Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 13

Gilead’s Curse - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Reparation - Andy Smillie

An extract from 'Deliverance Lost' - Gav Thorpe

Dead Calm - Joshua Reynolds

Lesser Evils - Tom Foster

Hunters - Braden Campbell

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 14

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Two - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

The Burning - Nick Kyme

In the Shadow of the Emperor - Chris Dows

The Tilean's Talisman - David Guymer

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 15

Beneath the Flesh - Part One - Andy Smillie

Gilead’s Curse - Chapter Three - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Torment - Anthony Reynolds

The Pact - Sarah Cawkwell

An Extract from 'Deliverance Lost' by Gav Thorpe

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 16

Beneath the Flesh - Part Two - Andy Smillie

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Four - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

The Shadow in the Glass - Steve Lyons

Redeemed - James Swallow

An Extract from 'Know No Fear' by Dan Abnett

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 17

Vermilion - Ben Counter

The Iron Without - Graham McNeill

Stromfel's Teeth - Josh Reynolds

An Extract from 'Knight of the Blazing Sun' by Josh Reynolds

The Lion - Part One - Gav Thorpe

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 18

The Oberwald Ripper - Laurie Goulding

The Lion - Part Two - Gav Thorpe

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Five - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Slayer of the Storm God - Nathan Long

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 19

Irixa - Ben Counter

The Lion - Part Three - Gav Thorpe

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Six - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Thunder From Fenris - Nick Kyme

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 20

In Hrondir's Tomb - Mark Clapham

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Seven - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

The Talon of Khorne - Frank Cavallo

Lords of the Marsh - Josh Reynolds

A Mug of Recaff - Sandy Mitchell

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 21

The Shadow of the Beast - Laurie Goulding

An Extract from 'Fear to Tread' - James Swallow

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Eight - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Dead Man's Party - Josh Reynolds

Born of Blood - Sarah Cawkwell

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 22

The Mouth of Chaos - Chris Dows

The Butcher's Beast - Jordan Ellinger

Fireborn - Nick Kyme

Leechlord - Frank Cavallo

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 23

Bloodline - James Swallow

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Nine - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Let the Great Axe Fall - Part One - Graham McNeill

The Hunter - Graeme Lyon

Necessary Evil - Rob Sanders

Hammer and Bolter: Issue 24

The Rite of Holos - Guy Haley

Gilead's Curse - Chapter Ten - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Let the Great Axe Fall - Part Two - Graham McNeill

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Gilead’s Curse

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Chapter 1

I sat alone with the bard the night the cursed stories came. He was almost as ancient as I am now, and he had not the power to rein in his thoughts nor to staunch the flow of words that tripped over his tongue into my innocent ears.

He had mentioned the cursed stories before, and the calamities that went with them. He was sorry not to tell tales of such daring and bravery that none could doubt the prowess of their elf hero: Gilead te Tuin of Tor Anrok, son, brother, companion, warrior. He was the fiercest and most loyal of his noble race, or so the bard would tell anyone who would listen.

I sat alone with the old storyteller. The delirium had taken him, and the women had worked their medicinal magic. I was to sop his brow with a poultice, rub his hands and arms with sappy oils, and sit awake for as long as I was able, while the women recovered their strength.

I was fearful, and his delirium was loud and fierce; there was no risk of my falling asleep that night. In the morning, he would be dead, and the cursed stories would be circling my brain, but not before the bard had rehearsed the curses, over and over, between the more lucid moments when his eyes stared straight ahead, and the stories came tumbling forth.

He had sworn he would not tell the cursed tales, but he was insensible and driven by unknowable forces. I had not sworn to block my ears against the telling, nor would I have known how so to do for I was no more than a slip of a girl.

I am ancient now and eager for the end to draw near. If I am as bewitched as the old man was, so be it. I would not pass his cursed tales to one unconscious of their significance or of the dangers inherent in hearing them.

I told the tales as a child. I talked of the curses until I was boxed about the ears, beaten black and blue and silenced by anyone scared enough to quiet a child with violence.

Leave now if you cannot stomach hearing these stories recited for the last time since I was an infant, for the last time by me. Someone must keep them in his heart until it is time to pass the baton to a new generation, when, perhaps, a little of the curse will have withered away. When the curse is old and dissipated, man will hear the complete tales of Gilead, and in the meantime, the great elf lord, the compassionate, stoic warrior, will add to this canon of adventures with feats so noble as to be almost beyond imagining.

Three generations of men have been born in my lifetime. I should have been a great-grand-dame, but it was not to be. The cursed bard lived a century through, and many of his stories came from generations of storytellers before him.

They say that elves live forever. I believe that Gilead lives, yet, and I know that he has lived a dozen of our short, human generations, and more besides.

He would have been an old man when the cursed tales began, had he been a man. He was, instead, a tall, slender, fine-boned young elf of grand descent, fallen on the most desperate of circumstances. His home and his family were gone, his brother dead, his lessons in revenge learnt, and his honour restored.

There was never a tale of cruelty or neglect, except when it came to himself. He was the saddest of beings, the most bereft, the least heedful of his well-being. Some said his mind was so tortured that he looked long and hard for death, but that it eluded him, that cruel fate preferred to keep him in rude health while he fought against the fragile nature of his broken heart.

Be not a-feared. My first tale is not cursed. It is a preamble, a setting-up, a prologue. Hear it out, and then I will begin the cursed tales, for my time on the dirt of this realm is short, and I could not desire to live beyond the story’s end.

Gilead fell into the practice of traveling for a little after the sun began to rise, or he began to journey before the sun had set. It was unpleasant always to sleep in the daylight and move through the darkness. It irked him to be always under a lightless sky. The shadows were long and lean, as he was, grey-on-grey in the twilight; that magic time when a thread each of black and white resonate with the same dull sheen when held against the sky. Any shadow was better than none at all, any light a blessing.

He travelled when the earliest risers were beginning their working days, and was aware of their heavy human scents and vulgar vocal tones. He had been alone so long that he was quite used to the meagre sounds of the natural world around him, the sighing creak of ancient trees, the tremulous whisper of fast-growing wild herbs, the fall of all kinds of rain, and the movement of the air. He heard the voices of the few remaining creatures, the hesitant mews of the deer of the forests, the swoops and caws of carrion birds, and even the rustle of insects foraging in the mulch that gathered in the undergrowth.

He did not need or particularly want human companionship, but his path inevitably skirted the more populous villages and towns. He knew better than to move openly among them, for their safety as much as for his own, and so that he avoid distractions from his cause. Humans were creatures of urgent and consuming need, especially in these increasingly desperate times, and if they knew he was close-by they would call upon him to make their pitiful lives more bearable. A thousand small acts of kindness might add weak smiles to some of the human faces that he so readily cringed from, but he had a mission that could change so much more, so much for the better.

‘The shadow... It’s too long. It’s an omen... As bad an omen as you could wish for,’ the woman whispered to her husband, clutching the child close to her skirts.

Her husband bent towards her, her low tones almost inaudible.

‘By Sigmar, you’re a foolish woman, Brigida,’ he said. ‘The sun so low gives us all long shadows. Look at the bairn’s, as tall as a willow switch whip.’

The woman stopped in her tracks, picked up her only child, who was too big to be lifted, but who was glad to be carried, warmed by his mother’s anxious body, and eager to return to a sleep so harshly cut short.

‘Not our shadows, Ignaz,’ she said. ‘The other. Look to the edge of the ditch where the path loses its metal. Look to the shadow there.’

Gilead had not noticed his shadow and he cursed his carelessness, but he had already retreated from the road edge, ducking between the trees that leaned out over the road, windswept in the harsh, northern climate. He had crossed the Middle Mountains weeks ago into Ostland, and Wolfenburg was behind him to the west as he headed into the depths of Ostermark. He had travelled through the night, mounted on the fresh horse that he had procured in Altdorf the previous spring. He was fortunate indeed to get even this moderate palfrey, but the mare was young and even-tempered, and Gilead was spending whatever time he could training the beast. She was a useful horse, clean and sound, not easily unnerved, and habitually quiet.

At sunrise, he had left her in a sheltered glade only a few dozen yards from the edge of the road, which was more-or-less straight and fairly recently metaled, with room for carts and carriages to pass easily, so there must be regular traffic along it between villages and market towns. The air was cold and he could see his breath clouding slightly in front of him. All was quiet. He was tired, but content, and he had allowed himself to drift into memory, not of happier times, for there had been none these many decades, but of his people, at least.

He had been in a place very like this, at the edge of the Forest of Shadows, when the time had come for him to depart for the memorial. The similarity to those other circumstances so struck him that, in his imagination, he was back with his people, hearing the stories told by the women, examining the beautifully woven and embroidered shroud of the lost, casting his mourning cape around his shoulders and saying his farewells. The humans spoke so ignorantly of the elf, of his way of life and the manner of his death. The race was not immortal. An elf could and would die, perhaps not as readily as the human, who chased the narrow thread of his life away so quickly, but with his eyes so rarely facing forwards. A human life was so short that the future was as nothing. No man could rely entirely on being in the future of tomorrow, next week or next year, let alone the next decade or century.

Elves died too. Gilead had travelled a thousand miles, two, to return to the place of departing, to mourn his distant cousin. Death generally came only after a long life, and the fallen elf’s noble deeds were celebrated in the times of departing, of the departed and of mourning. This death had come too soon.

The time of departing was for the closest family and friends. For anything between a decade and a score of years, depending on the elf’s status and the size of his family or retinue, the fallen was in the departing stage of his life and death. He was still close enough to be spoken of in the present tense by those who had loved him the longest and most loyally. During the time of departing, the shroud was spun, woven and embellished with icons of the season and year of falling. When this phase was complete, the wider elf community was brought in for the time of the departed, when the fallen’s career was celebrated, stories told, and the elf’s embalmed, enshrined body finally dressed in his shroud. The second phase was shorter than the first, but equivalent in the hours spent. Ten brethren might spend ten years in the time of departing, one hundred cousins, six weeks in the time of the departed.

The elf population was small, in decline, and spread widely across the Empire and beyond. Intimate family groups were often made up of only two or three elves, and extended groups seldom had more than a dozen members.

The time of mourning was the last of the three phases, and would extend across centuries or even millennia. The time of mourning continued until the last of those present at the time of the departed entered their own time of departing. In the time of mourning, the fallen elf lived on in the hearts, minds and deeds of those who had known him, those fellow elves who had crossed his path.

Gilead had met his cousin, seventh generation removed, in that last time of departing. It had pleased him greatly for Fithvael’s sake, for his old servant, friend and co-conspirator in the events that followed his brother Galeth’s death. That had been the beginning of it, when he had been the age of this young elf, this Laban te Tuin of Tor Mahone. The boy was young and eager, but respectful and gentle, and when the time of the departed was over, every old elf kissed him and smiled to know that, so long as this elf-child lived, their time would not be forgotten. Even Fithvael, among the oldest of them, could expect to live in this boy’s memory for a thousand years.

Gilead’s latest and most significant cause had been cemented in his will during the memorial to his old friend and cousin. It had been cemented with the knowledge that he must ensure Laban live a long life, that he might remember Fithvael for his allotted time of mourning. All hope would be lost if the elves began to fall to the evil that had cursed the weaker species of the world. Gilead would not allow it.

He knew not what was at the centre of all that was happening in the world, but he knew now that it was affecting every life force that inhabited every corner of every continent. How many decades ago had it started? Had it begun with the failing hedgerows and the meagre crops? Had it begun with the hunger that had caused so much fauna to perish? Once upon a time, the calls of the beasts and birds of the fens and woods, prairies and plains that he had traversed had been more than Gilead could stand. The abundance of layered voices, cries, caws, growls and howls had followed him everywhere he had travelled, and at night, a whole vast new array of beastly sounds filled the hours that should have been more restful. At the time, he had been able to find no peace, now he craved the sounds of a healthy and robust environment.

Livestock had been affected once there was not the excess of strong grass and grazing crops to feed them. They had grown tired and hungry, had withered to hide-covered skeletons and had died leaning against trees, walls and buildings, or had lost the ability to stand and had fallen dead to the bare earth.

The humans had struggled on. The very old and very young had died in greater numbers than they would have in times of plenty, but their lives had always been short and lived too quickly. Then the children stopped coming. Suddenly, even the youngest and most fertile of human women began to look drawn and wan and tired. Children came less often and families grew more slowly, and many of those that were born clung to the threads of their lives with quiet desperation.

Gilead’s purpose was set in stone. It led him across the Empire from the Loren Forest, north through Altdorf and on towards the Middle Mountains before his brethren began to suffer. Then his beloved cousin, Benath, had fallen. The time of the departed was spent speculating as to the cause of his death, and when no ready answer came, Gilead began to suspect that the plague that had befallen first flora and fauna, and then the fragile humans, might have taken his cousin and friend.

He returned to the north with renewed vigor, determined to find the source of the evil that was permeating all strata of life. Nothing would sway him from his cause or from the course he must follow to track the evil force.

‘It is gone,’ said Ignaz, ‘if it was ever there. Your imaginings will get the better of you, wife. You will scare the bairn to death.’

He stopped and gave his wife a rough hug. He had been too harsh with her, but he was fearful, too: fearful of losing his wife, and his child; fearful that his sparse and meagre beet crop might yet succumb to some blight or other; fearful that his one remaining milking goat had lost the will to bleat. More than anything, he was fearful that there would be no work for him or Brigida at the labour fair in Bortz, seven miles hence. A shadow, even a shadow so unusual that it had made his wife’s face pale and turned her voice to a whisper, was the very least of his worries.

Brigida leaned her head into her husband’s shoulder, and their child buried himself more deeply into the cocoon that their bodies made. Ignaz swallowed hard as he saw a long, grey shadow stop suddenly to the right of the road, and then ripple and wobble its way over the rutted ditch and disappear into the trees beyond. Apart from the effect of the terrain on the shadow, it seemed to glide as if by magic.

Ignaz held Brigida’s head against his chest until the apparition had passed, and then disengaged, looking down at her, his pale face full of concern.

‘I won’t let any harm come to you,’ he said. ‘I promise you that on Sigmar’s beard.’

‘Don’t promise,’ said Brigida. ‘Don’t dare to invoke the great god’s name. How could you stop it? The harm is already done.’

Gilead was roused from his reverie by Ignaz’s reassuring words. He turned, unconsciously, towards the sounds the human couple were making, and caught sight of the low-slung sun, barely above his eye height, between the trees. He shielded his face for a moment and looked out across the road, a hundred yards or so behind where the couple stood, locked in their embrace. Their long shadows stretched away between their position and his.

Gilead waited for the little family to move away, aware of their heavy footfalls for several long minutes. The watery sun was rising slowly, and the shadows would be long for some time to come.

Tired, his mind dulled by the unravelling of recent memories and with a long night’s journey, Gilead returned to the little glade where he had left his horse. He unburdened the palfrey of the few essentials he carried with him, rubbed her down with a handful of sickly, yellow strand grass, and threw a blanket over her. When his mount was comfortable, he swathed himself in the rough cloak, woven from contrasting threads, that he had bought when his beloved elf cape had become too fragile to wear for any but the most serious or sacred of occasions.

Gilead lay on the ground, sheltered beneath the greying canopy of a tree that was struggling to hang onto the last of its life. He could not sleep. He cast his mind back over the night’s journey. It was a trick that Fithvael, his oldest, dearest, last companion had taught him, that his mind might not return to the darkest of places from which the old retainer had barely managed to rescue him. The night had been without event. He had travelled a long, narrow path through the woods, close to the edge of the road, staying in shadow, hidden from the twin moons that hung in the sky so high, for so much of the night.

Shadows. There had been talk of shadows. It was this morning. His mind was sticking on something that had happened this morning.

Gilead soon realised what it was, and knew that a sleepless day would follow, a day of information-gathering, of listening from the shadows, of moving among the humans, among their scents and sounds. He was loath to do it, but do it he must.

Gilead had not been slack or careless on the road that sunrise. He had not neglected to see his shadow running ahead of him, into the human woman’s line of sight. He cast his mind back. It had been early, the sun low, so everything had been casting long shadows, but he had been moving to the west and south of the couple, and his shadow must have been cast into the woods, not onto the road.

Gilead’s tiredness ebbed away as this clue played on his mind. The palfrey needed to rest, if she was to be useful to him over the days to come, but she could sleep while he scoured the area for whatever had cast that shadow.

He hugged the edge of the ditch to the south and west of the road, keeping his shadow beyond the tree-line, while he reconnoitered the area. There was nothing in the road, no sounds of people or creatures anywhere nearby, and the only shadows were of the tree line on the opposite side of the road. Gilead lifted his head to smell the lightly moving air, but there appeared to be nothing on the breeze. He could faintly sense the three humans that had walked the path before him, maybe an hour earlier, but he knew their scents and sounds, and was content to rule them out; he knew they had passed and moved on to their destination.

Several hundred yards further along, in the direction the little family had taken, the road swerved gently to the left so that the tree line shadows covered its entire width. Gilead crossed quickly, using the shadows to consume his own. His swift, silent feet barely seemed to connect with the hard, smooth surface of the road, and the air around him hardly moved at all. If he smelled of anything, it was of cool air and clean water, of the few food stuffs that he still managed to forage and of the sweet hide of the beast that carried him.

No human would have detected his movement across the path, even if there’d been anyone watching. The few surviving local creatures, a scrawny rat picking at the dry remains of a bird carcass, while its mate plucked sadly at its battered feathers from the low branch of the nearest tree, didn’t so much as blink at his passing.

Within the hour, Gilead knew that whatever had belonged to the shadow that Brigida had shied from, was gone, or else had been a figment of her imagination. Everyone was jumpy. Everyone had been jumpy for a long time.

Gilead spent the next two hours foraging for what he would need to sustain him for the remainder of the day, for, once the mare was rested, he would continue his search for the elusive creature that had blighted the sunrise.

The soil was pale and poor, and would have been blown away on the breeze long ago if it weren’t for the tenacious hold of the woodland trees’ roots. They were stunted and twisted, wore greying or yellowing leaves, and their bark was pitted and sallow, but they clung on, the most ancient of life forms, biding their time until the tide should turn and the world should be rid of the plague that spread insidiously across its lands.

The shoots and leaves that Gilead favoured to flavour his meals and provide aromatic salads had not been seen for a dozen seasons or more, and he had taken to foraging a little below the surface of the earth for tubers, roots and corms that provided some meagre sustenance, though often their flesh was stringy and dry, and he had to pummel and mince them after long cooking to extract any nutrients buried within. He collected enough wood to make a small fire, the smoke from which would be dissipated among the lower branches of the trees, rendering his position undetectable from more than a dozen yards away. He sourced water from an old, shallow culvert, the contents surprisingly fresh and sweet in the otherwise inhospitable surroundings; no doubt because there were neither humans nor animals in any numbers to deplete the stream.

Gilead bathed, ate, and refreshed himself, and, when the time came, he packed his belongings and led the palfrey out onto the road. He followed in Brigida and Ignaz’s footsteps, keeping close to the ditch, crossing the road at its turns to ensure that his shadow was hidden, and he kept his mare relaxed and quiet.

He would be seen, and not seen. He would hide in plain sight, casting no scents nor sounds nor sudden movements into the air. The humans would hardly know he was there, yet, when they had need of him, he would respond.

His senses on full alert, Gilead tracked every sound, every movement, every scent on the air. As he came close to the subdued little town of Bortz, two hundred miles south-west of Bechafen, the natural smells and sounds of the open landscape drifted away, and the stink of fear and the sound of tremulous resentment tripping from the lips of the doleful humans filled his senses.

‘They say Brigida saw a shadow on the road, this morning,’ said one young woman as Gilead listened in.

‘We’re all seeing shadows,’ said the old dame with her, ‘and with good reason. Death casts the longest shadow, and he’s among us now. Sigmar help us all!’

‘Don’t say so,’ said the younger woman, clutching the old dame by the crook of her arm.’

‘I do say so,’ said the dame. ‘I shall say so until I come to Sigmar’s wondrous presence, and I shall be glad to go.’

Gilead moved on. This was only talk, an old woman frightening instead of reassuring the child. This was rumour, not fact.

‘Not much of a labour fair,’ said a young man, dragging a half-filled, tarpaulin-covered cart in his wake.

‘Nothing worth buying labour for,’ said his companion, ‘and the quality of the labour to be had, so weak and poor.’

‘Shall it end, father?’ asked the youth pulling the cart.’

‘Not in my lifetime,’ said his father. ‘Not while Sigmar gives me breath.’

As Gilead approached the main square of the market town that had clearly once been a busy, even thriving centre of commerce, he heard the tentative dull clang of a handbell being lifted by someone inexpert at handling it.

The bell clanged again.

Gilead slid silently off the palfrey as the people around him stopped and turned to see where the noise was coming from.

Gilead watched as an old, bent man took the bell gently from the faltering hands of a tall slender, tired-looking man, the man that the elf had seen on the road. Gilead watched as the old man lifted the bell to an inverted, upright position in his hand and then relaxed his hand away, letting the bell drop onto its clapper, sending a clear, high note resonating across the square and out to the ears of the milling people.

More people stopped and turned, and, one by one, they began to move slowly back to gather in the square.

‘Ignaz has something to say,’ said the old man, inverting the bell and placing his hand over the clapper inside.

Ignaz coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he didn’t want to let the words out.

‘I couldn’t admit it before,’ he said.

‘Speak out, lad,’ said a middle-aged woman from the rear of the crowd.

‘I didn’t like to admit it to Brigida, this morning. I didn’t like to say it when there was no one to hear it, and us so vulnerable on the road alone.’

He coughed again.

‘Only we weren’t alone,’ he said.

‘Get to the nub of it, lad, the sun won’t stay up forever, and you know it,’ shouted the woman again, before one or two of the older men around her glared in her direction and shushed her.

‘It’s here,’ he said. ‘It’s among us. Brigida saw it this morning, but I told her nay.’ Ignaz gestured towards his wife whose faced turned an even paler shade of sallow, and the hollows beneath her eyes appeared to fill with greenish-black shadows. ‘I saw it too, but I kept it from her.’

‘Saw what?’ someone called from the crowd in the shrill, tremulous voice of an eager boy or a terrified woman.

‘Brigida saw a shadow. Then I saw it too.’

A murmur began to pass through the crowd. Some believed every word and were frightened of what might come next out of the man’s mouth, others were more sceptical, longer in the tooth or made of sterner stuff, others still could feel their sap rising and their instincts to fight kick in. One or two shook their fists or howled improvised war cries.

‘It doesn’t sound like much... A shadow,’ said Ignaz, ‘but it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was too long and too lean, and too... too... It wasn’t human.’

Someone shouted from the crowd ‘What time did you see your shadow?’, brave enough to heckle, if nothing else, ‘Was it at dawn, perchance? ‘Oooh... Loook... Look how long the shadows are! Sigmar save me!’ I’m sooo scared!’ The voice broke into laughter, and Gilead watched, unsurprised as a gathering of cocky boys started pummeling each other, playing at daemons for they knew not what else to do.

‘It’s here,’ said Ignaz. ‘The thing we’ve heard talk of. The rumours were true.’

The scents on the air grew stronger as the sky, filling steadily with clouds, darkened and the lowering sun was swallowed into its grey depths. Gilead could smell their fear on the air.

He tugged ever-so slightly on the mare’s rein and turned into its body as it made a small circle to face the way they had come. The boy with the cart and his father were standing too close, and Gilead had to jink to avoid them. Their eyes were cast across the market square to watch as Ignaz tried to continue.

The palfrey was less lucky, and, as the tightening rein tugged at her head, she whinnied, her nostrils flaring slightly.

‘Watch out,’ said the boy, steadying his cart with the handrails he still gripped as the horse bumped against it. ‘Look where you’re going with that stupid beast.’

The boy was already unnerved by what was going on in the square. They were all in a state of tension from the rumours that were passing from one town to the next about the plague that was in their midst, and the daemon that rode in on its heels.

Once the cart was stable, the lad dropped his hold on the handrails and it bumped onto its stop-feet, leaning slightly. The boy slapped the palfrey hard on the flanks, and it skittered on its rear hoofs.

Gilead loosened his grip on the mare’s reins and turned to the boy, but the space around them was so limited, and the youth so agitated there was nothing he could do to prevent what happened next.

The heckling boys were scuffling with each other, and Ignaz’s voice was drowned out by the commotion that was gradually building. More of the locals were drawing close to see what the fuss was about, or to spread talk of what was happening. Gilead didn’t like it. He was suddenly in the middle of a tight little group of stressed people; the situation was becoming less and less predictable, and he wanted to get him and his mount out of there.

The youth slapped the horse again, and it pulled its head up, extending Gilead’s arm as he reached for a tighter hold, close on the horse’s head. The boy was drawing attention to the mare, and the mare was drawing attention to him. He kept his head low and his grip on the reins steady, and worked his body away from the youth and his cart. There appeared to be no way out as the scuffling boys started to kick and punch at one of their number, falling against the cart, which inched across the paving stones with a squeak and a groan, blocking the mare’s exit.

Gilead stood very close to the horse, his side against her foreleg, his shoulder against her neck. He leaned in gently and made soothing noises close to her ear. There was not room to mount her, and he didn’t want more eyes on him.

Then he heard the odd clang, again, the sound of the bell being mishandled, and the market square was suddenly filled with the ringing of the bell, loud and shrill as someone swung it inexpertly and too fast.

The horse, already jittery and hemmed-in, tried to bolt, but got its legs caught in the hand cart. It panicked and struck out, kicking the boy that was being tortured by his friends, landing a heavy hoof in the victim’s shoulder as he lay with his back on the cart. The boy yelped, and his friends stopped pummeling him, laughed, and tried to help him out of Gilead’s way.

Gilead was impotent to do anything but try to keep his horse under control. He could not allow himself to be seen or recognised. He had to remain slumped under his cloak, his height disguised and his head covered. It was easier said than done.

Finally, the old man intervened. He grabbed the youth’s hand as he pulled it back to slap the mare for a third time, and gave the cart a hard shove out of the way. The scuffling boys skipped off, dancing through the crowd, and Gilead breathed a sigh of relief.

The bell had quietened the crowd for the moment, and Gilead was sure that he could get away. He rubbed the mare’s nose and patted her lightly on the shoulder. He turned the reins over in his hand, adjusting his grip, and clicked his tongue to encourage her to walk on.

Gilead did not see the child.

In the confusion of the busy market square, when things had begun to happen, a diligent father standing a few yards away, had quietly picked up his child, lifted him over his head and sat him on his shoulders.

The child was suddenly the tallest person in the square, and watched, smiling, as the scene unfolded beneath him. He saw the boys arguing and the handcart getting bumped. He saw the skittish mare and the old man. He saw a hand reach up to the horse’s head to hold the reins. He saw the long, tapering fingers, the narrow, elegant wrist. He saw the fine skin and the beautifully turned cuff of a type of garment that he didn’t recognise.

All things are new and wondrous to a child. All creatures are fascinating.

Gilead did not notice the child, but, as he walked past, still soothing the mare, the child reached his hand out and gently tugged at the hood of the elf’s cloak.

As the hood fell back to his shoulders, Gilead turned to see what had disturbed it. His eyes were more-or-less on a level with the child’s, and his cold stare made the colour drain from the child’s face, and his jaw quiver.

The child’s face went from long and pale to red and round, and, before Gilead had time to lift his hood and drop into his knees to reduce his height, the child was screaming.

The child wailed hard, pointing all the time at where Gilead had been standing.

The crowd, hushed by the ringing of the bell, turned to look. The man with the child on his shoulders stared at Gilead for a moment before lifting the child from his shoulders to comfort it. He did not need to take action. He was not the only one who had seen what his child had seen.

One hand still tight on the mare’s reins, Gilead turned his head in a slow circle, his body following. He came up to his full height, placed his feet shoulder-width apart and braced himself for what was to come.

Hours before, he had mistaken his shadow for that of whatever was terrorising these people. Now, they were mistaking him for their nemesis.

The first swing came, as it always did, from the youngest man, the most cocky, the keenest to prove something. Gilead dropped his shoulders back an inch or two, and the blow, which was never going to reach his face, was so poorly timed and imprecise that it failed even to connect with his chest. It did, however, turn the cocky kid and sent him staggering a step or two back into the tight circle that was forming around the elf.

Then a man stepped forward, and the gap in the circle closed behind him. This must be their champion. He was a tall, wiry man, young, but by no means a boy. Gilead weighed him up in a moment or two. He lifted a hand in front of him, not so much a warning as a gesture of retreat. The elf would walk away if he was allowed to do so.

No one was going to allow him to walk.

The champion clasped one fist in the other, briefly, and danced a fast step towards the elf, swinging a left hook low, into Gilead’s body. Gilead moved deftly to the right, and the champion was surprised when his fist connected with fresh air. He swung twice more, and twice more, Gilead ducked, while still managing to hold onto the mare’s reins.

When the next blow came, it came from Gilead’s left and a little behind him. It connected with his side, above his right hip. Gilead turned his head in time to see his assailant pulling a pained face and shaking out his punching hand.

It was two against one, if both the humans were prepared to continue.

Gilead handed his mare’s reins to the old man with the kid and the cart. He took them, without thinking, and then looked down at his hand, not a little surprised by the turn of events. He shrugged, shortened the rein and patted the mare on the shoulder to reassure her; after all, the horse wasn’t his enemy.

Gilead wound his cloak into a long rope and secured it around his waist, lest he trip over it. Before he was finished, a third man had his fists up and a fourth was weighing a length of wood in his hand that looked like some sort of paddle.

The paddle came first, swung out low to take his legs out from under him. Gilead stepped lightly over the paddle and waited for the next attack. The champion tried punching, again, but there were five assailants, now, surrounded by spectators, and the momentum was taken out of his swing when his fist, drawn back, landed in the armpit of the man next to him.

Gilead thought about turning and walking away from the farce, but that was impossible. The crowd was spoiling for a fight. The threat of the plague was bad enough, but to have the rumoured monster in their midst and do nothing was unthinkable. Any man would try to get his hands on the elf, and most of the women and children, too. Gilead must stand and fight.

When the next arm swung at him, Gilead caught it deftly by the wrist, turned it and its owner away, and shoved the man in the back, sending him sprawling into the arms of the crowd. Then he jinked to his left and tripped the youngest and cockiest of his opponents. The boy landed on his face, bloodying his nose.

The man who hurt his hand punching Gilead tried a double-handed swing at arm’s-length, but Gilead turned, and the fists landed in another man’s exposed gut, doubling him over and making him retch.

Several men, watching the fiasco, began to separate from their wives and children, removed hats and jackets, and set pugnacious expressions on their faces.

Over the next few minutes, one or two blows found their targets, but none penetrated the elf’s defences completely enough to cause him any damage, however fleeting. He caught swinging arms and legs, ducked imprecise blows from fists and feet, banged a couple of heads together, and sidestepped one woman who began angrily swinging a bundle that she’d been carrying.

More and more men joined the fight, but soon they were brawling with each other, fighting to get to their mutual enemy, sure that they might succeed where others had failed. Frustration and exasperation overcame them, rendering them useless in the face of the elf’s vastly superior fighting skills.

Gilead had no intention of hurting any of them, and he’d rather not watch while they hurt each other.

The elf was ready when the old man dropped the mare’s reins and jostled the man next to him, who had thumped the youngster on his way into the fray. Gilead picked up the reins, ducked under the mare’s neck, and led her quietly away.

His information-gathering exercise had to be aborted, but it had born some fruit. The locals were terrified. They were afraid of the plague visited on their land and livestock, but they were more afraid of the rumoured creature.

Death was not a ghost, a myth or an idea. Here, now, death came in corporeal form.

Gilead retreated to the woods that bordered the town to the south. He lay low for days and then weeks, moving his small camp at regular intervals and leaving no signs of where he had passed through or spent time. There were hundreds of acres of woodland to forage, and, while food was not in plentiful supply there was enough to sustain him for as long as he needed.

Gradually, he began to weave his way closer to Bortz. He needed more information if he was to change the fates of the people who lived there, but he dared not be spotted again.

He left the mare safely hidden in the woods and made several sojourns into the edges of the town where he would sit quietly in the corners of inns and drinking holes. On market days, he moved silently between barrows and stalls, listening to gossip, and, on the roads between the town and the local farms and villages, he tacked himself onto the ends of larger groups of traffic and listened to the stories that were spreading across the region.

Within a matter of weeks, as the days began to lengthen into a tired, pale form of spring, Gilead started to know who the enemy was and where he could be found. Whoever, whatever it was, clearly lacked Gilead’s skills. It did not avoid detection by tracking. It appeared to return to the same haunts over and over again, approaching the town from the same direction, being spotted, or imagined in a small area close to where Gilead had entered the town for the first time. The best, most reliable of the rumours all came from the same road into Bortz.

The spectre was humanoid, although its dimensions were exaggerated by the hysteria that had grown up around it. Had it been another elf, Gilead would have felt its presence. It had to be human, or some humanoid monster.

There were reports of it drifting away at twilight. It was said to be pale, deathly and ethereal, while being a strong fighter, and there were rumours of an impressive steed of the kind a warrior might ride.

Gilead spent two days in the woods tracking the creature. Its prints were clearly made by feet that were long and slender, large for a human man, but certainly not inhuman. Gilead tracked the horse, too, more often ridden than led, although, in the heaviest, most overgrown acres of the wood, two tracks wove side-by-side between the trees. The ground was otherwise undisturbed; there was no digging for roots to eat. Gilead found only the pale, scrawny carcasses of meatless rodents, bloodless and papery.

It was night when Gilead knew that he was close. It was the smell. It was like the smell of humans, but older and more decayed. There was a smell of dry graves, sepulchral, almost. There was a mingled scent of horse sweat, warm leather and grease. The earth smelled of a fire that had been lit and extinguished more than once, but which had cooked nothing, and of blankets used too often between laundering. Gilead almost mistook the whole for the smell of death, but human death did not smell like this, nor animal death, either. This was the antithesis of the death-smell.

Gilead ducked between the lowest branches of the trees that surrounded the tight, narrow area from which the smell emanated. He saw the horse, first, tethered to a tree, its head at full-stretch trying to reach fresh sources of grass to chew on. The horse looked up for the briefest of moments, and then bowed again to its purpose.

Confident the horse would raise no alarm, Gilead looked through the darkness beyond it to the curl of grey smoke that rose a foot or two above the tiny fire pit that shed the only light for miles. A figure sat, bent before the fire, its back to Gilead, its silhouetted elbow working small circles as its hands performed some monotonous task.

Gilead drew the shorter of his blades. There was little enough room to fight hand-to-hand, and none to wield a sword. He wondered for a moment whether a fight was necessary. Could he not simply kill the man, quietly, while his back was turned? It was not the elf way. Gilead would stand face-to-face with any foe, believing that his greater skill and longer practice would lead to the defeat of any opponent he met in mortal combat.

He ducked under the last of the branches overhanging the space in the wood that hardly qualified as a glade, making no effort to quiet his footsteps. Gilead noticed the gleam of metal in the dim firelight. The creature was polishing a large piece of armour, a cuisse or a pauldron. A helmet, adorned with a battered plume, sat on one side of the figure, and he appeared to be wearing a mail headpiece, although his chest and back were covered in nothing more than a loose shirt.

As Gilead took another step, the war steed’s head came up, and its ears flicked forward. The figure sitting at the fireside turned towards Gilead, stepping swiftly to its feet. It dropped the polishing cloth, and bent slightly at the knees to lower the section of armour that it had been polishing to the ground, keeping its gaze on Gilead.

Their eyes locked, and Gilead knew, at last, that this man had transcended human mortality. It had been a man once, but was no longer constrained by the passage of time or the decaying of the mind or body. This sham of a man, this facsimile of a noble knight, had faced death and been reborn. It was, perhaps, as long-lived as Gilead, and might live longer than any elf, unless Gilead could put an end to it.

The first blow came fast and cruel as the knight turned, swinging one foot high and wide to connect with Gilead’s shoulder. The knight had not removed his boots and a gleaming spur left a tight row of pinprick holes in the flesh of Gilead’s arm. The elf had expected to land the first blow, but he was quick to react, and blocked the knight’s kick just above the knee with his own foot, before too much damage was inflicted.

The knight was caught off-balance when the side of Gilead’s foot landed squarely against the inside of his thigh, and he had to wheel sharply to bring himself squarely in front of Gilead for another attack. Gilead brought his knife up, and wove quick movements into his assailant’s chest. The knight ducked and backed away from two of the passes, but a third made contact with the mail coif, covering his head and neck, but for which, the blade would have sliced a convenient artery in the knight’s neck.

The knight was strong and agile, and faster than any human, and it had been some time since Gilead had done serious battle. He had spent a considerable amount of time fighting humans, but always from a defensive stance, never intending to mark or maim, let alone kill.

Gilead caught the knight’s wrist as it propelled a roundhouse punch in his direction, but the knight was too quick, and twisted his fist, loosening the elf’s grip. Then the knight turned his back so that Gilead was behind him, at close quarters, and drove an elbow up hard under the elf’s ribs.

If Gilead had been human, that blow would have winded him and probably left him badly bruised with a couple of cracked ribs, but Gilead was not human.

Reflexively, as Gilead bent to lessen the impact of the blow, he thrust his knife-hand out, hoping to make contact with the knight’s hamstring. The knight had taken off most of his armour to clean it, so his legs were clad in nothing more protective than a leather-patched pair of breeches. He anticipated the elf’s move, however, and sat into the knife, so that the flesh of his buttocks took the worst of the injury, leaving his muscle and connective tissues intact.

The wound should have bled, fiercely, but Gilead was not surprised when his knife-hand did not come away slick and hot with fresh blood.

As the knight turned to face Gilead, a weak stream of dark liquid trickling down the back of his leg, the elf flicked his knife deftly from his right hand to his left, and thrust hard into the knight’s side before he had a chance to land another blow.

The knight barely faltered in his lunge towards Gilead, wrapping his arms around the elf’s waist and driving his protected head into his chest, bringing them both crashing hard to the forest floor. The mulch was not rich and thick on the ground as it might have been ten or a dozen years ago, and the pair fell heavily. Gilead, with his wiry frame, the tensile strength of his narrow bones vastly superior to a human’s, felt nothing very much, but the knight, landing hard, was winded. It gasped a stale breath of air up at Gilead, its eyes bulging slightly.

Only then did Gilead see the teeth. They were long and strong and as yellow as old ivory. In the split second the elf had to his advantage, he wondered whether this undead knight would bite him, whether one species could be sustained by the blood of another. Before the split second was over, Gilead rolled the body of the knight, until the elf was sitting on his chest, yanking the protective mail headpiece away to expose the knight’s head and throat.

Rather than resisting the removal of the small amount of protective clothing that might save him from the elf, the knight brought his feet up and dug his heels hard into the elf’s back, tearing Gilead’s shirt, and gouging long scratches to either side of his spine that would need good and careful cleaning if they were not to become infected.

The knight brought his hands up to grasp the elf around the neck. Gilead whipped his head around and brought it towards the knight’s face in a swinging arc, hardly able to believe that he had been driven to head-butting the creature. This was not dignified. This was not how an elf warrior fought.

Gilead jumped to his feet, freeing himself from the knight’s grasp. His shoulder smarted slightly, but adrenaline was kicking in and he felt no pain.

The knight did not stay long on the ground, and the two warriors were soon circling each other, marking out an arena in the tiny clearing.

As he stood, the knight grabbed his discarded mail headpiece and wrapped it around his right fist. Gilead threw his knife from one hand to the other, preparing to strike. His first swing was met by the mail glove, which shrieked with the impact.

Gilead turned, kicked high and then thrust low with his knife, but the knight saw the kick, and countered it with a low, lunging punch. Both combatants were unbalanced, and whirled away from each other to regroup.

Keen to gain some small advantage, Gilead unsheathed his sword. He would have to keep its hilt close to his body, and limit his movement, but he could keep the knight at a greater reach, and perhaps control the outcome of the battle.

The knight’s hand thrust down to the ground and scrubbed around for some kind of weapon. He was close to the fire, and a meagre pile of firewood. He picked a piece up, but discarded it immediately as useless.

As Gilead extended the tip of his sword towards the knight, ready to lunge, the knight’s hand fell on the cuisse that he had been polishing, and he brought it up like a shield, deflecting the tip of the sword, sending it out wide, where it peeled a ribbon of diseased bark from a tree at the edge of the clearing. Gilead pulled the sword hilt back into his body and adjusted his grip, wrapping his fingers firmly around the guard, shortening the weapon’s reach by several inches.

As Gilead worked his knife and his sword, flicking, extending, turning, jabbing, and, from time to time, sending the short knife away in stunning arcs to give it the momentum to do real damage to flesh and bone, the knight lunged with his improvised shield, parried, stopped the blades with his mail-wrapped hand, and sustained no penetrating injuries.

Gilead brought the knife across the knight’s cheek, taking off the tip of his nose, but he missed his eye entirely, and the wounds leaked only a little clear liquid. He brought the sword across the knight’s body at an angle and left a slice in his shirt, and chest, but, again, no real damage was done. Gilead wanted to see pink flesh and white bone, and was a little perturbed when he saw only a greenish-grey flap of skin.

After twenty or thirty minutes of Gilead’s fast-paced swordplay, and the knight’s impressive defensive moves, after battling it out in the clearing for longer than any fight should last, someone had to break the deadlock.

Gilead willed himself to succeed, but the pace and rhythm of the fight had begun to stagnate and the adrenaline in his system was long gone. He found it almost impossible to increase his pace.

The knight wearied of playing the defensive game and finally stepped things up. He let go of the end of the coif and let it drop in his hand so that he was holding one end of it. Without his head to shape it, the links of the mail fell into a rippling length of metal a yard long.

As Gilead thrust with his dagger, the knight swung the coif and brought it skittering against the length of the blade. The momentum of the swing wrapped the mail around the weapon and, to Gilead’s surprise, dragged it out of his grasp.

The knight dropped the coif in favour of the dagger. Both combatants had a blade, and the knight still had the advantage of an improvised shield.

Gilead, in a desperate effort not to lose the advantage, tilted his sword up in front of him and drove at the knight with the full weight of his body. The knight was recovering his footing having bent to pick up the blade, and was not ready for the onslaught. As he tried to remain standing, the knight dropped the heavy cuisse, and it crashed to the ground, tumbling over a pile of firewood.

At the edge of the clearing, the war steed made itself as small as possible between the trees, and lifted its head in a sympathetic whinny.

The elf and the knight fought each other in the tiny clearing for another hour. Blows were traded, blades were thrust and parried, and, once or twice, the knight and the elf were whisper-close to each other, the shorter knight’s glowing eyes, staring up into the elf’s steely ones.

Gilead had flashes of his shadow-fast capabilities, moments when he was everywhere at once, but still he could not best the fated creature that could not or would not die. They both bore wounds, some shallow and haphazard, others deeper and more threatening. The air was full of the grunts and cries of pain and triumph that punctuated their combat, and of a mixture of their scents; the sharp tang of adrenaline, the earthy blend of new sweat and old, and the sweet, clearwater smell that clung to the elf more strongly the harder he worked.

Then the dawn came.

Gilead did not see it, at first; he only heard it in the gentle early movements of the few creatures that still inhabited the woodland. Then he could smell the beginning of a new day, and feel it too. His senses better tuned to all things than a mortal man’s would be, the elf knew that the day was breaking. He also knew that with the new day would come the end of one or other of them. He knew that if he did not kill the undead knight, he would perish at his hand.

For the first time in a hundred years, Gilead wondered whether he could beat his opponent. If he did not, he would die on the blade of his own dagger, the weapon forged by his father’s armourer and given to him in a ceremony by his faithful companion, Fithvael, on the completion of his combat training.

A shaft of light found a low angle between the trees at the edge of the woodland and speared across the narrow clearing. Morning had broken.

Reparation

Andy Smillie

Thorolf coughed, sending flecks of blood and filmy matter onto the dirt. Touching a hand to his aching ribs, he scolded himself for allowing the human to get so close. Human, the term barely applied to the gene-bulked creature growling at him from across the arena. The man’s, if he had been a man, musculature was swollen to insane proportions, his head lost between boulder-like shoulders. His nervous system had been replaced by a network of cables that poked through pallid skin like rusting veins, and his legs were powered by pistons sunk into the meat of enlarged thighs. In a century of warfare, Thorolf had yet to encounter such a nightmarish union of flesh and science. The chrono-gladiator had been quicker than his bulk belied, steaming into Thorolf to deliver a punch to the Space Marine’s midriff that would have killed him if it were not for the hardened bone structure and numerous implants his Chapter’s Apothecaries had gifted him. Even now, Thorolf knew his enhanced physiology was working to heal the internal injuries he’d sustained; his twin hearts pumping fresh blood to areas of trauma while his Haemastamen implant helped filter away dead cells.

‘We must keep our distance.’

Thorolf turned to look at his cell mate as auditory devices fashioned into the walls of the arena translated the lanky, blue-skinned xenos’s words into Gothic.

The chrono-gladiator rushed forward again, steam hissing from metallic vents sunk into its spinal column. Thorolf dived forward, throwing himself into a roll to evade the brute’s charge. The tau side-stepped left, flowing around the gladiator to slash a wide gash in its midriff as it thumped past. Thorolf was begrudgingly impressed; the tau wielded his weapon, a long pole-arm with a curved blade at each end, with enviable dexterity.

Ignorant of the wound, the chrono-gladiator reset itself and came at them again.

‘Aim for the cabling!’ Thorolf shouted to the tau and rushed forward to meet the chrono-gladiator head on, baiting him.

Nodding in affirmation, the tau circled round behind their opponent, whipping his blade up in a tight arc to slash through a host of the putrid tubes feeding the chrono-gladiator’s nervous system. Chemical-laden fluid spurted out from the severed cables, which writhed like pained serpents, spraying onto the tau’s exposed abdomen. Screaming in pain as the chemicals seared into his flesh, the tau dropped his weapon and stumbled backwards.

Pivoting with a speed that belied its size, the chrono-gladiator sunk a hammer-like fist into the tau’s jaw. The blow shattered the aliens mandible, caved the side of his face in, flipping him backwards through the air like a spent round.

Breathing heavily, the chrono-gladiator turned to face Thorolf. It fought to take a step forward as a shudder permeated its body, the vital fluid balancing its tortured musculature spilling out onto the ground.

Thorolf moved backwards, drawing the chrono-gladiator away from the tau, before darting around the walking-weapon to scoop up the tau’s pole-arm. Sticking one of the bladed-ends in the ground and snapping it off, the Space Marine fashioned himself a spear.

‘Your body has suffered enough. It’s time your soul bore some of the burden,’ Thorolf spat, hefting the spear and running full tilt at the chrono-gladiator.

The brute braced itself, flexing its biceps as it prepared to rip Thorolf in half.

A hair’s-breadth outside striking range, Thorolf threw the spear. The weapon hit home before the chrono-gladiator could react, punching into the soft flesh of the brute’s throat. Thorolf followed it in, diving elbow first into the chrono-gladiator and knocking it to the ground.

The Space Marine recovered first, righting himself and driving the spear further through the gladiator’s neck, pinning it to the ground.

Dark ichor ran from the gladiator’s mouth as it reached for the spear but again Thorolf was faster, hammering his fists into the brute’s deltoids and smashing its shoulder joints. With both of its arms disabled, the gladiator’s legs flayed helplessly, its torso twitching in shock as it died.

‘The Emperor protects,’ exhausted, Thorolf rolled off his opponent’s corpse and stumbled to the exit.

‘Space Marine... I live,’ the tau cried out as Thorolf moved past him.

Thorolf stopped and closed his eyes, ‘In His sight.’ Straightening, he turned and walked to the tau. ‘No xenos, you do not.’

The tau looked up, his eyes full of confusion, ‘I... I thought we had a bond, as warriors.’

‘If that were true, I would be as guilty of heresy as those I hunt.’ The Space Marine raised his blade.

Thorolf ran his hand up over the smooth metal of his cell wall, bringing it to rest on a blackened, pockmarked section. Closing his eyes, he traced the contours, his fingers remembering how he’d made each of them. Thorolf’s thoughts turned to the strangled cries of the chrono-gladiator as its retarded throat tried to give voice to its death. He spat on the wall. The metal hissed under the saliva as the acid liquid burned a fresh imperfection into the metal. Satisfied, Thorolf knelt in prayer and offered thanks to the Holy Throne and God Emperor that he yet lived to continue his mission.

Thorolf stared uneasily at the hunchbacks. Their childlike, smiling faces jarred with their weeping skin in a way that made Thorolf wish was able to adjust his eyes the way he could the optic lenses of his battle helm.

He had little way of knowing how long it had been since his fight with the chrono-gladiator, but he was certain it wasn’t time for another appearance in the arena. Perhaps, he thought, this was an oddity of the tournament. Since his imprisonment, he knew that time had flowed strangely. It seemed fragmented and inconsistent, days indistinguishable from hours, seconds stretched out that they might fill eternity. He sighed, through gritted teeth; time was yet another constant that the eldar had taken from him. Running his hand across the black body suit that they had replaced his power armour with, Thorolf visualised the armoured grooves of his sacred breastplate, his fingers able to trace the line of every chink where the reinforced ceramite had been tested in saving his life. Inwardly, the Space Marine promised himself that he would don his armour again.

He looked past his jailors towards the open cell door and waited for the bastardised female to enter. She did not.

A body flew from the darkness beyond the door, hurled like a doll by someone or something far stronger than even the stimm-pumped chrono-gladiator. It landed hard on the floor between the hunchbacks, twitched and coughed up a smattering of blood. Thorolf took one look at the prone figure, immediately recognising the enhanced musculature of a fellow Space Marine. Without a word the hunchbacks turned and exited, the door locking behind them.

Thorolf moved to check the figure’s vitals –

‘Stay back,’ the new arrival snarled through bloodied teeth and pushed his torso off the ground.

‘Easy, brother, we are both playthings of the same captors. I bring no harm.’ Thorolf spread his hands in conciliation and retreated to the far wall.

The Space Marine seemed appeased, and slid back against the opposite wall. ‘Where are we?’

Thorolf looked at the naked Space Marine, studying the tapestry of angry scars that criss-crossed the pale flesh of his torso. Tell-tale puncture marks studded the Space Marine’s body, souvenirs left by the pain racks that had tortured his nervous system. Thorolf felt his muscles bunch as he remembered his own ordeal at the hands of their jailors. By contrast, the newcomer’s face was untouched; baring none of the signs of warfare Thorolf would have expected to see on one of the Emperor’s shock troops. It reminded Thorolf of the hunchbacks, wracked of body and beautiful of visage. His mind recoiled at the twisted work of the eldar surgeons.

‘We are on Damorragh,’ Thorolf spoke with hushed clarity, like a preacher consoling his flock. He sought the beads of his faith as he spoke but they had been stripped from him along with the rest of his wargear when the eldar had taken him. The warrior monk sighed and made a mental note to beg the Emperor’s forgiveness for uttering the xenos word. ‘It is an arena world of the pirate eldar.’

The newcomer was about to speak when Thorolf interrupted him, ‘I think brother, it is my turn to ask a question.’

The other Space Marine nodded.

‘Who do you serve?’

Anger flashed across the Space Marine’s face, ‘And why is it that I should tell you? Which Legion do you serve?’

‘I seek no advantage over you, brother. I am Thorolf Icewalkdr, son of Russ.’

‘Space Wolf,’ the Space Marine spat, doing a poor job of hiding his distaste for the children of Fenris. The newcomer considered the other Space Marine. It seemed at odds with what he knew of Russ’ descendants that Thorolf had spoken so plainly rather than aggrandising his Chapter in a torrent of audacious boasts. ‘You speak well for a berserker.’

Thorolf felt the Space Marine’s eyes on him. He wondered just how bestial he must look to him, his hair twisting in blood-matted locks down to his shoulders, an unkempt beard clinging to his face.

‘Now,’ Thorolf’s voice hardened, ‘I would know who it is that shares this cell.’

‘I am Ecanus of the Dark Angels.’

Thorolf stared the Dark Angel in the eyes; he could detect no taint of Chaos upon him. ‘I fought alongside a Dark Angel once.’

‘What?’

Thorolf lowered his eyes, ‘Ramiel was my first cell mate. He was a mighty warrior. I honour him with each breath I take in the arena, my body a monument to his legacy.’

‘Where are your fangs, wolf?’ Ecanus snapped, distracted.

Thorolf clenched his teeth in annoyance, ‘It would bid you well to watch your tone, son of Jonson.’ He paused and rubbed a hand against his mouth, ‘Their infernal surgeons took great joy in filing away my lord’s gift. A pain and an affront I will wash clean with blood.’ Thorolf let his gaze drift to the kill markings on the wall.

Ecanus followed his gaze. ‘Leave it to a Space Wolf to tally kills. You and your brethren’s idea of honour is more akin to the feudal barbarism of backwater savages.’

Thorolf’s face softened, ‘It is not glory that they recount. Each mark serves to remind me of the penance I must face when this is over.’

‘This will never be over, Wolf. I have emerged champion from two of these infernal games, only to find myself here, at the beginning of a fresh nightmare.’

‘In death brother, in death shall it be over.’

‘Hmm,’ Ecanus sniffed. ‘Perhaps it will be you and I who fight next.’

‘Perhaps,’ answered Thorolf softly. ‘The eldar take great pleasure in watching the arena tear apart the bond of brotherhood.’

‘Ramiel?’

Thorolf nodded, ‘I killed him.’ He met Ecanus’s gaze. The Dark Angel brow was creased with rage, his eyes murderous. ‘Fear not brother, should we make it far enough in this forsaken tournament then I have no doubt that we shall be pitted against one another. You will have your chance to restore Ramiel’s honour...’ Thorolf shuffled down onto the ground and closed his eyes, ‘but for now, there are plenty enough xenos and mutated abominations for us to dull our blades on.’

The grind of gears and rattle of chain-fed levers woke Thorolf. He could have enabled his Catalepsean Node to cut in; allowing parts of his brain to switch off while the others maintained alertness. But in truth he needed to rest fully. The demands the recent past had placed on his body were nothing to what his mind had been forced to endure. He sat up as the brass door to his cell ground open. A lithe figured entered, the symmetry of her long, curved limbs and perfect bosom at odds with the vertical grille that replaced her face. Thorolf stayed on the ground as two of her kin entered, and flanked her to either side. They were badly hunched, the musculature in their chest’s overdeveloped to such an extent it threatened to snap their backs. Their bodies were revolting, sheathed in a sickly skin with pores that dripped with virulent toxins. Yet by the standards of most cultures their faces would have been considered beautiful.

‘Stand.’ The female hissed the command through her grille-face.

The word rasped through the air, both distorted and clear. Had it not been for his Lyman’s Ear, which worked to filter out the harshness of the sound, it would have ripped into Thorolf’s skull like a saw blade. As it was, he felt wetness on his cheeks as blood trickled from his ears. He stood and waited for the hunched males to step forward, keeping his gaze fixed on the perverse ugliness of the female as they shackled his wrists with heavy chains.

‘Follow.’ The female turned sharply, her barbed hair cutting the air as she exited.

Thorolf ground his teeth as he fought against the nausea her voice induced, and allowed himself to be led from the cell by the hunchbacks.

The corridor stank of death. On the battlefield, Thorolf had smelt almost every death imaginable: the acrid taste of dirt mixed with bone as explosive rounds blew men apart; the sharp tang of laser fire as it lanced through their flesh; and the choking smell of promethium that burned them to ash and boiled away the air they breathed. But the death-smell in the corridor was far more putrid than anything a soldier was capable of inflicting on his enemies. The air tasted of depravity, of death wrought for the enjoyment of butchers. Thorolf tried hard not to breathe too deeply, his enhanced senses choked by the reek of dozens of foul toxins and pollutants. Down there, in the depths of an alien contrived hell, you died over a long time, when elaborate tortures had broken your spirit, and decay and rot had wasted your body. Death here was not a means to an end, an acceptable part of winning a war. It was manufactured for its own sake.

The hunchbacks led Thorolf along a snaking corridor of tarnished metal and smooth stone, lit by ghoulish faces that hung from the ceiling like lanterns. The eyes and mouths cast a drab light on the studded panels of the walkway. Each time he’d been led from his cell, Thorolf had tried to get his bearings. He’d tried to keep track of the twists in the corridor by counting the lanterns, then by remembering the shape of the other cells they passed. But it was no use, each time the corridor looked different, turned in a different direction. It was as impossible to fathom as it was for him to deny the hundred years of training and instinct that forced him to continue to try.

At the bottom of a metal incline, the female turned and spoke, ‘Stillness.’

Thorolf remained where he was as the hunchbacks ambled forward and removed his chains.

‘Go,’ the female motioned towards the ramp with an elongated arm that ended in knife-like fingers.

Thorolf fixed his gaze ahead and started up the incline. The surface, which at first had seemed smooth and featureless, was covered in an intricate design and script; carved into the metal with a craftsmanship that Thorolf doubted even his Chapter’s finest artisans could match. Blood ran in the relief between the symbols, tracing a grim outline around them. Thorolf felt his pulse quicken as he realised the arena he was about to enter was of more significance than the ones he’d fought in previously. At the top of the ramp Thorolf was met by an enormous circular metallic door large enough for his Chapter’s holy Land Raiders to drive through two abreast. He waited.

With a whisper, the circular door opened, its petal-like segments peeling apart to reveal an equally massive spiked gate. Light flooded in, and Thorolf was forced to cover his eyes until they adjusted. Then came the noise, a thunderous cacophony of jeering voices calling Thorolf to battle.

‘Within dark and forgotten regions hide the enemies of the Emperor. Be resolute. You have received his gifts so that you may enter such places and cleanse them,’ Thorolf let the mantra slow the beating of his twin hearts, and ease the tension from his shoulders.

The gate vibrated angrily as unseen machines hoisted it up into the vaulted ceiling. Thorolf took a long breath and strode forward; whatever it was that awaited him, he would bring it the Emperor’s forgiveness.

Thorolf stepped onto the arena floor, a steel platform covered in coarse, spiked gravel, to an explosion of noise from the crowd. He ignored them, thankful for the heat of the planet’s three suns as they burned down on him. The coliseum was by far the largest he had fought in. Tiered galleries surrounded the fighting pit, towering up into the blood-stained sky to where even Thorolf’s enhanced eyes could make out no more than a vague outline. No wall separated the crowd from the gladiators, allowing a privileged few to be sprayed with the blood of a combatant as an opponent’s blade opened his flesh. Between each row of seated spectators a pole of spiked iron stood in the ground, the head of a fallen gladiator impaled upon its tip.

At the opposite side of the arena, Thorolf saw his opponent – an ork. He had killed hundreds of the green beast’s kin on the field of battle, given the order to bombard thousands more out of existence from the deck of an orbiting battle-barge. But here, without the protection of his blessed armour, the cleansing rounds of his boltgun or the reassuring weight of the crozius arcanum, the hulking greenskin seemed a far harder proposition. Even hunched, the beast stood head and shoulders above Thorolf. Stood upright, it would have been double his height. The Ork gripped a makeshift mace in each of its oversized fists, metal poles with stone blocks chained to their tops.

Thorolf hefted the saw-blade he’d taken from the armoury in his right hand. ‘Pit the might of your faith against the strength of the foe and you will cease their onslaught,’ Thorolf knelt in prayer, sanctifying his temporary weapon the way he would have honoured his own battlegear.

The air above the centre of the arena sparked and distorted. Thorolf turned his attention upwards as the light folded in on itself creating a dark spot from which an obsidian balcony materialised. The platform was devoid of any thrusters, and Thorolf assumed it was held aloft by the same advanced anti-grav technology the eldar used on their skimming battle tanks. The crowd fell silent as the doors stood in the centre of the balcony swung open.

A single figure emerged onto the platform. Thorolf recognised him by the blood-soaked flesh cloak that hung across his shoulders. The Orator, the grotesque narrator of Damorragh’s arenas, was clad in crimson armour that dripped with thick blood pumped over its surface by hidden nozzles. With the skin of his bald scalp scraped back in a taut flesh-lock, his eyelids pinned back to reveal pallid, weeping eyes, and his mouth sewn shut by barbed wire, he was as frightening a spectacle as anything the arena could muster.

‘Citizens of Damorragh, warriors of the Bladed Lotus, raise your blades and kneel,’ the Orator’s lips stayed sewn shut as he spoke. Instead, the hundreds of ghoulish faces impaled around the arena gave voice to his words, their lifeless jaws moving in unnatural unison.

A hundred thousand barbed weapons glinted in the sun as the assembled masses obeyed.

‘Archon K’shaic,’ the Orator made a sweeping gesture with his arms, flicking blood from his armour into the air. The droplets hung suspended for a fraction too long, a morbid collage painted with the blood of the archon’s enemies. To Thorolf they formed a crimson serpent, and he felt his insides bunch at the unnatural liquid.

K’shaic stepped through the doors to deafening applause; the interlocking plates of his midnight black armour shifting like scuttle beetles. The blood-master of the depraved arena world raised a gauntleted hand and took his seat at the front of the balcony.

Once more, the Orator spoke through the mouths of the dead. ‘Here in Xelaic Prime, most blood-spattered of our inglorious amphitheatres, the tournament of the Razor Vein dawns. Let us greet it with the blood of a lab-grown man-thing and the entrails of a barbarous ork.’

Thorolf tried to block out the voices, but they washed over him in a nauseous wave that flooded his mind. He looked around for some way of silencing them but saw no cables or antenna linking the heads to the Orator. Thorolf dared not think of the debased technology the aliens used to accomplish such a bonding with the dead.

‘Emperor protects,’ he said, turning his thoughts away from the macabre.

From across the arena, the ork bellowed a thunderous roar, its mouth opening wide enough to swallow Thorolf’s head whole. He remained kneeling and closed his eyes. Enraged by its prey’s insensate reaction, the greenskin beat its chest and charged towards the Space Marine. Thorolf felt the ground tremble under the ork’s quickening footsteps. It rushed onward, and his nose picked up the beast’s foul breath. Thorolf shifted his weight to the front of his feet. The Ork’s sweat filled his senses. He heard the crunch of gravel as the beast turned on its foot, swinging a mace at his face. Thorolf sprang up and backwards in a tight arc, his blade flashing out to slice up the ork’s midsection and rip though its eye. The beast howled and stumbled backwards.

Thorolf landed and rolled sideways, away from the ork’s enraged thrashing. On his feet, he darted inside the beast’s reach, chopping its right hand off at the wrist with a downward stroke. Turning in place he brought it back up to block the mace held in the ork’s left, though the force of the blow threw him flat on his back. Thorolf rolled sideways as the ork brought a foot down to trample him, reaching up to cut the tendons behind the beast’s knees. Unable to stand, the ork fell forward, catching itself on its remaining hand. Thorolf leapt to his feet and dragged his blade two-handed through the ork’s neck. Showered in blood, Thorolf tore his blade free, locking eyes with the archon as the ork’s head flopped backwards onto its shoulders.

‘Our stances are not as dissimilar as I would have expected Space Wolf; you fight with more grace than I credited you with.’

Thorolf had no idea how Ecanus had observed his fight with the ork, and he was too weary to investigate further, ‘Ramiel. I fought many bouts alongside him.’ Thorolf eased his body onto the ground, ‘A true warrior must learn from his allies and adapt to his enemy.’

Ecanus said nothing.

He was awake when they came for Ecanus. Though his eyes were shut, Thorolf had allowed his Catalepsean Node to keep part of his brain alert, forgoing a measure of rest to keep a mind on his new cell mate. Judging by the stench, a pair of hunchbacks had entered the cell, though Thorolf didn’t detect the female. He picked up a new scent as a harsh male voice ordered Ecanus to stand. It reminded Thorolf of the deep rumble the deceleration thrusters on a drop-pod made seconds before impact. He felt pressure build in his ears until he was sure they would burst. Fighting the urge to vomit, Thorolf continued to listen as the hunchbacks shackled the Dark Angel, chains rattling as they led him off into the corridor. Thorolf waited for three breaths but the door didn’t close.

Thorolf opened his eyes, and rose to a crouch. Awake, he tensed and relaxed his muscles, bringing his body to combat readiness. Yet he still found himself caught by surprise when the female appeared in the doorway. She fixed Thorolf with her oval eyes, each a single black jewel promising infinite pleasure, and leaned into the cell. Unable to do otherwise, he held her gaze.

The female ran her palm over the wall sending a snaking current across its surface. The metal of the wall shifted like water, rippling away from the current’s touch. Thorolf watched as the energy settled in a pool above his head height. The grey of the wall dissolved and fell away in droplets to reveal a dark, fathomless rectangle. A moment later and a fighting pit swam into view. Through the eldritch lens Thorolf felt the heat of the suns and tasted the outside air. Somehow, the female had opened a portal onto the arena itself.

‘Watch.’

The word drifted from her face-grille like thoughts and seeped into Thorolf’s mind. Despite himself, he took comfort in the warm embrace of her voice. The female retracted her arm, the door springing closed behind her.

‘Emperor forgive me,’ Thorolf bowed his head, ashamed of his weakness. He let a drop of his acid-saliva fall onto his forearm, keeping his lips sealed as it bubbled away his flesh.

Through the portal, Thorolf watched a blue humanoid enter the arena. He had his back to him, a long blade held by his side. Beyond the tau, Thorolf could just make out Ecanus clutching a trident-like spear in both hands. Thorolf had encountered the tau twice in his lifetime; they were exceptional marksmen and employed powerful ranged weaponry, but he doubted they could match Ecanus in combat. The tau stepped forward and Thorolf caught sight of four more of its kin, all similarly armed and pacing towards Ecanus. That evened things up.

Thorolf could see the crowd cheering, willing blood to be spilt, and the Orator floating above the arena his arms outstretched in pantomime. Yet he could hear nothing. Watch, the female voice surfaced in Thorolf’s mind; she was being literal. He stared at the portal as it bobbed within the wall of his cell, and shuddered at the erroneousness of the alien technology.

Thorolf’s captors had never allowed him to watch a match before. Perhaps they wanted him to see what nightmares awaited him, so that they may revel in his fear; or they wanted him to watch his brother Space Marine die, and gorge themselves on his anguish. Even in the darkest corners of his heart, Thorolf knew no fear, and the Dark Angel’s death would be an inconvenience at best – his would-be tormentors would fail on both accounts.

Ecanus’s spear struck the lead tau in the chest and pitched him backwards. Thorolf flinched as a spatter of blood shot through the portal to land on his face.

Thorolf wiped his brow, rubbing the sticky tau blood between his forefinger and thumb, ‘Emperor protects.’

The fallen tau’s body was blocking his view of part of the arena, but Thorolf could make out Ecanus surrounded by the remaining tau. Ecanus sprang into motion, and in a blur of tangled limbs fought his way through the circle of tau, to emerge on the side closest to Thorolf. The Dark Angel was bleeding from several slashes on his arms and back but seemed untroubled. Two more of the tau lay dead in his wake, each missing an arm and a leg. Ecanus now gripped their blades in his hands. The last of the tau approached him cautiously. The Dark Angel strode forward, blocking the tau to his left’s downward stroke with a rising sweep of his own blade. Reversing the motion, he severed the tau’s arm at the elbow, before taking a half step forward and pushing the blade through the alien’s throat. Ecanus left the blade in place and spun on the spot, kicking the final tau in the head as it rushed in to attack. The Dark Angel caught the dazed tau’s weapon hand and muttered something before bending the weaker creatures arm back until it pierced its chest with its own blade.

Blood dripping from him like a macabre sweat, his muscular frame fighting for breath, Ecanus looked more feral than any Space Wolf Thorolf had ever encountered.

Abruptly, the portal closed and the limits of Thorolf’s world reasserted themselves.

‘The lion and the wolf, together,’ Ecanus held out his hand, ‘what would our ancestors make of this?’

Thorolf ignored Ecanus’s jibe and clasped the Dark Angel’s hand.

Surprised that his mention of the rivalry between their two Chapters hadn’t promoted as much as a growl or toothed grin from his opposite, Ecanus clasped the Space Wolves hand for a second too long.

Thorolf was about to speak when a tremor rocked the ground beneath his feat, forcing him to steady himself. The arena floor continued to rumble, giving birth to four obsidian columns that pushed up through the ground like the stems of some infernal plant, dislodged rock tumbling from them as they rose. The pillars stood equidistant from one another, creating a smaller arena within the confines of the larger fighting pit. Each was covered in bronzed spikes and etched with burning runes that spat blood into the air.

‘Citizens of Damorragh,’ the Orator appeared in the air between the four pillars, his arms outstretched like the master of a blasphemous orchestra. ‘Archon K’shaic welcomes you all to the final stages of the Razor Vein.’ The crowd answered the Orator with a screaming roar, several of them cutting their own flesh in honour of the tournament. ‘Two of mankind’s superhumans,’ the Orator swept his arm out to encompass Ecanus and Thorolf, blood flowing from his armour to form a toothed serpent in the air. ‘Those considered the height of human evolution...’ the ghoulish vox-faces conveyed every nuance of the Orator’s mocking tone, ‘...against this monster.’ the Orator pointed a blood-slicked arm at the ogryn.

Thorolf stared past the bleeding columns towards their opponent and sighed. The ogryn’s bulk was greater than even his and Ecanus’s muscular frames combined. A particularly resilient species of abhuman, Thorolf had once watched an ogryn stagger from a burning Chimera armoured transport, its skin running from its skeleton like melted rubber as it charged into the fray, bent on exacting vengeance from its would be killers. The abhuman had barrelled into a group of cultists who tried in vain to scrabble away. Using its weapon like a meat-hammer, the ogryn beat them to death with blunt, callous strikes. Concentrated lasfire and small-arms munitions had blasted chunks off the abhuman’s flesh as the cultists rallied, yet still it had fought on, cracking their treacherous bones until a barking heavy weapon round exploded its head in a shower of teeth and bone.

Thorolf studied the ogryn’s confident gait as it began pacing towards him, a massive halberd clutched in one over-sized fist, a flail of chain wrapped around the other like an improvised knuckle-duster. He took one look at the saw-blade in his own hand and found himself longing for the arcing power of the weapon of his office, the peerless relic his captors had taken from him.

‘An abhuman, a bastard flaw of their species.’ the Orator continued, turning in the air to include more of the crowd. ‘Today, we shall see who evolution truly favours – the genetic misfit or this pair of lab-grown dolls.’

‘You do not fight like a wolf.’ As the Orator brought the fight to a start, Thorolf remembered the words Ecanus had spoken three fights ago, after watching him kill a vicious, bird-like xenos. ‘I have fought alongside Space Wolves before and you lack their ferocity. You attack with poise and intent, never with instinct.’

‘You brother, are not the only warrior with a keen eye.’ Thorolf had replied. ‘The eldar are well versed in how we of the Fang wage battle. I would have been slain like a youngling whelp had I not adapted my approach.’ Thorolf hadn’t been sure if Ecanus had believed him. He still wasn’t.

‘Vlka Fenryka!’ Thorolf beat his chest and advanced to the orgyn’s right. He motioned for Ecanus to circle left, knowing full well their best chance lay in attacking from both sides at once. But the ogryn moved with them, side-stepping and turning so that Thorolf always blocked Ecanus’s line of attack and vice versa. Clever, thought Thorolf, what the abhuman lacked in intelligence his genetic disposition for fighting seemed more than capable of compensating for.

‘You are an oddity of creation, a stain on the Emperor’s divine canvas...’ Thorolf spat as he continued to circle the ogryn. The abhuman’s face folded in rage but it didn’t break from the stand-off as Thorolf had hoped. It wasn’t inconceivable that the abhuman had undergone some form of neural enhancement at the hands of the eldar. ‘I will take your life in penance for the sin of your birth.’ Thorolf stepped in to attack but the ogryn was ready, striking out with the halberd. Wrong footed, Thorolf pivoted out the way, the halberd’s blade slicing through the air where his throat had been a moment before, and dropped into a roll.

Thorolf got to his feet as Ecanus’s impaler speared past him and into the ogryn’s shoulder, stopping the abhuman’s advance and giving the Space Wolf time to recover. Untroubled, the ogryn grunted in annoyance, pulling the spear out and tossing it away.

‘We must attack together.’ Ecanus pointed towards the ogryn, ‘From this side.’

Thorolf followed Ecanus’s gaze – behind the abhuman a glistening spike jutted out from the nearest of the columns. ‘I understand, brother.’

Together, Thorolf and Ecanus strode towards the ogryn. Thorolf relaxed his body and lowered his weapon, baiting the abhuman. The ogryn didn’t waste the opportunity, striking out with the halberd in a long-reaching slash that would have been impossible if it weren’t for the abhuman’s weaponised biceps. Thorolf’s blade was raised in an instant. Blocking the halberd, Thorolf rolled along its length, inside the orgyn’s reach. At the same time Ecanus rushed in and pinned the abhuman’s other arm.

‘All-Father, grant me strength!’ Thorolf hammered his shoulder in under the ogryn’s arm and tried to drive him back. The abhuman resisted, his feet fixed in place.

‘He’s too strong,’ Ecanus snarled.

‘Wound it!’ Thorolf swung the ridge of his hand up and into the soft meat of the monster’s throat, bruising its windpipe.

Ecanus followed suit, delivering three swift punches to the ogryn’s body, the punch-dagger clutched in his fist digging deep into the abhuman’s flesh.

Thorolf felt the resistance lessen, the muscles in his legs flexing as they edged the ogryn backwards.

‘Now!’ Ecanus yelled.

Thorolf pushed with every ounce of the holy strength the Emperor had gifted him, the screaming pain in his muscles drowned out by the roar of defiance in his throat.

Together, the Space Marines powered the ogryn backwards, driving him onto the spike. Thorolf felt the abhuman go slack as the serrated metal punched through its abdomen, shredding its organs as it drove through them. Thorolf kept pushing, tearing the ogryn along the length of the spike until its back was against the pillar. Exhausted, Thorolf let go and staggered away from the eviscerated ogryn.

The abhuman glanced down at the spike protruding from his chest. It was sticking out from his midriff like the misplaced tusk of a metal beast.

Thorolf looked round as a guttural sound rumbled from the ogryn’s damaged throat, blood spilling over its lips with every tortured syllable. He watched as the abhuman reached up with its hands and gripped the spike, and strained to hear a rasping curse, as the ogryn pulled its ruined body, hand-over-hand to the end of the spike.

‘Emperor’s mercy,’ Thorolf stared in disbelief as the ogryn inched its way off the spine of metal. ‘Will this abomination not find peace?’ Breathing hard, he turned his blade over and readied himself for another attack.

For the briefest of moments, Ecanus took his eyes off of the ogryn to glance at Thorolf. The elegant piousness of the Space Wolf continued to unsettle him. It was not the way of the Fenrisians. A rising roar from the crowd drew Ecanus’s attention back to the abhuman, his doubts pushed aside by decades of conditioning as he readied his weapon.

The attack never came. Free from the skewer, the ogryn fell to its knees, its midriff torn apart, its shredded entrails spilling to the ground. Twice it tried to rise, gurgling bloodied chunks as it sought to voice its frustration, until even its enduring constitution gave way to the inevitable, the last of its innards escaping through the grievous wound in its torso. With a final grimace, the ogryn fell forward onto its face and lay still, the earth beneath its body stained dark by an expanding pool of blood.

‘His will,’ Thorolf lowered his blade and walked to Ecanus, ‘You fought well, brother.’

‘As did you. Though it seems as well that you don’t give into your more impulsive nature too often, that clumsy abhuman would have had your head had I not intervened.’

Thorolf grinned, ‘Aye, it is as you say, brother.’ He fought to keep the smile from his face. Thorolf had hoped that the Dark Angel would interpret his carelessness as the act of an enraged, impetuous Space Wolf. Thorolf clamped his fist against his chest, ‘You have my thanks.’

Ecanus’s reply was lost in the maelstrom of directional air as a platfrom shot down from the upper reaches of the amphitheatre and threw the two Space Marines flat with a decelerating burst from its engines.

Thorolf was aware of the crowd going berserk, chanting words of hate as he suffered for their amusement. Even with his enhanced hearing, he was unable to tell where the roar of the thrusters ended and their bloodthirsty shrieking began. Pinned to the ground, Thorolf managed to crane his neck round far enough to catch a glimpse of the platform. A discus of sublime metal that was at the same time transparent and pitch black, the platform seemed to blink in and out of focus. Holding it aloft were three monstrous faces that spewed flame downward, each a tortured sculpture of the terrible beasts that stalked the arena. Though Thorolf suspected their purpose was more decorative than functional, the platform likely calling upon the same esoteric anti-grav technology that the rest of the eldar vehicles used to stay aloft. Thorolf felt the pressure on him wane as the thrusters died, the platform drifting to the ground to his left. Able to move, Thorolf sprang to his feet and took up a guard position next to Ecanus.

Two hulking figures stepped off the platforms. Each head and shoulders taller than the ogryn, they gripped two-handed axes in immense fists and left depressions in the ground as they walked. Under ragged robes of dyed flesh, taut translucent skin strived to contain their swollen musculature. Implanted pipes and hoses fed coloured liquids directly into their organs, which glowed with a sickly hue beneath a re-engineered skeleton. Errant cables snaked from sparking backpacks and shocked their nervous system into a constant state of readiness, further increasing their lethality.

Thorolf dropped his guard. He knew with certainty that without the augmentative abilities of their power armour, he and Ecanus were no match for the colossal arrivals. Clearly, whoever else was waiting on the platform was taking no chances that the gladiators might try and kill them.

The lead brute pointed toward the platform, motioning for the Space Marines to board.

Thorolf stepped forward, stopping short as one of the brutes caught his arm. He let out a cry of pain, dropping to one knee as he felt his skin burning beneath the vat-creation’s icy grip. Thorolf dropped his blade and the crushing hand let him go. He tested his arm, splaying and tensing his fingers, checking for broken bones and severed tendons. Nothing; his arm was fine. Where his senses told him that his radius and ulna should have been broken, the tendons severed, his limb useless, reality asserted otherwise. Thorolf glanced up at the brute, inwardly shuddering at the adeptness with which the eldar administered pain, and joined Ecanus on the platform.

The brutes stepped on behind Thorolf and the platform sped upwards, activated by the weight of their immense physiques. The crowd applauded as it roared up past the highest balconies of the arena, carried aloft on pillars of blood-red flame. Thorolf tensed the muscles in his legs, ready to adjust for any pitch or yaw that might toss him over the edge. He needn’t have bothered – for all its seemingly abrupt, crude acceleration, the dais maintained a perfect horizontal alignment as it climbed. Thorolf experienced none of the discomfort he’d have expected from such rapid acceleration, his breathing normal and his feet as steady on the platform as they were on the ground. Confident in his footing, Thorolf relaxed, noticing for the first time the intricate detail forged into the floor. The prostrate bodies of a human, an orc, a tau, an eldar and several creatures Thorolf had never encountered were strewn across the platform, their macabre mouths fixed in a moment of pain, gutted by a barbed vine that looped around the platform and tore through their bodies.

‘Watch,’ the word came from nowhere.

Thorolf spun in place, his eyes searching the platform for... the female. She was on the platform. How? The thought hung in his mind like a slab of ceramite, slowing his wits. How had he not seen her? What unholy alliance of light and dark had worked to keep her from him?

‘Watch,’ the female repeated her command and walked to the edge of the platform, pointing a slender limb down towards the arena.

Thorolf swallowed the temptation to shove her off and followed her gaze to the arena below. Impossibly, he could see everything – the Orator, his arms sweeping the air as he spoke; two eldar, one in pale bone armour wielding a sword that throbbed with eldritch current, the other in hues of green clutching an elegant chainsword; facing them the arena champion, Khalys Dzhar, who was all but naked save for the leather holsters and bandoliers that held her array of knives. Unsurprisingly, Thorolf could hear nothing.

‘You two next,’ the female motioned to Thorolf and Ecanus, and withdraw to the rear of the platform.

The meaning was clear; she wanted the Space Marines to watch Khalys slay the eldar, to quiver as they awaited their own turn to cross swords with the arena’s champion. Thorolf would give her no such satisfaction. He was an instrument of the Emperor, he feared no evil, his faith armour against the horrors of the universe. The wych Khalys was but one more stepping-stone on the path to his quarry. Thorolf turned away from the arena...

‘She is not unbeatable.’

Thorolf turned back, annoyed that Ecanus had mistaken his disinterest for concern.

‘She wastes energy with her flourishes. Her obsession with violence makes her unable simply to strike, to kill. For her there is too much pleasure to be gleaned from the moment.’

Thorolf watched Khalys slip a blade into the green-armoured eldar’s neck as Ecanus spoke.

‘It is slight, minute even, but there is a lull in her concentration.’ Ecanus pointed at the wych’s face and it zoomed into focus. ‘See, as she cuts and tastes blood, she relishes the sensation. We can exploit that.’

‘Warriors of the Bladed Lotus,’ the Orator swept off the Archon’s balcony into the air, a mist of red gore billowing in his wake like a vengeful cape. ‘Much blood has been spilt for your pleasure. Now, it is you who must give yours.’

‘A razor through our veins! A blade through the heart of our foe!’ As one, the warriors of the Bladed Lotus recited the oath. Drawing ceremonial daggers from ornate clasps fastened around their wrists; they slashed their hands, squeezing three drops of blood each into a thin channel that spiralled down through the galleries of the amphitheatre. The crowd fell silent as the blood trickled downwards to pool in the skull of an onyx gargoyle.

‘Drink!’

Khalys bowed to the Orator and walked beneath the gargoyle. The beast’s stone mouth opened, bathing Khalys in the crimson liquid. She opened her mouth wide, relishing the baptism as the blood fell across her face and flooded her throat.

‘And so it begins, the end of the Razor Vein,’ the Orator broke the silence that had descended upon the arena.

Without pause, Khalys turned and paced towards the Space Marines. She had sought no respite after killing the eldar, stopping only to accept a frenzied roar of approval as the crowd celebrated their champion. Droplets of the green-armoured warrior’s blood still adorned her unblemished skin, reminding Thorolf of the tell-tale markings carried by the most venomous snakes of his home world.

Ecanus sensed the other Space Marine’s disquiet, ‘Remember, brother, she can be killed.’ The Dark Angel shook the tension from his body and tested the weight of the impaler he carried in his right hand.

‘As the Emperor wills it,’ affirmed Thorolf adopting an aggressive posture with his blade.

Khalys smiled and stopped. Sheathing her twin blades, she held her empty hands up to the archon. The crowd met her display with ecstasy, eager to see her kill the so called super-humans with her bare hands.

Thorolf thrust his blade at her midsection. She stepped to the side, patting away his arm with her palm before skipping her knee into his jaw. Thorolf staggered backwards, teeth loose in his mouth. Ecanus made to attack Khalys’ exposed back but she was quicker, twisting in mid-air to kick him in the head. The blow flipped him; he landed hard on his shoulder.

Thorolf struck out with a flurry of arcing cuts, but the wych weaved between his blows, stepping inside his guard to strike him in the throat before hooking her hand under his arm and throwing him to the ground. Khalys moved to finish the prone Space Marine, but Ecanus interceded, stabbing the tip of his impaler toward her. She turned just in time and leapt over the weapon. Ecanus pressed his attack but the wych cartwheeled off to the side, whipping her feet into the side of his head as she danced past.

The crowd roared with amusement as the Space Marines flailed around like children, unable to land a blow on the dextrous wych.

Khalys attacked again. Pushing through her toes, she let her lithe calf muscles propel her through the air, the ridge of her outstretched foot aimed at Thorolf’s throat. Ecanus read her move. Pivoting on his back foot he kicked Thorolf hard in the abdomen. The Space Wolf bent double as the blow, robbing Khalys of her target, unbalancing her. Ecanus let the momentum of his strike carry him round, swinging his rear leg up like the blade of a grav-copter to kick the wych in the face as she landed.

Khalys moved with the blow, folding into a roll that took her clear of the Space Marines and up to her feet. She touched a hand to her jaw and licked her tongue around the inside of her mouth, delighting in the metallic tang of her chemical-filled blood. With a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, Khalys unsheathed her knives.

‘No more games wych,’ Ecnaus spat.

Khalys snarled and leapt at the Dark Angel. Ecanus gripped his impaler by the edge of the haft and whipped it out in a long-arcing strike. Khalys bent at the waist, curving her body underneath his swing. Rising, she disarmed Ecanus, slashing a dagger across his forearm and driving the other into the side of his neck. The wych finished with a flourish, kicking Ecanus in the face with the exact same kick he’d struck her with.

Thorolf looked up from all fours. Kahlys had paused to savour the Dark Angel’s blood. It had been for less than a heartbeat, but for an instant she wasn’t in motion.

Khalys was poised to finish Ecanus as he struggled with the wound in his neck.

Thorolf sprinted headlong at the wych. She turned as he knew she would. He fed her blades the outsides of his forearms. Devoid of vital arteries, her blows would not be fatal.

Blood splashed across Khalys’s face. She moved around the charging Space Marine, though slower than she might have, her mouth open as she relished the fruit of his veins. Thorolf twisted as he past her, and spat a gobbet of acid-saliva onto her face.

Khalys screamed as the searing liquid burnt at her flesh. She lashed out like a rabid dog, her twin blades seeking vengeance.

Thorolf swept low, avoiding her desperate attack, and ripped his blade across her abdomen.

He stared at Khalys as she bled out on the ground in front of him. The wych’s once perfect features burned away by his saliva, her lithe body ruined by the vengeful teeth of his blade. Ecanus had been right, Khalys technique was as flawed as her debased soul. Thorolf caught the Dark Angel’s hand as he moved to finish Khalys.

‘The champion of this accursed arena does not deserve the All-father’s mercy. She will die in pain.’

‘As you wish,’ Ecanus dipped his head in acknowledgement.

‘Emperor, eternal saviour and redeemer, it is by your hand and unfailing wisdom that we have been spared this fate.’ Thorolf closed his eyes in prayer.

Ecanus stared at Khalys in silent satisfaction as the last of her life-force ebbed away. The wych’s veins pulsed like flashes of lightning beneath her taut flesh as the cocktail of stimms and combat drugs in her system continued to burn. Khalys’s flesh began to bubble and run as the excess adrenaline and frenzon in her blood melted her organs. Within moments all that remained was a pool of toxic ichor.

Ecanus ignored the jubilant roaring of the crowd and held his hand out towards Thorolf. ‘It has been an honour to fight by your side, brother.’

Thorolf looked Ecanus in the eyes and grasped his arm in a warrior fashion, clasping his hand around the other Space Marine’s forearm. ‘It is my sacred duty to save your soul from the Dark Gods of Chaos,’ Thorolf stared into Ecanus’s eyes as he spoke, feeling the Dark Angel’s grip loosen as realisation set in, ‘and I will save your soul, even if you die in the process.’

The nagging feeling Ecanus had pushed to the recesses of his mind burst to the surface like a blazing comet, illuminating the truth that had until now eluded him. Past the unruly, matted hair, the unwashed skin, and the careful lies, Ecanus saw Thorolf for the first time. The other Space Marine was not a wolf but a lion, a Dark Angel.

‘You...’ Ecanus’s mouth hung open as understanding dawned.

Thorolf brought his knee up and drove his foot into Ecanus’s chest. Ecanus let the force of the blow carry him and rolled backwards to his feet. ‘I am Interrogator Chaplain Ramiel,’ Thorolf spoke, revealing his true identity, ‘member of the most sacred brotherhood of the Inner Circle, son of the Lion and avenging blade of the Angels.’ Ramiel pointed his blade at Ecanus, ‘You are a traitorous cur, a shameful stain upon our Chapter’s honour and I have come to offer redemption.’

Ecanus bared his teeth in a snarl, ‘I will spit upon your corpse, pawn of Jonson.’ Ecanus sprang at Ramiel, unfettered rage dulling the pain from his wounds.

Ramiel stepped off Ecanus’s line of attack, avoiding the punch-dagger that was aimed at his primary heart, and sliced his blade down towards Ecanus’s thigh. The Fallen countered without pause, pivoting away from the blade, swinging his leg up over the sword stroke to kick the Chaplain in the jaw. Ramiel staggered, recovering in time to block the cross Ecanus threw at his nose. Too late, Ramiel realised Ecanus had wanted him to block it. The Fallen rode the momentum of the Chaplain’s parry, folding his arm in on itself and bringing his elbow smashing through Ramiel’s guard and into his face. Ramiel felt the sickening crunch as his cheekbone broke, dropping his blade as he struggled to stay upright. Ecanus allowed him no reprieve, spinning tightly to deliver a powerful back-kick that broke the Chaplain’s ribs and sent him sprawling into the dirt. Ramiel wheezed heavily as his lungs struggled to draw breath.

The crowd erupted in violence-fuelled ecstasy, drinking in the animosity between the two combatants.

‘I have crossed the depths of space and ripped the hearts from warriors far mightier than you before you’d even deemed to crawl from your mother’s foetid womb,’ spat Ecanus as he paced towards Ramiel.

Ramiel felt his strength slipping, he needed to buy some time, recover and then–

Fight now, heal later.

Brother-Sergeant Sariel’s voice filled the Chaplain’s head. Sariel was a member of the Deathwatch, the best of the most elite warriors the Dark Angels could muster. He had helped Ramiel from his knees once before, back on Tervanaous IV when a tyranid bio-weapon had devoured most of Ramiel’s abdomen. Ramiel took heart from his old sergeant’s words, Sariel’s memory surfacing in the Chaplain’s mind to help him once more. Emboldened, Ramiel threw himself at Ecanus.

Caught off guard by his opponent’s sudden resurgence, Ecanus swung a clumsy punch at the Chaplain’s face. Ramiel caught the attack, wrapping his right arm around Ecanus’s left and using his other to hook the Fallen’s neck, pulling him into a headbutt that began when Ramiel had leapt from the ground and ended when it dented Ecanus’s brow and caved-in his right eye socket. Ramiel kept a hold of Ecanus, firing one knee and then the other into his gut, winding him. Grunting with effort, the Chaplain hurled the Fallen Angel across one of the barbed sections the arena floor. The carpet of microscopic blades ripped open Ecanus’s skin as he tumbled over it, leaving him bleeding from hundreds of small lacerations.

‘The will of the righteous cannot be denied,’ Ramiel let the catechism invigorate him.

Ecanus’s head swam, Ramiel’s blow had been severe and his body was struggling to heal the myriad incisions puncturing his body. He looked up and saw the Chaplain, blade in hand, advancing. Behind him, Ecanus could just make out the glint of an impaler in the dirt. Standing, he winced as the damnable arena stabbed into his feet.

‘Time to die, Chaplain,’ Ecanus skipped forward and flipped over Ramiel’s sword stroke. Landing behind the Chaplain, Ecanus scooped up the impaler with his foot; catching it he lunged at the Chaplain.

Ramiel had read Ecanus’s move, his clumsy sword stroke a lure. Turning on the balls of his feet, he side-stepped the impaler’s tip, grabbed its haft and pulled Ecanus onto his outstretched blade. Ramiel felt the Fallen’s body judder and spasm as the blade punctured his primary heart.

‘Let the blood of the unclean act as an offering to the Lion’s shade,’

The Chaplain ignored Ecanus’s desperate hands as they tried to push him away. Ripping the blade across Ecanus’s chest, Ramiel scythed it through the secondary heart and tore it out through the shoulder. The Fallen’s body fell at Ramiel’s feet in a ruined heap.

‘The unworthy shall be crushed from the Emperor’s sight.’ Ramiel stamped his foot down hard on Ecanus’s skull, cracking it into the dirt.

The crowd erupted in a torrent of cheering; their sickening ovation amplified to a numbing crescendo by the distended mouths of the cadaver heads encircling the arena.

Archon K’shaic stood, silencing the applauding masses.

‘Champion of Xelaic,’ the Orator began. ‘Through blood and death you have earned your freedom.’

Ramiel stood immobile and waited for the punchline.

‘You will accompany my master to the depths of Commorragh, where you will fight for even greater glory and perhaps even, immortality.’

The crowd approved. Braying like savages, they banged gauntleted fists against armoured chests and roared in pleasured excitement.

Ramiel’s jaw tightened in anger. He would no more continue to kill for the entertainment of K’shaic and his depraved race than he would have allowed Ecanus to live. The Chaplain closed his eyes for a moment, finding solace in the darkness and offering a prayer to the Emperor for strength. He felt the weight of the impaler clutched in his right hand, it was perfectly balanced. Opening his eyes Ramiel let his enhanced senses filter out the crowd. Their jeering faded away to a wash of noise, like waves rolling onto a distant beach. The army of pendants and the grotesque sheets of flapping skin blurring out of focus until only the archon remained visible – a dark spot at the end of a white tunnel Ramiel formed in his mind.

‘I am the Emperor’s wrath!’ cried Ramiel, and in one fluid motion the Chaplain stepped forward, his arm shooting up to launch the impaler at K’shaic’s chest.

The impaler flew true, covering the distance to the archon in a heartbeat and striking him full in the chest. The blow triggered a burst of light like the shattering of a minute star, momentarily eclipsing the archon and his attendants. In the after-flare, Ramiel saw K’shaic still standing – the archon had used some form of displacement field to swap places with the Orator.

A thousand lifeless mouths cried out in symphony as the Orator looked down at the haft of the impaler protruding from his chest, its spear tip buried in his black heart.

K’shaic watched dispassionately as the mouthless creature collapsed in a pool of thick blood. The cries of the Orator’s familiars tailed off as the last of its blood ran onto the barbed floor of the balcony. The archon nodded in mock respect towards the Chaplain, with a wicked smile that revealed two rows of dagger teeth.

‘His loyal servant unto death,’ Ramiel reached for where his rosarius should be sitting on his chest and awaited eternity.

AN EXTRACT FROM DELIVERANCE LOST

Gav Thorpe

‘Picket ships detected.’ Ephrenia’s announcement stilled the activity on the strategium.

‘Three destroyers, overlapping sensor sweeps, detecting plasma trails of three more vessels, probably light cruiser class,’ she continued.

The Avenger was only two days from reaching translation point, far enough away from the gravitic pull of Isstvan’s star to make a safe warp jump. For the last three days the net thrown up by the traitor ships had been closing in, but this was the closest they had come, only a few hundred thousand kilometres away.

Corax glanced at a screen in the arm of the command throne, showing the relative positions of the vessels. In a moment he had assessed their trajectories and the coverage of the scanner sweeps.

‘Too close to alter course,’ he declared. ‘We will have to make a dash for the translation point. Shut down all auxiliary systems, impose blacklight protocols, divert power savings to the engines.’

A series of affirmatives chorused from the assembled staff and legionaries. The primarch turned his attention to Commander Branne.

‘I want you and Agapito to make a stern-to-prow inspection. Ensure all support systems are at minimal output. Pass the word to Solaro and Aloni to enforce the blacklight protocols.’ The primarch raised his voice. ‘I want full energy balance in ten minutes, no later.’

‘Aye, lord, I’ll see to it,’ replied Branne.

‘Detecting launch, Lord Corax,’ said Ephrenia. ‘Picket ships are firing torpedoes, wide dispersal.’

‘Direction?’ snapped Corax, returning to his place behind the command throne, eyes fixed to the small data screen.

‘Crossing pattern,’ Ephrenia replied. ‘Even at our increased speed they will pass ahead of us.’

‘Clever bastards,’ muttered Branne from behind the primarch. ‘Hoping to get lucky with blind firing.’

‘Save three per cent of energy output for manoeuvring, just in case,’ said Corax. ‘All personnel to attend to battle stations.’

‘Weapons, Lord Corax?’ asked Ephrenia. Her expression was as calm as ever, but the primarch detected the slightest hint of tension in her voice. ‘Shall we reserve any output for the weapons batteries?’

‘No,’ replied the primarch after a moment’s thought. ‘We won’t be able to fight our way out of this one if we are discovered.’

‘And the void shield transformers, Lord Corax? Shall I have them running on standby?’

‘No,’ Corax said. ‘All power to reflex shields and engines, nothing else. If they hit us, it will be too late anyway.’

Taking the shield transformers offline would add almost four minutes to the time required for the reflex shields to revert to defensive void shields; extra minutes during which untold damage might be incurred by the Avenger. For the first time since he had come aboard, Corax noticed hesitation in the controller. It lasted only a heartbeat before Ephrenia nodded and turned to the task at hand. He heard the doors opening and glanced over his shoulder to see Branne departing on his inspection.

He checked the display again. They were two hundred and fifty thousand kilometres from the Traitor picket. Seven more vessels had been picked up by the low-band sensor screen, creating three layers of defence between the battle-barge and the safe translation point. If there was even a momentary blip in the reflex shields, or one of the torpedoes caught the Avenger in its blast, the primarch’s ship would quickly find itself surrounded by enemies.

He could not outpace his foes and he could not outfight them. Corax’s only option was to hold his nerve and stay focused on evading detection. It was something he had been good at since he was a boy, and he was not going to start making rash decisions now.

Blacklight protocols meant the complete shutdown of all non-essential systems. One by one, life support, lighting, heating and other environmental systems powered down to their minimum levels; just enough for the human crew to survive. Even the artificial gravity was lessened to one-half Terran normal, freeing up valuable power for the plasma drives.

In the busy transport compartments in the depths of the hold, nearly fifteen hundred legionaries were packed together as darkness descended. The battle-barge had been designed to carry a fraction of that number.

Space had been made in storage holds, weapon bays, and amongst the gantries and decks of the engine rooms. Squads had found room in maintenance crawlways and in stairwells, and several dozen elevator and conveyor shafts had been decommissioned to provide even more space. Even with such measures, the warriors of the Raven Guard had little freedom of movement. Only the main access corridors had been kept clear, to allow runners easy access between the strategium and other essential stations.

Amongst the throng, Alpharius watched the lights dimming and then going out. Of course, he was not the Alpharius, but by some clever mind-programming and a little psychic intervention by the Legion’s Librarius, he had chosen to forget his real name. To all intents and purposes, he now was Alpharius.

And he was a little concerned. He sat with his adopted squad on a gangway above the plasma reactors, clad in his armour. Environment warning sigils lit up in his display as the air thinned and gravity lessened. Without thought he gave a sub-vocal command to power up the auto-senses of his helmet.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Alpharius turned his head as Command Aloni’s voice rang along the gantry. He realised the captain was talking to him.

‘You know what blacklight means,’ continued Aloni. ‘Power to minimal. Do you realise what kind of energy signature one and a half thousand power armoured legionaries are going to give off? Everybody pay attention! Everything is to be set to minimum output, lowest cycle. Rebreathing, moisture recycling, locomotion. Everything. No communications, no external address, no movement.’

Nodding his compliance, Alpharius powered down his suit, becoming an immobile statue of ceramite, plasteel and adamantium. His secondary heart began to beat, compensating for the lower temperature outside, and his multi-lung inflated, enabling him to cope with air that had not been properly recycled.

Around him the others were doing the same. Here, out by the reactors, all life support was being withdrawn, leaving each legionary cocooned within his own personal environment. Artificial night descended, broken only by the wink of illuminated gauges and monitor lights on the twin reactors fifty metres below the walkway. Moisture began to ice over the armour of the legionaries, thin trails of vapour dribbling from face masks and backpack exhaust vents.

Locked inside his suit, Alpharius realised how precarious his position was. Discovery was not an immediate problem. What with the reorganisation of the Legion, and the general unwillingness of the others to discuss what had happened on Isstvan, it had been simple enough to take up his new role.

His face was still sore from the grafting surgery, particularly where the implanted flesh of his new face met his original skin at the base of his neck and around his throat. The bone beneath had been remoulded and ached, while tendons and muscles that had been shortened or lengthened felt raw beneath his stolen skin.

Alpharius swallowed, remembering where the body had been found, no more than five minutes dead, leg blasted off by a Whirlwind rocket, spine snapped across a ridge of rock. The Apothecaries had acted as quickly as possible. For decades the Alpha Legion had striven to look alike, modelling themselves on their primarch, glorying in their anonymity. To have black hair, to have distinctive features and eyes that were a pale green, was a new sensation for him.

And the memories lurked inside his mind too. He knew a little about the legionary whose persona he had taken. He had taken in the meat of the fallen Raven Guard, allowing his omophagea to dissect and absorb the information about his prey. Bolstered by the abilities of the Librarians – abilities forbidden by the Decree at Nikaea but still widely practised by the Alpha Legion – he had gathered what fragments he could of the dead legionary’s life.

He could feel them, flashes of images, snippets of conversation. More than that, Alpharius could feel how his new persona had felt. He had been proud, a veteran of the Lycaeus uprising, and had earned distinction with the Raven Guard since they had been united with their primarch.

The memories itched as well, jarring inside his thoughts, confusing him occasionally. Over the time he had spent fleeing across Isstvan V with his new comrades, he had learned their names and faces and the way they fought. The most fraught time had been the first few days, when commands had been issued in codephrases, and formations called out in battle-lingua that he did not know, a language evolved on Deliverance that he had not grown up with. Yet he had been picked for this mission because of his gift with languages, his quick mind and his instinct for adaptation. His deficiencies had been covered by the efficiency and cohesion of the Raven Guard themselves and soon he had managed to blend in during the hit-and-run attacks, avoiding the suspicion of his squad comrades as well as the deadly attention of those pursuing the Raven Guard.

All of that seemed to be poised on the verge of pointlessness now, as he sat immobile over a reactor that would turn into a small star the moment it was breached, aboard a warship ghosting through an enemy fleet protected by nothing more than a few metres of bonded plasteel and adamantium. One lucky hit and he would be incinerated, along with the rest of those aboard the Avenger.

He did not know how many others of the Alpha Legion had been successful in taking their place; he did not know if he was the only one or if there were dozens of them. It did not matter. For the moment he was alone, and had to act accordingly. He had to do all he could to stay alive, remain undetected, observe Corax and get in touch with Omegon once they returned to Deliverance.

As fervently as he had ever hoped for success, he now hoped for his allies to fail. Whoever it was out there chasing the ship – Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, World Eaters, Sons of Horus, Iron Warriors, Imperial Army – Alpharius wished them every disaster that he could imagine: engine failure, outbreaks of disease, weapons malfunction, anything that would stop that one lucky hit from eradicating his existence. He was prepared to give his life for his primarch and his Legion, but not this way, not without a foe to fight and a mission to protect.

It would be such a pointless way to die, he thought, as the sound of a detonation echoed dully through the hull.

‘Nova cannon shell,’ reported Ephrenia. ‘Six thousand kilometres, starboard bow.’

Corax did not react immediately. Two cruisers had joined the destroyers, the growing enemy flotilla saturating the intervening gulf of space with torpedoes, missiles and plasma blasts in an attempt to catch the Avenger in a blanket of fire. It was not a particularly effective tactic.

The volume of void they were trying to cover was vast and they were trying to get very lucky, or frighten Corax into an act that would betray his location.

That the Traitors knew the battle-barge was in their vicinity was beyond doubt, but the question that now concerned Corax was whether they knew any more than that. The nova cannon detonation had not been so close as to convince him it had been deliberately aimed at the Avenger, but neither had the margin of the miss been enough that it was outside the normal margin of error for such a long-ranged shot. Could he afford to wait for a second plasma explosion to prove things one way or the other?

‘Decline by fifty thousand metres, three degrees starboard,’ he snapped to the men at the helm controls.

‘Navigational shields absorbing plasma residuals and debris,’ announced another crewman. ‘Nearing reflex shield tolerance levels.’

Corax gritted his teeth. The low-power navigational shields were usually in place to ward away microasteroids and other space-borne debris, but now the nova cannon blast was swamping them with more than they were intended to handle. If he increased power to prevent any of the shockwave reaching the Avenger, the energy spike would reveal their position.

‘Ride it,’ he said, as the ship started shuddering around him. ‘Implement previous order.’

The battle-barge made best use of the space available, using all three dimensions to change course away from the point at which the nova cannon had been targeted. It was not an eventuality Corax had expected – the nova cannon was still considered highly experimental by most Imperial forces, and few commanders would allow one to be mounted on their vessel.

‘Can you calculate the launching vessel?’ he asked Ephrenia.

‘Just detecting a third line-class ship, Lord Corax,’ the strategium controller replied. ‘Probably a grand cruiser. Approaching from almost directly astern, broadcasting

Iron Warriors identifiers.’

‘Typical,’ Corax whispered. Give one of Perturabo’s captains the chance to mount a bigger gun and he would snatch your hand off to take it.

‘Detecting another nova cannon launch,’ warned Ephrenia.

In her worry, she had forgotten his title, something the primarch had thought impossible. Corax noticed her face paling and the knuckles of her thin hands whitening, supporting callipers flexing, as she grabbed the edge of the display console, expecting an impact. There was no way a warning could be given to the crew without giving away the battle-barge’s position, and if the nova cannon scored an unlikely direct hit, no amount of bracing and preparation would save lives.

‘Passing to port, fifteen thousand kilometres and increasing, Lord Corax,’ Ephrenia said, smiling slightly and relaxing her grip. ‘Detonation detected. Seventy thousand kilometres away.’

‘It is safe to assume the fire is random. Set in a course for closest translation point.’

Corax had noted the two separate detonation points and filed them away in his memory. It seemed likely the Iron Warriors were using a firing formula to calculate their target points. Three or four more detonations would allow Corax to calculate the formula in retrospect and take appropriate action to decrease the odds of another close call. Other than that, there was nothing else to do except continue to hope for the best.

The Avenger continued on, dipping and rising, zigzagging its way towards the translation point, cutting an elusive path through the net of Traitor ships. At times Corax headed directly towards the enemy, passing within ten thousand kilometres of battle cruisers and frigates, trusting the reflex shields to mask any emission that would betray their presence.

The cordon tightened, the glimmers on the traitors’ scanner displays drawing in more and more vessels, chasing ghost returns that were little more than fuzzy mirages against the backdrop energy haze of the universe.

Sitting in the darkness of his requisitioned command chamber, Corax felt the change in vibrations that signalled another course alteration. They were less than half a day from the translation point. It was tempting to make the warp jump now and take the risk of gravimetric interference, but he stayed patient.

There had been some close calls: torpedoes unleashing their warheads a few thousand kilometres from the Avenger, last moment changes in direction to avoid enemy scans, nova cannon detonations that had pushed the navigational shields to the limit, random reactor spikes that had brought the battle-barge to a virtual halt to compensate for the energy flare-ups.

The primarch had taken all of this without a moment’s fear. There was no room for error, but there was also no room for uncertainty. His situation was very stark: escape and survive or be detected and destroyed. Such extremes made clarity simple, and drove away other thoughts that might have clouded his judgement.

For the moment they were exploiting a small break in the traitor cordon and had had several hours of unopposed travel. Blacklight protocol was still in full operation, and so Corax sat at the large command console staring at the blank screens and dead displays, his eyes picking out the details of the room in the smallest glow from blinking red standby lights and the gleam from the doorway leading to the strategium.

He was used to waiting.

Over long years, he had learned the lessons of patience, of precise timing. During hundreds of battles he had known the moment to act and the moment to pause, and had known victory every time because of those decisions.

The massacre at the dropsite had caught him off-guard. It troubled the primarch that he had perceived nothing of the traitorous intent of his fellow Legion commanders. Sitting in the dark, alone with his thoughts, he wondered if he had been blinded to their treachery by some weakness in himself. Had he been too trusting? Ignored subtle signs of his brothers’ intent? Been overconfident?

What had happened had been unthinkable, and that was part of the problem for Corax. Should it have been so outlandish that he had never considered having to fight his brothers? He had been sent with the others to Isstvan to bring Horus to account – surely he should have wondered whether Horus had acted entirely alone. Had the shock of the Warmaster’s turn against the Emperor befuddled him, caused him to blunder into an obvious trap?

The questions were all the harder because they were unanswerable.

Another vibration, another course change. The hours ticked past. The primarch needed no data-screen to tell him what was happening. He had a picture in his mind of the Avenger and the ships arrayed against it, their courses plotted in his thoughts as accurately as any schematic.

Any notable divergence from the picture he had drawn would be reported, and he had received no such communication from Ephrenia. The complex web being woven to catch the Avenger was not tight enough, there were always gaps.

Patience.

Hours, days, weeks of waiting. Years, in fact, when he had been making his preparations, hidden amongst the prisoners of Lycaeus. There was something of a purity in the stillness; something energising about the solitude.

His wounds still pained him, occasional stabs of sensation that broke through the walls of his semimesmeric state. He would shift his weight to relieve the stress on ravaged ribs, to move pressure away from damaged organs. Corax’s engineered body could withstand incredible amounts of damage, and yet there was something deeper than the physical wounds that afflicted the primarch. The pain was something he forced himself to endure, as a reminder of his failure. He suffered a hurt that no superhuman body could rectify: a grievous injury that the attention of the Apothecaries would not cure. Until he could bring an end to that internal agony, he would not allow his body to heal.

Roused from his contemplation by one such brief burst of pain, Corax activated a data-screen. Analysing the intersecting courses displayed on the monitor, Corax spotted something he had not seen before: a convergence of possibilities brought about by some minor alterations in the enemy’s disposition a few hours ago.

There was a gap. Or rather, there was not a gap, but a coming together of four Traitor ships. The wash from their own plasma drives, the emissions of their reactors, would obscure the Avenger and provide a pathway to the transition point earlier than he had planned, if he dared take it.

Seeing the possibilities unfolding, Corax stood up, re-examining the chart. He was sure he was correct. Passing from inaction to motion in moments, the primarch leaned over towards the communicator activation stud.

He stopped with his finger millimetres from the switch.

Corax weighed up the situation once more, cooling his excitement, ignoring the lure of sudden activity. The manoeuvre would bring the Avenger within range of the guns of at least three enemy vessels. If he changed to the new course, they would be committed. Any significant alteration by the enemy would change the dynamic, revealing the Raven Guard’s position dangerously close to the foe.

He discarded the idea.

Though Corax was eager to reach the relative safety of the warp – eager to do anything proactive – there was more to be said for caution than daring at the moment. He had gone after Lorgar at the dropsite, driven by a thirst for revenge, briefly abdicating his responsibility as a Legion commander. Had that emotive response cost his Legion, more of them falling to the ambush than would have done had he been commanding the retreat? He would not act rashly again.

The most important thing was that he had lived, and that was as true now as then. Half a day was not important; survival was important. That need to survive, that animal instinct to keep drawing breath had driven him on, filled him with purpose. He would not lie down and accept death willingly. Even now, his Legion almost wiped out, his enemies outnumbering his allies, Corax knew that he could not give up. His duty now was to keep the Raven Guard alive, no matter the temptations and instincts to act with resolve and daring.

On Deliverance, when it had been called Lycaeus, there had been true desperation. Weaker men had fallen and lesser men had balked at the task ahead. Not Corax. He had dragged Lycaeus, bloodied and screaming, into freedom, and not once doubted the righteousness of his effort. Why now did he wonder if he had the resolve to triumph?

He sat immobile in the darkness once more. He liked the dark; the shadows had always been an ally. He might spend the last hours of his life like this, waiting, anticipating the next shudder of a course correction, expecting a knock at the door to bring a fresh report of the enemy’s movements, trying not to relive the mistakes and horrors of Isstvan.

Trying, but failing.

The room was dank with the smell of sweat, the air thick with the stench of his own fear. Marcus Valerius was more than happy to face any foe in an open fight, or even to stand firm while battleships destroyed each other with blasting broadsides. This war, the Raven Guard way of war, vexed his nerves and tightened his chest around his heart.

The praefector lay on his bunk, his eyes closed, wishing the ventilators could be activated to siphon away the filth of his perspiration. His hands trembled on his chest, his hair was lank across his brow and the pillow and sheets were soaked beneath him.

All it would take was one warhead to find the Avenger and they would all be killed. Valerius was certain of it; the reflex shields provided no defence against a dozen megatonnes of atomic destruction. The walls vibrated with the shockwaves of distant detonations – thousands of kilometres away, yet all too close for the praefector’s liking.

Pelon was in the antechamber. Marcus could hear his short, panicked breaths and imagined his servant sitting in the corner of the room hugging his knees to his chest. The praefector understood well the dread that gripped his man, because he shared it.

The bombardment had started less than half an hour ago. He had been sent from the strategium by Corax as the first nova cannon shells had erupted, far from the battle-barge yet too close for comfort. As he had hurried down the corridors and descended seemingly endless stairwells, he had felt the ship vibrating beneath his tread, the metal of the handrails quivering under his fingers.

He had tried not to run. The Raven Guard he had passed were unperturbed by their predicament, trusting their existence to power of the reflex shields in a way that Marcus simply could not. He was Imperial Army, a Therion, and he was used to fighting an enemy he could see, his life entrusted to power fields or tank armour or the metres-thick walls of a bunker. He had endured artillery duels and orbital attacks, but nothing compared to the helplessness he felt right now.

The darkness was absolute. No lights could be lit. In a way, he was grateful. It was better that he was confined to quarters, where Lord Corax and the others could not see his cowardly reactions, could not hear his suppressed whimpers with each rattle of a passing shockwave.

Yet it was also a nightmare to be alone. Pride might have helped him master the fear, had he been within sight of others. With just himself to impress, his resolve was revealed to be woefully weak. The darkness was as cloying as the sweaty air. It weighed heavily on his chest, pushing the wind from his lungs, throttling him.

He choked and gasped and swung to the edge of the bed, booted feet touching upon the bare decking, arms hugged tight around his chest as he winced at another vibration that rattled from starboard to port, accompanied by creaks and cracks from the bulkheads around him.

‘This is insanity,’ he muttered.

His words were a whisper, but echoed inside his head. Sanity had been a scarce resource of late for the praefector. At first he had been relieved that the nightmares had ended. The blissful oblivion of sleep had been returned to him and he had embraced it.

The sensation of relief had not lasted long. Barely a few days after the evacuation of Lord Corax and the Legion, Marcus’s empty dreams had started to nag at him. He woke in the middle of the night watches, a void in his thoughts, feeling dragged down into an abyss. Soon he had come to fear the nights as much as when the fires and the cries of dying ravens had haunted him. It was not the searing hot terror, the paranoia that had gripped him before, it was a cold dread that trickled down his spine and sank to the bottom of his stomach.

Alone in the dark of his cabin, that dread had returned, seeping out of the darkness while missiles and shells lit up the firmament beyond the steel and rockcrete walls. The nothing that awaited him was too much like the vacuum of space. In his dread, Marcus was convinced that he was going to die. Just as he had dreamt of the Raven Guard’s predicament, now his sleeping thoughts were bringing him a vision of his doom. He would die alone, freezing in the void, swallowed by the emptiness of the universe.

Marcus let out a whimpering moan and threw himself face-first into the pillows and covers, trying to bury his head, striving to block out the emptiness that was leeching away his existence.

‘That was a little too close,’ remarked Branne as a nova cannon shell blossomed into nuclear life a few thousand kilometres off the starboard bow.

‘Too close is a hit,’ replied Agapito. ‘Anything we survive is far enough away for me.’

‘Hush,’ said Lord Corax. His voice was calm, his features expressionless, as he watched the dull glow of sensor readings on the primary display. ‘I am thinking.’

The primarch had taken over the helm controls as soon as the latest raitor fusillade had started, guiding the Avenger along a safe course that only he himself could see, his mind constantly calculating and adapting with each launched torpedo salvo and nova cannon detonation.

‘Lord, we are heading to danger-close proximity with an enemy cruiser,’ warned one of the attendants at the scanner array.

‘I know,’ replied the primarch, eyes locked on the display.

‘Lord, they will detect our plasma wash if we pass that close,’ Controller Ephrenia added, her tone quiet and respectful, yet tinged with concern.

‘That is not all they will detect,’ Corax replied, turning to smile at the woman. He paused for a moment and then held up a finger. ‘I judge that we have reached safe distance for translation.’

‘Lord?’ Ephrenia’s confusion was matched by Branne’s. A sideways glance at Agapito and Aloni showed that his fellow commanders were tense, eyes narrowed.

‘We will not be fleeing without a last remark to our enemies,’ said Corax.

‘Should we power up the void shields and weapons batteries, lord?’ asked Ephrenia, hand hovering over the command terminal.

‘No,’ said the primarch. ‘I have something more dramatic in mind.’

On the strategium of the Valediction, Apostle Danask of the Word Bearers was finding his latest duty a stretch on his patience. The joyful anarchy and slaughter of the dropsite attack seemed a distant memory after days of fruitless searching for the fleeing Raven Guard. His latest orders were no more exhilarating. For more than a day his ship had been sporadically firing torpedo spreads into the area the Warmaster had ordered, with no result at all. It was a waste of time, and made all the more insulting because his brother legionaries were already en route to Calth for their surprise visit to the Ultramarines. It was hard not to feel that this was in some way a punishment for some breach of Legion rules of which he had not been made aware.

Danask wondered if perhaps he had not been dedicated enough in his devotion to this new cause. He had noticed Kor Phaeron looking at him strangely on occasion, and was sure that the Master of Faith was testing him in some fashion. He had offered no complaint when he had received his nonsensical orders, and had offered effusive praise to the primarch for considering him for such an onerous but essential duty.

‘Energy signature detected!’

The words of Kal Namir came as a triumphant shout from the scanner panels, snatching the Apostle from his thoughts.

‘Where?’ demanded Danask, rising up from the command throne. Sirens blared into life, shattering the quiet that had marked most of the patrol’s duration.

‘Almost on top of us, two thousand kilometres to port,’ announced Kal Namir. ‘Weapons batteries are powering up. Void shields at full potential.’

‘Mask energy signature and get me a firm location. Brace for impact,’ snapped the Apostle, realising that the enemy would only reveal himself to open fire.

He heard Kal Namir mutter to himself, swearing under his breath.

‘Speak up or stay silent, brother,’ rasped Danask. He was in no mood for his subordinate’s grumbling. He punched in a command on the arm panel of the throne and brought up a real-time view of the enemy’s rough location. A shimmer against the stars betrayed the presence of the Raven Guard ship.

‘The scanners must have malfunctioned. This makes no sense,’ Kal Namir said. He checked his displays again and then turned to look at Danask with eyes wide from shock. ‘Signature is a warp core spike, commander…’

On the screen, the enemy battle-barge came into view, dangerously close, black against the distant pale glimmer of Isstvan’s star. Moments later the space around the vessel swirled with power, a writhing rainbow of energy engulfing the ship from stem to stern.

‘Take evasive action! yelled Danask, but even as he barked the words he knew it was too late.

The Raven Guard ship disappeared, swallowed by the warp translation point it had opened. The warp hole roiled wider and wider, washing over the Valediction. Danask felt the flow of warp energy moving through him, a pressure inside his head accompanied by a violent lurching of the cruiser.

‘We’re caught in her wake,’ announced Kal Namir, somewhat unnecessarily, thought Danask.

The Valediction shuddered violently as the spume of warp energy flowed past, earthing itself through the void shields. Tendrils of immaterial power lashed through the vessel, coils of kaleidoscopic energy erupting from the walls, ceiling and floor, accompanied by the distant noise of screaming and unnatural howls.

More warning horns sounded a moment before an explosion tore apart the stern of the ship, the void shield generators overloaded by the surge. Secondary fires erupted along the flanks of the Valediction, detonating ammunition stores for the weapons batteries, opening up ragged wounds in the sides of the vessel.

The shriek of tearing metal accompanied fiery blasts of igniting atmosphere gouting from the massive holes to port and starboard. The Valediction heaved and bucked, artificial gravity fluctuating madly, tossing Danask and the others on the strategium to the ceiling and back to the floor. To the right of the Apostle, a communications attendant fell badly, snapping his neck on the mesh decking.

Then there was stillness and silence.

The shielding of the reactors had held firm and no further explosions occurred. Several minutes of disorientation ensued, during which the strategium staff busied themselves getting damage reports. The scanners were all offline due to the warp wash, the dozens of screens surrounding Danask all grey and lifeless.

‘Get me helm control,’ he rasped.

Anti-damage procedures continued for some time. Danask’s head throbbed, an ache in the base of his skull growing in intensity until it threatened to be a significant distraction.

‘That could have been worse,’ said Kal Namir. ‘At least we survived.’

Blood started to drip from the Word Bearer’s eyes and nose, thick rivulets of crimson streaking Namir’s face.

The blood vessels in his eyes were thickening and his skin was becoming stretched and thin. Danask held a gauntleted hand to his nose as he tasted blood, and saw a drop of red on his fingertip.

One of the weapons console attendants gave a scream and lurched away from his panel, his robes afire with blue flames. The man flailed madly as others tried to help him, pushing him to the floor and swatting at the flames with cloaks and gloved hands.

‘Get them off me! My face! Get them off my face!’ shrieked another serf, tearing at his eyes and cheeks with his fingers, stumbling from his stool.

A subscreen flickered into life at one end of the scanning panel. Danask knew what he would see but looked anyway. Outside the ship the stars had disappeared, replaced by a whirling vortex of impossible energies that hurt his eyes to look at, even through the digitisation of the display.

They were in the warp.

Without their Geller fields.

Unprotected.

As realisation settled in the Apostle’s numbed mind, he felt something clawed scratching inside his gut. He dared not look down.

A detached part of his brain marvelled at what had happened. To engage warp engines close enough to drag the Valediction into the immaterium yet far enough away not to destroy the cruiser was an incredibly difficult thing to do. He wondered what manner of man could do such a thing.

Around him, madness reigned. He felt apart from it all as his serfs and legionaries howled and roared, limbs cracking, warp energy swirling through their bodies, distorting and tearing. He realised he had asked the wrong question. Exposure to the warp was the most horrific death that could be visited upon any living creature. It was not what manner of man could do such a thing, it was what manner of man would do such a thing.

He never got to answer his own question. Moments later, a horned, red-skinned beast erupted from his innards, splaying out his fused ribs and chest, his twin hearts held between fanged teeth.

Danask’s agonised scream, so inhuman, so unlike a legionary, joined with cries of the rest of his crew.

They were safe in the warp. As safe as the warp could ever be, though the Avenger’s Navigators had complained about a roiling tempest as soon as they had translated. The Astronomican, the light that guided them through the immaterial aether, was all but obscured by storms of immense proportions.

Corax had told them to do the best they could. Their goal was simple: head to the source of the Emperor’s light and they would reach Terra.

The primarch stood on the strategium with his commanders, the pick-up for the internal vox system small in the palm of his hand. Blacklight protocols were over, the reactors running at full capacity. The strategium was awash with light, bright after the days of gloom. The primarch’s disposition did not match the brightening of the environment.

Hesitating, Corax wondered what he would say to his warriors. What words of encouragement could he speak when he felt so devoid of hope himself? The Traitors had struck so well, their concealed blow aimed with deadly effect; it seemed unlikely that they could be stopped. He had given many speeches in his life, to rouse the weary to fight on, to inspire his warriors to acts of great bravery; all of the words that sprang to mind now seemed to the primarch to be hollow platitudes.

It did not matter. He drove out the doubt with a surge of will. Now was the time when he needed most to display the leadership for which he had been created. It was at times like this, not in the heat of battle where his physical abilities could sway the day, that his true worth was judged. He was the primarch of the Raven Guard and his legionaries would look to him for guidance and strength. Many had seen rough times before, though nothing compared to the cataclysm that Horus had now unleashed upon them. Some were survivors of the Unification Wars, others the veterans of Lycaeus’s rebellion. All of them were warriors, with the pride of the Legion in their hearts.

‘We leave Isstvan in defeat,’ he said, his words broadcast the length and breadth of the ship. ‘It is not a pleasant feeling, but I want you to remember it. Take it into your hearts and nurture this sensation. Let it flow through your veins and fuel your muscles. Never forget what it feels like to fail.’

He stopped for a moment, taking a breath, letting another emotion replace the hurt and the despair.

‘Do not give in to feelings of desperation. We are the Legiones Astartes. We are the Raven Guard. We have been bloodied but we have survived. Take that sorrow and pound upon it with your anger, until you have forged a new purpose. Those who we once called brothers…’

Corax stopped again, the words catching in his throat as he said them. He glanced at Agapito, then Branne, then Solaro and finally at Aloni. His commanders’ eyes were bright with emotion, jaws clenched with suppressed fury. The primarch let out a growl, giving vent to feelings he had put aside since fleeing Isstvan.

‘Those who we once called brothers are now our enemies. They have betrayed us, and worse still, they have betrayed the Emperor. They are dead to us, and we will not give them the dignity of our sorrow. Anger is all we shall have for them. Anger the likes of which we have never unleashed before. Only months ago we still unleashed our fury in the name of Enlightenment. We brought war to the galaxy in the name of the Imperial Truth. Those days have finished. The Great Crusade has been brought to an end by the treachery of those we now call foes.

‘Hate them! Hate them as you have never hated an enemy before. Loathe the air they breathe and the ground upon which they tread. There is nothing so cowardly as a traitor, nor anything so worthy of our abhorrence. Hate them!’

Pain flared through Corax’s chest. In his agitation he had opened up the wounds he had suffered, causing blood to trickle down his body. A normal man would have been slain by any one of these injuries, but the primarch bore the pain without visible sign, stoically moving the agony to the back of his mind.

Corax’s hands were trembling and he took a moment, trying to bring some peace to his thoughts.

‘They tried to kill us, tried to annihilate the Raven Guard and erase us from the pages of history. But they made one mistake: they failed. We are bowed but not broken, wounded but not slain. I swear by my oaths to the Emperor and by my dedication to you that we will have revenge on those that have so wronged us! They will pay for their mistake with blood and death, and not until the last of them lies dead by our hand shall we know any measure of contentment or satisfaction. We will destroy them wherever we find them, as only the Raven Guard know how.

‘Swear with me now, my children, to follow me wherever this road leads. Swear to show no mercy to the traitors. Swear to slay them with hatred in your heart. Swear to excise this cancer that Horus has nourished in the heart of the Imperium. Swear to bring again the Imperial Truth to the galaxy. Swear that we will never fail again!’

Deep in the bowels of the Avenger, Alpharius listened to the primarch’s words and could not help but feel stirred by them. Such defiance was noble. Pointless, but noble.

Dead Calm

Joshua Reynolds

When the wind died and the mist began to roll in across the Sea of Claws, Hermann Eyll knew the captain had come for his due. From the great bay window in his study, the master of Marienburg’s south dock watched as every billowing sail fell limp and the wine-dark sea became as still as glass. Flags from a dozen principalities drooped as seabirds swooped and screamed, hurtling inland in one vast, raucous cloud. On the docks, men and women stopped and stared upwards, watching in wonder.

Eyll ignored the birds and instead turned to face the thin, olive-complexioned man sitting behind his grandfather’s ancient claw-footed desk. ‘He’s coming. Just as I said, Fiducci. He’s coming for his due and I’m damned if I’ll pay it,’ Eyll said, fear turning his tones savage. A thin man with a whip-like build and clothes of expensive cut, Eyll was every inch the merchant-prince. Pale, manicured fingers did a rap-a-tap patter on the scrimshaw butt of a pistol rising from the colourful sash about his waist, and he began to pace. ‘You’re certain you can deal with him?’ he said.

‘As certain as one can be in these – hmm – these matters,’ Signor Franco Fiducci said, shoving his spectacles further up the bridge of his beak of a nose. ‘Necromancy is not as exact a science as we would wish, hmm?’ The little Tilean bared blackened teeth in a half-hearted smile. ‘But Kemmler made careful records, and the ritual itself is not so far out of the bounds of this sort of thing, eh?’ He waggled worm-pale fingers. ‘A prick of the thumb and something wicked will surely come, as they say.’

Eyll grunted and eyed the necromancer. Fiducci came highly recommended, having performed certain services for certain people under certain conditions that could, at best, be characterised as stressful. He looked like a crow, dressed all in black and bobbing his head alarmingly as he spoke. But he was dangerous for all that. ‘It’s not his coming that worries me... it’s what he intends to do once he gets here.’

‘Ah, just so, yes, eh?’ Fiducci waggled his fingers again. ‘No matter. The captain is old and hard and wild like the sea itself, but Franco Fiducci is an artist of the bones, eh?’ He made a tight fist, his knuckles popping unpleasantly. ‘We will trim his sails back, have no fear.’

‘But his powers,’ Eyll said. ‘My grandfather said he was a sorcerer as well as...’ he trailed off and swallowed thickly, his mind shying away from the thought.

‘Yes. His kind are notorious for their sorcerous abilities. He likely possesses a far greater grasp of the winds of magic than my humble self,’ Fiducci said. His lips quirked in what might have been a grimace. One spidery hand splayed out possessively across a tumble of books, one of several that were stacked sloppily on the desk in haphazard piles. ‘But I am a quick study, eh?’

‘You’d better be, for the price I’m paying you sorcerer!’ Eyll said and lunged, slamming his knuckles down on the desk hard enough to cause Fiducci to jump. ‘I hired you to protect me from that – that thing and I expect you to do it!’

‘Of course,’ Fiducci said. ‘Let it never be said that Franco Fiducci does not have his employer’s best interests at heart.’

Eyll glared at him for a moment longer, and then looked away. ‘Stromfels take me,’ he muttered, shoulders slumping.

‘I have no doubt he will, Signor Eyll. He, or one very much like him, takes us all in the end. Except for your captain, of course,’ Fiducci said, stacking the books neatly. ‘But I will see to that, I think, provided you get for me that which I require.’

Eyll made a face. ‘I’ll have them this afternoon. Tassenberg drove a hard bargain, blasted flesh-peddler,’ he grunted.

‘But you got them? Twelve of them?’

‘Twelve of them, yes.’ Eyll looked away.

‘And pure?’ Fiducci pressed, leering.

‘Tassenberg said they would be, damn you,’ Eyll growled.

‘Oh no, Signor Eyll. Damn you, in fact, if they are not. Only twelve pure souls can save yours, one for each generation the captain has prowled the seas, making you and yours rich.’ Fiducci smiled nastily, displaying his black teeth again. ‘Your ancestor employed him as a privateer, sinking the ships of his competitors until his coffers swelled. And eleven generations since have reaped the benefits of that bargain. Now you want to weasel out of it, like a good merchant. Well, just so, Franco Fiducci will help you.’ He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. ‘And then you will help Fiducci, eh?’

‘Yes,’ Eyll said quietly.

‘Good.’ The necromancer rose to his feet. ‘I must go and prepare. And you must gather our materials.’

Eyll watched Fiducci leave, his fingertips tracing the patterns carved into the handle of his pistol. Like everything else in his possession, it was a hand-me-down from better times. He imagined putting a bullet in the little necromancer’s back, and then just as quickly dismissed the thought. Like pity, petty satisfaction was something he could ill afford at the moment.

Striding to the bell-rope dangling in the corner near the door, he gave it a yank, summoning a servant.

It was time to collect the captain’s due.

‘Don’t move,’ Erkhart Dubnitz growled. Water trickled from the docks above and ran down the piscine designs engraved on his sea-green armour. Sword in hand, he reached for the back of the priestess’s green robe. ‘Just... don’t... move.’

‘Why?’ Esme Goodweather, novice of the temple of Manann, said from between suddenly clenched teeth. Young and slim, she was a striking physical contrast to the bluff, broad knight reaching for the hood of her robe. Above her head, she could hear the clatter of iron-shod wheels and the babble of voices as Marienburg went about its business, unaware of what went on below their feet on the unterdock.

The unterdock was an open secret... an artificial world beneath the massive docklands that occupied Marienburg’s northern coast. Built in an ad hoc fashion by generations of smugglers, merchants, pirates and beggars, the rickety wooden walkways spread like a massive spider’s web beneath the docklands, cutting between the shallows and the surface. Stairs, ladders, fishing nets and overturned dinghies occupied the spaces between wooden planks, and formed natural landmarks. The air was muggy and thick with sea-salt. Barnacles clustered in patches like moss and things moved beneath the water. Things Goodweather didn’t particularly like to think about.

‘Because it’s watching you,’ Dubnitz said.

‘What’s watching me?’ Goodweather gulped.

‘Don’t worry about it. Go limp,’ Dubnitz said. He grabbed a handful of her robe and yanked her backwards. Something sprang out of the shadows that collected beneath the dock and Dubnitz sent the priestess tumbling unchivalrously to the soggy wood of the unterdock as he lunged forward to meet it. It was an ugly something, all iridescent scales and teeth, like a cross between a frog, alligator and shark. Dubnitz bellowed out a bawdy hymn to Manann as his sword sliced through the gaping mouth, shattering teeth and spraying the water with stinking blood. The creature squealed and crashed into a tangled bed of flotsam and fishing net. It twisted and leapt onto Dubnitz, its claws scrabbling at his armour. Roaring, Dubnitz head-butted it and the bulbous bearded metal face of Manann that served as his visor sank into the malformed flesh, causing the beast to flop backwards into the dark water. It croaked and tried to rise. Dubnitz pinned it in place a moment later with an awkward two-handed thrust.

Giving the sword a vicious twist, he jerked it free and kicked the spasming creature into the water. ‘Back to Manann, you blubbery fiend,’ he grunted, lifting his visor to watch it sink.

‘What was that?’ Goodweather snarled, clutching the trident icon that hung from her neck. ‘What was that thing?’

‘One of Stromfel’s children,’ Dubnitz said. He grabbed a handful of the priestess’s sleeve and cleaned his sword. ‘The Chaos-things breed like roaches down here and no two of them are the same, besides the teeth and the bad attitudes. Incidentally, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it, to ward these buggers off?’

Goodweather jerked her sleeve free of Dubnitz’ grip and grimaced as the barb struck home. ‘Yes. It just surprised me.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve – ah –I’ve never seen one of them before.’

‘Well, now you have,’ Dubnitz grinned. ‘Who did you annoy to get sent down here on this little expedition then?’

‘No one,’ she said, looking around suspiciously as if waiting to see what else might leap out.

‘It must have been someone.’ Dubnitz scraped blood off of his cuirass and flung it aside. ‘No matter, I suppose. You’ll get used to the Shallows soon enough...’ He looked past her at the motley gang of sewerjacks clustered behind them. Made up of condemned prisoners, mercenaries and disgraced watchmen, the sewerjacks patrolled the unterdock as well as the sewers and under-canals of Marienburg. These looked particularly shamefaced as Dubnitz glared at them. ‘You lot, on the other hand should already be bloody used to them!’ he snarled and several of the ’jacks flinched and edged back from the big knight. ‘By Manann’s scaly nether-regions, are you professionals or mewling infants? How did you miss that thing?’

‘Nobody talks to Big Pudge like that!’ one of the ’jacks growled. Big and bald, Pudge shoved his way through his compatriots, nearly knocking one or two of them off into the water as he forced his way nose-to-nose with Dubnitz. ‘Nobody calls Pudge a baby!’

‘Right. Noted. In fact, you’re far too ugly to be a baby. Maybe you’re an orc instead, eh?’ Dubnitz barked, his beard bristling. A fist the size of a cooked ham swung out, but Dubnitz ducked his head and the blow caromed off of his helmet. Pudge yelped and stepped back. Dubnitz stomped on his instep and shoved him off the wooden walkway into the grimy water. The man howled and thrashed in the water.

‘Stop screaming. It’ll only attract more of the beasties,’ Dubnitz said, sinking awkwardly to his haunches. He cast a glare at the other ’jacks. ‘I hope someone thought to bring a rope. Otherwise I’m leaving him.’

As the ’jacks hauled their fellow up, Dubnitz joined Goodweather. ‘Every day is an adventure,’ he said, smiling.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Goodweather said, pulling her robes tighter about herself. ‘I hate this.’

‘Probably shouldn’t have gotten yourself sent down here then, eh?’

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ she snapped. ‘And besides, you’re one to talk you great oaf!’ She glared at him. ‘Aren’t you down here because of that stunt you pulled with an uncooked octopus and a drunken goat?’

‘Lies and calumny,’ Dubnitz said, flushing. ‘That goat was hardly drunk.’ He hesitated. ‘You – ah – you heard about that then?’

‘The whole temple district heard about it! Ogg makes enough noise for three men twice his size!’ Goodweather said, her distaste evident in her tone.

Dubnitz couldn’t find the heart to fault her for it. Grand Master Ogg, leader of the Order of Manann, was an acquired taste. The bad-tempered, trident-handed Ogg was famous in Marienburg both for his bull-headed bravery and his political paranoia. His knights were fast becoming figures of familiarity in the households of the mighty of the city; he rented his warriors out as advisors, bodyguards and celebratory decorations alike, and it was said that whatever they heard, so too did he.

Granted, not everyone approved of Ogg’s expansionism. Dubnitz had no feelings either way. He chuckled. ‘He did, didn’t he? I’m hardly old Oggie’s favourite fish at the moment, eh?’

Goodweather snorted and looked away. ‘You deserve to be down here with these cut-throats,’ she said, gesturing surreptitiously towards the sewerjacks as they took turns kicking the water out of Big Pudge’s lungs.

‘And you don’t?’

‘No,’ she muttered.

‘Ha!’ Dubnitz shook his head. ‘Girl, you wouldn’t be down here if you didn’t deserve it for some reason. For now though, lets concentrate on why we’re here... where are they?’

Goodweather sank smoothly onto her haunches and pulled a handful of seashells and shark’s teeth out of one of the pouches dangling from her harness. Like all members of the Order of the Albatross she wore a tarjack’s harness over her robes, with dozens of pouches and reliquaries tied to it, as well as a hooked knife carved from the tooth of some unpleasant deep-sea leviathan and a handful of silver bells. She scattered the shells and teeth across the dock. All of the teeth pointed in the same direction. ‘soutch dock,’ she said, looking up.

‘Hmp. The Eel’s territory,’ Dubnitz said, stroking his beard. ‘He’s a touchy one is Prince Eyll. We’ll have to tread lightly.’

‘Surely our remit extends past his,’ Goodweather said, collecting her shells and stuffing them back in her pouch.

Dubnitz looked at her and grunted. ‘In theory.’ He sighed. ‘In practice, on the other hand...’ He clapped his hands together, the metal of his gauntlets clattering loudly. ‘Well, nothing for it but to do it. Form up you pack of half-drowned rats!’ he said, directing the latter towards the ’jacks. ‘On your feet Pudge, you orc-stain. All of you, get to trotting. soutch dock! On the double!’

The group moved quickly and quietly, save for the creaking of hauberks and the rattle of weapons. The ’jacks, for all their slovenliness, were professionals and they knew their job. At the moment, that happened to be the interception of a shipment of human chattel being delivered by Uli Tassenberg’s men to a buyer on the docklands. Tassenberg was the boldest purveyor of human flesh in Marienburg, taking captives to the water wherever it flowed. They said he could get any hue of flesh or size or build, guaranteed. It was one of the current Lord Justicar’s pet-peeves. Aloysious Ambrosius, the Marsh-Warden and supreme judicial champion of Marienburg, had few bees in his bonnet, but slavery was one of them. The one-eyed former knight hated the practice with a loathing most people reserved for mutants or orcs.

Dubnitz was against slavery as well, in a general sort of way. He had never been one and had no intention of becoming one, but felt that it was a relatively simple state of affairs to change, man or woman, if you really wanted to do so. Simply kill the bugger holding the other end of the chain. No man, no problem. In this case, the man was Tassenberg.

‘I grew up with him, you know,’ he said out loud. Goodweather, following behind him, looked up.

‘What?’

‘Tassenberg the Slaver. I grew up with him. Fat little bastard, even then. Hard too. We boiled horse-hide and made leather and glue like the other orphans in the Tannery.’ Marienburg was like an apple riddled with brown patches, and of those patches the Tannery was one of the worst. Located in the maze of streets that played host to the city’s tanneries, it was a squalid, foul-smelling territory and the gangs of mule-skinners and cat’s meat-men who made it their home were as dangerous as any dock-tough or river-rat. And now that he was powerful, Tassenberg made it his fortress. ‘Me and Uli and Ferkheimer the Mad and Otto Schelp, the Sewer-Wolf. Gods yes, got out as quick as I could too.’

‘I thought you to be of noble birth to be a knight,’ Goodweather said.

‘Who says I’m not?’ Dubnitz said. ‘Maybe I was switched at birth, eh?’ She looked at him, not quite knowing how to respond. Dubnitz gave a belly-rattling guffaw of laughter and clapped his hands. ‘Or maybe Ogg, bless his crusty little heart, wanted fighters first and fops second. He was no nobleman himself. Just a merchant seaman with a love of politics and esoteric Tilean pornography.’

‘What?’ Goodweather said again, her eyes widening in disgust.

‘Of course one has little to do with the other,’ Dubnitz went on, swinging an arm out. ‘At least in Ogg’s case. No, he picked the roughest, toughest, saltiest rogues he could find to form the core of the most holy and violent Order of Manann. And isn’t that what knighthood is about, really? Hitting people so hard that blood comes out of their ears? Of course it is!’

Out in the darkness of the unterdock, something shrieked. Dubnitz roared back. Silence fell. Goodweather scrabbled for the net of bells that hung from her hip and raised it, giving it a shake. There was the sound of something heavy splashing in the darkness of the Shallows. Then it faded.

‘Handy,’ Dubnitz said.

‘Shouldn’t you try to be more quiet, perhaps?’ Goodweather said, lowering the bells. Several of the sewerjacks made noises of agreement.

‘Being quiet only attracts ’em, the buggers,’ Dubnitz said. ‘They equate creeping with weakness, so I’d hurry up the pace if I were you.’ He strode on, one hand on his sword. The group followed at a slightly increased pace.

Behind him, Eyll sensed his bodyguards shifting. One of them tapped him on the shoulder and murmured, ‘They’re here, my lord.’ The two men were the best money could buy. Both were professional killers, skilled with the rapier and the dirk and honed to the peak of excellence in a hundred street-brawls and duels. He touched his pistol where it rested in his sash reflexively, reminding himself that he wasn’t helpless himself. He looked and saw a skiff sliding through the debris of the Shallows towards the unterdock, a hooded lantern marking its dim path through the thick, corpse-white mist.

Seeing the mist, Eyll felt a clammy chill squeeze his backbone with tender fingers. It had permeated the docklands, curling around ships and buildings alike, seeping into the canals and into cellars and hidden jetties. Despite the cool, he felt beads of sweat pop to life on his face. Somewhere out there, in the mist, a daemon waited to take his soul. A daemon with red eyes and teeth like knives and... fiercely, he shook himself.

Fiducci had assured him that he could bind the captain. Bind and break him. It. And once that was done, what? Eyll, like any man of his position, had a mind like quicksilver when it came to ambition. Once bound, what could a monster like the captain be turned to? Maybe his ancestor had had the right idea, to use the daemon to break and batter the fleets of his rivals. That was how the Eylls had made the soutch dock the power that it was today. But what could it become in the future?

‘Let them know we’re here,’ he said, fear momentarily buried beneath eagerness. One of his men held up a lantern and twisted the shutter-cap, sending the signal. The skiff approached and an anchor chain was looped around a wooden post. Five men climbed up onto the dock. One of them, a rangy Norscan, waved cheerily.

‘Hello Eel,’ he rumbled. ‘We brought your wares.’

Eyll ignored the nickname and looked at the skiff. A number of huddled forms occupied the centre of the boat, chained together, their heads obscured by burlap sacks. ‘Where did you get them from?’ Eyll said, trying to ignore the stifled sobs. It was harder than he’d thought.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Would I have asked otherwise?’ he said. It didn’t really matter. But he felt he needed to know, for some indefinable reason. If he was spilling their blood to save his own, he owed it to them to at least know where they had come from.

The Norscan snorted. ‘Here and there,’ he said. ‘Do you have the money?’

Eyll dropped a handful of coins into the Norscan’s hand. The blond brute gave a gap-toothed grin and bit down on one. ‘It’s good,’ he said and looked at his fellows. Eyll grimaced.

‘Of course it’s good.’

‘Only Tassenberg says maybe not always, huhm?’ the Norscan grunted. ‘Uli says maybe you tell us why you need these, hey?’ The Norscan swept his wolfish gaze across Eyll and his bodyguards, sizing them up boldly. ‘Can’t be selling to undesirables, Uli says.’

‘Undesirables?’ Eyll said. ‘I’m a Prince of the Dock!’

‘Blood don’t mean dung,’ the Norscan said. ‘Not to Tassenberg. Got to have standards. Can’t be selling valuable wares to daemon-lovers or sorcerers. Bad for business. Lot of girls,’ the Norscan continued, smiling. The coins had disappeared into his filthy hauberk and he fondled the hand-axe on his belt. ‘Why you need so many Eel? Maybe a party? Or something else?’

‘What?’ Eyll looked at the cut-throat. ‘It’s none of his concern. And certainly none of yours, oaf!’

‘Oh, but it is,’ the Norscan said, pulling his hatchet and gesturing off-handedly. ‘Tell us, Eel.’

‘Don’t call me Eel,’ Eyll said. ‘In fact, do not speak to me until spoken to. I am the Master of the soutch docks and you will show me–’

The Norscan’s fist shot out, and Eyll’s nose popped like an overripe cherry. He fell back into the arms of his bodyguards, his hands clawing at his face. The Norscan grinned. ‘And Tassenberg is the Master of Men, Eel. What he wants to know, you tell him, hey?’ The other cut-throats moved forward, drawing weapons. ‘Tassenberg heard you hired Fiducci the bone-fondler. He heard you’re planning something. Tassenberg wants to know what’s going on,’ he continued, stepping closer.

Eyll blindly fumbled at the pistol thrust through his sash. ‘Don’t come a step closer!’ he snarled thickly, aiming the weapon at the Norscan.

The big man hesitated, his eyes narrowing. ‘Only got one shot, hey?’ he said, after a minute. ‘Best make it count, Eel.’ He raised the hatchet.

‘There they are. And with their fingers right in the pie,’ Dubnitz muttered as he watched the skiff dock and Tassenberg’s men clamber onto the jetty to speak with their customers. He waved Goodweather back. ‘You keep those bells handy. If this gets bloody, the beasts will be on us in a frenzy. The rest of you, fan out. Horst, Molke, get those crossbows ready. Tarpe, Pudge, the rest of you... follow me. But be careful. This blasted mist is as thick as mud.’

‘Wait, what are you doing?’ Goodweather said, as Dubnitz made ready to step out of the shadows.

‘Arresting them. The quicker we do this, the quicker we get back up to the clean air and the quicker I can go to lunch. Fighting that beastie got my belly growling,’ he said, patting his stomach.

‘Listen, this mist... it’s not natural!’ Goodweather hissed, grabbing his wrist. ‘It feels wrong.’

‘Handle it then,’ Dubnitz said, gently pulling his arm loose. ‘That’s why you’re down here. And I’m here to arrest those buggers there.’ So saying, he thrust himself out into full view of the group gathered at the other end of the walkway and smashed a fist into his cuirass with a loud clang. The group of criminals spun, stunned. ‘Hoy! You’re done! Nicked! Nabbed! Give up and we won’t hit you too much!’ Dubnitz bellowed at the top of his voice.

A pistol snarled and one of Tassenberg’s men pitched backwards with a howl. Dubnitz reached the clustered criminals a moment later, the ’jacks just behind him. His sword swung out and crashed against a rapier as a man armed with the tools of a duellist intercepted him. The man was fast, dancing around the big knight, the tip of the rapier carving its signature in Dubnitz’s exposed flesh. Roaring, he managed to catch hold of the blade and jerked the swordsman off balance. He punched him in the face with the cross-piece of his sword and then gutted him with a casual swipe, kicking the body aside a moment later. ‘What part of “you’re under arrest” don’t you people understand?’ he snarled.

He made a grab for the pistol-man, whose terrified features struck him as familiar in the moment before one of Tassenberg’s men struck at him with a halberd. Dubnitz sank to one knee and blocked the strike, then twisted, forcing himself up and his sword down through his opponent’s skull. ‘Don’t run! I hate running!’ he said, as the pistol-man began to flee towards a nearby set of stairs. If he got to the upper level, Dubnitz knew he would lose him in the confusion of the docklands.

Behind him, he heard weapons rattling and a man screamed. The mist was thigh-high and swirling around them like serpents. Dubnitz ploughed through it and made a lunging grab for the fleeing man’s cloak. He snagged it and jerked the man around. He gave an oath as recognition hit him like a brick. ‘You!’

Hermann Eyll snatched the dirk out of his belt and made a desperate stab. The blade broke on Dubnitz’s armour and the knight drove a knee into the other man’s codpiece. The prince collapsed with a shrill scream. Dubnitz grabbed the back of his collar. ‘Oh, Ogg will just love this, won’t he? And the Lord Justicar too!’

‘No!’ Eyll wheezed, clawing weakly at the iron grip that held him. Dubnitz grimaced.

‘Yes. You’re for the yardarm jig, I’m afraid, milord.’

‘A dance of inestimable amusement, I’m given to understand, providing you’re not the one performing it,’ a chipper voice interjected. Dubnitz looked up. At the top of the stairs, a black-clad little form grinned at him.

‘Fiducci!’ Dubnitz rasped.

‘Hello, Erkhart. And, alas, goodbye,’ Fiducci said as he raised a peculiarly shaped bosun’s whistle to his thin lips. As the echo of its unpleasant trill faded, the abominable sound of heavy, slippery bodies splashing out of the mist filled the air.

‘Oh no,’ Goodweather said, rising to her feet, her bells hanging forgotten in her hand. The two crossbowmen looked at her nervously. The rising mist had made it impossible for them to get a shot off and now one of them said, ‘What’s that sound? Is it the beasties?’

‘It’s all of the beasties,’ Goodweather muttered, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling unpleasantly, though whether from the dank touch of the sorcerous mist or the sound of flabby bodies splashing closer. She peered through the mist, trying to spot the man in black she’d caught sight of just a moment earlier. The sound of the whistle had alerted her immediately to the danger. Goodweather was by no means the most experienced member of the Order of the Albatross, nor was she the most popular. Women and boats didn’t mix, or that was the assumption in some quarters. In truth she could haul sail with the best of them, and knew the stars like the freckles on her own hips. And she damn well knew the sound of one of Kadon’s Whistles and what it meant.

Carved long ago by the infamous beastmancer at the behest of one of the first merchant-princes, the whistles could summon or disperse the nastiest inhabitant of Manann’s realm. Sharks, whales, sea-wyrms and other things fell under the power of the whistle. So too, evidently, did Stromfel’s Children. As far as she knew, they were also all locked up in the temple of Manann. How someone had gotten their hands on one of them was a mystery to her, and for another time at that. Right now, survival was the priority.

Cursing, she raised her bells and dug in her pouches for sea-salt. Flinging the latter out in wide curves, she was rewarded by an immediate withering of the mist around her. Whatever was causing it didn’t like the touch of the Blessed Salts, no two ways there.

‘What are you doing?’ one of the ’jacks said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Quiet!’ Goodweather snapped. She pulled a handful of seagull feathers out next and flung them up, hoping she wasn’t going to see what she knew she would. A stiff sea-breeze hissed through the Shallows, shoving the mist aside and revealing a horde of tumbling, savage bodies. Some of them looked like otters or eels, while others looked like sharks and octopi. They heaved and squirmed through the water, forcing their way past the wrecks and small reefs of netting and barnacles towards the far end of the walkway, where Dubnitz and the others struggled. Goodweather froze for a moment, struck dumb by the horror. Bulbous eyes rotated behind filmy membranes and something that was like a frog and a fish and lion scrambled up onto the dock and scuttled towards them, jaws snapping. The crossbowmen screamed and fired as one. The beast snapped forward, jackknifing as the bolts thudded home. It slid across the wet wood towards them, thrashing in its death throes. More of the beasts began to follow its course however.

‘Stay close!’ Goodweather said, and then saw that it was no use. Both men were already turning to flee. She ignored their final moments and concentrated on keeping herself from joining them. ‘Manann bless and keep me from the beasts of the sea,’ she whispered, scattering salt around her and grabbing for her shark’s teeth. The creatures were of Stromfels, and the priests of Manann had long since devised methods for keeping such monstrous afterbirths in check. Squeezing the teeth in her hand hard enough to draw stripes of blood from her palm, she shook them and threw them into the water, hoping that she wasn’t too late.

Even as something that was more jellyfish than cormorant flapped squishily towards her, a red shape tore it into wet rags. Two more shapes joined the first and the phantom shapes of long-dead sharks spun lazily through the air around her, their ghostly teeth reducing even the boldest of the mutant beasts to ruin. She hurried towards Dubnitz and the others, blood dripping steadily from her hand. The spell wouldn’t last long, and there was safety in numbers. Or so she hoped.

As the knight of Manann was bowled over by one of the Shallows-beasts, Eyll found himself hauled to his feet by Fiducci. The necromancer flashed his black teeth and laughed wildly. ‘It works! It works!’

‘What works? What did you do?’ Eyll sputtered, yanking himself free of the little man’s surprisingly strong grip.

‘It is the answer to your prayers, Signor Eyll,’ Fiducci said. ‘But only if we have the bait. Where are they?’

‘In the – the skiff!’ Eyll yelped, turning. The slaver’s skiff rocked in the water as the beasts thundered past it, drawn by the whistle up onto the walkway. For the moment, they were ignoring it, but that wouldn’t last long. ‘Make them go away! We have to get to that skiff!’ he shouted, grabbing two handfuls of Fiducci’s robe.

In reply, Fiducci blew hard on the whistle. The roiling mass of beasts split and fell back as the necromancer began to walk down the steps, Eyll close behind. ‘Did you know that armoured buffoon who attacked me?’ he said, looking around for the knight. ‘Who was he? He seemed to know you...’

‘Dubnitz,’ Fiducci said, giving the whistle another toot. ‘Erkhart Dubnitz. He tried to hang me for practicing my art. Can you imagine? I was only doing as my clients asked, and the girl’s parents were so happy to have her back, when all was said and done. What’s a few maggots between family, eh?’

Eyll shuddered. His eyes were riveted on the beasts as they thrashed over and gnawed on the bodies of Tassenberg’s men and the sewerjacks. Eyll’s surviving bodyguard had vaulted into the skiff, obviously realising that the beasts were ignoring it. He watched them approach wild-eyed, his rapier extended.

‘Good man, Stromm,’ Eyll said as he dropped down into the skiff.

The man nodded jerkily. A moment later, his head disappeared down the gullet of the frog-thing that rose out of the water and grabbed hold of the skiff. Eyll screamed and fell backwards. The monster reached for the closest of the girls, its talons puncturing the poor wretch’s chest like a knife through a water-skin. With a triumphant croak it began to pull the whole lot overboard, the chains that bound them inextricably together rattling. Eyll grabbed on from the other end and a momentary battle of tug-of-war ensued. Then, something red and horrible reduced the monster to squealing wreckage. Eyll gaped up at the spectral sharks as they dove and curled through the air.

Fiducci dropped into the boat and felt for the dead girl’s pulse. ‘Fie! Dead!’

‘She’s the last, bone-licker,’ a voice growled. Fiducci and Eyll looked up. Dubnitz stood above them, his sword extended, his helmet missing, his armour covered in deep scratches and dents. ‘The last one ever.’

Fiducci reacted like a striking snake, grabbing Eyll and pressing a blade he produced from his sleeve to his employer’s throat. ‘Drop the sword or the Signor dies!’

Dubnitz hesitated, and that was long enough. Eyll elbowed Fiducci back and swung his pistol up. He had reloaded on the walk, and the weapon barked. The knight staggered back, a wash of red suddenly covering his face. Fiducci howled with glee and blew on his whistle. Monstrous shapes closed on the reeling knight, diving upon him hard enough to splinter the weakened wood of the walkway. The struggling knot of man and monsters plunged down into the dark water, causing the skiff to bob alarmingly.

Eyll twisted, shoving the smoking barrel of the pistol beneath Fiducci’s nose. ‘Are you mad?’

‘Eccentric, possibly,’ the necromancer said. ‘Grab an oar, Signor. We must go! Now, before there are any more interrup–’

A hand rose out of the frothing water and fastened on the edge of the skiff. Eyll scrambled back, thinking for a moment that it was the knight. But as he moved, he caught sight of more shapes, swimming forward in the mist. The chill on his soul returned, and suddenly, the struggling monsters behind him did not seem as bad as he’d first thought.

The dead man heaved himself up, his puffy, blackened flesh encrusted with algae and barnacles. Mutely, he glared at Eyll. ‘The... bargain... has... come... due,’ the corpse said, in a voice like oil sloshing in a lantern. A rotting hand reached for him. Fiducci interposed himself, teeth bared. Uttering several gurgling syllables, he tapped two fingers to the corpse’s head. It’s unseeing eyes rolled up in their sockets and it slumped back into the water.

‘He’s found me!’ Eyll shrieked. ‘He’s come for me!’

‘Of course he has,’ Fiducci said, wiping his fingers against his robes. He made a face and looked at the dead girl. ‘We will need to be clever, yes? Grab an oar!’ More zombies made their way through the water even as the two men got the skiff moving. Bloated hands reached for them, plucking at the oars and their arms as they made their getaway into the ever-thickening mist.

Dubnitz hit the bottom of the Shallows and silt exploded upwards, blinding him. He’d instinctively taken a breath before hitting the water, but it wasn’t going to save him, he knew. Claws scraped at him and he jabbed an elbow into a hideous face, shattering saw-edged teeth. With painful slowness, he chopped out with his sword, trying to drive off the rubbery forms of his assailants. His armour, a boon on land, was anything but beneath the water. It made his limbs feel as if they were wrapped in anchor chains. He struggled to disengage from the beasts now chewing on his limbs before his lungs exploded. It would be humiliating to drown in less water than filled a rich man’s tub.

Then, there was a flash of crimson and a wafting cloud of blood sprang into being around him. Waving it aside, he saw spinning ethereal shapes drive off his attackers and fade away into nothing. And beyond them he saw... what? Lungs burning, he peered closer, trying to make out the dim, dark figures plodding through the water away and out into the harbour. Finally, unable to stay down any longer, he thrust himself up. The water splashed against his cheeks and throat as he surfaced, and he clawed at the supports of the walkway, trying to haul himself up.

‘Give me your hand!’

Dubnitz looked up at Goodweather. ‘I’m too heavy,’ he gasped.

‘Just give me your hand, oaf!’

He did so, his gauntlet slapping into her hand. With a groan, she helped him clamber back up onto the wooden walkway. Stromfel’s Children had departed as swiftly as they’d come, leaving behind only bodies and the stink of blood and death on the close air. ‘Are they...?’ Dubnitz said.

‘All of them,’ Goodweather said grimly, rubbing at a scrape on her face. Her robes were torn in a dozen places and blood and ichor stained them. Her hands too were bloody, and they trembled noticeably. ‘We’re the only survivors. Other than–’

‘Fiducci,’ Dubnitz growled and thumped the walkway with a fist. ‘That foul little bog-stench.’

‘Fiducci?’ Goodweather said.

‘A necromancer. And a bad one. Why was he here? Why in the name of Manann’s drooping tail would he need a skiff full of women?’ He raised his hand as Goodweather made to speak. ‘Never mind. I know why.’ He growled again and pushed himself to his feet. ‘Did you see them?’

‘See who?’

‘Fiducci’s little friends,’ Dubnitz said harshly. ‘In the water. Dead men by the dozens. Walking along as if they were out for a stroll.’

‘The water-logged dead...’ Goodweather whispered, her face going pale.

‘We have to get after them,’ Dubnitz said, looking around. He spotted the steps and pointed. ‘He came from up there. And I’d bet fifty Karls he’s heading to the soutch dock.’

‘The soutch dock? Why?’ Goodweather said.

‘Because of who’s with him,’ Dubnitz said grimly. Stepping over the bodies of the dead, they made their way to the stairs and then up. There were access points to the docks above strewn throughout the unterdock. Forcing the wooden cover aside, Dubnitz gagged as more of the foul-smelling mist poured down onto him and spilled down the stairs. ‘Gods below, it smells even worse than it did before!’

‘It’s growing stronger,’ Goodweather said, through the torn strip of robe she’d pressed to her nose and mouth.

‘What is? What is it?’

‘An abomination,’ the priestess said curtly as Dubnitz helped her topside. The mist had settled between the structures and buildings of the docklands, obscuring the sight of the few people still about their business. Dubnitz heard the rattle of armour and saw a troop of watchmen hurry past, their faces tight with fear.

‘Something’s going on,’ he said. In the distance, from the direction of the soutch dock, he saw the mist turn orange. He sniffed. ‘Smoke.’ Then, an instant later, an alarm bell began to ring loudly and desperately. He heard the shouts and knew in an instant what it was. ‘Fire... come on!’ he said, hurrying after the watchmen. The knight and the priestess moved as quickly as they were able through the dense mingling of the smoke and the mist. The crackle of flames filled their ears, and people lurched through the mist, fleeing.

Moaning, someone stumbled against Goodweather, knocking her off of her feet. She fell back onto her rear and looked up at a ruined face. Fleshless jaws worked mushily as the dead man reached for her. Dubnitz’s sword sang out, decapitating the zombie. ‘He’s dead!’ she said as she climbed to her feet.

‘If he wasn’t before, he is now,’ Dubnitz said. He used his sword to point towards the harbour. ‘Hear that? It’s not just the fire. There’s a fight going on out there!’

‘Should we get help? Alert the watch?’

‘No time. Besides, they’ll figure it out soon enough!’ Dubnitz growled, taking a tighter grip on his sword. ‘Got anything in that bag of tricks that can clear this blasted fog?’

‘I can try,’ she said, reaching for more gull feathers. Out of the swirling whiteness, awkward shapes shambled. Dubnitz stepped forward, both hands wrapped around his sword’s hilt.

‘Hurry it up!’ he said as the first ambulatory corpse came into view. A rusty cutlass struck out at him and Dubnitz batted it aside and took its wielder’s arm off at the shoulder. The dead man gave no sign he’d noticed and simply reached for the knight with his remaining hand. Dubnitz took that one off as well, and then bisected the stubborn zombie. As the two halves thumped onto the wood, the second and third closed in, followed by the fourth, fifth and fifteenth. More and more of them shambled out of the mist, their blind eyes glowing with an eerie light.

‘Where are they all coming from?’ Goodweather said as she let a handful of feathers loose. Out here, closer to the clean sea, the breeze was far stronger then before and it flushed the mist back out from between the closest structures. What it revealed gave her her answer. There were dozens of the dead things staggering into the docklands from the sea. Not just dead men, either. There were the shapes of drowned horses and fenbeasts, Shallows-monsters, fish, eels, sharks and porpoises. A rotting octopus, missing most of its limbs, hauled itself across the dock, its eyes like poached eggs. They climbed up out of the water and across the docks, jetties and wharfs, striking out at whomever or whatever they came across.

‘By Manann’s foamy locks,’ Dubnitz breathed, his sword point dipping. ‘This isn’t Fiducci’s handiwork. It can’t be.’

‘It’s not,’ Goodweather said, pointing towards the harbour. ‘Love of the Sea-Lord... it’s not!’

‘They’re all over! Swarming like ants!’ the bosun shrilled, ringing the alarm bell. There were more than a dozen ships becalmed in the harbour, and on each of them, the crews were setting up a clamour. Torches were lit and men grabbed for weapons. Cutlasses, boarding hooks and other implements of defence found their way into sweaty palms as every eye watched the mist, which had begun to roil like a hurricane-tossed sea. For hours, neither wind nor tide had touched the keel of any ship in the harbour. Yet now, something was happening. Dead things thrashed in the sea, and boathooks were deployed to shove off the rotting, climbing things that sought to board every ship, including the Nordland merchant vessel that was the closest to this newest disturbance.

When it happened, it happened so gently, so quietly, that no man on the deck noticed until it was too late to do anything beyond stare in slack-jawed awe at the apparition sliding out of the all-consuming mist. With neither wind nor oar to propel it, the ship cut through the water like a shark’s fin. Its hull sagged from the weight of the barnacles that clung to it, and its sails were tattered wisps, the bare memory of once vibrant-coloured cloth. As it glided forward, the water seemed to shudder back from its warped prow, where the skull of some great leviathan had been lashed to the wood by heavy lengths of rusted chain.

It came on with no sound to mark its passage, and it neither slowed nor veered off as it approached the becalmed vessel. At the last moment, the quicker-witted among the crew gathered their senses enough to dive over the side and take their chances in the maelstrom the harbour had become. The others could only stare stupidly as the juggernaut bore down on them and then, with a terrible snapping and splintering of wood, the larger vessel split the smaller in two! The merchant vessel sank and the newcomer surged on, approaching the soutch dock like the hand of some vengeful god. Ancient cannon, crusted over with the filth of the sea, barked out a savage hymn and the soutch dock bucked beneath the onslaught. Docks ruptured and shattered. Bodies were thrown into the air like ragdolls and ships were burst at the waterline.

Eyll watched it all with a horrified fascination. His empire... everything his family had built... was gone in a flash. As burning body parts and wood rained down around him, he looked down at his hand, now bound tightly in a handkerchief of Cathyan silk which was thoroughly ruined by the blood seeping through it. He curled his fingers tight around it. ‘I-I can’t do this...’ he moaned, watching another ship rise up on an explosion and sink.

‘If you want to survive, you must!’ Fiducci said. They stood on the dock, the eleven living women and the one dead behind them. Fiducci had cast a glamour upon them, and they were as listless as the dead things wandering nearby, including the one who truly was dead. Fiducci had animated her, so that her lolling corpse squirmed beside the others. ‘It is a bold gamble, but it will work, and with a bit of luck, your family will again have the services of the captain!’

‘And you?’ Eyll said, still staring at the oncoming ship. ‘You have yet to say what it is you want.’ He glanced at the necromancer. Fiducci shrugged.

‘If we survive, I’ll make my price known eh?’ He gestured to the pistol in Eyll’s sash. ‘Did you load the bullet I prepared?’

‘Yes. Are you sure this will work?’

‘Not in the least,’ Fiducci said. ‘But one can hope, eh?’

The death-ship slowed as it approached the dock and a pitted anchor dropped with a dull splash. Beneath the water the beasts that lurked in the shallows fled the shadow of the ship. Seaweeds and scummy algae turned brown and dead where the shadow fell, and those fish unlucky enough to be unable to avoid its clutches drifted upwards, belly up. Ancient chains squealed like hogs at the slaughter as lifeboats were lowered into the water. Everything was quiet, save for the sound of buildings burning and distant screams.

The captain had returned to harbour at last, and all of Marienburg held its breath. Eyll shuddered uncontrollably as below him, he felt the thud of the prow of the first lifeboat as it connected with the dock. Fiducci stiffened. ‘He’s here, Signor,’ he whispered. Eyll glanced at the necromancer, and his heart sank. The little man’s confidence seemed to have been washed away, and he sagged, his fingers intertwined as if in prayer.

Zombies climbed up onto the dock. These were in better condition than the others, and they carried weapons as if they still remembered in some fashion how to use them. Eyll’s fingers stretched towards the butt of his pistol. ‘Do something,’ he hissed. Fiducci didn’t reply. Eyll spun, and he gave a horrified groan as he realised that the little man was gone.

‘Have I kept you waiting then, young Eel?’ said a voice as deep and as horrible as the catacombs that now contained his family. ‘Forgive me.’

A tomb-cold hand caught Eyll’s own, pinning it in place as he turned and instinctively tried to draw the pistol. The cold crept up his arm and his eyes started from their sockets as he looked up at a face out of childhood nightmares. A spear-point nose, wide-flanged and quivering jutted pinkly from the sickly grey flesh of a beast-face. Teeth that were like triangular arrow-points both pierced and passed over worm-like lips, dappling the scabby thorn-bush beard with black blood. Eyes like wind-tossed torches held his own in a poisonous grip. He could feel tendrils of ancient scents and bad memories slithering through his brain as the eyes bored into him. A flat, tar-coloured tongue slid out through the thicket of teeth and waggled in the air as a fart of laughter made Eyll’s legs go limp.

‘Now, now. No need for that, little Eel. The captain won’t hurt you, no,’ the apparition hissed. ‘Not when you’ve brought him a repast fit for an admiral, my yes.’ The hell-eyes swivelled towards the shadows, where the offerings huddled.

‘I-I...’ Eyll began hesitantly. His mind groped for the words Fiducci had taught him. ‘I want to pay my debt!’ he blurted. The eyes swung back, freezing his tongue in place.

‘Your many times great-grandfather and I had a bargain, young Eel, my yes. And such a bargain it was too. The oldest bargain. Blood for gold. Blood for the sea’s bounty, every glittering morsel. But why would you want to end that bargain? Didn’t I give him enough?’ The cunning beast-eyes glowed like lamps.

‘I want to pay my debt,’ Eyll croaked again, wanting to look away but unable to do so. A chalk-coloured hand rose out from beneath the rotting cloak, and something glittered between the spidery fingers. Eyll’s mouth went dry and he automatically stuck out his hand. Heavy coins plopped wetly one by one into his hand.

‘There are older wrecks beneath the sea by far than Sigmar’s petty kingdom.’ Shark teeth snapped together. ‘Good yellow gold from the Vampire Coast or the far seas that sweep the beaches of Tilea or Ind. All men love gold, young Eel. Just as I love other things...’ The gurgling voice fell to a purr and Eyll shuddered. Clutching the gold to him, he made a motion to the chained women, who were beginning to come out of their stupor. One of them screamed, until a mossy hand clamped tight over her mouth. The zombies clustered around the women, pawing at them idly. He looked down at the gold again and swallowed the rush of bile that burned in his throat. ‘Twelve souls. That’s what the books said,’ he said.

The captain laughed. ‘Ha. Yes. Twelve innocent souls for one black one.’ A moment later, black words dripped from his gnawed lips and there was a sudden rush of effluvium – a foul stink like Eyll imagined that the ocean’s bottom must smell of. Bloated faces glared mindlessly at Eyll and then at the prisoners. ‘Twelve pure souls for twelve generations of service, aye. Yesss. Let us have ’em, lads,’ the captain said, shifting slightly. In the moonlight, Eyll caught a glimpse of tattered finery and rusted armour coated in barnacles and other things, some of which moved in an unpleasant fashion. ‘Twelve good and true, my yes. I–’ The captain broke off and spun suddenly, his cloak snapping wetly. Eyll heard him sniff and he cringed as the captain clawed at him with a narrow gaze. ‘What is that I smell, young Eel? Got rot in the pork, have you?’

‘No. No! No!’ Panic tore through Eyll like a knife.

The captain seemed to ripple and bend like shadows beneath the surf. One moment he was there and the next... gone. Hastily, Eyll dropped the coins and tore the pistol from his sash. He cocked it with the edge of his bandaged palm and winced. The zombies hesitated, as if unsure of what to do. The captain reappeared next to one of the women... the dead one, Eyll realised with sickening dread.

‘What’s this? What’s this?’ The horrible eyes pinned Eyll. ‘This one’s no good, young Eel. Gone all overripe she has.’ Teeth snapped together. ‘Trying to flimflam me, are you?’

Eyll levelled his pistol. ‘Just trying to survive, really,’ he said weakly, and fired.

Dubnitz beheaded another zombie and charged towards Eyll and the thing that had come off the monstrous ship. His breath rasped hot in his chest as he ran full tilt, battering aside the dead in his haste to reach the living. Behind him, Goodweather hurried to keep up, her ragged robes tangling around her legs. As soon as he saw the creature, he knew what it was, if not who. Dubnitz had fought its kind before, with Ogg and the others, on a Sartosian expedition.

He cursed as Eyll fired at it, knowing it would be no good. The black manta-shape of the vampire lunged over the heads of the chained women and flowed through the soupy air towards Eyll. ‘Free the women!’ Dubnitz shouted at Goodweather. ‘I’ll handle the rest!’

Before the priestess could reply, Dubnitz had barrelled into the slinking shadow-shape and knocked it sprawling. Eyll gawped at him, the smoking pistol hanging forgotten in his hand. ‘You? But you’re–?’

‘Still planning to arrest you!’ Dubnitz snarled, backhanding the prince and sending him sprawling. ‘But not just yet.’ The zombies moved forward, weapons raised. Dubnitz tore into them, hacking them to pieces even as he bellowed a rough seaman’s prayer. But even as the last of them slumped, fingers like bale-hooks sank into the back of his gorget and he was summarily jerked from his feet. He was thrown hard into a pile of crates, which shattered and covered him in fish.

‘Come to challenge the captain, have you?’ the vampire growled. Talons flexed and then, with a wet chuckle, it drew the cutlass hanging from its hip. The blade was big and worn, but not rusty in the least. ‘Come on then,’ it challenged.

Dubnitz crawled to his feet, head ringing from the force of his landing. Black blood dripped sluggishly down the creature’s face from a circular hole in its temple. Evidently Eyll had left his mark. The vampire touched the wound and snarled loud enough to rattle Goetz’s teeth. He stomped forward and the cutlass sprang to meet him. Every parry and reply stung his arms to the root. The vampire was far stronger an opponent than Dubnitz was used to, and it well knew how to use its strength. Also, the mist seemed to curl and tighten about his limbs, hindering his movement.

‘The captain has spread red waters from here to Ind, little warrior,’ the vampire said. ‘He has butchered elven corsairs and broke the hump-backs of sea-beasts. You think you can stand against him?’

‘That depends, are you him?’ Dubnitz muttered through gritted teeth. He had only just blocked a blow that would have taken his head off and now he strained against the uncompromising weight of the vampire’s fell blade. Snarling, the vampire jerked its sword to the side, pulling the knight off balance and punched him in the chest, sending him skidding back across the dock.

Dubnitz rolled to a stop with a clatter and gingerly felt at the fist-shaped dent in his cuirass. Breathing heavily, he pushed himself up and glanced around, looking for Goodweather. The mist, however, was too thick for him to spot anything but the loping shape of his opponent, trotting forward unhurriedly, black tongue caressing the tips of his dagger teeth.

‘You fight well for a landlubber,’ the vampire said. ‘You’d make a fine bosun, strong lad like you.’

‘Flattery won’t save you,’ Dubnitz wheezed, bringing his sword up. The vampire laughed and darted forward so swiftly that Dubnitz couldn’t track him. The cutlass blade stopped inches from his face and the knight staggered back in surprise as the vampire suddenly dropped the weapon and clapped both hands to its skull. It shrieked and Dubnitz’s ears throbbed.

‘Scream all you want, captain,’ Fiducci said, stepping out of the mist, holding up a strange sigil composed of writhing shapes. ‘It will avail you nothing. Not with a shard of warpstone embedded in that corrupt brain of yours. And not when I hold this!’

‘What-what-what?’ the captain croaked. Green and black serum flowed down the vampire’s craggy face as its fingers clawed at the wound in its skull.

‘A little something I picked up in the East. Old Kemmler created it, according to its former owner. Made it to control your kind, which, apparently, it does. It harmonises with the warpstone, you see, creating a bond between this and thee,’ the necromancer chuckled. ‘You’re mine, captain.’

‘I think you mean mine,’ Eyll said, stepping out of the fog, his pistol cocked. His jaw was purpling already from Dubnitz’s blow. ‘Forgetting yourself, Signor Fiducci?’

‘I never forget myself, Signor Eyll. Merely my employer, once our business is concluded,’ Fiducci said. He smiled nastily. ‘You asked me what price I would demand. Well, there it is... the captain.’

‘You promised me–’ Eyll began.

‘I promised you that I would save you from the captain. And I have. But I said nothing about myself,’ Fiducci said. He pulled the sigil close. ‘captain, be so kind as to tender my resignation, eh?’

The vampire whirled and with a frustrated snarl, dove upon Eyll. Eyll fired his pistol and then fell beneath the pouncing shape, which reduced him to a ruinous mess in mere moments. Above the sounds of bones snapping and flesh tearing, Fiducci howled with laughter. The necromancer danced a little jig, stopping only when his eyes settled on Dubnitz, who glared at him.

‘You are annoyingly persistent, Erkhart,’ Fiducci said. ‘Like a wart that keeps coming back.’

Dubnitz straightened, trying to keep an eye on both the necromancer and the vampire. ‘I won’t pretend to know what was going on here, but I’m guessing it’s another of your little schemes, corpse-eater.’ He gestured with his sword. ‘And I’ll be damned if I let you get away with it.’

‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ Fiducci giggled. ‘Oh, captain...’

Dubnitz threw himself to the side as the vampire dove for him, its talons scraping grooves along his back. Rolling to his feet, he caromed off of another stack of crates and spun, hoping to land a blow. The vampire seemed to ooze around the edge of the sword and then its claws were at his throat and he felt himself being bent backwards. His gorget was ripped free and tossed aside, baring his throat to the greedy lamprey mouth that descended moments later.

The vampire stopped as an immense shadow spread across them. Fiducci’s giggles died away into stunned silence as the wide crest of water rose above them and then summarily slammed down! Dubnitz was torn from the vampire’s grip and tossed back up against a wall as the wave covered that section of the soutch dock and dissolved into puddles and foam.

Sputtering, Fiducci clawed around in the water. ‘Where is it? Where–’

‘Looking for this, are you?’ the captain hissed, hefting the sigil in one talon. As Dubnitz pulled himself erect, the vampire crushed the device as easily as another man might crumple paper. ‘Control me, would you? Better to attempt to control the tides.’

Fiducci fell onto his backside and began to splash away as the hulking shape of the vampire stalked towards him, clawed fingers flexing in eagerness.

‘I know your kind, necromancer... remoras, clinging to king sharks. Thought you’d twist this sacred debt to your benefit, eh? Thought you’d make the captain your play-pretty, your cabin boy, eh? I’ll give you a taste of the lash...’

As Dubnitz retrieved his sword, he saw Fiducci’s hand dart into his robes and felt a sinking sensation in his gut as he realised just what the little man was after. ‘No!’ he said, darting forward. The vampire, between him and Fiducci, turned and caught him, wrenching him into the air.

‘I’ll settle our account first then, shall I?’ the captain gurgled, eyes blazing. Behind him, Fiducci stuffed the scrimshaw whistle between his lips and blew a wet melody. Dubnitz, desperate, thrust his fingers into the leaking wound in the vampire’s skull. The creature shrieked and released him, and Dubnitz dropped heavily to the dock. He could feel the wood trembling and hear the smashing of great bodies through the Shallows. The wood cracked and burst abruptly as a number of horrible shapes thrust their way up in response to Fiducci’s summons.

Cutlass in hand again, the captain swung it as the first of Stromfel’s Children dove for the vampire, wide mouth gaping. The vampire cleaved the thing in two and met the next, matching it snarl for snarl. Dubnitz barely reclaimed his own sword in time to fend off his own attackers. As they fought, Fiducci blew on the whistle again and again, until the becalmed harbour waters fairly boiled with heaving piscine nightmares. Where only moments before the sea had given up its dead, it now gave forth every monstrosity that stirred in the deep silt. Krakens with clashing beaks and frenzied sharks made mad war on the floating dead and the monstrous offspring of the storm-god. Alarm bells sang out as the docks came under attack.

Dubnitz stabbed something with entirely too many flippers and stepped past it, reaching for Fiducci, who seemed enraptured by the chaos he had caused. Dubnitz grabbed the necromancer around the back of the neck and flung him to the ground. ‘You! Send them back!’ he snapped.

‘I think not! If Franco Fiducci is to be thwarted, the city itself shall pay!’ the necromancer yowled. ‘And you with it!’ He yanked a dagger from his robes and stabbed wildly at Dubnitz.

The knight caught his arm and bent it back, forcing Fiducci to drop the blade. Driving his sword into the dock, he made a grab for Fiducci’s other hand, where the whistle lurked. ‘Give me that!’

‘Get off of me you oaf!’ Fiducci shrilled, struggling. The whistle slipped out of his grasp and Dubnitz batted it aside, into the thick of the confusion. Fiducci screamed and scrambled after it even as the shark-shape of the captain cleaved its way towards them.

‘I’ll have my due one way or another, necromancer!’ the captain roared.

Dubnitz jerked his sword up and the cutlass scraped sparks the length of the interposed blade. Berserk, the vampire slashed at him, all pretence of humanity now gone from its form and feature. It hammered at him as if seeking to pound him flat, and he was in no shape to prevent it. It was only stubbornness keeping him upright and even that was fast fading.

‘Dubnitz!’

He looked down as something skittered across the dock and saw a medallion emblazoned with Manann’s sigil. He gave a furious shove, pushing the captain back long enough to clear enough room for him to snatch the medallion up. As the vampire swooped down on him again, he shoved the sigil into its face. The captain screeched and stumbled back, covering its eyes. Dubnitz’s flush of victory faded quickly; he could only keep the beast at bay so long.

The trill of a whistle cut the air. Large shapes blundered out of the mist like hounds on the scent, and Dubnitz tensed, preparing for the attack. Only it was not be. The Shallows-beasts leapt on the captain, one after another, dogpiling the vampire beneath a mound of mutated flesh. The captain’s angry shriek was cut abruptly short as the dock gave way in a fashion reminiscent of Dubnitz’s earlier plunge.

Dubnitz hurried to the edge of the hole, his whole body aching. The captain glared up at him, jaws working, bloody foam bubbling from between ragged lips. A jagged spear of wood had been shoved up through the vampire’s back and out through its chest. A claw stretched out towards Dubnitz with hateful intent and then sagged as the hell-light faded from the creature’s eyes. The body slumped and began to dissolve like seaweed in the morning tide. Dubnitz sank back and sat down, his body shuddering with exhaustion and not a little relief.

‘I’ll have my medallion back now, if you please,’ Goodweather said. The priestess picked her way carefully through the debris. Dubnitz looked at her wearily.

‘The women?’

‘Safe with the watchmen. Are you unhurt?’

‘Yes. Yourself?’

‘As well as can be expected,’ she said, taking her medallion back and hanging it around her neck. ‘My intervention appears to have been timely.’

‘It’s becoming a habit with you,’ Dubnitz said. ‘That wave–’

‘You’re welcome.’ Goodweather opened her hand and showed him the whistle. ‘And this will go back in the vault where it belongs.’

‘I don’t see Fiducci anywhere. I suppose it’s too much to ask that the little rat got eaten by one of his own monsters...’ Dubnitz sighed and stood. The mist was beginning to clear with the captain’s demise and the fires were being put out. ‘How in the name of Manann’s trident am I going to explain any of this to Ogg?’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. As long as it’s better than your explanation about the goat and the octopus,’ Goodweather said, scattering salt over the bodies of the dead and beginning the rites of her order.

Dubnitz laughed, and the sound was echoed by the cries of the returning seabirds. The birds swooped and dove and followed the retreating mist back out to sea, as the wind picked up once more and the calm faded at last.

LESSER EVILS

Tom Foster

As the lander cut through the last few layers of cloud, Lucan Vaughn checked his lasgun again.

Twenty years with a gun in my hand and I still don’t trust my weapons. A sudden blast of turbulence rocked the crew compartment, and his backpack thumped against his shoulders.

Nietzin, Vaughn’s second-in-command, had been standing by the door, watching their journey through the tiny window. As the turbulence shook them he staggered, staying upright with an effort. From his seat opposite Vaughn, Andus ‘Fane’ Garren laughed. Nietzin glanced at him, eyes bitter and hard. The engines rumbled around them.

Time to take control, Vaughn thought. He leaned round and pressed the intercom. ‘How long, Lao?’

‘Let’s see...’ Cornelius Lao sounded refined and bored. Vaughn knew it was a pose, picked up in his old career in a Navy fighter wing. ‘Just over ten minutes, I’d say.’

Vaughn closed the intercom and looked around the darkened cabin. ‘All right, ten minutes. Everyone check their gear and look ready. Anyone got any prayers to say, then now’s the last chance to say them.’

The flyer hit a fresh batch of turbulence and shuddered as if it were afraid. Opposite Vaughn, sitting next to Fane, Salia Tashac had screwed her eyes shut. There was a stripe of black soot smeared across the lids. Old habits die hard, Vaughn thought, his hands moving over his gun again. The Tallarn 43rd would probably have hanged Tash if they could catch her, but she still wore their warpaint. He wondered if she was praying or just bracing herself in case they fell out of the sky.

Vaughn unclipped his harness and stood up. He stepped to the door, and Nietzin leaned in to talk. The lieutenant was several inches taller than Vaughn, and his white hair brushed the roof. ‘All set?’ Vaughn asked.

Nietzin hefted the team’s plasma gun. ‘All set. Look, Lucan,’ he added, and the lines on his face seemed to deepen, ‘we’ve broken some laws before, but nothing like this.’

‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’ Vaughn glanced left, down the length of the cabin; Tash and Fane were not listening.

‘Nor did I.’ The ship rocked and Vaughn grabbed a strap hanging from the roof. It was all he could do not to fall on his comrade. ‘Not to begin with. But this is serious blasphemy, friend.’

‘Well,’ Vaughn said, ‘what do you want to do, go back and tell Harsek we were overcome by a sudden outbreak of mercy? You know I can’t do that.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ The older man paused. He seemed to realise that there was no point. The edge fell out of his voice. ‘I just wanted to say that I’ve got qualms.’

‘Me too. But what Harsek says, we do. It’s either us or them, you know that.’

‘It always is,’ Nietzin replied, his voice grim, and he drew back and checked the power dials on the side of his gun. ‘Never any other way.’

The intercom crackled. ‘One minute!’ Lao announced.

The flyer sank low, trembling. Through the window behind Nietzin’s shoulder, Vaughn saw the orange canyons and outcroppings of Rand XXI, and then towers and domes clinging to the rocks like spines on a monster’s back. As the flyer approached he made out individual buildings, then great stained-glass windows. At last he saw a round, landing pad, white as a plate, decorated with a huge fleur-de-lys. And then the flyer banked, twisted, and the legs struck the landing pad with a lurch that sent Vaughn reeling. The door dropped open in front of him and he cried, ‘Let’s move!’, and the strike team ran into the thin mountain air.

His boots hit the plascrete and suddenly he was in the open, ducking out from under the roaring engines of the flyer. Vaughn took in the fortress-priory before him, running along the ridge like a grey crest. In that same moment he saw the mountains in the distance, barren and red, and felt terribly exposed. Time to get to cover. He glanced back, saw the team behind him, and heard the engines start to rise into a roar.

At the far end of the landing pad, steps carved into the mountain led down towards the priory itself. A figure rose into view as it climbed the last few steps, robes and hair whipping in the breeze, the red bulk of a bolter held across an armoured chest.

A Sister of Battle. Vaughn was not sure he’d ever seen one before – at least, not at this range. She looked tougher than he’d expected, hard-eyed and callous. She was calling out something about landing clearance that she’d started to say on the steps, her voice raised above the engines and the wind.

‘You,’ Vaughn yelled, ‘Drop your weapon!’

It was pointless, of course. As soon as she saw them properly, the bolter was swinging up in her gauntleted hands, and as soon as she moved Vaughn’s men fired. Their guns were rigged for just this purpose, wired to hotshot power packs: a set of vicious cracks came from the right, and the Sister folded. She stood at the edge of the landing pad, doubled over. As Vaughn approached she looked up, and the blood running from her nose and mouth was shockingly red against her pale face. Then she fell onto the ground.

Vaughn reached the edge of the landing pad and looked down. It was a long climb on the stairs, and an even longer drop onto the mountainside. He’d never liked heights.

The dead woman’s armour had been polished until it shone like black marble. One of the lasgun shots had punched straight through her chest. The hole in her armour looked like a tiny stone thrown through a plate of tinted glass.

For a long moment Vaughn looked at her. Death had made her face as pale as a porcelain doll’s, the skin smooth and pallid as candle wax. There was a little prayer-scroll woven into her dark brown hair.

Then he but his boot against the dead woman’s hip and shoved her off the landing pad and into the abyss.

‘That’s a long way down,’ Fane said. He’d grown up in a hive city, where sunlight had been a rarity.

Vaughn ran onto the steps, and as he did the roar of the engines swelled up and Lao’s flyer heaved itself into the sky. The dirty white ship swung in the air, turned to the north and dropped out of sight behind the mountainside, following the canyons.

Vaughn began to climb down the steps, as quickly as he could without losing his balance. The thought of falling made him queasy, of bumping down a hundred hard stairs before dropping into the canyon. He heard his men hurry down after him, in a rattle of kit and armour plate.

Well, Vaughn thought, one thing’s for sure, there’s no going back now.

Two hundred steps so far. A slow fire was burning in his calf muscles. Behind him, Tash was the first to curse. Vaughn ignored her. As ever, he knew that it wasn’t her fault that she was hard to like.

The priory grew closer. He saw the details of the stained glass and the flapping banners. He made out the words ‘Imperator Deus’ in gilt lettering above the nearest pair of double doors.

By the saints, we’re exposed. A few bolter shells, one missile, and we’d be done for.

It wouldn’t even have to hit them, he realised. The force from a frag shell would knock the whole team over the edge. Despite the ache in his legs, he sped up.

As he ran Vaughn took out his monocular and studied the side of the priory. He wondered how the Sisters of Battle brought in their supplies: they wouldn’t make their own armaments, surely. Perhaps there was another landing pad, one he hadn’t been briefed about. That didn’t bode well. Or perhaps the Sisters carried all their gear down these stairs – backbreaking work, even if you didn’t fall into the canyon below. They’d probably think it was good for the soul.

The team kept up a good pace, even Nietzin. ‘You need me to carry you, old man?’ Fane demanded. Nietzin puffed out a curse in response. Vaughn’s gun bumped against his side.

As they approached the fortress, it occurred to Vaughn that he really didn’t know much about the Sisterhood at all. His knowledge was limited to awed rumours, a couple of mission briefings, and some dirty, heretical jokes he’d picked up in the Guard, the sort of thing that would get you into serious trouble with the commissar. He had no idea what to expect. He remembered his old company commander’s adage: When you don’t know the enemy, go in hard. You’ll either terrify them into surrender, or–

Or you’ll die serving the Emperor. Great.

‘Come on, people, pick it up!’ Vaughn snarled over his shoulder, and he quickened the pace once more.

If Harsek’s information was right – and Vaughn had his doubts about that – it would be ten standard minutes before anyone checked the landing pad. He visualised the little diagram, sketched with a blunt pencil on scrap paper like most of the best battle plans he’d made. To the east was the main body of the priory, the buildings rising in sanctity as they rose in height: domitarium, then scholarium and training chambers, and finally the dome of the Chapel Santissimus on the peak of the ridge. To the left, the lower buildings squatted on the rock: the refectorium, storehouses and hospital, where the less important matters of the body could be taken care of, overshadowed by the buildings of the soul.

The stairs flattened out. Together the team ran over a stone bridge broad enough to take a Baneblade tank, a sanctified banner flapping at either end. There were skulls on the banner poles, with letters scrimshawed into the bone. Vaughn didn’t stop to see whether they were the skulls of heretics or saints.

The building before them was grey stone, quarried off-world and barely decorated. A path ran around the edge, lashed by wind, its handrails little more than metal spikes linked by old rope. Vaughn jogged into its shadow, and the team followed him. His breath was still tight from running, but his body seemed to sigh. They were out of view of the main buildings now. It should be a bit further down the wall, he thought, remembering his sketch. Just a bit further – please, let it be here...

There it was. A metre across, hardly more than a bulkhead adorned with a plain fleur-de-lys of tarnished steel, the edges brushed shiny silver by generations of howling wind. Beside the door, to Vaughn’s relief, was a little keypad under a metal skull. The skull’s left eye shone red.

He looked back at Nietzin. ‘You know what to do,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘Fane, Tash, watch the sides.’

The older man took a plain grey data-slate from his thigh pocket. Nietzin turned it over in his hands, his lips moving. Then he leaned in and pressed the slate to the keypad. Slowly, he drew it down the lock.

Nothing happened. Vaughn checked his watch. By now, according to Harsek’s information, the guard from the landing pad ought to be checking back in at the dormitarium. Any moment now, the Sisters of Battle would begin to wonder where she had gone.

With a loud click, the skull’s red left eye went dead. Its right eye flared into bright green life. The door slid back, and they were looking into a tiny lift, just big enough to hold four men.

The lift shuddered and rattled as it descended, as if it had detected the presence of intruders and was trying to shake them out. Vaughn stood pressed against Nietzin, with Fane on his left and his lasgun held up beside his head as if presenting arms on parade. It occurred to him that if the lift jolted hard enough, the gun would probably go off and blast his ear away. These things were custom models, bought by Harsek’s dealer through some complex, back-alley arrangement: still, they couldn’t be much less reliable than the Departmento Munitorium versions he’d hefted back in the Guard.

‘We’ll come out in the storerooms,’ Vaughn said. ‘Once the lift stops, blast the controls and seal the doors shut. We’ll take the access stairs on the way back. There shouldn’t be anyone around – nobody to set off the alarms, that is. Then we make our way to the main cogitator. Once the main cogitator is out, we’ll head down to the cells. The cells will have powered doors – besides, each section of this place is probably airlocked. The last thing we need are the Sisters trapping us.’

And who knows what we’ll find waiting for us down there?

They nodded.

Fane said, ‘Seal off the sector, then make it ours. Like how we used to do it in the hive.’ His skin had always had a pallid, greenish tint, the result of years of living off synthetic food in a warren of bad light and polluted air. The weak red glow of the lift made him almost spectral.

The lift banged to a stop, shaking them against one another. Tash banged into Fane’s breastplate and she muttered a curse in some Tallarn dialect.

‘Keep sharp,’ Vaughn warned, and he hit the door button.

The door rumbled open and the team jabbed their guns into the aperture. Wordlessly, they scurried into the room, fanning out to cover the entire hall. Tash smashed the lift controls with her gun-butt and ran to catch up with the others.

The room was large, high-ceilinged, functional rather than sanctified. The metal walls looked scuffed and greasy. Four huge hoppers hung down from the roof, each three times Vaughn’s height. Only a glowing holo-image in an alcove looked more than just industrial. It showed a saint that Vaughn didn’t recognise giving a blessing, a power sword in her free hand.

They crept across the room, past the hoppers. No doubt they were for preserved grain or the like: even the pious had to eat sometime. The holographic saint cycled through her program, giving the same looped blessing as they hurried past, as if trying to mime a warning.

As they reached the door on the far side, Vaughn heard boots. He made a quick fist to halt the team, and they rushed to the door, two to each side. Vaughn glanced at Nietzin. Very quietly, the older man crouched down, laid his plasma gun on the floor and drew his knife. The sound of the boots rose, ringing on the metal floor, and a figure stepped into the room.

It was a girl, perhaps seventeen. She wore a wide-sleeved robe like a farm-worker’s smock, the hood down and the sleeves rolled up and pinned for practicality. She walked straight past them, muttering to herself as if trying to remember something.

She seemed extremely young to Vaughn – no, he realised, it was not her age as such, but the fact that she didn’t look very tough at all. He glanced left. Nietzin hadn’t moved.

Across the doorway, Fane waved his hand. Tash caught Vaughn’s eye and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask, Well, what now?

Fane pulled his knife. Vaughn raised his gun, took two long steps across the room and brought the butt down on the novice’s head.

She made a small Oof! sound from the air being knocked out of her. The girl dropped like a body cut down from a gallows.

‘Watch the door,’ Vaughn said. He crouched down and put his hand to the novice’s head. There was a little blood there, but no serious wound. He was surprised at how relieved he felt. When he stood up, Nietzin was looking at him.

‘Knocked out,’ Vaughn said, and Nietzin nodded as he sheathed his knife.

‘That was soft, old man,’ Fane said quietly. ‘You get soft, and then you get slow. You get slow, and then you get dead. Remember that.’

Nietzin stepped back. He had a family of his own somewhere, Vaughn knew. Harsek had rescued them from the same prison camp as Nietzin, making the old soldier his for life.

‘Tash?’ Vaughn said.

‘Sir?’

‘Gag her. Get her into the shadows. Come on, move!’

Tash pulled a couple of restraining ties from her pack. She looked only slightly older than the woman on the floor. Nietzin stooped to help her move the novice. Vaughn pulled his map out of his pocket.

‘Soft,’ Fane said as Tash and Nietzin laid the novice down.

‘If I want your opinion, I’ll let you know,’ Nietzin replied. ‘Let’s go.’

Below the storerooms, in a tiny chapel of its own, they found the cogitator. Saints and martyrs glowered down from the walls as if challenging the machine to betray them: there was no great love between the Sisters of Battle and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose cog-and-skull symbol stood out on the control panel.

‘You know how to make it work for us?’ Vaughn asked.

Nietzin smiled. A candelabra hanging down from the roof brushed his ruff of white hair as he approached the controls. He set his pack down and took out a small portable terminal, sheathed in red leather like an old book. ‘Data-djinn.’ He patted the terminal.

‘One of Harsek’s finest, I’m sure.’

Nietzin pushed wires into their ports. He mouthed a quick prayer. ‘And a little of mine. Forgive my less than total trust. Now, the machine spirits need to link...’

Vaughn stepped back and watched the chapel door. Nietzin knew his tech: it was detailed inquiry into old heretech that had got him sent to a penal colony in the first place. That and the things he’d started teaching his staff, ideas about free thought he’d learned from ancient, censored texts. But the old man knew his stuff. He’d soon have the facility under their–

A siren howled in the room above. Three pairs of eyes flicked to the roof. ‘Throne!’ Fane spat. The sound pumped on and on, a steady blast of sound.

Tash checked the settings on her gun. ‘That’s not good.’

‘That wasn’t me!’ Nietzin called over his shoulder. ‘We’re still making the connection. I just need a little while longer.’

‘You don’t have it!’ Vaughn snapped back. They know we’re here. They must have picked up the flyer, sensed us somehow. Maybe the lift was alarmed.

The siren roared on, muffled but furious, as if some monster was raging in the room above.

‘We’re in,’ Nietzin called. ‘The link’s sealing all emergency doors, cutting primary power to the defence lasers. It’s sending a message reporting fire in the dormitarium. That ought to confuse them. Right,’ he announced, pulling the terminal away, ‘The airlock to the cells is open.’ Nietzin pulled the plasma gun into his hands. If the siren bothered him, he didn’t show it.

Vaughn nodded. ‘Let’s go get our girl.’

They hurried down two flights of emergency stairs. As Vaughn stepped out, a figure leaned around a buttress, bolter in hand, and let rip.

The wall beside him cracked and as he dropped the shells detonated, blasting chunks out of the rockcrete. He fired, hit the woman’s shoulder and saw the beam ricochet off her polished armour. Something roared behind him, and a pellet of superheated plasma blew straight through the Battle Sister. She fell dead. No amount of faith could override a wound like that.

A narrow window let a slit of sunlight into the corridor. Vaughn stepped over, tilted his head and saw little dark figures spilling out of the buildings further up the ridge. Voices carried on the wind. They must have caught the Sisters at morning prayers, for most of them were running out of the domed chapter-house at the far end of the complex.

‘We’ll use the connecting tunnels.’ It’ll be murder, he thought, but preferable to what’s outside. He thought of the narrow walkways on the mountainside, the long drop into the canyon if he slipped, and reflected that he’d rather take a bolter round to the chest than fall into the abyss.

Together they ran into another storeroom. A hulking figure lurched out of the shadow, metal arms raised. Vaughn put three las-shots through its chest, and as it dropped he saw that it was just a menial servitor. They left it lying on its back, broken but still moving. Its legs still paced the air like a fallen clockwork toy, its bloodless head turning from side to side.

Vaughn stopped and looked around the corner. A vaulted corridor had been carved into the rock, twice his height and seemingly endless. He recalled the map and Harsek’s briefing. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The Custodium Penetentia is down here. Tash, have you got the things?’

She nodded. ‘Medicae’s all ready, sir.’

‘Good.’ He peeked around the corner again. Fifty yards up the corridor, a Sister ran from one side to the other, her robes flapping behind her. ‘This is going to get nasty,’ he said. ‘Follow me and keep going. And if you can avoid being taken alive...’

Fane loaded a fresh power pack.

‘Right.’ Vaughn took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go!’

He ran out. bent over to present a smaller target. Vaughn reached the far wall and threw his back against it as gunfire roared down the passageway. He raised his gun and sent half a dozen las-rounds back in return, hardly bothering to aim. A tapestry fell from the wall, smouldering. ‘Iconoclast!’ a woman screamed over the gunfire. ‘Blasphemer!’

The vaults stood out slightly from the wall at the base. They gave about twelve centimetres’ worth of cover. The team worked their way forward, each firing across the corridor to pin the Sisters back up the corridor. The air was a lattice of bolter shells and searing hot beams. One of the Battle Sisters fell into the corridor clutching her gut and was dragged into cover by the ankles, howling as las-shots burned the floor around her.

Vaughn pointed. Ten metres further up, a doorway lead off to the right. ‘Down there!’

Tash was first. She sprinted out, weaving as she ran, and Fane and Nietzin covered her way with suppressing fire. Vaughn crept forward until he was nearly opposite the doorway, then leaped. He landed awkwardly, rolled and was inside.

Tash grinned at him. She was holding a grenade. She leaned around the doorway and hurled it back into the corridor. There was a loud, echoing bang. Plaster filled the corridor. Vaughn glimpsed a Sister carrying some huge gun, a heavy bolter perhaps, stumbling from the force of the explosion. Nietzin ran across the corridor and inside. Fane ducked in after him.

The room was little more than a landing over a set of stairs. They ran down the staircase into a bare, whitewashed room. A monitor unit stood at one end. Half a dozen screens flickered over the console, showing the cells of the penetentia.

‘You’re bleeding, old man,’ Fane said.

Nietzin ran a hand across his forehead. ‘A stone chip must’ve caught me. I’m all right.’

Tash was at the far end of the room, before a massive door. ‘Problem,’ she said, turning. ‘Bad problem.’

‘Like we didn’t have any before,’ Fane said.

‘The door to the cells is code-locked. We can’t get in.’

Nietzin cursed. ‘It must run off a different system to the main controls. Damn it!’

Vaughn glanced at the stairs. It would be a matter of seconds before the Sisters gathered their forces and resumed the attack. ‘Well,’ he snapped, ‘can’t you make it open?’

‘I’ll have to,’ Nietzin replied. ‘Otherwise we’re trusting on the Emperor to send us a miracle.’ His expression told Vaughn how likely he thought that would be.

There was sudden noise on the staircase. Tash ducked into the stairwell, and the flash of her lasgun turned the stairs into a blaze of strobing light. A voice cried out and an armoured body crashed against the wall.

‘There’s a load of them,’ Tash said. ‘It looks like they’ll – grenade!’

Something small and cylindrical bounced hissing down the stairs. Tash lunged, grabbed it, lobbed the cylinder back up the stairs and threw herself onto the ground. Vaughn ducked, raising his plated forearms across his face – and nothing happened.

Tash got up, blinking. Vaughn opened his eyes and saw a cloud of thick grey smoke spilling down the stairs. He smelt burning chemicals tinged with incense. The stuff seemed to clog his nose and mouth. ‘Smoke!’

He yanked his rebreather up, shoved it over his mouth. He saw Tash stumble back, retching as she pulled her mask on.

A buzzing, ripping sound came from above. Boots clattered on metal stairs. A Sister of Battle charged through the smoke like some furious spirit, holding a long metal shield in front of her. Nietzin’s plasma gun blasted straight through shield and woman, and the hail of fire from Fane’s lasgun tore the soldier behind her apart. Then a great bull of a woman, almost Nietzin’s height and far broader, rushed them. A brazier on her backpack threw coals out behind her; inscribed skulls hung around her neck. In her hands was a roaring chainsword more than a metre long.

‘Die!’ she bellowed. Fane leaped back, lasgun forgotten, grabbing for his lucky pistol. Nietzin peered down the plasma gun, struggling to get a sight.

‘Die, filth!’

The sword was too big for the room, perhaps too big even for her. She swung the blade as if to hurl it away, and Vaughn ducked low and the sword whipped over his head, smashing out half the monitor screens in a shower of sparks. The shock jarred the woman’s arms. She staggered back, swinging the weapon up like a fisherman hauling in a net. Tash dropped and rolled out of the way, and as the Battle Sister swung her ponderous weapon, Nietzin fired.

He missed her. The plasma shot caught the chainsword halfway down the blade and blew it apart. Fragments tore across the room like shrapnel. Fane dived onto the floor. Like a thrashing snake, the chain whipped through the air, hit the wall, flicked back and struck its owner in the thigh. She bellowed, dropped and Fane pounced on her.

The room was almost silent then. Fane looked up. His pistol, an ornate, flashing thing worthy of a hive-gangster, was pressed against the woman’s head.

‘You want me to kill her?’ Fane’s rebreather distorted his voice.

Beneath him, the woman struggled and gasped. Her own mask had fallen down, but she seemed at least partly immune to the gas. She was muttering between her teeth, snarling out some catechism that Vaughn couldn’t understand.

She didn’t look like any soldier he’d ever known. Back in the Guard, he had encountered occasional commissars with the rabid look that she now wore, like an enraged animal caught behind bars. But not many of them. The Sisters knew how to fight, he thought – they were experts – but they made him think more of lunatics than soldiers.

‘Not yet,’ he replied. He pulled his rebreather down. ‘We’ve got the prioress!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘Stay back or we’ll kill her!’

The woman on the ground managed to control herself enough to speak. ‘I have no fear of dying,’ she proclaimed. Her voice was deep and loud, a preacher’s voice. ‘The Emperor shall shield me!’

It was the prioress herself. Vaughn glanced at the doorway. Tash was watching the stairs. A voice, surprisingly high and feminine, called down, ‘Touch the prioress and you’ll die!’

‘Tash?’ Vaughn said, ‘Throw me the cuffs.’

He looked down at the prioress. ‘Now,’ he said, snapping a pair of excruciators closed over her wrists, ‘it’s time to act like a martyr and endure.’

She was silent for a moment. All the rage seemed to have gone out of her. Perhaps, Vaughn thought, she was gearing herself not to dish out pain, but to receive it silently. ‘I did not expect to be taken alive,’ she said.

Fane shoved the barrel of his pistol into the flesh of her thick neck, and she pulled away from him; as much from his leering face than his gun. ‘Woman, who cares what you think? If I pull this trigger, your brain will be so much red mist, understand? All of your holy talk, it’s all the same to me. You don’t become a martyr unless you’re dead.’

‘Leave it,’ Vaughn said. He met the ex-ganger’s eyes for a moment, and there was something in them beyond casual viciousness and amusement in snuffing out life. For a moment Vaughn wondered if Fane had some deeper argument with the Ecclesiarchy. Whatever it was, it was getting in the way of the job. ‘Fane. I said leave her be.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Fane replied, making it sound a threat. He holstered the pistol and stood up. ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you, holy or not.’

The prioress looked back at him as if he was not quite human. ‘You’ll burn,’ she replied, and the calm in her voice worried Vaughn more than her anger.

‘Go and help Tash cover the stairs,’ Vaughn said. ‘Well, what’re you waiting for?’

‘Right,’ Fane said. He sounded disgusted at having to obey.

Tash waited by the stairs, crouched down to get a better view. She would have looked sullen and morose even without the black soot across her eyes. She looked round, met Vaughn’s glance, then scuttled over as Fane took her place. Tash ducked down beside the prioress, tiny next to her armoured bulk, and reached into her pack.

‘Keep this woman away from me,’ the prioress declared. ‘She is... tainted.’

‘Sedative,’ Tash replied, filling a syringe. ‘This won’t hurt you, but it’ll slow you down.’ She pushed the syringe into the prioress’ neck. The woman simply glared at her, as if challenging her to do worse. ‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Tash added, ‘I don’t like you either.’

Vaughn looked at the prioress. ‘We need you to open the doors,’ he said.

The prioress shook her head. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ she replied. ‘What’s down there in the cells has to stay here. I suppose you’re looking for treasure,’ she added. ‘Relics to sell to some seedy prelate, or to melt down for gems. I can tell you that what’s down there won’t get you rich, that’s for sure. You’ll be lucky if she only kills you.’

‘A possible emergent psyker,’ Vaughn replied. ‘I know.’

‘You know?’ The prioress glared at Vaughn, as if her stare could burn him. ‘And you came to liberate her? She’s open to the warp. If a daemon was to possess her – Thor protect us–’ Understanding crept across her face. ‘You’re cultists, aren’t you? Servants of the Ruinous Powers.’ As best as she could with her wrists tied, she made the sign of the aquila across her chest. ‘Salvate me, Imperator.’

‘No. That’s not us.’ The accusation stung Vaughn. He knew about the renegades on Tranch and the Siege of Vraks, about the murders and rituals they were said to have carried out. The idea of being mistaken for such creatures disturbed him. ‘Listen to me. We’re not cultists and we’re not traitors. But we’re taking her with us, understand? I don’t care how much that seems like sacrilege to you. Once we’re gone you can atone for losing her all you need. But she comes with us, and that’s that.’ Vaughn drew his bolt pistol. ‘Get the doors open. Now.’

For a moment she looked uncertain, and then a sort of hard calm came over her features. ‘No.’

‘I’m warning you–’

‘You’ll get nothing.’ She raised her chin, as if she was about to spit. ‘You can do with me as you want. I belong to the Master of Mankind. Better that I should die a thousand times than let you in there. In the name of the saints, I shall endure as Lord Thor endured the agonies of Vandire–’

‘Hey!’

They looked round. The prioress stopped in mid-rant, like a broken vox-caster. For once, Nietzin was smiling.

‘Ladies, gentlemen: one miracle,’ he said, and the door to the cells slid open.

Sister Cerra, 22, entered the Sisterhood at 14. Completed Novice and Cantus stages, in the process of Constantia training in preparation to become a full Sister.

Vaughn marched down the dark corridor, turning the words over in his mind. Down here, with the cells and rats, you needed something else to think about.

Reports of minor psychic phenomena towards end of Cantus training. Suspected psychic anomalies intensified over past year: four months ago, removed for spiritual reclamation and purgation of the soul.

The walls were rough and damp, the air clammy. At his side Nietzin, who knew more about the Emperor’s penal system than Vaughn, looked tired and grim.

Four months down here. I’d rather be shot.

Chanting came from ahead. The low drone made Vaughn’s skin prickle. He checked his gun without breaking stride, then glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Fane shoved the prioress along. Despite the shot of pacifier serum that Tash had given her, she seemed hardly less alert than before. No doubt about it, the Sisters of Battle were tough.

‘This is not for you,’ she said. ‘You should not look upon our work here.’

‘Shut up.’ Vaughn stopped before a broad door. The view-slit was padlocked shut, sealed with a prayer-text and a red lump of wax.

Tash came forward to the door, tugging her medical bag into her hands. Vaughn glanced at Nietzin, and nodded.

The big man kicked the door as if to stamp it down. It burst open and Vaughn ran in, gun up. ‘Nobody move!’ he shouted, and he stopped, horrified.

A figure stood at the far side of the room. It wore a loose white gown, the arms raised like wings. The head lolled: the hair was cropped. There were symbols painted onto her scalp in what looked like blood. Two hooded figures knelt before the girl: one read from a book, the other swung a small censer as she chanted. Neither looked round.

Vaughn stared at the scene for a moment, taking in details. The room reeked of incense. He saw that the girl’s arms were raised by chains; that her skin was pale and raw; that the wall on the left was covered in a mass of parchments. Devices hung from pegs on the wall: whips; saws; long pins attached to sacred parchments; a thing like a mixture of a stylus and soldering-iron; and other items that, even after years in the worst parts of the Imperial Guard, Vaughn had never seen before.

One of the robed figures started to rise.

‘I said don’t move!’ Vaughn yelled.

Nietzin blasted the first chanter. Superheated blood spattered the wall, hissing on the parchments. The second robed figure took a step backwards. The older man sidestepped, so as not to risk hitting the girl. Then he blew the second chanter’s head into steam. The censer clattered on the stone floor.

‘Torturers,’ Nietzin said, as if that explained everything.

‘It’s a ritual, you fool,’ the prioress spat. Vaughn could see the effort in her face, fighting down the effects of the sedative. ‘Her powers have to be locked inside her to stop them getting out – sealed with fire. A creature like that draws the warp. The right sigils need to be cut into the flesh, to trap the power of the warp inside–’

‘That’s enough,’ Vaughn said. ‘Get her down.’

Tash hurried past, syringe in hand, and sank it into the girl’s neck. Then she started to help Nietzin unfasten the chains.

‘I called it in,’ Nietzin said. ‘Ten minutes to extraction.’

Nobody moved in the corridor. ‘Careful,’ Vaughn said. ‘Careful...’

He crept back down the passage, his eyes flicking from wall to wall. Nobody stood behind the buttresses, waiting for the moment to attack. They can’t have gone, he thought. The Sisters of Battle would never give up like that.

Tash followed, then Nietzin, watching the two prisoners. A dose of torpor had rendered Sister Calla drowsy and confused, but at least compliant. If she did have psychic powers, she didn’t show them. Saints be praised for that, Vaughn thought. He glanced back as they hurried down the corridor. The prioress glared at him through a haze of drugs like a furious drunk.

As they drew near to the cogitator-chapel, a set of harsh metallic coughs broke the air, rising into a single, massed roar. Fane yelled, ‘Chainswords!’

A figure dashed around the corner, hardly armoured, only half-clothed, waving a whirling blade over its head. Smoke belched from the weapon’s exhausts. A voice screamed from behind a mask of parchments wrapped bandage-styled over the face.

Tash shot her dead, three las-blasts straight through the chest. As the Sister fell, her saw nicked her unarmoured leg and threw gore across the wall. More devotees ran out, whirling chainswords and yelling praises and threats, and Vaughn’s men cut them down.

Someone howled behind him. He spun round, expecting a trap, and saw the prioress leap at Sister Cerra. Even half-drugged, her hands tied, the prioress could fight. Cerra was down in a second, clubbed by two heavy fists. The prioress locked her thumbs on Cerra’s windpipe.

Vaughn didn’t hesitate. He emptied half his gun’s power pack into the prioress’ side.

He turned and fired down the corridor, covering Nietzin as he reloaded. Someone screamed and fell by the chapel doorway. A novice armed with an autogun leaned around one of the buttresses. Fane snatched his pistol from his belt, raised it and aimed in one motion and put four rounds into her chest.

The corridor was suddenly quiet, full of smoke and blood. Nietzin hauled Cerra to her feet. ‘Quickly,’ Vaughn said, and they picked their way between the bodies, towards the stairs. One of the Sisters, hit in the leg, was slowly crawling towards her gun. Vaughn kicked it out of reach.

The prioress lay on her back behind them, dead eyes staring upward. She had joined the long list of martyrs of the Imperium.

The lift was fast, but it was too much of a risk. They took the access stairs instead. It was hard, slow going. Vaughn’s knees soon ached from climbing. Their boots seemed to ring out an invitation to be ambushed on the metal stairs. Sister Cerra staggered beside Tash, a thin strand of drool hanging out of her mouth, until Fane, muttering about having to do the hard work, grabbed Cerra and hauled her along after him, half-carrying her up the stairs. Nietzin paused, puffing, met Fane’s eyes and started up again before the inevitable mockery began. They kept on, covering the way forward and the stairs behind, winding their way towards the surface. ‘Come on,’ Vaughn snapped, ‘Come on!’

He tried to remember how many Sisters the briefing had said there would be. By now, everyone capable of bearing arms would have been called in to fight. Surely there couldn’t be many more power-armoured Sisters. They’ll be waiting, he thought. It’s what I’d do: set a trap. Somewhere between here and the landing pad...

At last the stairs ended. They looked out onto a small hall, empty except for a door on the far side. Vaughn tore it open, Nietzin covering him, and they stepped out into fresh air and strong wind.

They crept down the side of the building. Vaughn glanced around the corner. The landing pad was empty. Vaughn peered towards the chapel through his monocular and saw small dark figures moving down the ridge; some robed, some armoured. He saw staves, censers, heavy bolters and meltaguns. The whole damned priory had turned out to fight.

The moment we step out, we’re dead.

The landing pad was wide open, and covered by a dozen big guns. For a moment he wondered if the flyer would turn up to rescue them at all.

Thrusters roared beneath him. The flyer rose up beside them, its engines setting the ropes on the handrail flapping wildly. A hatch dropped open in the flyer’s battered flank, and Lao’s voice came droning out of the speakers mounted under the wings.

‘Climb in – come on, hurry up! If you think I’m landing here you must be bloody joking.’

The flyer tore up through the sky. Vaughn watched the atmosphere thin out and darken as they reached its upper limit. Flames licked at the window as the ship left Rand XXI behind for good.

He looked over at Tash. As team medic, she was sitting beside the girl they had rescued, monitoring her status with a device somewhere between a narthecium and a psi-tracker. The novice herself sat with her mouth slightly open, gazing at a point behind Vaughn’s head. She looked like a doll, or a broken servitor.

Sister Cerra. Vaughn wondered if that was her original name: a lot of the Sisters of Battle changed their names when they joined the Adepta Sororitas. He felt too tired to care.

‘Watch her,’ he said. ‘Wake me up if anything changes.’ Then Vaughn rested his head on the wall, and the rumble of the engines coaxed him into sleep.

The others woke him up in the docking bay. The Solar Tradewind still looked like a merchantman inside. In truth, it was something between a Q-ship and a research vessel. Aching, Vaughn unbuckled himself and followed the others down into the bay.

Petarmus waited for him. His clothes were creased and his hair ruffled, as if it was he who had only just woken. He was Vaughn’s equal and opposite, the leader of Inquisitor Harsek’s other team of acolytes, the one the crewmen of the Tradewind called the left hand. The left hand watches the right, Vaughn thought, as a pair of medics wheeled a stretcher into the bay.

‘Welcome back,’ Petarmus said. ‘Good to see you’re alive.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You can tell your team they’ve got six hours. There’s a crate of amasec in the mess.’

‘I’ll let them know.’

‘Lord Harsek wants to see you in an hour. He says to make yourself presentable first.’

‘I will.’

Petarmus nodded. ‘He’s up in his garden, tending the spinethorns or whatever he does up there.’ Vaughn made to leave. ’Good work on getting out alive, by the way. There’s not many that cross the Sisters and walk away.’

Vaughn checked in his gear, washed, changed his clothes and slept for twenty minutes in his quarters. He sat on his bed and looked the room over. It didn’t seem like much for fifteen years of military service, of one sort or another. Travel the galaxy, serve the Throne. I could have missed the Guard tithe, worked out my time in a weapons factory instead of ending up here. Still, I did do something worthwhile; for once, I saved a life. If I’d have left her down there, she’d be dead by now; staked out and burned as a witch when the exorcism failed to take hold. For once, there had been no balancing out, no trading of a few lives to save many more. He had done the right thing, without doubt.

He walked down the corridor, to the mess room.

‘Hey, Vaughn,’ Fane said, working at the bottle top of an amasec flask with his knife, ‘Vaughn!’

‘What?’

‘Guess what I prayed for last night. Go on, guess.’

Vaughn shrugged. ‘The good grace to keep your mouth shut.’

‘I prayed for the saints to send me to a planet full of women. And you know what? I got what I asked for! The saints have a sense of humour, that’s for sure!’

Vaughn was surprised how much Fane’s blasphemy angered him. Nietzin shook his head and muttered something about people getting what they asked for.

Fane was in the first stage of drunkenness. Later on, he’d be wildly pious, ready to fight anyone he suspected of doubting the sanctity of the Blessed Quivvar Nog. Then he’d pass out. He might be trash, Vaughn thought, but at least he was predictable.

Vaughn caught the lift up to the main garden. The servitors knew all of Harsek’s acolytes by sight, but they still scanned his iris. The lift carried Vaughn away from his men, into Harsek’s private domain. Gears ground under him, until the lift stopped smoothly and the doors rattled apart.

He stood at the edge of a huge, domed room. The ceiling glowed with turquoise light. Vaughn walked into warm air alive with the chirruping of alien insects. Xenos plants covered the ceiling, crawled up the walls towards the dome. A floater-seed as big as Vaughn’s head bobbed past.

He walked in carefully. The garden was beautiful, at a distance. Close up, he saw poisonous plants, strangling vines and worse: Catachan brainleaves, spikers, even a massive creeper-tree tethered to the side of the dome. As it felt Vaughn’s footsteps it flexed its roots like a thug cracking his knuckles.

In the centre of the garden stood a bespectacled old man . He came towards Vaughn with a smile on his face, wearing a plain brown robe. Inquisitor Harsek, whose word had burned entire worlds, had no great aura of power. There was nothing obviously sinister about him, but as ever, Vaughn fought down the need to retreat, the need to hide from Harsek’s calm, knowing eyes. ‘You’ve done an excellent job,’ Harsek said.

Vaughn did not relax. He bowed, quickly and formally. ‘Thank you, my lord. My men did well.’

‘No need for formality,’ Harsek replied. ‘Or false modesty. This girl is ours now. Thank you.’

‘Will they cure her?’ Vaughn asked. No doubt, he thought, Harsek would have his men probe around in Cerra’s mind, digging out whatever they required in furtherance of their master’s plans. Then, once they acquired what they needed and made the rest of her safe, they would dump her on one of the more stable-minded civilised worlds, to eke out a safe, boring existence with a trillion other nobodies. That was much the way Vaughn himself hoped to end up, once his service for the Inquisition was done: comfortably anonymous, a billion kilometres from here. After all, he reflected, if they had wanted Cerra dead they could simply have left her with the Sisters of Battle.

‘Cure her? Goodness, no.’ Harsek whipped a pair of pruning shears from his belt and flipped them open like a butterfly knife. He stooped over a bush, snipping at the fronds. ‘One doesn’t cure a psyker. But they can be contained, put to good use. Only the Emperor can perform soul-binding, but there are other ways. The risk of a psyker drawing the attention of the Ruinous Powers never goes, of course, not entirely, but the danger can lessen a little, depending on how she’s used.’

At the mention of the Ruinous Powers, Vaughn made a quick, instinctive aquila across his chest.

‘But you managed to get her at her prime,’ Harsek added. ‘Just how we need her.’

For a moment, Vaughn thought he might just nod, salute Inquisitor Harsek and walk away. How did the saying go? A servant’s greatest contentment is the knowledge that his master’s task is done. But he had never quite followed that mantra. ‘How do you mean? If you don’t mind me asking, my lord.’

‘Of course. You’re always free to ask. And I’m always free not to answer.’ Harsek dropped the shears into a pocket in his robe. ‘She is an emergent psyker, undoubtedly. The presence of such a person draws warp entities the way blood in the water draws sharks. But there are some sharks worth studying, yes?’

Vaughn strained his memory to remember what a shark was. Ah, yes. ‘So, she–’

‘Would draw the attention of more interesting prey.’

‘Isn’t that dangerous?’

‘For her, yes. Fatal, probably. But for us... vital.’

Vaughn felt his face harden. ‘But she’s innocent, surely.’

‘Innocent?’ Harsek looked rather surprised, as if he had not expected to encounter the word in these surroundings. ‘Hmm. That’s not really a term I tend to use. I find it rather unhelpful. I prefer to think in terms of... purity of motive. Yes, that’s the best way of putting it.’

Vaughn made no attempt to hide his expression. There was no point in doing so. Harsek wouldn’t need to read his face to know what he was thinking.

‘Don’t be like that,’ the inquisitor said, his voice still gentle. ‘You didn’t waste your time – quite the opposite, in fact. She’s innocent, you’re innocent – so am I. We may do awful things sometimes, but our motives remain pure. The galaxy has yet to find a way to sully them.’ He smiled and took off his spectacles.

Vaughn knew that he would not tell his men any of this, especially Nietzin. For all they would know, Sister Cerra had been healed and set free.

‘I’ll remember that, my lord,’ Vaughn replied, and he turned and walked away.

Hunters

Braden Campbell

Mihalik was recalling his first encounter with the devil when the wind shifted slightly, rippling the tall grass in which he and Covone were lying. They took the opportunity to move forward again. Glancing to the sky, he noted that clouds were slowly rolling in, obscuring the stars. That meant the wind would continue to pick up and the two of them would be able to cover substantial ground. If the grass stopped moving, then they would have to as well. Although the cammo cloaks they each wore would make them all but invisible, the tau sentries wore helmets with amplified vision and their perimeter drones were equipped with motion trackers. To stay completely hidden, he and Covone had to move in conjunction with their cover. When the brush moved, they moved. When the world was silent, so were they. Adapting oneself to the environment; that was the Catachan way.

The way of their enemy, on the other hand, was very different. The tau had arrived on Cytheria weeks ago, thinking it to be largely undeveloped and unpopulated; a perfect world for them to colonize. The Catachans, who for generations had used its vast grassy plains and dense, lethal jungles as training grounds, begged to differ. They mustered nearly every piece of armour they had, and threw it at the interlopers. When it was over however, the tau’s accuracy and superior range prevailed. Had the planet been occupied by a different regiment, things would have likely ended in capitulation. But this was a Catachan world. The struggle to evict the tau was devolving into a series of guerilla actions, and although such a prospect would have seemed grim to most other soldiers, it was one the Imperium’s famed jungle fighters relished; how the aliens would deal with it was the big question.

Something pulled at the leg of Mihalik’s pants. He froze and looked over his shoulder. Behind him, Covone tapped the minicomp on his wrist, and then held up a pair of fingers. Mihalik understood the gesture. They had two hours until the sun would rise. They had to be in position and ready to fire by that time, or the entire mission would be a failure. He nodded to Covone, responded with a hand signal of his own that said they were very close to their target, and continued snaking his way forward.

Throughout the night, their goal had been to reach a particular tree that stood two hundred feet inside the overgrown park. It had a wide trunk to hide behind and a large burl of roots that would make an excellent rifle rest; and, it had a car smashed into it. At some point during the tau’s occupation of the town, one of the local civilians had apparently driven his ground car up over the curb and ploughed it right into the tree. The front end had crumpled horribly and the chassis was angled sharply upwards, creating a sheltered area better than any duck blind either Mihalik or Covone could have ever built for themselves. Had the hand of some benevolent god reached down and placed the wreck there for them, it couldn’t have made a more perfect firing position.

Thirty minutes of hard crawling and they finally arrived. Their clothes were damp. The skin on their chests and elbows was raw from constant contact with the ground. Their faces and hands were covered with insect bites. They dragged themselves underneath the wreck, and rolled over on to their backs, staring up into the dark.

‘I knew what time it was,’ Mihalik hissed. They were the first words he uttered all night.

‘What?’ Covone was panting.

Mihalik didn’t know if the other man was short of breath because he was out of shape or because of the gaping wound in his chest where the tau had stabbed him earlier. A bit of both, he suspected bitterly. ‘I said, I knew what time it was. You didn’t have to stop and tell me.’

‘I just… thought I… should remind you.’

‘Well you didn’t have to. I need a spotter, not a babysitter.’ There was a moment of quiet between them before he asked Covone how he was feeling.

‘My ribs are on fire,’ he said. ‘I think… I think this wound has opened up again. My bandages are soaked.’

‘That complicates things,’ Mihalik groaned. ‘We haven’t got any more replacements. Can you hang on ‘till we’re on our way back out of town?’

‘You just worry about yourself,’ Covone growled.

Mihalik’s fuse was running as short as Covone’s. ‘I will then,’ he snapped. ‘Get me my ranging info.’

‘Don’t order me around. I know my job.’ Covone began pulling out his equipment. From a tubular case hooked to his belt, he pulled out a battered macro-lens and a short computer cable. One end he snapped into his minicomp, the other into the electronic viewer. Mihalik wondered, not for the first time, how ancient and revered these two pieces must have been. Then he focused on his own gear.

Many snipers across the Imperium swore by the long-barrelled lasgun; it had pinpoint accuracy and covered the distance from shooter to target almost instantaneously. However, its major drawback was that the searing, white-hot beam of light could be easily traced back to its source by even a casual observer. Mihalik had no intention of making things that easy for the tau, and so he had instead decided to use a bolt-action rifle and solid slugs. In his mind, bullets more than made up in reliability what they lacked in technological extravagance. For days, his rifle had been cocooned in a camouflaged, waterproof sleeve. Now, he unwrapped it carefully, attached a suppressor to the end of the muzzle, and checked the ammo feed. He had five rounds in the magazine, with six more clips on his bandoleer. It was more than enough, an orgy of munitions in fact, but he had no intention of being killed this day for lack of firing back.

The quiet of the night was soon disturbed by an explosion, far off in the distance. Mihalik and Covone both paused in their preparations and lay in frozen silence. A minute went past. A second detonation rolled through the air from the most distant corner of the town. Then a third and a fourth.

‘Paskow’, Covone whispered.

‘Give ‘em hell, brother,’ Mihalik muttred. He would have toasted the man’s success had there been anything to raise a glass with. But his canteen was long gone now, lying drained and destroyed in the hallway of a filthy hab block. He suddenly remembered how thirsty he was. Golden Throne, he thought; even Covone’s detestable homebrew would have tasted like a sweet nectar right about now.

‘This stuff is terrible,’ Mihalik said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Why does it taste minty?’

Covone shrugged and took a sip from his own tin cup. His head shook reflexively as the contents worked its way down his gullet. ‘Probably because I made it out of fermented firepine needles. It’s all I could find. You don’t like it, don’t drink it.’

Mihalik looked over his shoulder. Beyond the open tent flap he could see the rest of the camp. The jungle foliage here was not so thick as to completely block out the rain, and small waterfalls poured down through a canopy of red leaves. Catachan soldiers, some under Mihalik’s command, some under Covone’s, huddled beneath tarpaulins and waxed canvas sheets strung between the trees. The ground was a thick soup of mud and rotting leaves that clung to their boots and trouser legs. They sat quietly cleaning their weapons, or sharpening their combat knives. A few cooking fires burned low and smokeless. There was no complaining. They were jungle fighters after all, every one of them. This type of environment was where they were most at home. Still, Mihalik could clearly see that there were no sparring contests, no racist or bawdy jokes being told. The men were quiet, dour, joyless. Weeks of constant retreat, and defeat at the hands the tau were dragging morale into grim and dangerous depths. Mihalik’s included.

He turned back to Covone. ‘Oh, I’ll drink it’, he said, and poured the remaining contents of his cup down his throat in a single swig, concentrating so as to not throw it back up. ‘Beats going sober in this place.’

Covone pointed and said, ‘Here he comes. Finally.’

Outside, Catachan soldiers were arriving, streaming in from a half a dozen narrow pathways in the otherwise unbroken foliage. Their heavy boots were caked with mud; their battle fatigues were filthy and torn. Each of them wore a green armoured plate over their left shoulder, emblazoned with a white winged skull and the number XXVI. Several of them, upon entering the clearing, collapsed down to sit in the muck, lacking even the energy to stumble or crawl underneath a shelter.

Among them was a tall figure who wore a red scarf tied around his forehead,as well as a secondary one on his right bicep. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were hollow. He spoke briefly with one of Covone’s men, who by comparison looked as fit and energetic as a first-season recruit; and then, he entered into the tent.

Covone extended his hand to the newcomer. ‘Paskow,’ he sighed. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘Couldn’t be helped,’ the man replied slowly. He clasped Covone’s forearm in familiar greeting. ‘We’ve been falling back from the plains for a week now. On foot. We managed to hold the blues up as long as we could, but it cost us all our transports.’

‘Well, we sure as hell owe you one,’ Covone said. He poured a fresh cup of his homemade alcohol and offered it. ‘You bought us the time we needed to relocate up here to the mountains. Ezra, have you two ever actually met?’

Mihalik shook his head. ‘Mihalik, leader of the Catachan 51st, the Black Vipers.’

Paskow nodded. ‘Leader, Catachan 26th, the Lurking Cobras.’ He drank from the cup slowly and unflinchingly; its burning aftertaste affecting him not in the least.

Covone and Mihalik exchanged a glance, both wondering how burnt out their compatriot might be.

When he was done, Paskow exhaled slowly and said ‘The Black Vipers. Heard you took a real pounding in the initial assault wave.’

‘I lost a lot of good men, yeah,’ Mihalik muttered. He hated to recall the ease with which the xenos invaders had overrun one position after another. His sniper corps had never shirked their duty though, never wavered in their resolve. They kept on shooting enemy squad leaders and identifying important personnel right up until the last second when some alien weapon barrage engulfed them in a fiery blast.

Covone sat himself on an empty ammo crate, and motioned for Paskow to do likewise. ‘So here we are,’ he said, ‘The last remaining leaders of Cytheria’s defense force.’

‘Risky to have us all meet in one place,’ Paskow muttered. His weariness radiated out through every part of him, including his voice. ‘The tau could end us right here and now if they wanted.’

‘Risky? Stupid is more like it,’ Mihalik grumbled.

Covone spread his hands in apology. ‘I had no choice. Four days ago, the last of the satellites went down. The planetary comm lines all belong to the tau now. If we’d done this over the air, even short-range radio, they’d have able to listen in. Besides, they can’t come into the jungle. Their forces are all geared for fighting in open country.’

‘You certain of that?’ Mihalik raised his eyebrows and looked at Covone sternly. Since the day of their first arrival, he had seen the foe employ a wide variety of military hardware, most of it so advanced and alien that it hurt his brain to even try and consider it. ‘I’ve seen them hit a target with a volley of missiles launched from beyond visual range. Beyond visual range, Covone. It’s not natural.’

‘Robots, too,’ Paskow said. ‘Like a big dinner plate turned upside down, and with some kind of pulse weapon attached. Not much on their own, but they field so many of them…’ His eyes lost focus for a moment as he relived some previous disaster known only to him.

‘They’re crafty alright, I’ll give them that,’ Covone said. ‘But I think I’ve figured out how to stop them dead in their tracks.’

Paskow sat forward intently. All the depression was suddenly gone from his voice, replaced with vitriol. ‘How?’

Covone leaned in and spoke in a low voice, as if afraid that, even here, the enemy might be eavesdropping. ‘The tau have a chain of command that’s totally inflexible. Every soldier looks to his squad leader for orders and obeys them without question. Every squad leader looks to his company commander for guidance, and the commanders…’

‘Who do they answer to?’ Paskow asked eagerly.

‘That’s just it. We had no idea. For all we knew, they operated like we do, with senior officers conducting their own operations, working largely on their own initiatives. But…’

Mihalik snickered. ‘Headless snakes.’

Covone and Paskow looked at him, and after a second, he elaborated.

‘Back on Catachan, when I was just a kid, I apprenticed under this old veteran, Kirsopp. He used to say that we were headless snakes; that a Catachan army couldn’t be crippled by taking out a single, all-encompassing leader because we had none. Some ancient expression about a serpent’s head and its body.’

‘It is the smartest way to run things,’ Paskow agreed.

‘Which is why it’s so surprising that the tau don’t do it too,’ Covone smiled now and reached for a brown leather carrying bag that lay near his feet. From it, he withdrew several grainy, black-and-white picts. They had obviously been taken at a very long range, but in each of them, the central figure was a tau. He wore complicated-looking, multi-layered robes with a laughably tall collar piece that stretched up behind his head. Around his neck was a clunky medallion. He carried a thin staff in one hand that was crowned with an apparently purposeless, asymmetrical design. His face was completely alien – no discernable nose, beady little eyes, and a wide slit for a mouth.

‘Some of my men snapped these while doing long-range recon,’ Covone handed the picts to Paskow, who squinted at them intently. The alien’s bearing and attire struck some chord of familiarity within him.

‘A priest?’ he guessed.

Covone nodded. ‘They call them Ethereals. Near as we can tell, they’re the tau’s ultimate authority on this world. We take this guy out, and their whole army will drift like a rudderless swampboat.’

Mihalik looked at the other two. They were both smiling now, swept up with the promise that the war for Cytheria might actually turn in their favour with one quick stroke. Yet, he was apprehensive. He plucked the pictures from Paskow, and scrutinised them.

‘Covone,’ he said, ‘I must’ve sniped a dozen priests in my life, and not one of them whose passing caused a whole army to freeze up. Can this… guy… really be so important?’

Covone’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Mihalik. ‘Two platoons died bringing me this intelligence,’ he said coldly. ‘I trust it.’

‘Where were these taken?’ Paskow cut in.

‘Bloedel Park, in one of the civilian colony sites. It’s tau central now. Their engineering teams have put up a landing field and command post there. I guess they thought it was better to build on empty land instead of demolishing half the town.’ Covone shrugged. ‘More efficient, maybe.’

Mihalik furrowed his brow. True, using the colony’s largest open area was the fastest way for the blues to establish a principal command. On the other hand, it also meant that their most important leaders and decision makers were hemmed in on all sides by pre-existing buildings, any one of which would make excellent cover for snipers or heavy weapon teams. For a supposedly intelligent species with a highly disciplined army, it struck him as being a really stupid move.

‘What exactly are you proposing, Covone?’ Mihalik asked, though he already knew the answer.

‘That we go in and get him.’

Paskow’s thirst for revenge was suddenly tempered by caution, a trait shared by all experienced Catachans. When a man spent his entire life fighting where the environment could kill as easily as an enemy’s weapon, if not more so, he either took the time to consider everything before acting, or he died in vain. ‘This is no simple undertaking,’ he said slowly. ‘How will we even get there?’

Covone held up a finger. ‘We have exactly one Valkyrie left, stashed nearby under a mountain of cammo sheeting. It can take us to an insertion point outside the town, well beyond their anti-air defenses. If we survive, it’ll be there to ferry us out.’

‘We’ll have to infiltrate through the occupied portions of the colony site, and only the Emperor knows what kind of security they’ll have in place.’

‘That’s why it’s got to be just us three. Any larger a party will be caught for sure, but three men, three highly experienced men, with cammo cloaks and essential gear only, might just be alright.’

‘What makes you think we’ll ever catch him out in the open?’ Mihalik asked Covone bitterly. ‘If this priest is so precious, what’s to say the blues don’t move him into a bunker a mile below the ground, or some such place?’

‘He gives daily sermons, out on the landing field, for all the tau to hear. Draws quite the crowd, I’m told. All about the glory of the Greater Good.’

‘The what?’

‘The Greater Good. It’s their little version of the Ecclesiarchy.’ Covone reached back down once more into his carrying bag, and withdrew a data slate. He tossed it to Mihalik, who caught it with one hand. ‘I got it from this. Xeno archives. Most of it is two hundred years old or more, but there’s a fair amount of stuff in there we can use.’

Mihalik looked up coldly. ‘You keep saying ‘we’. Who died and made you planetary governor?’

Covone rose to his feet. ‘If you have a better idea how to turn things around, by all means, let’s hear it.’

Mihalik wished like hell at that moment that he had an alternative plan, but he didn’t. Like all the others, he was tired of falling back, sick of being beaten by the blues. He wanted nothing more than to kill every last one of them, but Covone’s mission was a one-shot, all-or-nothing, stab in the dark based on centuries-old data and some sketchy field intelligence. It was like walking into a blind alley, and Mihalik hadn’t reached the ripe old age of thirty-six by allowing himself to be railroaded. He was a Catachan sniper, who led a regiment of other Catachan snipers. Hit and fade was the mantra he lived by, and he always made certain that he had an escape route in everything that he did.

He shook his head, and began to skim through the data slate. ‘There’s just something that bothers me about this,’ he muttered.

‘Like what?’ Paskow asked.

‘I don’t know. Something. Maybe I just don’t like having only one option.’

Covone sat back down again and started planning with Paskow as to what specific equipment they should be taking. Mihalik in the meantime, began reading the data slate in earnest. It was nearly an hour later when he finally found what he was looking for, and when he showed it to the others, they couldn’t help but agree with him.

In the hour before sunrise, they were nearly caught.

Covone was busy with his spotter’s duties; surveying the area thoroughly, identifying potential problems, and taking measurements of the wind and weather. Mihalik lay very still, listening to the various sounds beyond their hiding spot. It had been nearly an hour since they had heard the last of Paskow’s demo charges rumble through the streets like distant thunder. The colony was now deathly quiet, save for a pair of venomdoves cooing softly in the branches above them.

Covone coughed. Compared to the quiet that preceded it, the sound was like the cracking of a whip. Mihalik’s head snapped around, his eyes wide and ferocious. He saw his spotter, face down, his right arm wrapped tightly in front of his mouth and nose. Covone’s body shook with another, more muted cough. Several moments went by until he was certain the fit had passed. He pulled his arm away slowly, opened his mouth, and let a stream of mucusy blood rain out. Then he nodded to acknowledge that he was alright.

Mihalik’s eyes narrowed. He was about to whisper something when there came a sudden flapping of wings. The venomdoves had been spooked away, and not by the spasming of Covone’s punctured lung.

Together, they peeked out through the knotted roots of the tree. At first, they saw nothing; but then the clouds began to break, and in the gloomy indigo light that preceded the dawn, Covone and Mihalik could just barely make out the silhouette of a tau patrol. There were twelve of them out there, standing perfectly still in grass that came up to their shoulders. Their rifles, held at the ready, looked long and flat and lethal. Tense minutes went by, until the aliens apparently decided they hadn’t heard anything unusual after all, and continued on their way.

Mihalik slowly released the breath that he’d been holding and counted to ten. Then, he stared at Covone, who was once again draining blood from his mouth onto the ground. His fury turned to genuine concern, and he asked to see the wound.

‘It’s nothing,’ Covone hissed, and returned to his information gathering. Mihalik could hear the other man’s breathing though - raspy, gurgling, and getting worse.

Things had started out well enough. The Valkyrie had landed in a jungle clearing far outside the range of any tau defense. Paskow and Covone descended the rear ramp briskly, and took a few moments to make a final check of their gear. Mihalik walked the perimeter of the landing zone, ensuring that everything else was in place. Then, the three of them made their way to the outskirts of the colony. For as long as they remained in the jungle, they didn’t encounter a single tau. However, as soon as the trees gave way to fields of grass, it all changed.

Crouching within a thorny bush, the three men looked across a freshly ploughed field. Fifty or more humans, backs bent, were planting yellow stalks into the copper-coloured earth. Their faces looked joyless. High above them floated several of the dinner plate robots that Paskow dreaded so much. From a large speaker mounted beneath, it spoke in oddly accented Gothic.

‘Embrace the Greater Good. Do not complain about your work, but consider its benefit to all of society. There is unity between tau and man, between the higher and lower ranks, and between military work, political work, and rear service work. It is imperative to overcome anything that impairs this unity.’

‘What the hell?’ Mihalik breathed.

‘They’re enslaving the civilians,’ Paskow spat into the dirt.

Covone grunted. ‘They call it cultural assimilation.’

They skirted around the field, uncertain of whether the robots would identify them as enemy soldiers, or simply see them as three more humans in a town filled with humans. The afternoon was growing late when they finally entered the colony proper. They crept along back alleyways, their cammo cloaks making them appear as sections of crumbling brick wall or heaps of trash. Every so often they would risk looking out onto the streets, where throngs of people went about their business. As they got closer to Bloedel Park, the number of tau standing about increased.

Finally, as the shadows grew long, they crossed a parking lot filled with derelict ground cars, and slipped through a metal door set into the back of a hab block. It was dark and cool in the hallway beyond, and all three men took a minute to gather themselves. Mihalik drank deeply from his canteen. Covone tapped at his arm-mounted computer. Paskow stuck a hand into one of his deep pockets and withdrew a small bottle. He snapped the lid off using only his thumb, and dumped a cluster of four white pills into his mouth. Mihalik watched him swallow the lot.

‘Stay awakes,’ Paskow said lowly. He held the bottle out.

‘Can’t,’ Mihalik said, shaking his head. ‘They make my hands shake.’

Covone looked at the two of them. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘This place is occupied. Minicomp counts three hundred life signs. But, the other side of the building faces directly onto the park.’

‘I counted five stories from the outside,’ Paskow said as they began to walk down the hall. ‘I’m thinking the fourth floor?’

‘Should work,’ Mihalik agreed. ‘The top floor is too obvious a choice, and there’s no way we’re going up to the roof with no cover overhead.’

The climbed a stairwell littered with garbage. On every landing the three of them took note of several large posters, recently applied. One showed a tau in full combat armour, his head tilted up and away in a heroic pose that rang across all cultural lines. DO NOT FEAR was printed in blocky Imperial gothic across the top, and beneath it, THE TAU ARE YOUR FRIENDS.

‘Some friends,’ Covone said. He was pointing at a second poster the read, REPORT ALL SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOUR.

They emerged on the fourth floor. The halls were empty, but from within the apartments they could hear the sounds of people preparing their evening meals. The smell of boiling cabbage in the air was oppressive. Covone pressed his ear to one of the plain, brown doors and whispered, ‘This one faces the front, but it’s occupied.’

‘Screw it,’ Mihalik kicked it down, and the three of them strode into the shabby space beyond. There was a tiny kitchen to their immediate left and past that, a single large room furnished with well-worn couches and cots. Tattered blankets served as curtains. In one corner, a family of four cowered suddenly before the intruders.

Mihalik and Covone ignored them completely and crouched down by the window. They pulled back the corner of one of the blankets and peered outside. Paskow, on the other hand, pushed back the hood of his cloak and held up his hands.

‘We’re not here for you,’ he told the family. ‘We just need some space. It’d be better if you went into the kitchen and stayed there.’

Wide-eyed and trembling, they scrambled away as they were told. Paskow joined the others.

‘Aren’t you the community hero,’ Mihalik jibbed.

Paskow didn’t so much as smile, but tightened his jaw and ground his teeth as he bit back a response.

Covone glanced at his minicomp. ‘It’s sunset now. That gives us about ten hours until the Ethereal makes an appearance,’ he said.

‘This is a good spot,’ Mihalik replied. ‘Might be a bit windy this high up, but I can compensate. Let’s get set up.’

Paskow had been carrying the heaviest bag, and he dropped it to the floor with a deep thud. Mihalik carefully took the large bundle that contained his sniper rifle from off of his back, and leaned it against the window frame. Covone glanced over his shoulder, then rose and walked to where the apartment door still hung open. He was in process of closing it, when he realised that something was missing. He had just enough time to look around and ask, ‘Where’d that family go?’ before a squad of six tau soldiers barrelled in.

Things happened very quickly after that. The apartment was cramped and offered limited fields of view, but Mihalik could see Covone dive sideways into the kitchen while somewhere off to his right, Paskow opened up with his lasgun. Two of the alien soldiers ran into the main room, their long rifles blazing. Mihalik and Paskow were couched low however, and the pulsing blasts missed them entirely. The window and wall behind them, burst into shards of glass and chunks of plaster. Mihalik’s rifle was still in its waterproof cocoon. He drew his fang, and with a loud gasp, hurled the short sword-sized knife at the closest tau. It punched clean through the alien’s armoured chest plate and embedded itself up to the hilt in a fountain of blue gore.

There were more shots from Paskow, and the sound of a struggle in the kitchen, but such things were happening outside of Mihalik’s tunnel vision. He dove forward, grabbed the dead tau’s rifle, and began spraying the doorway. Through the brilliant flashes of white, he could see the remaining blues pitch forwards and die. He stood up, the xenos gun still in his hands, and then realised what he had done. He dropped the rifle with a sharp cry, and furiously wiped his hands on his pant legs. He had touched a xenos weapon. No, worse, he had actually used one. His hands felt dirtied, and his stomach heaved.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

Paskow laid a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. Occasionally, terrible things had to be endured in the course of a war.

From the kitchen came the sound of body hitting the floor. The two men rushed around the corner to find Covone leaning against the counter top. He had a laspistol in one hand, and his fang in the other. He was panting heavily. There were two gutted tau sprawled across the cracked tile.

Paskow pointed. ‘You’re hit.’

Covone looked down at his chest. There was a knife sticking out of his lower ribs. It was long and flat, and had an ornate handle wrapped in black leather and adorned with golden studs. It looked more ceremonial than practical.

‘Aw, damn!’ Covone sagged to the floor among the bodies.

Mihalik crouched down next to him. He whipped the red scarf from his forehead, wadded it up into a ball, and stuffed it in Covone’s mouth. Their eyes met, and when Covone nodded quickly, Mihalik yanked the tau blade out in a single, fluid motion. Covone kept quiet, to his credit, and bit down hard on Mihalik’s scarf. Paskow appeared and began to dress the wound with a roll of sterile bandages.

Mihalik dropped the weapon in disgust. ‘That’s twice now,’ he gasped.

Covone spat out the scarf, and tried to make light of things. ‘Report all seditious behaviour,’ he said between gritted teeth. ‘I find those people again, it’s Catachan neckties for the lot of them.’

‘We’ll help you,’ Paskow said. He tied off the field dressing with a sharp jerk that made Covone wince. ‘I can’t believe that our own people are buying into this ‘Greater Good’ nonsense.’

Mihalik stood and glanced at the other bodies. Each of them wore a knife similar to the one that had stabbed Covone.

‘And I’m getting tired of being right all the time,’ he said. ‘You know, when these guys don’t report in to their home base, we’re going to be up to our eyeballs in blues. We have to scrub the mission.’

Paskow stood up and crossed to the blasted window without a word. He picked up his heavy bag, and walked to the door. ‘No,’ he said, not meeting their eyes, ‘this is too important. I’ll head as far away as I can and make the biggest distraction possible. It should draw most of the patrols away so that you can do what you have to.’

‘Are you sure?’ Covone asked as he staggered back onto his feet.

Paskow opened the bag. It was packed with a variety of explosives from fist-sized frag grenades to monstrous demo charges. He smiled. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Leave us one of those,’ Mihalik said. ‘Just in case.’

Paskow handed a demo charge to Covone, then turned without another word and ran down the hallway. The two remaining men gathered up their equipment. Mihalik happily wiped his knife clean, but was enraged to find that his canteen had been hit during the firefight and was now nothing more than useless, twisted metal. He left it where it lay, and headed back down the stairs with Covone.

‘We need to find a new position,’ the wounded man panted. ‘Any ideas?’

Mihalik crossed the ground floor lobby to where the main door hung partially open. Across the empty street he could see Bloedel Park, and beyond that the curving, alien buildings of the tau. With no one to keep up a constant maintenance on Cytheria’s native plant life, the park was rapidly becoming wild. Already the grass was as high as his waist in some places. Then he saw the tree – the tree with the wide trunk; the tree with the large burl of roots; the tree with the car.

‘One,’ he replied.

Seconds later, they had dashed across the street and began crawling through the park towards the shelter beneath the wreck.

Now, as he lay there staring up at the underside of the car, with one partner puking up his lungs and the other most likely dead in the streets somewhere, Mihalik began to seriously consider that this might be the end for him.

‘Close your eyes,’ Kirsopp told him. ‘You get this stuff in them, and you’ll go blind.’

Mihalik did as he was told, and felt gruff hands smear the paste all over his brow, mouth, cheeks, and nose.

‘Emperor, this stuff reeks,’ he groaned.

‘Not to the baby devils. They love it. To them, you’ll smell like corn-fed grox steak cooked just right.’ The old man stepped back to survey his work.

Mihalik looked down at himself. He was naked from the waist up, dressed only in a pair of canvas pants and a pair of jungle boots. On every inch of his exposed skin, Covone had plastered a pungent mixture of animal blood and gluey toxvine sap. It was already beginning to harden in the infernal heat of the jungle.

‘I look like a giant scab,’ he said.

His mentor gave him a withering look and said, ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter what you have to endure. All that matters is how effective you are.’

Mihalik lowered his eyes and gave a weak ‘Yes, sir’. He was ten years old, and Kirsopp was an ancient forty-five. It was an honour and a privilege to tutor under such an accomplished veteran, but the man had absolutely no sense of humour.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ he snapped.

‘Yes, sir!’ Mihalik barked.

Kirsopp folded his arms angrily across his chest. ‘Better,’ he growled. ‘Now, let’s go over it one last time. What’s your objective?’

Miahlik waved his arm. All around, Catachan fighters were finishing their preparations. Half were stationed up in the twisting trees, armed with a variety of rifles and heavy weapons. The rest were on the ground, hacking at the foliage with their machete-sized knives, or pouring barrels of thick, black tar all around the perimeter of the cleared area. ‘To draw the target out from hiding and into this kill zone, sir,’ he said.

‘And how will you do that?’

‘Sir, when everyone is ready, the fastest runners will go down that cleared path,’ he pointed to a break in the jungle’s vegetative wall, ‘to the cave where the devil’s nest is. They’ll have buckets of this same stuff I’m covered in, and they’ll start smearing the trees with it, making a trail that leads back here. When one of the baby devils gets a good whiff of it, it’ll come charging up, see me, and move in for the kill. That’s when all of you will light the oil, trapping it. Then the shooters can kill it.’

‘What’s your exit?’

‘I’ll climb out on a rope ladder lowered down to me by one the senior fighters, sir.’

Kirsopp nodded with satisfaction and then, with nothing more to be said, turned and walked away. Mihalik watched his teacher scramble up a tree to a safe height. One by one, the older Catachan fighters did likewise until he was alone in the centre of the circular clearing. For days, there had been men out here preparing the ground by clearing away the brush and cutting down the undergrowth. Only one path had been left, ensuring that the gunners up in the trees would know exactly where to place their shots. Despite this however, the success of this hunt all came down to him, Mihalik.

The Catachan Devil, when fully grown, was as long as a freight train, had multiple sets of legs, huge pincer-like claws, and a gigantic barbed tail that dripped lethal poison. It was an absolute monstrosity, and worse, it lived in nests. Each nest would usually contain half a dozen fully grown adults and twice as many ‘devilspawn’. They had to be culled each season, lest the population become so great that they take over the planet, and old Kirsopp had, at some point in the distant past, decided that he might as well make use of this annual event. Every young Catachan had to thereafter endure this test of worthiness if they wanted to study under him.

It was suicide to simply attack the devilspawn where they sheltered. The adults would boil up from out of the ground and kill everything that moved. Therefore, the jungle fighters had evolved a means of luring the young devils away from their parents where they could be killed singularly. The foul mixture that Mihalik was covered in smelled sickening to adult devils, but when mixed with human sweat, proved intoxicating to the spawn. The creatures would follow the trail laid out for them, but had the uncanny ability to sense a trap. Mihalik’s job this day was to present himself as an irresistible target, a morsel so tasty that it would override the spawn’s cautionary instincts, and run headlong to its death.

If he succeeded, his bravery would be proved, and he would be gifted with a red head scarf of his own. If he died, well, it would be just another day on Catachan.

Mihalik looked back up into the trees. The other jungle fighters had vanished in the intervening seconds, camouflaging themselves seamlessly into the background. Suddenly, the ground began to rumble. Somewhere nearby, a flock of swamp herons took flight, squawking madly with fear. Then, the devilspawn appeared in the middle of the cleared path.

It was the biggest spawn that any of them could remember seeing, and afterwards they all agreed that the creature was one year shy of becoming a full adult. It focused its enormous, coal black eyes on the defenseless, half naked child in front of it. Thick drool began to fall from its clawed and tentacled mouth. It reared up, like a venomous snake might do, and then drove the entirety of its bulk at Mihalik.

The boy leapt as far to one side as he could. The monster plowed into the earth, burying its head and sending chunks of mud flying. Mihalik knew he had to stay in the circle long enough for his elders to ignite the oil. Tough as they might be, immature devils had a fear of fire, and once the barrier was set alight, the monster wouldn’t dare try to break out through the flames. He rolled up out of his dive and into a fighting crouch. A wall of fire erupted suddenly, filling the air with hellish heat and an unbearable stench. There was gunfire too, but he hardly noticed. The braided vine rope, his sole escape, dropped down from an overhanging limb. His impromptu dive however, had taken him too far away from it. The spawn was in the way, and he couldn’t get around it. He looked desperately around for one of the elders, for Kirsopp, for anyone, to come to his rescue, but there was no seeing beyond the flames. He was trapped and completely alone, and his choice was a blunt one: stay here and surely die, or climb out.

The devil pulled its massive head from out of the soil, and shook it from side to side. Clods of dirt whipped into the trees. It fixed its mad gaze on Mihalik again, and bellowed. Then it reared up just as it had before, and dove.

Mihalik dodged to his left. The abomination’s head slammed down into the ground again. Then, instead of moving to distance himself from it, Mihalik bolted straight forwards. While its face was buried in the soil, the boy ran up the creature’s back and launched himself into the air. He caught the vine rope half way up its length, and climbed hand-over-hand with all his might. Kirsopp appeared, a long piece of red cloth clenched in his meaty fist. He handed it to Mihalik.

Now that he was clear, the other Catachans were free to shoot the spawn with abandon. Mihalik took the headband, held it to his heaving chest, and listened. Below him, the devil rampaged in its cage of fire until it was finally felled.

‘There’s our boy,’ Covone whispered.

Mihalik’s wandering mind snapped back to the present. He inhaled sharply and shook his head. Twice now, the memory of his initiation day had been dredged up by his subconscious to be splattered across the forefront of his mind. He knew why, of course; understood of what it was that his instincts were trying to warn him. The tau would never be able to go into the fetid swamps and dark places his fellow Catachans were now falling back into. And, since they couldn’t take their fight to the enemy, the blues would have to draw their enemies out to more favourable ground.

‘Trapped with the devil in a circle of fire,’ he muttered.

Covone’s looked at him questioningly.

Mihalik rolled over onto his belly. ‘Forget it,’ he said as he nestled the muzzle of his rifle amidst the tree’s burly roots. He settled his cheek into the stock, and peered through the scope. The sky was lightening as the sun crept up over the horizon. ‘Let’s have a look’.

The enemy base, which at a distance looked like a tumble of featureless white blocks and domes, leapt into clarity. Covone hadn’t been exaggerating when he had called it tau central. There were nearly a dozen different buildings in various stages of construction. From the reports he’d read, he was able to identify a few of them; a low, rounded barracks, a cluster of glowing pillars that were power generators, and an arched structure with four angled towers attached to it that could only be the command centre. Of the others, he was not so sure. Three tall towers of differing heights were still being erected; their bases hidden behind a mesh of scaffolding and their tops crowned with cranes. There was also a fourth, crescent-shaped building he assumed to be some kind of massive communications array. In the middle of all this was an open courtyard, large enough to act as a landing field for a fleet of orbital dropships. It was filling up now with tau soldiers, all of them in identical suits of ochre-coloured combat armour. They were kneeling in perfect rows and columns, preparing themselves to receive whatever inspirational wisdom their leader was about to bestow on them.

‘There sure are a lot of them,’ Mihalik said.

‘Only have to kill one,’ Covone replied.

Covone began reading off the numbers and coordinates displayed on his minicomp. Mihalik adjusted his angle to match. Finally, he settled his sights on some kind of floating platform. It was round and white, with a podium moulded into the front. Behind this was a high-backed chair with over-sized arms, and seated within was the tau priest.

‘You locked on?’ Covone asked.

‘Sitting behind his flying pulpit?’

‘That’s him.’

Mihalik flicked off the weapon’s safeties with his little finger. ‘We’ll wait until he stands up,’ he said. He swallowed in a dry throat and then asked, ‘Wind speed?’

Covone glanced down to his sensory readout. ‘I read four knots, blowing from the west.’

In his cross hairs, the priest rose up from his seat, and shuffled slowly up to the pedestal. Mihalik moved his rifle imperceptibly to the east, and adjusted a fraction upwards to compensate for the way in which his bullet would drop during its long flight. ‘I’m zeroed in,’ he murmured.

‘Then let’s see if you were right,’ Covone said.

Mihalik listened to the blood rushing in his ears, and in the fractional space between one heartbeat and the next, where an exhale finishes but the next intake of breath has yet to begin, he pulled the trigger. Thanks to the suppressor, there was no flash, and no retort. The only sound was a soft chuff as the bullet leapt forward. A little more than a second later, it had flown over the tall grass and above the heads of all the assembled tau warriors, where it promptly mushroomed and bounced off the invisible forcefield that surrounded the Ethereal.

Mihalik looked over at Covone, whose face had become a pale, slack-jawed mask of disbelief. ‘I told you so,’ he said. He withdrew his gun from the tree roots and rolled out from under the smashed car. ‘Now comes the hard part. Let’s move.’

Covone rolled onto his side, stared back at him, and shook his head. He gazed down at his chest to where the bandages were stained deep red. A pool of blood had formed underneath him all the while he had been scanning and observing. ‘I’m not coming, Ezra. I won’t make it across the street, never mind the Valkyrie.’

From his leather bag, Covone pulled out the last of the demo charges. He popped the protective seal off of the detonator, and placed his thumb over button. Mihalik felt a wave of regret crash over him. He opened his mouth to say something encouraging or comforting, but Covone spoke first.

‘Don’t try to patronize me,’ he grunted. ‘You know what you have to do.’

Mihalik started back towards the street, bent low with his rifle in his hands. He constantly fought the urge to look back. Enemy soldiers would be massing on the wrecked car within seconds, and as much as he disliked Covone, the man was still a fellow Catachan. Those who wore the red scarf rarely left a brother behind.

He quickly reached the entryway to the hab block. He slipped past the still-open door, went to one of the front windows, and wiped away enough dirt with the back of his hand that he could look back out onto the park.

Cytheria’s sun had not yet crested the tops of the other buildings, and the park was a swirling mix of deep red shadows. An alarm was wailing somewhere, and scores of tau soldiers were spilling out from their base. A cloud of robot drones swirled in the air above like a swarm of robotic bees, stirred to angry life by a solitary bullet.

The demo charge erupted moments later. A massive, glowing fireball consumed Covone, the car, the tree, and more than two dozen tau who had been moving in to capture or kill the would-be assassins. Chunks of wood and twisted, burning pieces of metal rained down everywhere. The grass in the park was set alight, and the concussion wave shattered every window that faced the street. Mihalik stood unphased as a hundred jagged shards of glass sliced into his bare chest. He could have used this diversion to make good his escape, he knew, but what would that accomplish? No, he thought, it’s up to me to light the fire. He hoisted his rifle, and pressed the scope to his eye.

For a moment, there was nothing save for muffled screams and shouts in the apartments above him. The scene outside was one of destruction and shocked stillness. Then, he saw one of the blues rise up from where he had been sent reeling into the tall grass. Mihalik exhaled as he pulled the trigger, and the faceplate on the alien’s helmet folded inwards with a spray of blood and bone. His right hand flew up the bolt even as he scanned for another target. The spent cartridge dropped to the floor, and he reloaded with an almost supernatural calm and speed. Another tau appeared only to go down again with a shot centre mass. Again, he reloaded. He found a fresh target and let a third round fly. A fourth. A fifth. He dropped the spent magazine to the floor and slapped in a fresh one. Search, acquire, fire, reload. Again. Again. Again. Relentless.

Within a minute, he had hit and killed a total of ten tau, and exhausted two of his ammunition clips. It was more than enough to get their attention.

He was turning to go when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. They weren’t lasers per se. They were more like beams of pale blue smoke, discernable only because of the way they played over the powdered glass that covered the floor of the lobby. He had no idea what they were, but it couldn’t be good. He dashed forward, diving over a couch. Behind him, a volley of small missiles detonated across the building’s façade. The door turned into splinters. Bricks and mortar tore through the room. Part of the ceiling gave way with the impact, and plaster rained down on Mihalik’s back. A searing pain tore through his left arm. He remained crouched behind the sofa, his head down; and he cursed. The missiles suggested the presence of a light artillery battery, or worse yet, a vehicle. Cheaters, he thought. This is supposed to be a contest between infantry.

Mihalik knew he couldn’t stay here. Sprawling on the floor, he began crawling away. His multiple cuts smeared themselves across the carpet leaving a trail of blood, but it couldn’t be helped. As he rounded a corner, he took a second to see why it was exactly that his arm hurt so much. With a start, he discovered that a large piece of steel window frame had impaled itself right between his radius and his ulna. He stood up, and yanked it from his flesh. A jet of blood the same colour as his headband painted a dripping curve along the wall.

He ran down a back hallway, bashed a metal fire door open with his shoulder, and emerged into a parking lot. He had only jogged a few steps when one of the tau trackers, moving at a full run, emerged from a side alley. The tau skidded to a halt, apparently surprised to encounter Mihalik outside of the building already. For the briefest of moments, the two stared at each other. Then, the alien began to raise his carbine. Mihalik, with his longer reach, swung his rifle like a club, and bashed the tau upside the head. Then he closed the distance, dropped his gun, and yanked his fang from its sheath. He swung the blade in a horizontal, decapitating arc, but at the last second, the tau blocked the attack with a forearm. Mihalik, who had assumed that the fight would be over as soon as it had begun, was taken aback, and doubly so as he was kicked fiercely in the shin. The two of them grappled for a moment longer before Mihalik was finally able to twist his opponent’s arm behind his back, and stab him through the chest. The tau started to spasm and then went limp. Mihalik withdrew the blade to find it covered in thick, cyan-coloured gore, and even though time was of the essence, he stopped to wipe it clean on the alien’s pant leg. No filthy xeno’s blood would be allowed to stain his fang.

He was off again, moving down the narrow, twisting streets of the colony. The remaining tau trackers were close behind him, of that he was certain. It was a race now, a true contest to see which species had greater skill and fortitude. Before long, he was outside the town and weaving his way through the thickening jungle. He was trying to take the most convoluted path he could think of, but his head was beginning to swim. He sagged against a tree, breathless. The cuts on his chest were minor things, but the hole in his forearm was near crippling. Blood poured from the wound. His right hand looked as if it had been dipped in red paint. He used his headscarf as a makeshift bandage, and carried on.

It was nearly noon by the time Mihalik neared the extraction point. For the rest of the morning, he had managed to catch a few signs that he was still being pursued – a snapping branch here, an alien scent on wind there. However, all was quiet now. Through the trees, he could see the Valkyrie that that had ferried himself and the others in. Its rear hatch was open and looked as inviting as a mother’s embrace. He was far gone, he knew that; he was exhausted, starved, dehydrated, cut, bled out, and burned. Still, it was almost over. He stumbled out into the open and towards the transport.

Mihalik was steps from the boarding ramp when the tau energy blasts hit him. They came from all directions, striking his chest, back, arm, thigh, and head. The world vanished in a succession of white flashes, and he collapsed on the jungle floor. He was dimly aware that a portion of his left leg was now missing, but it seemed somehow inconsequential. He could hear the little aliens moving through the grass towards him, coming to either confirm the kill, or finish him off. He lay there for a moment, face down in mud, thinking to himself how perfect an ambush it had been. Then, he painstakingly raised himself up, because when this happened, he was determined to be on his feet for it.

There were five of the alien trackers standing in a rough circle around him, their weapons raised. Their armour, nothing more than a protective chest plate and reinforced gloves, was red, not ochre; the better colour to blend into this planet’s native palate. A few had black scorch marks across their combat vests that he guessed was a result of Covone’s heroic last stand. The crests of their helmets were very tapered, with a single, red eye lens that regarded him impassively. Their rifles appeared short and stubby. Mihalik nodded with subconscious approval. Light armour for greater mobility and a carbine so as not to catch on foliage or rubble. These blues obviously weren’t run of the mill soldiers; they were specialists. He’d finally found his alien counterparts.

‘Nicely done,’ he croaked. ‘I used every counter-tracking trick I know of, and you still trailed me. Outmanoeuvred me, too. You guys are good, no question. You must be the best in your army.’

One of the tau said something. To Mihalik’s ears it sounded short and choppy, like the crackling of a log in a bonfire. He didn’t speak their language and so had no idea whether he was being praised or damned. It didn’t matter regardless.

‘Take ’em!’ he shouted.

The tau all died. Some of them were shot through the chest, others in the head. Their bodies hit the ground simultaneously, and the fittingness of that made Mihalik break out into uncontrollable laughter. Unity was important to the blues, after all.

All around him, a dozen Catachan snipers were jumping down from their treetop perches. Three of them raced over to Mihalik, eased him back to the ground, and began applying aid to his wounds with medipacks and cloth bandages.

‘Did you get them all?’ Mihalik managed to ask. His fit of hysterical laughter had left as suddenly as it had come on.

‘Every one,’ the youngest of his attendants replied. ‘You led them right to us, sir. Just like you said would happen.’

Mihalik closed his eyes. The drugs were not only taking away all his pain, they were making his body a dim and distant thing. He was only half aware as his combat brethren rolled him onto a stretcher, and carried him into the Valkyrie. Then they were in the air, flying low over the canopy of the rainforest. The young attendant leaned over him to check his pulse.

‘Sir, can I ask you something?’

Mihalik’s voice was a raspy slur. ‘What is it?’

‘The blues. Will they come after us for what we did?’

‘I’m sure they’ll try. But they won’t find us. They won’t be able to get to us. We killed the best they had.’

The kid nodded, and then asked ‘How’d you know? I mean, how did you know that the whole thing was a trap?’

Mihalik struggled to focus on the boy. He was not more a few years past initiation, Mihalik thought. His skin was still relatively free of scars, and his beard stubble was downy. He wore the red head scarf, but obviously still had much to learn.

‘It was in the files,’ Mihalik said. ‘Under military doctrine. Do you know what the tau call their battle companies?’

The young man shook his head.

‘Hunter Cadres. They see themselves as being descended from great hunters. When I read that, I knew that they were just setting out bait to catch the best of us.’

‘But you turned it around on them,’ the boy was grinning with newfound understanding. ‘You left us at the landing site to nail them when they came far enough away from their headquarters, and made bait of yourself.’

Mihalik was suddenly reminded of old Kirsopp’s words to him; that whatever he had to endure was irrelevant so long as his actions were, in the end, effective.

‘I’m used to it,’ he said coldly.

Mihalik closed his eyes and began to drift away. He would sleep for just a few hours, he told himself, and then it would be right back to work. He was the senior-most officer in the resistance now, and he had an insurgency to organise.

Gilead’s Curse

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Chapter 2

Sleep comes at such awkward times when you’re as old as I am. It matters little, now. I am refreshed and ready to begin again, just as soon as you fill my glass with a little tepid water, and perhaps bring me a morsel or two to eat.

It is a conceit, I suppose, to leave one’s audience on a knife-edge, but it is not my way, I promise you. Now, where was I?

Gilead and the undead knight fought tooth and nail for long hours before dawn, and, as the sky was broken open by a new sun rising, the elf thought that, he too, would perish. He could not muster his strength. His elf abilities felt as if they were a million miles away. He sought to be shadow-fast, but the skill came in such short bursts as to be irrelevant to the passage of the battle.

Gilead had not come across so practiced a warrior in all his days. He had fought humans and daemons, monsters and beasts. He had fought creatures with brains and creatures with brawn, and, once or twice, he had done battle with beings of strength and sentience in equal measure. He had fought the spirited and the desperate, but he had never fought an equal.

With two blades, Gilead had not been able to bring down the knight. His undead foe had wielded no weapon in reply, but his skills in defence had proven his expertise in close-quarters warfare.

Gilead decided that whatever this being was, it was his equal in combat, and that was all that mattered on any field of battle.

A ray of clear, bright sunlight travelled between the branches of the trees, thrusting in at an angle to the ground, casting long shadows, and glinting dully off Gilead’s blade.

Gilead and the knight were circling each other, at too-close quarters in the confined space between the trees, looking into each other’s eyes, searching for some weakness, some chink in the other’s armour.

As the sun caught the blade of Gilead’s sword, the glowing light in the knight’s eyes dimmed and clouded.

Gilead thrust and swung, and thought, in the split second it took for the knight to parry, that his opponent might be slowing down.

Circling a little more, Gilead stepped between his opponent and the ray of sunshine, and the knight’s eyes shone once more.

The knight stepped in with the shorter blade, thrusting hard at Gilead’s side, tearing his shirt, but missing his body by the smallest of margins. If Gilead had been built like a human, the knight would have connected with flesh, muscle, and perhaps even organs, but Gilead was half the width of a man, and had evaded another grave injury.

In response, Gilead thrust high and tight, making the knight duck to his left, as another slender beam of light found its way into the clearing over the elf’s left shoulder. The strike cut another narrow, shallow slice in the knight’s neck, but it would take a great deal more than that to bring him down.

As Gilead drew his sword back to the centre, the new beam of light bounced off it slightly, and the elf noticed the clouds descend in the knight’s eyes once more. He jinked to his right, so that the knight had no choice but to circle away from him, and Gilead made another strike. This time it was a feint, designed to make the knight move a little further around the circle and into the light.

The narrow sunbeam fell first on the knight’s short dagger, and then danced from it to Gilead’s blade. The elf went through an exercise series, one that he had practised a thousand times with his twin brother Galeth in the training yard at Tor Anrok. He sliced and jabbed and made figures in the air, all designed to catch the light and throw it back into the knight’s face.

The knight’s eyes were dull and cloudy. Nevertheless, he raised Gilead’s dagger in a defensive posture and parried, while trying to find somewhere to hide from the light.

Gilead’s next strike hit its target. The tip of his sword found the gap between the knight’s ribs in the fourth intercostal space. It should have been enough to kill him.

The knight staggered back a pace or two, and fell against the sloping trunk of a tree in the grey shadow of its ragged canopy. His eyes glowed hot for a moment, and his fist clenched around his weapon with renewed vigour.

Gilead stepped back and took a long, deep breath, drawing the blade of his sword through a handful of cloth gathered up from his shirt to polish the elf-forged metal.

Gilead heard a distant whinny and then a weak bark. He swiped the blade through the cloth once more, and waited while the knight jerked his shoulder against the tree for leverage and took a step forward.

The knight and the elf circled each other cautiously for a moment or two as they both heard movement in the woods around them. There was the sound of the dog barking, eagerly, but weakly, the sounds of boots stomping through dry leaves and mulch, and then came the calls, howls almost, as the local men urged each other on, building up their confidence to face their foe.

Gilead had not been the only one to track and find the knight. The locals, tired of living in fear under the threat of they knew not what, had banded together to attack their nemesis. They would kill him, or they would die trying.

The knight, clutching the weeping wound in his chest, looked from Gilead to his mount. A dancing beam of light caught the edge of his improvised shield, and, for a moment, he was blinded again.

The local men had mistaken Gilead for their foe once before, and the elf did not relish meeting this human force again, however much of a rabble it might be. He was exhausted from the battle, mentally and physically, and he had a number of wounds to clean and dress before he could leave these dark, cold barren woods of Ostermark for good.

As the elf made up his mind, the knight flung Gilead’s dagger aside and threw a bundle over his horse’s back. Gilead swiftly and silently collected his weapon and left the tiny clearing before the wounded knight could notice his departure. The knight struggled to mount his war steed, and the horse stomped the ground flat as it circled once and then twice as the undead warrior gathered his wits. Moments later, they too left the clearing.

Gilead knew that, wounded or not, the knight would best any human attack, that the local men were too weak and ill-equipped to defeat him, even in daylight. He trusted that the knight would lie low for long enough to avoid contact with the men, that he would do no more damage to the vulnerable humans than had already been done. The warrior must be as exhausted as Gilead was, and he would surely hide from the daylight and the human force, such as it was, in order to rest and recover his strength.

It would be up to Gilead to rid the countryside of the terrible scourge of the undead warrior knight. He would hunt him down wherever he fled or hid, and he would not fail a second time.

Gilead ducked and wove his way back to his waiting mare without disturbing a single twig or leaving so much as a footprint in the dry, grey mulch beneath his feet. It was as if he had never been there.

The humans passing nearby did not catch his scent on the breeze nor hear his footfalls, despite passing within yards of him. They were tracking their quarry deeper into the woodland, and it was not Gilead.

Gilead washed out rags in the shallow culvert with its sweet water, and used them to clean and wrap his wounds. His injuries were numerous, but none of them were deep; his concern was the malignant poison that must surround such an opponent, and the likelihood of succumbing to infection. Gilead sought out the cleansing herbs he would need to make a fresh and living salve for his injuries, but there were none to be found. He dug deep among the few remaining supplies in his pack and found dried versions of the leaves he needed. He knew that they would be less effective in this form, and spent some time rehydrating the herbs with clean water and drops of the more potent oils distilled centuries before by Fithvael at their home of Tor Anrok, the lost tower. He hoped the resulting unguents would be sufficient to his needs.

Gilead had never feared death; for many decades after his twin Galeth’s death, he had cynically toyed with it, dared it to take him from the cruel world and the fates it offered. After many adventures that led him close to death, but closer to madness, he had learned from his last and best companion, gone these many years, not to throw his life away. Fithvael had taught him to look after his health, both physical and mental, and to reward his body for its skills in combat by treating his wounds with the very best medicines that were available to him. Today, in this woodland, in these straitened times, the best medicines were those he had carried, ancient and dried to powder, from his homelands.

All that remained was for him to rest, and to hope that he would not fall prey to some alien fever.

Within days, Gilead was content to continue his quest. His wounds were healing slowly, by his normal standards, but they were clean and free of infection. His horse, too, was rested and as well-fed as anyone could hope in these times of virtual famine.

It was not difficult to pick up the knight’s scent, literally and figuratively. He was not difficult to track, being less subtle than an elf, or even a well-trained human. The knight did not seek to hide his passage through the woodland, or the places where he had stopped to maim and bleed creatures to satisfy his appetites, and to allow his steed to rest or eat. Gilead was surprised that the knight had clearly covered a good deal of ground over the intervening time. The elf had wounded the knight seriously, if not fatally, and yet the creature seemed not to be slowed down by its injuries. It never stopped for more than an hour or two at a time, seemed not to need sleep, did not cook and hardly rested. When it travelled by day, it did so more deeply in the forest, staying under the canopy where it was at its most dense, where shade from the sun was at its most complete.

Gilead tracked through areas of woodland virtually decimated by the knight. He had taken almost a straight path, during the daylight hours, hacking through branches and saplings rather than going around them. The ground was churned up in places, as if the knight had forced his steed to move faster than the terrain ought to have allowed. There were no signs of cooking, and none of the edible plants that still remained just under the earth’s surface had been grubbed up or prepared. There were only the tattered, papery corpses of some of the more resilient local rodents, their flesh bled to a pale stringy consistency. Gilead did not care to muse on the knight’s tastes and urges. It was what it was, and Gilead would not stop until he had rid this northern winter land of its most feared predator.

Convinced that the knight was at the centre of all the horrors that had been visited on the Empire and beyond, determined that he must be caught and killed as soon as possible, Gilead rested little and rode his mare harder than he would have liked to make up ground.

In the northern lands, at the farthest north-east reaches of the Empire, in Ostermark, and further north on the borders of Kislev, towns and villages huddled no more than a few miles apart. In such cold climes and rugged countryside, a man might walk half a day to cover six or seven miles. If he was to visit a town or market and return home the same night, his round-trip should not be more than ten or a dozen miles at most. Homesteads and farms also congregated in the countryside in this manner, so Gilead was never very far from some form of human habitation, and yet, he saw very few people. The further he travelled in the knight’s wake, the fewer and further between were his human sightings.

On the third day of travelling, within a hundred miles of Bechafen, when Gilead felt that he was only a matter of hours away from finding his foe, he suddenly realised that he was totally alone. It was the elf’s natural state to be a solitary individual, and he was used to going for weeks, sometimes months or even longer without seeing another sentient being. Wherever he had been in the Empire, any time during the past several centuries, he had always been within the sight, sound or smell of some beast of the field, some bird, some creature, however small or humble. Now, there was nothing.

Gilead’s path took him out of the edge of the forest at last, on to a stony pathway that bordered cultivated land. An hour later, he stopped the mare along the narrow track that he had been following across sloping farmland that was roughly divided into a series of strips. He was keeping close to the high, dusty hedgerows so as not to be easily detectable, but there was no one to see him. The fields were fairly recently tended. New crops, planted in the hope of a more abundant harvest next season, from diminishing stocks of precious seeds, were trying to force their way into the world. Gilead could not help but notice that their growth was patchy at best, that the soil was dry and had not been irrigated, and that the plants were fighting for the poor earth’s nutrients with weeds that should not have been there. The small fields and narrow strips of land would each sustain only one family, and should be the lifeline to which the local community clung, but there was no one there. No one tilled the land or worked the tender young crops that were trying to grow there. If there were no humans, why weren’t the smaller beasts taking advantage of the young crops? Why were there not flocks of birds feeding on shoots and buds? Why were the shrews, voles and field mice not running amok? Why, if there was flora to feed the herbivorous creatures were there no predators to feed on them? What had happened to the food chain?

Gilead wondered whether the humans had simply deserted the farms and homesteads that he saw scattered across the land, for they appeared to be intact. The humans, if they had left, must have done so recently for the crops were newly planted and not halfway to being harvested. But where would they go?

Something unthinkable had happened. Some terrible fate had befallen all living things.

Gilead left the path with its hedgerows for the nearest metaled road, which joined the larger villages and towns. He adjusted his grip on the mare’s reins and brought her to a steady gallop in the centre of the empty road. The air was full of menace, not from a scent that he could identify, but of the lack of something. The air was too dry and stale, and Gilead felt death descending around him. The humans were dying. He was convinced of it. He was equally convinced that the undead knight had something... everything… to do with it.

Gilead rode into the outskirts of a market town called Omalk as the sun set, watery grey against a dull purple sky. He would normally have walked in, keeping to the meaner parts of town, to the alleyways and darker places. He did not hide now; there was no need for him to avoid detection for there was no one to see him. Many of the buildings, including the drinking holes and cook-shops where the poorer locals congregated to eat and drink were locked up with their shutters pulled down, or were simply deserted.

Gilead dismounted and pushed open a door that had been left ajar some time before. The tables still bore the remnants of the last meals eaten there, although the food was cold and congealed on the assortment of mismatched, chipped plates. Ale had been drunk hurriedly, leaving splashes on the tables and one last swallow in the bottoms of grubby glasses.

There was that smell again: the smell of old things, of death, and of human fear.

The men had left this drinking establishment, all at the same time, heedless of their meals and the few belongings that littered the room: a jacket slung over the back of a chair; a hessian bag, half-full of something-or-other, left under a table; a broken rake and a hoe with a split handle leaning side-by-side against the wide table that served as a bar.

Something had threatened these people. Something had threatened them with their very lives. Gilead could smell it, feel it on the air.

If he could smell it, he could track it.

Gilead could track as easily in the darkness as in the light, and much of the small town was in darkness. Chinks of light showed through in one or two places, from behind closed doors or around ill-fitting shutters. One or two windows had not been covered, nor the candles in the rooms inside extinguished, but they were few and far between. A trapdoor set in the pavement, close to a large building, showed light intermittently around its seal as someone moved around below. Then the light flickered and died.

Gilead did not need to disturb the inhabitants of the cellar to know that the place was full of women and children. He could hear the faint, shrill cries of small children and the murmurs of the women trying to soothe them. Once or twice he heard Sigmar’s name invoked in desperate prayers.

He could almost taste the foetid smell of putrefaction on the air as he rode into the market square at the centre of the town. He expected to see death and devastation on a scale that few rarely witness, but the place was still and empty.

The smell came stronger than ever, and Gilead dismounted his mare to follow his nose.

He knew that the knight had been here. He could not see or hear him, but he found evidence of his mode of battle.

Gilead looked for and found a trail of destruction. He saw leaves on the ground from the surrounding trees that could only have been sliced off by a well-sharpened blade. He saw hoof-print patterns in the blue-green verges of tough nutsedge around the town square that bore witness to a well-disciplined war steed’s wheeling and turning in response to his master’s hand on his reins. He saw barrows and stalls haphazardly backed onto curbs in avoidance of a raging battle, their meagre wares scattered across the paved streets.

Yet he saw no humans, and he saw no undead knight.

He could smell human blood, shed some hours before, and he found an abandoned shoe, and a button, sliced from a tunic. There was hair, too, a small clump of it with a scrap of skin attached, adhering to the bark of one of several trees that marked one end of the square. There were, however, no bodies, no wounded and no dead, despite the stench of mortality in the air.

The battle was over, or had moved on. This area had been cleared of dead and injured, and the women in hiding had taken their fallen men with them to tend their wounds or to prepare them for their graves.

The mare’s ears pricked as a thin wail penetrated the still silence. Then came the faintest of sounds; as if a blade was striking off stone. Gilead could very nearly smell the sparks as they flew off honed steel.

He was close, but the battle didn’t rage around him, it didn’t rage in the town proper, nor had it left the area.

The battle raged beneath his feet, below Omalk’s market square in whatever sewers, catacombs, cellars and underground sluices and passages occupied the spaces below the streets.

Gilead was struck by the thought that he should have known. He ought to have anticipated the knight’s movements. Of course, he would seek out towns that had underground places. He would not fight above ground, unless he had to. He could not fight by full daylight, not so efficiently as he could by night, at least, and Gilead had known it all the time he had been looking for the knight.

Gilead did not know this particular town, but it did not necessarily follow that the knight had not sought it out because of the dark places beneath. Many towns and cities, especially those in the north of the Empire, had masses of underground byways, tunnels and even huge, open spaces beneath them, some caused naturally, others built, often by the skilled hands of dwarfs, who took great pride in hewing and dressing rock and stone of all kinds.

Gilead thought again of the basement on the outskirts of town where he had heard the women and children gathered. This place might have almost as much city below ground as above. There must be a hundred entrances and exits, and dozens of routes and chambers.

If the town below the town belonged to them all, and was in general and continuing use, then there would be plenty of access, and it would be close to the market square, close to where he was standing.

He tethered the mare and walked around the square, touching the door handles of buildings, looking through unlit windows into darkened rooms, and skimming the ground all the time with his eyes, looking for access to the buildings below street level.

He quickly found metal grilles set into the pavement right up against the buildings. They extended perhaps eighteen inches from the buildings they abutted, were a yard across, and they covered open cavities below so that no one could fall in accidentally. One or two of them looked like they covered chutes for goods to be delivered into waiting cellars, others looked like storm drains and overflows for collecting rainwater or to aid in cleaning and draining the market square. One was clearly a run off from a slaughter house, with two well-worn, wide-brushed brooms leaning against the wall, and the faint smell of offal and old animal blood.

The smell of blood, fresh and human was stronger on the west side of the square, and, on close inspection, Gilead found that two of the grilles had removable bars. He only had to lift one of them out to be able to lower his body into the cavity. The narrow door that he found below street level showed no chink of light around it, and opened inwards.

Gilead carefully replaced the bar above his head to leave no trace of his entering the building, and then pushed gently against the door, turning the knob on the outside first one way and then the other.

The door opened an inch or two, but no further, and the strong, sweet, metallic smell of blood filled Gilead’s nostrils. The elf listened for a moment, and smelled the air again, but there was no new sound or scent. He put his shoulder against the door and eased it open, pushing aside the body that barred his way.

Gilead rolled the corpse over. The kill was only a matter of a few hours old, and it was human. It had been cruelly, and none-too-cleanly eviscerated, and the hard floor that it lay on was sticky with blood and ichor.

A low, rumbling echo met Gilead’s ears as he crossed the almost empty storage cellar, and he slowly, carefully, unsheathed his shorter blade, all the time edging towards the darkest corner of the room, eager to conceal his presence from anyone who might enter. He knew, from experience, that the knight was a fierce opponent, his equal in speed and grace with bladed weapons, and the elf wanted to meet him on his own terms, preferably by surprise attack.

Gilead backed into a dry, smooth stone wall, adjacent to an opening. He thought, at first, that it was an alcove, and glanced into it to see if it would offer him a temporary refuge, but, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he realised that this was the opening of a low, arched, brick tunnel. He also realised that this was where the sound was coming from.

He heard it again, but this time the low rumble was closer, and, quite clearly, a human moan, once the echoing nature of the subterranean corridor was factored in.

As Gilead stood, four-square, in the mouth of the tunnel, he glimpsed movement some thirty of forty feet away. A lurching figure staggered around a corner and fell against the right-hand wall of the corridor, clutching at its body with one hand. It groaned once more and slid to the hard, earth floor. Gilead almost felt the life force leave the bulky masculine body with that final groaning exhalation. He could do nothing for the human, now.

Gilead ducked from his full height and moved stealthily, virtually silently, along the other side of the corridor, stopping for only the briefest moment to assure himself that the knight’s latest victim was in fact dead. He looked down at the corpse still clutching at its gut even after death, trying to hold together a ragged tear that had allowed the contents of the man’s abdomen to spill out over his thighs. The wound was not a clean slice or cut. It was not the product of fierce and lunging swordplay. Either the knight had lost his weapon of choice and had resorted to some other way to see off his human enemies, or he chose to kill this way, to hack and tear when he could have killed cleanly, both more elegantly and with greater respect for his opponents.

Gilead followed where the dead man had come from, turning left and right along corridors that smelled of recently spilled blood, stepping over more bodies with ragged mortal wounds ripped through torsos, necks, abdomens and faces. Some were cold, dead for several hours, others were warmer, and one or two still spilled blood, suggesting that they had not yet succumbed to their injuries, although they no doubt would.

The light in the tunnel was subdued and intermittent. At times, Gilead passed close to one of the pavement grilles, which would have allowed light to flood in during the day, but which afforded only the most meagre glow of luminescence borrowed from candlelit interiors, few and far between on such a desolate night, in a town whose population appeared to be anywhere but here.

There were torch sconces along many of the corridors he travelled, following his senses to where the knight must be doing battle. Some of them had lit torches in them, but they were clearly old and poorly made, using inferior waxes and oils, so that they smoked or burned with dull, green light, which cast gruesome shadows on all the surrounding surfaces.

The knight, with his glowing eyes, could clearly see more effectively in the dark, and, if Gilead’s previous experience was to be born out, was stronger and more able in every way when and where the sun didn’t shine.

Gilead soon became accustomed to his surroundings. He adapted quickly and efficiently, using his heightened senses to compensate for any loss of visual clues.

Ahead of him, in the darkness, as Gilead approached a major hub where several tunnels of varying sizes and profiles, and various degrees of importance met, he saw a figure scuttling from one opening to another, and back again. Three of the tunnels were lit, and glowed oddly, casting a collection of shadows around the figure that seemed not to resemble its form at all. The figure appeared not to know where it was or where it was going. It seemed confused and not a little afraid. It was literally jumping at its own shadows.

Gilead pressed his back lightly against the cool stone wall of the corridor from which he was approaching the hub, making sure not to cast a shadow of his own. He slowed his breathing and remained totally still, watching.

The figure was joined by a second, which hurtled out of the mouth of one of the darkened tunnels, almost knocking into the creature that was already trying to find its way. Gilead could only think of them as figures or creatures. They might have been men, but he couldn’t be sure. They might have been boys, or even women. They were shorter than the average human male, and they were bent and ragged, the strange light conditions and multiple shadows hiding or distorting their forms.

As Gilead watched, the figure that had jumped at its own shadow suddenly lashed out at the other. It appeared to have a wide, short blade in its left hand, and moved quickly in frantic, staccato bursts.

It had clearly hit its target, because the other figure shrieked loudly, in obvious pain. It seemed to duck, and Gilead thought he saw it bare its teeth. Its head was entirely the wrong shape for a human, too flat on top and too narrow, and it appeared to end in an elongated jaw, too full of too-ragged teeth.

As the figures resolved, Gilead watched the creature being attacked fill its maw with the other’s arm, and thrash with extended claws, ripping at clothes and flesh, and tearing aside improvised armour.

Gilead allowed himself to breathe. The creatures, for it was clear that they were not human, were so caught up in their brutal skirmish that neither was likely to notice him.

The skaven beasts shrieked and clawed, turning and tumbling in a confusion of scrawny limbs, yellow teeth and claws, and mangy fur. Their blood, when it came, didn’t smell like human blood; it smelled of disease and decay, of rot and putrefaction.

They were dwellers in the undercrofts, sewers and tunnels that lay beneath most human habitations, and where they could not adopt lost and forgotten underground byways, they dug their own foetid labyrinth of warrens. Gilead did not wonder what they were doing here, for they belonged here, this was their natural habitat, borrowed by the undead knight for his evil ends.

As the ratmen rolled into the entrance of one of the darker, dingier tunnels, Gilead stepped deftly past them, listening at the mouths of the various corridors for sounds of battle. The skaven looked and sounded as if they were well on the way to killing each other, and the elf wanted no part of it. He had more pressing business. He was obliged to help the humans if he could, but more than that, he felt confident that he was reaching the end of a search that had taken decades, scores of years of his life.

Gilead listened for sounds that he might associate with the undead knight, for the dancing footfalls of his fast feet, for the swish of a tempered steel blade cutting the air, for the thunk and clang of ill-aimed weapons falling against his shield. All he could hear were the shrill calls of ratmen and the anguished cries and grunts of human farmers and guildsmen turned hunters and soldiers.

Before Gilead could decide which tunnel to follow, the hub was suddenly full of bodies teeming out of two of the corridors to his right. Some staggered and lurched while the more able-bodied pushed and shoved their way out. Many of the humans had jagged flesh wounds and all had rends and tears to their clothes.

A skaven horde, dozens strong, followed its prey into the hub, and, as they rushed in, the two rats who had been fighting looked up in astonishment, one on top of the other. One of the larger rats kicked them, and they struggled to get up and join the fray, at least for as long as their tattered bodies would allow.

Gilead drew his dagger. He would have preferred to avoid this mayhem, but he could not exit the hub for the mass of bodies fighting there, and, besides, the humans were being bested by the skaven, and the elf could not countenance the abject defeat of the local townsmen, knowing that their women and children were relying on them.

Gilead deftly cut the tendons in the back of one of the skaven’s legs, bringing it down, and with it, two of its brethren, as it dropped its rusting blade to reach out for anything that might keep it upright. The human under attack turned in surprise, only to find himself at close quarters with another of the rat-kind eager to finish what his comrade had begun rather than deal with a fresher opponent.

None of the filthy rodents wanted to face Gilead, and he found himself trying not to attack his foes from behind, blind-siding them. An elf warrior looked his opponent in the eye when he killed him.

A young man, slight of build, but quick and agile, a hoe held between his hands as if it were a staff, was thrusting his arms this way and that, whacking any rat that came within a couple of paces of him around the head, back and chest, or anywhere else that he might unbalance the foe. He soon realised that once any rat was on the floor it was unlikely to get up again. The skaven were weak creatures, feverish in their efforts, but shuffling and inelegant, and they were so short-lived by nature that they seldom had the chance to gain valuable experience in any sort of fight. They thrashed like fearful human infants, angry, petulant and entirely without discipline. It made them the perfect opponent in every regard, except one; they were unpredictable.

The young man swung his hoe, at waist height, once more. Gilead watched as the business-end hurtled towards a rat. The creature was a particularly ugly specimen with tufts of patchy hair protruding at odd angles from its skull and bony shoulders. The thing did not duck, but neither did the hoe blade connect with the rat’s torso, as Gilead had expected it would. The rat saw the swinging hoe, and thrust out its paws to catch hold of its shaft. The impact must have shaken the skaven’s elbow joints horribly, but it hung on, nevertheless, as the boy wrestled with it for possession of the improvised weapon.

Neither the boy nor the rat was going to let go. Hanging on to his portion of the hoe meant that the boy lost all his agility and had to plant his feet firmly, shoulder-width apart, to stop himself tipping over. He stood his ground, determined not to be bested by the ugly rat. Gilead noticed other skaven creatures reacting to the situation. They redoubled their efforts to deal with the humans, scrapping harder and faster, and squealing more loudly as they exerted every ounce of strength they had to free themselves of their individual battles, either by besting their human opponents or by escaping from them.

One rat came up behind the young man and took hold of the hoe’s handle, making it even more awkward for the boy to wield. Then two more came in low and began to bite and scratch at the boy’s ankles and legs. Seconds later, another rat hurled himself at the boy’s back, landing there, wrapping its ersatz arms around the boy’s neck in a chokehold.

Gilead switched his dagger to his left hand and drew his sword. He began to attack the rats closest to him, cutting them down with one swing of his sword or one deft thrust of his dagger, regardless of whether they were facing him or not; most of them were not. He made his way towards the boy, whose face was turning pale, but who stood his ground. The boy had two choices, he could keep a firm hold on his weapon and suffer the wounds that the other rats were inflicting on him with their snapping jaws and greasy claws, while the two on either end of the hoe disabled him, but he would surely die. Alternatively, he could let go of the weapon and have nothing left with which to defend himself against the massed skaven attack.

Gilead separated another rat from its life force, thrusting his dagger into the main artery in its groin and leaving it to bleed out, and he was right in front of the boy. The boy went from looking washed out to looking preternaturally pale. He had been heroic in his battle with the rats until they had found a way to get the better of him, and he still showed more courage than most, despite the colour draining from face. The elf was another matter entirely. Every sensible human was in awe of the elves, in awe of their stature, their prowess, and their long, long lives; in awe of their legendary standing.

Gilead saw mingled fear, respect and even hero-worship in the boy’s eyes. Then, the elf swung his sword at an angle and connected with soft tissue. The rat holding the bladed end of the hoe suddenly let go. As Gilead withdrew his sword for a second swing, the skaven clutched its paws to its belly and looked down at the blood and viscera leaking out of its abdomen.

The boy blinked, and a little of the colour flushed back into his cheeks. His eyes glistened and he nodded slightly at the elf, relieved to find an ally.

Without turning, the young man shoved the shaft of the hoe back into the rat behind him, winding it and snapping its fragile ribs, causing it to fall over the pair of skaven that were shredding his trousers and boots. He kicked them off, and then turned and backed hard into an adjacent wall to dislodge the creature from his back.

Encouraged by the boy, some of the men rallied and redoubled their efforts against the skaven, but the ratmen, if not stronger, were, at the very least, wilder, more ruthless and more accustomed to fighting. There were also a very great number of them.

Gilead continued to kill and maim the creatures in short order, but his real mission was to find the undead knight and prevent him causing any more damage. The skaven were opportunists, surely? Gilead thought it unlikely that they were in some way allied to the knight; he was a beast of an altogether different breed. He was as immortal as they were short-lived, as skillful in combat as they were clumsy, and as intelligent as they were brutish. The knight was more akin to the elf than to these sorry creatures.

The boy stayed close to Gilead, his new hero, wielding his hoe with innate finesse, felling a number of skaven while not actually managing to kill them.

‘Flee!’ Gilead said, the word alien in his mouth. He seldom spoke to humans, although he was able, preferring simply to listen to their conversations than join in with them and endure speaking in their ugly guttural language.

The boy looked at him, unsure what to think as the elf’s dulcet tones struggled with the human word.

‘Flee?’ he asked.

‘Flee,’ said Gilead, again, severing a rat’s sword-arm from its body, as it swung its spiked mace in a haphazard arc, trying to get under the elf’s guard.

Gilead and the boy were subduing the skaven horde more successfully as the elf fell into an easy rhythm and the boy’s confidence grew. Some of the men, on hearing Gilead speak, took the opportunity to follow his instruction and leave the skirmish, while some simply stared at the elf in awe and wonder.

Gilead pointed at a fallen weapon, a long, wooden handle with a blade strapped to one end with greasy twine and rags. It had belonged to a skaven rat, but Gilead indicated the boy might find it useful. The kid shook his head and rotated his hoe over his hands, showing how well-balanced the tool was.

‘No,’ said the boy.

Gilead was left in no doubt what he was being told ‘No’ to. The boy had no intention of fleeing and none of giving up the hoe he was using as a weapon.

A high-pitched war cry emanated from one of the tunnels, echoing around the hub, causing the skaven to stop fighting, and giving the few remaining live humans another opportunity to leave the scene.

The cry sounded again, closer and more urgent, the shriek a mixture of fear and loathing, distress and zeal.

Gilead cocked his head for a moment, assessing where the noise was coming from and at what distance. Then he nodded his head very slightly towards two of the tunnels to his left and one opposite. When they came, and they would come very soon, they would emerge from those three tunnels, and they would attack in their dozens or scores.

‘Flee!’ Gilead said again, but he knew that he was giving the order too late. He also knew that the brave boy would choose to stand his ground.

Gilead shrugged. He wanted to confront the knight, but he had no choice but to deal with the ratmen.

Then, at the edges of his hearing, Gilead detected the ping of tempered steel sparking off stone, and the swish of a deftly controlled blade cutting air. Perhaps the skaven were fighting alongside the undead knight after all, for Gilead knew in his heart that his enemy was bringing up the rear of the rat horde, careering down the dank tunnel towards him.

The first of the skaven emerged from the tunnel opposite Gilead’s position. They were smaller but firmer than many of the others, younger perhaps, less diseased, faster and more eager to defile the humans. They carried bladed weapons with long handles, and wore improvised armour, spiked headpieces and cuffs. Several of them also carried more of the torches, which glowed green and gave off a sickly sweet smell. The waxes and oils they used were neither fresh nor free from impurities.

As the skaven surged into the hub, they looked this way and that, and acted hastily rather than in concert. They touched their torches to anything that would burn. Soon, many of the corpses on the earth floor, both human and skaven, were burning slowly, flames licking lethargically through fur and cloth. One of the rats even managed to set fire to itself as it lowered its torch too close to the filthy rags that wrapped its backwards jointed legs. Gilead last saw it hopping and skipping about as if trying to escape the flames, but, instead, setting its twitching, frantic tail on fire.

Gilead watched for what felt like long moments as he counted the skaven pouring out of the tunnels, and assessed what damage they could do and what danger they were to him and to the humans still caught in the hub. He counted the torches, too, and worked out how long they might burn for and at what temperatures. He assessed how many of the humans would die or suffer lasting injuries, and decided that the figures were too high to be bourn.

Gilead had not been shadow-fast for many years, and had almost forgotten what it felt like. By turns it was liberating and tedious, exhausting and exhilarating. The elf had all the time he needed to prepare to fight the skaven, and all the time he needed to achieve the desired outcome of the battle. His sword and dagger moved faster than the eye could detect, even the flitting, nervous eye of the skaven. He cut them down as if they were nothing. He thrust and swung, lunged and flicked both weapons, never needing to parry, since none of the skaven were able to detect the movement of the blades in time to see them, let alone with time to mount a defence.

As Gilead worked his magic, and the few remaining humans did their best to keep out of his way, the skaven began to turn, feebly looking for an escape route back the way they had come. Ratmen began to push and shove their brethren into Gilead’s path in order to avoid the elf and his scything, invisible weapons.

Then he saw him.

High over the heads of the skaven, standing tall and lean and menacing, his eyes glowing in the low, green-tinged light shed by the skaven torches, stood the undead knight, fully armed and armoured.

Gilead spun out of the path of a pair of skaven, turning and barreling into a mass of clawing limbs and piercing squeals, and cut down two more of the ratmen who were trying to flee. His head came up for a moment, and he breathed deeply, steadying his senses as he harnessed his shadow-fast capabilities to home-in on the knight and his actions.

Gilead watched as the knight brought his sword around past his shoulder, giving his swing enough momentum for the blade to cut down two skaven at once, slicing across one belly and one back, severing a spine and gouging a gut, disabling both of the ratmen.

The knight fixed Gilead’s eyes with his own, and, shadow-fast, the elf looked deeply into the warrior’s glowing orbs for what felt like several minutes. He saw there fierce determination and the will to kill, but he also saw a kind of nobility, compassion even. Despite everything, despite the nature of the creature and his legacy, somehow, the undead knight felt like nothing so much as his ally.

The skaven were caught between two deadly foes, falling to the knight and the elf in roughly equal numbers, both warriors showing unheard-of prowess in the field of combat.

The young man stood by and watched in awe, raising his fist once or twice in celebration at some particularly powerful or subtle strike or blow, and filling the echoing chamber with calls to Sigmar.

Short minutes later, large numbers of skaven littered the hub and the entrances to all of the tunnels and corridors that led away from it. Some had managed to stagger away injured and dying, and one or two even showed some bravery, or perhaps foolishness, as they fought to the death, regardless of being seriously outclassed by their opponents.

The last of the skaven dealt with, Gilead turned his back on the small group of humans that remained underground, guarding them, his dagger and sword raised and ready before the knight.

The elf and the knight locked eyes once more as Gilead eased out of his shadow-fast state. He did not need the skill now, the very thing that would have surely overcome the knight in the glade those many days ago, and which he was now able to harness with ease, was no longer needed. It was for the best.

The knight raised his sword vertically in front of him, the hilt at his abdomen, the tip reaching beyond the top of his helm, in salute to Gilead. The elf sheathed his dagger and raised his own sword in a mirror image of his opponent. The knight closed his eyes and then opened them again slowly, and the elf nodded slightly, keeping his eyes on the warrior. The salute complete, Gilead sheathed his sword and turned to the boy.

‘You should have fled,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ said the boy.

‘Go now,’ said Gilead, and turned down the tunnel up which he had come.

‘It was the skaven,’ the boy called after him. ‘By Sigmar’s beard, it was always the skaven.’

THE BURNING

Nick Kyme

The following events take place between Salamander and Firedrake, the first two novels of the Tome of Fire trilogy. This series follows the Salamander Space Marines as they attempt to unravel the mysteries surrounding the Chapter.

First there was heat, then a sense of dislocation and a curious weightlessness as his body was propelled through humid air. It lathered his skin in a feverish steam-sweat that condensed into vapour as he moved. Pain followed swiftly, focussed in pins of agony impaled into his face, setting every nerve aflame. Reality was a series of flashes: light then dark, then hot and red.

Groggy, he lolled on his back. Ash, kicked up from the hard fall, billowed up in a grey pall. Coughing, he tried not to choke on it. Fire, fire in the eyes. Cinder flecks made them itch and sting. Scratch it out. Muffled voices spoke without meaning. The smell was potent, though. It was…

Burning.

A stark moment of revelation, and he realised it was his own flesh. His fingers…

They don’t feel like my own… smaller, not as strong.

…were just millimetres from the charred edges of his skin when a strong hand seized him.

‘Don’t…’ a voice warned. The faded quality dampened the sense of urgency it tried to convey. The accent was deep, thick. It had a silken tone that was instantly recognisable yet somehow incongruous.

‘What– what happened?’

My voice… strange, as if from someone else’s throat. No power, no resonance.

‘Dusk-wraiths,’ the other replied – he still couldn’t see him, his eyes registered only blurs of light and heat – as if that was explanation enough. ‘We must move. Come on, get up.’

‘I can’t see.’

So craven, so weak and… and… mortal. This is not my voice.

‘You will. Give it a moment.’

Strong hands gripped him again, hooking under the arms and hoisting him up. Sulphur tanged the breeze, acrid on his tongue. Sight returned slowly.

On the horizon stood a mountain of fire, its peaks wreathed in pyroclastic cloud as it spoke with a voice from the depths of the earth.

I know it. Was I born…?

A great plain of ash spread before him, grey like a tomb, flaking like cremated skin. In the distance, the mountain, imperious over its smaller brothers and sisters, reached up with craggy fingers to rake the incarnadine sky. Hot clouds billowed in the visceral firmament like blots of dissolute blood. Veins of lava bled down the mountain face, trailing to a vast lake of fire many kilometres away.

Ash, rock, flame – this was a hellish place, somewhere the damned came to suffer eternal torment. It was a red world, a world of magma rivers and razor-edged crags, of sulphuric seas and gorges of flame. It was beyond death.

One foot went in front of the other.

I used to be stronger than this…

His legs worked of their own volition, rather than through an effort of will. They were running when he spoke again, though he didn’t know from what.

‘Am I dead?’

Was I reborn?

The other turned, resolving through a milky film of slowly regained sight. He was tanned, etched with tribal scars and carrying a long spear. Even with the scaled hide draped across his body and the rough sandals on his feet, the man had a feral but noble bearing.

‘No, Dak’ir,’ he replied, nonplussed. ‘This is Nocturne.’

Home…

Behind him, Dak’ir heard the scrape and whirr of the turbines slowly closing on them. He dared not look back. Half-glances, snatched during the panicked flight, had revealed dark weapons and a long droning engine. Its nose ended in a jagged barb, its flanks were bladed and it hovered as if held aloft by the very air hazing around it. A metal stink, wet and hot, followed it in a thick miasma. Platforms either side of its black fuselage carried… daemons, black-skinned daemons.

The other had led them into a narrow gorge, scurrying down volcanic scree and through venting geysers of steam. It was hard going, even on foot, even unencumbered by armour or machineries…

I remember my armour.

…yet the turbine whirr followed.

Dusk-wraiths were dogged hunters.

I know them by another name.

Dak’ir heard their shrieking – an unnatural, eldritch clamour – grow with anticipation of the kill.

‘Follow!’ the other cried. Dak’ir lost him briefly in the smoke rolling across the crags. He fought to maintain pace, heart hammering in his chest…

Why do I only have one?

…but the other was too swift. He knew this plain. Dak’ir felt he should know it too, but it seemed distant in his memory, as if the sights were not his own to recall.

Keeping low, aware of the jagged bursts of displaced air overhead caused by weapons fire, Dak’ir barrelled around a twist in the rock.

Reaching the other side, he found the other was gone. He’d entered a belt of smoke, exuded from some venting crater, and did not appear again. Dak’ir fought his panic, held it at bay.

But I should know no fear…

Panic now and he was dead. He’d not even seen his predators clearly, yet knew in his core the sharp tortures they’d visit on his flesh.

I’ve seen their victims flayed alive, impaled on spikes…

Crashing through the ring of smoke, Dak’ir closed his eyes. Rough hands dragged him aside and into the shadow of a deep and hidden spur.

The other was there, a finger pressed tightly to his tanned lips.

Something large and fleet skidded past them, impossibly aloft on the hot air, breaching the smoke bank like a serrated knife through skin.

Three seconds lapsed before the whine of engines became the roar of explosions as the skimmer-machine was torn apart, its hellish riders thrown clear or devoured by fire.

An ululating war cry ripped from the other’s lips as he hefted his long, hunting spear.

Dak’ir found a recurve bow suddenly in his hands. He knew its contours well. This was his weapon.

And yet, it isn’t.

Nocking an arrow, he followed the other to the site of the wreckage.

More tanned warriors were emerging from the smoke and displaced ash. Some carried finely-wrought swords. A number of them even had long rifles, braced to their shoulders and spitting shot.

Dusk-wraiths lolled in the tortured remains of their skimmer-machine. Up close, it reminded Dak’ir of an Acerbian skiff but longer and infinitely more bladed. Skulls and other grotesque fetishes hung from spiked chains looped around its metal hull.

Its riders were armoured in a sort of black carapace reminiscent of an insect’s segmented outer shell. Not daemons at all, but still daemonic in their own depraved way. They were tall and lithe, cruelly barbed like their ship. Murderous coals burned in their eyes, like the embers of trapped hate.

I know these creatures, and yet they are not…

Several were dead, even before the spears, bolts and blades cut down the rest. The slain rotted and festered before Dak’ir’s eyes, their armour corroding on the arid breeze like metal rusting impossibly quickly until flaking almost to nothing. Their bodies became ash, meeting the grey patina of the plain and disappearing. By the end, there was nothing to suggest they’d ever been there.

Dak’ir lowered his bow, too stupefied to loose. The slaughter was over anyway.

The other approached him, wiping black ash and rust from his spear, and frowned.

‘Brother…’

Yes, I have many brothers, but you are not they.

‘Are you all right?’ The other came closer. Dak’ir felt the other’s hand upon his shoulder and only just realised he himself was similarly attired in sash and sandals.

‘I– I don’t…’

This is not my armour.

The other gestured for him to sit on a nearby rock. ‘Still dazed from the blast,’ he said mainly to himself. ‘It’s me, N’bel.’

I’ve heard that name before. It’s very old.

Dak’ir looked up, his eyes and senses suddenly sharp. The name resonated but he didn’t know why.

‘Brother…’ he echoed, and clasped N’bel’s arm in a warrior’s greeting. ‘I know you.’

It was called a drygnirr, a fire-lizard, one of many that stalked the volcanic plains of Nocturne. It was a kind of salamander, the lesser kin of the monstrous firedrakes that dwelled deep in the mountains near to the magma’s warmth. Dak’ir remembered this much of his surroundings as he awaited the metal-shaper.

Scurrying over the scattered rocks, the creature regarded him intently. A fire burned in its eyes, casting a glow about its onyx face. Barring a thin spine of blue, its scales were utterly black.

‘What do you want, little lizard?’

‘Don’t let the others hear you talking to yourself.’ N’bel appeared, carrying something in his hands. ‘They already doubt an Ignean’s mettle in battle.’ N’bel leaned in close and clapped a strong palm on Dak’ir’s shoulder. ‘Not I though, brother.’

Dak’ir nodded at the other Nocturnean’s camaraderie, so familiar and yet so strange to him at the same time. He had felt the prejudice at his Ignean heritage before, too.

That was another time, spoken by another’s lips.

When he glanced back towards the rocks, the drygnirr was gone. Perhaps it was just a figment of his imagination, and he wondered briefly if his doubters might be right.

‘Here.’ N’bel proffered a silver mask. ‘Pyrkinn flesh,’ he explained as Dak’ir took the mask. ‘It’ll quicken healing.’

The metal-shaper, a bald-headed, broad-shouldered warrior with folded arms like bands of iron, nodded sagely behind him. Unlike the other tribal warriors, the metal-shaper carried a stout hammer across his back. White ash marked his body in sigils representing the anvil and the tools of the forge. His skin was even darker than N’bel’s and his glossy eyes captured the fire of the overhead sun and blazed.

Eyes of fire… Skin as black as onyx…

Dak’ir put on the mask. It only covered half of his face, the wounded part, but he felt the pain ease immediately.

My face was burning when I heard them cry out his name.

‘My skin…’ he said, realising for the first time that it was much lighter than N’bel’s.

‘Ha! Ignean-ash. A cave-dweller sees less of the Nocturnean sun, Dak’ir.’ N’bel looked concerned. ‘Are you sure you’re well?’

‘Just a little disorientated. What happened to the wraiths?’

N’bel became pensive. ‘Gone.’ He gestured to the plain beyond where several warriors assembled. One of them wore scaled robes and a snarling lizard mask. He waved a crooked staff, threaded with curving fangs and desiccated reptilian tails. A chest-plate of saurian bones armoured his muscled torso. The others watched him intently as he padded the earth: taking up handfuls, tasting, scenting, releasing and finally repeating all over again.

‘The shaman will find their trail, though,’ he added sternly. ‘The earth never lies.’

On Nocturne, the earth and its people were one. She was a cruel mother, the world of fire, capable of terrible destruction and death uncountable. During the Time of Trial, she would crack and tear, spill her blood and weep tears of lava that threatened to consume the land and the very people scratching an existence on her rocky flesh. The earth gave as it took, however. It was part of the great cycle of birth, death and rebirth. She would take you back, the fire-mother, volatile Nocturne, take you back into her heart and her bosom. Life ended in fire; so too was it begun.

Resurrection was merely an aspect of tribal culture, of Promethean Creed. Nothing that ever came to live and die on Nocturne was ever truly gone. It was simply changed, reborn into something else.

Am I ‘else’, am I reborn into this unfamiliar flesh? My bones were like iron, my skin as strong as steel. I was invulnerable. And now… now… just the burning.

The shaman’s bond with the earth was great, certainly stronger than any in the modest war party. Ash flakes, smouldering craters, the very grains of the earth spoke to him in a voice only he could understand.

Dak’ir had ridden with them, a long file of tribal warriors mounted on the backs of sauroch.

Scaled, bull-like creatures, the sauroch were known neither for speed nor ferocity. But they were strong and tenacious, their hides thick and capable of bearing great burdens over long distances. Ash nomads, the transient tribes who shunned the Sanctuaries, travelled the Scorian Desert on their broad backs.

I have soared through the skies on wings of thunder…

In the blood red of Helldawn, dactylids circled. The winged lizards, combined with the whispers of the earth, had brought the shaman to a rust-red ridge veined with iron-grey. Slowly, the saurochs had followed him and there at a rocky summit the hue of old blood, they found the rest of the dusk-wraiths. Shrieking, screaming, laughing that hollow sound from throats of dust; it was a cacophony. A heavy and oppressive shroud laid upon them all, the sauroch riders.

Dak’ir could not remember the journey, though he did recall the drygnirr watching from the darkness of caves or the peaks of volcanic hills. It shadowed him, neither guide nor predator, merely an observer only he could see. It was as if the creature’s eyes could burn right into his soul and strip away the innermost secrets of his mind.

A scryer, psyker… I know you, brother. Your gaze… it burns. I burn.

‘We attack from three sides,’ N’bel was outlining his plan to the others. He’d dismounted and carved a crude map of the camp with a stick in the dirt, less than twenty warriors gathered around him. He beckoned Dak’ir closer into the circle.

‘Brother?’ The concern etched N’bel’s face as clearly as his honour scars.

I wear them too, burned into my flesh. They are a record of my deeds.

‘I’m fine.’ Dak’ir nodded for him to continue.

N’bel gave him one last look, before he went on. ‘Three prongs,’ – he made a trident from his fingers – ‘two from the east and west as a diversion. A third, much smaller, party will enter from the north where we are now.’

Dak’ir’s gaze strayed to the deep valley below the ridge as he imagined the route N’bel had inscribed with his stick. The path was strewn with crags and sulphur pits. The cinder and ash blown from the nearby caldera of slumbering volcanoes would render the ground red-hot underfoot.

I have walked across fire. I have felt it beat inside my breast. With it I shall… The rest of the litany is lost to me. The burning… it clouds my mind and thoughts.

At the nadir of the valley was a camp of wire and blades. Sharp structures, little more than metal pavilion tents like spikes, carried markings in a strange script. Even the alien letters were edged, as if merely speaking them could cleave your tongue. More skimmer-machines, like the one lying broken on the ash plains, hovered languidly nearby. Some were tethered to bloodied staves of iron; others roamed the perimeter for the entertainment of their riders. Distant figures fled before those machines, pursued by a savage pack.

One, a dark-skinned Nocturnean limping badly, was skewered by a dusk-wraith’s spear and Dak’ir averted his gaze. The riders screamed mockingly in tune with their victims, parodying their agony.

It was a slave camp this place and, judging by the sheer number of metal tents dotting the ground below, the flesh-tally was high. Dak’ir counted fifteen of the ‘tents’. No telling how many were clustered in those metal cages. A larger one at the centre of the camp drew his eye.

N’bel meant to free his people. The skimmer-machine ambushed on the ash plain had been drawn into a trap so they could follow its trail along the earth and find this graven place. He and Dak’ir had been the bait, the wound upon his face…

The burning.

…was the price of such bravery.

Dak’ir knew this, despite his fragmented memory, the sense of otherness, not just about this place, but also this time.

‘Dak’ir…’

He turned and caught a flash of lightning on the sun. It was a sword, its blade serrated and gleaming.

I know this blade… No. I know of one much like it. Its chained teeth sing a symphony of death.

‘You lost it on the ash plain. A warrior is only as good as his weapon, brother.’

You sound like someone I knew, someone I fought with a long time ago… or will a long time from now.

Dak’ir nodded and looked down into the valley. The slavers’ depraved revels were painting the earth a deep, visceral red. The heavy scent of fresh copper tainted the sulphur breeze.

‘With whom do I ride, N’bel?’

That was better. I sound something like myself, the old strength returning…

N’bel brought his sauroch up alongside Dak’ir’s. They were both so close to the edge. Another step and they’d be charging down the scree.

‘You are with the northern party.’ He smiled, but there was no mirth to it. ‘You ride with me, brother.’

They abandoned the saurochs a hundred metres from the camp, going the rest of the way on foot. The valley was littered with rocks and deep crevices thick with sulphurous smoke. There were plenty of places to hide from the dusk-wraith sentries. The earth and Nocturne’s people were one. They could blend together as fire blends with rock.

Dak’ir sent a whickering metal shaft through the creature’s neck. It crumpled, clutching its punctured throat. By the time he and N’bel had reached it, the dusk-wraith was already an emaciated husk.

‘Why do they wither to ash like this?’ he hissed.

Because they aren’t really here… ‘Focus on the burning. Use it.’ These are not my words inside my mind…

N’bel shook his head. ‘No matter how many we kill, there is always the same remaining at the camp. If I believed in it, I would say they cannot die because they are not truly alive.’

And neither are you, my brother…

A second sentry fell to a hurled spear. Another Nocturnean pairing appeared briefly before becoming lost again in the rocks and smoke.

The heart of the slaver camp was close. They’d penetrated the outer ring and were moving into the vicinity of the metal tents. The sun was still low, low enough to cast long, red shadows across the desert.

Dak’ir was about to advance when he saw the drygnirr again. It crouched atop the shell of a dusk-wraith’s corpse, blinking with eyes of flame.

‘Why do you watch me?’

He sees into your mind… my mind. I feel it… the burning… Vulkan, give me strength.

The drygnirr was occluded by a sudden stream of smoke. Once it had cleared, the creature was gone again.

Another shaft nocked to his bow, Dak’ir moved on.

Six of them crept silently into the dusk-wraiths’ camp, slaying sentries invisibly as they went. The rest of the slavers were swollen on carnage, in a drug-induced soporific slumber brought on by the brazier pans blazing lambently around the camp.

Upon reaching the first of the tents, a warning cry rang out.

The others had launched their attack. East and west, sauroch riders drove at the slavers to steal their attention.

‘Swiftly now,’ whispered N’bel, up off his haunches and running low to the first of the tents.

Dak’ir was right behind him.

N’bel ushered him on to the next tent, but gripped Dak’ir’s arm before he could go.

‘What?’

‘That’s where you’ll find what you seek.’ N’bel was pointing to the larger structure, the one at the heart of the camp. ‘He awaits.’

‘Who, brother? Who awaits?’

I can smell his decaying breath, feel it against my cheek, despite the burning…

‘Your enemy is there.’

‘My enemy? But what about the people?’ Dak’ir was struggling but N’bel would not let him go. Dusk-wraiths had noticed the commotion. Their forces were moving through the camp.

N’bel smiled. ‘We are already dead, Dak’ir. We’ve been dead for aeons, brother. Now, go!’ He pushed Dak’ir off, who stumbled and almost fell.

He was about to turn, to demand the truth, when a burst of rifle fire sliced overhead. Shard ammunition tore up the earth and shredded the flank of a tent. Dak’ir was about to loose when he saw another dusk-wraith, then a third and a fourth, heading towards them.

The large tent was near. He dropped his bow and ran.

The whine of automatic fire from the dusk-wraiths’ weapons hurt his ears. They merged with the baying of the saurochs as they were slaughtered. Somewhere a skimmer-machine exploded.

‘We are dead, Dak’ir, but you still live. Go!’ N’bel’s final words were a shout.

Dak’ir didn’t look back.

Crashing bolter fire rings my ears. I am within my gunmetal cocoon, surging to the planet below.

His path to the large tent was suddenly blocked by one of the dusk-wraiths. She was masked, the face long and elongated to tapered spikes at chin and forehead, and grinned evilly. The sun glinting off her wicked blades, held in either hand, turned the metal to the colour of blood. She was lithe and deadly, with the body of an athlete and a torturer’s confidence.

She rushed Dak’ir, a murderer’s snarl pulling at ruby lips visible through a slit in the mask.

He scraped his sword along the ground, kicking up a line of cinder-flecked dust into her face. She hissed as the hot flakes stung her, but drove on.

Dak’ir felt a cut to his ribs, then the warm splash of blood down his side. They’d crossed each other, like duelling riders, blade to blade.

I must control my breathing, remember the routines learned in the solitorium. My hearts beat with the thrill of battle.

She came again, the dusk-wraith witch, slashing down with her blades as a pair. Dak’ir parried, sparks spitting off the metal of his sword. A kick to his stomach sent him sprawling across the hot sand and into the tent.

Pain lanced his body. It was like he was on fire.

Must… fight… it… The burning… will consume me if I don’t.

Dak’ir waited several moments in the dark, watching the slivered entrance, waiting for his assailant. But she never came. He was alone.

The air smelled strange, like being underground, and the scent of soot and ash was redolent. As his eyes slowly adjusted, Dak’ir reached out a hand to touch the walls of the tent. Half expecting a barb or spike, he was cautious, but instead of a cut, all he felt was stone. The walls were rough and craggy, and hot against his tentative fingers.

The sensation was momentary. As he felt his way ahead in the dark, the walls changed again, smooth and cold as metal should be.

There were no captives, nor any dusk-wraiths. Yet, N’bel had mentioned an enemy.

The tent was larger within than it appeared on the outside. At the end of its gloomy length, Dak’ir saw a figure seated upon a throne. It was a silhouette, a veritable giant, and armoured unless he was mistaken.

‘Come forth!’ Dak’ir challenged, brandishing his sword.

The figure did not answer, did not even flinch.

‘If you are my enemy then face me.’

Still nothing.

Dak’ir crept closer.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement… a flash of reptilian eyes, a streak of blue on black. But when he looked, the drygnirr wasn’t there.

He watches, even now… even as I burn.

The figure on the throne was mocking him, Dak’ir was certain. He would cut the–

A thrown spear tore into the side of the tent and a shaft of light spilled in. It lit the figure, a silhouette no longer. His armour was pitted and broken, as if it had been corroded by time or–

The melta’s beam cutting across the temple. There is nothing I can do, even when it touches my face…

Though badly damaged, much of the paint chipped away, Dak’ir saw the armour had once been green. A pair of wings with a flame in the centre emblazoned the warrior’s shattered breastplate. Fingers of bone poked out from his ruined gauntlets. A chest cavity of dust-choked ribs yawned through the ragged gaps in his plastron. A skull, locked in a rictus-grin, regarded Dak’ir where a battle-helm had long ceased to be.

A word, a name, trembled on Dak’ir’s lips as he approached the armoured cadaver.

‘Ka… Ka…’

He was my captain. My guilt gives him form in this place.

Dak’ir was less than half a metre away – ‘Ka… Ka…’ – when the corpse-warrior reached out with his deathless hands and seized Dak’ir by the neck.

‘Diiiiieeeee…’ it hissed, naming itself and damning Dak’ir in one word, though its rictus jaw never moved.

Yes, that was his name. I cannot forget.

Dak’ir was choking. He scrabbled at the bony fingers but they wouldn’t relent. Blood pulsed in his ears and he felt his eyes bulging as his brain was starved of oxygen.

The burning… Use it!

He had to drag some breath into his lungs or be strangled by the terrible undead thing before him. That was when he noticed the air bleeding out of the room, devoured hungrily by the flames wreathing his body. It burned, a flame so invasive it went to the nerves and threatened to overwhelm Dak’ir.

The skeleton’s grip loosened.

Dak’ir choked through fire-cracked lips.

‘What is happening?’

Let it burn us. Embrace the flame. It is yours to mould…

The fire became an inferno. It roared outwards in a wave, cascading from Dak’ir’s body, exploding the skeleton to ash with its fury, yet he was untouched.

Pain wracked him, bringing him to his knees as the fire rolled out, devouring the tent, sloughing the metal. It boiled outwards in a white-hot tempest. Blinking against the rising sun, Dak’ir watched the rest of the camp as it was consumed. His brothers fled before the flame but none could outrun it. N’bel fell last of all, screaming as the burning stripped flesh from bone and turned a man into a dark shadow upon the scorched earth.

It was out of his control now, a fiery maelstrom engulfing all upon the plain, consuming all of Nocturne in a relentless wave.

Dak’ir threw his head back, as the fire turned on him at last, and screamed.

Pyriel staggered as the blast wave struck him. He was standing in the pyre-chamber below Mount Deathfire. Crushing the totem creature of the drygnirr in his fist, now little more than a simulacra wrought of flame, he hastily erected a psychic shield against which the waves of conflagration broke eagerly. He could barely see the figure crouched at the eye of the flame storm, but heard Dak’ir’s screaming clearly.

White fire lit the Librarian starkly, flickering across the blue of his power armour and the many arcane artefacts chained about his person. The drakescale cloak Pyriel wore on his back snapped and curled with the tangible heat.

Sweat beaded the Librarian’s forehead. He felt it running down to the nape of his neck. Never before had he been so tested, never before seen such a potent reaction to the burning. To his horror, the edges of his psychic barrier were cracking against the fire tide. He tried to reinforce them but found he had neared his limits.

‘Vulkan’s strength…’ he gasped, beseeching his primarch and was answered.

Master Vel’cona emerged from a cascade of flame into the room, his eyes ablaze with cerulean power. His armour, only a suggestion through the heat haze, was more ancient than Pyriel’s. Akin in some ways to the earth shamans of old Nocturne, it was festooned with reptilian bones and dripped in scale.

Together, the two Librarians pushed the fire tide back until it was nought but wisps of smoke. A blackened crater outlined Dak’ir’s crouched position. He was naked, steam and fire exuding from his scarred flesh. The searing legacy of the melta beam he’d suffered on Stratos flared angrily on the side of his face, a physical reminder of how he was different to his fire-born brothers. The burning had destroyed his armour, rendering it an ashen patina shrouding his body.

Though he remained still and upright, his head tucked into his chest, arms drawn up around his legs protectively, Dak’ir was unconscious.

The entire pyre-chamber was a charred, soot-stained ruin. It was little more than bare rock, its entrance sealed by a pair of reinforced blast doors, but fire-blackened wall to wall. The only void was where Pyriel had been standing. The air was so hot it hazed, and reeked heavily of sulphur.

The ash cocoon encasing Dak’ir cracked and he slumped to the earth.

Vel’cona regarded the would-be Lexicanum impassively. ‘He has survived the burning.’

It wasn’t a question, but Pyriel answered it anyway.

‘Yes.’ He was still breathless from his exertions but recovering.

‘And?’ Vel’cona turned his penetrating gaze onto the other Librarian. The fuliginous darkness of the room seemed to coalesce around him, rendering him indistinct and shadowed.

‘Incredible power, like nothing I’ve ever seen.’

Vel’cona’s eyes flared like blazing blue sapphires in the gloom. ‘Can it be controlled?’

Pyriel removed his battle-helm, revealing a sweat-swathed face. His scalp was excessively damp. Only now was the cerulean fire in his ember-red eyes fading, such was the power he’d been forced to call upon. He delivered his answer in a low voice.

‘On this occasion, he could not.’

‘Saviour or destroyer…’ Vel’cona muttered. ‘Nocturne in the balance… A low-born, one of the earth, will pass through the gate of fire.’

Pyriel was confused. ‘Master?’

‘The Tome of Fire reveals much,’ said Vel’cona on his way out of the chamber. He had to use a bolt of psychic force to open the metal blast doors. They were fused together. ‘But it does not tell us everything. Who can say what the Ignean’s role will be in the turning tide? His flame may flicker and die, it may roar into a conflagration. Much is not yet known, but I sense a visitor approaching who may help us in our understanding.’

Pyriel had been hoping for a more straightforward explanation, but he had learned long ago not to question the vagaries of the Chief Librarian of the Salamanders.

‘What is your will, master?’

‘Keep training him.’

‘And if he loses control again?’

‘Do what you must,’ Vel’cona’s voice echoed from the darkness beyond the fire-smote room. ‘Destroy him.’

IN THE SHADOW OF THE EMPEROR

Chris Dows

‘Barrabas is dead. We need to go now.’

Commissar Abdiel shouted over the screaming hiss of air from a hundred ruptures leaking life from the Merciless Fist. Cleaved in two by the space hulk, any hope of repairing the venerable vessel was lost. If they didn’t act fast, this once-proud cathedral of destruction would be their tomb. Abdiel scowled at the impeccably dressed sub-lieutenant, the kind of irrepressible and inexperienced junior officer he loathed, waiting for him to do something.

‘He could have survived, sir. He should be back–’

The roof of the Dictator-class cruiser’s massive drop-ship bay emitted an ear-splitting crack, making the few surviving members of the salvage crew duck in unison with the two officers. All eyes darted upwards to search for the source of the dreadful sound, creating a second’s pause that they could scarcely afford. Recovering, they continued scuttling between the menacing silhouettes of a dozen Valkyrie assault carriers, desperately trying to get the battered drop-ship ready for flight. A score of bedraggled infantrymen looked on nervously in the middle of the deck, unsure what to do amongst the frenzied activity around them.

‘We have no time, Eutychus. Believe me, I’d rather have killed him myself but I’ll just have to live with the disappointment. There’s no one left outside this launch bay.’

As the amber emergency lighting continued to dim and cast ever-feebler shadows in the massive hangar, the young man realised that the commissar was right. Despite his lowly posting and rumoured fall from grace, Eutychus had to respect the fact that Abdiel was still the Word of the Emperor on the Merciless Fist, even though he was a spiteful, desiccated old bastard. And with Captain Barrabas missing, that put him, Alameth Eutychus, in charge of the evacuation. All the saviour pods had been deployed when the cruiser had been crippled in battle with eldar pirates, reducing her to the shattered state that this salvage force had inherited. This rapidly disintegrating launch deck was their only way off the ship. Clearing his throat, he shouted over to the portly form of Armsman Haddar, who was staring intently at the vaulted roof above.

‘How many Valkyries are serviceable, Haddar?’

The squat, once-muscular man snapped his gaze away, his jowly face wobbling with the sudden movement.

‘Well lad–’ The armsman caught his mistake as he saw Abdiel’s fist tightening on his chainsword hilt.

‘Apologies, sub-lieutenant. Five serviceable, but we’ve only got four pilots, including yourself.’ He paused and blinked. ‘That won’t get all of us out of here.’

‘How many is “all”?’ spat Abdiel.

‘Forty-four, commissar. Not including the infantry.’

Eutychus swallowed hard. Forty-four out of an original compliment of four thousand, and that was a skeleton crew for a vessel this size. He had to make a decision or Abdiel would take charge. Ship-wide vox was out and he could only hope the captain was on his way from the astropath’s chamber, but that would take at least twenty minutes. By his reckoning, they had five at the most. He could see the furthest Valkyrie powering up with a roar, its twin exhausts creating a furious brilliance behind it.

‘Get those troops onto that ship. The separator bulkheads have gone, so we’ll have to launch together. Tell–’

A chest-thumping bang pounded through the air and the deck dropped, sending men sprawling and Valkyries sliding with a painful squeal towards the sealed launch doors. Eutychus was up first, and made the mistake of attempting to help Abdiel to his feet. Even in the fading light he could see the telltale stretched skin from a dozen basic juvenat treatments on the sinewy neck, a vein throbbing with fury as the old man’s coal-dark eyes burned into his.

‘Save your help – and your prayers – for your absent captain,’ growled the commissar.

Nothing less than a catastrophe would compel Jahath Barrabas to set foot inside an astropathic sanctum, but the current situation fitted that description perfectly. The first space hulk had appeared out of warp with no warning, its random jagged mass instantly annihilating three of the five cruisers in this Emperor-forsaken salvage fleet. The second hulk just missed them, but Barrabas knew the capricious and cruel nature of the warp and there might well be more on the way. Eutychus could organise the evacuation; Barrabas needed to get an emergency message out. For that, he had to endure this dank, stinking cavern and its babbling occupant.

The sinewy hands of Astropath Transcendent Sharah gripped the arms of his elaborately carved wooden throne, his sunken eye sockets eerily lit by the hundred burning incense orbs surrounding his wizened form. Huge metal support beams arced upwards in the domed interior, reminding Barrabas of a starving man’s ribcage, mirroring the psyker’s emaciated carcass. Blood began to run from Sharah’s cadaverous nose, a scarlet line on parchment skin staining his filthy green cloak.

‘Clouds darken folding in blackness. Deep. Too deep. Salvage convoy two-three-ten reports three cruisers destroyed. The Genocide and the Merciless Fist survive. My soul is bound to His. No clarity to send. Repeat. Attempt.’

Barrabas had seen astropaths get twitchy before, and while he didn’t pretend to understand the workings of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, he knew enough about the massive upheaval caused by sudden translation from the warp to know it was the source of his confusion and agony. Sharah had cast his voice into the void and Barrabas was just wasting his time now. As he turned to go, the ghastly creature’s voice dropped an octave.

‘The Emperor’s tears wash our sins. The weight of House Barrabas is mighty, captain of the lost. Living in His shadow. Crawl into the Emperor’s light. Into the light.’

Barrabas was mesmerised. Sharah was talking about him, his family, his shame. The contorted skeleton of a face turned and spoke in a barely audible whisper, its body unmoving in the massive wooden chair.

‘My darkness gathers. The maelstrom awaits. Habitable planet in range. Arboreal. Barrabas… wait. Something stirs in the scarlet dawn.’

Shadows danced from the glowing braziers as the deck began to vibrate, many shaking themselves free of their rusting chains and crashing to the floor in a bloom of fire. The throne shook violently on its dais, yanking the astropath’s heavy hood loose. Grasping desperately at his skull, the psyker doubled over and vomited blood onto the floor. The Merciless Fist pitched to starboard as if swatted by a giant hand, throwing Barrabas towards the disgusting, screaming creature.

Barrabas retreated over the raised deck plates as the spasming Sharah clawed wildly at his face, blood pouring from his nostrils and eye sockets. He’d never seen the like and felt in his gut that it was the prelude to something truly horrific.

He was right.

The astropath’s head exploded, spattering slippery gore over the captain’s filthy uniform. Fragments of bone lanced into Barrabas’s stubble and he wiped them away as he stumbled into the corridor. The scene of carnage that met him took his breath away. The Merciless Fist was mortally wounded, the shriek and scream of men and metal from a dozen decks uniting ship and crew in their death throes. Another space hulk had appeared, not close to the ship, but inside it – structural integrity was collapsing on both of the parted sides, pressure bulkheads and blast doors vainly trying to slow its inevitable end. Miraculously, the space hulk’s randomly shaped protrusions provided a fast, precarious short cut straight down to the launch decks. Barrabas lost no time in clambering onto its shuddering surface, praying to the Emperor that the Merciless Fist wasn’t torn asunder before he reached his goal.

Eutychus squirmed inside the open cockpit of the battered Valkyrie, readying it for take-off. Three fully loaded, and equally decrepit, attack craft waited for his signal. Out on the deck behind, Abdiel gravely murmured the commissar’s benediction to the nine crewmembers who were staying behind. He was shadowed by the stocky form of First Mate Barat, the closest thing to an ally the commissar had. The crewmen crouched and prayed in near-darkness, gripping metal aquilas on filthy neck lanyards or loose in their bloodied hands, accepting their fate as the Emperor’s will. His duty over, Abdiel turned to leave, but was blown off his feet by a massive explosion in the hangar’s rear wall. A ragged tear of light and heat exposed the deck’s vast central corridor. Staggering to his feet, the old man squinted at what he saw and muttered a curse. Barat shook his shaven head in disbelief.

The smouldering form of Barrabas gesticulated towards the fifth Valkyrie’s open hold as he ran for it, ignoring them both.

‘Come on lads, no time to sit around. Let’s get off this wreck.’

Scrambling to their feet, the once-condemned men threw themselves at the drop-ship’s underbelly. Barrabas felt his way into the open cockpit of the Valkyrie pilot’s seat, detached his sword and dropped it to one side. Pulling on his helmet, he met Eutychus’s open-mouthed stare through the filthy glacis canopy with a thumbs up. He reached for the closing handle, but Abdiel’s gnarled hand stopped his downward tug and the commissar climbed into the co-pilot’s seat behind him.

‘Glad you could join us, commissar,’ he muttered. Abdiel merely growled in response.

Powering up the engines, Barrabas initiated an emergency depressurisation of the bay and immediately realised his mistake. The weakened inner frame buckled and the cavernous interior’s roof creased downwards, flattening the outmost Valkyrie, pressing it into the bay floor. The massive launch doors ground open with painful slowness, sucking the inferno from behind them into space along with countless spinning bodies. With just a hair’s-breadth clearance, the four remaining Valkyries roared into the void as the Merciless Fist was torn apart.

‘I have to hand it to your family, Barrabas, when you destroy a vessel of the Imperial Navy, you are very thorough.’ Abdiel wrung out every drop of sarcasm from the venomous jibe, but Barrabas was too busy navigating the massive chunks of twisted metal spinning and wheeling around them. Flicking from internal to ship-to-ship vox, Barrabas calmly spoke into the headset.

‘Single file behind me. Eutychus at the rear. Lock onto my approach vector.’

Jahath Barrabas was a brilliant flyer, one of the main reasons he’d been allowed to join the Imperial Navy despite his family history. Had he stayed a pilot, things might have worked out significantly better but, in his younger days, Barrabas had been determined to prove he wasn’t cut from the same genetic cloth as his disgraced grandfather, whose actions as a Naval captain had led to the destruction of an Emperor-class battleship and most of its complement. Unfortunately for him, one of the few survivors was the man directly behind him. Because Abdiel hadn’t immediately countermanded his grandfather’s disastrous orders and executed him, the Commissariat had found him guilty of gross negligence. Little wonder he had held a grudge for all these years.

A blossom of flame caught Barrabas’s eye and he instinctively took evasive manoeuvres. With every muscle tensed, he shrank into the pilot’s seat as the engines of the Merciless Fist’s amputated aft section roared overhead, a rainbow arc of fire pushing debris away behind them. Instantly changing course, he headed for the torn-off stern, to Abdiel’s alarm.

‘What in the Emperor’s name are you doing? We’ll be incinerated!’

Barrabas gritted his teeth and hit the thrusters, ducking and weaving through the shower of debris. Smaller pieces thumped into the nose plating and leading edges of the wings. It was only a matter of time before a chunk went straight through one of the engines, so the perfectly clear pathway created by the dying cruiser’s engines was their best – their only – way out of the maelstrom. Barrabas saw a tide of wreckage smash into the Genocide’s port side, gas erupting from several burning fractures. No ships left its bays.

He looked back to a sea of frozen bodies appearing as if from nowhere. They careened off the nose and hull, like rag dolls thrown by an angry child. Grief at the loss of his crew and command would have to wait. Grimly, he ploughed straight through them.

Curving upwards, the line of Valkyries banked as one and skirted the rapidly fading tip of the Merciless Fist’s dismembered exhausts before turning hard to starboard, using the wreck’s wake as a passage into open space.

‘Captain, I’m venting air from–’

Barrabas and Abdiel grimaced at the shouting sub-lieutenant.

‘Calm down, Eutychus. We all are. These crates are barely fit for atmospheric flight, let alone any extended time in space. Reduce the oxygen supply by twenty per cent to the hold and use your rebreathers. If there aren’t enough, then they’ll have to share. Get scanning for a habitable landing zone.

A third voice crackled into their headsets, the low tones of Tug Pilot Zebah. Barrabas was glad to hear his voice. Zebah had been with him since the beginning of his illustrious career as a salvage captain. He trusted him with his life. Like the majority of the senior crew he’d carefully assembled over the years, Zebah would joke that they lived on their bellies, crawling from one battered wreck to the next, but their gallows humour and dishevelled appearance didn’t stop them yearning for the glory of battle and a chance to prove themselves to the Emperor – despite what Abdiel thought.

‘Sir, I’ve detected a possible landing zone. It’s close.’

Barrabas could feel the commissar’s eyes burning into the back of his head. He allowed himself a sigh of relief.

‘Take us in, Zebah. I’ll lead upon planetfall. Activate the automated distress beacon with the coordinates. There may be survivors from the fleet able to rescue us.’ The lack of response in his headset was telling.

Alternating the vox-switch, he spoke to his passengers.

‘It’s going to be an uncomfortable ride, gentlemen. Prep any weapons or equipment you can find. We’re going to need them.’

Despite having no real idea where they were going, Barrabas knew that it was infinitely better than where they had been and at least offered some feeble ray of hope.

The howl of wind and turbines combined to pummel Barrabas’s hearing as the Valkyrie plummeted across the blood-red sky of the planet. His hands were numb and his knuckles burned with pain as he gripped the violently shaking control stick between his tensed legs. As they descended, Barrabas cast about for a suitable landing spot between breaks in the low, wispy cloud, but the surface was a maze of differing levels, some little more than corridors of black soil on top of crumbling stone projections, forming gaps too narrow for the unpredictably responding drop-ship to navigate. Finally, a wide, open plateau came into view and, while there were ranges of raised columns in the distance and elevated embankments on either side, it looked like their best bet.

‘All ships, try to remember as much of the geography as you can.’

Easing the nose down, the ship dropped sharply to the right as the starboard engine exploded. Alarms wailed and warning runes flashed, but he didn’t need any reminding of his situation. The drop-ship fell into a shuddering dive and he levelled off just in time for the underside of the Valkyrie to plane away beneath his feet and a small boulder make short work of the port wingtip. As the nose dug a furrow into the ground he tried to compensate with the single engine but the Valkyrie rammed headfirst into a raised bed of rust-coloured rock, pitching him upside down. His sword fell onto the roof of the canopy and, absurdly, he feared he might become the first ever captain to be decapitated in such a way. Abruptly the ship stopped and, once the soil-muffled whine of the dying engine had subsided, there was dark silence.

Barrabas heard voices, rattling and hammering, and was suddenly aware it was brighter behind his closed eyes and colder around his ringing ears. Eager hands clawed at the straps holding his body into the seat, and he dropped with a thump. Then he was on his back, looking up at broiling sepia clouds and the bloody, frowning faces of Armsman Toah and First Mate Barat. They were dressed in infantry fatigues salvaged from the hold and had a variety of small arms dangling from hastily-attached webbing.

‘Report,’ he croaked.

‘We’re all alive, captain, although Mortok’s broken his arm. Narris and Lubek are working on a short-range transmitter they found, and the others are gathering up ammo from the hold.’ Barat wiped blood from a gash in his sweating head as he spoke, while the reedy form of Toah helped Barrabas to his feet.

Straightening his tunic as best he could, Barrabas clenched his fists to coax sensation back into his shaking fingers and retrieved the dirt-covered sword at his feet. His next question was drowned by the shriek of three Valkyries, in far better shape than his, which touched down forwards and to the left of the rocky plinth on which they stood, skilfully avoiding the raised ridges that flanked their position.

‘Get the commissar out,’ said Barrabas.

Barat jumped to the order, carefully unbuckling Abdiel’s unconscious dangling form.

‘Lend a hand here, Toah!’ Barat was a powerful man, but couldn’t manage to safely detach Abdiel on his own. Toah’s eyes flicked to meet Barrabas’s frown, and the captain shook his head softly. With a shadow of a smile, Toah sloped over to help his misguided colleague.

‘Respect the uniform, not the man,’ grunted the larger man.

Toah had heard this from Barat before. It didn’t wash one bit with him or any of the crew, but his forthright response was drowned out by a loud, wet sucking sound. Barrabas wheeled towards the noise, his head spinning from the rapid movement and it took a few seconds to work out what was happening in the scarlet light. Two of the drop-ships had begun to sink, not the normal settlement of landing pads onto soft ground but a rapid, uneven descent that signalled real danger.

‘Open the gunship holds! Now!’

The heavy rear doors dropped, their leading edges immediately disappearing under the mire with a splat. Twenty men spilled out with a variety of weapons and uniforms grabbed from their respective ships, their enthusiasm on release soon tempered by the danger in which they found themselves. Still airborne, Eutychus saw the problem and pulled up steeply on emergency thrust, forcing the stricken Valkyries down faster than before in his wash. Aft-heavy, their noses rose into the air as men struggled through the quicksand, hauled out by their crewmates who had found the nearest safe footholds. Barrabas blinked away a single flickering shadow that passed to his left, blaming it on the concussion that sang between his ears.

Eutychus landed his Valkyrie on a flat expanse of rock and was out of the cockpit within seconds, hopping between boulders and natural platforms towards his captain’s inverted gunship. Barrabas ran towards the assembled crew as the stricken Valkyries slid downwards, both pilots now balancing precariously on the up-ended noses of their ships, and shouted at Zebah who was closest.

‘Jump. We’ll pull you out as soon as you get in.’

A panting Eutychus skidded to a halt besides Barrabas, while a dazed Abdiel made his unsteady way towards them.

‘They could get sucked right under if they jump from that height,’ said the young man. Barrabas nodded, clearing grit from his collar with a couple of fingers.

‘If they don’t go now, they could get pulled down with their ships. Come on!’

Again, Barrabas saw a fleeting shadow at his feet, bigger this time. He looked to the sky but saw nothing. The two overall-clad men exchanged a glance and then, with a thumbs up, leapt into the innocent-looking black soil below. Landing with a plop, they were as relieved as Barrabas that their rate of descent was surprisingly slow, and carefully waded outwards. Shouts of encouragement from the crew gave them heart, and Barrabas breathed a sigh of relief just as several flickering shadows flashed overhead. Eutychus saw them too, his head snapping upwards into the bright red sky.

‘Captain–’

At first, Barrabas couldn’t process what he’d seen; such was the speed of it. Flashes of grey and white, outstretched leathery wings with glistening edges, the glint of curved, exposed talons craning forwards in a lethal reach. Then there were screams. Again he shook his head, battling the buzzing hive between his ears, but Eutychus was already unholstering his laspistol and taking aim as Abdiel screamed at the stunned crewmen assembled nearby.

‘Don’t just stand there. In the name of the Emperor, kill them!’

Jolted into action, the thirty-nine men frantically grabbed for small arms and lasguns, a jumbled mass of confusion and poor weapons practice. Barrabas pulled his laspistol free, firing into the wheeling mass of creatures descending upon the desperately waving forms of the two pilots. Working as a lethal flock, the huge reptilian beasts flew in a tight circle around the men, a whirlwind of slashing razor-edged wings and dagger-sharp talons, until the men’s features became an unrecognisable mess of blood. An arm disappeared in a gushing instant, taken up high by one creature which, away from the group, presented a more focused target and Abdiel blasted repeatedly at its sinewy form. Surprisingly agile for its size, it ducked, turned and weaved, avoiding the fire and refusing to drop the gruesome trophy from its long, bony beak.

The screaming abruptly stopped and despite the hail of fire now hitting the flashing bodies, only two creatures fell into the swampy ground, immediately diced and devoured by their merciless kin. The pilots were now bloody stumps, cut and sliced apart piece by piece, but at least their misery was over. Some of the larger creatures swooped low over the wildly firing crew, veering off at the last second from their attack. Barrabas was horrified to see a further dark cloud of them approaching.

The ground shook.

Barrabas, Eutychus and Abdiel lost their footing and fell heavily onto the polished rock, immediately scrambling to their feet in fear of an attack from the flying nightmares. Instead, they were surprised to see the flock hurtle upward towards the distant explosion that now rolled across the skies and had surely caused the ground to quake. Their burst of speed created a foetid breeze behind them, leaving nothing more than a stream of lazily-popping air bubbles on the marshy surface and Zebah’s partially stripped leg still in its work boot. Not a fitting end for such a man, thought Barrabas, as he turned to the panting form of Armsman Haddar.

‘Get up that ridge and see what’s going on. Might be someone else made it out of the convoy. The rest of you, inventory what we have. Keep to the rock.’

Barrabas wiped the grime from his face and took a deep breath. It was cold and getting dark. Shelter would be needed, and soon. Abdiel threw him a filthy look, clearly blaming him for the situation they were currently in. Barrabas didn’t turn away from the old man’s gaze, even when the commissar slammed home a new power pack and cocked his weapon deliberately towards him.

Haddar shouted down from the raised embankment to his left. ‘Captain, there’s a big chunk of space hulk about fifteen kilometres away. Too far to make out details, but it looks like those… banshees are circling it.’

Eutychus turned to Barrabas, his face uncharacteristically serious.

‘Orks?’

‘Very likely. We need to get out of here.’

Barrabas peered into the distance through shattered magnoculars, down the wide trench in which they stood towards the towering needle-like columns darkening slowly in the distant sunset. He could just make out two of the creatures wheeling lazily between the spires and it suddenly became obvious to him they knew where their prey might get trapped – a fact they could use to their advantage.

‘We need to know what we’re up against, sir.’

Eutychus was thinking like an officer. This pleased Barrabas.

‘Agreed. Take two armsmen and scout the situation, sub-lieutenant. We’ll make our way over to the base of those towers. There are some caves at ground level.’

Eutychus saluted automatically and strode over to the assembled men, catching a lasrifle with a clatter from the stocky form of Haddar as he approached. With a nod, Toah swiftly fell in behind Eutychus, exchanging a grim smile with Haddar as they marched towards the embankment – they were they boy’s first command, but as it clearly didn’t bother the youth, it didn’t worry them unduly. Barrabas shouted after the trio as they clambered up the rocky slope. ‘Be careful where you step. Look to the skies. If those creatures fly at night, they’ll show you where to avoid.’

Within seconds the men were at the top of the incline and, after a short pause and much pointing, disappeared out of sight into the dark red gloom descending over the planet’s surface. Abdiel strolled over to Barrabas’s side, his face a shadow under his cap.

‘What kind of “captain” are you, Barrabas? What kind of role model for a young officer? He’s a good prospect. A little too well-mannered perhaps, but with the right training he might make an officer. Look at you ¬– you’re a disgrace, like your grandfather. He follows your example at his peril.’

Barrabas spoke as calmly as his hoarse throat would allow, knowing this infuriated the man beyond measure.

‘You’ve been riding my back for the last three years, Abdiel. We both know why I’m here, but what about you? What did you do wrong?’

The belt at the bottom of Abdiel’s polished breastplate creaked as he leaned menacingly towards Barrabas who, being a good ten centimetres taller than him, didn’t retreat one inch, even at the whiff of the commissar’s stinking breath.

‘The only mistake I made was to give undisciplined, wayward scum like your grandfather the benefit of the doubt. I don’t intend to repeat that error. Ever.’

Eutychus pressed his back against a rock, its dampness soaking into his tunic. To his left, Haddar pulled a battered lasgun to his barrel chest, darting glances all around in the russet darkness. To his right, the ends of Toah’s boots tapped nervously against each other as they dangled downwards at head-height. ‘What can you see?’ hissed Eutychus through cold-clenched teeth.

‘Orks, sir. Thousands of ‘em.’ Toah lay flattened to the ground on the plateau above and behind Eutychus and Haddar, surveying the scene as best he could with his salvaged lascannon scope.

Eutychus frowned. It was likely that the orks were also survivors of the collision with the fleet, and the proximity to their own crash site couldn’t be coincidence.

‘What are they up to, Toah?’

‘Bloody rocks could be hiding anything, sir. They’re trying to assemble vehicles for scouting parties, but they keep sinking under their own weight. Looks like the banshees have gone, but–’

Toah was silenced by a huge throwing axe that cleaved his skull. Wrenching it free with a sickening wet crack, the owner of the clumsy weapon turned to face Eutychus, grunting as Toah’s feet twitched wildly, his body not yet realising that his brain had been bisected. Within seconds the hulking figure was attacking; a raging shadow of muscle and sinew seamlessly connected to the enormous cannon now bearing on its target. The darkness burst into stroboscopic brilliance from Haddar’s weapon as he emptied an entire power pack into the bellowing ork’s head with absolute precision, the cover of night only returning when the greenskin collapsed onto its back.

Eutychus had heard the crew joke about Haddar’s self-proclaimed prowess in battle as the ramblings of a middle-aged, deluded man. What he had just witnessed would have stopped them laughing. Breathing heavily, the armsman looked sharply at the gaping officer.

‘There’ll be more, lad. Time to go.’

Eutychus forced himself away from the hard comfort of the wall and headed back the way they came, the ground soft and sucking on his saturated boots. The jangling of equipment and the men’s panting breath was soon joined by another sound, that of shrieking and whooping directly behind.

‘Into the shadows, Haddar. We might lose them.’

It was optimistic of Eutychus to think that they could successfully retrace their steps in the dull gloom that passed for night on this Emperor-forsaken planet, and within minutes he had absolutely no idea where they were in relation to the crashed hulk or his own crew. Rocks loomed claustrophobically around them, and things took yet another turn for the worst when the ground changed from a sucking mud to a wetter, softer consistency which grabbed at the sub-lieutenant’s legs and pitched him forwards.

‘Watch out Haddar, the ground’s–’ Eutychus’s words were drowned out in a volley of echoing fire from behind and he felt the whistle of projectiles pass his ears. Haddar’s return shots were rewarded with shrieks of pain from the darkness, but this only added to Eutychus’s frustration. He couldn’t turn enough to give any kind of supporting fire, and he knew the armsman was a sitting duck as long as he blocked the orks’ path in this slender corridor. Finally hitting solid ground, he spun and threw himself back-first onto the rock, levelling the lasgun towards Haddar. The passage was too narrow. He still couldn’t fire past or over the portly man without fear of hitting him. Then the armsman’s power pack was exhausted. Seizing the moment, the orks thundered forwards as he stood his ground.

‘Haddar! Get down!’

There was no answer. Tossing his lasgun aside, Haddar calmly reached into the pockets of his webbing and pulled out a pair of frag grenades. As the whooping greenskins smashed into him, Eutychus was thrown back a full five metres by the double explosion’s shockwave. Smoke rose into the air and the smell of singed flesh caught in the back of his throat as, seriously winded, he fought for breath. With no obvious signs of movement from the, now thankfully hidden, carnage, Eutychus wiped an angry tear from his eye and staggered off into the darkness, utterly distraught at failing his first real test as an officer.

Barrabas sat wearily at the mouth of a shallow cave and took a swig from his water bottle, watching the brown-red sunrise with concern. Their location was hardly a perfect defensive position, but the eroded cliff-face had offered some shelter and, with a deep natural passageway behind, a potential escape route. The order to rest had been issued barely four hours before, but the low murmurs from his crew confirmed their state of exhaustion.

Engineers Narris and Lubek, who had busied themselves with the salvaged transmitter to his left, hadn’t stopped since they made camp. Occasional bursts of static punctuated the air, quickly followed by the urgent muttering of invocations and supplications from the two veteran technicians in their attempt to appease and coerce the transmitter’s machine-spirit. Shifting uncomfortably on his rocky seat, Barrabas still wasn’t happy about the distance they’d put between themselves and the greenskin crash site. He could only hope the dumb rage of the orks would drop them straight into the shifting patches they’d managed to avoid. It might buy a little time, but sooner or later they would catch up. As long as it wasn’t here, they might stand a chance.

‘Your crew, such as they are, seem to think they owe you something for stranding them here.’ Abdiel appeared at Barrabas’s side without a sound. ‘Personally, I don’t see it that way.’ The commissar stared straight ahead into the gloomy valley from which they had come, eyes fixed on an unseen point.

‘While we’re alive, we still have a chance.’ Barrabas wasn’t convinced by his own words, but he wasn’t going to let Abdiel ignore the fact that he owed him his life.

‘Marooning us with no chance of rescue on a planet teeming with orks isn’t something to be applauded, Barrabas. You seem to forget I’ve been through this before with your family – giving them a chance, only to see destruction and ruin. My ruin.’

It might have been the deep, numbing fatigue or the last vestiges of concussion, but Barrabas didn’t react to the sound of Abdiel’s bolt pistol being drawn. He found himself looking into its charred muzzle and, behind, the commissar staring impassively at him.

‘I’m taking command. In the name of the Emperor, you’re relieved of–’

Both men jumped at the blaze of noise from the nearby transmitter. Luckily for Barrabas, the commissar’s finger was light on the trigger.

‘Automatic repeat. Attention all survivors of salvage convoy two-three-ten. This is Captain Rale of the Genocide. We are aware of your situation and will dispatch rescue vessels on completion of repairs to our starboard airlocks. Activate landing beacon if safe to do so. Time stamp zero-three-hundred-forty-two. Automatic repeat. Attention…’

Rushing out of the cave at the sound of the amplified voice, the crew’s excitement quickly turned to astonishment as they beheld the commissar’s pistol levelled at their captain and saviour. Lubek turned the volume down and glanced at the squatting Narris, ten years his junior but in far worse physical shape, and the two joined the increasingly tense silence of their shipmates.

From the corner of his vision, First Mate Barat saw the shadow of a weapon being raised but thrust out his muscular arm and pushed the muzzle down, praying Abdiel hadn’t seen the move. The crewman glared at Barat, but the first mate met his stare unflinchingly; this had been coming for a long time. It would have to play out between captain and commissar with no intervention from the crew.

‘It appears that I just might have saved us after all, commissar.’ Barrabas spoke evenly, his eyes staring into the darkness beneath Abdiel’s peaked cap.

‘This doesn’t change a thing, Barrabas. There’s no telling when the Genocide will be able to launch rescue ships. If it’s more than a day, we’ll be done for anyway.’

‘Make that half a day.’

Weapons clattered in clumsy response to the new voice from the dark, but recognition quickly followed as Eutychus staggered up the steep incline to their position. Without turning his attention from Abdiel, Barrabas snapped his fingers and a water canteen was handed to the exhausted man, who drank from it with grateful, heavy gulps.

‘Where are your men, sub-lieutenant?’ Abdiel regarded the filthy, bedraggled officer with no hint of pity or welcome, his arm still locked and arrow-straight despite the weight of the pistol.

‘I… lost them, commissar.’ Eutychus looked down to his mud-encrusted chest, the blue of his tunic hardly visible in the meagre light. ‘Both of them.’

‘Useless. Absolutely useless. You’re as feeble as your mentor.’

Abdiel looked back down to the unflinching Barrabas and over to the wary group behind him. He’d felt hostility from the crew before, burning into the back of his neck, heating the wrinkled skin behind his high collar, but nothing on this scale. Commissars were supposed to stand for discipline and instil the will to serve, but he felt as if he were among the scum of a penal legion and any wrong move would be his last. Easing his finger off the trigger, he casually holstered his bolt pistol and turned his attention to the transmitter and the two squatting men frozen to the spot beside it.

‘See if you can get a vox-message back to Rale. Tell him to hurry.’ He nodded towards Eutychus. ‘That idiot’s probably led the greenskins right to us.’ Turning on his heel, he marched over to the crewmen.

‘Our chances of survival will be maximised in a firefight with the greatest possible number of men. Your captain’s execution will hold – for now.’

With that, Abdiel shoved his way roughly through the line of crewmen back towards his kit inside the cave, exchanging a brief nod with Barat as he passed. Barrabas could feel the anger and confusion mounting in his men and knew he had to act fast. Rising quickly, he strode over to the dejected figure of Eutychus, whose shoulders were slumped in defeat, and turned to face them all.

‘Now listen to me. We can still get out of this.’ The men looked to each other, then back to Barrabas. ‘We’re still on our bellies, we’re still in shadow, but we have a chance to serve the God-Emperor and perhaps even survive in the process. One thing’s for sure – if we stay here, we will die. Eutychus?’

The younger man’s head snapped up, shocked by the unusually sharp tone in his captain’s voice. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘How long do you think we have?’

Eutychus rubbed his chin, Toah’s blood flaking away from his still-smooth face. ‘Eight hours, perhaps less. They couldn’t get any of their vehicles out of the swamp around them so they’ll be on foot. If anyone survived Haddar’s last stand, they could be even–’

The explosion was ear-splitting. Rock showered onto the ground from the smoking hole created by the ork mortar round above their heads and a distant muzzle flash attracted everyone’s eye. Despite the greenskins’ poor marksmanship, they would hit someone or something given enough time and shells, a belief clearly shared by the wheeling flock of banshees that had appeared as if from nowhere.

‘Move!’ screamed Barrabas, and they scattered back into the safety of the cave as the soft, black ground erupted at the base of the slope before them. The greenskins had over-corrected the trajectory and, mercifully, the shell fell short. Inside the cave, the men grabbed their gear and swiftly threw on packs, weapons and helmets, orchestrated by a furious Abdiel who pushed most of them out towards the escape route at the rear of the cavern.

Taking up the tail-end of the ragged line, alongside Barat, he ran towards the figure of Barrabas who stood to the side of a wide fissure in a sheer rock wall. The first of the men disappeared into the corridor as, far above, the banshees suddenly dropped. They fell short of descending onto the moving feast below. Instead, their wingtips loosened spikes of rock at the top of the canyon’s walls, spilling debris down upon the fleeing crew.

The ground erupted with a roar, throwing soil and stones in a filthy hail. Abdiel looked behind him and saw Barat lying on his side, one hand spasmodically clutching the air. Despite the obvious danger from another lucky shell, the commissar ran back to the mortally-wounded man, the side of his chest oozing life from a protruding dagger of shrapnel.

‘Commissar… leave me. They’re right behind us. You have to…’ Barat gritted his teeth, overwhelmed with pain. Abdiel looked down at the man with pity and fury. But Barat’s eyes were focused on the rocks raining down into the chasm and, with a sudden burst of adrenaline-fuelled strength, he grabbed Abdiel’s overcoat.

‘Get me… to the passageway, sir… I can stop… the greenskins.’ Barrabas was shouting, gesticulating wildly into a crack in the rock face, but his words were drowned out by a shrieking whistle. A smouldering mortar round thumped into the ground a few metres away, its battered shaft fizzing and sputtering menacingly. Despite his frailness, Abdiel hauled the wheezing first mate to his feet, ignoring the blood fountaining from the gaping hole in Barat’s side. With painful slowness, they approached an incredulous Barrabas as a live round exploded in the distance.

‘We can’t take him with us, Abdiel. He’ll–’

‘I’m not… going anywhere, captain.’

Barrabas blinked, then nodded. Turning on his heel, he shielded his head from the increasingly heavy rain of dust and small stones as Abdiel laid the man gently into a sitting position, his legs nearly touching the other side of the slender corridor. The creatures could be seen in the narrow crack of light high above. They had spotted their next meal and were whipping themselves into a frenzy. A boulder bounced between the sides of the chasm, pounding dust and chunks out of either side as it crashed its way down.

‘For the Emperor, commissar.’

‘For the Emperor, First Mate Barat.’

Abdiel ducked under the wedged lump of stone while Barat shielded his eyes from the dust and grit showering down on him. Behind him, another shell exploded and he could hear the thud of ork movement. The banshees needed a little more encouragement to carry out the first mate’s suicidal plan, so he wiped his hands into the warm, wet blood leaking from his body, feebly pushed out his hands and screamed skywards.

‘Come and get it!’

This was too much for the banshees, who swooped down, heedless of the danger, towards the easy pickings below. Their wings beat against the crumbling walls, opening up ancient fissures and bringing down tonnes of rock, burying Barat and catching many of their brethren in a maelstrom of stone. The passageway was blocked, and all that the furious orks could do was bellow impotently at the now-impassable corridor.

Two hours later, Barrabas’s men lay panting and exhausted on a rocky outcrop, dried mud caking their uniforms. Commissar Abdiel stared grimly into space, clearly upset at the loss of Barat, but unwilling – or unable – to discuss it with anybody. Sitting heavily next to Barrabas, Eutychus took off his cap, swigged from his canteen and wiped the back of his mouth with a filthy hand. ‘Captain, the men are in pretty bad shape. This seems like a good enough place to defend. What do you think?’ Eutychus still carried the loss of Haddar and Toah on his young shoulders, but Barrabas was pleased that the sub-lieutenant still had the condition of his men at the top of his agenda

‘We need open ground. Barat bought us some precious time, but if the orks get onto those ridges above us, they’ll flank us and we’ll be slaughtered. According to Abdiel, this valley flattens out a couple of miles ahead.’ Eutychus turned to look in the direction of the bloated red sun, shielding his eyes against the scarlet light despite the gathering clouds.

‘There are a lot of banshees over there, sir. Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘They’ve already done us one favour. Besides, it’s the best chance we’ve got for our landing beacon signal to be picked up. Ready the men. Our retreat’s nearly over. After this, we make a stand – and you get revenge.’ Eutychus nodded grimly. He’d aged a decade in a day.

Reaching the end of the plateau, Barrabas and Eutychus halted the men and they surveyed the change in scenery. Eutychus gulped. Abdiel snorted derisively. Barrabas looked skywards.

The ground stretched to the horizon on the left and right, sloping gently downwards in front of them to a ragged edge and a sheer drop to the floor below. Directly ahead was a narrow natural bridge leading to a wider soil-covered platform that angled upwards, terminating in a flat rocky ledge. It was a complete dead end, with no escape save for the fatal plunge surrounding it. Dozens of banshees circled high in the sky over the bridge, with new ones joining them every other second. Something was very, very wrong here but Barrabas smiled at the brilliant shaft of light breaking through the clouds like a scarlet spotlight, throwing the surface of the rocky projection into shining relief.

What had the astropath said? ‘Crawl into the Emperor’s light. Into the light.’

‘That’s where we make our stand.’

Eutychus stared at Barrabas and a soft gasp of disbelief hissed from the men assembled behind.

‘Captain… it’s a dead end. And the banshees–’

Barrabas didn’t shift his gaze from the view ahead. He spoke with a calm assuredness that cut Eutychus off without a hint of chastisement.

‘Look closely. The creatures are very high. They’re waiting for something, and I think I know what it is. Get over the bridge, spread out, and keep to the edges as best you can. The rock at the back of that platform is perfect for a rescue ship to land on. The slope will help us fortify our position. We’re going to make a redoubt.’

Abdiel barked a laugh. ‘What is this? Some exercise in ancient military tactics? This is suicide, Barrabas, and you know it.’

Barrabas turned to Abdiel. He was beyond exhaustion and past caring.

‘Commissar, there’s no other ground around here that will support the weight of a drop-ship unless you want to spend precious hours reconnoitring the area, which means splitting our forces. We can’t stay here because it’s too exposed. Over there, we have the advantage of height and focus of fire. It’s also perfect for a homing beacon. We’ll be out of range of their small arms from this side and we’ve seen how good their artillery skills are.’

Abdiel looked at him sharply.

‘You know what I mean. Barat was killed by a lucky shot, nothing more. Besides, orks will do anything to kill us up close and to do that, they have to come across that bridge.’

The crew silently regarded the island of rock in front of them and the thickening blur of banshees whirling above. With a renewed self-belief, Barrabas turned to face the remains of his crew.

‘It’s time to get off our bellies, men. Look in front of you. For once we’ll be raised up, elevated above the dirt and filth, so we can stand like men in the light of the Emperor and take strength from it. The rescue ship could be on its way right now. All we have to do is hold out for as long as we can. What say you?’

The roar of ‘Aye!’ was immediate and shouted with passion. Their long-desired chance to fight and serve had come. This was their battle, their chance for glory. They’d seen the ways this planet and its creatures could take their lives, and had survived. They would die fighting, for the Emperor, for their captain and for themselves.

As Barrabas led the men down towards the bridge, Abdiel took up the rear and watched them carefully traverse the precarious channel. Despite his objections, Barrabas’s logic was sound and there was no denying that he’d energised his exhausted men as well as any commissar.

It seemed he might be different to his predecessors after all.

Three hours later, Barrabas stood on the broad rocky ledge at the rear of the platform, looking down at the thirty-five survivors digging and patting with their field spades below. Several hundred pairs of banshee eyes also watched from their unrivalled vantage point high above, having retreated swiftly upon realising there would be no easy pickings from the men crossing the bridge, even in the softest ground at its centre.

The steps of the redoubt had shaped up quickly and would allow three rows of twelve men, each elevated behind the next, to concentrate fire on the same spot. To the left, a grime-covered Abdiel threw down his implement, wiped his brow and nodded in satisfaction at what they’d achieved, unaware Barrabas was watching with a rueful smile. Coming from the commissar, that was almost a compliment. Both men looked over at the shout from Eutychus – the orks were in sight, hammering down the canyon.

‘Throw everything you don’t need over the side. Narris, activate the landing beacon. Lubek, protect the transmitter as best you can. The rest of you, check and clean your weapons. Form ranks when ready.’

The crew moved as one, stripping down to the bare minimum – weapons, ammunition, what body armour they’d salvaged from the Valkyries. Within twenty minutes, the orks stood at the ridge opposite, assessing the situation. Their stench drifted on the air, along with guttural laughter.

‘How many do you think, captain?’ Eutychus’s voice was level, without fear.

‘More than us.’

It was obvious that the survivors had nothing like enough firepower to defeat the greenskins in open battle, but it should be adequate for his plan. He hoped.

With a roar, the orks began their untidy dash towards the bridge, a ragged mass of hate-fuelled muscle, twenty lines deep. Shafts of red light caught their dull helmets and glinted off their keen axe blades, the thumping of a thousand boots shaking the ground beneath them. The men took their places, with Eutychus to the left of the front rank, Abdiel in the middle raised position and Barrabas at the top.

High above the bridge, the banshee formation tightened, with only a couple darting down to take a closer look when, victims of their own fury, some particularly clumsy orks plunged straight off the side of the opposing cliff, such was their rush to be the first into combat. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t stop the sea of howling, mindless greenskins pouring onto the narrow bridge, its underside a rough arch thickening at the connections to the plateau and the rocky pillar on which the survivors stood. Its thinnest point was at the middle, and this would be where the men would concentrate their fire.

The orks slowed on hitting the marshy surface of the bridge, with some of them disappearing into the quagmire as they were steamrollered by their kin. Within seconds the bridge was a seething mass of bulging muscle and grinding armour, wild firing and roars of fury. It looked like a living entity, a writhing sea of chaotic movement. One of the crew caught a blast in the arm and spun with the impact, and the men began to move restlessly.

‘Steady, lads. Steady. Front rank, make ready. Look to the front, pick your targets, wait for the order.’ Barrabas’s voice was strong as Engineer Narris helped the injured crewman back to his place in the line. The orks were now queuing to get onto the bridge, pushing and shoving the dozens in front of them along, their grunts and cries a wall of sound resonating across the chasm. Sheer strength and bloody-mindedness drove them on towards their quarry, fuelled by the predictable rage Barrabas had counted on and would use against them.

‘Front rank… fire!’

A mix of lasguns and autoguns blasted in unison, hitting the lead orks with a lethal concentrated punch of beams and high velocity rounds. The beasts stumbled and looked down at the torn gashes in their bodies but the momentum of their fellows pushed them forwards still.

‘Middle ran, fire! Rear rank, fire!’

Two more volleys hit the same targets in the same spot; this time tearing into them and sending some spiralling off the sides of the bridge. Infuriated, the orks behind howled and pushed even harder, straight into the intense fire. The narrowness of the footway meant there was no room to avoid fallen compatriots, and the clumsy brutes staggered and slipped over each other, pummelling the dead or injured into the soil below.

‘Front rank, fire! Middle rank, fire! Rear rank, fire!’

The three rows fired within seconds of each other, giving their weapons enough time to cycle, stop from overheating, or for magazines and power packs to be exchanged, without a pause in the hail of focused destruction. One man in the front rank fell, then another in the middle, but the others kept their positions and maintained disciplined fire as the pile of bodies on the bridge began to mount. The few faster, luckier orks who made it onto the platform were picked off by Abdiel with carefully aimed bolt pistol fire. Up above, the banshees circled, watching the carnage unfolding below them, avoiding stray fire with great beats of their leathery wings.

The noise of human and ork weapons clattered deafeningly, but the first crack of the bridge cut through the din like a blade. Staying in line, Barrabas ducked to his left and saw rubble fall from the middle of its underside. He had hoped for this, but not the small group of infuriated orks currently rushing from the heaped dead at the bridge’s centre towards the front rank of defenders.

Abdiel’s pistol had jammed, and the orks would be on him in seconds. Eutychus saw the problem too, and both men ran forwards, weapons blazing at the approaching greenskins. Barrabas ignored the volleys of fire hurtling overhead as he joined Abdiel at the mouth of the bridge, the added peril only adding to his fury. The loss of his crew and his ship, and years of self-loathing, overwhelmed him now. Bathed in the planet’s crimson light, he let rage course through him.

An approaching ork took the brunt of his rage as he repeatedly shot it at point-blank range with his laspistol, venting his anger with a final kick to its bloody, gaping stomach, sending it spinning from the platform. That loss of control nearly cost him his life as one particularly stupid warrior seized the moment by leaping high into the air, intent on crushing the captain underfoot. His battle-cry turned from a shriek to a wet gurgle as a dozen lasguns neatly dissected his repulsive head from his thick body, spraying viscera over the other greenskins.

Recovering his balance and wits, Barrabas drew his sword and fought back-to-back with Abdiel against a couple of grunting orks while Eutychus helped from the side, blooding his officer’s blade for the first time.

‘Suffer not the alien to live! Stand fast in the light of the Emperor’s glory!’

Abdiel’s rage matched that of Barrabas and while three more men fell behind them on the redoubt, the withering fire continued. Good lads, thought Barrabas. Good lads. His reverie was cut short as a massive ork hand struck the side of his head, sending him reeling to the floor. He cursed himself for losing concentration once again and had it not been for the ground suddenly and violently shaking, he would have been stamped out of existence by the brute.

Two thunderclap cracks boomed, and the trickle of rock from the bridge’s underside became a torrent. With a teeth-rattling crash it finally gave way under the weight of the orks, dead and alive. Fracturing at its weakest point, the whole of the bridge’s length fell away and a countless greenskin throats screamed as they hurtled to the earth below in a shower of rocks and dirt. A thrashing black smear of banshees followed them down, ready to gorge on the rich pickings at the bottom.

The surviving men on the redoubt gave a spirited cheer which, as Barrabas struggled with a huge green hand around his throat, he felt to be premature. Repeated thrusts into the greenskin’s belly with his sword, and Eutychus’s frenzied slashing at its back, soon loosened the greenskin’s grip and, with a moan, it crashed lifelessly to the ground. As Barrabas pulled his blade free of the greenskin’s massive form, the transmitter suddenly crackled into life on the raised ridge behind.

‘Attention all survivors of salvage convoy two-three-ten. This is Captain Rale of the Genocide. We have your position and will be with you in minutes. Stand by.’

The air was torn by the scream of missiles overhead, pulping most of the remaining orks as they frantically assembled a variety of decrepit mortars to fire across the chasm. Near the ledge of the platform, Eutychus bent over in an attempt to catch his breath, retching at the stench of spilt alien innards while Abdiel stood panting behind him, smoking bolt pistol in one hand and gore-covered chainsword in the other.

‘Well, it seems you’ve claimed a famous victory here, Barrabas. Congratulations.’

There was no malice in Abdiel’s voice, no sarcasm or insinuation as he calmly walked towards the exhausted captain and levelled the pistol between his eyes, faint wisps of smoke tracking behind the charred muzzle. Eutychus looked up at Abdiel from his bent position and shook his head disbelievingly. On the redoubt, the surviving men watched anxiously.

Without taking his eyes from the barrel of the bolt pistol, Barrabas wiped his blade on his trousers, sheathed it and threw his laspistol to the ground.

‘You’ve saved us all,’ continued the commissar. ‘But I must dispense the Emperor’s justice. It’s time for you to die.’

Flicking his gaze to meet Abdiel’s, Barrabas shrugged. ‘Get on with it then.’

Abdiel’s finger tightened on the trigger, but the grim smile on his face disappeared along with the ground beneath him. Barrabas caught a glimpse of total astonishment on the commissar’s face before a crashing rumble filled the air and the edge of the platform dropped away. Eutychus pitched over a fraction of a second later. Reaching out instinctively, Eutychus’s arms fell heavily onto the newly-exposed edge of the platform but, with nothing to grab on to, he began to slide. Throwing himself forwards, Barrabas clutched at both retreating hands and felt the sinews pop in the younger man’s wrists. Despite having a good grip, the sub-lieutenant seemed very heavy and Barrabas struggled with the weight. Behind him, the captain could hear the remaining crew running to help, but the whole forward section of the rock pillar was giving way now that its precarious support from the bridge had disappeared.

‘Eutychus… Try to… pull yourself up if you can…’

Eutychus’s eyes bulged with naked panic. ‘I’ve got… Abdiel hanging on to me… He’s trying to climb–’

Sure enough, Barrabas could hear the breathless, cursing voice of the old man as he wildly tried to pull himself up Eutychus’s shaking body. All three slid forwards, dragging Barrabas until his arms dangled over the crumbling ledge, taking the full weight of Eutychus and Abdiel. He couldn’t hold on much longer and shouted in desperation.

‘Abdiel, you’re going to kill us all! Let go, man!’

‘I… am the Emperor’s servant… the… architect of His wrath…’

The old man’s free hand shook with the effort of pulling up the bolt pistol, levelling it at Barrabas. The captain wasn’t looking, distracted by a fast-moving shape in the sky. It swooped downwards like a dart then, metres away from the dangling shapes, unfolded its wings and thrust out its talons. The bony points punctured Abdiel’s arm and side, punching through his chest plate and violently jolting him free of Eutychus. Carried up and away in a graceful curve, Abdiel fired into the creature, which abruptly released its grip. The commissar’s fading scream ended abruptly and the banshee took its time to descend, safe in the knowledge that its feast was ready to devour on the ground.

Barrabas desperately heaved Eutychus over the ledge and the two staggered upwards towards the rocky rear and the waiting survivors as large sections of the platform randomly dropped out of sight. The entire column pitched forwards violently as it disintegrated below them, but the noise was drowned out by the sudden roar of engines directly above and the hot wash of exhaust fumes from two Valkyries, their cargo hatches open and hovering as close to the surface as the pilots dared. The men threw themselves inside the ships while Barrabas pushed Eutychus up the nearest ramp just as the ground rose, clanging on the drop-ship’s underside. With all the strength he could muster, Barrabas leaped into the grasping hands of his crew and the column crashed spectacularly downwards, burying Abdiel, the orks and Barrabas’s redoubt under tonnes of rock and dirt.

As the drop-ship climbed steeply, Barrabas looked down through the open hatchway at the teeming orks who bellowed furiously up at them. Eutychus and the other survivors breathed heavily, nursing their wounds. They had an air about them that he hadn’t seen for the longest time, one of achievement, of victory. But at what cost?

Eutychus stared at his boots with fixed, dark eyes, a new, grim set to his jaw that signalled the end of the man’s youthful verve and optimism. Many of the crew had told him that in the Emperor’s service, there was only war, and now he knew it to be true. Looking to the others, the sheer scale of it all knotted the aching muscles in Barrabas’s stomach and he quickly turned his gaze back to the exposed hatch, the loss of his ship and crew sweeping over him like a wave.

Breaking cloud cover and banking to port, the Valkyrie’s compartment was flooded with scarlet sunlight just as the heavy metal door began to close, bathing them in brilliance for a few seconds, chasing away the shadows and immediately lifting his soul. The gleaming sun gave him a different perspective. Against all the odds, Jahath Barrabas had won. Glory was his, but far more important was the restoration of his self-belief, of honour for himself and his family. He’d struggled and fought to get off his belly and out of the shadows, to bathe in the light. Now he and his men could stand tall, radiant in the glow of their beloved Emperor.

Barrabas smiled.

THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN

David Guymer

From now on, Siskritt intended to do as he was told. No more, no less. He cowered beneath the table as the slaughter raged around him. Trembling, he risked a peek through the cage of his own claws. The room resembled the aftermath of a stampede: tables and chairs had been smashed to kindling and the floor rushes were thick with the blood of countless corpses, both skaven and man-thing.

Heedless of the carpet of carrion, the melee swirled on through the same dense smoke that seared Siskritt’s snout. The roar of warpfire flooded his ears as the tavern’s frontage burned, fingers of green-black flame licking hungrily at the beamed ceiling, casting the whole orgy of bloodshed in an unearthly glare and exciting his whiskers with the tang of warpstone.

A sudden crash above his head made him jump and he bit down hard on the pommel stone of his shiny new sword to keep from yelping out loud in terror. A dirty, gold-furred arm fell across his view, the battered wooden shield it bore sliding free and rolling to a halt at his feet. The Horned One’s sigil stared into him. Silently, he screamed into the precious stone. It was a sign. He was going to die here.

Unconsciously, his paw moved to the talisman around his neck.

It had been worth it, whatever happened. The talisman belonged to him now. It would protect him. The horrors of the room seemed to fade as the talisman’s magic seeped through his fur and flesh, flowing lazily up his arms and filling his mind with calm thoughts. He closed his eyes and could almost hear its whispering voice, reassuring him, encouraging him.

He pulled the sword from his mouth and regarded the gleaming blade. This was ridiculous, now that he thought about it. It was just one dwarf.

Siskritt snarled, shaking his head as the moment passed. This was not just any dwarf: it was like a warpstone-powered engine of death.

The dwarf tore its axe from the belly of another skaven, its momentum carrying it through a low spin to take the legs from the next. An iron-shod boot across the struggling warrior’s windpipe put an end to his suffering.

Siskritt watched as the dwarf took advantage of the momentary lull to wipe skaven blood from its good eye.

In the far corner of the tavern, the few surviving man-things still hung on. Backs to the wall and side-by-side, they fought a losing battle against the endless tide.

The dwarf hefted its axe with a sneer. It opened its mouth to speak and, though Siskritt could not make out every word, its joyful belligerence was plain to see. It hurled challenges at the swarming clanrats, cursing their cowardice as the axe bit deeply into their wiry bodies. In a furious panic, skaven warriors turned swords and teeth upon one another, but there was nowhere left to run. With a final roar of laughter, the dwarf barrelled forwards, tossing the survivors aside like grass. It burst through the press of furred bodies, bellowing a war cry as it swung its axe for a warrior that knelt across a prone man-thing on the rush-covered floor.

The skaven sprayed the struggling man-thing’s grimy red cloak with fear-musk and hurriedly raised his blade in defence, but the dwarf’s axe clove the rusted weapon in two like rotten matchwood. The tip skittered off into the darkness as the rune-encrusted axe buried itself in the skaven’s skull.

The man-thing heaved the dead skaven away and clambered upright, suddenly wracked by a fit of coughing as it drew in a lungful of the acrid smoke. Siskritt could not clearly see its face through the haze, but the man-thing was tall, and its armour writhed with green shapes reflected from the spreading warpfire. He recognised it as the dwarf-thing’s companion, Feelicks. The man-thing gabbled something in Reikspiel, but the dwarf merely laughed as it sent another warrior flying with a swipe of its bare fist.

It spoke slowly, in the usual manner of the dwarfs, but Siskritt still struggled to puzzle out their conversation. He cursed bitterly as the exchange passed over his head.

A shrill note from the doorway grabbed the man-thing’s attention as a fresh wave of skaven warriors spilled through the blazing portal. Charging ahead of the rest, a wicked halberd held high in both paws, was a massive, black-furred brute in armour the colour of malachite, a challenge shrieking from his throat.

The dwarf grinned. Its man-thing friend sagged.

Siskritt leapt from his hiding place, sword in paw. He was saved. Nobody was stronger than Krizzak. He rushed to join the battle, already picturing how the grateful chieftain would reward his bravery.

The dwarf lumbered forwards to meet Krizzak’s mighty charge, swinging its axe in a killing arc. At the last instant the giant skaven checked his run and the axe instead tore out the ribcage from one of his more slow-witted brethren. Taking advantage of the mis-strike, Krizzak threw his weight against the dwarf, pinning its weapon and burying his teeth into its neck.

The dwarf bellowed like an enraged bull, and with a strength that defied reason, it ripped the skaven’s jaws clear with its free hand. The dwarf compressed its grip around the huge skaven’s throat, and Krizzak thrashed and squealed – a pathetic, mewling sound that seemed unreal coming from the jaws of the giant warrior – and sank his claws deeply into the dwarf’s bicep. Blood ran freely down the dwarf’s arm, but its hold didn’t loosen. Instead, the dwarf roared and hauled down hard, smashing the skaven’s snout with a brutal headbutt, splattering its own tattooed hide with its foe’s blood and sputum. Krizzak staggered back a pace, shaking his head to clear it before the dwarf’s axe parted it from his shoulders.

Too late, Siskritt realised he was alone, and face-to-face with a monstrosity: the vivid orange mohawk, the skaven gore smeared across the fearsome patterns on its brutish face, the axe wielded with unnatural strength that dripped with the still-warm blood of his kin. He sprayed himself with fear scent.

A faint tinkling skirted the boundaries of his perception, vaguely registering as the sound of his sword clattering to the floor from his trembling fingers.

He was thrown back into his senses by a body bowling into him. He looked up into a familiar face twisted with fear.

‘Crassik?’ he squeaked in surprise. With no time for any further thought, he spun his litter-brother around and shoved him into the dwarf’s path. ‘Fight, Crassik-brother. Kill-kill!’

Whirling away, Siskritt dashed for freedom. He had only to make it to the cellar and from there he could easily lose the dwarf in the tunnels. The cellar, he thought with black despair, why had he not just stayed down in that cellar?

Siskritt stumbled through the shattered furniture away from the rampaging dwarf. Frantically he threw his gaze left and right but could see nothing through the smoke. He forced himself to be calm. Yes! The cellar was to his right; even through the fire he could detect the rancid ale smell. He dashed in that direction, vaulting the bar, only to blunder straight into the man-thing Feelicks. This time he saw its frightful face, blackened with ash and its pale hair pasted to the skin with spatters of blood.

Only their mutual surprise spared Siskritt’s life.

His paws twitched instinctively for his weapon, but too late he recalled how he had dropped it. The man-thing’s eyes widened, and it raised its sword above its head for the killing blow.

Siskritt scrunched his eyes tight and waited for death.

The talisman vibrated on its chain, a muffled bell tolling inside his skull, and for an instant he was enveloped by an incandescent shield of light. The man-thing cried out in alarm as the sword was wrenched from its grip and fired into the ceiling like a missile from a bolt thrower.

Hesitantly, expecting his head to split like a cracked nut if he moved too hastily, Siskritt opened one eye. The man-thing’s sword was buried to the hilt in the rough wooden beams, the owner’s knuckles whitening around the grip as its feet kicked ineffectually at the empty air, trying to turn its own weight and straining muscles to tug the weapon free.

Siskritt tittered and scooped up a fallen blade. It wasn’t his nice new one, but there’d be other swords. The man-thing dropped to the floor empty-handed and spun into a fighting crouch in front of him, raising its fists as he approached. Siskritt rejoiced. Just one unarmed man-thing and he would be free!

Suddenly the man-thing relaxed, a smile splitting its ugly face. Siskritt’s nose twitched at this puzzling behaviour, but the heavy footsteps behind him sent cold dread marching up his spine, scattering all thoughts of the man-thing in its wake.

He spun on his heel as the dwarf approached.

The fighting was over. His kin were all gone and the tavern was a dead place. The only sounds that remained were the crackling of the wooden structure as it was consumed by warpfire, the heaving breaths of the man-thing, and the footfalls of the dwarf that seemed to echo the frantic hammering of his own heart.

‘You!’ he hissed in broken Reikspiel. ‘How you still live-breathe?’

The dwarf raised its axe. ‘Because nothing has killed me yet.’

Siskritt snarled. His talisman would spare him. He lived with the Horned One’s blessing. He sprang forwards, ducking under the dwarf’s swing to stab at its belly. The dwarf swatted aside the flat of his blade on its wrist and, with a deftness of foot that would not have been misplaced on an Eshin assassin, shifted its balance to bring the axe backhanded between Siskritt’s shoulder blades.

As it had before, the talisman flared into life. It caught the axe in mid-swing.

The dwarf roared as the talisman held its weapon in a supernatural grip, the axe’s runes glowing hot as it burrowed into the flickering barrier. The talisman’s song became a scream, filling Siskritt’s ears with pain. Just as he felt he could endure no more, the light fled before the dwarf’s axe, drawing back into the talisman and leaving him deafened and in darkness. He stared at it in disbelief as the dwarf’s axe punched into his spine.

His sword slithered free from nerveless paws and he sank to his knees, crumpling over onto his side. His face struck the floor but he barely felt it, his nose filling with the scent of blood, wood dust and mouldering straw.

The talisman lay before him, amidst the corpses, as far away as its chain would allow, almost as though it were trying to escape him. Siskritt tried to stretch out a paw to reclaim it but his arms no longer obeyed. Sound and colour bled from his world as his vision closed in around the talisman.

Why had it left him? Why could he no longer hear its whispering voice? Why had it betrayed its new master at the moment of his greatest need?

It was the last thing he saw as the darkness claimed him.

Siskritt watched his litter-brother work as the blood ran in tiny rivulets between the flagstones, relishing the fleeting warmth as it moved languidly between his toes. Drawing his sword, he padded over to where the dead man-thing lay, the notched and rusted weapon reflecting nothing of the cellar’s dim torchlight.

He prodded the corpse with the blunted tip of his blade. ‘Fool! Can’t you see, is not the one!’

Crassik sniffed. ‘You sure, Siskritt-brother? Man-things look all same-same to me.’

Siskritt snarled, treasured notions of skaven supremacy offended by his litter-brother’s slack-jawed idiocy. ‘This one doesn’t have it. Is just a child-thing. Look how small it is! And is too pale. The man-things of Tilea have darker hides. You spend more time watching man-things back home, then you not be so stupid-slow.’

He sighed. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that their target should fall so invitingly into their lap; Siskritt had never been overly burdened with the Horned One’s favour.

Vaguely, he realised his litter-brother was still speaking.

‘We must be going-gone. Lesskreep kill-feed for rats if missed.’

‘Fool!’ Siskritt resisted the impulse to lash out. Crassik was nearly twice his size, and not too beholden to his litter-brother’s wits to administer a beating of his own. ‘None will miss us. Who will miss two from so many? None. None will care.’

‘But–’

‘Graaah!’ With a cry of exasperation, Siskritt ignored his better judgement and cuffed the other skaven across the snout. ‘Sneak into man-thing town is what Lesskreep said, and sneak-sneak is what we do. If no other skaven knows this tunnel then is because they are not half so smart as Siskritt. Lesskreep will be pleased.’

And besides, he thought, when he found this man-thing merchant, this Ambrosio Vento, and took the talisman it wore for himself, maybe he would feed Lesskreep to the rats instead…

Siskritt chewed his weapon nervously. If any of that was going to happen, then it had to happen soon. At best, he had an hour before the attack began. When that happened, his opportunity would be lost and the Tilean’s talisman would be looted from its corpse as a pretty bauble by whoever found it first and was strong enough to keep it longest.

And that, Siskritt acknowledged, would not be him.

He returned his attention to the immediate problem, looking up at the ominous portal to the surface world. For so foreboding a thing it was a simple affair: plain and pale-coloured, raised about the height of a man from the floor, and accessible by a half-dozen roughly hewn stone steps. Giant barrels loomed in the shadows on either side like leering trolls as he padded silently towards the steps. A man-thing might have been given pause, but Siskritt was born to darkness.

He pressed his muzzle to the door and listened.

His hearing was exceptional, even by the standards of his own race. He could pick up the strains of several man-thing voices, but they were distant and his grasp of Reikspiel far too rudimentary to pick out one voice amongst so many. He stayed a moment longer, the scent of the damp wood filling his nostrils, until at last he was satisfied he could open the door in safety.

He returned his attention to Crassik. ‘You watch-see, you watch-guard. Understand? You pay attention. I go see. Anyone comes in here you kill-kill. Be quiet.’ He gestured at the dead man-thing. ‘And no eat-eat. You pay attention. You listen for me. I call, you come run-quick. Understand?’

Crassik said nothing, preferring to stare sullenly at his own paws. Siskritt smirked. His litter-brother didn’t want Siskritt to have the talisman for himself, but Siskritt was in charge, and Crassik far too big and stupid to help him steal it. Too bad for Crassik.

‘Understand?’ he repeated.

‘I watch tunnel. Come run quick-quick. I understand.’

Siskritt took a deep, steadying breath, cracked open the door, and scuttled hesitantly into the light.

It was blinding. And terrifying.

With trembling paws, Siskritt clung to the door frame, reassuring himself that escape was possible at any time. Gradually, the white glare began to fade and a vision of a smoothly cut, upward sloping stone passageway came into focus. A high-pitched squeak, well beyond the range of feeble man-thing ears, escaped his lips.

It was strange, he thought, to be so fearful of walking amongst the man-things. He had spent many nights crouched in the shadows of Sartosa, ever alert for even the most meagre of opportunities for his own advancement. But the Tilean port city was a warren of bolt holes and hiding places from years of discreet skaven exploration, and Siskritt knew every inch of it better than the scratches on his own claws. Even now, after many weeks’ absence, he could picture its close, densely shadowed alleys, filled with the detritus of a city awash with poverty and prosperity in equal measure.

Feeling emboldened by thoughts of home, he managed to slide one foot-paw forwards. He winced slightly, half expecting his leg to be burned from his body by the unfamiliar environment. When it was not, he felt his courage return like a rising tide. He flitted along the passageway’s upward incline, moth-like, towards the second doorway, cowering beneath the open frame to peer at the man-things beyond.

He supposed it was some kind of common room, typical the world over of all man-thing buildings of similar function, no doubt: wide, straw-covered floor; high ceiling supported by sagging beams and joists; a score of rectangular tables and short stools littering the floor space; and a long bar opposite the doorway.

The room was near deserted. His sharp eyes counted no more than a dozen men: the old, the sick and the crippled. Their conversations were muted, and their eyes were dead inside haunted faces. Siskritt cared not for their fears.

Upon their first arrival in the Badlands, the clan had stirred up the local orc-thing tribes who had gone on to burn a swathe through this barren corner of the Old World. It had been the grey seer’s plan and Siskritt couldn’t help but admire the old skaven’s cleverness, even though the merest thought of the grey-furred rat set loose the fear of the Horned One himself in his soul. At the cost of a few hundred clan warriors, the seer had unleashed a horde of the orcs into the man-thing territories, and even now most of those of an age to fight were somewhere out in the Badlands hoping to repel the supposed marauders. And while orc and man-thing slaughtered each other in the fields, Siskritt and his kin would rise up to claim what remained.

Siskritt peeked out from the doorway and behind the length of the bar, pulling his head back to relative safety with all the speed of a serpent’s flickering tongue. He snarled silently, nibbling at his dulled sword blade in consternation.

The bar was just a single stretch of plain wood with nothing at either end. It could give him a clear and concealed run across the common room, and to the stairway he had glimpsed at its opposite end. Were it not, that was, for the fat man-thing standing squarely in the way as though placed there by the Horned One himself as some wicked taunt. Siskritt bit down hard on the metal as he took another, more measured, look.

Tasting iron on his lips, he withdrew his sword and hefted it thoughtfully. These men were on the very brink of madness after months of war against the orc-things, their soft minds ready to snap, to be sure. Catching the fat one unawares, Siskritt could kill it easily and swiftly – both things he liked – and he suspected there was a good chance that these others would not come willingly to its aid. He could be gone and away before anyone caught a glimpse of him. A good chance…

But not good enough a chance for Siskritt. He liked to deal in certainties. Anything less left a chance for error, and when the cost of failure was so high…

Well, what in this world could be more valuable than his own life?

Not for the first time that day, he cursed the haste he’d been forced into. He didn’t like it. It made his fur crawl and his tail itch. Every sound and shadow sent his heart into his mouth. As if skaven lives were not already too short! He didn’t understand the rush, and that bothered him. What bothered him much more was the danger that that entailed for him. Damn that stupid grey seer, and damn Hellpaw too! Siskritt didn’t understand how someone as big and frightening as the warlord could be pushed around by anyone, even the insidious Thanquol.

He shivered. He had met the grey seer just once, and then only briefly, for he had felt a sudden urge to be anywhere but in that infamous skaven’s presence.

What was Thanquol after? He’d have given anything to find out. He shivered again, and changed his mind. He really didn’t want to know.

He gnawed upon his blade to keep his fear in check and chanced another look along the bar. The fat man-thing was lost in conversation, but he could neither see to whom he was speaking nor understand the words he uttered. Nor did he much care. All he could see was a few inches of bright orange hair flaring up from behind the bar. Yet another child-thing; this place seemed infested with them.

Riven with indecision, he hopped back and forth, one foot to the next, expelling some of the anxious energy that was bubbling up inside him. He had come too far, risked too much, to be thwarted at the last by… by a… a stupid, fat man-thing.

His racing thoughts were disturbed by a distant scream from somewhere outside the tavern. His ears pricked up, though none of the man-things seemed to notice. As if the first had been some kind of signal, the strains of pained and frightened man-thing voices started rising from all across the town, merging together with the sound of slamming doors and of weapons being drawn. It was a cacophony that was most pleasing to Siskritt.

At last, the noise reached the weak ears of the man-things. They raised wrinkled faces from their cups and muttered to each other fearfully. Siskritt found most of what was spoken incomprehensible, but one word stood out, a word that was common to all lands and languages of men throughout the world.

Orcs.

He couldn’t help but smirk. Yes man-things, he thought, turn to face the orc-thing that isn’t there, and die with a skaven sword in your back. It was at times such as this that the sheer magnificence of the skaven intellect simply demanded to be recognised.

Muffled noises filtered through the sturdy walls of the tavern: confused shouts, screams, the pounding of running boots on cobbles, and the dull clamour of steel on steel.

The men shuffled nervously from the doorway and towards the bar, perilously close to where Siskritt lay hidden. For a moment he feared that man-thing soldiers would come bursting in, but such fears were instantly scattered by the roar of an explosion, close enough to rattle the door in its hinges and bring clouds of dust and grime streaming from the rafters, sending the man-things into fits of coughing. He flinched momentarily, but gripped the wooden frame tightly to steel his nerve.

The fat man-thing cursed in words Siskritt did not know, before reaching behind it to a spot on the wall that was hidden from Siskritt’s view and plucking a giant war hammer from a sconce. Siskritt gulped to see the ease with which the silver-haired man-thing hefted the massive weapon, seeing for the first time the broad shoulders and powerful muscles that had lain hidden beneath thick rolls of fat. A former adventurer settled down for retirement, no doubt. He should’ve suspected as much. In many ways life in the Badlands bore similarity to life in the clans: only the strongest could survive and thrive.

Again, he cursed the enforced haste. If he could have had just one day to scout the tavern…

The innkeeper strode across the room with a calm authority, its hammer glowing with an inner power. Finally the fat one neared the door, squat and suddenly forbidding as if it were a portal to the Chaos Wastes themselves. Before it could lay hands upon the handle, a voice spoke out. Its words were in slow, deliberate Reikspiel, and Siskritt could just about make them out.

‘I wouldn’t open that door just yet, manling.’

The speaker strode from where it had been hidden behind the bar. The enormous orange mohawk came into view like the sails of a smuggler’s ship rounding the horizon, followed by the muscular, heavily tattooed shoulders of a dwarf Slayer.

The fat one turned to the dwarf to say something that seemed to Siskritt to be quite innocuous, but the dwarf spat back a venomous reply that was far too quick for him to follow. The man-thing dropped its eyes and raised an empty palm in surrender, and spoke again, this time more softly.

Siskritt cursed the man-things and their pointless plethora of languages and dialects. He would gladly have traded a paw to know what it was they were saying.

The dwarf cast the innkeeper a glance before returning his stare to the doorway. The man-thing towered above him, but the dwarf had an aura that dominated the room. Even Siskritt felt himself hanging on his next words. ‘I don’t know, manling. I’m just looking forward to killing it.’

Siskritt snickered. Foolish dwarf-man, no orc-things for you this day.

Taking one last look, he scurried behind the protection of the bar and dashed with silent haste to its far end. It was only a short hop from the bar to the shelter of the stairway. His ears twitched as the sounds of battle drifted closer.

A green-black glow was streaming through the cracks in the door, accompanied by the murderous crackle of warpfire, bathing the man-things in a ghastly light. The air was practically fizzing with warpstone ash. There was a brief struggle in the street outside: shouts, screams, shrill squeaks, and metal sliding though meat. The door rattled angrily, as though something soft and heavy had just been thrown against it. The wail of a man-thing melted into a gurgle and, by its silhouette, Siskritt saw it slump against the outside of the door.

Suddenly, it was as though a spell of quietude had been broken.

The fat one began bellowing orders and the man-things snapped into life. Tables and chairs were dragged into a crude barricade, while those that had them readied their weapons. Siskritt picked out ridiculous names called between the man-things: Roodolf, Gunter, Holegur, Feelicks. The one named Roodolf hurried for the cellar door, fumbling with a heavy iron ring of keys.

The sense of entrapment closed in upon him like claws around his throat. Between the rising barricade and the man-thing Roodolf, there was no way out. Panic rose in him as Roodolf drew closer and closer.

Grah! Now or never!

Half running, half crawling, he scrambled across the straw covered boards and behind the thin wall of stone that partitioned the stairway from the common room. He came gasping to a halt on the first step as he waited for his panicked heart to slow. Silently, he promised himself he would never ever do anything like this again.

He glanced back around the wall just in time to watch the man-thing disappear down into the cellar. For a short moment he thought of Crassik; he would not grieve for the idiot, but the sudden feeling of isolation wormed its way through his veins. He was alone, trapped in the lair of the man-things!

He took a deep breath, and though the air was thick with man-thing fear, he felt calmer. Crassik or no Crassik, he had always been alone. One Siskritt amidst a hundred thousand less deserving skaven. He ignored the shouts and noises of the busy man-things and returned his attention to the task in hand. The talisman was so close now he could almost feel its weight around his neck.

The stairway was short. He counted ten bare wooden treads leading up to the building’s second level, but they were widely spaced, more suitable for the long stride of a man-thing than for Siskritt’s short legs. He leapt delicately from one step to the next, taking great care to land silently, though he doubted the sound of a creaking board would carry far above the excited chittering of a thousand clanrat warriors closing in on an easy kill.

The upper floor was better kept than the lower. A wide, carpeted hallway stretched ahead of him, its stained and faded patterns barely visible after years of wear. To the left was an evenly spaced trio of low, recessed doorways leading to the guest rooms, each one carved with the likeness of a different fantastical beast. He could not quite discern the carvings on the further two, but the nearest door carried a rendering of a three-headed chimera, sufficiently lifelike to make him squeak out in alarm when he rounded the corner to find it six inches away and glaring into his face.

The wall to the right was broken by several wide and intricately leaded windows, and the view beyond was one to warm the heart of any skaven.

The city burned.

Half of the skyline was alight, with pockets of green-tinged flame in hotspots throughout the city. Siskritt’s heart swelled at the inherent greatness of his race. Let the foolish man-things sit behind their walls and battlements. How useless they were in the face of skaven cunning. He watched as another explosion carried the roof from a nearby building, its walls bursting like overripe fruit to be consumed by the warpstone-fuelled fires.

The flames painted the hall with an eerie green light through the windows, as though Siskritt himself swam in molten warpstone, trapped behind glass for the amusement of some half-crazed Clan Skryre warlock.

He was dragged from his reverie by a sound from further along the hallway, and he dived through the chimera door just as a pair of armed men clattered past him and down the stairs. From the furthest doorway a voice yelled after them in the Tilean tongue that Siskritt knew well.

‘I’m the one that pays you, you ungrateful dogs! Not this excuse for a city!’

For a few moments, Siskritt could hear the man-thing still hanging upon the threshold as if fully expecting its minions to return.

‘Fine then! Die together, all of you!’

The door slammed closed and Siskritt grinned to be the beneficiary of such unlikely luck. Listening to his prey’s former bodyguards lending their efforts to the man-things below, Siskritt mouthed a silent thanks to the munificence of the Horned One.

He spared a glance over the empty, unmade chimera room. The eldritch warplight from outside cast long shadows that flickered and danced across the walls and ceiling. Even in this state, the room smacked of human luxuries he could only imagine… But one day soon he would have all of this, and more. He squeezed his eyes tight with pleasure at the prospect. His paw closed over his chest where his talisman might soon rest. Yes, he would have all this and much more besides.

He crept back into the hallway, reassuring himself that the Tilean’s guards were fully occupied downstairs and would not be returning any time soon. Satisfied, he moved lightly past the second guestroom – a manticore, he thought – and around a long table towards the third.

Suddenly, a low rumble vibrated its way up through his feet. He stared out of the window in horror as the tall building across the street subsided into an evidently ill-judged skaven tunnel, burying hundreds of panicked clanrats as they swarmed clear. Broken tiles tumbled from its roof and peppered the rough stucco walls of the inn. As realisation finally dawned, Siskritt rolled under the table just as the tiles from the building’s elevated garret smashed through the windows, showering the hall with glass and heavy lengths of gritty lead that thundered against his scant cover. Rolling into a ball, he buried his face in his fur until the scraping of settling rubble and the thin cries of buried skaven told him the barrage had ceased.

Timidly, he unblocked his ears and poked his snout from his hiding place. The sounds of slaughter came clearly now through the voided windows, the wind laced with screams and heavy with the scent of smoke and burning flesh. He took a sniff, but he could smell little beyond his own blood, welling up where a sliver of glass had lacerated the soft flesh of his nose. Squeaking alarm, he squashed his bloodied snout beneath the tattered sleeve of his tunic.

The last wisps of courage fled his body with the blood from his precious nose and he scampered clear of the table, blind to everything but the instinct to escape. He collided headlong into a wall, collapsing tail-over-head into a heap before righting himself in a blur of blood and fur. Witless with panic, he trembled in the shadow of the wall, catching short rapid gasps of the charnel house air. Slowly, his nerve returned and he gingerly pulled his sleeve from his face. He gave his nose a tentative dab with the cleaner – relatively speaking – side and almost fainted with relief when it came away bloodless.

He gave the cloth an experimental sniff. Blood, dirt, faeces. All of the familiar smells.

Using the window ledge for support, he pulled himself upright, tiny slivers of glass twinkling from his fur in the fiery green glow, and peered down into what remained of the street below.

The man-thing city was overrun. The sounds of fighting continued in more distant quarters, but here clanrat hordes flowed through the thoroughfares like high-tide in the Sartosa marina, and the only sounds to punctuate their excited chittering were the cries for mercy of the nearly dead.

Everywhere, he could see skaven warriors spilling from open doorways carrying looted treasures and man-things: the living, the dead, and the half-consumed. The inn itself seemed to have checked their advance, a lone bulwark placed in the path of an unstoppable tide. One particularly creative skaven had fashioned a battering ram from an abandoned cart and was attempting to smash through to the last pocket of defenders within. Siskritt watched with detached disdain as the impromptu siege engine fell apart under the pressure without having made a dent in the heavy doors.

Fools. Someone would pay for that failure. Siskritt could have done better.

True enough, some poor unfortunate – whether the guilty party or no – had already been run through by one of his nearest compatriots, and a maddened brawl broke out before normality was restored by a high-pitched barrage of threats and bluster from a larger rat in the muddied green armour of the clan.

As Siskritt watched this minor sideshow unfold, the excitement in the street had quite palpably turned up a notch. Scanning the crowd, he could just about discern a huge black-furred skaven arriving from a side street.

It was Krizzak, Hellpaw’s feared lieutenant and second in command of the whole clan. He and his stormvermin elite were shoving a path through their lesser brethren, while a group of smaller figures trailed behind in his wake, clutching an unlikely array of machinery in their paws.

Siskritt’s nose twitched.

Lubricant… accelerant… a cocktail of chemicals he couldn’t begin to identify but had learned, through hard experience, to recognise a mile away. The delicious taint of warpstone reached his nostrils with bleak inevitability.

Warpfire thrower!

‘No, no, no. Now-now Siskritt, before whole wretched man-thing place comes down!’

He turned to face the final door, carved into the features of some kind of a feathered monster. A griffon… Or possibly a cockatrice? He didn’t care. It was nothing but the final obstacle between himself and the first step on his path to greatness. His fur tingled.

Drawing his sword, he kicked at the door with a snarl. Once. Twice.

On the third kick the lock gave and the door burst inwards. He charged through, experiencing a bravado that came only through an immediate sense of absolute mortal terror, his blade held before him as though he had a rabid plague rat by the tail.

At that exact moment, the side wall of the tavern was wreathed in a great gout of warpfire from the crew below. The surviving windows exploded inwards as fiery tendrils licked at the beams and plasterwork. Siskritt screeched in terror as he was hurled from his feet and into the room on billowing wings of unholy flame.

The Tilean merchant threw itself to the floor and wailed as Siskritt descended upon it, wreathed in a halo of green-black fire. A pewter goblet it had been clutching fell from its fingers, the blood-red contents already spilled over its silken finery.

Ignoring the stupid man-thing entirely, Siskritt hissed and snarled as he swatted out small fires in his fur and clothing, his tail spinning an intricate spider’s web of afterimages as its flickering tip lashed through the air. His wild eyes darted about the room seeking some means of escape…

But then they settled upon the talisman.

He caught his breath and his eyes narrowed, terror at once overcome by a fierce, jealous avarice. It was here. It would be his!

With wisps of smoke rising from his warpfire-scorched fur, he advanced towards the snivelling man-thing, crushing the fallen goblet beneath his paws as it scrambled backwards. He was invincible. I am Siskritt, fearsome and great, scourge of the man-things, and soon-to-be favoured of the Horned Rat!

The man-thing, who Siskritt knew was called Ambrosio, retreated until it sank into the corner, its eyes dilated with fear and its face slack with incomprehension. Siskritt had little sympathy as he closed the distance between them with short, quick steps. Despite all the evidence before their flabby noses, the man-things continued to refute the very existence of the skaven.

A Tilean of all people, dwelling in the shadow of Skavenblight itself, should know better.

‘W-wh… what…’ The man-thing cowered like a monkey cornered by a bird of prey. It might be better dressed than a monkey, it might be taller, but its flapping lips gabbled no less gibberish.

‘Quiet, man-thing. Be silent-still.’

‘Y-you speak Tilean! Are you a daemon sent to punish me?’

Siskritt responded with a burst of chittering laughter. ‘Yes-yes. I’m a daemon of… of… man-thing gods. Give me talisman and I’ll go away-gone.’

He held out an expectant paw. He hoped the man-thing didn’t notice how it trembled. He hoped the man-thing’s weak nose couldn’t smell his fear scent.

The man-thing started to weep, tears scouring twin trails over its sand-worn cheeks. Ambrosio folded down to grovel at Siskritt’s feet, either uncaring or blindly unaware of the man-thing blood that was congealed there, spongy and soft like jelly.

Siskritt cocked his head in bafflement as the man-thing began to babble a litany of supposed sins for which it was, of course, wholly repentant. The whole spectacle might have been amusing were he not so pressed for time. His back blistered in the terrible heat, and alarming groans of tortured wooden beams spread through the building. Not far below his feet, he heard the solid doors of the tavern collapse.

There would have been no need for orders. The weight of warriors filling the street would be pushing the nearest skaven through the hanging curtain of cinders and into the inn where the frightened man-things waited. The first dozen might die in agony, stepping in molten metal, fur set alight by dancing flames. Already, the frantic screams of skaven and man-thing were echoing through the smoky corridors like the unquiet spirits of the damned. Ambrosio snivelled on the carpeted floor as the sounds of chaos and carnage grew.

It was only through an effort of great will that Siskritt did not snivel right alongside the man-thing. He held his paw outstretched. ‘The talisman, man-thing! Hurry-Hurry.’

‘M-my talisman? Of course. It belonged to a man I sold as a slave. Am I being punished for that sin? If I buy back his freedom, will I be allowed to live?’

‘Yes-yes, man-thing will live! Just give talisman quick-quick or foolish man-thing die!’

Fingers sticky with sweat, Ambrosio yanked at the chain about its neck, the links tearing at its straggly beard in its haste to see the item removed. It pressed the talisman eagerly into Siskritt’s paws as though relieving itself of a curse from the gods.

Siskritt beamed with delight. In a way, it was.

His gaze settled on the talisman in his paws as though pulled by a puppeteer’s strings. The chaos of battle ebbed away as the talisman held his full attention. Long seconds passed with only the sound of his own breathing and, if he closed his eyes, the faintest whispering inside his mind, congratulating him on being such a clever skaven. So much work, so much risk, so much planning, and now it was his. Lovingly, he traced his claws across its surface.

The talisman was jet black within a latticework of platinum and a long silver chain. Even were it not magical, this pendant could doubtless have bought him his own clan. But magic it was; Siskritt could feel it. It felt unnaturally heavy in his paw given its size, and it had a presence, as though it was regarding him in return.

He pushed the eeriness aside and popped the chain around his neck, the talisman falling to rest against his thighs.

He felt strong. The man-thing had kept the talisman hidden beneath his silks, but Siskritt let it hang over his rags with pride. Let the others know I am a skaven to be reckoned with!

Ambrosio sank to one knee, having seemingly travelled through the veil of madness and well beyond the other side. ‘I have served you, servant of the gods. Will you keep your promise to me? Will you permit me to live?’

Siskritt shuffled forwards and reached down for the sword in the man-thing’s hand. The merchant released its grip willingly. Siskritt held the blade in his admiring hand. It was a long and beautiful weapon, double-edged with a cruciform hilt and tapered to a wicked point that drew blood when he laid his finger upon it. Elegant lettering traced the length of the blade from tip to hilt. He recognised the curling Arabyan script, but he could no more read it than he could this man-thing’s mind.

It was a fine weapon indeed.

Siskritt looked up at Ambrosio. ‘Of course I help, man-thing. You help-help, I help-help.’

The merchant followed him out into the hallway, but it paused at the shattered windows. The wind was angry and its breath was hot with fiery green cinders, roasted meat, and blood: always the pervasive iron whisper on the tongue, of blood.

Ambrosio was aghast. ‘What has happened here? Have I brought this terror upon them all?’

‘Quiet now, man-thing. I say Siskritt will help you.’

The street was largely empty, barring a few hold-outs that had successfully avoided the fighting. The whole frontage of the building was alight with warpfire, and even just standing here at the window was uncomfortably akin to being strung above some hungry giant’s fireplace.

Silently, Siskritt crept up behind Ambrosio. Jumping up from one leg, he planted a firm kick with the other into the merchant’s back. Had it been further from the window it might not have fallen, but its clumsy feet caught on the base of the wall and tipped it over the edge, its silks flapping madly in the rising heat as it pitched forwards with an undignified yelp. The man-thing disappeared into the flames before it had even a chance to scream.

An ominous groan from the floorboards beneath the steaming carpet sent Siskritt scurrying for the stairwell. Somehow, the fighting downstairs raged on and he could hear the booming war cry of the crazed dwarf rallying the survivors for a final stand. Siskritt drew his enchanting new weapon and waited for the right moment to join in the fray. He was injured and bloodied: no one could claim that he hadn’t been present all along.

He fondled his talisman and grinned; a smile filled with wicked, yellowing teeth. He could almost taste the greatness that would soon be his. Lesskreep, Krazzik, Hellpaw, and yes, even Thanquol. They would all recognise his power.

He flew down the stairs like a shadow to rejoin his victorious brethren.

Gotrek spared his companion a glance before walking over to where the last ratman lay. He pulled his axe free from the dead creature’s spine, the blade coming loose with a wet squeal of bone and a small gout of dark blood. Almost as an afterthought, he stamped down on the pathetic creature’s little trinket, grinding the black shards into dust beneath his boot.

He scanned the room, looking for more enemies but, disappointingly, there appeared to be none left alive.

Felix came up behind him, hacking and wheezing in the smoke. ‘Now, may we leave? Or are you going to insist on having one more drink first?’

Gotrek ignored him, instead clambering up onto one of the few remaining tables and grabbing the hilt of his companion’s runesword. He tugged it free from the ceiling without the slightest effort. Agape, Felix almost failed to catch the weapon as Gotrek tossed it over to him.

‘No,’ he said finally. ‘The ale in this place tastes like orc-spit.’

Felix raised a blood-caked eyebrow, and shrugged before starting for the cellar door. Gotrek stopped him with a raised meaty fist.

‘Where do you think you’re going, manling?’

‘That last ratman was headed this way, obviously there’s a way out.’

Gotrek shook his head and laughed his deep, gruff laugh. Lumbering into a run, he drove through the flames and out into the street. The sounds of battle resumed.

Felix sighed as he swallowed a curse. ‘A burning city filled with an army of ratmen? Of course we’re going that way.’

Beneath the Flesh

Andy Smillie

‘I am His vengeance as He is my shield. I will deliver death to His enemies as He brings deliverance to my soul.’

Noise filled his world. An incessant thrum reverberated under his feet. The metal and ceramite around him squealed as angry thrusters were pushed to their tolerance. Bolts and arc-welded plates rattled as their construction was tested. A thunderous staccato of impacts rang like bolter fire against the hull around him. Yet in his mind, there was only silence: a sanctifying stillness, in preparation for battle. He would not be distracted from the consecration, his weapons would be ready.

‘Brother Maion, ready yourself.’

Maion lifted his head at his sergeant’s command and touched the blade of his chainsword to his temple, finishing the rite. He sheathed his weapon, and pulled the combat harness over his head, activating the mag-lock. ‘Ready, brother-sergeant.’

The Stormraven gunship powered through the void, its crimson hull charred and pitted from hundreds of recent atmospheric entries. The serrated black symbol on the gunship’s wing was almost indistinguishable from the scorch marks emblazoned on its flanks, eroded by the vengeful impacts of dense minerals and debris clusters. Flames licked the Stormraven’s surface, tracing a searing thread along its squat outline. It dived lower, pushing into Arere’s embrace.

The planet’s twin arid continents were turning from the system’s single sun. Had any of Arere’s citizens still been alive to gaze skyward, they would have marvelled at the descending gunship. The brightest light in the sky, Arere’s dead populace would have mistaken the Stormraven for yet another meteor, destined to crash into the desert-earth and forever change the maze of ravines punctuating the landscape.

++Entry achieved++ The pilot-serf’s mechanical voice crackled across the vox-link.

Maion juddered in his harness as the gunship knifed downwards, turbulent crosswinds breaking against the hull. Next to him, Harahel sat immobile, a massive eviscerator held across his lap. Maion smiled; it was a fitting weapon. Harahel was from Taci, a province of their home-world Cretacia. The region was well known for the broad, well muscled and aggressive individuals it bred, traits further amplified when they underwent the physiological enhancements required to transform them into Space Marines. Brother Amaru had replaced Harahel’s harness with one normally used to secure warriors in Terminator armour, in order to accommodate the Assault Marine’s bulk.

‘Bring up the tactical hololith.’ Sergeant Barbelo was on his feet, clasping an overhead assault-rail with a gauntleted hand. His face and shaven head were a mess of re-grafted skin and thick, serpentine scars.

‘A moment, brother.’ Amaru extended a bundle of data cables from his armoured-forearm and plugged them into a control slot in his seat. The Techmarine muttered something to the gunship’s machine-spirit and closed his left eye. The glowing bionic that replaced his right continued to shine like a targeting reticule.

The compartment’s luminators dimmed as a three-dimensional overview of Arere’s primary continent appeared in the middle of the deck, the blue-hued landscape hololithically projected by an optical lens mounted in the ceiling. With a thought, Amaru narrowed the focus on a line of canyons towards the north-east. A series of fortified buildings resolved out of the map.

‘Substation 12BX sits between the two walls of this canyon.’ The area changed colour to a deep crimson as Amaru continued, ‘The approach to the main entrance is overshadowed by a narrow gorge and high spires, landing improbable.’ The Techmarine paused as he calculated an approach. ‘We can land here.’ Amaru manipulated the image again and an octagonal courtyard sprang into view.

‘What of the enemy?’ Barbelo’s brow furrowed as his thoughts turned to battle, turning the deep lines of his forehead into shadowy ravines.

The image oscillated and zoomed out, the substation receding into the distance to glow faintly among the canyons. ‘We do not have real-time data but estimates would place enemy forces here.’ Amaru indicated the black mass surrounding the substation, representing the disposition of the Archenemy army on Arere.

Maion stared at the display, his muscles tensing instinctively at the mention of the Archenemy. Their forces had dispersed from their landing zones like an aggressive cancer, brutalising their way across the globe. The outpost was the last bastion of sanctity.

‘We have less than two hours until they reach the substation,’ Amaru stated plainly.

‘And if the worse has happened and our brothers are as we fear?’ Maion voiced what he knew the others were thinking.

‘That should be time enough to retrieve their gene-seed,’ Nisroc touched his narthecium in emphasis. The Sanguinary Priest’s gleaming white armour was in stark contrast to the deep crimson and black worn by Maion and the others.

Barbelo scowled. ‘That is not our primary mission Apothecary. We must understand what happened on Arere, we must retrieve the compound’s data files.’

Nisroc felt his jaw tighten. ‘The Chapter is on the brink of extinction, recovering the gene-seed is paramount. I am bound by duty–’

‘Brothers…’ Amaru paused as one of the gunship’s many auspexs drew his attention. ‘We are closing on their auger range,’ the Techmarine looked expectantly at Barbelo. ‘We need to do it now.’

Barbelo glared at Nisroc. He knew as well as the Apothecary that the Chapter’s supply of gene-seed was critical. But the data files held vital information. Without them, they risked losing the entire Itan sector to the Archenemy. ‘They are our orders, and you will follow them.’

The Apothecary said nothing.

The sergeant took his seat and turned to Amaru. ‘You are sure this will work, Techmarine?’

Amaru nodded, ‘I sanctified this vessel myself. Its spirit is strong. It will not fail us.’

‘Very well, relieve the pilot.’

The hololith stuttered and dissolved as Amaru disengaged his cables and assumed the cockpit.

‘Prepare yourselves,’ Barbelo activated the mag-lock on his harness and clamped his helmet down over his head.

‘Emperor’s strength be with us,’ to his right, Nisroc locked his own helm in place.

‘Emperor’s strength,’ Maion joined the rest of the squad as they repeated the Apothecary’s words and donned their helmets. He felt his pulse quicken as hissing pressure seals locked his helmet to his armour, readying him for war.

‘It is done,’ Amaru moved at pace, taking his seat next to Barbelo. ‘The machine-spirit has us now.’

The gunship fell.

Amber warning lights lit up across the craft’s interior as the gunship surrendered to gravity. Maion was driven into his harness by the force of the descent, the metal bars gouging into the ceramite of his battle-plate as the gunship plummeted towards the earth. The reassuring rumble of the gunship’s engines was replaced by the frantic chiming of the altitude counter that counted down to their doom. ‘Ave Emperor, stand with me and I shall not fail in your sight,’ Maion mouthed the prayer, banishing the thought that he was about to be crushed to death inside an armoured coffin. By the Emperor’s grace, he would meet his end on the field of battle.

‘Ten seconds,’ Amaru’s voice cut over the vox-link.

The Stormraven bucked violently as it fell. Even with the benefit of his Lyman’s Ear and the myriad of other implants that were working to relieve the stress on his body, Maion struggled to stay conscious.

‘Five.’

Maion redoubled his grip on the harness.

‘Brace!’

The Stormraven’s thrusters fired on full burn, exploding downwards in a hail of fury as they fought to arrest the gunship’s descent. Their tumultuous roar drowned out the angry hum of warning runes and the whining collision siren. For the briefest of instants the world was silent and Maion was no longer falling.

A heartbeat later and the world was enveloped in noise. The Stormraven slammed into the earth, and Maion winced as he was driven up into his harness. The hull squealed in protest as fractures stabbed across its outer armour. The landing supports shattered, their metal struts fracturing on impact. Armoured glass broke from the cockpit and flooded into the compartment as dislodged rock hammered it. The gunship ploughed forwards, tearing a dark trench in the earth until its momentum was spent.

‘Egress!’ Barbelo was on his feet and out of his harness before the hull had stopped shaking, slamming his fist into the door release and motioning for the others to disembark.

The assault ramp lowered part of the way and stalled, its hydraulics spitting oleaginous fluid. Harahel barrelled forward, throwing himself at the stricken ramp. It slammed down into the earth with a dull thud, tossing powdered dirt into the air as the giant Space Marine rolled to his feet.

Maion pushed the catch on his harness. Nothing happened. The locking mechanism was broken.

‘Sit back brother.’ Micos flicked the activation switch on his chainaxe and the weapon roared into life. He freed Maion with a casual downward stroke, his weapon’s adamantium teeth making light work of the harness.

‘You have my thanks, brother.’ Maion unsheathed his blade and followed Micos down the ramp.

Outside, beneath Arere’s starless sky, it was pitch dark and the elements conspired to impair visibility. Howling winds tossed grit and earth into a storm. Torrential rain fell in near vertical sheets. Neither fact mattered to Maion. His helmet’s ocular sensors filtered and illuminated the darkness, allowing him to see as clear as day.

Reams of tactical and situational data scrolled across his right eye, assimilated by his eidetic memory. The atmosphere was breathable. The Stormraven’s engines were cooling and unlikely to combust. His left pauldron had sustained mild damage during the landing but the servos were working within normal ranges. The squad had formed a perimeter around the stricken Stormraven. Their ident-tags and vitals hovered on the peripheral of Maion’s retinal display.

‘Stay alert! We may not be alone.’ Barbelo’s voice crackled over the vox-link.

Maion panned his bolt pistol around, scanning for targets. The outpost’s walls towered over them from all sides. He glanced at them briefly and a new set of data drifted over his helmet’s display. The base was designate Arere Primus. Its walls were an adamantium and ceramite compound, capable of withstanding a full-scale bombardment.

‘Stay in close formation, the storm is restricting comms,’ Barbelo’s annoyance was evident in his tone. ‘Amaru, can we extract in the Stormraven?’

‘Undetermined. I’ll need time to assess,’ the Techmarine’s reply rasped in Maion’s ear.

‘Atoc, secure the Stormraven while Amaru works.’

‘Harahel,’ Barbelo abandoned the hissing comm-feed. ‘Lead us into the strategium.’

The towering warrior grunted in affirmation and sprinted towards the metres-thick blast door that sealed off the compound’s command and control centre.

Harahel ran a gauntlet hand over the access panel, wiping away the dirt.

++Internal Protocol Active++

A command rubric blinked through a veneer of rapidly settling dust.

++Terminal Sealed++

The words blinked at Harahel. Harahel snarled and smashed his fist into the screen. ‘Brother-sergeant, the door has been locked from the inside.’

‘There are melta-charges and cutting equipment in the armoury,’ Maion recalled the information he’d assimilated during the briefing.

‘Apothecary, you and Micos cover our rear,’ Barbelo thumbed the power slide on his plasma pistol. ‘No one comes out of those doors. Maion, Harahel, follow me.’

The doors to the armoury unlocked with a hiss of pressurised gas. The toothed slabs slid apart and disappeared into the recess of the armoured frame. Maion followed Barbelo in, sweeping left as Harahel moved right. Maion grimaced as his helmet worked to filter out the putrid air. Evidence of battle was everywhere. Broken luminators stuttered in the ceiling, throwing jagged patches of light around the entrance chamber. Fist-sized holes studded the walls. Sparks cascaded from exposed cabling that hung in thick bunches. The metal of the floor was scorched and charred. Webs of blood and viscera clung to everything.

‘No bodies.’ Harahel voiced what Maion had been thinking.

‘The dead are not our concern. Keep your eyes open for the living.’ Barbelo aimed his plasma pistol towards the adjoining corridor and advanced to the rear of the room.

Maion nodded. According to the schematics, the passageway extended half a kilometre before a set of stairs would lead them down to the armoury proper. ‘Ideal place for an ambush,’ Maion said as he stared into the darkness of the passageway. ‘Luminators are out.’

‘Harahel, maintain position and assume overwatch.’

‘As you wish,’ Harahel hid his displeasure poorly. Though he knew the sergeant was right – they’d be forced to advance down the corridor shoulder to shoulder; there’d be no room to wield his Eviscerator.

Maion advanced into the darkness.

Harahel stood immobile, panning his gaze around the chamber. He could hear Maion’s footsteps as he moved down the corridor; the other Flesh Tearer was halfway to the stairs, the fizz of the electrical cables as they spat in their death throes… and the shifting of metal – Harahel pivoted left as a grenade hit the ground. His ocular sensors dimmed, shielding his eyes from the piercing flash that flooded the chamber. With a dense clatter, a half-dozen of the ceiling grilles fell to the ground. A cluster of figures in sodden fatigues dropped down after them and opened fire.

‘Contact!’ Harahel shouted into the vox even as a hail of las-fire pattered off his armour.

‘How many?’ Barbelo turned his head as the sporadic flash of weapons fire lit up the corridor behind him.

‘Contact front,’ Maion swung his bolt pistol up, advancing and firing as las-fire erupted from further along the corridor.

‘Micos,’ Barbelo summoned the other Flesh Tearer as he opened fire, following Maion into the enemy ahead, ‘Assist Harahel.’ The sergeant didn’t wait for affirmation, deactivating his comm-link. He wanted no distractions; he wanted to be in the moment, to relish the kill.

Harahel’s attackers bore the Imperial eagle on their filth-encrusted chests. Traitors, he growled, grinding his teeth as a las round struck his helm. Harahel clasped his Eviscerator with both hands, twisting the handle to activate the power core. The weapon’s giant blade snarled into life, a physical manifestation of the rage churning through his veins. He ran at the traitors, heedless of the beads of las-fire that stung his armour.

Harahel grinned; the traitors were holding their ground. He tore the first of them apart with a savage upward swing that cut the man in half from groin to shoulder. Pivoting as the two halves of the man’s torso hit the ground, Harahel bisected another from hip bone to ribcage. A third died as he finished the move, chopping the Eviscerator down through the man’s head and dragging it out through his ribs.

Maion counted fifteen muzzle flashes. The traitors had ambushed them with woefully inadequate numbers. The cowards were nestled behind some overturned supply crates and sheets of metal they’d dragged up from the floor. Maion stitched a line across the barricade with his bolt pistol. His enhanced hearing registered the changing sound as the mass reactive rounds hammered into metal and blew apart flesh. Twelve muzzle flashes. To his left, Barbelo’s pistol hissed as it discharged, sending a flickering plasma round down the corridor. The barricade exploded in a blue flash as Barbelo’s shot struck home. Men screamed as superheated shrapnel perforated their bodies. Others were luckier, dying instantly as the round liquefied them. Maion knew that underneath his helmet, Barbelo was smiling. A dishevelled traitor stumbled over the corpse of his comrade, toppling onto the wrong side of the cordon. He struggled on all fours, scrabbling for a weapon. Maion shot him in the head.

Bathed in blood-spatter and faced with an opponent whose armour bore their comrade’s eviscerated innards, the traitors fell back. One held his ground, staring wide-eyed at Harahel as he pulled a clutch of grenades from a harness. Harahel decapitated the man as he advanced on the others. The grenades fell from the headless corpse’s fingers. A cloud of flame and shrapnel washed over Harahel’s battle-plate as they detonated. A slew of warnings lit up on the Flesh Tearer’s retinal display. Harahel blinked them away; his armour’s integrity was intact.

Ahead of him, the traitors had rallied behind a pillar. He could see the fear on their gaunt faces as he emerged unscathed from the billowing fire. Harahel heard the distinctive click of las power packs locking into place. It was insulting they thought the pillar offered any protection from his wrath. The huge Flesh Tearer growled, the metallic resonance of his helmet’s audio amplifier lending the sound a bestial quality. The stench of ammonia wafted on the air. He smiled, one of the traitors had pissed himself.

Harahel rushed them. He leapt the last few yards, swinging his Eviscerator through the pillar as he landed. The blade showered him in sparks and pulped organs as it chewed through the metal of the column and into the bodies of the two traitors closest to it. The men died screaming, flesh ripped from their bones and tossed into the air by the churning, adamantium teeth. Harahel ripped the weapon free, maiming another traitor as he drew the blade back to the guard position.

A scarred traitor screamed at him, lunging at him with a bayonet. Harahel sidestepped the attack and backhanded the man across his face, smashing his skull and sending chunks of his teeth spearing into the face of a heavy-set warrior who was fumbling with the activation stud of a shock maul. The man cried out in pain, dropping his weapon and clutching his ragged face. Harahel clamped his hand over the man’s head and squeezed, crushing his skull.

‘Cowards,’ he snarled, throwing the twitching body into the press of traitors as they scrambled away.

Five muzzle flashes winked at Maion from behind the barricade. The disorientated traitors’ shots flew wide. He sighted on the nearest of them.

‘Save your ammo,’ Barbelo held his arm out blocking the shot. ‘We are almost upon them,’ he growled as a las-round ricocheted off of his rerebrace. ‘Sanguinius!’ Barbelo broke into a run, enraged by the pitiful attempts to kill him.

Maion stopped firing. Barbelo was lost for the moment, lost to a part of the rage they all shared. Chainsword roaring, he followed the sergeant into the press of traitors.

Barbelo dived over the barricade to land on top of a blood-caked traitor. Ribs broke under the impact, splintering into internal organs with a crunch. Barbelo drove his knee into the man’s face as he rose, crushing the traitor’s skull into the deck.

Maion went straight through the barricade, chopping his chainsword down through a scorched supply crate before reversing the motion and eviscerating the traitor that was using it for cover. Blood and viscera splashed across his helmet. His ocular sensors adjusted, allowing him to see through the flesh-mire. To his right, a stick-thin traitor turned to run. Maion threw his combat knife. The blade shot pierced the traitor’s back and went through his chest. The man pitched forward as the blade clattered to the floor. Maion grinned ferally. He turned, searching for someone to kill but Barbelo had beaten him to it. The sergeant punched his fist through a screaming man’s chest before stamping his boot down on the head of another, pulping it. Maion retrieved his knife as Barbelo stalked past him towards the armoury chamber, vines of intestine and bloody matter hanging from his gauntlet.

Nisroc listened to the exchange of weapons fire over the open vox-channel. With each broken retort he became more envious of his brothers. To be a Flesh Tearers was to be at the vanguard of the assault, to be elbow-deep in the enemy’s bloody remains, not holding the rear like some Imperial Fist strategist. His muscles swelled with blood and adrenaline as his body willed him to engage the enemy. Targeting reticules swam over his display as his helmet translated his mind’s unconscious need to fight. ‘Reclothe my mind, that it may temper the needs of my soul,’ Nisroc took a calming breath. Ascertain why Brother-Sergeant Paschar had not answered the summons to exfiltrate Arere. Locate and secure the squad or retrieve their gene-seed. Rendezvous with the fleet. Nisroc ran through the mission objectives, focussing his thoughts. He could not afford to lose control, too many had been lost to The Rage persecuting the campaign already. He cast a fleeting glance up towards the barren sky; there was something about this sector of space that left him ill at ease, something malevolent that hung in the darkness where the stars should be. Nisroc bit down another burst of adrenaline, he would not allow himself to succumb to The Thirst. He was a Sanguinary Priest, duty demanded he control his rage. Too be lost in the throes of battle was to lose sight of the future. He lived to maintain the gene-seed and through it the Chapter. For without that precious link to their progenitor father, the Flesh Tearers had no future. ‘For the Chapter,’ Nisroc exhaled, emptying the last of the tension from his body – battle would find him soon enough.

Barbelo entered the armoury. Maion was about to follow but stopped as weapons fire erupted from within.

A noise like the birth of thunder filled the corridor as a heavy weapon roared. The sergeant jerked backwards as high-calibre rounds slammed into his armour, pitting the ceramite. His own shot went wide as a round clipped his gauntlet, the plasma blast scorching the ceiling. Barbelo dropped his chin and raised his shoulder as another torrent of rounds hammered him. Even as his pauldron cracked, the icon of the Chapter blasted from his shoulder in a shower of splintered ceramite, the sergeant took a step forward.

Maion recognised the harsh bark of an autocannon as the traitors poured fire onto Barbelo – the sergeant’s armour would not hold. Maion lunged forward, tossed a frag grenade into the room, grabbed Barbelo’s gorget, and pulled him back into the corridor.

‘You dare!’ The sergeant snarled at Maion, back-fisting him across the helm.

Maion staggered cursing. With disciplined restraint he quashed the rage boiling up inside him. ‘Calm yourself brother. To proceed would have been folly.’ Maion kept his voice level, but lifted his gaze to stare Barbelo in the eyes. He steeled his jaw, ready to receive another blow. But Barbelo’s posture shifted, and Maion relaxed as the sergeant regained control of his emotions. The traitors continued to fire, their shots spitting into the corridor to impact on the wall opposite.

‘You waste your time, brother,’ Barbelo motioned towards the doorway as more rounds zipped into the corridor. ‘They are entrenched behind a barrier. Your grenade will have done little more than chip the–’

Maion held up his hand, the firing had stopped. His enhanced hearing had heard the bark of every round as they tore from the autcannon’s barrel. His eidetic memory had catalogued every shell casing that struck the ground. The weapon’s magazine was still half full. The traitors weren’t reloading, they were baiting them.

Barbelo knew it, too. Incensed by their obvious ploy, the sergeant took a step towards the doorway. Maion grabbed his vambrace.

‘Brother…’ Maion knew that behind the red lenses of his helmet, the sergeant’s eyes were redder still, his pupils alight with rage. ‘You will die.’

Harahel knelt among the corpses, blood dripping from his armour, his weapon humming on idle, and watched the last of the traitors run for the doorway. The cowards would not make it. Micos’s ident-tag flashed on Harahel’s helmet display as the other Flesh Tearer approached the entrance from outside. Harahel saw the pilot light of Micos’s flamer as it shone in the gloom. Some of the traitors caught sight of the other Flesh Tearer and stopped running; they slumped to the ground in abject defeat. The others kept running, too lost in panic for rational thought. Harahel smelt their fear as Micos fired, blanketing the traitors in a sheet of burning promethium that washed away flesh and dissolved bone to ash. He watched them burn, frail wicks eaten up by a ravenous flame. The meek and the brave, they all died.

‘Are you injured?’ Micos asked Harahel over a closed channel. He knew his friend would not have wanted his condition shared with anyone save perhaps the Apothecary.

Harahel didn’t respond, his gaze remained fixed on the dying embers of the traitors. His twin hearts hammered in his chest like the pistons of a giant engine, fuelled by the tang of spilt blood that filled his senses. A boiling darkness cloyed at his mind, threatening to overwhelm his restraint. He tore his helmet off and roared, driving his Eviscerator into the armoured floor. Gripping the hilt with both hands, he rested his head on the blade and prayed, ‘Emperor bless me with your temperament. Fill me with a righteousness inferno that I may burn away my bloodlust. Emperor keep me from the darkness of my soul.’

‘Outer room pacified, proceeding to your position,’ Micos’s voice came through the comm-feed in Maion’s helmet.

‘The corridor is clear. Move to our position and assist,’ Maion voxed Micos and turned to Barbelo, ‘Micos is on his way.’ The sergeant nodded, his comm-link still powered off.

The traitors’ weapons had fallen silent as the two Flesh Tearers waited out of sight, their backs pressed against the wall of the corridor. But there was no peace for Maion. His pulse filled his head like the tribal drum his villagers used to attract the roaming karcasaur at High Feast. His hands trembled like the ground beneath the giant reptile as it loped through the jungle. Every genetically-enhanced cell in Maion’s body wanted to rush into the room and tear the traitors limb from limb, to bask in their death throes and drink deep of their blood. Maion clenched his fist and struck the aquila sigil on his breast plate. ‘What nourishes you also destroys you. Either conquer your gift or die,’ Chaplain Appollus had spoken those words to Maion when he was but a noviciate. He focused on his battle gear as the Chaplain had taught him, testing the weight of his bolt pistol, the balance of his blade. Maion needed to be as they were: furious and unyielding in battle, cold and impassive in respite. He glanced at Barbelo. The sergeant would be struggling with his own blood-rage. Over his centuries of service, Barbelo had slain more enemies of the Throne than Maion and the rest of the squad had tallied between them. For Barbelo, the call to violence would be stronger, harder to deny. Maion considered what he would do if the sergeant gave in to his desires, if he–

‘I stand ready brothers.’ Micos’s voice drew Maion’s attention. The other Flesh Tearer glanced at Barbelo’s smashed shoulder guard but knew better than to ask after his sergeant’s wellbeing.

Barbelo nodded towards the doorway.

Maion thumbed the selector on his bolt pistol, switching it to full auto. He stuck the barrel of the weapon into the room and opened fire. A man cried out as the explosive rounds tore across the chamber.

Micos swung low, sending a stream of fire into the chamber. The burning promethium swarmed over the barricade to feast on the cowards behind it. The traitors screamed.

Barbelo dived into the room. Maion heard him snap off three shots and the hungry growl of his chainsword as it cut into bone.

‘Armoury secure,’ Barbelo’s voice came over the comm-link a heartbeat later. ‘Apothecary, join us at once.’

Nisroc bent over the Flesh Tearer’s corpse. A gaping hole dominated the fallen Space Marine’s scorched breastplate. The flesh around it was fused with armour, a dark stain billowing out from the wound like a web. ‘Melta weapon or fusion-based explosive,’ Nisroc spoke for the benefit of his helmet’s data recorder, documenting his findings. ‘The high level of penetration suggests close range detonation.’ Nisroc extended a needle-like probe from his narthecium and stabbed it into the wound. Brother Haamiah, Second Company. Lines of biometric and biological data scrolled across Nisroc’s helmet display as the probe analysed the Flesh Tearer’s blood. There were traces of human flesh too, melded to Haamiah’s; a traitor had given their life to plant the charge.

‘Maion, if you would,’ Nisroc stood to give the other Flesh Tearer space.

‘My honour, brother,’ Maion nodded and knelt next to Haamiah’s body. Maion was the closest thing the squad had to a Chaplain. He had studied under the revered Appollus. Most of the Chapter had expected Maion to follow in the High Chaplain’s footsteps. But he could not, not yet. He wasn’t ready to accept that the Flesh Tearers were beyond saving. Maion bowed his head, ‘Emperor, your servant’s duty is at an end. Grant him peace.’ Maion made the sign of the aquila over his breastplate and rose. ‘I’ll wait for you in the corridor.’

Nisroc paused a moment. Of all the duties that were his to complete, this was the most important, the heaviest burden to bear. Only in death does duty end, the axiom may have been true for the soldiers of the Imperial Guard or the Sisters of the Adeptus Sororitas but not for a son of Sanguinius. In death, a Space Marine had one more thing to give. The transformative Progenoids implanted in his body had to be returned to the Chapter, ready to be received by the next generation of aspirants. Only through the harvesting of the glands would the Flesh Tearers continue to survive. Without the precious gene-seed they would be unable to stand against the Emperor’s foes.

The Apothecary extended his reductor and punched the bladed tube into Haamiah’s neck. A jolt of energy rippled along the blade’s length as the moulded end closed around the first progenoid gland. With a wet hiss, the gland was sucked up through the blade into the narthecium. A green icon blinked in the corner of Nisroc’s helmet display. The gland had been recovered safely, and was being frozen for transport to the gene-banks on the Flesh Tearers home world. Nisroc activated his bone-drill; the second gland was harder to reach.

It had taken over thirty minutes to cut through the mag-seals on the strategium’s door and a further ten to fasten melta-charges to the piston hinges. Amaru had abandoned repairs on the Stormraven to oversee the work, directing Harahel as he wielded the industrial laser-cutter with the same ease the others handled their bolters.

‘Ready to detonate, brother-sergeant.’ Amaru turned his back on the huge door and paced back towards the Stormraven. The Chaos forces were under an hour away and he still had much work to do.

‘Prepare yourselves,’ Barbelo’s order hissed in Maion’s ear as the storm continued to hamper vox communication. He checked the ammo-counter on his bolt pistol and activated his chainsword, its roar inaudible over the wind. To his left and right, his brothers were preparing their own wargear. Micos’s flamer hung by his side, its pilot flame would remain extinguished until they were inside. Maion shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, moving his weight forward.

‘Go!’ On Barbelo’s command Amaru blew the charges.

The hinges detonated in rapid succession, like the quickening heartbeat of a colossal beast. The door fell from its housing, slamming into the earth an inch from Barbelo and his squad. Under his helmet, Amaru’s mouth twitched in an approximation of a smile. His calculations had been perfect.

Maion was in motion before the doors had settled in the dirt. Adrenaline flooded his system as he powered into the strategium’s entrance chamber. A warning rune filled his helmet display. ‘Defence turrets,’ Maion’s warning came too late. Two automated weapons burst into life, pumping a stream of high-explosive rounds towards the Flesh Tearers.

‘Cover!’ Barbelo shouted the order even as he realised there was none. Whoever was cowering in the strategium had been waiting for them.

Maion winced, dropping to one knee as a round clipped his thigh. Barbelo threw himself into a roll as the weapons stitched a line towards him. Nisroc spun on the spot, turning his back to shield the gene-seed stored in his narthecium. Explosive rounds slammed into his backpack, knocking him to the floor. Micos’s world went dark as a round tore through his pauldron and broke against his helmet. Atoc bucked, dropping his bolter as his breastplate was pulverised by a fusillade of explosions.

Harahel ground his teeth as Atoc’s ident-tag disappeared from his peripheral display. ‘Forgive me, brother,’ He swung his Eviscerator over his shoulder, mag-locking it to his back, and picked up Atoc’s body. ‘For the Chapter!’ Harahel raised the corpse-shield in front of him and ran flat out toward the guns. Anger drove him on as merciless shells hammered into Atoc’s corpse, the weapons ignoring the other Flesh Tearers to focus on the immediate threat of Harahel. Atoc’s armour broke like glass under the relentless assault, the dead Flesh Tearer’s head spinning from his body as his legs and arms were pulped.

Harahel roared as he closed inside both turrets’ sensor range. Dropping the stump of Atoc’s corpse, he swung his Eviscerator round to shear the barrel off the nearest weapon. The gun exploded as the round in its chamber detonated. Harahel ignored the hail of shrapnel that cascaded over his armour, oblivious to the pain warnings blinking over his left eye. Cursing, he brought his blade down on the other gun, cutting through its ammo feed. The weapon continued to fire, making a tortured grinding noise as it cried out for ammunition. Harahel kicked it over, stamping on it until he’d flattened the firing chamber. ‘Weapons neutralised.’

Maion was on his feet, advancing with Barbelo towards Harahel and the stairwell that led to the inner sanctum.

Nisroc pushed himself up off the deck. A damage alert scrolled across his display. The shots to his backpack had damaged his armour’s power source. He checked the output. It would last an hour, two at best. ‘Micos?’ Nisroc’s vox went unanswered. He turned to the other Flesh Tearer.

‘I am fine, Apothecary,’ Micos snarled, throwing his ruined helmet across the chamber. ‘A flesh wound. ’

The Apothecary cast his gaze over Micos. A blackened hole sat where his right eye should have been and his face was a mess of dark scabs. ‘As you say, brother.’ Nisroc switched to his vox, ‘Orders, brother-sergeant?’

‘We advance on the inner sanctum. Secure the level beneath.’

Lasgun fire stabbed at Maion as he crossed the threshold into the command sanctum and peeled left. He raised his bolt pistol and shot two traitors in the chest. Their bodies snapped backwards, covering diode-encrusted consoles in blood and viscera. A third traitor opened fire, a bolter bucking in his hands and destroying a bank of data-screens as he struggled to adjust for the recoil. ‘The Emperor’s tools serve only his servants,’ Maion pumped two rounds into the man, plastering his innards across the wall.

Harahel entered behind Maion and moved right. Three men blocked his path. He shouldered them aside, decapitating two with a single stroke of his blade, and killing the third with a thunderous head-butt. Ahead, a panicked traitor struggled with a grenade launcher. Harahel tore the skull from the nearest corpse and threw it at the man. The macabre projectile shot into the traitor’s chest, cracked his sternum and stopped his heart.

Barbelo was the last to advance into the chamber. He moved straight forwards, sighting a traitor in a heavy overcoat wielding a plasma pistol. The man fired. The sergeant dropped his shoulder to avoid the shot. The plasma round burnt through the air to melt the wall where his head had been an instant before.

The man fired again. ‘In the name of–’

Barbelo, dodged left and fired, his round vaporising the man’s head and shoulders before the traitor could finish his sentence. ‘We will not hear the name of your heathen god, heretic,’ Barbelo fired again; his plasma round obliterating what remained of the treacherous commissar’s corpse in a crackle of blue energy. ‘Sanctum secure. Nisroc, status?’

‘They were keeping their wounded down here,’ Maion heard Nisroc’s report as it came over the comm-feed. ‘Resistance was minimal. Lower chambers cleansed.’

Nisroc entered the inner sanctum to find Amaru poring over the main data console. The Techmarine had nano-wires and connective fibres plugged into every available data jack.

‘Brother Atoc?’ Barbelo had his back to the door and spoke without turning around, his gaze fixed on a wall-mounted viewer.

‘His duty is at an end.’ Nisroc touched a hand to his narthecium. ‘His gene-seed survives. His death served its purpose.’

Barbelo turned to face the Apothecary, pausing before he spoke. ‘And his body?’

‘His–’ Nisroc faltered. Bodies, where were the bodies?

‘Micos,’ the other Flesh Tearer snapped his shoulders back at the sergeant’s summons. ‘Return Atoc’s corpse to the Stormraven, his weapon too.’

‘Bodies,’ the word tumbled from Nisroc’s lips.

‘What is it, Apothecary?’ the grille mouthpiece of Barbelo’s helmet did little to filter his annoyance.

Nisroc cast his gaze around the chamber. Harahel’s armour was pitted and scared. Maion’s cuisse was fractured. The dismembered bodies of traitors were strewn around the floor, a madman’s mosaic. ‘Where are the other bodies?’ Nisroc repeated the question straining at his mind.

‘What?’

‘There were ten of our brothers stationed here. We have found only one, Brother Haamiah. Where are the others? There was no trace of them on the lower levels or here in the sanctum. They must be somewhere.’

‘I agree with you brother, it is an oddity. But we do not have the time,’ Barbelo turned back to the monitor, ‘the enemy advances from all sides. Their vanguard will contact us in thirty-eight minutes.’

‘Then we must make the time. We must find them. We must retrieve their gene-seed and honour their deaths.’

‘And what if they are not here? What if they are as ash, carried from here by the blasted storm?’

Barbelo’s tone brooked no discussion but Nisroc persisted. ‘Then we shall mourn their loss and the loss of their gift. But we must first check everywhere. We must be sure.’

Barbelo turned to face Nisroc, his poise threatening. ‘The enemy outnumbers us thousands to one.’

Nisroc moved towards Barbelo. ‘Death means nothing as long as the gene-seed survives.’

‘And who will collect our gene-seed when we lie dead beneath the starless sky of this world?’

‘We must–’

‘No!’ Barbelo pressed his forehead against Nisroc’s. ‘Amaru has affected repairs on the Stormraven. Once we acquire the data from the base’s cogitators we are leaving. You have until then.’

‘Very well,’ Nisroc took a step back and made to turn away. ‘But know that I shall take no pleasure in reporting our mission as a failure to the High Priests.’

Barbelo snarled. Never had he failed his Chapter. His grip tightened on his chainsword. He should gut Nisroc. Stain the Apothecary’s white breastplate crimson with his own sanctimonious blood. Out of his peripheral vision he saw Maion and Harahel edge closer. The other Flesh Tearers had remained silent but Barbelo doubted they would stand by and watch him kill the Apothecary. A warning shone on his display as he threatened to crush the chainsword’s handle. He fought to bring his rage under control. Now was not the time. ‘Go then. Look for the others. We will do what we must.’

Nisroc dipped his head, ‘Thank you, brother.’

Barbelo growled, ‘Do not push me, Apothecary.’ His voice was void cold. ‘Harahel…’ The sergeant drew his gaze from Nisroc in an effort to calm himself. ‘Go with him.’

Harahel walked silently beside Nisroc as they approached the chapel annex. It was the only spine of the compound the Flesh Tearers had yet to explore. If any evidence of Haamiah’s squad remained then it had to be there. The chrono display in Harahel’s helmet clicked down to thirty. He turned it off, uncaring as to whether they made it off Arere before the Chaos advance struck. It didn’t matter if he fought here or redeployed to another world, as long as he fought, as long as he killed. Blood, the thought rolled into his mind like an invading army. Saliva began to build in his mouth, his nostrils flaring as they searched for arterial juices. Blood, Harahel hungered for blood.

‘We are here,’ Nisroc’s voice crackled in Harahel’s ear breaking his stupor.

Harahel blinked hard, clearing the fog from his senses.

‘Is something the matter?’

‘No, I am fine,’ Harahel unlatched the Eviscerator from his back.

‘Wait,’ Nisroc held up his hand. Stepping ahead of Harahel, he moved to the chapel door’s access panel and removed one of his gauntlets. He wiped the grime from the console and pressed his palm onto the biometric scanner. The ancient machine chimed green as it recognised Nisroc’s genetic code as that of a Space Marine. With a pressurised hiss, the arched doors to the annex swung inwards.

Harahel grunted and followed the Apothecary inside.

‘The enemy will contact us here first,’ Barbelo spoke as a hololithic representation of the compound rotated in the air between him and Maion.

‘I would have thought here a more likely target,’ Maion gestured to the curving walls that formed the east side of the central courtyard.

‘No, they will expect that area to be mined; more than a handful of detonations would bring the rock face down on top of them.’ Barbelo pointed to the compound’s main entrance way. ‘They will attack from here.’

Maion studied the hololith, the sergeant was right. Had the base been fully manned, then attacking down the wide avenues of the main corridors would have been suicide. Under current circumstances the wide avenues would allow them to enter in force and overwhelm the Flesh Tearers. ‘What is this area here?’ He pointed to a dark spot on the display behind the armoury. ‘It wasn’t on the briefing schematics.’

‘That area…’ Amaru paused as his implants sifted through the compound’s memory banks for an answer. ‘It’s a missile silo. Surface-to-orbit ordnance. No use against ground targets.’

‘We cannot hope to defend the entire complex, we will make a stand here,’ Barbelo indicated a group of passageways that sprung from the main corridors and ran to the courtyard. ‘We’ll collapse these four and split ourselves into pairs to defend the remaining two.’

‘Four against–’ Maion paused, turning to Amaru.

‘Four thousand and seventy-eight separate contacts.’

Maion grinned, ‘Seems there’ll be blood enough even for Harahel.’

‘I think I can help even the odds,’ the hololith changed to show the Stormraven as Amaru spoke. ‘The Stormraven’s hurricane-bolters and missile launcher can be removed,’ the gunship’s weapon systems floated away from its hull, illustrating the Techmarine’s point. ‘It wouldn’t take much to reconfigure them as defensive turrets.’

‘What about the Stormraven?’ Maion’s face hardened. ‘The courtyard is uncovered, even a glancing hit from a siege gun and– ’

‘We needn’t worry about artillery,’ Barbelo interrupted. ‘I have fought this enemy before. They are like us.’

Maion glared at the sergeant, ‘You would liken us to the Archenemy?’

‘You have fought beside our Chapter’s Death Company?’

Maion nodded, his unease growing at the mention of the Chapter’s damned warriors. The Black Rage was a genetic curse that threatened to overwhelm all of the sons of Sanguinius. Once afflicted, a Flesh Tearer would be lost to battle lust, his sanity replaced by a desperate need for violence. Those that succumbed to the madness where inducted into the ranks of the black-armoured Death Company where they’d soon find redemption in death.

‘Like our coal-armoured brethren, the enemy we face is lost to bloodlust. They are fuelled by an insatiable rage, ever hungry for battle. They will want to taste our blood when they kill us,’ Barbelo tested the weight of his chainsword. ‘They will not attack from range.’

With the storm’s howl locked outside, silence permeated the chapel. Harahel moved ahead of Nisroc, his eyes adjusting to the change in light as a string of angular luminators hummed into life along the ceiling, filling the corridor with the hushed yellow glow the Imperial church reserved for religious buildings and the homes of cardinals.

Harahel smelt blood. He touched his thumb to the activation stud on his Eviscerator, ‘Stand ready.’

Nisroc raised his bolt pistol, letting its scope feed targeting data to his helmet display. He knew better than to question Harahel’s instincts.

From the reception chamber, they entered the Hall of Solace, a long corridor with single-occupant prayer cells joining it every few metres. The two Space Marines stopped. Dried blood and fleshy matter coated the metal floor ahead of them, paving the way like the regal carpet of some warp-spawned fiend.

Nisroc knelt and extended a probe from his narthecium, using it to scrape away a fragment of gore. A line of genetic sequence flashed across his display as the probe finished its analysis. ‘Sanguinius gut them,’ the Apothecary slammed his fist into the ground, cracking the metal panelling. ‘This blood belongs to the Chapter.’

Harahel tightened his grip on his weapon as his pulse began to quicken. He swallowed hard in an attempt to stop salivating. ‘Blood calls out to blood,’ Harahel recited the battle mantra as he fought down the urge to tear apart the walls.

‘The main chapel lies at the far end,’ Nisroc spoke as the chrono display flashed a warning in his display. ‘Time is–’

‘Advance behind me,’ Harahel activated his Eviscerator, the weapon’s barbed blades impatiently churning the air as they search for something to rend. ‘If anyone emerges, shoot them.’ Harahel spat the words through a pool of saliva. He dropped his weight and flexed his knees.

Nisroc nodded and slammed a fresh clip into his bolt pistol.

‘For the Chapter!’ Harahel broke into a run, the servos in his armour whirring as he picked up pace. The enhanced musculature of his thighs powered him forward at a speed that belied his bulk, an engine of ceramite and fury. ‘One, clear. Two, clear,’ Harahel looked left and right as he ran, updating Nisroc as his armour’s optical and audio sensors checked and recorded the disposition of each of the prayer cells in a heartbeat. ‘Three–’

Las-rounds stabbed at Harahel from either side.

‘Contacts, five through nine,’ Harahel kept running, ignoring the smattering of fire coming from the cells. Most shots went wide, his powerful strides carrying him past the cell openings before his attackers could take aim. A handful of rounds grazed his armour, picking the paint from his war plate. Harahel growled. The combination of his helmet’s vox amplifier and the hall’s acoustics amplifying his annoyance until it filled the corridor like the roar of some terrible beast.

‘Keep moving,’ Nisroc opened fire. His bolt pistol bucked in his hand as he sent three traitors sprawling to the floor, their heads blasted from their malnourished shoulders. ‘Your rear is secure.’

Harahel blinked an acknowledgement to Nisroc and pushed onwards. He was nearing the last cluster of prayer cells. His targeting overlay lit up with data, tracking the trajectory of the three fist-sized globes that rolled onto the corridor in front of him. ‘Grenades!’ Harahel bellowed a warning to the Apothecary, and threw himself into the nearest prayer cell as the devices exploded, avoiding the wash of flame and shrapnel that billowed out from them. He heard a muffled cry and a wrenching snap as the cell’s occupant’s bones broke under his immense bulk. Harahel snorted and picked the dead man up by his skull.

‘Harahel?’ Nisroc’s voice crackled in Harahel’s ear.

‘I am unharmed,’ Harahel emerged from the cell carrying the head of the dead traitor by the spinal cord, his gauntlet slick with blood.

‘The way is clear brother.’

‘No, there is one left, there,’ Harahel tossed the dismembered head into the cell opposite. A man screamed, firing on reflex as the head landed with a wet mulch.

Nisroc stepped into the cell, allowing his armour to filter out the smell of excrement. The man had the nose of his lasgun pressed inside his mouth. His eyes trembled as they looked up at the Flesh Tearer. The Apothecary growled. The man juddered, reflexively pulling the trigger. The single las-round blew apart his skull, painting the wall behind him with superheated brain matter. Nisroc turned from the corpse to find Harahel on bended knee, his helmet discarded at his side. The veins in the other Flesh Tearer’s forehead were threatening to push through his skin, his brow ran with sweat. Nisroc took a tentative step towards Harahel, his finger resting on the trigger of his bolt pistol.

‘Stay back!’ Harahel held a hand out to the Apothecary.

Nisroc resisted the urge to fire, ‘Control yourself! Now is not the time. The Archenemy has taken the lives of our brothers.’ Nisroc gestured to the arched doors of the chapel, ‘We must know what lies behind those doors.’

Harahel said nothing, saliva dripped from his mouth to burn away at the floor.

‘On your feet, Flesh Tearer! You can report to Appollus as soon as we return to the Victus, I’m sure he’ll welcome you into the Death Company. But right now, you need to get to your feet or, Emperor help me, I’ll put a bolt-round through that thick skull of yours.’

Harahel titled his head to look up at the Apothecary, his eyes bloodshot.

‘On your feet.’ Nisroc proffered Harahel his helmet. ‘Use your rage for something useful, like getting through that door.’

Harahel took the helmet and locked it in place. ‘Never threaten me again, brother.’ He regarded the fusion marks on the chapel doors. Someone had welded them shut from the outside. He took a step back and then drove forwards, slamming his armoured shoulder into the weld-line. The metal buckled. Harahel brought his knee up and kicked out, the doors snapped inwards. A bank of suspended luminators stuttered into life as he stepped into the chamber.

‘Emperor save us…’

The story continues next month...

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter Three

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever,’ the words tripped out over a narrow, dry pink tongue, through V-shaped rows of bright, sharp dentition.

His gleaming black eyes, like onyx marbles lapped to a mirror finish, shone back at him from the many reflective surfaces of the object he held between blackened claws as he gabbled. His words came in a torrent, spoken almost without punctuation, without pausing for breath, fast and uncontrolled.

‘He will come, so he will. He will come,’ he said, but there was no one in the chamber to hear his speech, only the artifact in his hands and the air moving in response to his words.

The scratch of claws and the groans of leather armour creaking around bobbing heads as his attendants sniffed at the foetid air and rotated their ears, listening for the things they must listen for, drew his attention. He ran one soft, pink palm over the vibrating earth wall of his antechamber, and then dropped the artifact on its plaited hair-ribbon back under his coat. It hit the soft short fur of his belly, where it had grown new the last few days, and began to heat and then whither the fur until the smell of slowly burning hair drifted up to his nostrils, making him turn his head this way and that, eyes wide.

The undercrofts throbbed with the movement of hundreds... thousands of his minions, their whispered exchanges creating a susurrus that filled the air and the mind. He could sense it all as they gathered in the vaulted chamber of an ancient crypt, built by man-things a millennium ago, inhabited by his own kind for almost half that time. He would go to them in a few minutes more, go to them, show himself and speak the words that would galvanise them. He did not need to hear the words they spoke to one another in fast, clipped tones; he needed only to feel the air move around him, vibrating the coarse whiskers that sprouted from his brow and maw.

One conversation came to him, and then another and another.

‘The gold is there, the gems, the wealth. Gold and more gold, and gems and gold. Piled, piled high and wide, piled everywhere, the gold and the gems and more gold.’

This was his power. These were his lands, these walls, these tunnels, caves and warrens, these fissures through the earth. All that was sky-less belonged to him, and all those who thrived sunless and moonless in his nether-lands bowed down before him.

They were ratkin in their dirt-lined warrens, tunnels and burrows, living in the warm embrace of the earth, lean and sleek, fast as fast, eager to serve, eager to get closer to their lord, to the centre of things. They were the whisperers, the collectors of information on the movements of men, of beasts, of higher beings. They were the stalkers, the followers, the gatherers of intelligence. Every time man or beast undertook a journey, the whisperers knew about it. They could read the vibrations in the ground. They knew whether a warrior travelled alone by the weight of his warhorse’s hoof-falls, knew how far and how long he had travelled, and how burdened he was. They knew when carts rolled to markets, laden with the new fruits of the surface fields, fruits too young, not ripened to the putrefaction of the flesh they thrived on, not brown and grey and fizzing with fermentation, but bright and clean and anathema. They knew when the dirt was tilled and when it was dug, and they knew the purpose of the tilling or the digging. They knew the difference between deep holes dug for bodies and those excavated for hiding treasures, wealth, things, objects, artifacts, the wonders the air-walkers worshipped them with.

They were ratfolk in their brick-lined burrows, with their dripping moss-covered walls, and low vaulted ceilings, nothing but brick below, around and above them. Their warrens rich in midden-pickings from above, they were closest to the top-worlders, the surface-dwellers, the crust-livers, the air-walkers. They lived so close to the streets, houses, workshops, hostelries inhabited by species that had solid ground only beneath their feet and never above their heads. The rest was air. By contrast, the air-walkers were robust of constitution, slow of wits, hairless and sluggish, and abominable.

They were squatters and vagrants in their rock-hewn fastnesses, stolen away from the ancient race of dwarf masons who had quarried the stone, and built the halls and corridors and vaulted spaces. They were skirmishers and assassins. They had outnumbered the dwarf men, out-manoeuvred them, bested them and stolen from them. They were thieves and liars, wielders of knives and blades, and they were ruthless.

He had learned about the air-walkers. He had learned so much about so many. He had learned that they were not all alike. The dwarfs were few; an old enemy, irrelevant. The humans were the worst, the ugliest the most stupid. The humans were to be despised and to be pitied. They would fall as the dwarfs had. They were as nothing compared to the Fell people. The Fell people, they were fast like he was, but long-lived, longer-lived than the humans... much longer.

He placed his hand over the smoldering flesh of his belly, filthy black claws extending almost the full width of the spongy swelling below his narrow ribcage. He felt the incessant bump of his blood organ, ticking his existence away.

The vibrations were growing, the waves pervading his senses, intersecting to create patterns in the micro-movements of the air in his waiting room, the antechamber that led directly out onto the mound of earth raised at the near end of the crypt, the mound from which he would speak to his followers.

He smoothed his coat over his chest, pressing the amulet a little deeper into his fur and skin. He clenched his teeth together and rotated his jaw several times as if chewing, and he lifted and bobbed his snout and whiskers.

Timing was everything.

He took the staff in his left hand, and wrapped the ragged ribbons of cloth that clung to it around the flesh of his paw, protecting the soft parts while exposing the black claws. He cast his eyes over the runes that ran the length of the staff, and concentrated for the briefest of moments, almost as if in silent prayer.

He left the antechamber by its only exit, and climbed the short spiral of stone steps that would lead him onto the mound. He tapped his staff down hard on each step, quieting the crowds that could hear his egress and feel the vibrations he was summoning from the staff and the old worn steps. There was menace in every footfall, and more in the deliberateness with which he placed his staff, not to aid his climb, but to instill fear and wonder in the waiting audience, his congregation.

He stood on the dais in the pale ethereal light cast by a hundred lanterns, fed with low-grade vermin-fat, which had been hung, not for their light, for the congregants did not need it to see by, but for their effect. The chattering that had ebbed away as he climbed the steps came to a dead stop as he planted his feet firmly at the centre of the mound. He was surrounded by his bodyguard, the strongest, bravest and most ruthless of his followers, who stood lower on the sides of the mound, their backs turned towards him.

A head, below and to his left, situated almost directly under a lantern that swung lazily back and forth casting its low tremulous light, twitched as if its owner might dare to look over his shoulder, might presume to defy an order.

He took one step off the apex of the mound, one step down and to his left.

The attack was swift and deadly, the blades of his staff whirring through the air, cutting the vibrations into bright new patterns. He destroyed the guard who had dared to twitch, his right-hand man, his captain, his champion, with a series of slices from the long stiletto bound to the end of his staff. Then, he sawed into his remains with the broad, serrated blade that protruded from the haft of his weapon at a twisted but pleasing angle.

No human would have detected a sound as the congregation held its collective breath, but to these creatures, the air was filled with waves of tension and noise, and movement crashing through their numbers, driving them to respond with fear and wonder. Their leader returned to his position at the apex of the dais mound, blood gleaming on the blades of his weapon in the narrow beams of faint lantern-light.

He watched the throng.

Beyond his ring fence of bodyguards closest to the mound, stood his most trusted lieutenants, warriors and fangleaders, beyond them gathered their loyal followers, and beyond those great swathes of young clanrats eager for blood, swarmed in loose groups. It was there, at the edges of the congregation that the violence began.

The blood thirst was upon them as their whiskers, snouts and ears responded to the waves that their leader had sent through them. The stench of blood, the movement in the air as thousands of them exhaled almost in unison, the vibration under their feet as their leader pounded the end of his staff into the earth of the mound, conspired to generate a wave of fear and loathing that roused them to acts of unfathomable violence. When their leader cut down the lieutenant who had been plotting against his reign, reasserting his strength and wisdom, and rightness, the youngest of the congregants, the most eager, the neurotic and most easily influenced turned one upon another, needing no further excuse to wreak a debt of violence on their weaker companions.

The bodies would not lie in their stinking filth and blood for long. The wounded and dead would be consumed with gusto as soon as the niceties had played out.

In the minute or two that their leader allowed to elapse, dozens, perhaps hundreds of the most pathetic, had been hacked to pieces or maimed; ears, eyes and limbs torn to shreds, guts and skulls opened.

In the last moments before their ruler brought the meeting to order, two tribal leaders did bloody battle, surrounded by a heaving crowd of baying followers. They thrust and scythed their weapons at each other, blades clashing and arcing, leaving shadows in the air as they sped to their targets. The smaller, but bulkier of the two, hunched at the shoulders and wide of stance, took the bloodiest wound low in his gut or perhaps high up in his thigh. The resulting spurt of blood probably emanated from the femoral or iliac artery. His opponent stepped to one side and raised his arms in triumph, only to be cut brutally across his narrow belly with the serrated blade wielded by one of his henchmen. The victor took two steps up the side of the mound, and the last place in the circle of bodyguards was won and filled, the ring of warriors completed. Their leader had asserted his strength and power, the scheming right-hand man had been dealt with and replaced, and all had been accomplished in an appropriate bloodthirsty frenzy on the grandest of stages.

His position thoroughly reasserted, the leader threw back his head and squealed with laughter. The sound was high and shrill and filled with breath, like a shriek or a screech. The cacophony erupted in the space and fractured the atmosphere, which was too filled with the sounds of clamouring, skirmishing young ones. The air splintered and trembled as it was cleansed of the sounds of close and brutal combat.

The congregants loosened their grips on their weapons, shrugged themselves back into postures and stances that roughly signified attention to the dais, and, most of all, they fell silent.

He told them. He told them all, his warriors and his workers, his spies and his whisperers. He told them this, as he had told them before, long and often.

‘They love us and loathe us; love and loathe.’

He snickered, and his whiskers wove intricate patterns in the air as he proclaimed this lesson to his gathered masses.

‘They worship and defile us. Worship us. Worship me. They give into the earth all the things they despise on the earth, and all the things they treasure beyond everything. Their treasures are our treasures. They dig our dirt and deposit their treasures in the earth to worship us. My treasures. The gold is mine, and the gems; the gold is mine and ours, and all to my good. The gold and the gems. And the secrets. The dirt holds their secrets.’

The skaven masses hissed their approval as the Rat King laid claim to all that was below the surface in every crevice, nook, hole and grave dug by man or beast.

‘It is the Fell One,’ he said. ‘The Fell One must be mine. The Fell One must be my newest treasure. Behold his powers. Behold how fleet he is, how fleet. The Fell One must be mine. Seek him. Seek him out, and I shall lead him here. The Fell One shall fall at my feet and call me master. The Fell One shall fall, and I shall be his merciless captor. Behold how fleet he is, how fleet. The long-lived one, the Fell One, shall fall. When he falls, for fall he will, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever.’

There was movement among the skaven crowds gathered in the crypt before their Rat King. They shuffled and elbowed one another at this strange turn of events. They bared their teeth, and hissed, and kicked. One went down at the edges of the gathering, and then another. They were restless, and their ruler seemed not to know what he was saying. The atmosphere filled first with motes of dust, disturbed into flight by the action of rat-feet on dry, subterranean dirt. Then the air began to move with the breath of the ratkin and the palpable tension among them; their snouts could not help but shrug and twitch, their whiskers tremble and their ears rotate. Their blood organs could not help but flutter and fibrillate. Their energy made the motes dance and weave in intricate, delicate patterns, writing the courses of their fates in the air around them. No mortal man could read the prophesies written there, but the dancing collections of motes began to mesmerise the weakest of the skaven. Only the initiated, the ancient, the leaders and kings of other worlds and other times could truly read the hieroglyphs created in the air, the omens and oracles that spoke of the true and honest states and fates of their kind.

The Rat King looked out over the heads of his followers, out into the depths of the crowd, as whispers approached him. He heard disappointment, disenchantment, impatience and dread. He heard the disaffected whisperings of the very young and the moans of fear from the old.

‘Gold and gems,’ he heard. ‘Gold and gems.’

‘Gold and gems,’ he said, lifting his weapon in his left hand, allowing the runes carved into the surface of its haft to glint in the low, yellow light of the smoking lanterns.

The skaven hordes quietened a little, and he felt rather than heard the whisper come again. He seemed not to be able to speak his own mind.

‘Gold and gems,’ he said again.

And then again, ‘Gold and gems.’

He felt the ache in his belly, and smelt the musky, acrid scent of his body hair singeing and his skin scorching beneath the amulet.

‘Gold and gems,’ he said once more as he thrust his hand under his coat to extract the amulet.

As he lifted the hair-ribbon over his head, the amulet felt dull and cold in his paw, no more interesting than a lump of coal or chalk. He could not feel its facets, nor imagine the reflective qualities that it had possessed only minutes before. It felt dull and soft and crumbly. Fear struck deep in his blood organ as he clenched his clawed paw around the amulet. He felt the power drain out of his hands, and thought he might stagger or fall. His left hand gripped the staff of his weapon more firmly, and he allowed it to take his weight as his right hand rose before him, without him exerting any of his will upon it.

His head was suddenly full of words that he did not understand and could never have annunciated. He wanted to copy the words, say them aloud from his V-shaped maw, but none would come.

He heard a hum, a tune, almost a melody. It was a lullaby, and then it was gone, transformed into a frantic crashing wave of discord that emptied his head of all right-thinking.

Then the motes in the air began to dance to a different tune, to no tune at all, only to the noises in his head.

The Rat King wanted to hold his paws over his ears and over his eyes. He wanted to still the insistent twitch of his whiskers and the rotating of his ears, and yet he had no power over his movements.

Finally, he felt the amulet grow so cold in his paw, so insubstantial that he thought it would fall to dust. He wanted to clench it more tightly, to hold onto it, never to let it go. It sustained him. He knew not how, but it was because of this object that he had grown and thrived and lived so long among his brethren.

He clutched the staff in his left hand, driving its end so firmly into the compacted earth floor of the mound that it made a small, perfectly hemispherical crater that was beginning to radiate odd cracks in the surface of the dais. His weapon took his entire weight for he felt as slow and heavy as death. His blood organ boomed, low, within his body, ponderous as a human’s.

His head turned to watch the movement of his right arm as it stretched out to his side, parallel to the floor. He looked at his paw, glowing and translucent, the veins showing like threads of pink light through the padding of his paw palms. The veins pulsed, long and slow. The involuntary twitching in his snout and whiskers slowed so dramatically that he thought he had been stilled, that this was all some terrible dream-state, or some unasked-for condition that afflicted any hapless being who came into ownership of his amulet; the magical talisman that had shown him his path to great age and even greater power among his kind.

He could do nothing but watch and trust.

At the furthest reaches of the congregation, skaven began to keel over where they stood, falling to their deaths as their blood organs slowed to nothing, or trilled to a frequency beyond the capacities of their bodies to tolerate. There were no signs. There was no way to know which of them would succumb or why they were dying, but die they must, in their dozens and hundreds. They expired staring into space, without a mark or a spot of blood appearing on their bodies.

Then, the air sucked away the swirling motes from around the corpses. The particles grouped and banded together and moved around the crypt in waves until all eyes were fixed on the dancing display of light and dust specks over the skavens’ heads. The spectacle drifted up towards the vaulted masonry high above them, casting shadows and spots of light onto the surfaces of the stones, making them glisten and glitter.

A galaxy of motes and particles, forming an array of symbols in three dimensions settled in a broad halo around the mound with the Rat King at its centre. Then he was bathed in light as the specks reflected and refracted all the illumination they could summon from the lanterns that flickered their smoky flames into the cavernous ceiling space.

The throng was agog, the skaven staring at their leader and at the story that was playing out over his head.

The Rat King watched as his right paw throbbed with the pink light that seemed to be coursing through his veins, and he sucked in a shocked breath as he watched his claws spread and his palm open.

He waited, his blood organ stopping entirely, true silence falling all around him as the motes stopped their merry dance, each coming to a dead halt in the air, all shining their reflected light down on him.

If there had been any capacity for rational thought in the Rat King’s mind, in that moment, he would have believed that he would never take another life-sustaining breath. Indeed, many of his kind would be dead by the time the drama had played out, and he did not doubt, in that moment, that he would be one of them. If he survived, he knew that he would live a longer, more satisfying life than all of his predecessors, perhaps than all of his predecessors combined.

He dreaded dropping the amulet to the earth floor at his feet. He dreaded that it would wither to dust, that it would cease to protect him, cease to strengthen his reign.

He wanted to close his eyes against the sight. He wanted his blood organ to begin pumping again. He wanted to be one of them, one of the horde, a simple skaven without the wit for ambition, without the secret of longevity.

He could neither blink nor twitch a whisker, nor clear his parched throat. The terror and anticipation filled him with wonder and horror and glee. The amulet had woven its magic before in ways that he had never understood, but he had kept it, cherished it, allowed it to burn his hair and brand his flesh, tolerated it filling his mind with unfathomable sounds and words and songs. He had fallen under its spell, and he had benefited and suffered for it in almost equal measures.

The Rat King’s claws peeled away from the charm, and his pink palm throbbed.

He was no longer holding the amulet in his paw, and yet, it did not fall.

The charm hung for a moment in the air, and then brilliant light exploded from it in a million prismatic sparkles, brighter and more ethereal than the dust motes held magically still in the air above his head. He thought that the charm had splintered and broken, its otherworldly elements rending it asunder in a miasma of blinding shards of luminescence.

When all the light had dispersed into the vaulted ceiling of the crypt, and his hand closed again, involuntarily, around the air, he felt something cool and solid and slick where he had expected to feel nothing at all. The amulet felt hard like stone, but greasy like the pelt of a well-fed and well-serviced brood-mother. He could not determine whether it was the faceted mineral that it had appeared to be in its most recent incarnation, and he could not open his paw again to look upon it.

He stared out over the congregation of rats, at their faces upturned to look at the light display whirling above their heads. Then, deep in the gloom at the furthest reaches of the crypt, he saw a pair of pink eyes shining out at him. Their gaze held as the Rat King called upon this, his minion, to do his bidding, to find the Fell One.

Suddenly, there was a picture in his head, a glowing image of the tallest, most slender and upright being that the Rat King had ever seen. The biped stood as high as two, if not three, skaven, and it was straight, without the angles for shoulders and elbows and knees and heels that typified the ratman’s physique. It was more like the hairless, human air-walkers, while being taller than the tallest man-thing, longer of neck, more elegant, half the width and so uncannily upright. The Rat King knew that this was his target, this was the Fell One, this was the creature that would help him to live forever. He knew not why, nor how this could be achieved; he only knew that it was his destiny. He only knew that he had clutched the amulet, and that he had sensed and seen his very being projected into a wondrous future, to a time when he would be worshipped by everything below the ground in the nether-lands, by everything above it and by all that lay between.

At the very moment when he wondered whether he was dead or in some mortal trance-state, the glitter dust that the charm had produced whirled and cycled in the air before him, between his position and that of the skaven who had locked eyes with him. He could no longer see the young pup, for he was blinded by the perfectly realised hologram that the brilliant sparks had generated, the perfect vision of the Fell One.

‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever.’

He heard the words, both in his head and in the air around him. The voice sounded like his, but he could not remember forming the words, either in his mind or in his maw.

‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, you’ll live forever. You won’t live for now, not just for now. You’ll live forever.’

The words were real, the whisper coalescing around the astounding form of the Fell One that began to change colour and slowly revolve in the air before him.

It was the pup, speaking.

The Rat King’s eyes, open wide in a blinkless stare, could see the suggestion of movement in the pup’s jaw, and sense the tremor in the air caused by his whiskers as he shaped his maw to produce the words.

Then another voice spoke up, and another.

Eyes began to turn towards the figure of the Fell One with its white head-hair cascading from its high crown, with its intricately woven cloak of the strangest iridescent cloth, with its weapon so fine, so light, burnished so bright as to defy usefulness. Unblinking eyes shone pink, whiskers twitched and maws chewed and flexed and whispered.

The susurrus of the thousands of voices moved the air such that the detail the Fell One was wrought in became increasingly profound. It was possible to divine individual hairs on his head and stitches in his garb, to see flecks of a million colours in the bright irises of his almond-shaped eyes and to stare into the eternity reflected back from their fathomless pupils.

The news radiated outwards from the crypt.

The skaven followed their burrows and tunnels back through the nether-lands to where they had come from, all the while monitoring the movements in the earth above them, searching for the sounds of the Fell One, reaching out to feel his alien vibrations in the micro-movements of the dirt around them.

Competition was fierce, and the eager skaven fought one another tooth and claw for the best avenues, the shallowest fissures, the places under the earth that resonated most profoundly with the waves of movement on the surface. They defended the spaces where earth tremors intersected to pinpoint exact locations where the Fell One might pass. Some chose their positions and stayed there, fighting off all-comers, and touching, testing and sniffing the dirt endlessly, confusing their senses and rendering them helplessly insane, often in a matter of hours.

They would begin by trying not to affect the area where they stood sentry, fighting the urge to twitch or move or even breathe. They could not risk hunting, did not dare to leave their posts in search of food or drink, so that when the supplies that they carried ran out, they didn’t think to replace them. Many died of starvation without eating the rations they carried lest they miss some tremor in the air because they disturbed it with chewing.

Others of the skaven scurried back and forth, thither and yon in the dirt tunnels and warrens of the nether-lands, searching for the Fell One by covering too much ground too quickly. They collapsed, exhausted and confused, or fought for access to the narrowest least-used of the tunnels below ground. Their accelerated metabolisms meant they could cover a great deal of ground quickly, but they also meant they needed to eat and drink often. Many were so intent on finding the Fell One, so driven by their Rat King’s mission, so eager to please their lord and to benefit from the capture of so rare and wondrous a creature that they too forgot to feed their bodies.

Violence had been the most common form of death among the skaven for centuries, violence from outside forces and external enemies, and violence from within their ranks. There was no understanding of familial relationships, no sense that they were brothers-in-arms, no loyalties, no ties, and no love lost between them. They fought each other, and killed and died, for any reason and for no reason at all. Now, they died from starvation and insanity, or they were ground down and eaten up by the amulet; that magical device that gathered up souls, devoured them, and distributed their life and longevity back to the wearer.

The Rat King felt it all. Every road, every path, every warren, every space led back to his crypt, back to his anteroom, back to him.

Any skaven that learnt anything, either by good luck or hard work, or by means of stealing from others of his kind, came scurrying back to its master, and the whispers began finding their way back up the chain of command to the Rat King.

He felt their conversations in the air, knew when they were close and when they were on wild-goose chases. He could tell by their manner, their bearing, the way they whispered, as much as by what they whispered, whether they were onto something or not.

Then he heard about the human. He knew from the side-by-side rhythms of the human boy and his master the Fell One, that he had found his quarry. The contrast between the vibrations they caused and the echoes these sent down through the fissures and burrows, down through the dirt and the earth back to the Rat King, was the most telling clue of all. Each vibration was identified by a comparison to its companion.

The boy defined the Fell One.

There was blood on his hands. There was skaven blood on his hands. The boy had killed a ratman. He had killed ratmen. He would kill them again.

The Rat King did not care. The loss of one of his kind was as nothing. He could devour a thousand of them, a thousand thousand and still not consume a life force to equal that of the Fell One. Let the boy kill, let him kill them if it brought the Fell One closer.

Closer he would come, closer and closer.

‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, the Fell One will come too.’

In the dark little antechamber of the crypt, the Rat King sat on a throne cobbled together from the broken staves, hafts and blades of a dozen weapons or more; the rusted, useless, broken blades jutting out at angles in all directions. The joints were made with greasy twists of cloth, ribbons torn from rent and bloodied garments, wound tight, lacing back and forth around the sticks of wood. The hafts and staves were worn smooth, black and shiny by the filthy grasps of their many former owners, the runes crudely carved into them, many years before, honed by time and now silky to the touch.

The Rat King’s refuge was at the centre of his world. It was, so far as he knew, the only space for hundreds of underground miles, the only place in the nether-lands that had only one entrance and one exit, and those two the same opening. He was the only ratman that lived in private, that could not be taken by surprise, whose space was sacrosanct and could not be penetrated by new digs or the re-opening of old tunnels. He lived at the end of the maze, at the vanishing point, and all roads led to his door. He lived at the epicentre of all vibrations, of all movement, and all sounds travelled to him.

The stories of the boy came thick and fast, that he was with the Fell One and then at a distance, then close again. Every time the boy was mentioned the Fell One was felt, his rhythm denser and slower and more mediated, harder to detect, more economical. He was beyond the boy, and then ahead, and then behind him, to his left or right. They wove, together, a beautiful, intricate, crossing pattern with loops and whorls like the subtly winding paths of the pad prints from a skaven’s paw, and their vibrations made intersecting wave patterns of delightful complexity.

Hundreds of sightings over days and weeks came together in the Rat King’s mind. His leaders, his champions, his warriors and his minions each had small pieces of the puzzle, and the further up the food chain the skaven were the more pieces of the puzzle they had, but none could put together a complete picture. None had all the information.

No ratman would share information with another of the same standing in this skaven society. Lower ranking ratmen would share only with skaven of higher standing or status. The minions fed the warriors information, the warriors fed the champions, and the champions fed information to the leaders. Each of the dozen or so of the Rat King’s closest aides collected his own cache of information of sightings, of vibration paths, but none trusted his equals enough to share that information.

Once the Rat King had got what he wanted, he pitted his underlings against each other, filling their heads with stories of treachery, backstabbing, spying and stealing. No one survived for very long with any amount of information.

The strongest of the leaders, those who survived the deaths of their colleagues, came under special scrutiny from the Rat King. He promised them much.

The first of his lieutenants entered his antechamber as he sat on his throne, facing the single portal that kept him the safest and best-protected of them all in his uterine cul-de-sac.

He motioned for the large, red-eyed skaven with the thick covering of coarse dirty black hair to kneel before him.

The skaven did not argue with him, despite being beyond grovelling to anyone, including the Rat King that he would happily conspire to dethrone. Something compelled him to take orders from the wizened old Rat King, whose wrist was adorned with the hard dull amulet that seemed to throb, lighting the kinks and curves of hair in the ribbon that held it in place.

The Rat King held his hand in front of his kneeling lieutenant’s face, the charm suspended from it.

The lieutenant remained still, but the air around him began to bend and throb, vibrating the Rat King’s whiskers and filling his mind’s eye with a hundred images. The lieutenant began to speak, although all of the information was already suspended in the air between them, making his speech redundant. His eyes glazed over and he recounted, in automatic tones, all of the information that had been fed to him through the channels of his command. He had thought to keep something back, not to tell the whole story, but to leave gaps in the tale that might confound the Rat King’s intention to track the Fell One for his own ends. However, as he knelt in the small antechamber, the lieutenant had no choice but to tell it all, and to share the conclusions that he had drawn from the wealth of information that had come his way. With a broad overview, he had seen connections that others with less knowledge had missed, and he added these to his recitation of events.

The Rat King absorbed the account of the Fell One’s movements, along with the lieutenant’s thoughts on their significance, and all of the information that floated around in the air between them, with the amulet as his guide.

When it was done, the lieutenant continued to kneel before the Rat King, unable to move unless instructed to, his gaze caught in the impenetrable depths of the charm stone.

The amulet twisted and rotated on its hair-ribbon, as the Rat King brought his hands down onto his lieutenant’s face, one paw on each of the lieutenant’s cheeks.

The Rat King began slowly to apply pressure with his opposable claws, above the ridges of his lieutenant’s cheekbones. Seconds later, with a pair of quick explosions, there and gone in no time, he caught two pink, wet reflecting flesh marbles in his palms. The Rat King tossed his lieutenant’s eyeballs casually to the earth floor and muttered for him to leave the antechamber.

The lieutenant stood and turned, crushing one of his eyes under a paw as he did so, and stepping on the other as he moved tentatively across the room.

The second of the Rat King’s lieutenants lost his hearing when his master penetrated his eardrums with the same claws that had blinded the first.

The third lieutenant was relieved of his tongue, sliced deeply and cleanly away.

The fourth lieutenant lost his most precious sense when the king excised his whiskers, plucking them one at a time from his maw and brow, and then had his paws burned to thickly scarred stumps incapable of feeling the subtlety of a vibration through any wall made of earth, brick or stone.

The lieutenants relayed their information and, maimed and helpless, were returned to their men. None would last out the day, and, with their deaths, all the information they had gathered was lost back to its sources, sources who could not be induced to share anew.

The Rat King was all-knowing. He was the repository of all information pertaining to the Fell One and his unlikely companion.

The watched ones, the Fell One and the boy, had nothing in common. They did not sleep nor eat at the same time, nor with the same frequency; they moved at different paces, often in different directions; their bodies had no rhythms alike, nor had they similar needs.

And yet.

‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, the Fell One will come too.’

The words echoed around his antechamber as he awaited more news, more sightings, more information to add to the labyrinthine light map that he cast his black eyes over.

He did not read it consciously. The skaven were a simple, brutal race. They kept smells in their heads and vibrations, they recognised things intuitively. They knew fear when they saw it and the blood thirst. They registered anger and resentment, hunger and mirth. They instinctively knew where they were, underground, at any time, however far they had travelled through the nether-lands, however injured or frightened they were; a skaven could never be lost in his natural habitat. Maps of the nether-lands were redundant, and it was a simple fact that no one had ever seen fit to draw them. Maps of the top-world were known to exist, but the skaven turned their noses up at the thought of them, preferring to rely on the solid evidence of ancient and immovable landmarks.

A three-dimensional map made of dust and specks of light would be as alien to the skaven as flying. And yet, there it was, suspended in the foetid air of the Rat King’s underground lair, a living, breathing, cycling representation of all the routes and paths the Fell One and the boy had taken in their travels.

The Rat King disturbed the air gently with the claw of his left hand, amending the details on the map with hieroglyphic notations, while his right hand swung the amulet from its hair-ribbon in a fast, short pendulum motion that seemed to rearrange the dust in subtle, but important ways. He did not fully understand what he was doing, only that he was responding to the whispers in his head, the urgings and admonitions that he must listen to through all his waking hours, and all of his hours were wakeful.

All the time that the Fell One had been in his sights, all the time that he had been accompanied by the human boy, was time that appeared to have been spent in some kind of search, some quest that led the old being in a tacking course from one point on the surface to another. He was an air-walker, a crust-liver and yet he wove a path from one point of egress to the next across the skaven nether-lands.

Every point of egress from above ground to below, every portal, every burrow entrance from which a skaven might exit onto the dirt or enter under it, was marked by a sighting of the Fell One and the boy.

Other sightings put the boy at the site of an ancient tree or a known well, and still more put the Fell One at the entrance to a basement or the site of an ancient burial; places known to the skaven, landmarks for them in the confusing light and air of the top-world. But whenever the Fell One’s path entwined with the boy’s, wherever they joined forces, they did so where the skaven world met the surface.

The Rat King saw it all. Suddenly, all he could ever want was right there in front of him.

Everything fell neatly into place, and the Rat King clapped his paws together in glee, the claws clacking against each other in a staccato sound that tore tiny holes in the fabric of the air, disturbing the map that shone and glittered before him.

They were hunting. They were searching for skaven to kill. The tiny dull lights, flitting aimlessly in angry little batches, congregating in the dark places on the Rat King’s map were their prey. The skaven were dying, their blood was on the Fell One’s hands and on the boy’s.

The dull lights began to wink out one at a time, and then by twos and threes. Some continued to throb faintly for several seconds before blinking out, and some hurried away, returning to the nether-lands and to safety.

But they were not safe. The skaven were not safe. They were not safe from their Rat King, and they were not safe from the Fell One; they were not even safe from the boy.

The boy was the key, the boy and his companions.

He could have him. He could have the Fell One.

‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, the Fell One will come too.’

He spoke without realising that he was doing so, and as he spoke again, his black eyes clouded a little and his gaze seemed to fall short of the map that was slowly disintegrating back into its component parts.

The amulet, twisting and pulsing on its hair-ribbon, seemed to be slowing down, no longer rocking back and forth like a relentless pendulum marking time, but coming to a gentle rest.

‘I will bring him, so I will. I will bring him. When he comes, for come he will, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever.’

The Rat King unwrapped the hair-ribbon from around his wrist, hung it around his neck and dropped the amulet down under his coat. He could feel the flesh of his belly warm with the contact of the charm, and could smell the searing of his hair. His snout twitched slightly, and if his V-shaped maw with its rows of sharp teeth could smile, a smile was what appeared on his face now.

He placed his fleshy palms flat on the walls of his antechamber and felt the vibrations building. They built so fast and with such intensity that his palms curled, involuntary, and his claws dug deep gouges in the mossy stone walls.

He shrugged his coat more comfortably around his shoulders, and took the haft of his weapon in his left paw, using his right to wrap the strips of ragged cloth around the soft parts of his palm while exposing the blackened claws, now sharpened by their recent contact with stone.

The ground beneath his feet throbbed, and he could hear the treads of thousands of pairs of feet as his minions drew closer.

The message had been subliminal. He had not even been aware that he was summoning them, and yet summon them he had, in their hordes. Every tribal leader, every champion, every lieutenant had taken up his clarion cry, and soon they would fill the crypt and stand in awe as they listened to his orders.

He had sacrificed so many of them to his cause, and each of their lives had lengthened his by a breath or two, by half a dozen beats of his blood organ. Their lives were cheap.

It did not matter how many of them he sacrificed to ensure his immortality, there would always be more of them. Every time he killed a champion, every time he slaughtered a leader who knew too much, every time he tore into a warrior who coughed at the wrong moment, or turned his back, or showed the slightest disrespect to the Rat King, another happily took his place. They lived fast and they died young. The brood-mothers, their mothers, the glossy bitches, serviced by all and any who could fight their way through the throngs to get at them, simply produced more. The nurseries were full of them, teeming with the little bastards who would fight and die, even as pups, for the sake of violence.

There would only ever be one Fell One, and he had a plan to take him captive. He had a plan that would decimate his hoards of ratmen, but it would never exhaust their numbers entirely.

He did not know how long he stood in the antechamber, mesmerised by the voices in his head, and by the plot that was forming from the strange words. When his senses returned, the Rat King could hear the sounds of skaven jostling for positions in the crypt. They had answered his call. They had come. He could sense that the lanterns had been lit, and that his bodyguard, none of whom had served him for more than a few days, and none of whom would serve him for many more hours, were in position.

He left the antechamber and climbed the short spiral of stone steps that led to the mound. He tapped his staff down hard on each step, quieting the crowds that could hear his egress and feel the vibrations he was summoning from the staff and the old worn steps. There was menace in every footfall, and more in the deliberateness with which he placed his staff, not to aid his climb, but to instill fear and wonder in the waiting audience, his congregation.

He needed no words to silence them. They stood in rough ranks, facing him. They stopped jostling and pushing. They did not elbow, or shove or trip one another.

The Rat King’s snout twitched slightly in air that felt thick with fear and awe, fear and awe for him, and for the power he was about to wield.

The Rat King spread his arms to his sides, his left clutching the haft of his weapon. He looked down on the backs of the heads of his bodyguard; none twitched. They were still and they were silent.

He looked out over their heads, watching pairs of red and black eyes glinting and throwing light in the great space. The air above their heads was dense and dark and full of presentiments.

The Rat King took hold of the amulet and lifted it out of his coat. He didn’t wind the hair-ribbon from around his neck, but simply tugged on it, and it came away in a small cascade of drifting hairs. He held the amulet high above his head and opened his hand.

The charm spun slowly in the air, and then faster and faster, casting brilliant light into the darkest of corners. Then the voices began, first chanting some strange incantation that made some of the minions furthest from the dais sweat and gag, and fall dead to the earth floor beneath their feet. Finally, the chanting stopped and a single voice echoed around the great hall.

‘I will bring him, so I will. I will bring him. When he comes, for come he will, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever.’

The skaven joined in, first singly and in small numbers, and then in groups and tribes, and soon they were all reciting the words.

‘We shall bring him so we shall. We shall bring him. When he comes, for come he will, you’ll live forever. You won’t live for now, not just for now. You’ll live forever.’

As they spoke, the miasma of their breath, finding its way into the vaulted space above their heads, augmented by the ethereal, brilliant light from the amulet, formed shapes and patterns in the air until the entire plot was drawn in stark detail before them. The boy was there – the bait. The Fell One with his sword stood out in stark detail, defending the human boy. Some of the skaven tittered and gurgled odd laughing noises as they witnessed the Fell One’s unfounded loyalty to the ugly, slow, smooth-skinned human boy. They laughed less when they witnessed the speed and savagery of his weapon as it cut down their shadows right above their heads.

The plan was laid out before them. Their mission was etched indelibly on their collective mind. They would obey their Rat King and master, even knowing that they would die doing his will.

A young skaven, maddened by the sights before him, clutched his bladed weapon in both of his hands, like a scythe, and swept through the legs of a dozen of his nearest compatriots before he could be stopped. Another ratman, a frenzied tribal leader with a deep battle scar cleaving his brow, that should have left him dead, drew a thick-edged serrated blade across his own throat until bright pink blood gouted from his carotid, signaling his death.

Many succumbed, but those that remained were galvanised by the experience. It was all before them. They had a mission and they would give their lives in the quest for its completion.

They began to turn from the Rat King as he held his arms aloft and stared deeply into the light show high above him in the vaulted ceiling of the crypt.

Gradually, the amulet, slowed in its spinning motion, and the light began to disperse from it.

The hordes banded together and chose their routes out of the crypt, their feet pounding on the earth floor, and their voices echoing down the tunnels as they departed.

As the last of the skaven made ready to leave and the Rat King’s bodyguard turned to him for permission to fight for his greater glory, the amulet stopped dead in the air. The Rat King did not reach out to take it.

There were no more than a dozen of them in the crypt, standing around and on the dais mound, when the amulet began to revolve in the opposite direction; began sucking light back into its core, began to regenerate, just as the Rat King was revitalised by the losses of the lives around him.

All of the energy in the room was gone, and the darkness turned to something beyond dark, beyond the densest black darkness that the skaven were so familiar with in the depths of the dirt.

The amulet began to suck the light out of their eyes, catching the gleams that bounced off their claws and teeth; sucking the refracted pinpoint luminescences from the drops of saliva that coated their tongues.

It began to suck the light from the air among the hair on their bodies, and from the pores in their skin.

Then it began to draw light from the dressed stone of the crypt, from the vaults and buttresses, from every mason’s cut and mark.

When it was done, the amulet was dull and cloudy, and looked utterly unremarkable, aside from the fact that it sat in the air where there was nothing but necromancy to keep it aloft.

When it was done, the Rat King closed his hand around the amulet and stepped from the top of the mound towards his antechamber. As he left the crypt he turned to look at the desiccated corpses of his bodyguard. Then he turned to look back into the crypt, to take in all that had occurred.

The light was low, but that did not affect his sight, or what he saw.

The crypt was wrought new in obsidian stone, blacker than any stone hewn with a mason’s chisel had any right to be. It was dull and black in an infinite, endless way that would endure beyond anything that the skaven had ever known.

Whatever happened in the nether-lands, whatever became of the Rat King, of his minions and of his kingdom, the crypt would remain forever.

TORMENT

Anthony Reynolds

Death was nothing to be feared. Death he would have welcomed. It was the in-between place that that filled him with dread.

To some it was the Undercroft, Tartarus, or Limbo; to others it was Sheyole, the Shadowlands, or Despair. On old Colchis it was known as Bharzek. Translated literally, its meaning was simple and direct – Torment.

Those condemned to wander its ashen fields were said to be cursed above all others. They lingered there, haunted, confused and lost, suffused with impotent rage, longing and regret. Unable to move on, yet equally unable to move back to the lives they had left behind, they were trapped in that empty, grey wasteland, doomed to an eternity of emptiness.

He knew now that the old stories were wrong, however.

It was possible to come back...

‘Burias.’ That voice was not welcome here. It was an intrusion. He tried to ignore it, but it was insistent.

‘Burias-Drak’shal.’

He awoke to pain. It blossomed within him, building, compounding, multiplying, until every inch of his body was awash with fire. He was blinded by agony, yet he grinned, bloodied lips drawn back in a leering grimace.

Pain was good. Pain he could endure. He was alive, and not yet confined to the hell that the Dark Apostle had promised him. Burias embraced his pain, letting it draw him back from the brink of oblivion.

He knew where he was – deep within the Basilica of Torment, on Sicarus, adopted homeworld of the XVII Legion. He’d been dragged here in chains by his former brothers, but he had no concept of how long ago that had been. It felt like an eternity.

Gradually his senses returned.

The smell hit him first. Hot, cloying and repellent, it was the stink of a dying animal. It hung in the unbearably humid air like a fog, something that could be felt on the skin, oily, clinging and foul. He could taste it. Sickly stale sweat, charred meat and burnt hair; none of it could quite mask the stench of bile and necrotising flesh.

But more than anything else, he could smell blood. The room reeked of it.

He discerned low whispers and chanting, and the hushed shuffle of feet on a hard stone floor as his hearing returned. He heard the clank of chains, the hiss of venting steam, and the mechanical grind of gears and pistons.

This is not your fate.

The words were spoken with the confidence of one who does not need to raise its voice in order to make itself heard. It was familiar, but he could not place it. He tried to answer, but his lips were dry, cracked and bleeding, his throat raw and painful. He swallowed, tasting blood, and tried again.

‘Who are you?’ he managed.

I am the Word and the Truth.

‘Your voice... is inside my head,’ said Burias, wondering if his torture had driven him to insanity. ‘Are you real? Are you a spirit? A daemon?’

I am your saviour, Burias.

The haze of his surroundings was slowly coming into focus. He was staring straight up at an octagonal, vaulted ceiling. It was shrouded in darkness, lit only by a handful of low-burning sconces mounted upon the eight pillars surrounding him. Oily smoke coiled from these fittings, rising languorously.

He lay spread-eagled upon a low stone slab, bound in heavy chains bolted to the floor. The links that bound him were each the size of a Space Marine’s fist and heavy manacles were clamped around his ankles, wrists, and neck. The flesh around these bindings was blackened, raw and weeping, burnt almost to the bone.

The manacles were inscribed with ancient Colchisian cuneiform. Painstakingly replicated from the Book of Lorgar, the potent runic script glowed like molten rock, and the infernal heat radiating from them made the air shimmer. Yet more of the angular ideograms were carved directly into Burias’s tortured flesh, and these too smouldered with burning heat.

His body was a ruin of raw scar tissue, burns, cuts, abrasions and welts. His sacred warplate had been torn away piece by piece, with all the eagerness and hunger of feeding vultures. Where over the years it had become fused to his superhuman frame, it had been crudely hacked off with cleavers and blades that he suspected had been purposefully dulled to make the work longer and bloodier.

Every conceivable torture had been inflicted on him. But he had not been broken.

You are already broken, yet your mind refuses to accept it.

‘You lie,’ Burias gasped.

I do not. I am here to help you.

‘Then help me!’

Look to your left. That is your way out.

With some difficulty, his movement painfully restricted, Burias turned his head. Before him was the reinforced door of his cell. It was closed and bolted, and rust and corrosion was sloughing off its surface like dead skin. The door was massive, thick and solid, and the stonework around the lintel was carved with runic wards.

A pair of hulking executors were slumped in shadowed niches to either side of the door. Huge even compared to a Space Marine and vaguely simian in appearance, these mecha-daemon sentinels appeared completely lifeless except for their eye-sensors which blinked unceasingly in the darkness. They were behemoths of armour and barely-checked fury, mechanical constructs built around a brain and nervous system that had once been human, though daemonic entities had long since been bound within their steel bodies.

When roused, they were easily capable of ripping him in half with their immense powered mitts. Even in his weakened state, chained, tortured and stripped of his armour, Burias stared at them with eyes narrowed; an apex predator sizing up its rivals.

His muscles tensed as his body responded to his desire to fight, yet he was bound securely and he knew that any attempt to break his bonds was futile. There was no hope of escape.

All that imprisons you is your own perception, Burias, and nothing more. You believe that there is no escape, and so there is none.

‘You can hear my thoughts,’ said Burias.

Yes. You are not speaking aloud now, you realise?

‘Who are you?’

Burias’s question was met with silence.

‘Are you Drak’shal?’

Again, silence.

His view of the dormant executors was abruptly blocked as a dark figure shuffled in front of him, chattering incoherently. More of these robed figures moved around him, attentive and whispering, their faces hidden in the shadow of deep cowls. They were loathsome creatures, emaciated and hunched, the definition of their ribs and vertebrae clearly visible through their black robes. Their arms were corpse-thin and grey. Rusting cables and tubes that leaked milky fluids protruded from their flesh, and their bony fingers were tipped with a plethora of needles, hooks, blades and callipers. All were stained with blood. His blood.

Lobotomised cantors were hard-wired into hooded alcoves positioned half way up the chamber’s eight pillars. They chanted litanies of binding and containment in long, monotonous streams, their entire existence focused solely on this duty. Their eyes were wired open, and their grossly obese bodies were the pallid shade of a creature that had never seen daylight. Reams of parchment unfolded endlessly before them, and their mouths bled from the potency of the words they read aloud.

Everything about the cell, from the runic chains to the inscriptions upon the cell door and the drone of the cantors, had been designed with a singular purpose – to ensure that the daemon Drak’shal remained tightly bound, suppressed and quiescent.

With the daemon dormant within him, Burias was as any other warrior-brother within the Host; a demi-god of war in comparison to lesser, unaugmented beings, yes, but nothing more than a shadow of his former self. He could hardly feel the daemon’s presence at all, and this cut him more deeply than any physical torture. It felt like he was missing a part of himself, something so integral to his being that he felt like he had been hacked in two.

The daemon had been bound to his flesh in the early days of his induction into the Legion. He had been one of the special few, chosen for this path with great ceremony and care. Few warrior-brothers were able to survive the rituals of possession. Fewer still were able to master the daemon once joined.

There had been a period of struggle when Drak’shal had fought to gain ascendency, of course, but Burias had won out, asserting his dominance. He had been reborn. Everything of his former life was forgotten.

Drak’shal had given him strength – great strength – as well as speed, cunning, and rapidly accelerated healing that had seem him walk away from injuries that would have killed any other Space Marine. He’d fought in wars across a thousand battlefronts, and yet he bore not a single scar to show for all the countless wounds he had sustained – until now.

Fused with the daemon, his every sense had been heightened beyond anything he could ever have imagined. He could see in total darkness without the aid of his helmet’s optic augmentations. He could taste a drop of blood in the air at a hundred metres. He could run as fast as a Rhino APC and maintain his pace for days on end. His strength was easily that of five of his Word Bearer brothers.

‘You are nothing without Drak’shal,’ Marduk had said, standing over him as the manacles that now held him had been welded shut. Burias and Drak’shal had roared as one, knowing what was to come, but powerless to prevent it. The Dark Apostle had smiled as the runes had burst into flame, pushing the daemon back into enforced dormancy. ‘This is the punishment for your treachery, Burias.’

His muscles tensed at the memory, his lips curling back in a snarl.

It is your choice what path you take, Burias. To your left lies freedom; to your right, slavery.

Somehow Burias knew what he would see to his right, but he was still compelled to look.

For a moment the horror of the sight carried him somewhere else entirely; drowning, blinded, screaming.

The moment passed as quickly as it had come, and he was staring into a cavernous alcove, like the lair of some great beast. Slumped motionless in the shadow was the mechanical prison that would be Burias’s tomb for all eternity.

A Dreadnought.

War machines of colossal power, with a chassis of heavy ablative armour and toting weaponry comparable to that of a front line battle tank, the Dreadnoughts had been conceived early in the Great Crusade. Every time a Legion lost a battle-brother, particularly a captain or veteran, a wealth of hard-won knowledge and wisdom was lost along with them. The Dreadnought was designed to ensure that the greatest warriors and heroes of a Legion might live on even after suffering fatal wounds.

It had been a noble aim, one that seemed to hold great merit, but the machine’s creators on Mars had not foreseen the terrible, tortured existence that those interred within were forced to endure. Denied physical sensation, their existence was hollow, empty, and without end. They were cursed never again to experience physical sensation, and were cut off from everything and everyone.

To these poor unfortunates, the one thing that they had been gene-bred and trained for – war – was now a soulless and dissatisfying experience. They had become living war machines capable of laying waste to entire battlefields, and yet cruelly they were not able to elicit any satisfaction from doing so. Never again would they experience the rush of adrenaline that came from combat, nor feel the kick of a bolter in their hands, or watch the life leave a worthy enemy’s eyes as the shuddering kill thrust was administered.

As years turned to decades, decades rolled into centuries, and centuries became millennia, those pitiful souls condemned to that horrid half-life were driven slowly and inexorably to madness, filled with longing for all that they had lost, and bitterness towards those who had imprisoned them.

It was therefore in an act of pure malice and barbarity that Marduk intended to take Burias, a healthy, living warrior of the Host, and forcibly inter him. It spoke of the Dark Apostle’s vindictiveness that he would rather see Burias suffer for all eternity than have a fatally wounded warrior-brother saved from death’s grasp.

Burias stared at the immense, motionless machine with rising terror.

It stood upon squat, armoured legs, and its massive torso was almost as wide as the machine was tall. Both of its arms ended in immense power talons that hung dormant at its sides. A helmet – one of the early Mark II helms, brutal and archaic – was half-hidden behind a gorget of reinforced adamantium. The lenses of the Dreadnought were dark.

The machine was an ancient relic, a shrine to the dark gods, and its armour plating was a work of peerless artifice. Every centimetre of its deep crimson hide was covered in intricately carved scripture, and barbed metal bands edged each individual plate. Strips of vellum hung from wax seals, each covered in long tracts of illuminated text.

The chest of the Dreadnought was a gaping cavity. That was where the sarcophagus would be secured. That was where Burias would be entombed, and not as a glorious martyr of the Legion – the only injuries he bore were the result of his torture at the hands of the Host’s chirumeks. No, he was being interred within the Dreadnought as punishment for having dared turn against his sworn master Marduk.

Located behind his own was a second altar, mirroring the slab to which he was chained. Upon it rested a sarcophagus. His sarcophagus.

It was filled to the brim with liquid and ribbed pipes, cables and tubes spilled over its edges. Some of them connected into tall glass cylinders filled with murky amniotic fluid; others hung limp and lifeless, like parasites waiting to be affixed to a host.

The casket was not large – his arms and legs would be amputated in order for him to fit within. Cables and wires would be rammed into his nervous system, impulse-needles pushed into his cortex. Feed-tubes, ribbed-pipes and cables would be inserted into him, and oxygen-rich liquid would fill his lungs. Once sealed, his tomb could never be re-opened.

In times of war he would be interred within the Dreadnought and unleashed upon the foe, but at all other times his sarcophagus would lie dormant, collecting dust in the undercroft of the Infidus Diabolus. Denied outside stimuli, he would yet remain conscious, trapped in Torment...

Nothing is real but what you’ve chosen to accept.

‘You speak nothing but riddles!’ Burias snapped. ‘You said you were here to help me.’

I am.

‘Then tell me how to be free of his prison.’

Break your bonds.

Burias paused. ‘What?’

Break your bonds, and you will be free.

As simple as that, thought Burias, mockingly.

As simple as that.

Burias smirked, and shook his head slightly. Humouring the disembodied voice, he pulled against the chains binding him. He gritted his teeth and groaned with the effort, but there was no give in the metal links at all. He gave up. They were too strong.

They are not too strong, Burias. Belief is the path to freedom. Believe that you can break them, and you will.

Burias breathed in deeply, gathering himself. ‘Break, you bastards,’ he whispered, then hauled on the chains with all his prodigious, gene-enhanced strength. His abused, flayed musculature strained, veins protruding monstrously, like bloodworm parasites burrowing beneath the skin. He roared, pulling against his chains with reserves of strength that he did not know he had left.

He felt something stir within him.

The cuneiform runes carved upon his manacles burst into flame, their smouldering power surging. The droning intonation of the cantors lifted a pitch, becoming more strained, and the pair of slumbering mecha-daemon executors set to guard over him were roused, leaning forward on immense metal knuckles, emitting snuffling clicks from their vox-registers.

Burias’s vision was red, and the sound of his blood pumping in his ears drowned out all else. He could not hear himself roaring, though he knew that he still was. The runic wards turned white hot, and Burias dimly registered the smell of burning flesh – his skin around the manacles being seared anew by the heat of the metal. He barely felt it.

The executors were advancing, the rotary-barrelled autocannons mounted in their forearms clicking and ratcheting as they moved towards him. He lifted himself up off the slab, his back arching with the strain.

The first weakening in the wards came when one of the cantors began to spasm, its words faltering as it began to convulse. Blood burst from its nostrils and ears.

Whatever affliction had struck the cantor down was evidently contagious, as those adjacent to it began to shake and stammer. The chant lost all coherence and was suddenly a confused mess of conflicting, stuttering voices. The burning runes that bound Burias flared erratically, and the executor’s rotator cannons began to whine and spin.

With a scream that made reality shimmer, the daemon within Burias surged to the surface, rising like a monster from the deep. The warding runes exploded into blinding, glittering shards, and the chanting cantors’ brains burst in one mass collective haemorrhage.

Drak’shal was unleashed.

The change came over him quickly. Burias’s form shimmered and distorted like the display of a faulty pict-viewer, flicking back and forth between two incompatible images. It was as if two beings of vastly differing physiology were fighting to share the same location and the laws of reality did not know which to give precedence. Instead of a decision being made, the two images blurred together to become one.

Curving horns rose from Burias-Drak’shal’s brow, and his shoulders were suddenly bulging with additional musculature, flesh remoulding like wax. Barbed spines pushed from his elbows and down his spine, and ridges of bone sprouted down the blade of his forearms. His fingers fused to form thick talons, each as long as a mortal man’s thigh. Crimson hellfire burnt in eyes which were suddenly elongated slashes carved into a bestial visage, and thin lips drew back to expose the serrated teeth of a predator.

The whole change occurred within the space of a millisecond, faster than the time it took the guardian mecha-daemons to register the danger and open fire.

With a brutal surge of warp-spawned power, Burias-Drak’shal hauled himself upright. His arms and neck ripped free of the chains binding him, tearing the thick links effortlessly. One of the chain lengths held, and the heavy bracket securing it was instead ripped from the floor, bringing with it a torso-sized chunk of rockcrete.

With his legs still shackled, Burias-Drak’shal swung the chain around like a flail as the executors fired. The swinging rockcrete lump took the first in the side of the head, splattering blood and cancer-ridden brain matter as its armoured cranium crumpled.

The sheer brutal force of the blow almost tore the construct’s head from its servo-thick neck. Knocked off balance, its autocannon sprayed a burst of heavy-bore shells across the room, ripping through the bodies of black-robed attendants and tearing gouges along the far wall. A rain of expelled shell cartridges fell to the floor.

The second executor was spraying wild gunfire at Burias-Drak’shal, but the possessed Word Bearer was already moving, too fast for mortal eyes to follow. He used his momentum to wheel himself off the blood-stained stone slab, ripping the chains that bound his legs free. Detonations chased him as he spun away from the shots.

With a casual shove Burias-Drak’shal sent one of his craven, black-cowled tormentors flying backwards, hurling it ten metres through the air to strike one of the pillars with a sickening wet crack. With the same movement, he brought the weighted chain swinging around towards the executor that still stood.

The mecha-daemon ceased firing and reached up to grab the chain early in its swing. The heavy links encircled the armoured gauntlet of its fist three times, and the rockcrete lump crashed against its armoured forearm and shattered. With a savage yank, the executor snapped the chain, and Burias-Drak’shal stumbled to his knees.

The bestial construct bellowed in triumph and surged forward on all fours, moving with surprising swiftness. It lifted one immense fist high and brought it down hard, intending to pound Burias-Drak’shal into the floor.

The possessed warrior rolled, and the executor’s blow struck the flagstones, sending cracks rippling out from the impact and making the whole room shudder. Burias-Drak’shal scrambled to get away, but the executor managed to grab the short length of chain still attached to his left leg. With a triumphant roar that reverberated deafeningly in the confined space of the chamber, it hoisted him off the ground and swung him first into one of the stone pillars, then into the opposite wall.

Rock crumbled and dust fell as Burias-Drak’shal was pounded from side to side. One of the black-robed attendants cowering in a corner was crushed, brittle bones pulverised under the possessed warrior’s weight as it was caught up in the executor’s wild fury.

Then the Word Bearer was hurled violently across the chamber. He slammed against the far wall, which cracked under the impact, and fell to the floor. He spat blood as he pushed himself to one knee, momentarily blinded by pain.

The executor bellowed and came at him again.

Move. Leap to the right.

Burias-Drak’shal hurled himself aside as the voice commanded, and the executor thundered into the wall with tremendous force. Masonry dust fell from the ceiling, and cracks spread across the wall like veins. The monstrous executor’s shoulder was embedded half a metre into the stonework, and it appeared momentarily stunned by the colossal force of impact.

Kill it.

With a snarl, Burias-Drak’shal scrambled up the executor’s armoured body, climbing onto its hunched shoulders as it struggled to pull itself free of the crumbling wall. An outraged growl of scrap-code burst from its vox-grille and it whirled around, seeking to dislodge him, but Burias-Drak’shal clung on, holding tight to the edge of its armoured shell with one hand, claws digging deep into ceramite.

The executor’s armoured hide was as thick as the frontal glacis of a predator battle tank, but its joints were comparatively vulnerable. Its design compensated for this deficiency with overlapping, sheathed plating and a high gorget to shield its neck, but while this was powerful defence against an enemy facing it, there was little to protect against an enemy standing upon its shoulders.

With his free hand, Burias-Drak’shal began punching his talons into the executor’s exposed neck, hacking into the thickly bunched mass of fibre-bundles, servos and ribbed cables. Oil, milky fluid and stinking synth-blood sprayed outwards, splattering across Burias-Drak’shal’s face. Sparking electrical discharge arced from the wounds, and the executor went wild.

Spinning dementedly, roaring and bellowing, it sought desperately to throw off its smaller foe. It tried to slam him into one of the pillars, driving itself backwards at full force, but he clung on, hacking into its neck, ripping away cables and synthetic muscle-fibres, digging towards the vulnerable neural wiring deeper within.

The mecha-daemon’s data-roars become a pitiful, crackling whine, and it stumbled as its nervous system began to fail. It collapsed to the floor, twitching as its life-fluid pooled beneath it, running freely from its savaged neck. It clung to life, trying vainly to push itself upright, but it had lost all coordination and was unable to rise.

Burias-Drak’shal finished it off by driving one of his talons through the back of its armoured cranium, then turned his feral gaze towards the cluster of lesser creatures cowering in the corners of the chamber, determined to vent his fury on their flesh.

Go now. The others are coming for you.

Snarling, he advanced towards the terrified acolytes.

The immense cell door exploded outwards, wrenched out of shape and torn from its hinges. It slammed against the opposite wall, and Burias-Drak’shal sprang through the gaping doorway into a wide shadowed corridor. Gore caked his arms from talon to elbow, and bright blood was splashed across his chin.

There were four sentinels on guard outside his cell. Burias-Drak’shal did not stop to think why they had not entered his cell at the cacophony of mayhem that had been unleashed within, though if he had he might have guessed that in this place such sounds were not unusual. They came at him with falchion blades that hummed with power, and they died with those weapons still in their hands.

When his flesh was his own, Burias was a consummate and graceful warrior, elegant and poised. When he was one with the daemon, he was pure bestial rage.

He tore the head from one of the sentinels and ripped the throat out of the next with his teeth. The third died with the daemon-talons of his fist through its armoured chest, and the last was hurled away with a backhand blow, its spine shattered by the force of it.

Without pausing, Burias-Drak’shal swung his heavy head from side to side, tasting the air.

The ceiling was high and arched. Katharte daemons crouched high up along spiked buttresses like gargoyles, watching over him indifferently. The darkness hid their skinless forms from mortal eyes, though Burias-Drak’shal saw them clearly, and acknowledged them with a snarl.

Clusters of robed curators and indentured servants fled before him, wailing and falling over themselves in their haste. Penitents, their flesh criss-crossed with self-inflicted wounds, dropped to their knees in worship, crying out to him, skeletally thin arms raised in supplication. He ignored them, cocking his head to one side and listening intently.

Mournful bells of alarm were echoing up through the halls. He could hear raised voices barking orders in the war-cant of Colchis, and the stamp of heavy nailed boots on stone, coming in his direction. The sound reached him of weapons powering up – he discerned the unmistakeable hum of plasma weaponry; the electric crackle of submission whips.

With a snarl Burias-Drak’shal launched into motion, bounding down the hall towards the sounds. Each leap tore up the stonework as his talons dug deep, propelling him onwards, urgency and rage lending him speed. He rounded a corridor at full tilt, his momentum forcing him up onto the wall. Rather than slowing, his pace increased.

He hit the approaching warriors with all the elemental force of a thunder strike, leaping in amongst them and starting to kill before they had even registered his presence or thought to raise a weapon.

They were indentured Sicarus warrior-clan, enhanced post-humans bred by the XVII Legion for devotional combat. Their faces were obscured by clockwork rebreather masks and external optical targeting arrays, and hyper-stimms flooded their nervous systems. Though they could never have matched one of the Legion, they were a highly trained, elite force that was worthy of respect.

Nevertheless, there were children next to the fury of Burias-Drak’shal. Three of them were dead without even raising a hand in defence.

Burias-Drak’shal towered head and shoulders over them and ploughed through their ranks, ripping and killing. He smashed gun barrels aside as they were swung up towards him, and warrior-clansmen inadvertently slew their own brethren with high-powered hellguns and plasma blasts in the frenzied mayhem. He punched heads from shoulders, and ripped arms from sockets. He crushed skulls against the passage walls, and slashed throats with his blood-slick talons.

Writhing submission whips sought to ensnare him, but he was too fast for their touch, and those wielding them died, their hot blood splattering up the walls.

All the while, Burias-Drak’shal kept focussed on one figure at the back of the regiment, the hulking warrior whom he had heard barking orders in the language of dead Colchis. He was one of the Host, a brother Word Bearer that Burias had fought alongside for countless years. His name was Eshmun, and he was of the 16th Cohort.

A respected veteran, Eshmun was a stoic and capable warrior who, Burias-Drak’shal recalled, had been marked out for greater things after butchering three White Consuls, bastard gene-descendants of the Ultramarines primarch Guilliman, in close combat on the Imperial world of Boros Prime. In a hundred wars they had been comrades, fighting across innumerable worlds against all manner of foes. But here in these dark, sweltering corridors those bonds of brotherhood were forgotten.

Eshmun unslung his chainsword as Burias-Drak’shal leapt through the crush towards him, holding the weapon in a two-handed grasp. The blade’s engines roared, adamantium teeth a blur of motion as they spun in combat readiness. ‘Time to die, whoreson,’ growled Eshmun, his voice wet and throaty.

Eshmun was fully armoured in battle plate, yet even it proved unable to withstand Buras-Drak’shal’s fury. The possessed warrior took the swing of Eshmun’s chainsword in his forearm, allowing the whirring blades to rip into his flesh. It bit deep, screaming and spraying gobbets of blood and shards of bone, and then stuck fast.

With his weapon effectively disabled, the warrior was unable to deflect Burias-Drak’shal’s return strike, which punched straight through the front of his horned helmet and drove a half-metre long talon through his skull.

Eshmun died instantly but remained standing until Burias-Drak’shal withdrew, at which point the Word Bearer collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

Burias thought that killing one of his own Legion would have resonated powerfully within him... but it did not. It was merely another kill.

More of his kinsmen were closing in. He could taste their scent on the air.

It is the Anointed.

A part of him wanted to fight, but it was not a battle that he could win, and he knew that oblivion would not be granted to him; the Dark Apostle was too spiteful for that. He would fight, and a good number of them would die at his hands – Kol Badar included, if the Coryphaus dared face him – but Burias-Drak’shal would eventually fall.

Bloodied and broken, he would be dragged back to the cell, and once again he would be bound and shackled with wards and runes. The cantors would be replaced, their droning intonation would begin anew. Once Marduk grew bored, he would be torn limb from limb and sealed within the armoured sarcophagus that had been chosen for him.

Eternity in a box, going slowly and inexorably mad, was not a fate that he would welcome.

You must move quickly.

He stepped over the corpse of Eshmun and slaughtered a path free of the remaining clan warriors without a second thought.

Then he ran, the voice in his head guiding his every step.

Countless side corridors, hallways and tunnels branched off the main thoroughfares, like so many capillaries, veins and arteries. Each turn revealed ever more; thousands of passages spreading out in a bewildering, interconnected maze like an intricate spider-web.

Always, the voice guided him on.

It was impossible to fathom how many individuals were locked away down here, suffering, tortured and brutalised for all eternity. Still, he gave the matter just the barest moment of thought. What did he care? He was free – everything else was an irrelevance.

He passed by hundreds of heavy doors and cells, most of which were locked and barred. Agonised screams, wails and cries echoed from many. The curators of this hellish place knew their art well.

The corridors seemed to stretch out forever. It would have been possible to wander lost for a dozen lifetimes on any one level and never see the same corridor twice, and there were many hundreds of levels below ground, dug deep into the stifling, burning core of the daemon planet, and yet more were being excavated all the time.

Chained bondsmen, their eyes and mouths sutured shut, paused and raised their pallid heads blindly as he surged past them. Black-clad cenobites whipped them back into subservience, their faces obscured by masks of dead flesh.

Malforms with braziers surgically sculpted into their fleshy backs wandered the darkest corridors, existing merely to bring light where shadow lingered. In hidden alcoves, grinning chasteners scourged the bodies of proselytes, lashing them with barbed whips that grew from their wrist-stumps.

Tens of thousands of penitents shuffled along in endless lines, patiently and willingly awaiting ritual sacrifice, their minds turned to palsied mush by the blaring incoherence of floating Discords. Many of them had been standing in line for weeks on end. Flesh-eating cherubs circled around the weak and the sick, waiting for them to fall.

Burias-Drak’shal met his captors in battle once again at the foot of a majestic, sweeping staircase that spiralled up into pure darkness. Strobing lasfire puckered the air, and autocannons wielded by mono-tasked guardian-slaves tore apart the ornate, frescoed walls as they tried to lock onto his rapidly moving shadow.

He slaughtered everything that stood in his path, and bounded up the great stairs, taking them eight at a time. Up into the higher levels of the Basilica of Torment, Burias-Drak’shal climbed.

The scent-traces of the Anointed pursued him always.

He didn’t know how long he’d been running. Drak’shal had departed for now, receding back within, leaving him drained and aching.

Time was always difficult to judge on Sicarus. It was not a reliable measure here, its flow dictated by the tidal flow of the ether. It ran slower within the basilica than elsewhere on the daemon-world, the winds eddying around its buttressed flanks becoming torpid and slothful. This was no accident – the edifice’s location had been carefully chosen so as to maximise and extend the torment of those within.

Nevertheless, Burias had never been as disoriented as he was now. He might have been running for minutes, or it may have been weeks. Everything that had occurred since his escape from his cell had melded together into one confusing blur.

He vaguely recalled a restless urgency that had driven him up through the basilica. Sometimes he had ascended narrow, spiralling staircases echoing with ethereal wails and screams. At other times he hauled himself up yawning elevator shafts, climbing hand over hand up chains slick with grease and oily grime; he crawled through pipes gushing with liquid foulness, and shimmied up vertical chimneys where corpses were routinely dumped, broken bodies tumbling down into the bowels of the planet. He had fought and killed everything that sought to halt his progress.

Was any of that real? It seemed like a dream.

He tried to focus on his elusive, deceptive memories, but they were as insubstantial as smoke, dissipating like ghosts as he sought to grasp them. It felt like knives were twisting in his mind as he struggled to comprehend what was going on.

He rubbed his shoulders, feeling a ghost-ache there – residual pain from his torture, he guessed – along with a disconcerting recurring numbness in his arms and legs.

There was a heavy, wet feeling in his lungs, making his breathing painful and laboured. He could hear a dull repetitive thumping sound from somewhere nearby, as of metal striking stone. He dropped to his knees, an intense nausea threatening to overwhelm him.

Shaking his head, he struggled to focus on what was real – what he could see, hear, touch and feel. He could not allow himself to slip. Not now.

‘Are you still there, spirit?’ he growled.

I am no spirit. But I am here.

‘What is going on?’ he breathed. ‘What is happening to me?’

You teeter on the edge of Torment. You must keep moving, lest you succumb.

‘I cannot bear this,’ Burias said. ‘How can I know-’

Focus on what you feel. The stone beneath your hands, the ache of your muscles. The blood in your mouth.

Burias did as the voice bade him, and the nausea and throbbing pain in his head receded, along with the metallic pounding.

His strength slowly returning, he rose back to his feet.

Your pursuers are closing in on you once more.

‘Then guide me away from here,’ Burias replied.

After what seemed a lifetime he emerged, blinking, from the darkness.

He found himself upon a section of spiked battlement, high up on the basilica. Immense spires, turrets, towers, and domes soared above him, kilometres high, reaching up into the burning sky. Twin obsidian moons wreathed in hellfire stared down like the unblinking eyes of gods. Kathartes rode the heat-currents and swirling updrafts, circling lazily, descending occasionally to feast upon the twitching bodies of sacrifices.

He’d been guided up into the giant cathedral, driven ever higher by his relentless pursuers. The exits on the lower levels had been heavily guarded by warrior clans, sentry guns, and battle-brothers of the 34th Host. There had been no chance of escape there.

He allowed himself a moment, gazing across the surface of Sicarus, the adopted homewold of the Word Bearers. Vast cathedrals, temples, fanes, and gehemahnet towers stretched out across the scorched world, tightly clustered as far as the eye could see. Many of these grand structures were a dozen kilometres or more in height, yet the Basilica of Torment reared up over them all.

The surface of Sicarus was always changing, climbing ever higher into the heavens and the realms of the gods. Larger and more extravagant temples of worship were constantly being raised, constructed on top of the older, crumbling structures like the trees of a forest straining up to the sun and strangling out their rivals.

Ancient battleships, many of which had served the Legion since the Great Crusade, hung in low orbit like circling void sharks. Beyond them, the maddening heavens whirled.

The warp was alive with burning incandescence and surging, ethereal power. Semi-divine entities that defied description could be half-seen in the roiling fire out there, immense forms coiling and writhing, dwarfing the battleships below them. Their grasping tentacles reached down low in places, stretching toward the rising structures of Sicarus.

Burias leaned out over the battlements, gazing down. Cloying yellow cloud hugged the towers and flying buttresses below, obscuring the firmament and lower structures completely. Immense daemonic faces materialised within the fog, snarling and roaring in soundless fury. They seemed to be straining to rise and devour him, but they could not break free of the cloud bank. He found himself mesmerised by their languid, malevolent shapes.

The Anointed are upon you.

A whickering bolter shot whipped past Burias’s head, and he hurled himself to one side, ducking for cover. The concussive thump of impact reached him a fraction of a second after the self-propelled shell had passed him by.

He cursed himself for not having sensed how close his pursuers had come.

Stealing a glance around the edge of the archway, he saw the Anointed – hulking Terminator armoured Word Bearers looming out of the gloom, striding belligerently toward his position with weapons raised. The lenses of their helms shone red as their auto-targeters locked onto him.

He ducked back behind the corner of the balcony, cursing. A crackling melta blast struck, liquefying the rockcrete and making it drip like syrup.

‘You’ve led me to a dead end, spirit,’ he snapped.

Death is no end for us, Burias.

More gunfire struck the corner at his back, ripping at the stonework.

‘Where now, then?’

Up.

Drak’shal returned in an instant and Burias sprang vertically, talons latching onto a jutting ledge six metres above the balcony. The ledge began to crumble beneath his talons, and he scrabbled for purchase, feeling the dizzying pull of the void below...

Finding a foothold, he leapt powerfully upwards again, and latched onto the underside of a horned statue with one hand. As he hung there, he glimpsed the Anointed emerging onto the balcony below. He hauled himself up the daemonic stone figure as they raised their weapons and unleashed a torrent of fire towards him.

The statue fractured beneath the withering fusillade. Bolter rounds and splinters of rock sliced the thin air around him. He snarled as his blood was drawn.

Burias-Drak’shal pushed off from the head of the statue as it shattered, grabbing onto a jutting plinth and continuing his rapid ascent, bounding up the exterior of the basilica, leaping from handhold to handhold.

He swung out over a deep overhang, climbing hand over hand along stone ribs that formed arches supporting the underside of a protruding wing of the basilica. He could no longer see the Anointed or the balcony he had left below – both had been inexplicably swallowed up by the thick cloudbank that hung beneath him.

With a grunt of effort, he hauled himself up onto a ledge, disturbing a roosting Katharte. The daemon beared its teeth at him and dived off the ledge, drawing its skinless wings tightly in to its body.

Moving swiftly and silently, Burias-Drak’shal slid in through an arched window and found himself in a long shadowed corridor. There was no living soul to be seen, though flayed human flesh was pinned to the walls, hair and fingernails still attached.

As he drew near, fresh ruinous symbols carved by unseen hands were cut into these skins. Blood ran from the wounds, dripping down the walls. The flesh began to ripple and twitch, and a large milky eye slid open to regard him impassively. Mouths tore open, and the dead flesh began to wail and gibber, flapping and twitching spasmodically.

Burias-Drak’shal picked up his pace, loping quickly along the corridor as more mouths opened, adding to the toneless wail.

Outside, a floating Discord descended, drawn to the sound, and hovered several metres beyond the portico’s windows. It turned its brazen vox-grille toward him, a tangle of mechanised tendrils trailing behind it. A deafening blare of sound burst from the thing, a cacophonous wall of sound that made his eardrums vibrate painfully. It was the sound of Chaos itself, filled with ungodly screams, wailing children, pounding industry, and the beating of the dark gods’ hearts.

Amongst the din, a familiar voice spoke his name. ‘Burias.’

In confusion, Burias-Drak’shal stared at the hovering Discord.

‘Marduk?’ he said.

Do not listen. It will speak only lies and falsehoods. The deceiver seeks to draw you back to Torment.

A second blast of noise rolled over him, and he reeled as if struck a physical blow. Blood dripped from his ears. Again he heard the voice of his former lord and master, coaxing him back to… where...?

The choking, drowning sensation rose within his throat once more, threatening to engulf him.

Focus, Burias. All that is real is here.

Stumbling blindly away from the aural assault, Burias staggered through an archway into shadow. It was cooler here in the cloistered darkness, and a rasping wind seemed to pull him eagerly along. Within moments, the blare of the Discord faded away.

He paused in his flight, breathing heavily, until he was back in control of his senses. His ears were ringing from the din.

A familiar scent reached his nostrils, and his lips pulled back in a snarl, exposing his serrated teeth. He spun, lashing out… but too late.

His strike was knocked aside contemptuously, and powered talons clamped around his neck.

‘Hello, Burias,’ snarled Kol Badar.

Burias-Drak’shal was hoisted half a metre off the ground to match Kol Badar’s height, and his feet kicked futilely beneath him. The Coryphaus was wearing his quad-tusked Terminator helm, and his voice was a low, mechanised growl.

‘It is time to go back, Burias,’ said Kol Badar. ‘You cannot keep running forever.’

Burias’s windpipe was being crushed and his arteries compressed, stemming the flow of blood to his brain. Dimly he saw a distorted reflection in the elliptical lenses of Kol Badar’s helmet, but it was not his own face that stared back at him – what he saw was a wasted, grimacing cadaver. Tubes and ribbed pipes emerged from its nostrils and mouth, and its hairless scalp was pitted with plugs, cables and wires. Blood, oil and dark mucus leaked from the crudely drilled holes in its skull.

Burias-Drak’shal cried out, thrashing and striking out wildly, but he could not break the Coryphaus’s crushing grip. Kol Badar laughed at his frantic struggle.

His vision grew hazy and indistinct, his brain starved of blood and oxygen. Whispering shadows danced around the periphery of his vision, like grim spectres awaiting his death. His surroundings faded, the walls melting away, and flames erupted all around him. He gripped the Coryphaus’s talons, straining to loosen them, but his strength was fading, along with his consciousness.

With a sickly crack, a vertical slit opened Kol Badar’s helmet from chin to crown, yawning into a gaping, daemonic maw filled with rows of ceramite teeth. The jaws of this mouth distended impossibly, and Burias was dragged in towards it. Wriggling black worms emerged from deep in the monster’s throat, straining toward his face.

If you surrender now, you will be lost to Torment forever.

‘No!’ roared Burias, straining to turn away. Surging with a last burst of desperate strength, he managed to wrench apart the daemon’s talons, and he fell to the ground at its feet.

He rose fast, lashing out, but he hit nothing. He was alone.

The corridor was empty.

Still gasping for breath, Burias staggered down a narrow side tunnel and into an antechamber crowded with robed proselytes. Their heads were bowed as they hurried on their way, paying him no attention at all. The air was thick and cloying with smoke and incense, and the walls seemed to be closing in on him.

At the far end of the chamber, he could see the hellfire glow of the open sky, and he pushed his way towards it. He was battling against the flow of proselytes, and he roughly barged his way through the stinking press of bodies. Still they paid him no mind, not even complaining as he shoved them out of his path. Several fell to the ground and were instantly lost beneath the living tide.

Burias realised he was getting no closer to his goal, and he began to lay around him more forcefully, battering aside those in his path, breaking bones and limbs with sickening cracks. He trampled over those that fell and crushed them with his heavy steps.

At last he emerged into the light to find himself upon a wide bridge spanning the gap between two cathedral spires of the basilica. Statues of Word Bearers, each more than five metres tall, lined the bridge, each with hundreds of prayer papers fixed to their armour. Doleful bells sounded, reverberating across the maddening cityscape of Sicarus.

The flow of the faithful broke upon him, streaming around him like liquid. He was an island, a lone motionless figure in the midst of a migration as the bells called the faithful to worship.

‘Burias.’

Again he heard someone speaking his name and he turned, scanning the sea of downcast faces for its source.

His legs gave way beneath him. They were completely numb, and the same loss of sensation was tingling up his arms. He felt suddenly confined, claustrophobic and trapped in the midst of the crowd. ‘Burias-Drak’shal.’

Shut it out.

Burias clutched his head, confused and disoriented. ‘What is happening to me?’ Bodies pressed in around him, bustling past.

You are being called back.

‘Back to where?’

Torment.

The immense Word Bearer statues began to move, stepping off their plinths with stonework crumbling away from their forms to reveal blood-red armour beneath. They strode through the crowd, moving toward Burias in step with the pealing of the distant bells, giant bolters clasped across their chests.

‘This cannot be real,’ he whispered, dragging himself to his feet.

The crowd turned, as if seeing him for the first time. In a rush they surged forwards, babbling and speaking in tongues. They crowded around him, their eyes burning hot with faith and fever, reaching out to touch him.

‘Bless us, great one,’ a scrawny proselyte begged, clutching at his leg. Burias kicked the wretch away, snapping the man’s bones.

‘This cannot be real!’ he said again, pushing away from the crowd, making his way to the edge of the bridge.

This is all that is real, Burias. Everything else is Torment.

The giant Word Bearers were closing, making the bridge shudder with every footfall, crushing any who did not get out of their way quick enough.

Run. Fight. Kill. Do this, and you can live on here, forever.

Burias laughed at the absurdity of it all, and climbed up onto the edge of the soaring bridge’s low wall and glanced down. The sickly cloud bank below was impenetrable even to his daemon-sight.

‘To hell with this,’ snarled Burias.

‘Burias-Drak’shal,’ said every proselyte in unison, speaking with the Dark Apostle Marduk’s voice. ‘Come to me.’

The immense statues hefted their bolters, closing in all around him. The voice cut through Burias’s mind, tinged with desperation.

Do not do this!

‘And to hell with both of you,’ said Burias, speaking to both the spirit-voice and the voice of his master. He turned away from the crowd of believers.

With his head held high, he extended his arms out to either side. He closed his eyes, and breathed in deeply.

The thunderous fire of gigantic bolters echoed all around, but Burias had already let himself topple forwards.

The proselytes screamed as one. ‘No!’

No!

Burias pushed off hard, and holding his cruciform pose, he plummeted down into the fog. The air rushed past him, yet he kept his eyes shut, giving himself over to the Ruinous Powers.

It felt as though he were flying, soaring the ether with the kathartes. Not the foul, skinless harpies that filled the skies of Sicarus and frequented the Infidus Diabolus, but the beauteous angelic beings of pure light that those daemons became in the deep flow of the warp.

He was drowning.

Thick, viscous fluid filled his lungs, lukewarm and repulsive. He coughed and spluttered, crying out in shock and anger. The sound was muffled by the thick bundles of tubes and pipes that filled his throat and nostrils. All he achieved was to expel what little air he-

‘No!’ roared Burias, kicking and thrashing against his confinement, and then he was falling through the void once more.

Abruptly, the cloud bank parted and he smashed through a great dome of coloured glass. Coming down fast, he rolled and skidded along the length of a flying buttress to rob the fall of its impact, tumbling to the floor and ending the movement on one knee. Shards of coloured glass studded his flesh, and more showered down around him, filling the air with its tinkling music.

He found himself in a tiny chapel. It was a humble, ascetic space, a simple shrine to the dark gods that lacked the grandeur and ceremony that infested the rest of Sicarus. A plain altar was carved into one wall, atop which sat a skull with a simple eight-pointed star of Chaos burnt into its forehead.

Beneath a shadowed arch stood the lifeless, immense form of the Warmonger. Burias’s skin began to itch as he looked upon the Dreadnought, his arms and legs tingling.

‘You should not be here,’ said a woman’s voice, and Burias-Drak’shal snarled, turning sharply. He had not sensed a presence in the room.

He could tell by her manner of garb and bearing that she was a seer. She stood in the shadows, bedecked in robes the colour of congealed blood. Her hood was down, revealing an angular, pale face. Gaping, empty hollows were located where her eyes should have been, yet she seemed to stare at him unerringly. ‘You have gone too deep.’

Drak’shal was raging within him, urging him to attack, to brutalise this witch and be away, but he resisted. He forced the daemon back. It struggled, attempting to gain ascendancy, but it was an old battle, and one that Burias had won long ago. Resentfully, Drak’shal receded, sinking within.

The daemon’s presence had ensured that the wounds of his torture had now healed. All that remained was his dried blood upon his skin.No scars marred his flesh.

For a moment he thought he heard a distant voice speaking his name. He shook his head, clearing it of these errant distractions.

‘There is someone waiting here for me,’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

‘You do not need me to answer that question,’ said the seer. ‘You already know the answer.’

‘I do not have time for riddles,’ muttered Burias, turning to leave.

‘Time is meaningless here,’ she replied. ‘You know this.’

‘Speak plainly, witch, or do not speak at all.’

‘It was he who released you from your bondage,’ she said, her words giving him pause. ‘It was he who brought you here.’

‘Released me?’ Burias snarled over his shoulder. ‘I released myself!’

‘No,’ said the seer, shaking her head. ‘He burnt away the wards holding you, opening the door for you to come here, to come to him. But I see that your mind refuses to accept what your heart already knows is true. You need to see in order to believe.’

The seer stepped away from a simple wooden door, and gestured towards it.

Burias frowned, his anger piquing, but he stepped past her and placed a hand upon the door’s rough hewn panels. It swung inwards easily, revealing a narrow passage. Lowering his head, he stepped within.

He moved up the narrow passage until he came to a circular, windowless prayer-room lit by a single candle in an arched alcove. It was small, the kind of room used by fasting penitents or hermetic recluses. The walls were covered in tiny neat script-work. He recognised the hand-writing. He had seen its like before.

‘Burias. Burias-Drak’shal.’ That voice again...

Burias’s twin hearts began to pound. He could not breathe. He heard metallic pounding in the distance, beating in time to his hearts.

His gaze fell upon a figure kneeling in the centre of the room. Its back was turned to him, and it wore a plain robe of undyed, coarse fabric. Its head was smooth and hairless, the bare scalp glinting like gold in the candlelight.

The figure rose to its feet. It seemed to expand to fill the circular room, as if it were magnifying in volume to gigantic proportions. Then the illusion passed, and Burias realised that the figure stood no taller than he.

As the figure turned, Burias looked upon the golden face of a demi-god.

His eyes began to bleed and his mind rebelled. His soul lurched, and he was driven to his knees, breathless and suffocating.

A veil seemed to be ripped aside, and the walls of the shrine disappeared, replaced with roaring flames and darkness. A maddening cacophony of screams and roars assaulted him from all sides.

‘Urizen? Lord?’ he breathed.

The flames seared his lungs, but he did not care. His mind was reeling. He did not understand. The primarch of the XVIIth had been locked in self-imposed isolation within the Templum Inficio since long before Burias’s creation. How could he be here? Where, in fact, were they?

Burias’s hearts were thundering, beating erratically and dangerously fast. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning. He was blind.

Look.

The voice was velveteen and smooth, once again calm and measured. It was the same voice that had guided him to freedom, yet it seemed more potent, more vital. There was a controlled intensity to it that was almost painful.

LOOK.

He opened his eyes. The figure that stood before him was not the holy primarch of the XVII Legion. He was staring at himself.

He jolted, and the vision was gone. He was alone in the cold darkness.

‘Burias.’

That voice was not welcome here. It was an intrusion. He tried to ignore it, but its power was impossible to resist. He rebelled against it, but it dragged him back towards consciousness.

‘Burias-Drak’shal.’

He was drowning.

Thick, viscous fluid filled his lungs, lukewarm and repulsive. He coughed and spluttered, crying out in shock and anger. The sound was muffled by the thick bundles of tubes and pipes that filled his throat and nostrils. All he achieved was to expel what little air he had left.

In panic, he registered that he was completely submerged, and as he struggled to rise he struck a hard, unyielding metal surface. He thrashed wildly, smashing against the sides of his containment, desperately seeking escape. There was none to be had. He was sealed in and drowning.

His hands refused to respond to his commands, and he could not move his arms. He could see nothing but darkness. He tasted oil and blood, battery acid and bile. He vomited violently, but the acidic foulness had nowhere to go.

His strength was fading, along with his consciousness. Metallic clangs, hammering and the whine of engines echoed loudly around him. Behind it, he heard the muffled murmur of voices, but could make no sense of the words.

The end was close now, and his struggles weakened. His lungs rebelled against him, causing him to reflexively suck in a deep breath of liquid and his own vomit. He began to convulse, shuddering and jerking violently.

Oblivion came for him then. But it was not to last.

He awoke to darkness. There was no pain. There was nothing at all, and he knew then that he was in hell.

He roared in a voice that was not his voice. He heard that mechanical, grinding, anguished bellow with ears that were not his ears; external sensors translated what they heard into electrical impulses and were transmitted directly into his cortex.

He clenched a hand that was not his hand into a fist, and an immense, blade-fingered power talon clenched. He pounded this great fist into the stone walls of his prison once again. It made a dull sound, metal on stone. That sound...

‘Burias,’ said a voice. ‘Burias-Drak’shal.’

It was the voice that had called him back. It was the voice that had brought him into this hell. He swung towards it, servos whining.

‘Back in the land of the living, finally. In a manner of speaking, at least.’

Optic sensors interpreted what they saw. A figure stood nearby, one that he recognised.

‘You were in deep this time,’ said the figure. ‘I was not sure you were coming out. You resisted my call for the longest time yet. I am impressed.’

Burias lunged at the figure, pneumatic piston-driven legs driving him forward and giant claws reaching out to crush it, but immense chains bound with burning runes held him fast, restraining his mechanical strength.

Dark Apostle Marduk laughed. ‘Now, now, Burias. Mind that temper.’

Hatred surged through what was left of Burias’s body – amputated, rotten and curled foetus-like in the amniotic fluid sloshing within the sarcophagus implanted at the heart of the machine.

Hatred. That was something he was still capable of feeling. His mighty fists were clenching and unclenching unconsciously. With every last remaining fibre of his being he wanted to smash the author of his torment to paste.

‘How long this time?’ Burias managed, his voice deep and sepulchral, the sound of immense rocks grinding together.

‘Not long. Ninety-seven years, unadjusted.’

To Burias it had felt like an eternity. He wondered how he could possibly endure.

‘Why do you rouse me now?’ he growled. ‘There is no torment that you can unleash upon me that would make my suffering any more complete.’

‘Torment, old friend? No, you mistake my purpose,’ said Marduk. ‘I come to you because the Host marshals for war. I am, for now, releasing you from torment. It is time you killed again for the Legion.’

Death was nothing to be feared. Death he would have welcomed. But denied that, the next best thing was the chance to kill once more. Burias ceased his struggles.

‘War?’ he boomed, unable to keep the eagerness from his grating, mechanical voice.

‘War,’ agreed the Dark Apostle.

A silken voice spoke in Burias’s mind.

None of this is real.

The Pact

Sarah Cawkwell

‘And the stolen voices of his venerable kin will welcome him, embrace him and bear him to the heart of our scarred past, the first home of the Argent Order. There, the ashes of the great destroyer lie mingled with the fading embers of our birth, two banners falling as one to call him back. Back to the beginning. Then will the past be revealed.’

– From The Orthodoxy of Varsavia, Author Unknown, 221.M37

Nothing had survived.

Once, according to the records, the planet Lyria had boasted fertile and verdant grassland which generated seemingly endless supplies of food for the people of the Imperium. Agri-habs had dotted the landscape in the south of the single large continental mass and people had worked the soil diligently. The mountains and rockier terrain in the north had been far less hospitable. But as the saying went, where there was a will there was a way and the indigenous tribal people of the world settled wherever they could find flat ground. Thus they had lived and thus they had prospered as was humanity’s way.

Now it was all gone. The combined might of the Silver Skulls fleet as they had unleashed the full wrath of the Emperor’s fury on the surface had made certain of that. Rendered essentially sterile with a hostile, barely breathable atmosphere by the missiles and guns of the fleet, Lyria fell into decay and became a forbidden place; an unsightly mark on the exceptional record of those who consider themselves amongst the Emperor’s most loyal.

Lyria, a world of beginnings; the former home of the Silver Skulls Chapter had become a tomb world, rendered to ashes and dust.

The air was acrid and stifling from the heat that bubbled up through rifts in the ground. Volcanoes that had lain long dormant had been awakened by the orbital onslaught and seismic activity rocked the planet almost continually. It was a world that would have been better left dead.

Six figures picked their way across the broken landscape, ascending a mountain path that would take them to the long-deserted fortress-monastery. For eight thousand years, no Silver Skulls battle-brother had laid eyes on their ancestral home. Now they did so in silence, each absorbing the impact of this horrific sight in their own way.

Five of the figures were massive, clad in ancient Terminator armour. The other was wearing the blue battle plate of a Prognosticator, a psychic hood rising about his bare head and a force axe slung comfortably across his back. It was this warrior who crossed into the entrance first.

By Adeptus Astartes standards, Prognosticator Bhehan was young. Barely thirty solar years old, he had nonetheless acquitted himself admirably upon the field of battle. His ability to divine the skeins of fate had proven itself over and over again. He had served with both Eighth and Fifth Companies with distinction, but had never once imagined that he would end up deployed with the Talriktug; the First Company’s elite squad. Especially following his vision; a vision that had led to Chapter Command agreeing that the time was right for them to return. A vision that had married up unfailingly with words penned in the Orthodoxy millennia before. The two war banners.

He should be honoured to be amongst them, he knew. Led by the courageous, plain-speaking and stalwart First Captain Kerelan, they were heroes of the Chapter. They had been heroes of the Chapter for hundreds of years before Bhehan had even been born. Perhaps it was this last fact which made him uncomfortable and which had led to much of the silence that had accompanied their journey here. Whenever he had spoken, their respect for him seemed disproportionate given their standing and experience.

Such was the way of the Silver Skulls. They valued their psychic battle-brothers highly, no matter their age or seniority.

As the rest of the warriors lumbered into the vestibule behind him, he allowed his senses to roam freely amongst the rubble. A smashed stained glass window stood several metres above his head, admitting the only light that the interior of the place had seen for years. Closing his eyes, he tried to picture it as it had once been. A thousand ghostly echoes rippled through him, clamouring for his notice. Voices that had been desperate to be heard for millennia. It was a near-overwhelming din and Bhehan employed every ounce of his training to keep his calm. The filigree-fine crystal mesh of his psychic hood glowed softly as he walked. The First Captain glanced at him.

‘What are your senses telling you, Brother-Prognosticator?’ The ruby lenses in Kerelan’s helm gave away nothing.

‘No less than I anticipated. This place swarms with memories, First Captain,’ Bhehan replied in his soft voice. ‘So many voices crying out at the horrors wrought upon this world.’ His youthful face creased in a frown. ‘There is more, too. Something… I cannot quite place. I may be able to concentrate more if I make direct contact with the stone.’

‘Do what you must, brother. We will ensure there are no interruptions. Our primary duty is to defend and protect you on this mission.’

‘Aye, First Captain. I warn you, however. This process is not likely to be swift. The echoes here are old and worn by time.’

The warrior glanced from side to side, then shrugged. ‘I see no other pressing engagements demanding my time and resources, brother. Proceed as you see fit.’

A smile flickered over Bhehan’s lips. He had learned that for all his stoic reticence and unshakable pragmatism, Kerelan possessed a dry wit that was frequently startling. He reached down and unsnapped the fastenings of his gauntlet, sliding his hand free. He turned his body sideways to the wall and set his bare palm against the stone.

Amongst the Prognosticators of the Silver Skulls, Bhehan was rare. Not only did he have a staggeringly accurate ability to read the skeins of Fate with the use of his rune stones, but he had discovered an affinity for forging tenuous links with past events, simply by laying hands upon the thing of interest. It didn’t always work. If psychic echoes were not deeply embedded then an inanimate object would remain just that. Inanimate.

But the walls of this desecrated fortress ran thick with tendrils of memory and the moment Bhehan’s hand came into direct contact with them, he was thrown instantly into a thronging mass of bodies. His body stiffened. The psychic hood about his shoulders crackled with energy and the unmistakable ozone-like odour of spilled power joined the aroma of dust and burning ash that filled the air.

He no longer saw the ruined fortress and the five Terminators. Instead, he was…

…somewhere else entirely.

‘…interference. My vox has stopped receiving. Do you have a situation report, brother?’ The voice came from his left. Opening his eyes, Bhehan was mildly startled, but not surprised, to see that the ruined wall he had been leaning against was once more intact. Fires burned in the wall sconces throwing flickering, eerie images against the stone. Above him, the stained glass window was intact once more, but no light shone through it. Beyond, it was night.

This was no crumbling ruin, but a fortress-monastery in its prime. The walls rose gracefully to curve in a high, vaulted arch far above him. A slight breeze lifted the hanging war banners and they swayed gently. But for all the peace, Bhehan recognised a war footing when he saw it.

Chapter-serfs hurried past him – and occasionally through him. In their midst were a number of warriors wearing the steel-grey battle plate of the Silver Skulls. They towered above the humans and Bhehan focused on them.

Two battle-brothers, one wearing the laurels of a veteran and bearing a battle standard at his back were standing close by, their hands tightly closed around the hilts of chainswords. They were rocks of solidity amidst the sea of bodies heading deep into the mountain.

‘I have, Brother-Sergeant Igneus. It is as we expected. The Chapter Master has had no choice but to give the order.’

‘As you say… we expected this news. Still, we must bear it with staunch determination.’ The other warrior nodded vigorously and Igneus sighed. ‘Our world must die. There is little worth in dwelling upon the matter. What of the brothers below?’

‘On their way up from the training level. It is barely a handful, sir.’

‘A handful will be good enough, Varlen. We will hold our fortress against these… things… for as long as we are able. We can only hope that our external defences have prevented an egress. If the xenos scum have broken through, then while we live we will defend our Chapter’s home with our very last breath.’

Such certainty. Such passion. It quite took Bhehan’s breath away as he listened to the phantom veteran sergeant’s voice, coming across the millennia as though he stood only a few feet away.

‘It is no longer the eldar we should concern ourselves with. They are all but defeated. It is the taint we should worry about.’

A loud scream, a male scream, sounded and Bhehan whipped his head the other way. Barely visible at the dark end of the corridor, Bhehan saw the flailing of a man running towards them. He passed through the Prognosticator’s body as though it were insubstantial mist and fell prostrate at the feet of the veteran sergeant.

‘They have breached the outer walls, my lord!’

‘Then we will meet them in battle.’ The veteran sergeant stared down at the cowering Chapter-serf and without hesitation, aimed a bolt pistol at the man’s head.

‘No…’ Bhehan spoke, but no sound left his lips. The echo of the bolt pistol reverberated around the corridor and the man fell dead at the veteran sergeant’s feet. Bhehan’s lips formed the question, but it was Varlen who spoke the words.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘It was necessary,’ he said. ‘He may otherwise have brought the corruption within.’

Corruption. Bhehan knew his history well enough. Invasion and plague had wrung the meagre defences left on Lyria almost dry. The rest of the Chapter had been deployed at war elsewhere, engaged in one of the endless battles that had raged through the galaxy in the years following the Great Heresy. Bhehan knew that the planet had been lost. He knew that in order to prevent the pestilence spreading, they had been forced to take the ultimate step.

‘How can we be sure that the taint has not already reached the inner walls?’ Varlen stared down at the corpse of the unfortunate Chapter-serf, then raised his head to Igneus.

‘How can one ever be sure of anything, Brother Varlen?’

There was a distant sound of gunfire and the ghost of Igneus raised his chainsword.

‘They are coming,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps they are already here.’

Bhehan felt a knot in his stomach and slowly he removed his hand from the wall.

There was a distant sound of gunfire.

Caught momentarily between two worlds, Bhehan was disoriented and confused. He swayed slightly and looked as though he might fall.

‘Prognosticator?’ Brother Djul had stepped forward and rested a steadying hand on the smaller warrior’s shoulder.

‘I am well. Let go of me.’ He snapped the words before he remembered exactly who he was talking to. Djul’s massive, armoured hand released his shoulder immediately. As his equilibrium righted itself, other senses kicked into gear; the senses that had been bred into him. He may have been a psyker of considerable power, but first and foremost he was a warrior. His killer instincts pushed the vision to the back of his mind and every muscle, every nerve and every synapse of his brain switched to alertness.

‘Your timing is impeccable, brother,’ said the First Captain. ‘Whilst you were engaged in your communion, the rest of the squad took the opportunity to scout ahead. We have found more than just ruins here.’

‘There are intruders in this sacred place.’ Djul sounded outraged, as well he should. ‘The captain and I remained behind to protect you during your communion with the Emperor. We would obviously have consulted you on the matter first, but you were distracted. We did not think it seemly to…’

‘How long was I distracted?’ Bhehan interrupted abruptly. Djul’s ponderous response was tinged with the faintest hint of reproach.

‘The time is not of importance, brother. Were you successful? Did you divine anything of use?’ Kerelan intervened.

‘After a fashion. I needed more time.’ Those final words had left a heavy feeling somewhere deep in Bhehan’s gut, but there was no time to linger on the matter.

‘My apologies, brother.’ Djul sounded genuinely remorseful but Bhehan waved it away.

‘No matter. As you rightly point out, there are other more pressing matters that must take precedence. We can study the past in greater detail later. For now, let us deal with the here and now. The Emperor’s Blessing is with us.’

At these words, Djul touched his hand to the Crux Terminatus on his shoulder guard before turning away and heading deeper into the complex to find the battle.

‘You should prepare for combat, Prognosticator.’ The eye lenses on the Terminator helm seemed to bore into Bhehan, weighing and measuring his capability.

Prior to their deployment on the planet, Bhehan had spent several hours in deep meditation and contemplation of the runes. He had decreed that the Emperor’s Blessing was with them on this matter and had added a carefully worded caveat that should the warriors need to engage any enemies on the planet, then they should do so. At the time, he had not believed such a thing would be necessary. Now he felt pleasure at his own foresight.

Kerelan fell into easy lockstep beside the Prognosticator. The First Captain had unsheathed the relic blade that was his favoured weapon. A huge double-handed monster of a weapon, it looked remarkably small in his huge hand. He turned his head slightly towards his companion. ‘Are you ready for this, brother?’

‘I am always ready for battle,’ replied Bhehan and he unsheathed the force axe at his back. He could not imagine a smile on the face of the rugged warrior beneath the helmet but Kerelan’s voice seemed filled with approval.

‘Trouble is here on Lyria,’ he said. ‘Let us go and find it.’

‘Brother Djul implied that we have already found it.’ Kerelan’s gaze lingered on the Prognosticator for a moment. The First Captain was apparently deeply amused by Bhehan’s literal interpretation of his words.

‘Indeed,’ was all he said. ‘And it wears the face of the eldar.’

It was an insult like no other. The eldar, the very xenos whose presence had caused the downfall of this world, had returned. As Kerelan, Djul and Bhehan moved down the spiralling pathway, their infrared lenses detected every disturbance. Air that had lain still for so long was stirred and restless, raising twinkling particles of fine dust into the air.

‘Vrakos, report.’ Kerelan activated the vox and spoke to one of the advance group. Weapons continued to discharge below them; a storm bolter’s unmistakable sound, but there was no answering report to be heard. Bhehan willed the two Terminators to move more swiftly. The time spent with the fast-moving battle-brothers of Eighth Company had spoiled him, he mused. The Talriktug were admirable. But speed was not amongst their assets.

‘We have counted ten xenos moving to the lower levels of the fortress,’ came the calm and measured reply. ‘All heavily armoured and loaded with weaponry… but they have not acted in a hostile manner. Neither have they made any attempt to communicate with us.’

‘That hardly matters, Vrakos. Those vermin are transgressing in the halls of our ancestors. That in itself is a blatant act of war. They will pay the price.’ Djul made his displeasure known and began to recite a litany across the vox. Bhehan was well aware of Djul’s reputation as a deeply zealous warrior. He had heard the Catechism of Hate recited many times before, but never with such passion as the words that filled his ears now.

‘We have picked off two of them,’ said Vrakos, ‘but the cowards are fleeing deeper into the fortress-monastery.’

‘Then we go with them,’ responded Kerelan. ‘Hold your position for now, Vrakos. We are on our way.’

‘I can go on ahead and join with the others,’ said Bhehan. ‘I mean no disrespect First Captain, but I move far more swiftly and my talents may be of use to Vrakos and the others.’

‘Your eagerness does you great credit, Prognosticator. However, I am charged with your wellbeing. As such, you remain with us.’ Again, there was an underlying hint of amusement in Kerelan’s voice. ‘Do not concern yourself with missing the fight. Where would they go, after all? We will corner them and deliver our retribution for this transgression.’

‘Yes, First Captain.’ Bhehan fell silent once again and listened to Brother Djul as he recounted more litanies and prayers across the vox. The Terminator’s zeal was infectious and the Prognosticator felt a great swell of pride. He allowed his psychic senses to extend once again, reaching downwards this time.

His exploratory range was considerable and as his attention drifted into the depths of the fortress-monastery he pulled up short with a loud gasp. Fortunately for him, Kerelan had been several paces behind, otherwise the First Captain would have ploughed straight into him.

‘Brother? What do you see?’

‘It is less what I see and more what I sense, First Captain,’ Bhehan replied. Something had brushed against his consciousness; something inexplicably alien. Over the few comparatively short years he had lived, he had honed his mental bulwarks until only the most accomplished could get around them. He had stood in the company of the Chapter’s most powerful psyker and received a softly-worded compliment on the strength of his defences. Then Vashiro had broken them in order to complete the lesson.

He had fought against numerous foes since he had ascended to the rank of battle-brother. He knew what their minds felt like. He had mentally sampled the flavour of the tyranids; a never-ending and insatiable hunger. He had touched the mind of a tau and had been surprised by the driven, single-mindedness. Every eldar mind he had encountered was cruel and twisted. This was not. This was unknown to him.

The thoughts and presence of his own battle-brothers were like shining beacons amidst the xenos thoughts that had brushed his psyche in the past. It was his mind, his sanctuary and he knew it better than he knew the back of his hand. No psyker could afford anything less than complete control over their power. Countless enemies had attempted to break his considerable will and, one by one, they had all died when he had lashed psychically back at them.

Now, though, this new consciousness had bypassed those defences with all the ease of a spectre and was probing his mental landscape. Its presence was unwanted and he held it back easily.

You are… mon-keigh. You are not one of my people.

I am human. And I am coming for you. I will not allow this violation. Be gone.

You have great strength for one so young… you could help us.

The voice that came was undeniably female. Summoning up every ounce of mental strength he possessed, Bhehan visualised closing a fist around the presence in his mind and flinging it away.

Wait! Help us. We need your power… do not… at least allow me...

With a concerted effort, Bhehan cast the alien presences from his mind. The second it was gone, he immediately got to work fortifying his psychic barriers. It was only then that he realised that Kerelan was practically shouting at him.

‘Prognosticator!’

‘My apologies, First Captain. Something was trying to break through my defences. A mind was attempting to infiltrate my consciousness.’

‘Are you compromised, Brother-Prognosticator?’ The question came from Djul and Bhehan realised immediately that the Terminator would have no compunction about dealing with such a matter in the way he best saw fit.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘My wards can withstand anything the xenos throw at me.’ He forced himself to hold his head proud and stared defiantly at Djul for a few moments. The warrior shrugged slightly and continued onwards. The skulls chained together and looped as a decoration around his belt clanked together as he moved, a gory herald of his arrival.

Djul’s reputation amongst the Chapter was well-deserved. There were those who said Brother Djul was more fearless even than the Lord Commander.

‘Do not mind him,’ said Kerelan as though clarifying the rumour. ‘Djul was born spoiling for a fight. What did you learn from your divination?’

‘Very little,’ admitted the Prognosticator. ‘Regardless, I recommend extreme caution here. The xenos female who spoke to me seemed a little distracted. She suggested that she needed assistance of some kind. Those of her kind we are pursuing… perhaps they have been summoned to her aid. Thus, we would do well to presume we are being led into some kind of trap.’

Kerelan nodded. ‘As I said… where would they go? Once we corner them, once we get to the heart of the monastery, they will be ended. Have faith, brother.’

‘I have more faith than you could imagine, First Captain. When you place yourself at the mercy of the warp, a little faith goes a long way. Imagine how far a lot will take you.’

The taciturn Kerelan was silent for a moment, then he laughed warmly. ‘I like you, boy.’

Strange how that pleased him more than he could have expected. Bhehan inclined his head graciously in acceptance of the compliment and fell in beside the Terminator.

The weapons fire had ceased and the silence was loaded with ominous portents.

‘They have begun a descent,’ Vrakos reported. ‘We are in pursuit, but they can move a lot faster than we can.’

‘And they still have not returned fire?’ Kerelan exchanged a look with Bhehan. A trap, the Prognosticator had suggested.

‘Not a shot, Kerelan. Although we have taken down a few of their number, they have not even so much as thrown a rock at us.’ Vrakos sounded disappointed by the fact.

‘We are almost with you,’ said the First Captain grimly. ‘If they are about to lead us into a snare, we will walk into it together.’

‘And we will end it together,’ added Djul.

The lowest level of the fortress-monastery was as black as the depths of night. The air here was sour and stale and Bhehan’s physiology worked hard to compensate. But no matter how astonishing the Adeptus Astartes implants were, they could not work to clear the overwhelming stink of the death and decay. The combined scents of rotting meat and vegetation were strong and overlaid with the pervading musty smell of old, stale air.

The walls were sticky, with ichor that oozed from pustules growing like tenacious fungi along their length. Whatever it was that they produced was drab olive in colour and it pooled on the ground, creating sticky puddles that sucked at their boots as they advanced.

But the foul liquid was the least of their concerns.

‘Xenos!’ The roar of triumph came from Vrakos who was advancing ahead of the others. The tone of his voice altered slightly as he added to his report. ‘And worse.’

‘The only thing generally worse than xenos is more xenos,’ said Kerelan, his relic blade ready. ‘Talriktug, on my mark, advance. Prognosticator, you remain behind us. Extend a shield, if you would.’

The squad needed no further encouragement than those words. As a unit, they advanced, keeping their line tightly held. Bhehan fell into place behind them and drew on his psychic might, projecting a force shield that extended the length of the battle line and was wide enough to ensure he remained within its area of effect as well.

What they saw as their infrared lenses filtered through the darkness was quite horrific. A number of eldar warriors of various castes, different armours marking the one from the other, were engaged in combat with what looked on first sight like human figures.

‘What in the Emperor’s name…?’ Djul left the question half asked as another figure suddenly sprang up directly in front of him. His reactions were lightning-fast and he brought up his arm. The chainfist that snarled at the end of it was cumbersome and slow to bring down, but he was grimly resolute. His weapon chewed through the creature before he had even managed to get a direct look at it. It splattered more of the ichor-like goo in every direction and it was with some obvious difficulty that Djul dragged his chainfist free from it. The humanoid creature, sheared in half, fell to the ground and began to immediately decompose.

‘Assessment of enemy forces,’ said Vrakos who had been taking in the scene. ‘Fifteen eldar warriors engaged in battle with… whatever these things are.’ Djul dropped slowly to a crouch and studied what remained of the thing he had killed.

‘Bio-matter,’ he said, his voice terse. ‘Similar in some ways to the tyranid biomass pools that we have encountered. Only these appear to be spawning these creatures. Or…’ He peered more closely and stood again, disgusted. ‘They are corrupted in some way.’

Bhehan’s brows feathered together at Djul’s words and he brushed his senses across the room, attempting to ignore the anxiety and fury that was coming from the eldar minds. The psyches of the things that they were fighting were disturbingly blank with no spark of intellect coming from them at all. They were psychically arid and seemingly without life.

‘They can be killed,’ began Kerelan.

‘No,’ interrupted the Prognosticator. ‘You cannot kill what is already dead. You can merely slow it down.’ He stepped forward to crouch down where Djul had recently been. ‘Look.’ He scooped up a handful of the jelly-like matter and held it up. They could all see what he meant; there, in his hand, were fragments of bone just like those that they had trodden underfoot. ‘These are… animated things that have been created by something greater. They are created in a human image. A memory, perhaps, of what they once were? It is hard to say.’

There was a lingering stench of the warp, a scent he was well accustomed to. But although Bhehan was familiar with the ozone taint of warp power as it leaked from every psychic being he had ever encountered, it rolled from this stuff in a near-overpowering wave.

He let the stuff slide from his gauntlet with a foul slurp and stood once again. ‘This place is filled with decay and death. There is…’

He broke off again as he felt a sudden battering at the wall around his mind. He stepped backwards and renewed the surge of psychic energy. Whatever it was that was trying to break through would not succeed. And yet still there was a trickle of a thought, that worked its way in through the small cracks with a skill and deft precision the Prognosticator would not have believed possible.

Help us. Alone, we cannot do this thing. Together…

Get out of my head.

‘Kill everything that moves,’ said Kerelan grimly, noting the Prognosticator’s sudden distraction. ‘The eldar and these things. We can work out the specifics when there are no xenos scum standing between us and them.’

‘As the First Captain commands,’ chorused the Talriktug. They fanned out, equidistant from one another. Brother Djul’s voice began to once again recite the Catechism of Hate.

‘While vile mutants still draw breath, there can be no peace. While the hearts of obscene heretics still beat, there can be no respite. While faithless traitors still live, there can be no forgiveness. In the name of the Emperor, in the name of Argentius, in the name of all Silver Skulls… brothers, we fight!’

Three storm bolters immediately opened fire as the line of Silver Skulls began to advance towards the enemy, their staccato reports echoing in the vast caverns of the fortress-monastery. Smoking shell cases dropped to the ground at an incredible rate and the muzzle flares briefly lit up the darkness. The orange and white glow from the flamer in Asterios’s hand burned brightly and served as an effective weapon against the enemy.

Djul and Kerelan moved in closer. The First Captain swung his relic blade in a murderous arc towards the closest eldar warrior. It raised a blade of its own to fend off the attack, but Kerelan’s superior strength and skill served him well. He pressed back with all his power and the eldar warrior crumpled beneath his assault. Kerelan raised his blade again and let it come down against his opponent. It did not penetrate on the first blow, instead tearing a ragged gouge across the alien’s segmented armour. The eldar staggered back.

‘You do not know…’ it began, but Kerelan cut short its words with another swing of his blade. The eldar’s head rolled clear of its shoulders, blood fountaining from the stump of the neck. The warrior crashed heavily to the ground.

‘I know enough,’ retorted the First Captain, his voice barely audible above Djul’s zealous declarations. He had already moved onto the next challenge. To his right, Djul carved his way through more of the faceless humanoid golems with his chainfist. The warrior never ceased his recital as he fought, hardly even pausing to draw breath. Bhehan let the words wash over him, let them fill his hearts with more strength and he began to draw his power to him.

This was the moment that he would open his mind up to a psychic onslaught if the owner of the female voice was so inclined. It was a chance he was going to have to take.

Something thudded into the shoulder guard of his armour and he turned reflexively. A sharp-bladed disc had embedded itself into the ceramite. He tore it out and flung it to the ground with a clatter. Then he stood straight and pointed his force axe at the eldar who had dared attack him. A crackling bolt of lightning burst from the end of the weapon as he channelled his power through it. The bolt struck the unfortunate target squarely in the chest, flinging him back into a knot of three of the monsters. They bent and buckled under the impact and then sprang back into shape.

Almost immediately on making contact with them, the eldar began to struggle to free itself, but it was caught fast. The three creatures switched attention to their captive and even as Bhehan watched in macabre fascination, the eldar’s armour began to disintegrate before his eyes. The shreds of fibre that came from the intricately wrought battle gear seemed to be absorbed into the golems and they grew noticeably larger.

The eldar, now without his armour continued to struggle, but the unnatural force that animated these things continued without remorse. The flesh of the xenos was devoured even as the eldar still lived and his screams echoed throughout the corridors until finally nothing was left but the bones. Then they too were consumed. The entire process had taken only seconds. The three golems congealed and came together to form a single, larger creature which began to slowly lumber towards the Silver Skulls.

Revolted by the foulness of the entity, Bhehan unleashed another torrent of psychic force at it. It burst apart in a thousand flaming pieces, returning to a liquefied state.

‘When they are animated, do not touch them. Do not let them keep hold of you,’ he voxed to the rest of the squad. ‘If you are trapped by them, it…’

Follow the corruption.

It was her voice again.

Follow the corruption and it will lead you to the source. Hurry. There may not be much time. Look down. Look at your feet. You will see…

Despite his determination to ignore the voice, Bhehan’s lowered his eyes to stare at the ground. The floor, which was coated in a fine film of ooze and now a veneer of blood from the eldar warriors who were dying swiftly beneath the guns and blades of his battle-brothers, was moving. It carried the very visible shreds of armour, chunks of blood and muscle and even recognisable internal organs. They slid in a sticky mess down the tunnels.

‘First Captain!’

Kerelan did not respond immediately, engaged as he was with the battle. Bhehan called to him again, a little more urgently than before.

‘Prognosticator, a moment if you would.’

Another round of shells disgorged with a resounding clatter from Vrakos’s bolter and Kerelan nodded with satisfaction before turning towards the agitated psyker.

‘The daemon calls to its own, First Captain! The source of this evil is at the end of this flow.’

‘Then we will finish our work here and we will move on.’

Bhehan did not mention the voice in his head. Instead, he caught a tight hold of his force axe and threw himself with easy confidence into what remained of the battle.

Eliminating the remaining eldar afforded no hardship. They were struggling to survive the onslaught of the vile creatures. Two more of them suffered the same fate as the one Bhehan had sent flying into their clutches and their screams as their bodies were dissolved were horrific. Yet Bhehan could not help be feel satisfaction. Ancient enmity between the races ran deep.

‘What are these things, Prognosticator?’ The question came from Vrakos who had fallen into step next to Bhehan, the weapon in his hand still spitting out shell after shell.

‘I am not sure, brother,’ replied Bhehan, swinging his axe round in a neat arc, severing another golem in two. Like the others, it simply seeped into the greater flow and moved slowly down the corridor taking pieces of flesh, bone and armour with it. ‘But there is the touch of the warp at work here. Of that I am sure.’

‘Daemons, do you think?’

‘Aye. I suspect.’ Bhehan pointed down at the ground, at the slowly snaking river of debris. ‘I cannot think of anything else so powerful as to be able to manipulate matter in this way. Wherever this flows… it will lead us to our answers.’

The two warriors fell silent as they executed one of the few remaining eldar. They worked in harmony as though they had fought together on many occasions before. Vrakos fired his weapon into the chest of an eldar who flew backwards. The xenos’s armour soaked up most of the initial damage, but before the alien could even get to his feet, Bhehan had unleashed psychic hell on it. He thrust his hand forwards, the axe held tightly in the other. Jolts of psychic and electrical energy found their target, frying the enemy’s brain. It slid down the wall, far from the pools of ooze.

From somewhere further down, the Silver Skulls heard a sudden roaring. It was a deeply unnatural sound, somewhere between rage and pain. The two warriors exchanged glances.

‘That was not a noise made by any xenos I have encountered,’ observed Vrakos in a mild, almost conversational tone. ‘I would say it lends weight to your daemon hypothesis, Prognosticator.’

The last remaining eldar let out a bellowing phrase in its own language and turned, hurtling at full speed down the corridor in the direction of the sound which was still echoing along the walls.

Raking fire scraped down the rock behind the fleeing eldar and the six Space Marines formed up as a single unit once again. The saving grace was that in the wake of the bestial roar that had resounded down the tunnels, the golems had collapsed. The stream of debris continued to flow.

‘Pursuit,’ said Djul, breaking off from his endless litanies to speak the word. He was almost visibly trembling with zealous fury. ‘It is our only choice. We cannot stand here in idleness whilst the xenos still desecrate our ancestral home.’

‘Aye, brother. At least one remains and I fancy we will find more at the end of this tunnel. More than eldar too if that noise was anything to go by. Brother Prognosticator? The Emperor’s Word, if you would?’

‘Aye, First Captain.’ Bhehan reached down to the rune bag at his waist and drew a stone at random. It was his preferred method of divination in fraught situations. He studied the beautifully carved stone as he raised it to his eyes. ‘This rune symbolises death,’ he said.

‘Ours?’

‘Nothing so obvious, First Captain. Merely a suggestion that something is coming to an end. It can also suggest success, that we reach our goals.’ Bhehan dropped the rune back into his pouch. ‘The rune is a positive one,’ he said. ‘We should proceed. With caution, obviously. These are eldar we are dealing with. As I observed, this may be some elaborate trap on their part.’

‘This is something that had not escaped my own consideration,’ replied Kerelan. He glanced around his squad and nodded. ‘The Prognosticator has spoken. It is the Emperor’s will that we pursue.’

Djul had already started walking.

‘Your helmet, Prognosticator?’

‘In due course, First Captain. Whatever it is that is trying to invade my thoughts, I want to look on its face properly when I kill it.’

‘Spoken like a true Silver Skull.’

There were three minds at war.

The female voice still whispered at the edges of his awareness. He could sense its sheer desperation and that bothered him. If she was powerful enough to insert herself into the highly defended mind of an Adeptus Astartes psyker, then what could possibly cause her such anxiety?

Then there was his own mind. Young, but gruellingly trained to deal with this kind of invasion. He had expended some considerable psychic energy during the altercation with the eldar and the daemonic beings, but he was still more than in control of his faculties. He was keeping the woman at bay – for now at least – and he still had plenty to give.

But the third presence was new, as though it had only lately become aware he was there. An insidious, creeping presence that sought to break through the first gap in his defences that it found. Where the alien’s voice was like a constant hammering on the door of his mental fortress, this new consciousness was like a noxious gas attempting to seep in.

Despite not having replaced his helmet, Bhehan was not struggling to see where he was going. Barely any light reached this far down into the tunnels but Bhehan had long ago learned to compensate for lack of vision with other, preternatural senses. He felt the shape of the room around him and was able to pinpoint his battle-brothers with accuracy. A soft blue glow from his psychic hood and the silvery thread of power that rippled around the head of the force axe loaned a little light to the proceedings but the squad forged ahead mostly in darkness.

‘There is a chamber up ahead.’ Asterios spoke from the front of the line of Terminators. ‘Bodies. Movement. Something I cannot quite…’

Another roar sounded, this time so close that they could all feel the shifting air that accompanied it. Death. Disease. Rot and plague.

‘Replace your helmet, Prognosticator,’ Kerelan began as red warning runes began to flash across his eyes. ‘There is poison in the air.’

The young psyker had already begun the task of putting his helmet back on. It was not a quick thing to do to manipulate it around the psychic hood, but he managed it. As the seals hissed into place, he blinked heavily to adjust his eyes to the infrared. Taking note of the analysis of the air, he was confident that he would not have suffered any undue harm.

‘First Captain!’

The shout from Asterios dragged Bhehan’s attention away from the scrolling data and they moved as fast as their armour would allow them towards the chamber. Not heeding Kerelan’s order about remaining by his side, Bhehan accelerated his speed and moved ahead of the others, arriving at the mouth of the chamber before they did. Asterios shot him a glance. He said nothing. He did not need to. What was visible in the chamber spoke for itself.

A swift scan of the inhabitants of the vast, high-ceilinged room revealed eight eldar warriors, including the one who had fled from the previous battle. All wore segmented, form-fitting armour apart from one. The second Bhehan’s eyes rested on her, he knew at once that this was the source of one of the two voices in his head. She was clad in flowing robes of deepest purple that draped around her slender frame, protected by an ornate breastplate and pauldrons. She stood firm and defiant, her hand out before her and was shouting words in her own language at a monster of unimaginable proportions. Her voice was muffled by the rebreather mask that protected her from the poisonous air.

‘In the Emperor’s name,’ breathed Asterios through the vox. ‘What horror has been wrought in this place?’

It was massive, fully four metres in height and at least that across. It had no real form and seemed to be nothing more than a huge, shapeless mass of vile and putrid decay. Its skin spilled in rolls that rippled as it moved and the slimy trails of corruption that had led the Silver Skulls here flowed directly beneath it. Occasionally, whenever an eldar weapon or projectile made contact with it, a great gash that approximated a screaming mouth would open up. Bhehan stared for a few moments, realising what it was made from. Its epidermis was entirely transparent and beneath its roiling surface the young Prognosticator could pick out bone fragments. He saw skulls, torn strips of flesh and muscle… all the living matter that had been torn from the eldar in the previous chamber. Organic matter that had been absorbed over the millennia.

It is a spawn of the Unclean One. A lesser daemon of Nurgleth. It was the eldar woman’s voice in his head and this time, Bhehan did not reject her presence. We came here in response to a vision and we seek to defeat it. It has fed for so long on the decay and death that infects everything on this world. Please, mon-k… human. Please, you must aid us in this venture. We cannot succeed without your help. It may only be a minor creature but this place is so strong in decay that it thrives.

‘A creature of Chaos,’ he responded to Asterios’s question. He chose carefully not to reply to the eldar. Her pleading tone disgusted him. ‘A daemonic entity that thrives on atrophy and decay…’

‘I do not purport to understand the nature of daemons,’ said Kerelan. ‘But I do understand how to fight them. Concentrate your fire on that thing first. We will deal with the eldar later.’

‘How do we know that the filthy eldar witch is not controlling it?’ Djul’s response was startlingly predictable and he raised his storm bolter, levelling it at the eldar woman’s head. ‘If we kill her then it will die.’

Do not let this happen, human. A slightly sharper psychic probe that made Bhehan gasp. She turned from what she was doing, lightning or some other, unknown force dancing from her hands and stared at the Silver Skulls directly.

Our goal is shared, she said to Bhehan and the desperation returned. Surely you can see that? There is a time for animosity between our species, but it is not now. Now is the time for us to combine our strength, to join together. I felt your presence the moment you arrived on this world. We must do this thing together.

‘Please,’ she said aloud.

‘Do not even speak, alien,’ said Djul and prepared to fire. But Bhehan moved to stand between him and his target.

‘Stay your hand, Brother Djul.’

There was a tone of command in the young Prognosticator’s voice that brokered no argument. Kerelan nodded but said nothing, allowing Bhehan the moment he needed to take control of the situation.

‘The witch is right,’ he said, not elaborating on the fact that his communication with the woman had been mostly private. ‘There is only one way we are going to defeat this thing. The eldar and I have to…’ He swallowed, the words struggling to leave his lips. ‘We have to combine our powers. We have to work together.’

‘What you say is dangerously close to heresy, brother.’ Djul’s face was hidden behind the skull-faced Terminator helm, but Bhehan could easily picture his wild-eyed fury.

‘What I say is what I see,’ he retorted. ‘Do not believe for one second that I am in favour of this course of action, of forming this unwelcome alliance. But if I do not, then the rest of us are dead.’

‘Better death than cooperation with the xenos…’

‘Brother Djul, I agree with you. But this is the sacred home of our ancestors. Or have you so soon forgotten? We do not fight to save ourselves. We fight to preserve what we were. What we are.’

‘The Prognosticator speaks wise words, Djul. I do not agree to this pact at all, but the boy is right. Stay your hand. Concentrate your weapons on that… thing. Do not fire upon the eldar.’

Every member of the squad picked up his mental addition.

Yet.

‘The guilt and blame for this action will be mine to bear, brothers,’ said Bhehan and he moved towards the eldar woman.

‘Bhehan.’

It was the first time Kerelan had addressed him directly by name rather than rank. He turned to look at the First Captain.

‘At the first hint that you are losing control, you oust this creature from your mind.’

‘Such a severance could kill me, First Captain.’

‘I am aware of that. It is either that or die at my hand afterwards when I believe you to be compromised.’

The certainty was oddly reassuring. This was the only chance they had of destroying the daemon. If it failed, Kerelan would not allow him to suffer for long. He inclined his head in obeisance to his commander.

So be it, he told the eldar mentally and the walls of his defences lowered, letting her in.

Her unwelcome arrival in his mind was like a malignant tumour, its presence spreading to fill what little space he had granted her. Yet it did not feel malevolent. They were sharing their power. She was not stealing it. She had spoken truth. Psychic tendrils curled deeper into his mind, seeking the strength that he bore.

You are powerful for one so young. Her surprise was insulting.

Yes. So I am told.

You must release the power. Our strengths must meld or we will not be strong enough. You must trust me.

I do what I do because I must, Bhehan responded and his anger flared as a red spot on the landscape of his thoughts. I will never trust you and your kind. Memories of engagements against the eldar rose, unbidden to the surface and Bhehan tried to quell them but it was too late. The farseer’s brow rose.

Curious. I said before that we are not all the same. These warriors you have battled against are those who Fell. We will talk more of this when the matter at hand is dealt with. Now are you ready, human?

Bhehan did not respond immediately. Was he ready? Was he ready to commit the atrocity of working with this xenos filth? Was he able to prevent her from doing as she pleased with his mind?

Trust me, she had said.

He had blocked out all the ambient sounds in the dark, dank chamber but now it slowly crept back into his awareness. Gunfire was sounding; discarded shells ringing against the stone floor as they were spewed from the heavy weapons that were being discharged. His battle-brothers were holding the enemy at bay, but it would take more than physical damage to deal with the threat. The weight of expectation was heavy and the young Silver Skulls warrior stood straight and bore it with the stoic pragmatism of his ancestors.

A sudden memory of Brother-Sergeant Igneus, the warrior he had seen in his vision flashed before his eyes and he remembered the ancient hero’s words.

We will defend our Chapter’s home with our very last breath.

He released the self-imposed restraint he had placed around his full psychic might and it burst into his psyche like an unstopped river. The farseer gasped at the sudden influx of strength and elsewhere, in the corporeal world, he felt her hand close tightly around his. The touch made his skin crawl, but he tolerated it. For the sake of his brothers. For the honour of the Chapter.

The two psychic forces duelled briefly for supremacy and finally they joined together. Without ever understanding how he achieved it, Bhehan subsumed the power of the eldar woman into that of his own and she did likewise.

For the briefest of moments, post-human warrior and eldar farseer were as one. They knew all there was to know about each other. Her memories were coloured with images of a youth and young manhood spent in endless study; of years of unforgiving training in increasingly harsh environments. A youth who had known anything but war. His memories were interspersed with those of the farseer and what he saw would change his perspective forever. He discovered that the Silver Skulls had been incorrect in believing that all eldar were the same. Despite the pressing nature of their situation, curiosity drove him to dig deeper.

He saw her vision, that which had driven her kind to Lyria. That were this thing allowed to continue its existence, the time would come when the followers of the corpulent god would free it from its prison. That the traitor once known to the Imperium as Typhus would come here, to this holy place and unleash its horror on unsuspecting worlds.

In return, the farseer saw his vision. She saw the entwined war banners and she saw them fall, burned and ruined. He felt her grief at the sudden understanding of what that meant and he knew no pity.

Everything happened fleetingly. Their powers burst forth in a rush of white flame that spread like a ripple from where they stood. The corridor funnelled the psychic burst, channelling it directly towards the vile creature. It was bleeding black ichor from countless wounds, its ability to repair itself severely impaired by the sustained fire pouring down upon it and the roaring breath of the heavy flamer. At Kerelan’s order, the Talriktug continued fighting, firing into its gelatinous form. If it was weakening at all, it gave no sign.

The first wave of energy touched it seconds later and the noise it made was other-worldly. It was not pain; the psychic burst had not apparently hurt its physical body, but something had happened. The formless daemon shifted its massive bulk and turned towards the psykers, its attention taken from the other warriors.

Again, the farseer said and Bhehan complied without hesitation. He could not afford the risk of doubting her. Not now he was this deeply invested in the outcome.

Another flare of energy and this time the daemon did scream. So did the farseer. Bhehan felt her body start to crumple and grabbed hold of her shoulder dragging her back upwards.

Again, he told her in the same way she had spoken to him. One more and we will defeat it.

I… cannot…

You must and you will, witch. You will take my power and you will complete what you have started here.

Her plan was exquisite. The creature was a daemon of death, rot and decay. She was defeating it with life. Too much life. She was taking her own life-force, combining it with the purity of the young Space Marine and she was using their joint powers to amplify it.

The daemon fed, unable to stop itself. The desperate need to take any sustenance it could from everything that lived or died around it took over and it absorbed the energy into itself. But such purity and faith, amplified at such vast power levels was the antithesis of everything it was.

Silver Skulls and eldar warriors continued to pound away at the flesh of the thing whilst Bhehan and the farseer burned at its ties to reality. The harder the two psychic beings pressed their attack, the more damage the weapons of the warriors was doing. Bolter rounds embedded themselves beneath the surface and exploded, spraying an acidic substance across the room. It damaged eldar and Space Marine alike, eating into Djul’s pauldron. But it did not go far. Whatever organisms or whatever warp magic gave it its power seemed to be fading.

‘Whatever you are doing is working, Bhehan,’ bellowed Kerelan. ‘Do not stop.’ He was slicing strips of gangrenous flesh away from the daemon as though he carved a beast. His relic blade glistened, coated with the once-lethal substance that had devoured countless men, women, children and xenos across the years. This thing stood on the sacred, holy ground of those who had come before and his fury was unmatched.

When the daemon finally stopped moving, when all the fight went out of it, Bhehan was surprised. He had anticipated it bursting like an overripe fruit. He had been ready to seek cover to avoid the inevitable rain of acid that would come with its destruction. But instead, it merely wailed as it began to lose size and cohesion. Where once a gelatinous giant had stood, now there was only a quivering lump the size of a Space Marine.

It continued to diminish, spreading across the chamber floor and littering the ground with splinters of bone and rock. One object stood out as different, unusual; glancing more closely at it, the Prognosticator felt a shock of recognition. The last time he had seen that war banner, it had been worn at the back of the noble Brother-Sergeant Igneus, the warrior he had seen during his earlier flashback.

And he understood how the plague had come into the fortress-monastery. He realised what the creature they had just destroyed had been. It sickened him almost as much as what he had done to defeat it. One of their own, twisted and distorted into something so…

Do not linger on what was, came a weary voice in his mind. Instead, give thanks for what is no more. See? It dies, Bhehan.

The psyker was utterly exhausted and drained by his mental exertions, but it was as to nothing compared to the dying spark of the woman who stood beside him. For the first – and only – time, he felt admiration for her.

When the creature finally dissolved into nothing more than a lingering smell and a fading death wail, a harsh silence descended. The sounds of gunfire died away, their echoes fading to nothing. The eldar woman fell to her knees, her breath coming in a low rasp.

She had withdrawn her presence from Bhehan’s mind; he could sense that and it was a welcome relief. He snatched his hand from her, stepping backwards.

‘Prognosticator.’ Kerelan’s voice was quiet and filled with concern. ‘Speak to me. Is it over?’

Bhehan knew that the First Captain was not just referring to the battle with the daemon. He nodded his head. ‘It is done. My mind is my own once more, First Captain.’ He was calm and controlled and Kerelan grunted his satisfaction. The farseer raised her head with obvious effort.

‘I want to thank you…’ she began, but Bhehan shook his head.

‘I did what I had to do. Do not thank me for exposing my mind to you.’ He unclamped the bolt pistol he wore at his thigh.

‘Listen to me, Bhehan,’ she said, reaching a hand up to him. He winced at her use of his name, the insult cutting him deeply. ‘I know what you must do. I always have known how this must end. But you have seen, now. You have seen that we are not all that you believe us to be. That even though there cannot be peace between our two peoples, there can surely come some tolerance.’

‘Heed my words, xenos. I have purged your taint from my mind already,’ was the reply. ‘When I return to my ship, I will cleanse my soul of this experience. By the time I return to my home world, you will not even be a memory. I promise you that much.’

Tears filled her eyes. ‘I had hoped…’ she said, simply and then held her head high. The pride in her expression was worthy of Bhehan’s respect even if it… if she was not.

‘In time,’ she said, ‘I hope you remember what you saw here.’

‘Do not count on it,’ he replied, pressing the bolt pistol against her head.

The killing shot echoed loudly through the fallen fortress. Bhehan stared at her fallen, broken body without expression. Reacting to their leader’s death, the few remaining eldar prepared to attack, but despite their bulk, the Terminators were faster. Within seconds, the enemy were destroyed. Not one of the eldar remained alive.

‘I would say that this place is now purified,’ rumbled Djul. ‘Let us give thanks for the Emperor’s hand in this.’

Another litany began and Bhehan joined in wholeheartedly. Kerelan moved towards the war banner and crouched to look at it. ‘That thing destroyed almost everything that remained here,’ he observed. ‘But this artefact held true. It held firm across the ages. A precious relic indeed. Vashiro will be pleased.’ He carefully gathered it up and stood. ‘For eight thousand years, this war banner has stood as a testament to the tenacity of our Chapter. Imagine, brothers. Imagine the heroes who have carried this into war. Imagine what we can learn from it…’

He glanced at Bhehan. If the Prognosticator let his talent extend to the banner, many of the Chapter’s lost secrets could be divulged. But from the expression on the youth’s face, it was the furthest thing from his mind. Kerelan changed tack.

‘Brother Prognosticator, the honour of taking the witch’s head should fall to you in recognition of the part you…’

‘First Captain. I put myself in your custody.’ Bhehan raised his head, pride and conflicting guilt warring on his expression.

‘What are you talking about, Prognosticator?’

‘I allowed myself to become tainted. I am… impure. There will be penance to pay for my heresy and I welcome it gladly. I know my duty.’

‘Your duty, Prognosticator…’ Kerelan’s tone changed slightly. ‘Listen to me, Bhehan. Do you sincerely believe that we are all free from guilt? Look around you, boy. This very place is a guilty mark on our entire Chapter’s record. This whole mission, everything that you have done today should teach you that there will come times, during your service to the Golden Throne, when you will be forced to take uncompromising action. The ends in this instance more than justified the means.’

‘But I…’

‘When we return to the ship, commune with the Emperor. Put your future in his hands. Our entire Chapter holds by that tenet. What would it be if our own Prognosticators did not trust to their own readings of fate?’ He reached up and for the first time, removed his helmet. Beneath, his face was fearsome. A full skull had been inked into the skin from chin to forehead and gave him a ghastly appearance. But his eyes held the wisdom of the years.

‘Your actions were not questionable,’ he said, laying a hand on the young psyker’s shoulder. ‘You did your duty. Nothing more.’ His face contorted in what Bhehan could only presume was a smile. ‘Now take her head and let us depart with our prize.’

‘Aye, First Captain,’ said Bhehan.

An Extract from Deliverance lost

Gav Thorpe

In a darkened chamber close to the strategium of the Vengeful Spirit, a meeting was being held. The room was large, big enough for several dozen occupants to be seated, the light of the single great lantern hanging from the centre of the ceiling barely reaching the banner-hung walls. A few data stations blinked with ruddy lights on the far wall, beneath an embroidered standard depicting the Eye of Horus in gold on burgundy. The floor was plain plasteel mesh, scuffed to a dull grey by the countless footfalls of booted feet.

As the door closed behind Alpharius, the primarch’s eyes instantly adjusted to the gloom. The space seemed cavernous, occupied by only three others. Alpharius was surprised; he had been expecting several of his brother primarchs to be attending the council. As he stepped forwards he realised that this was not a war council, it was an impromptu interrogation. Perhaps even a trial.

The thought did not sit comfortably with him as he regarded the chambers’ other occupants with what he hoped was an impassive expression. Alpharius knew that he tested the patience of the Warmaster, and here at the heart of his lair there was no telling what he might do.

Horus, Warmaster, Primarch of the Luna Wolves – the Sons of Horus, Alpharius corrected himself – sat on a broad, high-backed throne, robed in heavy black and purple, hands on his knees. His face was heavily shadowed, eyes hooded with darkness with just a glint at their core. Even seated, the Warmaster’s presence dominated the room. Alpharius had spent time with Horus before – when loyal to the Emperor and since – and never before had he felt threatened. This time was different. Horus seemed bigger than ever.

Alpharius was the smallest of the primarchs, but had not allowed this to undermine his confidence. Now that he looked at Horus, tree-trunk-thick arms stretching the fabric of his robes, Alpharius realised that his fellow primarch could crush him, tear him limb from limb, without warning.

Their relationship had changed, that much was clear. The primarchs had once been brothers, equals. When Horus had been made Warmaster he had been treated as the first amongst equals. Looking at Horus now, Alpharius was left with no doubt that Horus considered himself master, a lord to whom fealty was owed. The obedience of his co-conspirators was no longer demanded, it was expected.

There was also no mistaking the Warmaster’s perception of his role in the coming meeting. He was the judge at a trial. His eyes remained fixed on Alpharius as the primarch walked to the centre of the room. The gloomy surrounds, the half-lit shapes at the edge of vision, were a crude trick, Alpharius told himself, only capable of intimidating lesser individuals. For all that, the primarch of the Alpha Legion felt a cold trickle of uncertainty creeping through his gut.

At the Warmaster’s right shoulder stood First Captain Abaddon, fully armoured and with a power sword at his hip. He had a look that matched his reputation: his hard eyes were those of a stone-hearted killer. At the Warmaster’s left was the Word Bearer Erebus, his armour painted a lavish crimson, adorned with golden sigils and hung with fluttering pieces of parchment covered with tiny scrawls of Lorgar’s meandering litanies. The Word Bearer leaned closer and whispered something in Horus’s ear, so quiet even Alpharius’s superhuman hearing could not detect it. The Warmaster looked sharply at the primarch of the Alpha Legion, eyes narrowing.

‘It would be unwise to take my name in vain, Alpharius,’ said Horus, fingers tightening with anger. ‘You claimed my authority and misled Angron and his World Eaters, allowing Corax and his Legion to escape.’

‘Perhaps your conversion to our cause is less than complete,’ added Erebus, before Alpharius could reply.

The Alpha Legion’s primarch held his tongue for the moment, quickly adjusting his demeanour in the face of Horus’s hostility. He stood in front of the Warmaster, helm under one arm, head bowed in obeisance, the picture of the diffident servant.

Abaddon put his hand to the hilt of his sword and growled.

‘Your duplicitous nature is well known,’ said the captain, teeth bared in anger. ‘The Warmaster saw fit to bring you into the light of his plans, I hope you have not made a mockery of his fair judgement.’

‘I seek to place Horus on the throne of Terra, the same as you,’ replied Alpharius, lowering to one knee in deference. It was an instinctive reaction, though such submission grated at the primarch’s pride. ‘If I acted out of turn it is only because circumstance forced me to make a decision quickly.’

‘I have not yet heard an explanation for your actions,’ said Horus.

The Warmaster’s gaze was piercing, as if trying to bore into the primarch’s mind to see his thoughts. Alpharius matched the stare without fear. Horus knew nothing of the Alpha Legion’s true aims. If he had any inkling of the part made out for him by the Cabal, Alpharius would already be dead. ‘I consider it a grave crime to usurp my authority, a crime compounded by the severity of the consequences.’

‘The Raven Guard have not yet been apprehended,’ said Erebus, a sneer twisting his lips. ‘Though but a shadow of their former strength, it was foolish to allow them to escape.’

‘You must trust me,’ said Alpharius, ignoring the two legionaries, his attention focused on his brother primarch. It was the Warmaster’s will, or whim, that needed to be swayed to Alpharius’s cause. ‘The military potential of the Raven Guard has been expended, they are no physical threat. Their survival, Corax’s escape, will play a greater role in this war we have unleashed.’

‘Will it?’ Abaddon spat the words, his scorn etched into the creases in his brow. ‘What greater role?’

Alpharius kept his gaze on the Warmaster, noting that his displeasure did not seem so deep. It was clear that he did not have Horus’s full trust, but Alpharius did not care for that. His brothers had always been wary of the Alpha Legion, always suspicious of their methods, if not their motives. Horus was no different. He had consistently underestimated the power of subterfuge, eschewing the subtler weapons of espionage and misdirection in favour of overt action. Alpharius had not answered the Warmaster’s summons to excuse his actions, he had come to persuade Horus of their merit. That he could do so without the interference of the other Legion commanders was an advantage.

‘The Alpha Legion have infiltrated the Raven Guard,’ Alpharius said bluntly.

He saw Horus’s eyes widen slightly with surprise, and suppressed an expression of pleasure at the Warmaster’s nonplussed moment. Far from an admission of guilt, it was a declaration of strength; the unveiling of a weapon that the Alpha Legion kept hidden.

Alpharius could see the calculation behind the Warmaster’s eyes. If the Alpha Legion could infiltrate the Raven Guard, they could have done the same to any Legion. The Warmaster cocked his head to one side, momentarily perturbed, his eyes flicking away from Alpharius for the first time since he had entered, glancing at Abaddon.

‘To what purpose?’ asked Horus, recovering his composure, his stare returning to its previous intensity. ‘Had they been destroyed, what would be the point of spying on corpses?’

‘You allowed Corax to get away from the World Eaters to protect your operatives.’ Erebus levelled the accusation with a pointed finger, pushing Alpharius’s patience beyond its limit.

‘I am a primarch, genetor of the Alpha Legion, and you will show me due respect!’ snapped Alpharius, standing up.

He took two steps towards Erebus, eyes glittering. Abaddon moved to intercept him, half-drawing his blade

‘Don’t make the mistake of letting that sword leave its scabbard,’ said Alpharius, fixing Abaddon with a venomous glare. ‘I may prefer to work in subtle ways, but if you continue to insult me, I will slay you here and now.’

Horus held out a hand, waving Abaddon back, a thin smile on the Warmaster’s face. He seemed pleased at Alpharius’s anger. ‘You are somewhat defensive, my brother,’ he said, gesturing for Alpharius to seat himself on one of the chairs arranged around the throne. ‘Please explain to me the benefits of allowing Corax to escape.’

Alpharius sat down, reluctantly accepting the Warmaster’s invitation, darting a warning look at Erebus just as the Word Bearer opened his mouth to speak.

‘Save your posturing for those that are swayed by it,’ said Alpharius. ‘Your change of loyalty proves the vacuity of your proselytising. You are privileged to stand in the presence of your betters, and should know not to speak until spoken to.’

The primarch enjoyed the contortions of anger that wracked the First Chaplain’s face, but Erebus heeded the warning and said nothing.

‘I have good information that Corax will attempt to return to Terra,’ Alpharius said, turning his attention back to Horus. ‘He will entreat the aid of the Emperor, and be given access to some secret of Old Night that we can use to our advantage.’

‘From where does this “good information” come?’ asked Horus, affecting disinterest though Alpharius could see that the Warmaster was intrigued.

‘We each have our own means and sources,’ replied Alpharius, flicking a meaningful gaze towards Erebus. The Alpha Legion had made it their business to know as much as possible about their fellow conspirators, and Alpharius was well aware of the strange rituals that Lorgar and his Word Bearers now indulged in. The Alpha Legion’s allies in the Cabal had furnished them with much information concerning the Primordial Annihilator, the Power of Chaos. It would not hurt to pretend that the Word Bearers were not the only Legion who had influence with the powers of the warp. ‘I am not of a mind to share mine with you at the moment.’

‘Are you not?’ said Horus, irritated. ‘Why would you keep secrets from me?’

‘Perhaps it is just my nature to do so. Secrecy is my best weapon.’ Alpharius smiled apologetically and gave a slight shrug. ‘Also, I do not believe myself or my Legion indispensable in your endeavours, so it would be unwise to surrender the few small advantages I possess. I know that my behaviour in the past and in recent times does not engender trust, but I assure you that this information is not only legitimate, but accurate.’

‘I will accept your assurances,’ said Horus, ‘for the moment.’ He leaned back in his throne, visibly relaxing as if to back up his words. Alpharius knew not to be lured into a sense of security. The Warmaster’s temper might change at a wrong answer from him or a sly word from Erebus. ‘What is your intent?’

‘We will allow Corax to obtain whatever it is he seeks, and then take it from him, turning it to our purpose.’

‘How do you think your operatives will remain undetected?’ Abaddon asked. ‘Our reports show that less than four thousand Raven Guard fled from Angron. New faces will be easily spotted, your legionaries exposed.’

‘That is why they wear old faces,’ Alpharius told him. He smiled and explained further when the others’ frowns deepened. ‘The Raven Guard were scattered as they fled the massacre at the dropsite. It was several days before they convened their strength again, during which time many were cut down in pursuit and anarchy reigned through their organisation. It was no simple matter for my Apothecaries to transplant the facial features of several fallen Raven Guard onto volunteers from my Legion, but they have had a lot of practice. As you may have heard, such facial surgery is not uncommon in the ranks of the Alpha Legion. My warriors are skilled and experienced, able to blend in without attracting attention. Even now they are with the Raven Guard, waiting for the opportunity to report.’

‘You stole their faces?’ Abaddon’s expression was a mixture of incredulity and disgust.

Alpharius nodded and looked for Horus’s reaction. For a moment the Warmaster had the same guarded look as earlier, but his aggression swept it aside as he leaned forwards, brow furrowing.

‘You are sure of their success?’ asked Horus, the words laden with accusation. ‘You have heard from them since they began their infiltration?’

Alpharius hesitated at this question, not sure of his reply. There was no point lying at this stage, even though the truth might upset the Warmaster further.

‘They have not yet been in contact,’ Alpharius admitted. ‘It is possible that they have been discovered, or perhaps slain in the fighting, but it is unlikely. They will send word when there is something of note to report.’

‘That will be a feat in itself, considering how far away they might be,’ said Abaddon.

‘As I said before, I have my means.’

Saying nothing, Horus regarded Alpharius for some time, his shadow-hidden eyes never leaving the face of the Alpha Legion primarch. Erebus bent down to say something but the Warmaster held up a hand to stop him.

‘You should have come to me with this intelligence before you interfered with the World Eaters,’ Horus said, his voice quiet. Alpharius chose not to repeat his point that he had had no such time to seek the Warmaster’s authority, and certainly didn’t voice his view that permission would not have been given. The judge was about to pronounce his judgement and Alpharius could not tell which humours held sway over the Warmaster. He held his breath, trying not to tense lest his anxiety was seen as guilt. ‘Angron has been given further cause to doubt my commands, and he is not shy in voicing his displeasure. I do not appreciate your scheming, brother, and I will be watching you closely.’

Which meant that no action more imminent would be taken against the Alpha Legion. Alpharius breathed out slowly, still on his guard.

‘We have a possible contact with a Raven Guard vessel heading out-system from Isstvan IV, Warmaster,’ said Abaddon. ‘Should we call off the pursuit, if it is your desire to let them escape?’

Horus looked to Alpharius, one eyebrow raised, seeking his opinion, though Alpharius sensed he was still being tested.

‘I would humbly suggest that the pursuit continues as normal for the moment,’ said the primarch. ‘Corax may already be suspicious of the events that allowed him to elude the World Eaters, any further deficiency in our attempts to bring him to battle might cause him to act with greater caution and ultimately thwart the reasons for allowing the Raven Guard their freedom.’

‘I concur,’ said Horus. ‘I have every confidence in Corax’s ability to escape my clutches without further help, and it will cause further consternation and questions amongst our allies if I am seen to interfere again.’

‘A wise decision,’ said Alpharius, bowing his head. ‘If there is nothing more to discuss, I must return to my Legion and continue the operation.’

Horus signalled for Alpharius to depart and the primarch felt the Warmaster’s heavy gaze on his back as he walked towards the door. The hydraulically-locked doorway remained closed to him, but Alpharius did not turn around.

The murmur of Erebus hovered on the edge of Alpharius’s hearing as the primarch waited for the portal to open.

‘If I thought for a moment, brother, that you were working against me, I would destroy you and your Legion,’ Horus declared.

Alpharius looked over his shoulder at the Warmaster and his two advisors.

‘I have never doubted that, brother.’

The door hissed open in front of Alpharius and he stepped out of the star chamber, trembling at the experience.

Beneath the Flesh

Part II

Andy Smillie

The mutilated corpses of eight Flesh Tearers decorated the curved walls of the chapel. Fixed in place by the blades of their chainswords, they hung like nightmare visages of the saints that decorated Cretacia’s Reclusiasms. Their armour was pitted and dented from numerous impacts and lacerations; their helms had been torn from their locking mounts, mangling their gorgets; all that remained of their faces were sunken husks, matted with bloodied hair.

‘Blood of Sanguinius,’ Nisroc fell to one knee, the desecration of his brother’s flesh staggering him.

‘Blood will bring blood,’ with a grunt of effort, Harahel pulled the blade from the nearest of corpses. The dead Flesh Tearer’s remains made a dull thud as they dropped to the ground. Harahel stared at the deep hole in the chapel wall; the blade had been driven through the outer rock into the metal support behind. ‘It took great strength to do this.’

Nisroc nodded, and cast his gaze around the chamber. The plaster finish and faux-brickwork of the walls was undamaged. The flagstones that paved the way to the raised, wooden alter were unblemished save for a single dark spot left behind by an errant blood droplet. ‘They weren’t killed here,’ Nisroc pushed himself to his feet. ‘There’s no sign of battle. Someone brought them here.’ The Apothecary struggled to talk, grinding his teeth in rage ‘After.’

Harahel snarled. ‘Brother-sergeant,’ he summoned Barbelo over the vox. Static filled his ear as he waited for a response. ‘Emperor damn this storm,’ the Flesh Tearer punched the wall, cracking it in a cloud of plaster-dust.

‘Report,’ Barbelo’s voice crackled back.

‘We have cleared the chapel annex.’ Harahel paused as another burst of static shot across the vox-link, ‘Eight of our brothers lie here.’

‘Status?’

‘Dead. All of them.’ Harahel turned his eyes from the corpses, his fists bunching in restrained fury as he glared at the aquila etched on the floor.

‘Show me.’

Harahel closed his eyes. He had no wish to look upon the massacre a second time. Activating his helmet’s visual feed, he panned his head around the room, streaming what his optics registered to the others.

For a long moment, the vox-link fell silent.

‘Nisroc, get what you came for. Harahel, meet us at the Stormraven.’ Barbelo’s voice rasped through another bout of static.

Six minutes. Time continued to count down at the edge of Maion’s peripheral display. The Archenemy’s army was almost at their door. ‘Let them come,’ he snarled, affixing the last of the melta-charges to the crossbeam that supported the ceiling. The charge was directional, and he’d taken care to make sure that the blast would travel down the corridor away from where he and Micos would be positioned.

‘Brother,’ Harahel’s voice rasped over a secure channel, ‘Back in the armoury, we gutted the traitors without incident. The ones in the command centre put up no more of a fight.’

Maion knew where Harahel was headed. ‘Yes, I had the same thought.’

‘How could such, such filth,’ Harahel spat the word, ‘have overcome our brethren? Those weaklings could scarcely have lifted a chainsword, let alone driven it into solid rock.’

Maion brought the percentile counter that recorded the progress of the data-stack download to the forefront of his helmet’s display. It ticked down slow and deliberate, like a dying man’s laboured breath. ‘Emperor willing, we’ll live long enough to find out.’ Maion sighed and blinked the counter away.

‘Jetpack assault troops. Bearing down on the courtyard,’ Amaru’s voice cut across on the main channel, interrupting Harahel’s reply. The Techmarine was still jacked into the compound’s data banks in the inner sanctum and was observing the Archenemy’s advance through a remote-link with the Stormraven’s sensors. The Archenemy’s jetpack squad appeared as solid red blips that drifted over the landscape and grew in size as they neared. ‘I count six of them…’ Amaru’s voice trailed off as he worked a calculation. ‘Harahel, you will not clear the courtyard before they descend.’

Harahel emerged from the chapel annex and growled up into the blackness of Arere’s starless sky, his enhanced eyes searching for the tell-tale flares of jetpacks. ‘I see no enemy.’

‘I assure you brother, they are coming.’

‘They’re a vanguard, nothing more.’ Barbelo growled over the vox-feed, his impatience evident in every syllable. ‘Harahel, ignore them and get to my position. The main force will hit us in less than five minutes. Amaru, cover his advance.’

The Techmarine blinked an acknowledgment icon to Barbelo and concentrated on communicating with the Stormraven’s machine-spirit. The gunship’s sentient mind was silent, almost dormant. It resisted Amaru’s gentle interrogation, blocking his attempts to rouse it.

‘My skin for yours.’ The Techmarine invited the machine-spirit into his armour as he probed deeper into the gunship. The connection sent a spasm through his muscles as he gained access to the Stormraven’s weapon systems. Amaru teased power into the gunship’s turret-mounted assault cannons.

‘Battle,’ the machine-spirit whispered in the Techmarine’s head as it stirred to readiness.

The red-blips pulsed on Amaru’s display as the enemy neared weapons range. He cycled the twin-assault cannons to firing speed, their multiple barrels whirring with a metallic hiss as the autoloader fed them rounds.

‘Enemy.’ The word growled from within the Stormraven’s machine soul, washing through Amaru’s mind like the strained rumble of thruster backwash. It was awake now, wearing the Stormraven like a suit of ceramite war plate, wielding its turret-mounted weapon with the same ease and precision that a Flesh Tearer hefted a blade.

A sound wave spiked across Amaru’s display as the Stormraven’s auditory sensors detected the roar of enemy jetpacks. The Chaos Space Marines were gunning their thrusters, slowing their descent.

‘Purge the heretics.’ the Techmarine urged the gunship to open fire.

The enraged machine-spirit obliged. The twin-assault cannon’s twelve barrels flared into life, lighting up the sky like miniature starbursts as they fired. Caught unaware, the Chaos Space Marines dived straight into the fusillade. The first three died in a heartbeat, their armour and flesh torn asunder by the unceasing hail of armour piercing rounds.

Harahel was two-thirds of the way across the courtyard when the assault cannons opened fire. He risked a glance skyward and saw the visceral red power armour of the Archenemy’s warriors. Their breastplates were shaped like cruel gargoyles and snarled at him from the darkness. A burst of rounds clipped the nearest of the Traitor Marines, blowing apart his thrusters in a shower of flame. The enemy warrior veered downwards towards Harahel, carried by what remained of his earlier momentum. The Flesh Tearer smiled and swung his eviscerator up through the stricken Chaos Space Marine’s ribcage, ripping him in two. Harahel kept moving, tearing his giant weapon through the body of another foe that slammed into the earth in front of him a moment later. The Flesh Tearer bit into his lip, relishing the taste of his own blood as he pounded towards Barbelo and the slaughter to come.

Amaru watched as the Stormraven continued to track and fire. He felt his pulse quicken to the hoarse wheeze of the assault cannon’s barrels as they spun. Several more of the red blips disappeared from his display, shredded by the gunships’ unerring fire. The Techmarine could feel the machine-spirit’s cold rage, its lust for violence and the gleeful abandon with which it massacred the enemy. He gasped, clutching the cables that linked him to the compound’s datastacks, and fought the urge to sever the link. He needed to be outside with the Stormraven, fighting, killing. His body began to tremble as he tried to restrain his urges. The download sequence was in its final stage, any interruption now would corrupt the data. Amaru dropped to one knee, screaming in rage as the machine-spirit’s emotions threatened to overcome him. ‘My work is iron, my will steel.’ The Techmarine held his clenched fist against the machine-cog on his left pauldron as he growled his way through the devotion, ‘I shall not falter, I shall not heel.’ Defend, he forced the order onto the machine spirit and drew his mind away, severing the link to the gunship and the violence outside.

Panting hard, Amaru focused on finishing the protocol. ‘There is no truth beyond the data, it is the muniment of the future. Guard it well.’ Download complete, Amaru unplugged from the datastacks and completed the rites of remembrance, secreting the data-keeper within his armour. The Techmarine let out a slow breath as the after-shadow of the Raven and the compound fell away, and the confines of his world reasserted themselves.

Alone in his armour, he took reassurance from the cold, impassive touch of the bionics and augmetics that punctuated his body. Perfect where he was flawed, the machine components of the Techmarine would continue to function long after The Rage drove his flesh to destruction. ‘Download complete,’ Amaru voxed the update to the rest of the squad and pushed himself to his feet.

‘Nisroc, status?’ Barbelo’s voice crackled over the vox.

‘I need three minutes,’ Maion listened to the Apothecary’s reply as the chrono-counter on his display blinked down to one.

He stood immobile in the darkness. His gaze fixed on the heavy blast doors at the far end of the corridor, as the chrono display floating at the edge of his peripheral vision blinked down to zero. The attack had begun. If Barbelo was right and this enemy did indeed wage war like the Flesh Tearers, then they would have fallen upon the outer walls with all the fury of a scorned god. Maion imagined the scene outside, picturing the Archenemy’s forces as they descended on the compound. Vindicator siege tanks would have lead an armoured charge, unleashing a devastating bombardment as accompanying Rhinos and Razorbacks disgorged frothing assault squads. With the siege shells exploding overhead, the assault troops would use melta weapons and crackling thunder hammers to finish the job, smashing an entry hole into the compound. Right now, the Archenemy would be tearing towards him and the others like a swarm of berserker locusts.

Yet the scene ahead remained unchanged, the blast door intact. The only sound Maion could hear was the gentle purr of his armour and the wash of his rebreather. His muscles twitched. The urge to break from his defensive posture and meet the enemy head on was almost overwhelming.

‘The longer you stand, the more blood you can spill,’ Micos placed a calming hand on Maion’s shoulder guard, reading the other Flesh Tearer’s mood. ‘Save your fury, we’ll be steeped in their entrails soon enough.’ Micos thrust his chainaxe towards the blast door as a trio of sparks dripped to the floor.

Maion nodded, allowing Micos’s words to soften the call to violence that rang in his mind like the summoning gong of an ancient arena. The other Flesh Tearer looked odd in Atoc’s helm. Atoc, Maion’s anger returned in force as he thought of his brother’s death. His knuckles turning bone white inside his gauntlets as he squeezed his weapons, desperate for something to rend. Another burst of super-heated metal flared in the gloom. He blinked away a myriad of tactical icons from his display; he was going to kill whatever came through the blast doors, nothing else mattered.

The drizzle of sparks tumbled into a downpour as the Archenemy intensified their assault on the door. A pulsing, amber line resolved into focus, bisecting the door from floor to ceiling.

‘Here they come,’ Maion crouched down, motioning for Micos to do the same.

The cutting stopped. The weld-line hung in the gloom, glowing and raw like a fresh scar. Silence filled the corridor, threatening to steal the last of Maion’s restraint.

An immense, metallic hand punched through the centre of the blast door. Pneumatic pistons hissed and spat as elongated fingers flexed in search of something to rend. The audio dampeners in Maion’s helmet worked to filter out the torturous screech of metal as the hand reached backwards, gripped the door, tore it from its hinges and dragged it backwards into the darkness. An instant later, the hand and the lumbering body it was attached to, bolted into view.

‘Dreadnought, corridor one,’ Maion warned, resisting the urge to open fire with his boltgun. He couldn’t afford to waste the ammo and even the weapon’s mass-reactive rounds would do little more than scratch the paint from the armoured behemoth bearing down on him. A dread fusion of Space Marine and technology, the Dreadnought was more foe than he and Micos could stop unaided. The towering walker stomped over the wreckage of the door, emerging into the corridor proper, and opened fire.

Maion threw himself flat. ‘For the Chapter!’ he roared, thumbing the control stick Amaru had fashioned for him. On the ceiling above him, one of the missile tubes stripped from the Stormraven’s wings screamed into life, sending its payload burning on a plume of fire towards the walker.

The first of the missiles slammed into the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus and exploded, splintering its armoured hide. The missile’s secondary booster ignited a moment later, driving a tertiary charge in through the weakened armour plating to detonate in the Dreadnought’s core. Flame engulfed the walker, wreathing it like a burial wrap. Autocannon rounds tore across the walls and ceiling as the Dreadnought continued to fire.

Maion fired again, sending another missile towards the metallic beast. A shrill cry resounded from the Dreadnought’s voice-casters as it raised its clawed arm in defence. The second missile’s primary warhead broke against the arm, blowing it apart in a shower of silver shrapnel. The remaining warhead burrowed into the Dreadnought’s flank, detonating with enough force to finish the job, destroying the Archenemy walker.

A blood-curdling roar filled the corridor as a tide of blood-armoured warriors swarmed over the Dreadnought’s corpse towards the Flesh Tearers. Micos roared back, pushing himself to his feet and striding forward to bathe the enemy in a jet of liquid fire. The Archenemy’s warriors ran through the flame, heedless of their bubbling armour and the flesh that ran from it like water.

Maion advanced to Micos’s right, his boltgun flashing in the darkness as he pumped a stream of rounds into the press of enemy. Each time Maion caught sight of a foe it forced a curse from his lips. Their red armour seemed in direct mockery of the sons of Sanguinius. Where Maion’s breastplate was adorned with the holy aquila and his shoulder guard carried the mark of his Chapter, the foe’s armour was inlaid with brass skulls and blasphemous runes.

‘We can’t hold here,’ Micos’s flamer stuttered and died, its fuel tank exhausted. Letting it hang on its sling, he drew his bolt pistol and continued to fire. In the close confines of the corridor he couldn’t miss, each round found its mark. He shot an enemy point-blank in the chest, then two more. At such close range, even power armour offered little protection, his bolt rounds punching out through their backs in a hail of gore.

Maion stood level to Micos’s right, firing his boltgun on full-auto until the round counter flashed zero. There was no time to reload the next enemy only ever a breath away. ‘Micos, down!’

Micos grabbed the nearest corpse as it fell to the ground and pulled it down on top of himself. Maion did likewise. Behind them, the hurricane bolter emplacement they’d fashioned from the Stormraven’s sponson weaponry opened fire. The noise was deafening as the three pairs of linked boltguns pumped a storm of shells into the corridor. Funnelled by the walls of the corridor, and pushed onwards by the press of warriors at their backs, the Archenemy were driven heedlessly into the salvo. They died in droves, their torsos pulped and limbs severed by the vicious onslaught.

Maion lay under the twitching corpses of half a dozen enemy. His pulse was racing, his twin-hearts echoing to the call of the hurricane bolters. The smell of blood and burnt flesh was choking. He was lying in an expanding pool of blood that dripped from all around him, congealing into a puddle of thick, viscous fluid that threatened to swallow him.

‘Emperor, fashion my thirst to your unbending will.’ Maion focused on the data overlaid on his helmet display, turning his thoughts to the tactical challenges that an endless horde of berserker foe presented, and away from the bloodlust burning in his veins. The weapon emplacement’s ammo counter was racing towards zero. ‘Two seconds.’ Maion subvocalised the warning to Micos and slammed his last clip into his boltgun.

With a final thrum, the hurricane bolters racked empty. Maion shot upwards from beneath the corpse-cover. The Archenemy dead were heaped upon one-another like red-armoured sandbags. Yet still they came. He opened fire, sending two more abominations to join the pile of dead that choked the corridor. The smell of promethium and burnt flesh flooded towards Maion as the enemy turned their flamers on their dead, burning a path towards the Flesh Tearers. The damning clack of an empty firing chamber drew a curse from Maion’s lips as his boltgun spat its last round. He discarded the spent weapon and gripped his chainsword with both hands. ‘I am His vengeance!’

‘Harahel!’ Barbelo tore his chainsword from an enemy’s ribcage as he shouted for the giant Flesh Tearer.

Harahel wasn’t listening, his attention fixed on the dismembered bodies of the three Chaos Space Marines he’d just slain.

‘Harahel, fall back!’

Harahel ignored the sergeant, launching himself back into the press of enemy. Ducking a whirring chainaxe, he shouldered an enemy warrior into the wall, pulping his skull between rockcrete bulkhead and ceramite pauldron. Harahel smiled and swung his eviscerator around in a tight arc, hacking into the onrushing press of red armour with a cold fury.

‘Emperor damn you.’ The other Flesh Tearer’s disobedience drew a curse from Barbelo’s lips as a roaring chainblade flashed out towards his neck. He leaned back as far as his balance allowed. The weapon’s teeth sparked as they grazed his gorget. Growling, he fired a plasma round into his attacker’s leering helm, vaporising the Chaos Space Marine’s head and torso. The headless body twitched backwards and disappeared in the press of red armour. ‘Harahel! When they cross the line, I will detonate.’ Barbelo let his smoking pistol drop to the floor, its power pack exhausted, and drew his combat knife. ‘Harahel!’

Harahel snapped his head around, sighting the sergeant. Barbelo was embroiled with two Chaos Space Marines, a blade in each of his hands as he fought his way clear of the melee. A bolt round stung off Harahel’s shoulder guard. He ignored it, snapping the neck of a charging foe with a thunderous backhand and delivering a low kick that broke the leg of another. It went against his every instinct to move backwards. Faced with the immediate need to kill, duty was a secondary consideration. The rage that burned in Harahel’s veins was insatiable. Roaring like a mad-man, he continued into the enemy. Behind him, Barbelo went down under a flurry of blows.

Distressed bio-data filled Barbelo’s display. A stray round had clipped his helmet, dazing him long enough for one of the enemy to rake his midsection with a whirring blade and batter him to the ground. He tried to focus but his head was ringing. Pain lanced through him as a blade dug into his back. Gritting his teeth, he pulled a bolt pistol from beneath a corpse. Twisting, he fired it on full-auto, sending half a clip into his would-be executioner. The Traitor Marine juddered and fell as the rounds slammed into him. Surrounded and badly wounded, Barbelo knew he had little chance of regaining his footing. I am redeemed. Proud that he had remained master of his rage, that his armour had not been daubed in the black of madness, the sergeant clasped his hand tightly around the detonator. The Cretacian symbol for caution flashed across his display, warning him that he was within the blast radius.

‘In His name.’

Barbelo released the device’s pressure-clasp.

The melta-charges ignited, blasting apart the corridor’s support studs in a hail of shrapnel and filling the passageway with an expanding ball of flame. Harahel was tossed like a leaf in a hurricane as the explosion slammed him into the walls and ground. Strobing runes filled his retinal display, as fire washed across his armour, testing the limits of its ceramite plating. The screed of warnings were in vain, Harahel unable to process them before the ceiling collapsed and his world went dark.

‘The gene-seed is secure. Moving to the Stormraven.’

Maion struggled to hear Nisroc’s voice over the pumping of his hearts and the roar of his chainsword as its teeth tore through another enemy. ‘Understood,’ he growled, turning aside an enemy chainaxe. He parried the weapon down to expose his attacker’s neck, driving his combat knife into the Chaos Space Marine’s windpipe. Maion immediately withdrew the blade and buried it in the face of another of the Dark Gods’ minions. ‘If we’re not there in two minutes, leave.’

‘Sanguinius guide you.’

Maion was in no doubt that the Apothecary would be leaving without him. The Archenemy had him surrounded. His armour had been struck clean of paint and insignia. Deep lacerations covered his arms and torso. His muscles ached with exhaustion. It would not be long before even his indomitable constitution gave out, and the enemy killed him. Only his rage kept him on his feet, allowing him to fight on. The insatiable need to rend powering his blows and staying death’s probing touch. In death’s sight, you are fury. In his colours you are reborn a reaper. None shall evade your wrath, Maion recalled the mantra Chaplain Appollus used to rouse the Death Company for war. Until now, he’d embraced only the edges of the beast growling inside of him. Never daring to fully embrace the whispering voices that scratched at his mind. But here, on starless Arere, in the darkness of the corridor, Maion stopped resisting. He invited the red mist to descend to light up his world in a whirlwind of gore. He felt his rage swallowing him, the shadow in his mind–

A staccato of miniature explosions snapped Maion from his morbidity. He felt the press of enemy ease off behind, allowing him to take a step backwards. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw Amaru. The Techmarine stood in the centre of the corridor like a vengeful daemon, the quad arms of his servo-harness spitting death from an array of laser cutters and plasma burners. In his gauntleted hands, Amaru carried his power axe, Blood Cog. The Techmarine had forged the weapon himself upon his return from Mars. The axe’s sparking head was shaped like the gearwheel from a giant machine. A weapon of exquisite beauty and terrible power, it was imbued with all Amaru’s artisanship. Blood Cog rose and fell like the levers of an antiquated stenogram, as the Techmarine hacked down the Archenemy in brutal swipes that crackled on impact.

‘Quickly brother, fall back,’ Amaru called out to Maion as he chopped Blood Cog through another Chaos Space Marine, bisecting the unfortunate from shoulder to hipbone. ‘Fall back now.’

‘Micos.’ Maion cast his gaze around. He had long since lost sight of the other Flesh Tearer but his ident-tag still shone. He was alive, for the moment at least. ‘We can’t leave him.’

‘They will rally soon.’

Maion ignored the Techmarine’s caution, and bludgeoned his way past another assailant to where his retinal display indicated Micos should be. With a huge effort, Maion began tossing back the bodies of the Archenemy, until he spotted the familiar ashen helm of a Flesh Tearer. ‘I have him,’ knifing his chainsword into the thigh of an onrushing foe, Maion grabbed Micos’ vambrace and dragged him from under a heap of corpses.

‘Can you carry him?’ Amaru’s question bore no insult.

Maion growled, tearing his blade free and beheading the wounded Traitor Marine. ‘To Cretacia and back.’ With a grunt of exertion, he hoisted Micos over his shoulders.

The Techmarine nodded and hacked the weapon arm from one of the Archenemy, before beheading him. Amaru’s fury was methodical, the aggression of his flesh tempered by the cold efficiency of his machine parts. Maion envied his calm. Though he knew that someday, the Techmarine’s rage would no longer be held in check. On that day, Maion would know pity for the enemies of his Chapter.

Pulling his axe from the chest plate of another Chaos Space Marine, Amaru tossed a glowing canister over Maion’s head. ‘Run.’

Harahel pushed himself off the ground, shrugging a pile of debris and a limbless body from his back. He felt his twin-hearts quicken as they worked with his armour to pump pain suppressors through his bloodstream. Angry runes flashed on his display as his helm’s optics tried and failed to focus. The lenses were cracked. Stumbling to his feet, Harahel spat a curse and unclasped his ruined helmet. The Chapter’s armourers had their work cut out for them. He mag-locked it to his thigh and paused while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Thick silence hung in the air. It was in almost painful contrast to the cacophonous din of battle that preceded the explosion. Harahel listen for signs of the enemy but could hear nothing beyond his own shallow breathing. The blast had levelled the corridor, chocking it with collapsed rockcrete and the dead. The Flesh Tearer searched for his weapon, picking through the rubble and bodies nearest him. ‘The mists rot you’, he said. Cursing in tired frustration, Harahel kicked a fallen Chaos Space Marine in the chest. The ceramite skull adorning the fallen warrior’s breastplate cracked under the blow. There was no trace of the eviscerator. His weapon was gone. Harahel staggered forwards, steadying himself on a dislodged support beam. There was movement up ahead. Two figures, one crouched over the other. He stepped towards them, unsteady on his feet as he fought to remain conscious.

‘Nisroc?’ Harahel cried out, delirious from the chemicals keeping him alive while his body healed itself. ‘Brother?’

He moved closer, stopping as the crouched figure’s armour resolved into focus. It was not the white of the Apothecary or the deep crimson of Barbelo’s garb, but a vibrant, arterial red. Harahel took a step forwards, and saw Barbelo slumped underneath the figure. The sergeant’s breastplate was peeled open, his organs scattered on the ground. Harahel bared his teeth and snarled.

The hunched figured turned and rose. Fresh blood stained his baroque armour, tracing the outlines of the ruinous brass symbols that adorned it. Skulls rattled on rusted chains as the Chaos Space Marine stood. He was a walking effigy of death. A vicious chainaxe barked to life in his hand.

Harahel gripped his helmet and strode towards his enemy, all thoughts of injury gone as rage invigorated him. He would avenge the sergeant. The traitor would pay in blood.

‘Skulls for His throne,’ the Archenemy warrior roared through the skull-shaped vox-grille of his helmet, and charged at the Flesh Tearer.

Harahel caught his opponent’s arm as he slashed down with the chainaxe, pivoting and smashing his helm into the side of the Chaos Space Marine’s head. He followed with his elbow, folding it into his opponent’s left ocular lens. The Traitor Marine roared as the shattered armour-glass dug into his eye, and threw a panicked hook with his free hand. Harahel felt his jaw break as the gauntleted blow struck his unarmoured face. He struggled to keep a hold of the Chaos Space Marine’s weapon arm, spitting a glob of bloody mucous and teeth as he slammed his head into his opponent’s other lens. Pain shot through Harahel’s skull as his toughened skeleton protested at the cruel misuse. The Archenemy’s head snapped backwards under the blow, unbalancing him.

‘Die!’ Harahel roared and smashed his helmet into the Chaos Space Marine’s head. The enemy warrior’s grip on the chainaxe loosened. The Flesh Tearer struck him again, and again, using his helmet as a hammer, bludgeoning the Chaos Space Marine to his knees. The chainaxe clattered to the ground as Harahel battered his foe into unconsciousness. ‘Die!’ The Traitor Marine’s body went slack but the Flesh Tearer held him upright and continued to batter him. ‘Die! Die! Die!’

Only when his helmet was mangled beyond recognition, and his opponent’s head was nothing but bloody spatter on the wall, did Harahel let the body drop to the ground. The giant Flesh Tearer stood panting, the Archenemy’s blood dripping from his face. He growled, bunching his fists as he fought the urge to smash down the wall. ‘Strengthen me to the demands of blood. Armour my soul against the Thirst.’ Harahel looked down at Barbelo’s corpse. ‘Let me kill those who blaspheme against your sons.’ Calmer, Harahel knelt and unfastened Barbelo’s helm. ‘Forgive me,’ Harahel said as he locked it in place over his head. Both retinal displays lit up with sigils of bonding as the sergeant’s helmet synchronised with his armour. Harahel called up the squad’s ident-tags, thankful that his brothers were still fighting. Slinging Barbelo’s body over his shoulder and picking up the fallen chainaxe, Harahel made for the Stormraven. ‘Come, brother, there’s more blood to spill yet.’

The Stormraven was a burning wreck of charred metal and crumpled ceramite. The courtyard compromised. Enemy assault troops sat perched on the upper gantries like sentry-carrion, their weapons searching for targets. Half a dozen more sat crouched on their haunches, nursing wounds the Stormraven had dealt them before its demise.

‘Wretches! Sanguinius drink you dry,’ Nisroc opened fire, pulverising the nearest enemy with a hail of explosive rounds. There was no place in a Flesh Tearer’s mind for dismay. If he were trapped on Arere, then he would kill his enemies until death came to stop him. The Apothecary dived into cover, throwing himself against a metal container as a slew of bolt-rounds and melta-blasts tore towards him in retort. ‘I’m in the courtyard. The Stormraven’s gone.’ Nisroc’s voice was punctuated with rage as he voxed the update. Movement to the left drew his attention. He opened fire, suppressing a pair of Chaos Space Marines that were trying to encircle him.

‘Sanguinius’s blood. What now?’ Harahel snarled over the vox.

Another torrent of rounds smashed into Nisroc’s cover, forcing him to crouch low as he reloaded his bolter. ‘We fight, we–’

‘I know a way,’ Amaru interrupted.

‘Explain…’ Nisroc trailed off. The enemy had stopped firing. On instinct, he subvocalised the Cretacian rune for haste to the rest of the squad.

‘Apothecary!’ The word rang out in a garbled roar, its syllables tortured by a voice unaccustomed to speech. ‘I will feast on your hearts and savour the seed of your brothers.’

At the corner of his peripheral vision, Nisroc saw four more Chaos Space Marines, their weapons trained on him. He ground his teeth in frustration. His only option was to face the challenger.

‘Not while I draw breath!’ Nisroc drew his chainsword and stood to face his opponent. The Chaos Space Marine was a giant, taller even than Harahel, his bronzed armour covered in egg-shell cracks where it struggled to contain his warped bulk. ‘Tell me,’ Nisroc said in a low growl. ‘Whose blood shall my blade taste?’ The Apothecary activated his visual feed as he spoke, transmitting the locations of the Chaos Space Marines in the courtyard to the rest of the squad.

‘Krykhan, Fist of Khorne,’ the traitor growled as he launched himself at Nisroc.

Amaru sprinted from the corridor firing, Maion close behind him. ‘Fall back to the missile silo.’ The Techmarine dropped to one knee to avoid a plasma round, the arms of his servo-harness whirring as they turned to return fire. The Chaos plasma gunner died in a heartbeat, dissected by the merciless cutting lasers.

Maion ran past the Techmarine, Micos draped over his shoulders. It irked him to be unarmed, but he hadn’t the time to find a weapon. Bolt-rounds barked at his heels and churned up the dirt as he moved. He spat a curse, desperate for a chance to return fire. Angry runes flashed on his display as shell fragments spattered off of his legs. ‘Where?’

‘Back through the armoury.’ Amaru was forced to shout over the din of bolter fire. ‘The rearmost corridor.’

Harahel felt Barbelo’s body jerk as bolt-rounds hammered into it. Growling, he took cover behind a shorn off section of the Stormraven’s wing. The orphaned appendage stood in the ground like a piece of industrial sculpture. A grenade exploded, showering Harahel in shrapnel. The noise reminded him of a Cretacian thunderstorm. Ahead, he saw Nisroc. The Apothecary was about to die. A massive warrior stood over the prone Flesh Tearer, his murderous intent obvious. Harahel growled, standing to throw his chainaxe into the Chaos Space Marine’s back. The towering warrior roared, pitching forwards under the force of the impact. ‘Get up and kill him,’ Harahel snarled at Nisroc.

The Chaos Space Marine turned away from Nisroc, reaching for the axe in his back. The Apothecary summoned the last of his strength, shooting upwards to thrust his combat knife through his opponent’s neck. The Archenemy warrior’s body shuddered as his brain died. Nisroc caught the body before it could fall, pulling it around as a shield against the two Chaos Space Marines who immediately opened fire on him. He drew the dead warrior’s boltgun and put down his attackers with pinpoint shots. ‘Harahel, move! I’ll cover you.’

Too late, Amaru realised a Chaos Space Marine had landed behind him. His servo-harness sparked violently, its arms falling limp as the Archenemy warrior sliced through its control fibres. Amaru hit the release clasp and rolled away, pivoting as he rose to face his enemy. He spun forwards, tearing Blood Cog down through his foe’s shoulder and ripping it from his ribcage.

A round struck Maion’s pauldron as he cleared the threshold of the armoury. Another hit his abdomen. He fell, Micos toppling with him. He pushed himself onto all fours and tried to focus. Everything was faint, murky, as though he were a long way underwater. Pain forced a growl from his throat. His injuries were severe.

‘On your feet.’ Harahel grabbed Maion by his backpack and hoisted him up.

‘Micos…’

‘I have him.’ Harahel pushed Maion further into the armoury, stooping to gather up Micos.

‘Amaru, where now?’ Nisroc backed into the chamber, a boltgun barking in each hand.

‘Enter the third launch annex.’ Amaru pointed to the passageway leading from the rear of the armoury. ‘Go!’

Debris dust drifted into the missile silo, bathing the Flesh Tearers in powdered rockcrete. Amaru had used the last of the melta-charges to bring the corridor down behind them, creating a barricade between them and the Archenemy. He hoped it would give them enough time.

In the centre of the chamber stood a single, towering missile, its base disappearing down into the earth, its tip several stories above the control deck. A laddered gantry snaked around the missile, weaving between vines of cabling and fuel hoses to connect the deck with its upper reaches.

‘We don’t have long.’ Amaru pointed up towards the missile. ‘Quickly, into the nose.’

‘What?’ Maion stopped, unsure if he’d misheard the Techmarine.

‘It is a Mark-XV defence missile, the nose space is relatively empty.’ Amaru detached a plasma cutter from his pack and passed it to Maion. ‘Make entry with this and seal it once you’re inside.’

‘And you?’

‘I will remain here to ensure your withdrawal.’

Maion made to speak, but the Techmarine held up a hand, ‘The missile will not launch itself.’

The other Flesh Tearer nodded grimly and took the plasma cutter.

Amaru grabbed Nisroc’s vambrace as he walked past. ‘Wait.’ He held his axe out to the Apothecary. ‘The Chapter has lost enough this day.’

Silently, Nisroc clasped his hand to Amaru’s vambrace and took the proffered weapon.

The nosecone was cramped, only just accommodating the four Flesh Tearers. Nisroc had removed the gene-seed from Barbelo’s body while Maion had cut them an access hatch. They’d left what remained of the sergeant on the gantry. Maion bent the armoured panelling back into shape, heat-sealed it with the plasma cutter and squeezed his bulk between Harahel and Nisroc. Micos was still unconscious, and was only on his feet because there was no room to fall over.

‘We’re in.’ Nisroc opened a private channel to Amaru.

‘Ensure Tabbris sanctifies Blood Cog. Its spirit is strong; it will serve him well.’

‘It will taste flesh again,’ Nisroc answered. Tabbris was Amaru’s pupil, a novitiate Techmarine. That Amaru would cede him his weapon signified his faith in the novitiate’s abilities. Nisroc would see to it that the Master Artificer knew of Amaru’s wishes. ‘Death find you well, brother.’

Amaru said nothing. Extending a cable from his armour, he plugged into the firing console. Behind him, the forces of the Archenemy had already blasted through the rubble. He could hear them striding along the corridor. There was no time to perform the correct consecration or rites of firing. The missile’s machine-spirit was ancient. He hoped it would not be offended. Launch. Amaru sent the command to the missile. A tremor passed underfoot, rattling a canteen pack off a nearby workstation. Shrill klaxons screamed through the corridor as the warhead powered up. The Techmarine deactivated them. Sensors and bundles of thick cabling detached and fell away from the rocket as pressurised hydraulics moved it into the firing position. More rumbling. Fuel pipes retracted. Exhaust vents ground open beneath the floor of the silo. Amaru interrupted them, closing the grilles. The engines gurgled into life. More alarms rang out as the compound’s safety systems detected the block in the ventilation, Amaru overrode them, silencing the alarms and pushing the missile up thorough the shaft into the final position.

‘For the Chapter.’

A wash of flame erupted from the missile’s booster like the breath of an angry dragon, propelling it upwards on an expanding pillar of fire. Amaru’s world burned away in an instant, the temperature gauge on his retinal display flashing red as the thruster backwash broiled him. A second warning blinked across his vision for the briefest of instants before he, and everything else in the compound, was incinerated.

The maglift whispered to a stop. He stepped off into the corridor, his armoured boots making a dull thud as they contacted the deck plating. He paused for a moment while his enhanced eyes strained to adjust to the gloom. They could not. The walkway floated in complete, impenetrable darkness, shrouded by a long-forgotten technology that defied even the keenest of auspexes. To walk the passageways of this level was to know exactly where to tread or to fall to your doom amid the ancient bowels of the ship. He continued along the corridor, making the turns instinctively, following the pattern imprinted in his eidetic memory. His pace quickened as he felt his ire rise, his warrior blood drumming in his veins at the frustrating tediousness of the journey. He stopped and drew a breath, calming his mind. He did not have the luxury of indulging his baser nature. Such things were his burden to bear and some secrets were not meant for the light.

A door slid open into a darkened chamber. He stepped inside and the door closed behind him. The faint glow of an idling pict-screen cast the face of the room’s single occupant into half-shadow.

‘Where did you find them?’ As always, his voice was dangerous, his pensive demeanour only ever a heartbeat removed from the violent rage that made him such an implacable warrior.

‘The strike cruiser Jagged Blade intercepted them just beyond the Arere system.’ Captain Araton stepped closer, the light from the pict-screen illuminating the crimson of his breastplate. The serrated blade emblazoned on his armour was thrown into menacing relief.

‘Survivors?’

‘Only three, lord. The fourth…’ Araton paused, unsure how to continue. ‘The fourth, Brother Micos, was killed in transit.’

‘Explain.’

‘He succumbed to…a rage. The others were left with little choice.’

‘The curse?’

‘Perhaps, but Nisroc believed it to be something more, something worse.’ Araton turned to a console and activated the playback on the pict-screen. ‘These feeds were extracted from the datastacks the squad recovered from the outpost.’ The captain stepped away from the screen, retreating into the darkness.

++Recorder 3: Sanctum: I808++

The sanctum was alive with motion. Men clambered behind consoles and data stacks as explosions wracked the chamber. A straggler was hit in the back, the force of the blow spinning him through the air, his torso a bloodied mess. The Guardsmens’ fatigues marked them out as the Angorian Rifles, the garrison regiment of Arere. A figure burst into the room, too quick for the pict-recorder to capture fully. It barrelled into a huddle of Guardsmen. They tried to run. A vicious chain-weapon struck out and sent a bodiless head spinning past the pict-recorder lens.

An officer stood up and screamed, motioning for his men to fall back. His battleplate was blackened and pitted, his creased face caked with mire. Shrapnel danced around him as mass-reactive rounds slammed into the console he was using for cover. He shouted again, dragging the man nearest him to his feet.

A jet of super-heated flame blew over the console, incinerating both men in a wash of burning promethium.

++Recording Interrupted++

++Recorder 7: Barracks: I827++

Two squads of Angorian Rifles were taking cover behind a row of overturned kit-lockers. The barrels of their lasguns glowed hot as the troopers poured an endless stream of fire towards the doorway. Two objects flew in from off camera and exploded in front of the lockers. Ashen smoke filled the viewer.

It cleared to reveal a twisted mass of metal, the Angorians’ makeshift barricade in ruins. The corpses of half their number lay slumped lifelessly over the shredded lockers, shards of metal embedded in their flesh. A figure advanced from the doorway, his armoured back filling the viewer. The Guardsmen opened fire. Untroubled, the attacker fired back. The unmistakable muzzle flash of a boltgun illuminated the Angorians as they flipped backwards, torn apart by the mass-reactive rounds.

The attacker turned his crimson breast plate–

++Recording Interrupted++

++Recorder 19: Armoury: I901++

A crimson armoured warrior was sprinting down the corridor into a hail of las-fire, his breastplate scorched clean of insignia by their attentions. A bright muzzle-flash blazed into life up ahead. Heavy calibre, solid-state rounds began churning up the floor and walls as they stitched a line towards him. One struck his right pauldron. Splintered armour fragments struck the pict-recorder as he spun to the ground. The warrior rolled to his feet and continued into the gunfire, his weapon forgotten on the ground behind him as he disappeared from view.

The ruined corridor lay empty, battered ceramite flaking to the ground. The intensity of the gunfire lessened, sporadic rounds zipping down to the corridor. Then it died altogether. Within moments, the armoured warrior emerged from the end of the corridor. Blood pooled in the recesses of his damaged armour, which was pitted and cracked like the surface of a moon. His hands and forearms were thick with gore. Blood dripped from his fingertips, leaving a macabre trail behind him as he strode back towards his weapon.

++I901: Segment Ends++

++Recorder 12: Courtyard: I873++

A Flesh Tearer lay slumped against the wall, one of his brothers bent over him. The brother turned, withdrawing the blade he’d driven into the other’s heart. His helmet was gone, his face contorted into a bestial snarl. He made to rise when a searing plasma round struck his chest.

A shadow fell over the Flesh Tearer’s prone form. He pushed his hands into the dirt and tried to stand when a second plasma round obliterated his head in a stream of sparking gore.

The shadow grew larger until the Flesh Tearer’s executioner was right beneath the pict-recorder. The man looked up, straight into the lens.

The image froze as the viewer’s recog-system analysed the man’s face. The image blinked once as data began to scroll down the screen.

First Commissar Morvant, attached to the Angorian Rifles. Awarded Iron Faith honours for the Ivstyan Cleansing. Last posting Arere, Substation 12BX. Current status: Unknown.

The image blinked again and playback continued.

The man’s passive stare didn’t change as he raised his pistol towards the pict-recorder.

++Recording Interrupted++

The viewer clicked off, emitting a faint buzz of static as it returned to idle.

Silence persisted.

‘Destroy it.’

‘And Arere?’

‘Exterminatus.’ Gabriel Seth, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers, turned on his heel and headed back into the darkness.

He had a world to kill.

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter Four

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

I dreamt, I think, a strange and brutal dream. I sleep so little now that I am ancient, and when I do, I find myself riding the night horse with a vigor that belies my age and sex. The boy was right, it is always the skaven.

The stories I have heard and told of the skaven cause me to wonder yet if they are not the most damned of beasts, the most cruel and vicious of races; certainly, they haunt me still.

‘Go home,’ said Gilead, mildly revolted by the feel of the human words on his lips. ‘Return to your family.’

‘I have none,’ said the boy. ‘I was the last of them. My brothers, older and younger, and my baby sister... All are dead,’ he said, with a catch in his throat, making the words sound even more guttural and ugly to Gilead’s ears than they might otherwise.

‘You have a homestead, somewhere,’ said Gilead, ‘a village... a town.’

They were more words than he had spoken to another living soul since he had left his brethren at the funeral, more words than he cared to speak in the ugly human tongue.

‘All gone,’ said the boy. The catch in his throat had cleared. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone without any discernible affect. Gilead turned to the boy, surprised by such composure in one so young and so unutterably related to the coarser species.

Gilead had been sitting before a small fire at the edge of one of the roads that radiated out from the dreadful, defiled town. He had not gone back into the woods; there was no need. The remaining humans were resting and regrouping and mourning their dead. They would not miss the elf, and neither would they travel at night.

Perhaps he had come there on purpose. Perhaps he had made it easy for the human boy to follow him and come upon him so easily and so quickly after the battle. He looked at the boy who stood a little way behind him and to his right, at the edge of the road. He said nothing, and then turned back to the simple meal that he was cooking at his fire. He pushed the point of his knife into the glowing orange-grey embers under the fire, spearing something that nestled there. With a flick of his wrist, the elf sent the object arcing through the air. It landed in the boy’s outstretched hands, but he had to toss it from one hand to the other to prevent it burning his palms. Ash dropped away from the small tuber, and the boy popped it into his mouth, biting hungrily into it. It was too hot, and he spat it out, the two pieces landing unceremoniously in his hands, the bright pink insides, fluffy and steaming.

When the first tuber was eaten, Gilead tossed the boy a second. It was sweeter than the first and dark purplish red in hue. After biting into it, the boy looked from its exposed flesh to Gilead, a question in his eyes.

‘It’s good,’ said Gilead. ‘Almost anything can be made to be edible.’

The boy smiled and took another healthy bite from the tuber.

The tea that Gilead handed to the boy in a horn beaker that looked more like a thimble, even in his small, feminine hands, tasted slightly bitter, but wonderfully aromatic. He did not know what it was made of, only that it was intense and warming, and unlike anything he had ever tasted. Somehow, it quenched his thirst too, despite being so meagre in quantity.

‘It is cleansing,’ said Gilead. ‘A little is enough.’

When he had finished drinking, the boy ran his little finger around the inside of the beaker and sucked on it, eager not to miss a drop of the delicious liquid.

Gilead did not smile; at least, if there was a smile somewhere within him, it did not find its way to his lips.

‘Sleep,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, we shall talk.’

‘Then I can stay with you?’ asked the boy.

‘Tomorrow, we shall talk,’ said Gilead again.

The boy looked at the elf’s face and saw that it was useless to ask his question again. He looked into a face that frightened him a little, but which was also reassuring. He knew what an elf was; everyone knew what one was, but no one that he knew had ever met a member of the ancient race, and he doubted that anyone he would ever know would find himself in the position of being the guest of one.

The countryside was full of them, and yet they went undetected by the human boy, until they were pointed out by Gilead; but the kid was smart and eager, and he soon learned the signs that would lead him underground, into the realms of the skaven.

The ground was often built-up around the entrances, which appeared on the shaded sides of mounds constructed by the rat-kind or in convenient natural slopes. They were generally not to be found in dense or difficult ground, so rarely very deeply into woodland where tree roots would make it difficult to penetrate easily underground.

In open country, it was easy enough to locate entrances to the burrows and warrens that the skaven excavated and then made their homes in, nor was it difficult to work out whether the entrances were currently in use or had been abandoned some time previously.

Gilead was a skilled tracker and was endlessly patient. He would watch and he would wait for clear evidence of skaven movement. He was capable of sitting in hiding, lying in wait for hours or even days at a time, despite cramped or difficult conditions.

The boy, once shown how to identify possible entrances to underground skaven lairs was sent out into the surrounding countryside to locate new positions. He travelled on foot over several miles each day, taking arcing paths in previously determined sectors. Gilead told him where to go, pointing out landmarks, and the boy covered the ground.

He had told the elf warrior his name once, but had never heard it spoken back to him. They did not talk. Gilead tolerated his presence because he was useful.

‘Aargh!’ he cried.

It was dusk and he had quartered a large area of pasture on the north slope of a wide shallow valley. The tree line had been cut back decades or even centuries ago and the land had clearly been used for common grazing. The animals were gone, the livestock long dead, either slaughtered to feed the famished locals, or starved to death for the want of enough healthy grass. The boy had been up to his waist in weeds that were clumping in odd formations and showing small flowers that were almost grey. Hungry, the boy had pulled a handful of the tall, slender stalks, but when he put the plant up to his nose, it stank of putrefaction and he tossed it aside in disgust.

It was late and he had not found any evidence of excavation, so the boy was hurrying back to the elf, through the last section he was supposed to be examining, convinced that to stop and study the land properly would be a waste of his time. Besides, the elf was bound to have something for him to eat, and it had been several hours since he had almost eaten the weeds that grew in this area.

He was embarrassed by the scream. He had placed a foot without looking, and it had dropped away beneath him, startling him into crying out. He had landed hard on his backside, but his foot had not touched the bottom of the hole, so there was no damage to his leg or ankle. He withdrew the leg and, still seated, began to part the weeds to expose a ragged, almost elliptical hole in the gently sloping ground.

The boy dropped his head closer as he saw the faint twinkle of a light somewhere below the opening, and then he cried out again.

Claws reached up to clutch the boy’s head, dragging him by the neck into the darkness. Then he heard a shriek close to his ear and another fleshy paw, complete with needle-sharp black claws, began to swipe and tear in the general direction of his face.

The boy grabbed the haft of his hoe close to the head, and drove it hard into the hole. He couldn’t see to aim the blow as his face was half-covered in grappling paws, but he could feel the end of his hoe meet the resistance of flesh-covered bones. Something squealed and bucked in a frenzy of movement. The boy could feel the ground beneath him vibrating with the violence of the skaven’s fit. He could not believe that the frenetic shrieking, bucking and clawing was deliberate.

The boy shook his head and neck clear of the flailing claws, but not before he had taken several deep scratches to his face and neck; one, connecting with his mouth had left a flap of skin hanging from his lower lip, exposing the pink of his gums. He backed away from the hole, watching intently for evidence of another attack from the rat.

He saw not one pair of shining eyes, but three. Or, at least, he counted five sparks of light glinting off five eyeballs, suggesting the presence of three of the skaven in the hole . Then he saw the flash of small, bright white claws, when previously he had seen only black talons. The squeals were pitched higher than he thought possible, even for the ratmen, and he could discern very little fur. He reached out to take a tuft of fine hair that had been torn out on the ragged lip of the hole, and rubbed it between his fingers; it was as fine as a baby’s breath, and, when he lifted it closer to his face to get a better look at it in the failing light, the hair was pale and silky and smelt sweet, like overripe fruit.

There was another shriek, and the boy thrust his hoe into the hole once more. He was less afraid for his own life, now, and more concerned about what was happening in the dark shadows of the burrow.

A claw reached up, took hold of the haft of the boy’s weapon and started yanking at it. The boy pulled back hard on his end of the staff, leaning his back against the slope and bracing his feet. After four or five seconds of stalemate, he suddenly let go his grip on the weapon, making his opponent fall abruptly backwards deeper into the hole. Then he renewed his grasp, burning his hands slightly as the wooden haft sped through his grip. Finally, he held it firmly again, close to the end of the long handle, but determined to make ground. The skaven who had fallen back into the hole must be hurt, surely? The boy pulled and thrust on the haft, by turns, knowing that he couldn’t risk letting go of his only weapon and losing it forever.

There was more scuffling and squealing in the hole and more evidence of flashing eyes and claws as the light began to ebb out of the air. Then something was bundled out of the hole onto the slope close to the boy’s feet. He peered at the bloody mess, not sure what to make of it, at first. It might just have been an old fur made into a bundle for storage, but it had new pink blood on it. Then he saw a black claw at the end of a deep gash, ripped out, no doubt, by the force of the blow that its owner had struck, and he knew that he was looking at the victim of vicious skaven infighting.

He kicked, gently at the bundle of fur, and it rolled clumsily over. The boy wanted to gag.

This was not a skaven soldier, an adult that could fight for itself in the scuffles for supremacy that occupied much of their time and thinking space. This was not a warrior being punished for some scheming insubordination. The skaven rat lying in a bloody heap at the boy’s feet was an infant. The skin on its belly had not yet grown hair and was still pink; where its hair had grown, it was soft and downy and a delicate colour. Its brand new claws, not yet the killing weapons that they might have become, were clean and white and almost transparent.

The boy sat dumbfounded for a moment. He knew that they were vicious and evil, but, until that moment, he had not realised just how ruthless the skaven were.

The first skaven to emerge, alive, from the hole in the ground was large and grey, and had only one eye in its misshaped head. The eye glinted blackly at the boy, caught off-guard by the horror of his realisation.

Before he knew what was happening, the boy was pinned to the cold earth beneath him by the handle of his own weapon. He looked into the one good eye that the ratman still owned, and braced himself for the onslaught to his olfactory senses that was bound to occur if he followed through with the thought that was forming in his mind.

He held his breath and kicked out in the direction of the ratman leaning on the handle of his hoe. It was his intention to dislodge the hoe and bring the ratman down on top of him so that he could fight it on his own terms. He had not factored in the possibility of the haft flexing and snapping off a couple of feet from his shoulder.

When the rat landed on him, it did so by impaling itself on the jagged end of the broken hoe handle. Its body thudded down on top of him, expelling in a foetid gust the last of the stale air in the skaven’s lungs.

Pinned to the slope, the boy thought, once again, that he would gag, or even faint at the stink that assailed his senses. Beyond that, he knew that he’d have to dislodge the surprising dead weight of the ratman in order to crawl out from under the corpse. He tried to bring a hand up to cover his face, pinch his nose, and cut off the stench, but both of his arms were pinned down. The corpse was leaching blood from the site of its fatal wound and the putrid, diseased smell of its insides added to the malodorous fog that was threatening to make the boy puke; a most unpleasant prospect when he had no way to turn his head.

Suddenly, the smell had abated, and the cold air hit the boy hard in the chest, leaving the creeping sensation of someone else’s blood cooling and congealing in his shirt.

He heard a yelp as he rose on his elbows to see who had rescued him. The last of the skaven, jaws wide in the midst of a death-scream, was run through on the point of Gilead’s sword, as the elf lunged effortlessly towards the ratman emerging from the hole in the ground. A deft shove, and the newly dead skaven fell back through the hole, folded almost in half, its clawed, hoof-like back feet the last of him to disappear below ground.

The one-eyed skaven was not nearly as dead as the boy had imagined. It yelped as it rolled over, the haft of the hoe clearly visible protruding through its back. It crawled away, grabbing the dead infant under one arm and trying to scurry off down the hole. It was a pitiful sight. Its life-force was all but spent and its blood organ was pumping wildly, desperately trying to enable the skaven’s escape.

Gilead only wiped the blood from his sword. The rat-thing was dead already; he wasn’t going to waste his efforts killing it again.

The elf sheathed his sword and looked at the boy. He did not speak, but it was enough that he had heard the commotion and come to investigate. The boy scrambled to his feet, wiped the worst of the blood off his face with his sleeve and pulled the blood-sodden shirt away from the sucking contact it was making with his skin. It disgusted him for a moment. Then he saw the remaining broken piece of his hoe, and the skaven’s putrid blood was all but forgotten. The hoe wasn’t a weapon, not really, and yet it’s balanced haft and sharpened blade had stood him in very good stead over the days and weeks that he had used it to combat the cursed skaven. Now it was broken and useless. He had not the tools to mend it, and, even if he could, the balance would be lost in the repair. Besides, he didn’t relish going after the one-eyed skaven to retrieve the missing section of handle from its corpse.

Gilead picked up the end of the broken hoe with the head attached and weighed it in his hand. Then he signaled for the boy to follow him, and they walked towards the small camp they had made where the slope of the land met the tree line. The boy thought they must be returning for their supper, and could see the welcoming drifting smoke of the small fire that Gilead had lit some time before. He had become used to the tubers and corms that the elf cooked for them both, looked forward to them, even.

As they reached the tree line, Gilead wove a path among the saplings that grew close to the edge of the wooded area. The woods had clearly been cultivated and used, but coppicing appeared to have stopped two or three years earlier. In these times of famine and plague, the boy was surprised to realise that Gilead had a wealth of young trees to choose from. The elf selected one that was growing straight and true at the centre of a clump that needed to be thinned out if any of the healthier saplings were to grow on unchecked. There were no woodsmen left to thin and coppice and manage the woodland, but there was at least hope that the woodland would survive and even thrive, eventually.

Gilead cut the sapling low to the ground, and examined the wood where it had been sliced into. He discarded the sapling briskly, and the boy noticed that there was rot at its base. Perhaps it was an illusion; perhaps the woodland was not as healthy as it appeared to be. Gilead cut two more saplings from the central growth, but both were equally rotten. Then he selected a sapling from the outer circle of growth. He cut the young tree away above where it curved at the base to accommodate the growth of other branches. He weighed the length of raw wood in his hands and nicked off the one or two side shoots that were developing close to its tapering end. The cut end was clean and white, and the grain tightly packed.

They walked the hundred yards or so back to the camp, and Gilead sat down by the fire. He retrieved what looked like a paring knife from his pack. When he began to strip the bark from the sapling, the boy wondered whether the tool he was using was appropriate to the work, but he had already seen the wonders that could be wrought with an elf-made blade and thought better of questioning Gilead. The boy coughed. Gilead looked up from his handiwork and nodded at the embers of the small fire, encouraging the boy to finish preparing their meal while he worked on.

When the boy woke the next morning, Gilead handed him his hoe. The haft was smooth as silk, glossy almost, and had been finished with some sort of wax that smelt fresh and sweet. The hoe gleamed with a high shine and was almost too sharp to the touch; it had been fixed to the handle with perfect dome-headed pins of a type that the boy had never seen on a farm tool, although he had once seen something similar in the pommel of a greatsword.

The boy didn’t know what to say. He simply looked at Gilead, who stood more than two heads taller than he was, and smiled up at the elf. He didn’t know whether Gilead had slept that night. He didn’t know how long it must have taken to produce something so perfect. To whittle and carve the haft should have taken a mere mortal a day or two, and to clean, straighten and hone a blade on the hoe at least another day. Gilead could not possibly have completed the work and slept, and yet the elf looked rested and alert.

‘We begin today,’ said the elf.

The boy looked at him, an eyebrow raised, questioning.

‘They know we are here,’ said Gilead. ‘We have sabotaged as many of their entrances underground as we were able, and now we attack.’

‘We’re going underground?’ asked the boy, his mouth wide with fear and wonder.

‘If the skaven are to cease their persecution of the humans, we must penetrate to the source of their evil and destroy their leader.’

‘We’re going underground,’ said the boy.

Gilead and the boy had sabotaged dozens of openings in the ground over the past weeks, cutting the skaven off from their prey above ground, and leaving them without escape routes. Gilead knew the lay of the land, knew every inch of hundreds of acres of pasture, scrub and woodland. He knew which entrances underground the skaven used most often and which had been abandoned or were used only in the direst of emergencies. Gilead and the boy had collapsed several of the portals, digging away at the earth around them. They had filled others with vegetation and rocks, and even rotten trees and branches torn from the woodland . Some, they had turned into traps, using tripwires and hidden obstacles that would bring the skaven crashing to the ground and cause lethal injuries.

Gilead and the boy had skirmished at the edges of some of the burrow holes. They had injured some of the skaven, and killed several, but they had never before sent their victims back down their own holes, and, last night, the one-eyed ratman had crawled back into his warren with a hoe handle through his torso.

When they climbed down into the hole in the slope where the boy had seen his first infant skaven, where the one-eyed ratman had retreated to die, they found nothing but a clump or two of grey fur and a broken, rotting leather thong that might have been part of some padded armour. They could smell death, putrescence and corruption, but the scent was hours old and mostly distant.

The boy didn’t care to think what had happened to the corpse of the infant skaven, and there was no time for misplaced sentiment.

It quickly became clear that there was no space underground with a ceiling high enough to accommodate the attenuated height of the elf, but Gilead seemed to lose none of his stealth or speed simply because he could not stand upright. The boy felt clumsy by comparison, even though he barely needed to drop his shoulders, let alone stoop, to walk unobstructed along the skaven-built tunnels and burrows.

It also became only too obvious that the boy could not function in the pitch darkness that soon engulfed them below ground. The skaven were adapted to the lack of light, and Gilead seemed to manage well enough, but the boy soon found himself tripping over his own feet. Gilead handed him what looked like a rush lantern, but on a much smaller scale. It had a brass reservoir in the lower half, shaped like a bowl so that it wouldn’t stand on a flat surface, and a small crystal cover above with a wick between the two that was barely thicker than a strand of strong hair. The boy wondered whether it would show any light at all, and if it did, for how long. Nonetheless, he held the cover open, while Gilead lit the wick, and was soon surrounded by enough soft light to show the earth beneath his feet for a pace or two, the walls at his sides and the ceiling pressing down on his head. The light seemed not to bleed at its furthest reaches, but to stop abruptly at a radius of about a yard and a half.

Gilead was the first to sniff out skaven scum, and he killed the ratmen they came across with consummate ease. The boy raised his hoe only once in the first few hours of their exploration. They had come to a junction, a place where one path forked into two, one tunnel rising steeply away, back to the surface, to an exit that Gilead knew he had booby-trapped with stakes thrust into the soft earth at dangerous angles, should the skaven happen to trip or fall into them. Gilead dealt swiftly with the two ratmen that emerged from the right-hand fork in the tunnel, which led deeper into the earth. He did not see the small, hunched figure of a third skaven as it peered around the edge of the tunnel that led back to the surface. The boy turned in that direction, something catching his eye in the darkness, and he was upon the skaven, thrusting the newly-sharpened blade of his hoe at an angle deep into the creature’s side. It did not cry out, it simply folded in half with the exhalation of a shallow, forced breath, and collapsed at the boy’s feet. The sound that followed could not possibly have been caused by his demise, could it? Was it a sound?

The boy looked to Gilead for guidance, and the elf raised a hand to indicate the boy remain still and silent.

The elf felt it through his feet, like a roll played on an impossibly deeply tuned drum. He felt the faint throb of dozens of scurrying feet thundering along pathways, tunnels and corridors, without knowing what it must mean.

The boy’s eyes grew large.

‘They’re coming,’ he said.

But the noise did not grow louder, and the vibrations did not increase. The skaven were not running towards the elf and the boy, but away from them.

The elf and the boy continued deeper into the labyrinth of warrens and burrows, always taking the path downwards when given a choice.

Once or twice, the tunnels opened out into excavated caverns and caves, which might have been rooms if the skaven lived like any other civilised race. They found crude seats made from mounds of earth with planks placed on top, or from short planks simply wedged into the hard walls of the burrows at sitting height. They saw bundles and piles of leather scraps and cloth, and shallow bowls full of foul liquid grease used to oil leather armour or as fuel for the clay lamps that sat in niches higher in the walls. In the darkest and dampest corners they found foodstuffs stored and piled, fermenting into heaps of unidentifiable vegetation. Once or twice, they saw young skaven foraging at the edges of the mounds for the liquescent treats they clearly craved. Gilead ignored them.

Sentries were posted only intermittently, mostly where the tunnels met or branched out. They seemed to have been chosen from the oldest and youngest of the active rat-warriors, from the sickest and least able. Gilead wasted little effort, simply running them through or cutting their arteries and letting them bleed out where they fell. They were no competition for him.

‘Why are they so few?’ asked the boy. ‘Where are the rest of them?’

Gilead looked at the boy and tipped his head slightly on one side as if in thought. Some of the burrows and tunnels had clearly been deserted for some time, but many of them still held the appalling scents of the skaven, and some even harboured the warmth of their recently retreating bodies.

The ratmen were short-lived and unsubtle, and could not possibly have any sort of plan. They had simply moved on, or were retreating for fear of their adversaries. Their kind had seen what Gilead and even the boy could do with a little brute force and effort and a decent weapon, so perhaps they preferred not to meet them in hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps they were cowards, after all.

They were not cowards. They were brutal, ruthless killers, and, for the only time in any of their short lives, they had a leader who could formulate a plan; they had a leader who could formulate a plan and, having done so, a leader who could compel the skaven horde to carry out that plan.

There were ratmen who could not, would not, concentrate for long enough to hear the plan. There were those who wanted nothing so much as to follow their senses, track the intruders into their tunnels and bring them crashing down at the mercy of their blades and claws and teeth, however unlikely that outcome might be. There were those who could not sit still, but broke away from their tribes and scoured the tunnels for prey. There were those too long in the tooth to leave the posts they had defended for all of their meagre lives. There were those too stupid to live. There were those whose thoughtless acts would lead the Fell One and the human boy ever closer to the heart of the underground compound that they called home. Dozens would die bringing the Fell One to the skaven Rat King, but their deaths would not be in vain, for they were, unwittingly perhaps, doing the better part of his bidding. There were any number that could be sacrificed, any number that would sacrifice themselves.

The remainder of the skaven, the vast majority, had congregated once more in the great crypt. They had fought their ways there, jostling one another, beating a path when the call had come. The traffic through the burrows, tunnels and warrens had been fast and dense and had left bodies in its wake.

Gilead had still been on the surface, mapping the entrances to the burrows, sabotaging them and planning his assault on the heart of the warren. Only the weak, the sick, the young and the disabled skaven remained close to the surface. He had killed the one-eyed old ratman with ease, had run through his companion, and the infant had died only moments after the boy had extricated his foot from the hole in the ground. The skaven Rat King had left traps like this one, close to the surface all over the plot of land that Gilead and the boy had quartered and examined. It mattered not which bait the Fell One took, it only mattered that his boy was a clumsy air-walker of the human kind, and would lead the elf into the snare that awaited. Every hole in the ground, every entrance to a burrow was rigged to bring down the clumsy boy; every hole had a small skirmish party ready to respond when the entrance was breeched. Wherever the boy fell, the Fell One would follow, and he would attack.

Gilead and the boy worked their way deeper and further into the network of tunnels and spaces below the ground. Gilead felt his way through the soles of his boots and the palms of his hands, mapping in his mind all the tunnels he had passed through, which directions they had run in, where they had intersected and what they were made of. The boy kept pace only because of the lantern in his hand, by its faint pool of concentrated light. He remained behind the elf, where he had been told to stay, in touch, but out of danger.

Gilead turned abruptly when the light behind him suddenly went out. He did not need it to see by, and he cast a hand along the passage behind him, marking out the yard, less than his arm’s length, between his position and where the boy should be. He was gone.

The elf heard a gasp, but it sounded as if it was several yards to the left of his position, eight to be precise, and, in his situation, it paid to be precise.

For a split second, Gilead was torn between continuing on his quest to find the leader of the skaven, and any loyalty he might have to the boy. He had not asked the human to follow him, and yet he had been content to use the boy when it suited him. Was the life of one mortal human more important than the lives of thousands, perhaps millions of his species? The Empire was at risk, had been for decades, and in the past few years had been plunged into a combination of plague and famine that seemed impossible to escape. Gilead’s loyalty was to his quest; his obligation was to save the race, not the man.

Almost unaware of what he was doing, Gilead strode the eight yards to his left where he had heard the boy inhale a frightened breath, drawing his sword and assessing the width of the tunnel from the curvature of the earth floor beneath his feet and the echo of his own light breath sounds, undetectable to whoever else might be in the tunnel.

The sound of leather kicking at earth, behind and to the right of Gilead’s position, told him that the boy was being dragged away against his will, but that he was conscious and fighting.

Gilead did not think to question why the boy was not dead. He knew why.

The elf wondered where he had gone wrong, how he could have misjudged the skaven so badly, how he could have underestimated any creature that could successfully lead such a massive horde of unpredictable, infantile, erratic followers.

Gilead had used the boy to halve his workload, and his enemy had used the same boy as bait.

All the elf could do now was walk into the storm that was to come, alert and prepared to fight off a thousand ratmen with their glass-marble eyes and their foetid breath, with their squeals and claws and tearing blades.

He was not afraid for himself, and he cared little enough for the boy.

Gilead followed the sounds of scuffling as they echoed through the tunnels, leading yet further down into the depths of the earth. There was nothing to see, but the elf could smell the anticipation of a gathered army. There was nothing as profound as the aroma of eager expectation in the minutes before adrenaline began to pump and blood began to flow, and a hundred new scents pervaded the battleground.

Suddenly able to stand fully upright, Gilead broke into a measured run, the sword held firmly in the on-guard position in his right hand, his left hand dragging lightly against the tunnel wall, balancing his footfalls and honing his sense of direction. This was no time to trip or fall.

Then there was light.

And there was sound.

The sound was the rapid breathing of several thousand skaven bodies made restless by the passage of time that had brought their foe to them. Their patience, always limited, was being controlled by their sovereign, standing proud at the centre of his mound, a disheveled mess of a boy prostrate before him.

The light was the greenish glow of a couple of dozen lanterns strung around and above the mound, lighting the Rat King of the skaven, not in a spot of light, but in a sickly haze.

As Gilead stepped into the vaulted crypt, the crowds parted. One or two of the skaven were driven mad by the sight of a foe they were not allowed to touch, and they twitched and danced in front of him, frothing at the mouth, chittering and clutching at themselves. Some could do nothing more effective than rend their clothes and pull out clumps of their hair as their eyes spun in their heads and their blood organs burst within their chests.

As they died, the elf stepped over them, walking deliberately towards the mound.

As they died, the boy lifted first his scratched, torn and bloody head, then his shoulders and torso from the ground at the Rat King’s feet. He had no hope of living. He did not deluded himself; the elf was a wondrous being, but there was little enough chance of him escaping death, let alone of him saving the boy, too.

Finding his way to one knee, and then hoisting himself painfully upright, the boy did himself proud, looking across the gap that divided them, out over a sea of mangy grey heads. He nodded to Gilead.

‘Quirin,’ said Gilead, fervently, but almost under his breath.

The boy heard the elf speak his name, and his eyes were suddenly full of life, even though the skin on his face, where it was visible between tears and scratches, was so pale in the greenish light as to be almost grey. Gilead saw that the boy was sweating, too, and knew that he could not live for long.

A score more of the skaven died of shock on hearing the elf uttering a word in his elegant, resonating tones, and hundreds ducked and shoved their ways further back into the crowd.

Every single skaven, including the Rat King, would have stood in abject fear before the Fell One in any other arena, but in this place, at this time, the hive mind had taken over. They were not singular, they were not fighting for their own sakes; the hive mind was greater than any individual, and no one would die in vain. They knew not what they died for, but they were accustomed to the brevity of their lives, and killed and died by instinct, because that is what they’d done for thousands of years; killed and died and made more ratmen, that was all.

Somehow, against the odds, the boy had held onto his hoe during his abduction. It lay on the mound before him, light playing off the blade-edge that Gilead had honed during the previous night.

The boy stooped to pick up the hoe, but was slow and unsteady, and was quickly surrounded by several of the Rat King’s bodyguard.

The Rat King laughed, and waved a hand over the boy as if to suggest that his guard should not defend him against the human.

Gilead’s pace towards the mound increased, and with the movement of his body through the air, the skaven stepped yet further back, forming a wide aisle for him to jog down. The air was overflowing with the stench of the liquefaction of stomach contents as skaven lost control of their bowels and gag reflexes. Several reached filthy claws up to ears and nostrils that had begun to trickle with dirty black blood. Still, they did not seek to attack the elf.

The boy lurched towards the Rat King with his hoe held out in front of him. The King ducked and wove and danced a jig around the boy, laughing and squealing in delight as his guard looked on. The boy staggered, one eye glazing over with the fever in his brow, the other filling with the blood that was oozing from several wounds in his face and head.

As the Rat King ducked and danced, he turned his weapon over in his hands, slicing lightly, rapidly through the air, impossibly close to the boy’s staggering body.

The boy tripped a little over his feet, and took the haft of his hoe in both hands, holding it vertically so that he could lean his weight down on it without falling to the floor.

As the blood began to seep from dozens of shallow slices in the boy’s skin, as the cloth of his shirt began to fall away in long ribbons, exposing the grey skin of his torso and the hundreds of wounds inflicted there, Gilead made a last effort to reach the mound, the boy he could not save and the Rat King he intended to kill.

The elf feinted towards the skaven lining his route, watching for an opportunity. Before they had a chance to retreat, Gilead found a skaven leg joint to step onto to elevate himself, a stooped shoulder for his next step and a head for his last, and he was up and over the bodyguard surrounding the Rat King. His eyes blazed as he confronted the ancient creature, but he held his sword away from his body to the right.

The Rat King did not dance or weave or squeal. He stood before the elf as still and silent as any skaven might be, yet Gilead could feel the creature tremble, despite the bright flashes of light that reflected off the marble surfaces of his eyes.

The Rat King dropped his weapon and fussed with something hanging around his neck, a length of ribbon or leather, perhaps. The Rat King pulled on the length of braided hair and the amulet tied to it. He clutched it in both paws and raised it above his head.

The skaven were fast because they were short-lived creatures. They had no capacity for reasoning, so every action was a staccato reaction, a primal response.

Gilead was fast too.

The attack came from behind Gilead to his left. It was a brutal, badly timed lunge, and Gilead deftly tripped the bodyguard and pierced his chest before he could rise from where he had fallen on the earth mound at the elf’s feet.

A second guard attacked at the length of his staff weapon, a cross between a scythe and a halberd, an ugly hybrid clearly concocted from the blades of two older weapons and the handle of a third. Gilead disarmed him with a flick of his wrist, and the weapon spiralled away into the crowd that was gathering around the focus of the fight. It took out three more ratmen, two of them at the knees, and a third because he was pushed into the fray by the skaven behind him. The last tripped over his feet, falling onto the curved scythe blade that jutted from the weapon’s handle.

Each skaven bodyguard that fell was replaced by another of his tribe, warrior’s all. Gilead found time to unsheathe his short blade, and, a weapon in each hand, cut and sliced his way through skin, bone, flaking leather armour and the putrid strips of rotten, greasy cloth that the skaven wound their hands and feet in.

Gilead blinked and could see it all. He could see the faces of hundreds of skaven on the slopes of the mound below him and out on the floor of the crypt. He could see nothing in their eyes but a lust to destroy. They were jostling and breaking into skirmishes among themselves, since they could neither reach their enemy, nor, if they could have come face-to-face with the Fell One would they have been allowed to kill him. He saw a kind of uncontrolled primal frenzy that he had not known existed, despite the stories he had heard about the rat-creatures.

He also saw the boy. He saw him look at the elf, his hero, and then he saw him close his eyes, involuntary. The bloodshot orbs rolled back into the boy’s head. Somehow, the boy held onto the handle of his hoe, and it kept him upright for what seemed like minutes. It was almost comical, the way the boy’s... Quirin’s… corpse was suspended, half-standing, half-kneeling, propped up by the weapon that Gilead had remade for him. Finally, the moment was over, and the boy was slumped on his face on the dirt mound.

Gilead wanted revenge, not only because the skaven had killed the boy, but because he had allowed it to happen, and his guilt and anger could result in nothing short of devastation to the skaven.

Gilead was shadowfast.

While he ducked and dived and sliced and lunged, and thrust his blade into squealing ratmen one after another, he looked around for the leader of this debauched race. He saw that the sea of rat-faces looking up at the mound had become much denser, those twitching maws and marble eyes closer together. The crowd was surging towards the dais mound, dragging its dead and wounded with it, crushing the weakest among its mass. As it moved in an unstoppable wave towards him, the Rat King rode on an impossible wave of rat-arms away from him, shaking the double-paw in which it clutched its magical amulet .

Gilead thrust with his short blade into the side of a rat that had changed its mind about doing battle with the elf, and was turning tail, attempting to run away. The blade ground on something as it punched through the leather armour, skin and bone of the creature’s torso, and, as the skaven turned, Gilead lost his grip on the weapon, his hands slick with the gore of dozens of the dead.

Without a thought, he scooped up the boy’s hoe and began to turn it over in his hand, weighing its usefulness. Gilead’s second weapon was gone, rendering his primary blade much less useful against so many attackers.

The elf sheathed his sword, grasped the hoe haft with both hands and began to wield it expertly. The handle end broke sternums and winded rats to death, or tripped them off their hind feet, tumbling them to the ground where they met their deaths by trampling. The sharpened head of the hoe cut through limbs and arteries, and even sliced a scraggy grey neck clean through, the rat’s head falling in one direction and its body in another.

They came at him over and over again, barely lifting their weapons to the elf before dying at his hand. Gilead looked around again at the circle of assailants pushing and shoving each other, either to take their turn at fighting him or to get away from his thrusting attacks. They were poorly armed. Many appeared to have broken their weapons deliberately. There were stringy ribbons of greasy cloth where once a blade had been wrapped to a staff, many of the blades looked old and dull and well beyond use, and those skaven with decent weapons turned their blades away and attacked with hafts and handles.

Gilead looked at the mass of bodies around him, which was vast, despite the fact that the ratmen were clearing bodies away from the focus of the battle as fast they could manage. Then he looked out again at the Rat King riding above his followers, relying on their loyalty to keep him aloft.

They did not see him move, they did not feel his footfalls pass over their heads and shoulders as the Fell One found a path out over the crowd towards the skaven sovereign. He could not lose the battle by killing all day and all night, and for as long as it took to decimate the skaven horde. He could not lose the battle when none of the creatures were able or willing to even attempt to kill him. Despite it all, he knew that this was a battle he could not win.

In the blink of an eye, the Rat King, with the help of experience gleaned through years of life that he should never have lived, homed in on the Fell One, and knew what he was doing. He cried out at his followers below him, and, letting the amulet fall to the length of the plaited hair string that it hung from, he began to spin the charm around his head.

The mesmerised ratmen watched as the great vaulted ceiling of the crypt, black and sparkling, filled with thousands of pinpricks of bright light. Some died on the spot; many opened their own veins, driven by wonder and awe to end their lives at this zenith of their sovereign’s power. The Rat King was returned safely to the dais on a wave of rat-paws, where he stood at the centre of the bloody mound. All of his bodyguards were gone, not even their bodies remaining on the mound, although much of their blood had been spilt there . Every tribal leader, every champion, every lieutenant had been killed by the Fell One. Every one of them would add to the Rat King’s longevity, but they were as nothing compared with this great catch. The Fell One was in their midst, and the Rat King had the ultimate power over him.

The Rat King cried out high and loud and long. The rats responded vigorously, sloughing off their mesmeric states to do their leader’s bidding.

As shadowfast as he was, Gilead did not expect the ratmen to know that he was using their heads and shoulders as stepping-stones, but the Rat King was preternaturally fast, too, and he could feel and read every vibration and every movement in the air. He had monitored The Fell One’s every move, and now it was time for him to best him, to capture him and to harness his life-force.

Without warning, the sea of bodies under Gilead’s feet disappeared, the rat’s answering the clarion call to disperse with all haste.

Gilead fell, suddenly, but not far. His drop was almost vertical, and, under other circumstances, he would simply have risen in his knees, his weapon in his hand, and fought on.

As Gilead hit the ground, the ratmen piled on top of him in a mass of sheer numbers that weighed him down, crushing him to the earth floor of the crypt, disabling him. His ability to be shadowfast was knocked out of him as his concentration broke in the fall, and it was as much as he could do to fill his lungs so that he would not be killed by the black mass of stinking bodies that lay on top of him.

Gilead could not move, and the mass of bodies above him did not move.

Dozens of rats died in the scrum that brought the Fell One down to earth and kept him there, hundreds had died in combat with him, and thousands had died in setting the trap and luring Gilead into their midst.

The Rat King looked down on the Fell One as he lay lifeless on the floor of his antechamber, tied every which way with leather thongs from old armour, with the greasy rags that the skaven used in the construction of their weapons and in their sovereign’s throne, and with lengths of strong sinew cut from skaven corpses.

The Rat King did not count his dead. He could not count, but he knew in his thrumming blood organ that if he could, he would take great pleasure in counting the scores, perhaps hundreds of years of life that this great bounty, this Fell One, would secure for him long into the future.

THE SHADOW IN THE GLASS

Steve Lyons

It was a quiet Moon-Day morning when the Inquisition came to Icthis.

Yriel Malechan was woken by the sounds of running footsteps, shouted warnings, slamming doors. She heard the distant snarls of engine-spirits and leapt from her cot.

The floorboards of the old cabin felt cold to her bare feet.

Yriel pressed an eye to a worm hole in the window shutters. It overlooked the little village’s main road – the climbing road – a good distance below.

A convoy of eight tanks was grinding its way along that road. Marching alongside them were red- and black-armoured troops, two hundred of them at least.

The procession was led by the witch hunters themselves: old, grim-faced men with tall hats and dark cloaks who wielded their devotional symbols like blunt weapons.

Yriel caught the eye of one and recoiled with a frightened gasp. She had felt, impossibly, as if the witch hunter was staring back at her, even at this distance, through her tiny spy hole. She had felt like he could see into her.

With a start, she remembered the mirror.

She had slept with it under her pillow. She retrieved it now, her hands shaking. The mirror looked as beautiful to Yriel in the shafts of dawn that pierced her roof as it had in the dusty gloom of the curio shop yesterday.

It was a perfect glass disc, mounted in an ornate frame. The frame was pressed with gold – whether real or not she had no way of telling, but it glistened all the same – and inset at its crown with a small, greenish-black gem.

But it wasn’t just the frame that made the mirror so alluring. It was what the mirror showed her.

The face that Yriel saw in the glass disc was recognisably her own. Somehow though, her pinched features in the glass seemed… distinguished, almost aristocratic. In the glass, she looked older than her seventeen years, but not too much older. Her hair, straw-coloured and lank in real life, was spun from lustrous golden threads in the glass and the mole on her left cheek was no longer a blemish but a beauty spot.

In real life, Yriel was a fisherman’s daughter, orphaned at nine and a washerwoman since then. In the back-to-front world inside the glass, she was a princess.

A harmless glamour, was how the shopkeeper had described it, and it certainly gave Yriel a secret thrill to see herself as she might have been.

A guilty thrill, she recognised.

She let out a little shriek as an armoured fist attacked her door.

She leapt across the tiny room and thrust the mirror back under her pillow. It was a poor hiding place, but she could think of none better.

Her attention had been so taken by the mirror that she hadn’t realised how much closer the engine-spirits of the tanks had come.

Yriel snatched up her rumpled everyday smock. She pulled it over her head, on top of her threadbare shift. She pushed her feet into her sandals.

She eased her door open, cautiously. No one stood on the threshold, but the narrow wynd outside was thronged with half-dressed, bleary-eyed neighbours.

The witch hunters and their army were following the road around, climbing the coastal cliff face into which Icthis was built. As well as their engines, Yriel could now hear an augmented voice booming praise to the God-Emperor and promising that the properly devout need have no fear of His judgement.

The red and black troops were spreading out across the village, into crannies like this one that the tanks were unable to penetrate. They were making sure that everyone was roused to hear their message.

Yriel felt relief that hers hadn’t been the only door knocked on. She saw that same emotion reflected in the faces of the folk around her.

She could hear her own questions echoed in their voices too. ‘Why here?’ they were asking in hushed, fearful whispers. ‘Why us?’

They had known – they had all known – that the Inquisition was on their world. None of them had ever dreamt that it would turn up on their doorsteps.

Yriel couldn’t tell what worried her neighbours more: the possibility that dark forces had taken root in their village, unseen, or the possibility that they hadn’t. She only knew that, at this moment, very few of them were secure in their innocence.

The mirror!

Yriel looked around, checked that no one was watching her. They weren’t. No one ever really looked at Yriel Malechan.

She slipped back into her cabin. She ran straight to her cot, to her pillow, to the mirror. She snatched it up and transferred it to the inside folds of her smock. She had to get rid of it before she was caught with it. What had she been thinking, accepting it in the first place? She had to take the mirror back. Back to where it had come from.

Yriel made her way downwards through the village, towards the docks. She squeezed through fissures in the cliff face and clattered down rough-hewn steps. She knew this maze of back ways well and could avoid the Inquisition’s troops with ease.

She could feel the cold, hard disc of the mirror pressed up against her breast.

She knew there was something wrong as she approached the market plateau. As was usual for this hour, it teemed with shoppers come to intercept the pick of the dawn’s catch before the rest was pickled for transport inland and off-world.

This morning’s crowd, however, had weightier matters on their minds than the freshness of their fish. Something had drawn them to the westernmost edge of the markets. Something that had struck the majority of them dumb.

Yriel’s mind began to form a dreadful suspicion. She elbowed her way through the crowd – she had to see what was happening, she had to know – and that suspicion, that dread, grew until she felt as if its icy grip would suffocate her.

The curio shop stood apart from its neighbouring cabins, on the edge of a precipice.

There were red and black soldiers swarming all over it.

Four soldiers – all women; the soldiers were all women, Yriel noticed – appeared in the shop’s doorway. They were dragging a prisoner between them: the wretched, disfigured shopkeeper. ‘I knew it,’ some people in the crowd were crowing. ‘Didn’t I always say…? …Never fitted in around here… Always something creepy about him.’

The shopkeeper was forced to his knees. His misshapen head was stooped, but then it always had been. A soldier drew her sword and flicked a rune to make it blaze with holy fire. A low gasp was raised from the crowd, part horror, part anticipation.

Yriel missed the moment of the shopkeeper’s execution. She had flinched away as the blade began its downwards swing towards his neck. She had closed her eyes.

She had seen the shopkeeper’s face for an instant. His rheumy eyes, staring out from around the suppurating wart on his nose. He hadn’t looked afraid.

He had almost seemed relieved.

The executioner kicked the shopkeeper’s body over the precipice. It plunged towards the uncaring waters below. The decapitated head was summarily sent to follow it. Before it landed, Yriel was already running. She didn’t know where to. She only knew she had to get away from that place, away from judgemental eyes.

She came to rest, when her heart and lungs could take no more, on an isolated outcrop. She took the mirror out from under her smock. I should throw it into the ocean, she thought. Bury it with its owner… its former owner.

The shopkeeper had been so eager to sell the mirror to Yriel. He had asked only four coins for it, and accepted two. I should have seen it then, she scolded herself fiercely. I should have realised that the mirror could bring me nothing but ill fate.

Yriel looked in the glass a final time. She saw the princess smiling back at her. She heard a soft voice that sounded like her own voice in her own head, and it was saying to her, Why should you feel guilty?

The Emperor knows, you’ve worked hard all your life. You’ve always said your prayers. Don’t you deserve something? Just one nice thing to call your own?

She didn’t want to listen to the voice. She couldn’t help but listen. She held the mirror out over the distant water. Her arms were trembling.

And what harm can a simple mirror do to anyone, if no one even knows you have it?

Why should anyone have the right to deny you this simple pleasure?

No one dared skip temple that morning. The draughty hall was packed from floor to rafters. Yriel had to stand in the gallery, wedged between brawny fishermen whose sea-salt and tobacco reek reminded her of her dead father.

They were addressed by an inquisitor, silver-haired and frail of limb but whose bearing and voice exuded the highest possible authority. The same man, Yriel was sure, whose gaze she had met briefly through her spy hole.

She avoided that gaze as it swept across the congregation.

The inquisitor declaimed against the insidious lures of the Ruinous Powers. He urged the faithful to turn their own gazes upon their neighbours, to recognise the subtle signs that they may have given in to temptation. A blight, he said, had gained a foothold in this village, and it must not be allowed to spread.

Icthis, the inquisitor declared, might yet be saved.

Yriel felt relieved that she had cast away the mirror.

She had only had it for a day, she told herself. Even less: a single evening and a night. And no one had seen her with it. No one but the shopkeeper, and he could tell no tales now. What harm had she done, anyway?

She heard the echo of the princess’s voice in her head: Why should you feel guilty?

They have no right to judge you!

Yriel raised her chin from her chest. When the inquisitor’s eyes next roved in her direction, she met them with her own gaze, defiantly.

She walked home with her head held high. She had no reason to feel ashamed, and even less to fear. She was sure that no one would see the signs of corruption in her. No one ever really looked at Yriel Malechan, after all.

She found a day’s work piled up on her step. She pushed open the cabin door and hauled in the overflowing baskets one by one. She lit a fire in her hearth and filled a pot with the last of her water. She didn’t think about the mirror.

She picked up two empty buckets. By the time she had returned from the well with both filled, the first pot would be nicely heated.

It would take four pots – six buckets’ worth – of water to fill the old tin bath. Then, Yriel would launder her neighbours’ clothes and bed sheets, then her own, then at last she would bathe herself if there was time.

She would have to hurry. If she didn’t return the laundry to its owners – and claim her meagre payment from them – before the markets closed tonight, she wouldn’t eat. Thanks to the lengthened service at the temple, she was already running late.

She hesitated at the door.

There was something under Yriel’s smock. It was a cold, hard disc, pressed up against her breast. Her heart knew what it was even as her head denied it.

But it can’t be… I cast it away… didn’t I?

She pulled the mirror out into the light. Her reflection – the image of the princess – almost seemed to be mocking her as she remembered holding the mirror out over the waiting ocean. Her fingers had felt stuck to its frame as if glued, but she had been determined to shake the cursed thing free, to be rid of it forever.

She didn’t remember letting the mirror go.

But that meant…

She must have had the mirror with her all along. In the temple. In the presence of the stern inquisitor and his retinue. Yriel felt a breathless terror at how easily she could have been exposed. She felt exhilarated too, because she hadn’t been.

She had to find a better hiding place. She dropped to her knees and scrabbled at the cabin’s floorboards until she found one loose that she could pry up with her fingers. Tiny, crawling insects scattered as daylight spilled into their cold, damp under-space.

Yriel wrapped the mirror in tissues to protect its lustre.

She was about to lay it down when a tissue slipped away, and she caught a glimpse of something ghastly underneath. She let out a startled shriek.

The mirror slipped through Yriel’s fingers. It fell through the gap in the floor, landing face-up in the dirt. It was a moment before Yriel dared look at it again. When she did, she saw the face of the princess looking back at her. But she knew…

She knew there had been another face in the glass. Just for the briefest instant.

The face of an old woman, her skin wizened and blemished, her nose a misshapen canker, but her eyes… Her eyes had been like the inquisitor’s eyes, burning deep into Yriel’s soul. Hard, greenish-black eyes. Malevolent eyes.

Yriel reached down. She folded the tissue paper back over the mirror. She replaced the floorboard and moved the tin bath to stand on top of it. She was confident that no one would find the mirror now. It was safe, but close at hand. Her little secret.

She pretended that she must have been imagining things. The only face in the mirror, she told herself, was mine. All else could only have been a trick of the light.

She pretended that, when she had been looking into the glass, looking at the princess, she hadn’t seen the shadow of the crone behind her.

Yriel retrieved the mirror the day the Inquisition left.

Their stay had been a short one, but it had left her village scarred.

Sixteen people, sixteen members of the church, had been charged with vile heresies, tried and executed. Their homes and workplaces had been torched to burn out the Chaos taint that may have clung to them. Families, friends and neighbours of these sinners had been subjected to merciless interrogations.

But, at last, the intangible trail of rumours that the witch hunters had been following had led them away to a more populous town inland.

Icthis had faced its judgement, and the Emperor had not found it wanting.

With almost indecent speed, village life returned to normal – for all but Yriel Malechan, that was. Her life had been forever changed.

It was a subtle change, at first, one that few people would have noticed.

Yriel’s routine, her daily drudgery, went on. Her knees still ached from kneeling, scrubbing other people’s clothes. Her back ached too, from hauling water from the well, and her shoulders from turning the handle of her stubborn old mangle.

But Yriel endured all this with a hopeful heart, because she knew…

She knew that she was special. She took the mirror out from underneath her pillow every hour, and it told her so.

And, because she was special, because Yriel had been chosen, she knew that good things were going to happen to her. And they did.

They were small things to begin with. A market trader who had short-changed Yriel had his stall collapse and much of his produce damaged. A rude old woman who barged past her in the wynd fell over and bloodied her face. A customer who criticised her work and withheld payment suffered a nasty accident.

Nobody could explain what had made his carriage wheel fly off like that.

Yriel took pleasure in every one of these minor victories. After all, the mirror told her, they were no more than a princess deserved. She never wondered why the only fortune she was ever granted was the misfortune of others.

Sometimes, when Yriel looked into the mirror, her eyes strayed past the princess to seek the other face in her shadow. Sometimes, she thought she glimpsed it, but then she always looked away before she could tell for sure.

The thought of the withered crone made Yriel feel afraid. But, on some buried level, she had come to accept the fact of its lurking presence.

There could be no princess, she understood, without the crone.

And, in the meantime, there was another way in which her life had been transformed. One wonderful, breathtaking, heart-fluttering way.

Yriel had met a boy.

She had bumped into Jaresh on her way back from the well.

It had been her fault, but he had apologised anyway. He had refilled her buckets and insisted on carrying them for her.

They had talked on their way back to her cabin. Jaresh, she had learned, was born in Icthis but had left with his grandparents as a child. He had recently returned to help care for an ailing great-aunt. Yriel knew of his family and had seen the plague warning daubed in red on the great-aunt’s door.

At nineteen years old, she had almost given up hope of finding herself a husband. Most of the eligible men of the village had been taken by the draft and were dead by now. The few that remained had been ensnared by grasping hussies, without a one of their heads ever turning in Yriel’s direction.

Jaresh was different. He didn’t only talk about himself. He had asked questions about Yriel too and had appeared to be interested in the answers.

Her heart had pounded as she had watched him receding down the wynd. As soon as he was out of sight, she had run inside her cabin, to seek the mirror’s reinforcement. The reflection of the princess had filled her with high hopes.

Is it possible, she had asked herself, that another might see me as this special glass does, see what I truly am? Might Jaresh be able to see the princess too?

She saw a great deal more of Jaresh in the following weeks and months. She had made sure that she would.

She watched him, building up a picture of his daily routine and changing hers to match it. She found a new route to the well that took her close to his great-aunt’s cabin, and always dawdled with her buckets in the hope of seeing him there. She often ‘ran into’ Jaresh at the markets as they shopped for the same things, and each time he had a smile and a cheery word for her.

It wasn’t enough.

Yriel longed for more than just these stolen moments with him. But the more encounters she contrived with Jaresh – the more opportunities he passed up to declare any finer feelings for her – the more futile her fervent hopes began to seem.

You can make him yours, the mirror told her, if you truly wish it.

And Yriel decided that, yes, she was tired of waiting. The next time she saw Jaresh, she would ensure that he saw her, really saw her and heard what she had to say. She would ask him to take her to the tavern, and of course he wouldn’t turn her down, because Jaresh was a gentleman and anyway, who could refuse a princess?

The following afternoon, Yriel saw Jaresh at the market plateau.

Holding hands with another woman.

Jaresh’s great-aunt had been a respected member of the Icthis community. So, her funeral on the clifftop drew a highly respectable crowd.

Yriel stood at the back, where Jaresh was unlikely to see her. She wanted desperately to go to him, but she had no words to comfort him. Anyway, he had Shorea by his side to share his tears. The silhouette of their two bodies entwined was burnt into Yriel’s eyes by incandescent orange flames.

Due to the manner of the great-aunt’s death, her possessions were cremated with her.

After all the elegies were said, the mourners tramped back down the cliff path, headed home. But Yriel stayed behind. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she found it all the same. A small white square, fluttering on the coastal breeze.

A facecloth. She stooped to examine it more closely.

It must have fallen from the bag of the great-aunt’s clothes, unnoticed. The facecloth was nothing special. It was perfectly plain, in fact. Yriel saw three or more like it every day. She had one like it herself.

As did Shorea, she recalled. Yriel had taken a special interest in Shorea’s laundry ever since she had recognised her love rival as one of her customers.

She picked up the facecloth, gingerly. Of the funeral pyre, only embers now remained, so she undertook to take the cloth home and burn it in her own hearth. She dropped it into her pocket, making sure it was the only thing in there.

How terrible it would be, mused Yriel, were somebody to confuse this infected facecloth with another.

A fortnight later, there was a red-paint warning on Shorea’s door.

Yriel didn’t knock. Her coins would have to wait, she thought. She left her basket of fresh laundry on the step and returned home.

She spent much of the following week staring into the mirror. She felt unsettled and she wasn’t sure why, but the princess in the glass offered Yriel reassurance. Perhaps this is just how things were meant to be, the princess said.

Yes. Yes, I’m sure that’s right, she thought. So, why should I feel guilty?

At the funeral, this time, she found the courage to step forward and to take Jaresh’s hand. She stammered something about how he shouldn’t be so sad, the Emperor had a plan for everyone and this was simply his plan for Shorea. He clung to her like a drowning man and, even as she shared his tears, Yriel’s heart sang.

The next morning, outside the temple, she heard Jaresh’s name whispered and looked for him but didn’t find him. She saw that some of his friends were standing in a group, murmuring and shaking their heads in despondence.

She mouthed her way through the first of the morning’s hymns. Her throat was dry and her head pounded with an anxious prayer. She told herself she was being paranoid, but still she held her breath as the village notices were read out.

Yriel ran home with tears streaming from her eyes. It was all she could do to hold her scream inside her breast until she was alone inside her cabin.

Of course, she went straight to the mirror.

She wanted to know how last night’s tragedy could have happened. Hadn’t she been promised – didn’t she deserve – better? She felt betrayed.

She kept thinking about Jaresh, as the fishermen must have found him. His broken body dashed on a jagged reef. Brittle fingers still clutching the ring he had bought for his betrothed as the ocean gently licked the rocks clean of his spilled life’s blood.

It isn’t fair! He was supposed to be mine!

Yriel looked into the mirror and gasped in horror.

The face of the withered crone was staring out at her.

She gaped at it, transfixed. It was the first time the crone had shown herself so boldly, the first time that Yriel had been able to take a proper look at her.

There was an ugly brown patch on the crone’s left cheek. It was a mole, realised Yriel, spreading out of control. A little tuft of wispy grey hairs sprouted from it.

Reflexively, she raised a hand to her own left cheek and the crone mirrored the movement. The crone’s thin, dry lips were twitching at their edges.

She was smirking at Yriel, mocking her pain, and Yriel couldn’t bear it. She felt her horror giving way to a surging, white-hot anger, and at last she wrenched her gaze away from the crone and cast the mirror to the floor with all her strength.

It refused to break.

Yriel’s twenty-third year was a bleak one for the village.

The plague was still spreading, without pattern or reason and despite all precautions. In the year’s third month, it was declared an epidemic and Icthis quarantined.

Exports were embargoed, which at first delighted Yriel because it depressed the price of fish and left her with coins to spare. She felt no sympathy for the fishermen, because at least they could feed themselves.

But soon, because the fishermen had so few coins to spend, the traders began to struggle too and their prices – for all goods – rose. At the same time, Yriel was finding fewer and fewer baskets on her step every day. She lost two long-term customers to the plague, four to suicide and the bulk of the rest to penny-pinching.

It isn’t fair, she complained to the smirking crone in the mirror. Why must I always be the one to suffer most?

The mirror hung on the wall of Yriel’s cabin now. Why not? she had thought one day, a few months earlier. No one ever visited her, so no one would ever see it.

She still saw the princess, sometimes, in the glass, but more often – since the outbreak of the plague – she saw the crone.

She had come to accept this, on the whole. She understood that the crone was better suited than the princess to help her through these difficult days. The crone put food on Yriel’s table every evening, whether she could afford it or not, and not only fish. She never saw where the food came from and chose not to ask.

Still, Yriel missed the princess and often searched for her in the crone’s shadow. An occasional glimpse was enough to reassure her and give her hope that the princess might yet come back for good.

On her twenty-third birthday, there was an altercation at the markets when a stallholder accused her of stealing. An indignant Yriel brushed him off and tried to leave, but the other traders barred her way until a constable could be summoned. He snatched Yriel’s bag from her shoulder and searched it brusquely.

She remembered the necklace. It was pretty and it had drawn her eye. She had dangled it against her chest and fantasised about receiving it as a birthday gift. But then… She hadn’t put the necklace in her bag, she insisted tearfully. It must have been planted by somebody with ill will towards her.

Yriel spent four hours in the pillory at the village crossroads.

Everyone was looking at her now, she noted bitterly. Not only looking; they would spit in her face or encourage their children to pelt her with rotten fish. As if she wasn’t already suffering enough in her uncomfortable chains with her rumbling stomach and her cheeks burning with resentment. It could have been any one of them in my place, she told herself, and she swore that she would make them all pay for this cruelty.

As soon as she was released, she would ask the mirror to tell her how.

The new priest at temple talked a great deal about daemons.

He spoke at length about the dream realm in which these malefic creatures lurked. He warned that they were always seeking, searching for an unguarded mind that they could enter and thus gain substance and power in the waking world.

His words made Yriel shift uncomfortably in her pew.

The old priest had been fond of euphemisms. His sermons had been heavy with blood and hellfire but light on actual detail, and Yriel had preferred it that way.

She began to skip temple services.

It wasn’t a difficult decision to take – or to justify to others if need be – as her health had worsened anyway. Years of hauling laundry baskets and kneeling over the old tin bath had taken their toll on Yriel’s joints. Her chest was weak – she blamed the draughts that sliced through her ramshackle cabin in winter – and her back ached.

She rarely left the cabin now before the early evening, when she showed up at the markets for the end-of-day scraps. She existed in the shadows, keeping her face hidden. She didn’t want to be looked at. She felt ashamed.

One day, she glimpsed herself in a mirror – a normal mirror, on a market stall – and caught her breath in horror. Yriel’s skin was pallid and her flaxen hair had faded almost to white. She was sure that she was shorter than she had been in her teens. She hardly recognised the face that was staring at her from the glass.

It was like she was looking at a ghost. Her own ghost.

She hurried home with an empty bag. She had been eyeing up a rancid joint on the butcher’s stall, but didn’t want to wait for it. Even up to the moment that she pushed open the cabin door, she didn’t know what she would do once she got inside.

She surprised herself. She snatched the mirror from the wall. She threw it under her cot, face – faces – down, where it wouldn’t be able to tempt her.

She buried her own faded face in her pillow and sobbed bitterly.

The mirror lied to me, thought Yriel. It always lied. There was never a princess!

The now-familiar voice in her head whispered in reply. But there could have been…

Time passed, and so too did the memory of Yriel’s humiliation. From the minds of the adults of the village, at least.

The children, unfortunately, were not so quick to forget.

Most mornings, she was woken by the sound of taunting chants outside her door. The first few times this happened, Yriel threw on her cloak and sandals and ran out into the wynd, sometimes with a broomstick in her hand.

Each time, this had the effect of scattering her young tormentors. They would flee from her, shrieking in terror but with excitement too. The next morning, they’d be back – and often in greater numbers and even bolder than before.

They would knock on Yriel’s door and run away and sometimes hurl eggs at her shutters. She tried to ignore them, but that didn’t help either; it only made them braver still, and more determined to provoke her into some kind of retaliation.

She knew how that game was played. When Yriel had been their age, her peers had played it just the same with the keeper of the curio shop. She had even dared knock on the shopkeeper’s door herself one time, although he hadn’t come to answer it and no one at the scholam had believed her when she had told them.

The children’s taunts grew meaner. At first, they had called Yriel a thief and a spiteful bat – until, one day, in an unguarded moment, she unleashed an angry torrent of curses against them and swiped at one of them with her broom handle.

They called her something else after that. Something a lot more dangerous.

You must not let such a rumour go unchecked, the crone insisted.

The mirror was back in its place on Yriel’s wall. She had no memory of re-hanging it there, but it didn’t surprise her that she had.

It could bring the witch hunters back to Icthis, said the crone, and that would be a disaster for us both.

Was the priest right? asked Yriel. He… he said… The priest said…

The priest told you, said the crone, to put your faith in his Emperor. He promised you that the Emperor loves you – but where is that love?

The Emperor took your father from you, Yriel, and left you without love. He sends you to sleep each night on cold sheets, an empty stomach and a pillow of tears. So, by what right does He presume to judge you for doing what you must to survive?

She was right, of course.

The Emperor’s world is unfair, thought Yriel, so, how can it be a sin to look into a simple mirror and wish that things could be otherwise?

And how could it be a sin for other… beings to do the same?

She thought she understood now. Suddenly, it was clear to Yriel that the crone needed her as much as she needed the crone.

Will you do one favour for me? she asked, hesitantly. Will you let me see…? And the crone’s face softened into an indulgent smile, and she agreed.

Yriel took down the mirror. She sat down on the edge of her cot with it cradled in her lap and gazed upon her true reflection in the glass, until the sun rose outside and dispelled the night’s shadows and with them its blissful dreams. Then, with a sigh, she forced herself to stand. She hung the mirror back up on its crooked nail in the wall.

And never once set eyes upon the princess’s face again.

The final seeds of Icthis’s ruin were sewn with the discovery of a book.

It had been mixed up with the bric-a-brac on a stall at the market plateau: an unlabelled journal filled with spidery handwriting that, when deciphered, was found to describe the foulest of blasphemies.

The stallholder – by chance, the same one who had called Yriel a thief – protested his innocence. But his name and the names of his wife and his sons and his closest friends were all recorded in the journal, along with minutes of secret meetings.

It was enough, in the eyes of most villagers, to convict.

They demanded that a magistrate be sent for, but the constables demurred.

There was no dark cult operating in Icthis, said the constables, for certainly they would have known about it. It was likely that the journal was, as the stallholder claimed, a fake. They issued some pointed reminders about the dangers of baseless rumours and, for a time, suspicious tongues were – reluctantly – stilled.

No one wanted the Inquisition to come back, after all.

But then, someone said something – not much, just an idle thought voiced, but someone else saw the sense of it and passed it on – and, within days, a new and even more pernicious rumour had taken root in the villagers’ hearts and minds, although no one could remember what had started the rumour in the first place.

One overcast evening, an inflamed mob fought their way into a constable’s cabin and discovered, in the space beneath his floorboards, exactly what they had expected to find: crude, handcrafted symbols of fealty to the darkest of powers.

The constable, by chance, was the same one who had arrested Yriel.

Like his cousin, the stallholder, he affected blamelessness, and friends and family and fellow constables supported him. But the mob, denied its sense of natural justice once, could not be stayed again. Angry words were exchanged, and punctuated by shaken fists. Lynching ropes were swiftly tied and torches lit. In return, lasguns were drawn and warning shots fired. Battle lines had been drawn.

Yriel played little part in the ensuing events, although she followed them keenly.

She continued to haunt the markets, where factions formed and plans were made in furtive whispers. She listened from beneath her sheets as each night’s peace was shattered by gunshots and raised voices. She watched through her spy hole as weekly funeral processions wound their ways along the village’s climbing road.

The children let her be now, finding more deserving targets for their malice. No one ever really looked at Yriel Malechan, which suited her well.

She felt no sympathy for her neighbours – those who found themselves caught up in an endless spiral of attacks and reprisals, whose lives and livelihoods were under threat – because what sympathy, what love, had they ever shown for her?

Why shouldn’t they suffer, for once?

And soon, a new sound was carried to Yriel on the night air, a new acrid smell to her nose and, through her spy hole, she saw lights flickering in the sky and the moon and stars obscured by a drifting haze of smoke.

Yriel was twenty-nine when Icthis burned.

It was a Thunder-Day morning when the Inquisition returned to Icthis.

Yriel heard them coming, as she had the first time, half her life ago. She had been expecting them for days, but still she felt her stomach tightening at the sound of approaching engine-spirits. She didn’t need to look outside this time. She struggled out of her cot. She dressed with trembling hands. She sat and waited.

It wasn’t long before an armoured fist attacked her door. She levered herself to her feet and shrank against the cabin wall as rusted hinges shattered.

Yriel flinched, whimpering, from the glare of the morning sunlight. It was immediately eclipsed, however, by an inrush of armoured troops. Red and black.

She was seized and held as the soldiers tore through her few possessions. They overturned her cot and the tin bath and the mangle. They pulled down shelves and wrenched up worm-eaten floorboards. They found the mirror on the wall. It hadn’t even occurred to Yriel to try to hide it.

She wondered what the soldiers saw in the glass. Enough, they made it very plain, to confirm the rumours they had been told about her. As if her stooped posture and the hideous growths on her face weren’t proof enough.

Yriel had the aspect of a woman three times her age. Touched by the Ruinous Powers, the soldiers pronounced. Made a conduit for their evil.

They dragged her outside and forced her to her aching knees.

Words of protest spat from Yriel’s tongue, although she knew they were in vain. She had done no wrong, she shrieked, they had no right to treat her this way.

She blamed the mirror. Couldn’t see they the real witch in the mirror?

A small crowd had collected in the wynd: dozens when she had imagined hundreds, but then Icthis was hardly more than a ghost village these days. The spectators were quiet, accepting, almost mournful. They had little fear of the witch hunters, this time, because this time it was they who had invited them into their homes.

Yriel heard booted footsteps ringing ominously off the cobblestones.

She raised her head, with an effort, to greet the figure that approached her, that now loomed over her. She regarded him with a bloodshot gaze.

The figure wore the tall hat and dark cloak of a witch hunter. He looked surprisingly young to Yriel, blond hair dancing on his shoulders. But his eyes were indisputably a witch hunter’s eyes, staring into her soul.

He had the mirror.

He asked if this was the artefact to which Yriel had referred. He asked her where she had come by it and what she had seen in it. He spoke in a quiet, almost friendly voice, and she tried her best to answer him but was choked by shame because under the inquisitor’s glare she found she couldn’t tell a lie, not even to herself.

The inquisitor told Yriel that he could see no witch in the mirror.

He held the mirror out to her, so that she could show it to him.

And, of course, the witch was there. Of course she was. Her misshapen face. The spreading mole on her cheek. Grey, scraggly hair. Of course the witch was there, because what else would one expect to see in a reflecting glass, after all?

What else but an image of oneself?

There was no need for a trial, the witch hunter declared, and no chance of mitigation. It was clear that the accused had surrendered herself to daemon-kind, and therefore sentence could be passed and carried out summarily. He pried the greenish-black gem from the mirror’s frame and ground it under his boot heel. He nodded to one of the red and black soldiers, who unsheathed her sword and ignited its holy fire.

Yriel was surprised to find herself no longer afraid. Perhaps, she thought, it was because she had always known her fate. She had lived this moment in her dreams so many times that it had slowly lost its power over her. She was almost relieved, in fact, that the moment was real at last, because that meant it would soon be over.

She faced her death with equanimity, because it was everything she deserved.

She didn’t even try to struggle as a soldier held her fast, as another pushed her head forwards to fully expose her neck. She heard the crackle of the burning blade as it was poised above its target, and she remembered the first time she had glimpsed the shadow in the glass and how afraid of it she had been. Such a long time ago now. Back before she had come to realise that the shadow was naught to fear.

If Yriel had one regret, in these final moments of her life, then it was this: that no one had ever understood her. No one ever really looked at Yriel Malechan, after all, so no one had ever been able to see her for what she truly was.

Her neighbours, the people who passed her by every day, had seen the face of a plain and awkward teenager, a downtrodden washerwoman, a wizened crone and now, finally – the only face they would remember – that of a convicted witch.

But, inside, Yriel was none of those things.

Inside, she was just a lost and lonely little girl who missed her father. A girl with an aching void in her heart and nothing good in her life with which to fill it. A girl who had only ever wanted to be noticed and respected and, yes, loved.

A little girl who, even now, still wished that she could have been a princess.

Redeemed

James Swallow

A fall of night, red as rust and blood, followed the transporter.

It ranged up high over the scoured, mirror-bright line of the main rail, casting a wall of shadow out beyond the prow of the train as the line of five carriages snaked across the desert. A tokamak reactor in the heart of the engine car at the rear of the coaches propelled them at breakneck speeds, surging down the straightaways, wheels skirling and gushing sparks on the curves as it raced to stay ahead of the storm front.

The razorwinds had come in fast, gathering up sharp dust and stones as large as a man’s fist from the plains of the Oxide Desert. Turbulent and deadly, the sandstorms could flense the flesh from an unprotected body in moments, turning dust into blades and flecks of gravel into bullets. They were a fact of life on the planet Baal, drawn into existence by the complex tidal pulls of its two large moons and their intertwined orbits. Even now, Baal Secundus lurked low in the late day sky, reflecting the ruddy light of the far sun, watching the train run like the eye of a patient hunter.

The rails spread like web threads across Baal’s surface, radiating out from the starport at Arch Rock, connecting to the great Fortress Monastery of the Blood Angels at Mount Seraph, the relical donjons at Sangre, and elsewhere to all the satellite compounds and facilities the Chapter maintained on their homeworld. It was a system borne out of necessity; the cruel weather patterns of the desert planet often grounded atmospheric craft and the sands slowed ground vehicles, while the trains could forge their way through all but the harshest of hurricanes. Still, it did not do to tempt fate, and the Chapter serf driving the engine opened the throttle a little more as the leading edge of the winds buffeted the trailing coach.

Inside the sun-seared bare metal of the carriages, there was little but freight, rows of storage pods and supply modules bound for the terminal at the end of the line. There were just three passengers on this run, and they had been granted an entire car to themselves. For them, and their singular cargo.

They were Adeptus Astartes, all three brothers of the Blood Angels Chapter. The elder two were Sternguard veterans, men of taciturn character who took their duties seriously. Neither had shown their faces since they boarded the train at the Fortress, their crowskull helmets perpetually scanning the interior of the carriage and the item they were watching over.

The third passenger wondered if they had been communicating on a private vox channel that he had not been invited to join. He went unhooded, his helm maglocked to the thigh plate of his armour, just below his bolt pistol’s battered holster. His attempts to engage them in conversation had been met with terse, single-word utterances, and finally he had given up. They had continued on for hours with only the rattle and grind of the wheels beneath them as accompaniment.

Brother Rafen let his attention drift to the scratched glassaic port and the view of the deep desert flashing past beyond it, and he wondered: what did they think of me?

The hard and damning truth about what had transpired on the planet Sabien, the confrontation that almost became a civil war among the Blood Angels, the deaths from Space Marine fighting Space Marine: these things were still ghostly and yet to be fully revealed to the rank and file of the Chapter. And yet, some element of the truth found its way out in barrack-room word and suspicion. Many had seen the Europae return wounded from the engagement against the traitorous Word Bearers, and battle-brothers in similar condition. Men talked – it was inevitable. Rafen had been told that Chapter Master Dante would issue a formal statement within a few days, but in the meantime men talked, and they wondered.

If they knew the truth, would they speak to me then? He asked himself. Or would they distrust me even more than they do now? Rafen pushed the questions away. It served nothing to dwell on such thoughts. He was here because there was one final duty he needed to perform. A ritual, of sorts, although not one that would be found in any books of catechism or battle rites.

His gaze was drawn back, inexorably, to the load that shared the carriage. A steel-grey titanium tube some three metres in length, hinged along its long axis and lined with warding runes, the container was suspended in the air by flexing cables strung from the walls, ceiling and floor of the rail car. It swayed gently with the motion of the train, the lines chiming as they alternately pulled taut and relaxed.

There were three personal seals next to the bloodlock that held the container closed, parchment tapes dangling from them. He could see the golden mark of Dante’s signet next to that of the High Librarian, Mephiston, and Brother Corbulo of the priesthood. There should have been a fourth, the mark of Sepharan of the Sanguinary Guard, but the praetorians had not been present on Baal when Rafen had come home with this prize. He heard tell that Sepharan and his men had been deployed into the Eye of Terror on a mission of great and secret import, but it was only a rumour.

More rumour, he mused. The enemy of fact. Rafen felt the sudden need to be sure of something, and he rose quickly, drawing the sharp attention of the veterans. Without pause, he advanced to the container.

The other warriors exchanged a silent glance, and their hands went to their bolters. They did not raise them; it was not yet a challenge. But when he reached for the burnished steel surface, from the corner of his eye he saw a gun muzzle shift slightly.

‘Step away, brother,’ said a grim voice.

‘You do not give me orders,’ Rafen replied, without looking up. On the forearm of his power armour he bore a recently applied chevron of yellow, designating the rank of brother-sergeant that had been newly awarded to him on the voyage back from Sabien. Despite the seniority of the Sternguard and their laurels, by technicality he outranked them both. He pulled off his gauntlet and laid his bare hand on the container.

Nothing. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to feel – some answering pulse of warmth, perhaps? Some echo of the magnificent power he had briefly experienced on the battlefield? Rafen wanted to open the container, but the veterans would never permit that, even if he could defeat the bloodlock.

Rafen felt conflicted. He was here on Master Dante’s sufferance, and likely then only because Lord Mephiston had spoken in support of his request. That last fact troubled him in a way he found it hard to articulate. The Lord of Death saw things with his witchsight that no man or transhuman could know, and it made Rafen uneasy to think that the Librarian had seen something in him.

But this… this strange, almost funereal obligation that Rafen had imposed upon himself, was the last line of connection between him and his sibling, Arkio.

Poor Arkio, dead upon the steps of a ruined shrine-world cathedral. Poor Arkio, unknowingly corrupted by the forces of Chaos. Rafen’s brother in blood, not just in battle-name, dead at his hand for the price of his Chapter’s deliverance. The promise to their long-perished father to protect his kindred had been broken, while his oath to the Emperor of Mankind remained whole.

Rafen drew back his hand and looked at the scarred, calloused skin of his fingers. For a moment, the red sunlight reflecting off the desert through the window made it appear as if his hand had been dipped in blood. Then the instant passed as he sensed the train making a wide turn, its forward velocity slowing.

‘We are approaching the Regio,’ said the other veteran.

‘Aye,’ Rafen relented, and turned away.

Baal was a world of extremes, from its frozen polar regions, heavy with dense metallic snows, to the searing radioactive belt of the equator, and much of its surface could barely be considered habitable by human standards. It was a landscape of sparse, desolate places, the legacy of a long-ago atomic war only remembered by the stubs of obliterated cities, lying like broken memorial stones in the places where the rust-sands had not engulfed them.

Thousands of years ago, in the deep erg where not even the hardiest of native tribal nomads would dare to venture, the first Techmarines of the Blood Angels had built the complex known as Regio Quinquaginta-Unus. Its High Gothic name drawn from an ancient Terran legend, the Regio was their holdfast outside the great Fortress Monastery. From orbit, it could be seen at the heart of a skein of lines cut into the desert, which traced the twenty-kilometre long design of a droplet of blood. The facility’s uppermost level was a ferrocrete disc dotted with landing bays and portals, ringed with stark battlements and bristling with guns. This was only the face it showed the world, however. The bones of the Regio extended far down and out into the crust of Baal, sprawling into a network beneath the burning wilderness like the taproots of cacti. There were hundreds of sublevels and countless kilometres of tunnels, cavernous chambers and blocks of habitat and research units. Many of the deepest tiers had not felt the tread of human feet for hundreds of years.

Here, the Blood Angels of the Armoury, under the command of Brother Incarael, the Master of the Blade, kept their machine-works where the weapons and vehicles of the Chapter were maintained and sanctified for their eternal service in the Emperor’s name. An army of Techmarines, Chapter serfs and indentured artificers preserved the legacy of the Chapter’s precious wargear. It was the minds of the Regio’s genii who had crafted weapons such as the Angelus boltgun. They sustained the slumber of the Chapter’s Dreadnoughts between wars and preserved the treasured Standard Template Construct device that allowed the Blood Angels to build the unique mark of Baal-pattern Predator tanks. More than once, the rare STC had been the target of avarice from within and without the Imperium, and the Techmarines of the Regio guarded it aggressively.

The complex performed one other function. It was also a trophy house for weapons and technology deemed too important, or too dangerous, to be displayed openly in the reliquaries of the Fortress Monastery; it was said that between fighting alongside their battle brothers and engaging in their sacred duties, the Techmarines of the Armoury conducted works into the study of enemy armaments and archeotech so as to sharpen the combat edge of their kinsmen.

Rafen watched the crenels and watchtowers of the Regio rise from the sands as the transporter drew closer, following the silver rail toward the yawning mouth of an entrance tunnel. Watery shimmers of heat rose off the desert all around, giving the complex a ghostly cast despite the oncoming glower of the razorwind.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Up on a raised landing disc, a workgang of helots were drawing a segmented dome over a winged vessel parked there, as protection from the approaching storm. It wasn’t a standard craft like the Thunderhawks or Stormravens in use by the Chapter, more like the guncutters favoured by fringer crews and privateers. Rafen was struck by the livery of the ship as it vanished from his sight. The hull had been painted a red so dark it was almost black.

Then the train passed out of the waning day and into the unlit depths of the entrance tunnel. He felt the occulobe implants in his eyes tense as they immediately adjusted for the sharp drop in ambient light. The carriages rattled and growled as speed bled away to nothing. With a final hissing of brakes, the transporter rolled to a halt and great hatches in the walls of the rail cars fell open like ramps to allow servitors to begin the unloading cycle.

The Space Marine took a step toward the platform, looking around, taking it in. Rafen had never visited the Regio before, and it seemed a stark contrast to the ornate interiors of the Fortress Monastery. The complex had a heavy, brutalist ethic to its design, every surface sharply-cut from dense stone, blocky in form and function. There was no lack of regalia, but it was more martial, more practical than the elaborate ornaments of Chapter and honour in the Grand Annex, the great audience hall and the Silent Cloister. The first thing he saw were the twinned insignia of the Blood Angels and the Adeptus Mechanicus; the winged blood droplet of the Chapter was several scales bigger than the cyborg skull-and-cogwheel, and stood placed above it in symbolic recognition of who held superiority over this world.

‘Like battle-forged steel, our loyalty endures,’ said a voice, gruff with the effect of a vox-coder implant.

Rafen turned to see the approach of an Adeptus Astartes in red armour; not the vitae incarnadine of the Blood Angels, but something harsher, like the warning crimson of an alert sigil. Only one part of his wargear, his left shoulder pauldron, was the correct colour. It sported the Chapter’s insignia, but trimmed with a cog-tooth edging that repeated in other places over the other warrior’s armour.

The Techmarine made no move to doff his helmet, but he gave a small bow to the sergeant. The motion seemed strangely elaborate. The other Blood Angel’s power armour was equipped with a heavy, complex array of servo-arms emerging from his backpack, and they moved slightly as he did. Two of them ended in large manipulator claws, while a third sported the thick drum of a tool module. He carried no visible weapons.

‘I am Brother Krixos, warsmith of the Chapter arsenal,’ he intoned. ‘Welcome to the Regio, Sergeant Rafen. The Master of the Blade sends his regards, but I regret that issues of duty compel him to be elsewhere. I will be standing in his stead for the completion of this… this obligation.’

Rafen frowned at that but said nothing. The intentions of the Techmarine cadre were sometimes difficult to fathom. It was not a question of distrust – these warriors were Adeptus Astartes and Blood Angels to their marrow – but more one of dissimilarity. Every battle brother who set foot on the road to the rank of warsmith was first sent to the dominions of Mars, where he was trained by the priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the arcane lore of machine-spirits and technologia. They were as much servants of the Emperor upon the Golden Throne as they were adherents to the Cult of the Machine God; the Mechanicus cog-and-skull device on Krixos’s armour signified as such, showing the Techmarine’s dual fealty to his birth Chapter and his teachers. It was true to say that the kindred who called the Regio home stood aside from other Blood Angels because of who they were.

The emerald lenses of Krixos’s helmet stared impassively back at Rafen. His headgear was an unusually modified piece, thick with armour plates and additional sensor pits, lacking the fierce breath grille of Rafen’s Mark VII Aquila-pattern helm. Krixos turned slightly to beckon a heavy-set servitor with lifter blades instead of arms, and the helot ambled past Rafen, up into the carriage where it set to work taking on the weight of the container. The two Sternguard stood warily aside, maintaining their silence. Their job is done, Rafen reflected.

Krixos seemed to sense his line of thought. ‘I take stewardship of the weapon,’ he announced, in a formal, final tone. ‘You may return to the Fortress and rest assured that–’

‘I will see this to its ending,’ Rafen spoke over him. A jag of sudden, sharp emotion lanced through him. A reluctance. Fear, even?

The Techmarine hesitated before finally giving a careful nod. ‘As you wish.’ The hissing, plodding servitor emerged from the open rail carriage with the container suspended between its lifters, and walked away on its pre-programmed course. Krixos fell into step behind it and Rafen followed.

They made the descent into the lower levels of the facility aboard a wide inclinator platform the size of a duelling arena. The slab of steel decking creaked with the resonance of massive wheels turning beneath their feet, falling slowly down the angled shaft on heavy rollers in guide channels cut from the stone.

Standing in the middle of the inclinator, the blank-eyed servitor had the mesomorphic build of one from a heavy-gravity world, densely muscled and stocky with it. The slave stared unseeing into nothing, a punch-card command unit implanted in his chest ticking with clockwork. Rafen watched it for a moment. It seemed wrong that this servile, this commonplace mind-wiped thing, was carrying the weapon to its repose – there should have been ritual and ceremony, great circumstance and chronicles being written of the moment. This was a homecoming, after all.

Instead, the duty was being undertaken almost without note, in the shadows, and that sat poorly with Rafen. So many men had died to bring them to this point, not to celebrate their sacrifice with parades and hymnals seemed like a cheapening of their honour.

But that choice was not his to make. The Council of Angels, Commander Dante’s personal assemblage of advisors and confidantes drawn from the ranks of the Chapter at large, had ordered it so. The Blood Angels had been gravely wounded; this was not the first time such a thing had happened, nor even the worst occurrence, but the circumstances of it were troubling. The shadow of civil war had loomed briefly over the Chapter, a horror not seen since the terrible days of the Horus Heresy ten thousand years earlier. Although the threat to unity had ultimately been exorcised, the shock of the possibility of such an event still resonated, and many of the senior officers among Rafen’s battle brothers wanted all mention of this incident burned away and cast from their history, cut out like a cancer.

Imprudent to deny it, he thought. The battle may have been won but the echoes of the aftermath are yet to fade.

‘Brother-Sergeant?’ He became aware of Krixos at his side. ‘As you are here, there is a question that occupies me.’

Rafen’s lips thinned. ‘I will answer if I can.’

‘What happened out there? At Sabien? We have been told very little. Many of my brother Techmarines did not return with you.’

He immediately thought of Brother Lucion, the eager and dedicated Techmarine he had counted as a kinsman. Dead now, dead because of an allegiance Lucion chose to a falsehood, never knowing it to be so. He banished the man’s face from his mind. ‘We were tested,’ replied the sergeant, ‘and we have endured.’

‘Indeed?’ He could tell that his answer was not enough for Krixos, not nearly enough – but the warsmith did not press him any further.

The platform descended for another kilometre before it ground to a juddering halt, and thick steel doors drew back to give them passage through the twenty-seventh sub-level of the Regio. The servitor ambled on, and Rafen felt his pulse quicken as he took in the sights around him.

They had emerged in one of the great arsenal chambers, where the armourers, swordmakers and gunforgers of the Chapter maintained the weapons of the Blood Angels. Below, though a gridded walkway, he could see workstations where robed figures bent over boltguns and missile launchers, tending to them with the care of a parent nursing a child. On the upper level, displays of venerable armaments lined the passage, many of them sealed away behind panes of bullet-proof ironglass or the shimmer of protective energy fields.

In this age of heretics and mutants, witchkin and aliens, every Adeptus Astartes was, in his own way, a living expression of the Emperor’s wrath. They were Angels of Death, one and all, figures that strode like legends across every battleground to oppose all who would threaten the safety of the Imperium. And where they walked, they were venerated. Rafen remembered worlds where the populace went to their knees to worship them as the Blood Angels passed by. He and his kind were avatars of the God-Emperor of Mankind, and their aspect, their armour, the very guns in their hands, these things were all sacred and holy icons.

He saw weaponry that gave the truth to that ideal. A bolter from the Alchonis conflict, heavily detailed with brass filigree and platinum scrollwork, gold-wired blood drops carved out of red jade dangling on votive chains from the pistol grip and the muzzle. A chainsword with a handle wrapped in tanned orkskin leather, each individual tooth on the blade laser-etched with a single word from the Litany Vermillion. And there, so close that it caught his breath in his throat to be near to them, twinned combat daggers that had been owned by great Raldoron himself, and the thunder hammer that had been in the hands of the battle-martyr Zorael at the moment of his death. He looked about him and saw the tools heroes had used to forge their legends over ten millennia of ceaseless war.

These were not just devices for killing, but works of devotional artistry. In their own way, they were just as virtuous as the bones of a dead saint or a sanctified book of prayer. Everything around him was a museum piece, the least ancient of them dating back to the time of the Scouring, some so old that they might have been from before the Age of Unification. And yet, there were no relics here, not in the true sense of the word. These were not fragile things suspended in time, to be gawked at from a distance and mused upon by the unworthy. Every single martial device here was battle ready, should the need be there to call it to duty. Each gun was loaded and primed to fire, each sword’s edge keen. This was an armoury, a gallery of lethal art – and there could be no more fitting place for the burden he had brought with him.

‘Here,’ said Krixos, halting before an empty alcove. This section of the corridor was deeper in shadow, lit only by a line of lumen strips in the ceiling. Something about the depth and the shade of the gloom troubled Rafen. It was so stygian that even his occulobe implants could not peer all the way into it. Krixos seemed not to notice and Rafen dismissed the thought, listening as the Techmarine transmitted a brief pulse of binaric linguacode in the clear. In response to the sound, a hidden seam in the alcove wall creaked and gave way, shedding drifts of accumulated dust. Beyond was a small, crypt-like space, dressed with a low altar that sported a series of stays clearly designed to fit the titanium container.

‘Brother-Sergeant Rafen,’ said Krixos, beginning the final formal declaration. ‘Your stewardship of this weapon is at an end. In the name of the Regio and by the authority of the Master of the Blade, I stand ready to accept it. Will you yield it to me, in perpetuity for the Emperor’s eternal reign, in honour of Sanguinius?’

‘I…’ Now at last it came time to say the words, Rafen felt the same knot of hard emotion in his chest. Once he had turned his back on the weapon, the last thread of connection between Rafen and Arkio would be cut. It was almost as if to give it up would be to give up his blood-brother’s memory. He frowned; he would never allow that to happen. Let it go, Rafen told himself. You have done your duty. ‘I will yield,’ said the Blood Angel at last, and his hands came up to his chest to form the salute of the aquila.

‘So declared,’ said Krixos, without comment on his momentary pause. He gestured to the servitor, and the helot advanced toward the crypt-chamber.

‘It comes home,’ Rafen gave voice to his thoughts. ‘After so long.’

‘Yes.’ The voice came out of the darkness behind them like an unsheathed blade. ‘The weapon is brought home by the last to draw blood with it.’

Rafen and Krixos both reacted with shock, the sergeant’s hand snapping at his holstered bolt pistol, the Techmarine’s servo-harness turning a lasgun muzzle to point at the source of the sound.

‘Fitting,’ continued the voice, as its owner grew out of the shadows, approaching them with a steady, measured pace, ignoring their unease. Rafen’s eyes met a sullen gaze framed by an ashen face. Black hair fell to the warrior’s broad shoulders and the hint of something – an air of forbidding threat – played around his lips.

‘My lord…’ Krixos’s tone shifted, and Rafen could almost imagine the expression of confusion on the Techmarine’s face.

‘I came to bear witness,’ came the reply to the unasked question. The new arrival halted before Rafen, and the Blood Angel refused to turn away as the other Space Marine’s unflinching gaze bored into his. He found himself looking into the eyes of a legend; or as some of his brethren would have it, a nightmare.

The gene-curse of the Blood Angels, the fatal flaw that was the legacy of their long-dead primarch, manifested in them as the Red Thirst and the Black Rage. Two sides of the same sorrowful coin, both combined to push sane battle brothers into a berserker madness from which no-one could return should their iron self control ever slip. Rafen had touched the edges of the great fury himself back on Sabien, and the recollection of that moment still froze his heart when he returned to it. He had looked into that abyss, deep in his soul, and pulled back from the brink before it was too late – but many were not so lucky. The curse lay in the hearts of every Son of Sanguinius, Blood Angel and successor alike… and some fell far into that madness. Too far even for a last chance at redemption in the Death Company. When that horror claimed the mind and the soul of a battle brother, only the blade of the Executioner’s Axe was enough.

That blade lay at rest upon the shoulder of the warrior standing before Rafen, upon the one they called the Redeemer of the Lost, the High Chaplain.

‘I am Astorath,’ he intoned, and this time he showed his teeth. ‘Your name is known to me, Brother Rafen.’

Astorath the Grim. The name was a death-knell tolling in Rafen’s thoughts. Like the reaper-wraith myth from Old Night, Astorath was the Chooser of the Slain, forever voyaging the galaxy in search of those Sanguinius’s bloodline who had become lost to the Rage. He wore a suit of master-crafted artificer armour in blood-crimson, copper and gold. The plates resembled bunches of muscle, flayed of skin and shorn bare – Rafen had seen a similar design upon the armour of the psyker-lord Mephiston, but there the similarity between the two great Blood Angels ended. Where the Librarian was lit from within by an invisible sense of force, an ethereal aura that spoke of preternatural power, Astorath was bleak and shadowed. It was hard to quantify it, almost impossible to put into words… but it seemed as if there was a darkness clouding the air wherever the High Chaplain stood, a bitter and solemn ambience that stirred sinister memories in Rafen.

Strangely, a bolt of sudden anger raced through him and it took a near-physical effort for the sergeant not to snarl a question at Astorath. How many of my kinsmen have died by your hand?

The High Chaplain gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if something had been confirmed for him, and he turned to Krixos. ‘You wonder why I am here?’ He gestured in the air. ‘My wings. They were badly damaged during a clash on Kascol Trinus. I came to Baal to have Icarael’s Techmarines restore them to full working order.’

Rafen realized that the guncutter he had seen on his arrival could only have been The Fate, Astorath’s personal vessel. Yet it seemed so mundane to believe that the High Chaplain had arrived on the planet for something as minor as repairs to the black-winged flight pack he usually wore. Still, even without the dark arcs hanging over his shoulders, he still cut a formidable and daunting figure. The Blood Angel considered him. In many ways, Astorath was a harsh mirror-image of the ideal of their primarch, the antithesis of the exultant winged glory of Sanguinius. A balance of dark against the light, a living manifestation of the rage he was doomed forever to follow.

‘This matter is not of your concern, High Chaplain,’ the Techmarine was saying.

‘I want something,’ Astorath told them, ignoring Krixos’s words. ‘Before this rite is concluded.’ He nodded toward the container. ‘I want to see it.’

‘The weapon was sealed on the order of Lord Dante himself,’ Rafen insisted. ‘Your authority does not exceed his!’

‘Here and now it does, brother. And who are you to stop me?’ Before either of them could halt him, the High Chaplain pushed Krixos aside and stopped the servitor. Removing his gauntlet, Astorath tore off the seals and submitted himself to the bloodlock. To Rafen’s surprise, the container did not deny him, and slowly it arched open.

Wan, honeyed light spilled from the interior, banishing the shadows and the gloom. Every muscle in Rafen’s body tensed as the warm radiance touched him, gentle like sunlight on his face. The dark memories of Sabien stirred in him as Krixos remained rooted to the spot, still as a statue.

Inside the container was the weapon.

A spear made of golden metal, the haft was sculpted into a winged figure in a sanguinary high priest’s vestments, embossed with an ornate purity seal marked with the Emperor’s personal lightning-bolt sigil. It grew into a hollow-cored blade, shaped like a teardrop, and the metal seemed to emit a steady glow.

Lost in the chaos that followed the sundering of the Imperium during the Horus Heresy, passed into myth and legend for millennia until an expedition set off to recover it once and for all, the spear had finally completed its great journey across light-years, time and war. This was the weapon of a primarch, a weapon that, in defiance of all possibility, Rafen had wielded against the forces of the Ruinous Powers and used to dispatch a daemonic creature. This was the spear that had killed his sibling, a blade that long ago the Emperor himself had forged as a gift to his angelic son.

‘The Hasta Fatalis,’ whispered Astorath, a note of awe in his voice. ‘The Spear of Telesto. By the Throne, what a thing of beauty…’ He reached a hand into the container.

‘No–’ The word escaped from Rafen’s lips before he could stop it. ‘You cannot.’

‘You do not give me orders,’ Astorath replied, echoing Rafen’s earlier words back to him. The High Chaplain gently placed his palm on the haft of the weapon and Rafen saw him tremble slightly at the instant of contact. Astorath did not possess the preternatural insight of a psyker, but some said he had a peculiar gift of his own, an instinct that drew him to places where the curse of the rage and the thirst ran strong. Rafen wondered what Astorath experienced in that brief moment, coming so close to an artefact that had been made for the hands of their primarch and gene-father. Did he feel the same connection that Rafen had? The sound of blood roaring in his ears, like calling out to like? His memory of those feelings was transcendent and terrible, and not something he would dare to repeat.

Astorath’s hand moved to the teardrop blade and found something there, a faint patch of discolouration deposited on the golden metal. But how could that be possible? Rafen wondered. The blade burned off all stain of spilled blood, I saw it happen…

The High Chaplain brushed his fingers over the tiny specks of dried vitae and brought them to his nostrils. He tested the scent, licked at the dry powder; then he turned his gaze on Rafen again, measuring him. Somehow, he knows.

After a long moment, Astorath spoke again. ‘I have what I came for.’ He bowed reverently to the spear and made the sign of the aquila. His hand snapped up and slammed the container closed, the noise echoing like a gunshot. ‘Proceed,’ he said, turning his back on them to retreat into the long shadows.

Rafen watched him go, more uncertain than ever as to where his fate was leading him.

‘The High Chaplain’s presence here bodes ill,’ said Krixos quietly.

‘His curiosity seems to have been sated,’ Rafen offered, but without conviction.

‘Wherever he walks, the Black Rage is close at hand.’

Rafen eyed the Techmarine. ‘It is his duty to seek it out.’

‘His presence brings it to the surface,’ Krixos countered. ‘Astorath causes good warriors to question their own truth wherever he goes. He brings doubt and mistrust in his wake.’ The Techmarine paused, cocking his head; Rafen knew he was listening to a vox channel relayed through his helmet. ‘Even now, word spreads of his arrival here. Every brother in the Regio cannot help but wonder who the executioner has come for.’

‘He said he was here for your skills, not for your heads.’

Krixos made a noise in his throat, a grunt of dry amusement. ‘He need not have come home to Baal for those repairs to be done. Any forge world of sufficient expertise would have sufficed. It is a pretext.’

‘For what?’

‘I dread to consider.’ Krixos looked away.

The servitor placed the container on the rack and backed out of the alcove. Automatically, the thick stone walls ground together. Rafen watched it happen, schooling his aspect to remain impassive. ‘It is done,’ he said aloud. ‘And so am I.’ The sergeant nodded to the Techmarine. ‘Warsmith, my thanks. I will return to the railhead and–’

Krixos held up a hand. ‘I have been informed that the razorwinds have struck the complex with deadly force. All transports have been locked down for the duration of the storm.’

‘How long will that be?’

‘Several hours at the least. A day at most.’ Krixos paused. ‘The Regio can offer you some sustenance while you wait…’

Rafen gave the sealed alcove one last look. ‘A dormitory room, then. Somewhere I can have some peace to rest and meditate.’

‘This way,’ said the Techmarine, leading him back to the inclinator.

The chamber they gave him was a sparsely-furnished cell on one of the habitat levels, little more than a stone box with a lumen globe in the ceiling, a bed and an icon of the Golden Throne impact-welded to the wall. Like everything else inside the Regio, the air within was dry in a way that seemed to deaden all ambient sound.

Rafen placed his helmet, weapon-belt and holster on the pallet, and took to one knee on the floor. There was a chapel a few levels above, as Krixos has informed him, and the offer had been made for him to remain there in prayer if he so wished it. Rafen did wish to pray to his Emperor and his primarch, but not in the sight of others. He wanted some privacy in which to consider the questions that plagued him.

There was nothing in the cell to mark the passage of time, only the Blood Angel’s internal reckoning, and he did not glance at the chronometer embedded in his helmet display. Instead, Rafen let himself come adrift from the moment. Minutes or hours passed as he tried to find a point of tranquillity from which to observe himself and weigh his own concerns. He had limited success.

His thoughts continued to return to Sabien, and before that the war-grave world of Cybele and the Forge at Shenlong. The blood that had been shed by him on those three planets seemed distant, the idea of it like a story that had been told to Rafen by someone else, by some other Space Marine who was him, who had experienced these things.

He reached for the memories, drilling down into his own recollection, but he was reticent. Did he really want to relive those moments, now that the threat to his Chapter was ended? Would it not simply be better to just… move on?

‘No.’ The word was raspy, and it sounded as if he had not spoken in days. ‘No,’ he repeated, with force, saying it aloud again for any ethereal beings who might be turning their eyes toward him. ‘I will not forget.’ Rafen would make sure that the brethren who would rather ignore the hard lessons he had bled through would not be given the chance.

It is not over. The shadow of blighted Chaos that dared to try and corrupt the Chapter had been purged by the light of righteous souls, but the wounds left behind had yet to heal. Many battle brothers had perished in the insanity of it all, lives snuffed out and glorious futures cut short – but the Chapter would ever endure, just as Rafen had told Krixos. In thousands of years of war and history, there had never come a time when the Blood Angels had been cut so deeply that they had faltered. Not at Signus Prime, when the treachery of the primarch’s errant brother Horus Lupercal had thrown the entire Legion into a meat grinder; not at Holy Terra during the final siege of the Heresy when Sanguinius himself had died and left his sons without their father; not in the wars at Al-Khadir and the Kursa Ranges, or even in the aftermath of the Secoris Tragedy centuries past, when the Chapter had been reduced in number to less than a hundred warriors after a catastrophic space hulk intervention.

The Blood Angels would never be allowed to die, and while Rafen’s existence and that of his brothers in arms would come and go across the march of time, the essence of the Sons of Sanguinius would endure until the day the final victory came. He nodded to himself, holding on to the insight, taking comfort from it.

‘Blood endures,’ he told the dry, silent air.

As he bowed his head, the sirens began to wail. Rafen reacted instantly, shaking off the drag of his inaction and springing to his feet. The weapon belt was first, secured and then checked, his bolt pistol cocked and loaded. He grabbed his helmet and wrenched open the cell’s steel hatch.

Out in the narrow corridor, chaser lights strobed red and white, extending away in to the distance. He saw figures moving along a junction to the right, Chapter serfs by the look of them, sprinting away.

‘You!’ he called. ‘Heed me!’

None of them stopped, and he wondered if they had heard him over the sirens. Frowning, Rafen donned his helmet and activated the power armour’s internal vox unit. The monitor glyphs returned a steady No Signal display, and the Blood Angel felt the first real inkling of genuine concern. The heavy rock and ferrocrete of the Regio was what made it virtually impregnable, but it also had the effect of making vox communications difficult. Still, even with the attenuation caused by the strata all around, Rafen should have been able to pick up another Adeptus Astartes nearby. He gave up the attempt and went to the closest intercom unit. Wired into the Regio’s grid, it should have been able to connect him immediately to the command centre. Nothing but dead static answered him.

He drew the bolt pistol and thumbed off the safety catch, and for the second time that day he heard the voice from the shadows.

‘Rafen.’ From ahead, a broad-shouldered figure was framed against the glow of the alert lights. Astorath advanced with urgency, and he had the Executioner’s Axe in his hand.

‘My lord.’ The Blood Angel’s hand tightened on the pistol grip. If the High Chaplain had come to take his head, Rafen would not go easily.

Astorath did not seem to notice the gun. ‘My vox is nulled. Yours?’

‘The same.’

He nodded gravely. ‘They must have done something. Blanketed the zone with a jamming field.’ He looked back the way he had come. ‘I did not think there were any of us on this level. Follow me.’

But Rafen did not take a step. ‘They?’ he repeated.

‘You have been here all along.’ Astorath sounded it out. ‘Of course. Word did not reach you.’

‘I do not understand.’

The High Chaplain’s cold eyes studied him. ‘We are under attack, brother. I suspect that they came in under the cover of the razorwind storm.’ He looked away. ‘Raptors, brother-sergeant, by the hundredfold. Sent by the traitor Sons of Lorgar.’

‘The Word Bearers?’ It seemed like blasphemy to say the name of the Chaos warband aloud. ‘Here, on Baal? They would not dare to strike at our homeworld!’

And yet, even as he said it, Rafen knew that such a deed was not beyond them. He had fought the Word Bearers and seen the fury and insanity that drove their freakish, corrupted zealotry. But such an attack would be suicidal, and any gains they made would be wiped out once the shock of the surprise assault was dispelled.

‘I have heard no gunfire… and how could they reach our soil? Our battle barges are in orbit, our defence platforms fully manned…’

‘There is more than one way to thread the labyrinth,’ said the High Chaplain darkly. ‘Extreme-range teleportation from a stealth vessel in far orbit, a warp gate conjuring… an entire planet can never be completely secure.’

Rafen thought it through. Attacking the Regio from without was madness. The Raptors would dash themselves against the battlements and perish under hails of gunfire from the weapons at the walls…

Unless…

Astorath nodded again, pre-empting his train of thought. ‘They may already be inside. The doors may have been opened by treachery.’

A cold rush spread through Rafen’s blood. ‘Then the Word Bearers have come to loot this place, not to hold it. They must want–’

‘The spear, aye. No doubt to assuage the hurt that was done to them.’

Rafen’s heart was hammering in his chest. That could not be allowed to happen. ‘We have to protect the weapon. We have to get to the reliquary.’

Astorath beckoned him. ‘The inclinator is this way.’

The platform was in place in the throat of the shaft, and Rafen cast around as they crossed to it, looking for signs of life. Despite glimpsing the Chapter serfs moments earlier, there seemed now to be no sign of them. Perhaps they had gone to ground in one of the other chambers. He wanted to be sure, but the High Chaplain urged him on.

Astorath moved swiftly to the control podium on the far side of the platform, and Rafen looked up. The inclinator shaft stretched away above, rings of warning lights growing progressively smaller as they receded. He set his helmet’s audial sensors to maximum perceptive range, trying to filter out the sirens. Rafen listened for the sounds of combat, for gunfire or detonations, but he detected nothing.

‘We should try to find Brother Krixos,’ he said, turning back to the other Blood Angel. ‘If he-’

The rest of his words were lost in the flat report of an explosion, as a blast of smoke, fire and noise erupted out of the inclinator’s controls. Astorath caught the discharge at point-blank range and it blew him back across the wide elevator deck, ceramite screeching on metal as the High Chaplain skidded and tumbled.

Rafen ran toward him, just as the platform gave off a howl of tortured metal. One of the roller guides stuttered and slipped, and suddenly the deck was canted at a steep angle. Untethered cargo modules spilled across the inclinator, and Rafen threw himself aside, narrowly avoiding a collision with a hulking steel crate the size of a Dreadnought. Grabbing at a guide rail for purchase, Rafen moved as quickly as could toward Astorath’s prone form. He saw the High Chaplain move, heard him groan. The chestplate of his armour was smoking but the damage seemed minimal.

Then all at once, the guide rollers holding the platform in place slipped their moorings, and the inclinator shuddered and fell. Rafen lost his grip and rolled out across the decking, slamming into a quad of heavy storage tanks. The decking vibrated like a drum skin and Rafen could not regain his balance or his footing. He experienced the giddy, vertiginous rush of the headlong fall, strings of warning lights flashing past, racing away as they plummeted into the deeps of the Regio. He saw the tier counter rotating wildly, wooden ticker slats turning inside a brass cage, moving so fast he couldn’t read them.

The autonomic brakes finally snapped on, but it seemed to do little to slow them. Instead, great fountains of yellow sparks gushed from the smouldering rollers and the hot stink of burning metal filled Rafen’s nostrils. The platform crashed through ancient barrier plates erected to seal off lower levels, obliterating them in its headlong plunge. Some part of the Blood Angel’s mind was marvelling – how deep could this complex go? The indicator lights ceased, the last ring of them pulling away, and the inclinator dropped into a black chasm.

Then the impact. Rafen was thrown into the air, spinning through the darkness in the midst of the crash of splintering metal. His head smacked against the inside of his helmet and, mercifully, he fell again, this time into a different kind of void.

He dreamed of rain on his face.

Rafen dreamed of a ruined cathedral on a mausoleum planet, under weeping skies slashed by stark lances of lightning. He dreamed of falling without motion, of shadows and pain.

The scent of blood brought him slowly back to wakefulness. His cheek was wet, and he could feel fluid pooling. Rafen blinked, scanning the visible glyphs across the line of his field of vision. His helmet had been damaged, along with some of the actuators in his legs, but the cowl of ceramite and steel that surrounded him had taken the brunt of the crash.

He took stock of himself, feeling for injuries. Some minor breaks in his bones, contusions and the like, things that would have been deadly to a common human but little more than an irritant to a Space Marine. Rafen sat up and cast around. The preysight setting of his helm was non-functional, so with an exasperated grunt he removed it and secured it at his waist. The wetness on his face was blood from a wound across his temple that even now was staunching itself as the gene-engineered cells from his Larraman implant scabbed over the injury. He wiped the excess fluid away and peered into the gloom, shifting spars of twisted metal that had fallen across him. ‘Chaplain?’ he called into the shadows.

‘Here,’ said a voice close by.

Rafen rose to find Astorath standing behind him, his pale face corpselike in the dimness. ‘How long…?’ He winced at a jolt of pain from his scalp.

‘You can walk,’ said the High Chaplain. ‘So we walk.’ Astorath removed a chemical lumen stick from a pouch on his belt and waved it before them. ‘Look, there.’ He indicated a tunnel mouth not far from the wreckage of the inclinator platform.

Rafen took a step and then halted, looking up. Wreaths of smoke and wedges of debris made it hard to see far up the ascent shaft, but he estimated that they must have fallen several kilometres before colliding with the end of the passage. ‘What happened to the controls? The explosion?’

‘My armour protected me,’ said Astorath. ‘It was a small charge, less powerful than a frag grenade. Concealed inside the podium.’

‘Sabotage?’ Rafen scowled at the word.

‘It would seem so.’ The High Chaplain pushed past him. ‘Come. This way.’

The command came with such force of authority behind it that Rafen almost obeyed immediately and without question, years of ingrained training leading him to default to the orders of a senior officer. Almost.

He halted. ‘We should hold here. This is where our brothers will search for us.’

Astorath did not turn back to look at him. ‘This is where the Word Bearers will come looking when they learn their trap was sprung.’

The mention of the traitors made Rafen reach for his bolt pistol. By the Emperor’s grace, the gun was there and still intact. ‘Where are we?’ he wondered.

‘The deeps,’ Astorath replied. ‘The lowest levels of the Regio, isolated and left derelict.’

‘How do we get back?’ He looked up again.

‘As I told you,’ said the other warrior. ‘This way.’

Reluctantly, Rafen fell in step behind the High Chaplain, following him into the tunnel as his unease grew.

The warrens were cut from the living rock of Baal itself, reinforced by pillars of ancient ferrocrete that had become cracked and shot through with rust over countless centuries. The air was full of agitated dust particles, kicked up by the concussive arrival of the inclinator, and they filled Rafen’s mouth with a taste like bonemeal, sapping the moisture from his lips. Astorath deigned to give him one of his lumen sticks, and together the two of them navigated the aged corridors by the weak greenish light of the chemical lamps.

The walls were thick with oily lichen that seeped out of every crack, and in the midst of the fungal masses he saw tiny grubs writhing. There were shapes that fled before the edges of the lumen-glows, into boltholes and broken pipeways, and here and there thick curtains of web dangling from the ceiling, woven by fat, pale arachnids. An entire food chain of scavengers existed down here, living in the gloom.

The tunnel emptied out on to a rusted metal gantry and Astorath halted, sniffing at the air like a hunter canine.

Rafen eyed him. ‘You know where you are going. How is that so?’

The High Chaplain spared him a glance. ‘The accessways are all linked, Rafen. There are exhaust shafts sunk into the desert that reach down this far. All we need do is find the closest one and ascend… If we do not tarry, we could make the surface by daylight.’ He moved to walk on.

‘You are well informed, my lord,’ Rafen added.

Astorath made a noise in his throat that might have been a growl of irritation. ‘I was not always Astorath the Grim, brother-sergeant. There was a time, before my calling took me to other duties, that I served the Chapter as a line warrior in a tactical squad.’ He gestured at the walls, the lumen stick in his hand casting warped shadows. ‘I stood upon the battlements of the Regio as a sentry many times. I learned of its lore and history from men like Krixos.’ He gave Rafen a hard look. ‘By all means, if you wish to question everything I say, continue to do so. But you may find my answers become sparse as I direct my attention towards our egress.’ He strode away and did not wait for Rafen to go after him.

The Blood Angel grimaced and fell in step again. The shock of the alarms, the fall, all that was fading away now, and in its place remained Rafen’s growing disquiet. He could not shake a sense of wrongness about everything that was happening around him.

They navigated fallen sections of the rusting gantry, collapsed by the weight of time and neglect. In places where the path was broken, Rafen was forced to leap into the dark, praying to his Emperor for the certainty of a platform on the other side. Astorath navigated the hazards in silence, with only grunts of effort as he helped Rafen shoulder aside rubble or slice away debris with a swing of his axehead.

But for all his indifference, the High Chaplain was not ignoring Rafen. In fact, the reverse was true. Rafen slowly realized that the other warrior was scrutinising him at every turn, but taking great pains not to be seen to do so.

When a moment of pause came, as they stood at the bottom of a catchshaft damp with brackish moisture, Rafen’s patience reached its limit. ‘What do you wish to say to me?’ he demanded, squaring off before the High Chaplain. ‘I grow tired of your pretence.’

‘Do you?’ The reply was hard and brittle. ‘Perhaps I should ask if that blow you took to the head knocked the respect out of you, sergeant. Remember who it is you address.’

‘I know who you are,’ Rafen shot back. ‘There is no Blood Angel, no Son of Sanguinius that draws breath who does not know the face of the executioner!’

Astorath’s eyes narrowed. ‘That is my burden. And if you dare to think you could judge me for it, I will bleed you for your audacity.’ He pushed past and kept moving, stepping up on to a walkway that circled the inside of the vertical shaft like the thread of a screw.

Rafen’s temper flared. ‘Answer me! It was not fate that brought us together in this! Why else would you have been down on the habitat levels? Were you there for me? Or for some other reason?’

‘Do not ask questions you do not wish to have answered.’

The catchshaft joined an angled tunnel that rose up at a steep slant, and they began to ascend. Rafen advanced after the High Chaplain. ‘This is about the weapon. The spear.’

It was a long moment before Astorath replied. ‘It is so much more than that.’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ said Rafen.

When the High Chaplain spoke again, there was a challenge in it, his words severe. ‘You took the Spear of Telesto. You, a common Adeptus Astartes. You took up a weapon forged for a primarch’s hands and made it live. Such a thing should not have happened.’

‘It did,’ Rafen admitted. ‘I do not know how.’

‘A lie,’ snapped Astorath. ‘Who held the weapon before you, Rafen? What was his name?’

‘Arkio.’ He let out a sigh. ‘My blood-sibling.’

Astorath snorted, throwing a look over his shoulder. ‘Arkio the traitor. Arkio the corrupted. A puppet of the Ruinous Powers, created to cause a fatal schism in our Chapter!’

Rafen’s hands contracted into fists and his anger smouldered, but the High Chaplain was right. Arkio had betrayed his Chapter, he had been tainted by Chaos. ‘True enough. But I forgave him.’

This time Astorath gave a mocking laugh. It was an ugly, chilling sound. ‘You did? How generous of you. Was that before or after you ended his life?’

‘He knew of it,’ Rafen bit out the words. ‘I sent him to the Emperor with that.’

‘If there is justice in this universe, then He Upon The Throne sent your errant kindred’s soul into the hells.’

Rafen’s jaw stiffened but he refused to rise to the bait. They walked in silence for a few moments before Astorath spoke again.

‘Very well. Here is what I wish to say to you. It is a question, and if you do not answer, what I suspect will be proven true.’

‘I am not afraid of your words, executioner!’ Rafen snarled.

The High Chaplain looked back at him. In the lumen-glow, he resembled a monstrous apparition from some ancient fable, come to claim the Blood Angel’s immortal soul. ‘What happened when you wielded the spear, Rafen? What did you feel?’

Powerful, heady memories flashed in his thoughts. He felt the divine radiance of the spear on his face again, the light shining off the blade. ‘I…’

‘I know,’ Astorath growled. ‘The spear can only speak to the Black Rage and the Red Thirst. You touched that darkness within, didn’t you? That primal force Sanguinius left behind in all of us. You cannot deny it was so! It was the only way to activate the weapon!’

Rafen lost himself in the moment and he saw–

–the scarlet path unfurling about him in a storm of seething crimson, a fog of bloodlust madness descending upon him. The raw energy of his primarch a flash-fire in his veins, the traces of Sanguinius’s genetic code engorging with preternatural power–

Astorath nodded coldly. ‘I have seen hundreds of my battle brothers hollow of eye and fallen within. Are you any different from them?’

Rafen’s hands curled as if the Spear of Telesto lay across them, and he saw–

–golden fire, shards of lightning dazzling like fragments of suns, ripped from the air, collecting at the hollow heart of the teardrop blade–

He closed his eyes, and in the depths of his soul, he felt the mark of his eternal liege lord, indelible and bright as a star. ‘My life and my soul for the God-Emperor, for Sanguinius,’ he whispered. ‘For the Blood Angels.’

‘Your life and your soul,’ repeated the High Chaplain. ‘Are you ready to pay that price, Brother-Sergeant Rafen?’ Astorath rounded on him, and prodded him in the chest with an armour-clad finger. ‘Tell me, does the echo of that fury still resonate in you, even now? The gene-flaw overwhelmed you when you fought Arkio on Sabien, for how else could you have defeated him? My duty is clear, if any brother should fall to the Rage, then I–’

Rafen’s shout thundered down the tunnel. ‘I did not fall to the Rage!’ He shook his head. ‘You do not understand! The spear… it protected me.’

Astorath’s expression made it clear he thought little of that explanation, and he turned away, continuing along the tunnel. ‘How convenient.’

‘There have been those who looked into that abyss and did not end their days in madness,’ Rafen insisted. ‘Lemartes, who you yourself gave authority to live on and fight for the Chapter! And Mephiston, the Lord of Death!’

‘You compare yourself to them?’ grated High Chaplain. ‘Such arrogance. You are a pale shadow of the Guardian of the Lost, boy. And as for the Librarian… Mephiston may have spoken for you at Master Dante’s side, but I am not swayed by the words of a witchkin, even one as great as he!’

Rafen’s expression soured. ‘I speak only the truth.’

‘As you see it,’ Astorath shot back. ‘I know what you think of me. You see this–’ he brandished his axe and spun it in his grip ‘–and nothing else! I do not want the blood of my brothers on my hands, but I accept it.’ For a moment, there was sorrow in the other warrior’s voice; then it was gone. ‘I know my duty and I will never shrink from it. I have my curse and I keep it.’ He pointed at Rafen once again. ‘You have spoken of responsibility, of obligations. What if yours is to die?’

Rafen’s blood ran cold. ‘Only in death does duty end, and my duty has not yet ended. I am certain of that.’

‘Indeed?’ growled Astorath, cutting through a heap of fallen masonry with his blade. ‘And who are you to make that choice? Other Sons of Sanguinius, veterans all and learned warriors with centuries of experience upon their shoulders, see things differently. There are those voices on the Council of Angels that would see the duty of Brother Rafen to come to an end. Your blood kinship with the corrupted one is reason enough.’

‘I…’ The words came hard to him, but Rafen persisted. ‘I will not walk the same path as my sibling. Arkio was flawed, he was led astray. If I had been there before it happened…’ He trailed off and took a breath. The air was different here. He tasted changes in pressure and temperature that indicated they were nearing the desert surface. ‘I am not him,’ Rafen said firmly.

‘Your word is not sufficient,’ Astorath told him. ‘And now the Chapter finds itself rising from the aftermath of what your sibling wrought upon it. We are wounded, and hard choices must be made if we are to go forward. Secrets kept… and truths expunged for the good of the Blood Angels.’

‘The Sons of Sanguinius have endured far worse,’ Rafen persisted. ‘This… this trial will not break us.’

‘We have endured, aye,’ Astorath admitted. ‘But how? Through insight and pragmatism, by strength of our blood and the willingness to do what we must. The primarch taught us that when he left us.’

Rafen shook his head. ‘And so, what is to be done? Shall we excise my sibling’s insurrection from our chronicles as if it never took place, wipe the minds of the men who witnessed it? You would have the Blood Angels strike this incident from history?’ His lips twisted in disgust. ‘We do not hold our honour so cheap!’

‘Our numbers are depleted, our forces scattered to maintain the illusion of strength. Worlds have been burned in the wake of this. Tell me, Brother Rafen. What would you have us do?’

‘I would not embrace silence instead of truth!’ he spat. ‘That is not what the Great Angel would wish! He knew the truth better than any living being!’

‘What truth?’ demanded Astorath.

‘That we are imperfect!’ Rafen dared the High Chaplain to deny him. ‘We are not like the whelps of Fulgrim, professing that we are faultless and infallible! To pretend we are incapable of error is a weakling’s way, it is foolhardy and arrogant.’ He nodded fiercely, his temper rising. ‘The insurrection must not be forgotten, the lesson of it must live with us forever so that it will never come to pass again. We are our history, the best and the worst of it. That is what Sanguinius knew!’

Astorath paused and gave him a long look. The High Chaplain’s dark axe glittered in the gloom, the wicked edge of the weapon still sharp despite the many rocks it had cut aside during their ascent. ‘You are exactly what I thought you were, Rafen,’ said the High Chaplain, at length. He turned away. ‘Now, come. We are close to the surface.’

Until that moment, there had been doubt in Rafen’s mind. The possibilities existed in a kind of half-state, a chance that his future would unfold in one way or another, the path of his life crossing here with that of Astorath the Grim. Until that moment, he had not been certain.

But no doubts shrouded the understanding now. The look in those fathomless, bleak eyes, the iron in the words. Whatever he may have said or done, Rafen knew in his blood and bones that the Redeemer of the Lost had come back to Baal and to the Regio for him.

Astorath was here to judge him.

It took both of the Blood Angels to shoulder the hexagonal grille up from the stays that held it in place. Rafen spent a bolt shell on the lock, the mechanism coughing out sparks. With a skirl of rusted, elderly hinges, the hatch came open and they finally emerged in the desert.

The High Chaplain’s estimate had been correct. The cold night sky was changing colour toward the distant Chalice Mountains, shading away from deep black toward purple hues. Eventually it would push toward orange-red as the Baalite sun made its slow advance, but that was hours away yet. Baal’s night was long and slow.

Seamless drifts of rusty sand ranged off in every direction, settled in dunes and wavelike patterns by the passage of the razorwinds. Like the night, the storm had passed and only the faint breath of its trailing edge could be felt. Rafen turned in place and found a smudge of grey on the opposite horizon. The storm cell was advancing toward the westerly canyons, where its lethal energy would be expended in the endless, echoing arroyos.

Still turning, he got his bearings and found the distant lights of the Regio. They had emerged several kilometres from the outer keep walls, at the very edge of the perimeter zone. He squinted, cursing the damage to his helmet’s optics. He wanted a closer look.

The sight seemed wrong – or more accurately, the sight seemed right, as if nothing were amiss at the Regio. Even at this distance, he expected to have seen plumes of smoke, weapon flashes. Rafen strained into the wind to listen, trying to pluck out the sounds of combat from the susurrus of desert noises.

He heard nothing, and went tense with concern. Had the enemy assault been so lethal, so swift that it had passed like the razorwind and left no survivors? Rafen took a step toward the distant complex. ‘The attack… The Word Bearers…’

‘Even they are not overconfident enough to attempt so gaudy a suicide,’ rumbled Astorath. ‘The Sons of Lorgar, spite curse them, are not here. They never were.’

Rafen rounded on him, all his suspicions ringing in his mind like a clarion. ‘You.’ He pointed at the High Chaplain. ‘You lied. There was no assault on the Regio.’

‘A ruse on my part,’ admitted the other warrior, watching him steadily. ‘A small piece of theatre so that I might have what I needed.’

‘The explosive, the inclinator… you did that yourself. The charge was enough to damage the platform but not enough to penetrate your armour…’ He shook his head. ‘Why would you do such a thing, executioner? You could have killed us both in the fall!’

Astorath’s dead eyes locked with his. ‘That was not your time to die, Rafen. I did what I did to isolate you. I wanted to learn your character… and it is easier to divine the nature of a warrior’s soul if his attention is elsewhere.’

Rafen’s expression soured, annoyance rising in him. ‘Is your little game concluded, then? Have you got what you wanted from me?’

‘I have made my decision,’ said Astorath, as his axe dropped into his waiting hands.

In the next second he was charging, a feral snarl splitting his lips.

Combat reflexes took over and Rafen drew his bolt pistol in a fraction of a second, his other hand snatching at the hilt of the battle knife resting in a sheath along the line of his spine. He fired a single shot at the High Chaplain, aiming low, aiming to wound, to slow him down.

But he might well have called out his intentions in a shout. Astorath swept his blade aside and intercepted the bolt mid-flight with a crack of sound, the round blasting harmlessly into the dirt. Rafen dodged to one side as the weapon’s fast, fluid arc bisected the space where he had been standing, and he rolled, tumbling over red dirt and half-buried rocks.

The High Chaplain lost no momentum at all, pushing off a broken boulder into a shallow leap, leading with the Executioner’s Axe. Rafen knew he couldn’t deflect the blow, and feinted away, desperately trying to extend his distance. Astorath’s axe split the rock where he had been standing in two – and still the other warrior came, without missing a beat.

Rafen managed to cross the axis of his opponent’s blade with the battle knife and there was a grating screech of metal on metal as their fractal-edges met violently. The impact was so great it resonated up the bones of the Blood Angel’s arms and lit lines of pain through every joint.

He had the bolt pistol, and he had a shot to take. At close range, if he was clever and if he was lucky, Rafen might have been able to put a kill-shot into Astorath’s face – but he could not bring himself to do so.

‘Cease this!’ he spat.

The other warrior grunted and shoved the axe forward. The sickle-blade head smacked Rafen across the jaw and staggered him. He felt blood froth in his mouth and fragments of teeth in his throat.

Astorath finally paused, shifting his grip in an almost leisurely fashion. Preparing to strike the death-blow. ‘In a moment,’ he replied.

‘You have no right to do this,’ said Rafen, spitting out gobs of bloody spittle into the dust.

‘I have the right,’ Astorath replied coldly.

‘I will not die for the sake of those who doubt me!’ Rafen roared his defiance. ‘You may not share the weakness that tainted your sibling,’ said the High Chaplain, ‘but the rage lurks in you, as much as you deny it. I see it. I can smell it on you.’ He swung at the air, the axe humming. ‘Do not fear. I will make it swift. You will end with honour.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Rafen shook his head. ‘I am the master of my own will! The rage and the thirst do not command me!’

Astorath attacked again, cutting at him, a tornado of axe blows falling across him. Once again, Rafen could only react to the assault and try to stay alive for a few more seconds. His anger built inside him like a floodhead.

‘I see it,’ Astorath growled. ‘You cannot hide it from me, brother. Stop pretending you are in control and submit to the fury!’

And for a moment, that was all he wanted to do. It would have been so simple to release, to open the gates to the anger. To let the fire build and build until it consumed him. He wanted to fall into the fight.

But I have looked into that abyss and my future does not lie there.

Rafen raised his head and, very deliberately, he tossed the bolt pistol away. Then, with a flick of the wrist, he threw his combat blade into the sand, where it buried itself up to the pommel.

‘You want my anger, my rage?’ Rafen shook his head. ‘I will not give it to you, Astorath. I will not let you comfort yourself with the lie that you ended my life to save me from the gene-curse. If you want to end me, you will do it in cold blood.’ He dropped to one knee and adopted the position of a penitent at prayer, head bowed, hands crossed in the sign of the aquila. Rafen looked at the ground, losing himself in the myriad grains of red sand. Sanguinius, I put my trust in you as ever I have. My fate is yours to choose.

At first, silence, then the rush of the air as the axe fell towards the bare flesh of the back of his neck. Rafen did not close his eyes. He wanted to see, right to the very end.

The axe blade fell slowly, and by the prickling of his skin, Rafen felt the impossibly sharp edge touch his flesh, resting there. A line of icy cold as nerves were severed, then the hot pain of spilling blood – all this from just the merest touch of the Executioner’s Axe upon him.

A shadow moved across the red sand, and after a long moment Rafen dared to look up.

He was alone.

It took an hour or so for Rafen to walk the distance back to the walls of the Regio, and not once along that path did he see another soul. The wound on the back of his neck began to heal as the Larraman cells did their work, but the sting of it told him that from this day forward he would forever have a scar there, a perfect line of damaged flesh below his skull.

Dawn had come as the sentries saw him emerge from the desert, and it was Brother Krixos who met him at the Wanderer’s Gate.

‘Rafen!’ The expressionless eyes of the Techmarine’s helm studied him. ‘We feared you had perished in the accident in the inclinator shaft!’

‘The accident,’ Rafen repeated. ‘Yes.’

‘How did you survive?’

‘The old tunnel network, the catchshafts…’ He paused, thinking through what he would say next. ‘I was guided.’

‘Praise the God-Emperor and Sanguinius,’ said Krixos.

‘The primarch watches over me.’ He paused, glancing around. ‘The High Chaplain’s ship, the guncutter… Is it still here?’

‘The Fate?’ Krixos gave a nod. ‘The hangar dome was being opened as I left to come to the gate.’ He looked up. ‘It was about to lift–’

Rafen was already running for the iron spiral stairs that would take him up to the landing platforms.

He sprinted on to the elevated disc as the guncutter’s thrusters gave off a low thrum of power. Exhaust vents along the ventral fuselage chugged fire and a hot wash of spent promethium stink washed over him. The Fate rocked as the engine note shifted, rising as the motors gained power with each passing second.

Rafen raised a hand to shield his eyes, searching the portals along the sides of the ship, the cockpit canopy for signs of life but, like the dark-toned hull, all the windows of the guncutter were tinted black-red.

‘Astorath!’ he said, but his cry was snatched away by the noise.

Then the wound on the back of his neck prickled, and he spun around. The Redeemer of the Lost stood before Rafen, night-black wings rising up from behind him. His blade was still lined with crimson. ‘There are few who have felt the kiss of this weapon and lived to speak of it.’ The High Chaplain regarded him gravely, raising his voice so he might be heard. ‘But I have never once come to regret the moments when I pulled my terminal blow.’

‘I know the Black Rage and the Red Thirst lie within me.’ The words spilled out of Rafen’s mouth. ‘They are part of all of us. When and if that fury will return to me, I cannot know.’

‘It will,’ Astorath told him, and once again there was a moment of regret in his voice. ‘It always does.’

‘But I will not yield to it. This I swear, on our primarch’s name.’

The High Chaplain walked silently past him toward the guncutter, and from beneath the ship a ramp dropped down to accept him. Astorath paused at the foot of the gangway, and he pointed his axehead at Rafen. ‘You are not what I expected, brother. And so you live. For now.’ He sheathed the weapon. ‘But know this. After what happened on Sabien, you are being watched. And if you should give me cause, when we meet again I will not stay my hand.’

The Fate’s engines howled, and Rafen backed away as the guncutter’s hatch sealed shut. With a roar, the winged craft powered away into Baal’s sky, leaving the Blood Angel to watch it recede to a dark, distant speck.

He sensed Krixos approaching. ‘If you are ready, I have been informed that the rail transporter is cleared to depart the Regio for the return journey.’ The Techmarine looked up, studying the sky. ‘Now that the storm has passed.’

‘Has it?’ asked Rafen, staring into the distance.

An Extract from Know No Fear

Dan Abnett

[mark: -1.01.20]

The fleet tender Campanile passes the inner Mandeville Point of the Veridian System, outer marker ring 16, and the local picket. It broadcasts full and correct anchorage codes to the watch ships at ring 14, and to the Veridius Maxim Star Fort. The Star Fort retracts its target acquisition lock and signals the tender to pass.

The ship appears to be decelerating.

[mark: -0.55.37]

Teleport flare. The crackle of the energy burst shivers across the open hillside, and ozone taints the cold northern air.

Erebus, Dark Apostle, becomes flesh, and emerges from the scratch of light. He is not clad in ceremonial armour, he is wearing wargear that has been stripped down to fighting weight, darkened with ashes and inscribed over its entire surface with tiny, spidery script.

A strike team is waiting for him. Its leader is Essember Zote of the Gal Vorbak, a warrior of the most incendiary fury. His sword is already drawn. His armour is the colour of blood.

This is how their enemies will know them. Blood red, the colour of fire, the colour of hell, the colour of gore, the colour of the Octed.

Zote has a work party of the Tzenvar Kaul with him, seventy men, all childless. They have been working since they arrived at dawn on one of the first ships.

The Satric Plateau, two thousand kilometres north of Numinus City, is a lonely place. The hard winter has already arrived. Because of its size and terrain, the Satric region was chosen as one of the sixty-eight staging fields for the operation. Landers are parked all along the line of the slope, cargo hatches open to the grey sky.

Erebus inspects the work.

This particular area of the Satric Plateau, sheened with frost, is especially perfect. It took several days of comparative study with the orbital scans to determine its perfection compared to other potential sites. It is consistently flat in relation to sea level. It is aligned according to magnetic north and the tidal process, and has favourable moonrise on the day of the conjunction. It possesses other qualities too, other qualities that could not be disclosed by standard Imperial physics. Immaterium vectors are in alignment. The skin of the empyrean is thin here tonight.

This is the true conjunction. Erebus reflects upon how remarkably perfect it is. Not just workable or suitable or acceptable. Perfect. From today, for the next sixty days. It is as though some power somewhere manufactured the perfection at exactly the right time.

The men of the Kaul have laid the circle. Polished black rocks, each taken from the volcanic slopes of Isstvan V and marked with a sigil, are arranged in a perfect circle a kilometre in diameter.

Erebus takes the last rock from Zote. They are summoning stones. The latent power in them makes him feel sick, just taking one in his hand.

He places it in the gap in the circle. It clacks against the stones on either side as he sets it.

‘Begin,’ he tells Zote.

The men of the Tzenvar Kaul approach, carrying other offerings from the Isstvan system. In procession, they bear along portable stasis flasks like censers in some Catheric worship. The fluid in the stasis flasks is murky with blood. Harvested progenitor glands. Harvested gene-seed. The lost life of betrayed souls now offered for the final blasphemy. There is Salamanders gene-seed here, Iron Hands, Raven Guard. Erebus knows that the Ruinous Powers make no distinctions, so there is other gene-seed here besides: Emperor’s Children, Death Guard, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, even Luna Wolf. Any that fell during the secret abominations of Isstvan III or V are suitable.

Erebus stops the first man in the procession, and strokes the glass of the stasis flask. He knows what’s in it, the mangled tissue in the cloudy suspension.

‘Tarik…’ he whispers.

He nods. The Kaul start to carry the flasks into the circle. The moment they cross the stones, the bearers start to whimper and retch. Several pass out, or suffer strokes, and fall, smashing the flasks.

It doesn’t matter.

The moon is rising, a pale curl in a mauve sky already busy with lights.

Zote hands Erebus a data-slate, and the Apostle checks the approach timings. He is data tracking using anchorage codes.

He hands the slate back and takes the vox-link in exchange.

‘Now,’ he says.

[mark: -0.40.20]

‘Acknowledged,’ replies Sorot Tchure.

He walks back to join the others. His men are mingling with the men of Luciel’s company on the company decks of the Samothrace. They have finished the formal dinner that Luciel had arranged. None need to eat, certainly not the fine foodstuffs that Luciel provided, but it is a symbolic gesture. To dine as allies, as warrior-kings. To bond ahead of the coming war.

‘Problem?’ asks Luciel.

Tchure shakes his head.

‘Some question about loading platforms.’

Tchure looks at Luciel.

‘Why have you changed your markings and armour field?’ asks Luciel.

‘We are remaking ourselves,’ Tchure replies. ‘A new scheme to celebrate our new beginning. Perhaps it is down to the character of our beloved primarch, may the cosmos bless him. We have never quite found ourselves, Honorius. Not like you. We have struggled to realise a proper role for ourselves. I do not believe you appreciate how fortunate you are. The clarity of your purpose and position as Ultramarines. From the start you had a reputation that never needed to be questioned, and a function that never needed to be clarified.’

He pauses.

‘For years, I have despised Lorgar,’ he says quietly.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Sorot, you mustn’t–’

‘Look at your primarch, Honorius. So singular in aspect. So noble. I have envied you, envied the Imperial Fists, the Luna Wolves, the Iron Hands. And I am not alone. We struggle with a mercurial mind, Honorius. We labour under the burden of a brilliant but fallible commander. We no longer bear the word, my friend. We bear Lorgar.’

‘Some fall into their roles quickly,’ says Luciel firmly. ‘I have thought about this. Some fall into their roles quickly. Others take time to evolve, to discover what their purpose is to be. Your primarch, great Lorgar, is a son of the Emperor. There will be a role for him. It may turn out to be far greater than any that falls to Guilliman or Dorn. Yes, we’re lucky to have clarity. I know that. So are the Fists, the Hands, the Angels. Terra above, so are the Wolves of Fenris and the World Eaters, Sorot. Perhaps the lack of clarity you have laboured under thus far is because Lorgar’s role is yet unimaginable.’

Tchure smiles.

‘I can’t believe you’re defending him.’

‘Why can’t you?’

Tchure shrugs.

‘I think we may be finding our purpose at last, Honorius,’ he says. ‘Hence our new resolve. Our change in scheme and armour colour. I… I was asked to join the advance.’

Luciel frowns, quizzical.

‘You told me that.’

‘I have things to prove.’

‘Why?’ asks Luciel.

‘I have to prove my commitment to the new purpose.’

‘And how do you do that?’ asks Luciel.

Tchure doesn’t answer. Luciel notices how the Word Bearer’s fingers stir, tapping the tabletop. What agitation is that? Nerves?

‘I learned something,’ Tchure says suddenly, changing the subject. ‘A little piece of warcraft that I thought you would appreciate.’

Luciel lifts his cup, sips wine.

‘Go on,’ he smiles.

Tchure toys with his own cup, a straight-sided golden beaker.

‘It was on Isstvan, during the fight there.’

‘Isstvan? There’s been fighting in the Isstvan system?’

Tchure nods.

‘It hasn’t been reported. Was it a compliance?’

‘It’s recent,’ says Tchure. ‘The full reports of the campaign are still being ratified by the Warmaster. Then they will be shared.’

Luciel raises his eyebrows.

‘Guilliman won’t appreciate being left out of the loop for any length of time. Is this how the Warmaster intends to conduct the Great Crusade from now on? Guilliman insists on sharing all military data. And Isstvan was compliant–’

Tchure holds up his hand.

‘It’s recent. It’s fresh. It’s done now. Your primarch will hear all about it in due course. The point is, the fight was bitter. The Imperium faced a foe that had discovered the mortal power of treachery.’

‘Treachery?’ asks Luciel.

‘Not as a strategy, you understand. Not as a tactic to surprise and undermine. I mean as a property. A power.’

‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ smiles Luciel. slightly disarmed. ‘It’s as though you’re talking about… magic.’

‘I almost am. The enemy believed that there was power in treachery. To win the confidence of your opponent, to mask your animus, and then to turn… Well, they believed that this actually invested them with power.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘Don’t you?’ asks Tchure. ‘The potency, they believed, depends on the level of betrayal. If an ally suddenly turns on an ally, that’s one level. But if a trusted friend turns on a friend. That was the purest kind of power, because the treachery ran so deep. Because it required that so many moral codes be broken. Trust. Friendship. Loyalty. Reliance. Honesty. Such an act was powerful because it was beyond belief. It achieved a potency that was akin to the most powerful blood sacrifice.’

Luciel sits back.

‘Interesting, certainly,’ he says. ‘For them to believe that. Culturally, it speaks a great deal to the strength of their honour codes. If they believed this invested them with power, then it seems like an act of superstition. It has little strategic merit in terms of warcraft or technique, of course. Except, I suppose, psychologically.’

‘It certainly worked for them.’

‘Until you crushed them, of course.’

Sorot Tchure does not reply.

‘What’s the matter?’ asks Luciel.

‘It’s like a sacrifice,’ says Tchure. ‘You identify and commit the greatest betrayal possible, and it is like a sacrifice to anoint and begin a vast ceremony of victory and destruction.’

‘I still don’t understand. It has no tactical methodology.’

‘Really? Really, Honorius? What if it does? What if there is an entirely other kind of warfare, one that extends beyond all practical techniques, one that defies and eclipses all the martial law codified by the Ultramarines and recognised by the Imperium? A ritual warfare? A kind of daemonic warfare?’

‘You say that as if you believe it,’ Luciel laughs.

‘Think about what I’m saying,’ says Tchure quietly. He looks around the chamber, at his men talking and drinking with Luciel’s. ‘Think of this… If the Word Bearers turned against the Ultramarines, wouldn’t that be the greatest betrayal of all? Not Lorgar turning on Guilliman, for they dislike each other anyway. Here, in this chamber, between two men who have actually managed to become friends?’

‘That would be the most atrocious deceit,’ Luciel agrees. ‘I concede it would have some power. As shock value in the Legion. We are immune to fear, but horror and surprise might unman us briefly at the unimaginable nature of the act.’

Tchure nods.

‘And it would be the centrepiece,’ he says. ‘The sacrificial spark to ignite the ritual war.’

Luciel nods gravely.

‘I suppose you’re right. It would be well to understand, and allow for, an enemy who carried such conviction in the power of infamy.’

Tchure smiles.

‘I wish you understood,’ he says.

[mark: -0.20.20]

The Campanile crosses the inner ring, its codes accepted by the defence grid. The mass of the fleet disposition lies ahead of it, the yards. The bright glory of Calth.

As it passes within the orbit of Calth’s moon, it begins an abrupt acceleration.

[mark: -0.19.45]

‘Understand what?’ asks Luciel.

‘I was asked to join the advance,’ says Tchure.

‘And?’

‘I have to prove my commitment to the new purpose.’

Luciel stares at him.

For just a second. A second. And in that second, he finally realises what Sorot Tchure has been trying to tell him.

That in order not to betray one impossible bond, Sorot Tchure is required to betray another.

The goblet falls from Luciel’s grip. His hand is already moving, through instinct alone, for his sidearm. Only sheer, disfunctioning shock is slowing him down.

Tchure’s plasma pistol is already in his hand.

The goblet hasn’t even hit the tabletop yet.

Tchure fires. Point blank, the plasma bolt strikes Honorius Luciel’s torso. The bolt is as hot as a main sequence star. It vaporises armour plate, carapace, reinforced bone, spinal cord. It annihilates meat, both hearts, and secondary organs. It turns blood into dust. The shot’s hammer blow impact knocks Luciel down, through the table, smashing the tabletop up to meet the falling goblet, spinning it into the air in a semi-circle of wine.

Luciel’s men are turning, caught by surprise, not understanding the noise and motion, not understanding the weapon discharge or the violent collapse of their captain. Tchure’s men simply draw their guns. They are not distracted by the gunfire. Their eyes never leave the men they are talking to, men who are turning away in confusion.

Luciel rolls on the deck, limbs thrashing, as the smashed table falls around him. The goblet bounces off the deck plate beside his head. His eyes are wide, straining, staring. The plasma shot has burned a massive hole clean through him. His body is cored. The deck plating is visible through his twitching torso. The edges of the gaping damage are scorched and cooked by superheating. His armour is likewise punctured, the cut edges glowing. Larraman cells cannot hope to clog or close a wound quite so catastrophic. Tchure is on his feet, his chair tipping backwards behind him, toppling. He swings the plasma weapon down, aims it at Luciel’s face, and fires again.

Around him, the chamber shakes with a sudden storm of gunfire. Twenty or thirty boltguns discharge almost simultaneously. Armoured bodies, blown backwards, fall. Blood mist fills the air.

The goblet lands on the third bounce, rolls in a circle, and comes to rest on its side next to Honorius Luciel’s seared and shattered skull.

Vermilion

Ben Counter

It had the humanoid shape common to many intelligent xenos, but its four limbs and head made up the totality of its resemblance to a human being. The inner layers of its skin were bioluminescent, while the outer layers formed black flaps and ridges running along the front of its head and body. From the back of its torso and limbs hung thousands of half-metre-long cilia, quivering tendrils that, it was surmised, propelled it through the oceans of its home world much like the flagellae of single-celled Terran organisms. Its strange gnarled skin created hundreds of gills all over it, and gaseous respiration was achieved through twin pulsing air sacs in its throat.

It had no eyes. Its sensory input came from the pits along its arms and legs, which absorbed scents from its surroundings. It therefore knew exactly what was going on around it. It knew it was a prisoner.

The Imperial Fists had shackled the xenos in a drop-pod. The drop-pod stood in the centre of a shattered plain of crystal that reflected the rose-pink sun through a million broken facets. Bullet scars scattered multicoloured sprays of light, refracted further through the translucent pools of blood that had yet to dry.

Several other drop-pods, in the red and yellow livery of the Imperial Fists, stood, still smouldering. The twenty Space Marines of the strike force were grouped up around the landing site, keeping a watch in all directions.

And a short distance away was the Ordo Xenos Field Research Outpost, draped in bodies both human and xenos. The metal and flakboard watchtower made up the head of an installation that punched deep into the crystalline surface. Its doors had been blasted open and most of the bodies were heaped up around the scorched entrance. Jumpsuited tech-orderlies had been dragged out and butchered on the crystal plain. Gun-servitors had shot down dozens of xenos – one servitor was still trundling back and forth, training its autoguns across the battlefield.

‘We were too late,’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon. Two of his battle-brothers were hauling bodies out of the outpost and laying them out. Two more were heaping up the dead aliens, ready for immolation. ‘Scout Nemeidos reports that none living remain inside.’

‘Did Carmillas keep any live specimens?’ asked Librarian Deiphobus, the force’s commanding officer.

‘It seems not,’ replied Ctesiphon. ‘Nemeidos’s squad will do a full sweep, but it looks like there are only tissue samples, not whole organisms.’

Deiphobus knelt beside the body of a woman whose long blonde hair was half-scorched black. She wore carapace armour, tailor-made for her slight figure, and emblazoned with the stylised ‘I’ of the Inquisition. One of her eyes was a fascinatingly complicated bionic, multi-faceted and apparently controlled by intricate clockwork. In life she must have been very striking.

‘We need to get the body to the apothecarion,’ said Deiphobus. ‘Some inquisitors conceal datavaults inside their bodies. Back of the skull, base of the spine. Perhaps she saved her research.’

‘Is there anything you can do?’ said Ctesiphon.

Librarian Deiphobus took off one of his gauntlets and held his hand over the dead inquisitor’s face. He closed his eyes, and concentrated for a moment. ‘The body is fresh,’ he said. ‘Sometimes some consciousness remains. But not here. She is gone. All of her.’

The other bodies were Ordo Xenos researchers. Most of them had some augmentation – a bionic eye, or obvious cranial implants under a shaven scalp. Many had hands plated in heat-resistant ceramite, to help them handling dangerous samples. They had been killed with a mixture of small arms fire and blade wounds.

‘The xenos struck quickly,’ continued Deiphobus. ‘It does not take a psyker to see that. We arrived but an hour after we received Carmillas’s distress signal and yet the battle was cold when we got here.’

‘How did these aliens even know she was here?’ said Ctesiphon.

Deiphobus glanced behind him, at the sealed drop-pod.

‘There is a place,’ he said, ‘where that very secret waits for me.’

They staked out the xenos like a sacrifice on some primitive world. Each limb was fixed to a post driven into the crystal ground. Its head was restrained, so it could not look away from Deiphobus as the Imperial Fists Librarian stood over it. The pink sun glared down into its face.

Squad Ctesiphon surrounded the alien, their boltguns ready.

‘These heathens slaughtered an inquisitor’s entire personal staff,’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon. ‘At the first suggestion of danger, you will each put two rounds into this alien’s central mass.’

‘I doubt that such will be necessary,’ said Deiphobus as he knelt beside the alien. ‘But if I give the order, execute it.’

‘Emperor’s luck be with you,’ said Ctesiphon.

‘The first thing we learn in the Chapter Librarium,’ replied Deiphobus, ‘is that there is no such thing as luck.’ He took off his right gauntlet and placed his hand against the alien’s forehead. Creatures with approximately human form tended to keep their brains in what passed for their heads. Deiphobus felt an unyielding cranium under the layers of rubbery, spongy skin.

He closed his eyes. He let his mind sink back away from his senses, imagining his consciousness draining out towards the hind-brain where the instincts of a human still remained, not quite erased by a Space Marines training.

He imagined a black ocean, torn by storms and endlessly deep. He fell, as if from the deck of a ship, and plunged into that ocean. The input of his senses – the faint whining wind of the crystal plains, the smell of gunsmoke and dried blood from the battlefield, the feeling of the armour encasing his body – fell away, separated by an increasing stretch of liquid darkness.

Down here, in the cold and blackness, strange things lurked, as they did in the lower reaches of a real ocean. They were the rogue thoughts, instincts that a Space Marine ignored and the random outputs of a psychic mind. These were parts of himself that Deiphobus had discarded. Cowardice, a lurking predator, had been banished here, for a Space Marine was hypno-doctrinated to know no fear. The concerns of a normal man, for which a Space Marine had no time, were here too – a shoal of them, petty worries and fears that dominated a man’s mind. Deiphobus had once had a family, and down here the memories of them remained, ignored by the warrior. He had lived a life cut short in adolescence, when that youth had died and the Space Marine been constructed in his place.

Now Deiphobus sunk to the bedrock of his mind, the architecture from which all his thoughts and faculties hung. Here he had built, over years of meditation and study, the fortress from which he could conduct his psychic operations.

Deiphobus did not need to imagine the fortress of his mind, for he had built it in such detail and clarity that it rose up to him unbidden. Its command centre was a great circular room with a throne from which he could observe the whole fortress, and which had a hundred doors each leading to a different mental landscape. The fortress’s armoury had dozens of weapons and suits of armour, studied artefacts of the Chapter’s past with which Deiphobus could arm himself when the mental interrogations became hostile. There were even rows of cells winding deep into the rock, where certain memories were held that were too important to forget but too dangerous to give free rein in his mind.

Deiphobus coalesced in the command centre, seated on the throne. The image of his mental construct looked much as the real Deiphobus did then, the armour perhaps a little more polished, the face perhaps a little more youthful, looking as Deiphobus had when he first built this place.

Outside this fortress, beyond the limits of Deiphobus’s own mind, was the alien’s consciousness. Hostile territory that Deiphobus had to invade. Each door in this place led to a different concept of that mind, which Deiphobus could navigate in search of the enemy’s secrets.

A human had that same basic architecture as Deiphobus himself. Deiphobus knew it well, and could use that to help him make of that mind a place he could search and battle through. But an alien’s mind was something else. Other xenos were psychically toxic, their minds coated with mental poison. Deiphobus’s interrogation entailed a risk that this alien might be just one such psychic deathtrap.

Deiphobus selected a door. It opened, and darkness was all he could see beyond it. A clashing, buzzing sound reached him, his mind’s interpretation of the alien’s surface-thought static. Perhaps it was the sound of the alien’s fear.

Deiphobus dived through the door. He gave himself burning wings to keep him aloft, and armed himself in the heavy gilded breaching armour he had seen displayed on the Phalanx.

He slammed into a wall of inchoate bedlam. It was madness. It was formless and unyielding. It was alien.

Deiphobus struggled to keep his self-image intact. It might dissolve in this chaos and leave him an unthinking, unfeeling particle, lost in here. He might never find his way out. He forced his armour to become more solid and heavy, layering more armour plates onto it until it resembled nothing that had ever been worn by a Space Marine. He imagined anchors dropping, finding purchase in the mire to lock him in position.

He was becoming less like a man and more like a battleship now, a space-bound machine of war. Deiphobus seized on that idea and now an armoured prow faced into the winds of formless matter that hammered at him. His anchors held him fast.

Deiphobus fired from the cannons of his battleship and blasted clear the area around him. It was scoured empty, resembling now the void of space.

Now Deiphobus took the alien’s mind and made from it planets and asteroids drifting around him, like the spacescape of an inner solar system full of young planets. He did not think he had enough control yet to conjure up a star to light this system, so he bathed it in a hard yellow-white light that glared down from nowhere. It was not perfect, but it would have to do.

Deiphobus lay at anchor, searching through the alien nebulae that glowed in every colour. Somewhere, there was something he could use, some common point of reference between this alien’s mind and that of a human.

His spaceship was not faring well. Cosmic winds were stripping away the gilt and revealing pitted steel underneath. The hull was beginning to disintegrate. Deiphobus could feel his orbit decaying, and the light from the nebulae and the stars was bending as the forces of this strange cosmos bore down on the invader.

Deiphobus let the doorway form again behind him and left the void behind. He coalesced again in the throne room of his fortress, letting his consciousness slip back into the familiar form of an Imperial Fist. That door closed, but now it had a window in it looking onto the voidscape Deiphobus had created from the formless mass. He locked the door with a silver key, and so that mental construct was locked into his memory, stored to be withdrawn and used later.

The Librarian held up a hand. His armour was, like the hull of the ship, scored and stripped down. Between the segments of his gauntlets he could see his finger bones, clean of flesh.

Deiphobus let the fortress drift apart, stone by stone, as he rose back towards the surface.

The bodies were burned, and the smoke discoloured the sky for miles around. Its reflection caught the crystals, so even they looked dirty.

Deiphobus watched the heap of corpses burning as he emerged from the drop-pod. Already there was little in the heap that could be recognised as either human, or as belonging to an alien of the species that still lay shackled inside the pod.

‘Librarian!’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon, who was overseeing the pyre. ‘We are ready to leave. There is nothing left on this world for us.’

‘Did Inquisitor Carmillas yield up anything?’ asked Deiphobus.

‘It does not look like it,’ replied Ctesiphon. ‘She had a data storage implant, but it contained only instructions to transmit an astropathic death-code in case the body was found. She is stowed on the shuttle. The apothecary might find more, but my gut tells me there will be nothing.’

‘Then stow the xenos,’ said Deiphobus. ‘We will be back in orbit within the hour.’

‘What was it like in there?’ asked Ctesiphon.

‘Alien. It was all I could do to force a foothold.’

‘It will give up the answers, Librarian.’

‘Ah,’ said Deiphobus, ‘but the answers to what? Even the most talented psyker cannot sift through the entire contents of a sentient mind. Answers are not always the biggest challenge.’

‘You need to know what questions to ask,’ said Ctesiphon.

‘Very good, my brother! This alien will keep all its secrets if I do not know to look for them. I will go through the usual, of course. What it is. What it was doing here. Recollections of the battle. But there is one question I would like to answer very dearly, and I fear it is that answer it will guard the most tenaciously.’

Both Deiphobus and Ctesiphon were looking at the pyre now. Ashes were blowing away. Soon only a few white embers would remain, by which time the Imperial Fists would have left this lonely world behind.

‘Why,’ said Ctesiphon, ‘was this alien the only survivor?’

‘That is the correct question, brother,’ said Deiphobus. ‘Have it restrained in the shuttle. I shall continue in the Nerve-Glove Hall.’

The Imperial Fists strike force finished their work and embarked onto their shuttles. Above them the shape of the Fate of Stalinvast hung, picked out bright silver by the system’s sun. In a roar of engines they left that world which had never had a name.

Deep into the forest, life seethed everywhere. Creatures something like insects, but with scales and the darting cunning of something warm-blooded, skittered across the broad wet leaves. The ground was alive, consisting of a mass of oozing amoebas which writhed through the black loam. The sky was alive, heavy with clouds of wisp-like life forms that rode the air currents before falling in drifts to drain anything they touched of blood. The air that Deiphobus breathed was alive, with microscopic parasites competing to force their way into his bloodstream first.

Deiphobus trudged through the thickening vegetation. It dragged at him, trying to suck him down into the murk. It was up to his thighs, the slurping of the squirming mud like the sound of hungry jaws churning.

Around him, titanic remains of some xenos city decayed into the darkness. They looked grown more than built, great biological shapes of smooth stone now broken up and tumbled by invading roots. Something that might have been a face, or perhaps an image of a moon boiled in solar blazes, loomed over him through the dense canopy. Great stone staircases lead up to nothing. Once, it had been something magnificent, the kind of sight that could convince a man that the aliens who lived here were gods.

‘What,’ said Deiphobus, ‘can we conclude from such a place?’ His self-image here was that of an Imperial Fists Scout, with lighter armour that afforded a lower chance of getting bogged down or stuck. His used a Scout’s combat knife to slash and saw through the worst of the foliage as he forced his way onwards.

‘Fallen from grace,’ he continued. Though he seemed here to be talking to himself, in that fortress at the back of his mind his words were being inscribed on tablets which could be filed away with the rest of his crucial memories. ‘Once there was an empire, now no longer. But that does not mean this xenos is weak. They have known civilisation, and they lost it, and a species does not always do so unwillingly. Though their empire has fallen, they have not tried to rebuild it. Whatever they are now, they have chosen to be.’

The ground in front of Deiphobus gave way and he stumbled forwards. Suddenly an acidic light was shining down on him. The sky was a boiling orange, dominated by the red giant star that burned across fully one-third of it.

A path cut straight down through the jungle, as if carved by a laser from above. The ground was dry and solid, unlike the quagmire elsewhere. Deiphobus looked up and down the path, but it curved out of sight.

‘This is the first world the alien’s mind gave to me,’ he continued. ‘Not a barren place, to act as a firebreak, but a place teeming with life. Its mind seethes. It is intelligent, but perhaps does not have complete control over its own mind. There may be parts of it the xenos itself does not know. But the path itself is the most interesting. It means…’

Deiphobus froze in mid-word. The movement he had spotted in the corner of his eye was not that of an insect or jungle predator. It was too deliberate, too calculated. It was human.

Deiphobus whirled around, drawing a bolt pistol. Inquisitor Carmillas stood behind him.

It was not Carmillas. She was dead. But the likeness was good. Her eyes were a little wrong, for the light behind them was not a glint of human emotion but a literal light, glowing as if the inside of her skull was on fire. Her fingers had too many joints and they did not all bend the right way, so the hand that gripped the hilt of her ornate power rapier looked more like a tentacled creature clasping its prey.

Carmillas lunged. Deiphobus turned the point of the rapier with his own blade but the rapier’s power field discharged with a crack like a gunshot in his ear. The knife shattered in his hand.

Deiphobus drove a shoulder forwards into the inquisitor’s midriff. She shifted to her back foot but held firm.

‘What are you?’ snarled Deiphobus.

‘Xenos within perimeter beta!’ gasped Carmillas in reply, speaking not to Deiphobus but to someone who wasn’t there.

Deiphobus drove the remains of his shattered blade up into the inquisitor’s stomach. The blade found a seam in her flakweave body armour and slid up into her abdomen.

It did not feel like it should. A Space Marine knew well what a knife felt like as it cut through skin and organ, and grazed against the spine and ribs. Carmillas was more like a solid mass, spongy and multi-layered. There was not enough blood. Not nearly enough.

Deiphobus put his shoulder under the inquisitor and threw her over him onto the ground. He followed up with a slash at waist height, further opening up the ruin of her torso.

Her face showed no pain. She looked more angry than anything, as if the wound was an insult. ‘Break open the armoury! To battle stations and repel them! Do not let them into the anatomy theatre!’

She lunged at Deiphobus, and her arm was jointed wrongly. The elbow bent the wrong way, the shoulder unfolding and giving her an extra joint that turned the point of the rapier under Deiphobus’s guard. The point punched between his ribs and speared him right through the torso.

The pain was real. Deiphobus gasped down a breath, and the effort tore open two of his lungs further. The power field burned out a great channel of burned flesh and organ. Red flashes burst in front of his eyes as one of his hearts was ripped apart and his nervous system plunged into shock.

But he was not dead. This was not real. He was not a Space Marine. He was a mental construct, psychically projected into the mind of an alien.

For a moment, the thought created a break in the pain. He could move, he could act, for another half-second longer.

He spent that half-second ramming his combat knife up into Carmillas’s throat. He twisted the blade and her head came off, revealing a shredded mass of grey-brown matter resembling the flesh of the xenos itself.

The inquisitor – which was not an inquisitor at all, but the alien’s concept of a human being – slumped to the ground. Deiphobus looked up at the sky and saw it was turning white. The blood was draining from his eyes and the world was greying out. It lost its shape, for the only thing keeping this world resembling a jungle was Deiphobus’s own willpower.

Deiphobus fell to his knees. He would have to give up on this projection. The xenos had been ready for him this time. But he had found out enough.

The jungle disintegrated, and Deiphobus was yanked up through the freezing ocean as his self-image exploded into a million shards of colour.

The apothecarion of the Fate of Stalinvast was dimly lit and cold. Many battle-brothers had breathed their last there, and their names were carved into the walls. This wing of the apothecarion was the Nerve-Glove Hall, and several devices, looking something like human-shaped casts split in two with their interiors covered in circuitry, were ranked in rows down the centre of the room. The nerve-glove was a tradition of the Imperial Fists – to anyone else it was a torture device, but to an Imperial Fist it was a means to express the strength of body and mind that Dorn’s example had instilled in them.

Deiphobus sat beside the autosurgeon unit on which the alien lay, its wrists and ankles shackled. The alien was comatose – it appeared dead to the sensors of the autosurgeon, but Deiphobus knew better, for its mind was still alive.

‘Librarian,’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon, who stood by the doorway. ‘You are awake.’

‘Most astute of you, brother,’ said Deiphobus. He was aware that sweat was running down his face and his hand still hovered over the xenos’s skull. He withdrew his hand and pulled his gauntlet back on. ‘How long have you stood there?’

‘Long enough to know the xenos is putting up a fight.’

‘It is,’ replied Deiphobus. ‘But there was a path.’

‘A path? Does it mean something?’

‘Everything in there means something.’ Deiphobus stood. His body ached. Every muscle must have been tensed. ‘Have you news?’

‘Techmarine Krusse found something else in the data-medium from Carmillas’s body.’

‘And?’

‘It was hidden, but in such a way that a standard Imperial tech-seance would find it. It was a single word.’

‘And?’

‘Vermilion,’ said Ctesiphon.

Deiphobus thought on this for a moment. ‘Vermilion,’ he repeated, as if searching for something concealed in the sound. ‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing else.’

‘How far are we out from Beati Magnis?’

‘The crew say five days.’

‘That should be enough.’ Deiphobus looked down at the alien. It was disgusting. All aliens were, but this one had something particularly foul in its near-human proportions. ‘They know of us and what we look like.’ said Deiphobus. ‘But they know nothing of our anatomy. Carmillas may have been their first contact with humanity.’

‘Do they pose a risk?’ asked Ctesiphon.

‘Hopefully not so great a risk,’ said Deiphobus, ‘as we pose to them.’

Deiphobus picked up the path as a deep channel scored through a charnel heap the size of a mountain. In the distance, more mountains rose, stretching off in a mighty range that seemed to touch the purple-black sky seething overhead. The bodies were those of the same alien species whose mind Deiphobus was traversing. They were all different, their skin a different hue of grey and brown, their facial features arranged in a different manner.

This was not a sight from the alien’s imagination. Deiphobus had performed enough interrogations to tell the difference between fantasy and memory. The xenos had seen this once. It had witnessed mountains of its own dead. But the path had not been a part of that memory.

To traverse this region of the alien’s mind Deiphobus had taken on the form, not of a Space Marine, but of a hardy Missionary, a leather-skinned wanderer leaning on a gnarled staff. He wore the once-white robes of the Missionaria Galaxia and his every step jangled with the gear he carried, enough to keep a man fed and sheltered through whatever wilds he might have to cross.

The watchtower was ahead, where the path finally ended. It was obsidian and jade, squat and powerful, a bastion against the wind that howled through the heaps of xenos dead. The door was a solid black slab with a single gap at eye level.

Deiphobus banged a fist on the door. A pair of eyes appeared at the slit. They were human eyes.

‘Speak the word,’ said a man’s voice.

‘Vermilion,’ said Deiphobus.

A few seconds passed. The door swung open. Deiphobus walked inside.

Out of the wind, it was warm. Light came from a circular hearth in the centre of the room. A few medicae orderlies were tending to wounded soldiers. Imperial Guard by the look of them.

Deiphobus knew their wounds never healed. The orderlies’ work was never done. They symbolised the sacrifices made to put this place here, nestled so deep in the alien’s mind that without a path, no one could ever find it again.

Inquisitor Carmillas sat by the fire, washing soiled bandages in a wooden pail of blood-pink water. She was not in her formal inquisitor’s garb. She war a long white dress, already stained with the soldiers’ blood. Her belt held a sword – not a power weapon but a functional warrior’s weapon. Her hair was down around her shoulders. Deiphobus noticed she did not have her bionic eye. Perhaps this was how she had looked when she was younger.

‘Inquisitor,’ said Deiphobus. ‘I have come here to speak with you.’

‘I am afraid,’ replied the inquisitor, ‘that I do not have much capacity for conversation. I am a psychic construct of the Carmillas, not the inquisitor herself. I am as she was in her unguarded moments, and I understand the likeness is very good, but aside from a few simple interactions I am unable to speak in her stead.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ said Deiphobus. ‘I imagine her psykers programmed you with the information I must request. I need to see the protocols with which this xenos was implanted.’

‘Of course,’ said Carmillas. She stood and wiped off her bloody hands on a cloth.

Gleaming black slabs of crystal rose from the floor.

OBSERVE, Deiphobus read from one slab. The words were carved in High Gothic. WAIT, GAIN TRUST, AND RETURN.

Another read, BE SILENT ON MATTERS OF MANKIND.

BE AS A SLAVE TO THE EMPEROR, read another.

‘I see,’ said Deiphobus. ‘This is as I suspected, but it is good to be certain. Were you given any knowledge on the xenos itself to impart?’

‘I was,’ replied Carmillas. Her eyes left Deiphobus and she seemed to be focusing far away. ‘The xenos has a cyclical notion of existence. Their attitude to civilisation reflects this. When their society reaches a pre-determined level of sophistication, they cast down their civilisation and put their cities to the torch, regressing to a feral existence. They then build up their civilisation again until it is time to cast it down once more. The xenos are currently towards the beginning of this cycle, approaching multi-system capacity. This species’ threat level will increase, and their reaction to contact with the Imperium is unknown.’ She turned back to Deiphobus. ‘Is this response to your satisfaction?’

‘It is, inquisitor,’ said Deiphobus.

‘Is there anything further for you here?’

‘No,’ said Deiphobus. ‘I have all I need.’

‘Then good day to you,’ said Carmillas. ‘The soldiers’ wounds must be dressed.’

Into the shattered crag of Miser’s Peak was carved a chamber lined with lapis and gold, lit by a chandelier of pilgrims’ skulls. A great throne stood surrounded by choir-servitors, their hooded, hunched forms kneeling in eternal supplication.

Here the air was chill, for this world was too far from its sun to permit normal human habitation. That fact helped keep it secret, for if there was one thing the Inquisition valued, it was secrecy.

On the throne sat Lord Inquisitor Vortz of the Ordo Xenos. His regal robes were of glistening loxatl hide and his armour was cut from the bones of a dozen species. He was an old man, and his breath misted in the freezing air.

His interrogators and explicators stood at attention beside his throne in the scarlet uniforms of his personal army. Vortz’s presence was such that his underlings might as well have not even been there.

Deiphobus nodded in salute. He stood at the foot of the throne, a place intended to instil the observer with a sense of awe and inferiority to the inquisitor. Deiphobus felt neither. Behind him, Chapter serfs wheeled in the gurney on which the alien was strapped.

‘Lord Inquisitor,’ said Deiphobus. ‘The Space Marines of the Imperial Fists make common purpose with your Holy Ordos. We have brought you the xenos recovered from Inquisitor Carmillas’s outpost.’

‘So I see,’ said Vortz. ‘We were dismayed to hear of the death of Inquisitor Carmillas. She was once the most promising interrogators in our service, and in later years earned great praise from her brethren as an inquisitor. Pray tell, Librarian Deiphobus, how did she die?’

‘In battle,’ said Deiphobus.

‘That is something, at least. My explicators will receive the alien from you. And thus is our business concluded, in the name of the…’

‘This is not a simple xenos,’ said Deiphobus. Though Vortz was probably not used to being interrupted, even a man of his pride knew better than to take a Space Marine to task for it. ‘I have delved into its mind,’ continued Deiphobus. ‘Carmillas left information in datastores within her body in case she died with the alien’s mission unfulfilled. Her psykers built within its mind a set of commands of which it would be unaware. It was a spy, Lord Inquisitor. It was programmed thus to gather information on the aliens’ civilisation and report it back to the Imperium. But her spy’s fellow xenos tracked it down to acquire it by force, and in the battle the inquisitor lost her life. And all of this, I suspect, is of little surprise to Lord Inquisitor Vortz. Does not your own staff of psykers represent one of the Imperium’s finest resources in matters of the alien mind? Did not Carmillas learn from you?’

Vortz thought about this. Unease, well-disguised, passed over the faces of his underlings. ‘It is what I would have done,’ he conceded. ‘This species has been turning up in mercenary bands around the Ghoul Stars. Carmillas was eager to discover what danger it presented to the Imperium.’

‘They despise civilisation,’ said Deiphobus. ‘When their own grows to great, they burn it to the ground and start anew. When they look on the Imperium, it is with whatever passes in their minds for hatred. Watch them, Lord Inquisitor. This specimen will help you. They are savages, but they were not always so.’

Deiphobus turned and left the presence of Lord Inquisitor Vortz, leaving the xenos in the throne room.

Deiphobus, wearing the image that most resembled his physical self, slid the volume of memories into its place on the shelf. This was the library of his memory, a vast and shadowy place, on the shelves of which every interrogation was carefully filed away. Some memories were gemstones arranged carefully in display cabinets, or paintings hung on the walls, but most were books like the one in which Deiphobus had contained the memories of his interrogation of Carmillas’s spy.

‘Is this one mine?’ said Inquisitor Carmillas.

‘It is,’ said Deiphobus.

Carmillas was much as she had appeared in her sanctuary in the alien’s mind, although now there were no bloodstains on her dress. She had tied her hair back, as well, and looked a little more demure and official. ‘Might I read it?’

‘You may.’

‘My thanks. And, Librarian?’

‘Inquisitor?’

‘I cannot help but see how empty this place is. I take it that you do not make it a habit of bringing in new guests?’

‘Mostly the minds I examine have less savoury inhabitants,’ replied Deiphobus. ‘And I do not relish having them run loose in my mind. But you deserve to be remembered, inquisitor. And besides, this place has become rather overfull during the years. It needs a proper curator. If that work is not beneath you, inquisitor.’

‘Of course not,’ replied Carmillas – or at least, the memory that Deiphobus had of Carmillas, furnished by the echo of her he had met. ‘How many of us can help serve our Emperor after death?’ She look around and tutted. ‘This place is a mess, Librarian. You need me.’

‘Then I shall leave you to your work.’

‘I think that would be best.’

Deiphobus let himself fade away, the image he wore becoming translucent, then ghostly, and finally no more than a shadow. He felt the cold and heaviness of his physical body around him again.

He left all that remained of Inquisitor Carmillas in his mind, tending to the volumes of his memories.

THE IRON WITHOUT

Graham McNeill

NOW

His name was Soltarn Vull Bronn and ten of his vertebrae were mangled beyond the power of even the most mechanically adept Apothecary to save. His legs had been crushed to paste and his left arm jutted from the misshapen ruin of his chevroned shoulder guard like a broken girder. No amount of will could force it to move, but he was able to free his right arm from beneath his breastplate.

The circumvallations at the cave mouth were gone, buried beneath the collapsed ceiling of the enormous cavern. Through dust-smeared eyes, he saw that the wall and his command staff were a crushed ruin of flames and smoke. That meant Teth Dassadra was likely dead as well. Bronn had no feelings towards the man save apathy and an Iron Warrior’s natural mistrust, but at least he had been a vaguely competent siege-smith.

His collapsing lungs heaved to sift enough oxygen from the smoke- and dust-clogged air as his ears rang from the apocalyptic detonation that had triggered the collapse. He coughed a wad of bloody phlegm, knowing the position was lost and that any of his warriors who had survived the cave-in he had caused were as good as dead. The Ultramarines’ guns would see to that.

Had that been the plan all along?

Try as he might, Bronn could see no other conclusion.

He had followed the Warsmith’s orders to the letter, with diligence and dogged loyalty.

In retrospect, perhaps that was the problem.

The Warsmith was a warrior like no other, a killer of men whose mind functioned in a radically different way to the Legion in whose name he once fought. To some, that had marked him for greatness, but to others it was a vile stain on their honour that he should bear the visored skull of the Iron Warriors.

Half-breed, they called him.

Mongrel upstart.

Honsou.

He had left them to die, and though Bronn suspected that defeat would be the inevitable outcome of so risky a war, he found he was still surprised. A lifetime of betrayals; from the dawn of the Imperium, when gods walked among their disciples, and all through the Long War to this latest spasm of rebellion. Ever was it the lot of the Iron Warriors to taste perfidy, but this latest treachery was the bitterest Bronn had ever swallowed.

He had believed in Honsou.

Despite his squalid inception, the half-breed had risen through the ranks with the persistence of a monotasked servitor digging an approach trench, displaying just the right balance of initiative and blind obedience to his betters until those less skilled had fallen by the wayside.

It had been on Hydra Cordatus his chance to excel had finally come. Bronn remembered the thundering violence of that siege, the brittle regolith that collapsed at every turn, the hot sun that baked slaves alive and bleached their bones before they were buried in the foundations of the redoubts. Most of all, he remembered the deep yellow rock that resisted every pick and shovel.

It had been a masterfully wrought approach, each sap pitched at a precise angle and every battery thrown up with a speed that would have made the artisan masters of lost Olympia proud. Bronn had fought in the Grand Company of Forrix, and he could still remember the pain of seeing his master gunned down by the Imperial battle engine at the moment of final victory. Standing triumphant in the ruins of the fortress, Forrix had been killed in the moment of regaining his lost fire.

At battle’s end, Honsou was named the Warsmith’s successor and he had given Forrix and Kroeger’s warriors a stark choice: accept him as their new Warsmith and live, or deny him and be destroyed. It was no choice at all, and every warrior had dropped to one knee and sworn fealty to their new master. From Hydra Cordatus, they had battered a path through Van Daal’s Black Legion whelps at Perdictor and returned to Medrengard. Honsou had claimed the timeless fortress of Khalan-Ghol for himself, as was his right, but brooding in a crooked spire was not to be the half-breed’s destiny.

Jealous eyes had fallen upon Khalan-Ghol, and the grand armies of Lord Toramino had joined forces with the berserk horde of Lord Berossus to attack Honsou in his mountain lair.

Though pain was eating away at his formidable powers of endurance, Bronn grinned wryly at how the two lords of Medrengard had been humbled by the upstart half-breed, their armies broken and scattered to ashes beneath the cruel light of the daemon world’s black sun.

Whisperers railed at being commanded by a warrior without lineage, a half-breed with no memory of the Great Betrayal, who had not known the pain of the thousand indignities heaped upon the Legion by the Emperor, and who had not earned his bitterness on the fire-blackened rock of Terra. Honsou’s warriors were now fighters without a fortress, rootless wanderers little better than sell-swords, and that was hard to stomach for men who had stood at the side of a living god.

Even after the destruction of Tarsis Ultra, they called Honsou unworthy, and not even the release of the daemon lord M’kar from his imprisonment on the Indomitable had appeased his doubters. They hated him, called him impure, and plotted his downfall. Heritage and purity of genetics was all that mattered to these schemers, and no matter how many victories Honsou won, they would never accept him.

Bronn had hunted those who spread dissent and ended them, for he had always known that a warrior’s worth was measured in the blood he shed, the soil he dug, the walls he raised and the citadels he split asunder.

By that measure, Honsou was a true Iron Warrior.

But now this…

Bronn could stomach betrayal, it was the Iron Warriors’ lot, but to have it come from within on so grand a scale was galling.

What could be so important beneath the surface of Calth that was worth this?

THEN

Earth-moving machinery roared and bellowed, spitting clouds of caustic, lung-tarring smoke, spraying stone chips from beneath solid rubber tyres. A hundred and fifteen machines pulled like blood-maddened flesh hounds on chains at the cave’s exit. The confined air reeked of machine oil, blood offerings, petrochemical fumes and sweat. Over four thousand mortals in reinforced work overalls and canvas hoods huddled in the shadow of the heavy machines, armed with picks, shovels and rock-breaking drills.

Soltarn Vull Bronn swept his gaze around the widened chamber with a critical eye.

‘I need more machines,’ he said.

‘A hundred and fifteen should be more than enough,’ replied Teth Dassadra, comparing the arrangement of machines with hand-drawn schemata plotted out by Bronn less than an hour ago. ‘The forward redoubt only needs to be five hundred metres wide and twenty high.’

‘You say “only” as though we will be building it in a summer meadow with the enemy attacking us with flower blossoms,’ said Bronn.

‘No,’ said Dassadra, unable to keep the impatience from his voice. ‘I know the mathematics of construction as well as you. My logarithmic calculations are correct, even allowing for losses.’

‘And if those losses are greater than we expect?’

‘Why should they be?’

‘Because this is a world of Ultramar,’ said Bronn.

‘A world like any other,’ said Dassadra with a dismissive shrug as they reached a group of workers crouched behind a kinetic mantlet and bearing heavy picks across their shoulders. The men were tense, awaiting the order to advance into the teeth of massed artillery. For men under a virtual death-sentence, they appeared remarkably calm.

Bronn rounded on Dassadra. ‘No, it is not. These are the best fighters we have faced. They fear us, yes, but not so much that they will break and run when the first shells land among them. So long as the Ultramarines stand, so too will they.’

‘You admire them,’ hissed Dassadra.

‘I do not admire them, fool, I simply recognise their abilities,’ countered Bronn. ‘It would be stupid to do otherwise.’

Dassadra gestured to the thousands of men, servitors and drones gathered around the machines. ‘Plenty of meat and bone to raise a wall if the diggers fail.’

Bronn turned to the group of men sheltering behind the mantlet. With a casual twist of his arm, he unsheathed his entrenching tool from its shoulder scabbard. Its name was Earthbreaker, and its dull iron was scored and nicked where swords and axes had gouged its haft, yet the pointed half-moon of its blade was as sharp as the day it had been taken from the forge-armoury.

As a tool of siege, Earthbreaker had dug countless trenches, excavated a thousand tunnels beneath the hardest rock and raised earthworks so vast as to be visible from low orbit. As a weapon, it had taken the head of ten captains of the Fists, had split the spine of a greenskin warlord of six systems and hewed innumerable humble rankers in the bloody heave and swell of close-quarters battle.

Bronn hammered its blade into the nearest slave’s back. Blood welled around the embedded iron, and the man jerked as his ruptured spinal column sent contradictory impulses flailing around his dying body.

‘Mortal muscle to drive iron tools is in plentiful supply, and can be easily replaced when blood inevitably soaks the earth,’ said Bronn, irritated at needing to explain his methodology to Dassadra. ‘Machines are less easily replaced.’

Bronn shook the split body from his blade as another mortal ran up from the rear ranks to take his place. The dead man’s former comrades threw his corpse in front of the bulldozer, to be crushed into the rock when the assault began.

Using Earthbreaker like a walker’s staff, Bronn moved through the cavern, marking out lines of advance and reinforcing his construction orders as he went. The mortals looked up in terror as he passed, which was as it should be. He was sending them to their deaths, but even marching out into a hellstorm of artillery, gunfire and shrapnel was more palatable than displeasing an Iron Warrior.

Dassadra watched his every move, searching for mistakes and flaws in his orders, but Bronn knew he would find none. His aide had come to him from the shattered survivors of Lord Berossus’s army, and though those warriors had sworn loyalty to Honsou, they were little better than whipped dogs, volatile and always looking for advantage.

Bronn paused at the machine closest to the cavern mouth, a towering eighteen-wheeler on spiked iron tracks and with a giant hopper of crushed stone secured at its rear, rubble gathered from the collapsed ruin left by the defenders after the destruction of the giant tunnel leading from Guilliman’s Gate to Four Valleys Gorge. From this debris would be built a wall to shelter the heavy guns of the Iron Warriors, and the dark symmetry of this pleased Bronn no end. Flexible pipes at its sides pulsed like intestines, filled with rapid-setting permacrete that would be used to bind the loose rubble together and allow the mortal slaves to erect the mesh-wrapped blockwork of the batteries.

The cavern mouth was a semi-circular slice of wan daylight, something that grated against Bronn’s sensibilities. They were underground, and underground places should be dark. It made no difference to the projected operation, but it offended his sense of the way things ought to be. Bronn knew the subtleties of rock better than anyone, and it was said with only a spoonful of irony that it spoke to him.

Where there was a weak seam in a wall, Bronn would find it. Where the soil was softer and more amenable to undermining, he would know of it. Just by touching the rock, Bronn could know its hidden strengths, its complex structure and its inherent weaknesses. Where others might mount an escalade with more flair or know best when a breach was practicable, no-one knew the rock better than he.

Bronn held out his hand for the plan he had drawn earlier. Dassadra gave it to him with the speed of one who knows well his master’s desires. Bronn checked the distances between his machines and the cavern walls, the lines of advance and the routes of dispersal once they emerged from the transient safety of this tunnel.

‘This is all wrong,’ he said, swinging up onto the integral steps machined into the flank of a vast bulldozer with its shovel blade worked in the form of an enormous fanged daemon maw. The machine had been a gift from the Tyrant of Badab after the Skull Harvest, and was, to Bronn’s eyes, needlessly embellished. The operator’s cab was set behind a heavy mantlet of flared horns and armoured in sheets of layered metal, with only a thin slit by which the driver could see out.

He hauled open the door to the operator’s cabin and growled at the hunched figure hard-wired into the control mechanism. A hybrid thing of machine parts and bruised flesh, it had once been an Iron Warrior whose mortal remains had been housed in the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought.

‘Brother Lacuna,’ said Bronn, his voice muffled behind the fire-blackened visor he had taken from the pulped remains of his former captain on Hydra Cordatus. ‘You are too far forwards. Pull back ten metres.’

‘I will not,’ answered the operator, his voice a wet, rasping thing of droning vox-scraps stitched together to form a stunted vocabulary. ‘To raise the first block, I must be ahead of the pack.’

Bronn sighed. No Iron Warrior who could stand, wield a weapon or entrenching tool wished to demean himself by operating one of these machines, yet they were an integral part of the Iron Warriors modus operandi. Just another of the many contradictions inherent to the Iron Warriors. Only those plucked from wrecked Dreadnoughts or too badly injured to survive were deemed fit for such duties, and even then they weren’t the most suitable candidates.

‘You must pull back,’ insisted Bronn. ‘The first layer of foundation needs to be dug simultaneously. The rock at this depth is layered with staggered bands of loose soil and will collapse inwards if it is not strengthened at the same time. You understand?’

Lacuna stared at Bronn, though it was impossible to tell what was going on in his ravaged brain. The similar urge to wreak harm and inflict mayhem that saw many Dreadnoughts reduced to blood-crazed madness afflicted the machine operators, though their madness was of an altogether more dangerous kind.

The kind that could cause a fortress to fall.

‘I understand,’ said Lacuna in his chopped-up language. A hash of binary blurted from his vox-grille, and Bronn was glad the visor hid his grin as he caught the gist of Lacuna’s insult.

‘Just get it done,’ said Bronn. ‘And if you call me a fabricator of wooden walls again, I’ll have what’s left of you wired into a mine-clearance drone.’

Even with half his face gone and the remainder replaced by cannibalised servitor parts, Lacuna was able to register surprise at Bronn’s understanding of binaric cant. A frothed grate of machine laughter bubbled up from Lacuna’s rebuilt throat, as the bulldozer’s engine fired up and the gears clattered into reverse.

Bronn withdrew from the cab and slammed the door shut, riding along on the running boards until he was satisfied the machine was where it was supposed to be. He banged a hand on the door and dropped to the hard floor of the cavern. Its surface had been planed smooth by melta fire in readiness for the earth-moving machines and the Black Basilica, and Bronn felt its strength as he knelt and placed his palm upon it.

‘Is the rock strong?’ asked the harsh, guttural bark of this host’s war leader.

Bronn stood and gave a curt nod. ‘It is good rock, Warsmith Honsou, old rock,’ he said. ‘The kind of rock that can stand against everything the universe has to throw at it. The kind of rock that once formed the heart of Olympia.’

Honsou shook his head at such ill-placed nostalgia. ‘Olympia’s rock failed in the end, didn’t it?’

Bronn’s jawline clenched. ‘Its people failed,’ he said. ‘Not its rock.’

Honsou never missed a chance to remind his Legion that they had destroyed their own homeworld after its populace rebelled against their lawful rulers. It seemed wilfully perverse to twist such a knife in the guts of his men, but Bronn had long-since learned to let such barbs pass without comment.

‘But the rock of Calth will fall?’ asked Honsou.

‘It will not stand before the inevitability of Perturabo’s true sons,’ Bronn assured him, meeting Honsou’s barb with one of his own.

‘I never thought it would,’ said Honsou with a lopsided grin. The upper quadrant of the Warsmith’s face was a mangled, knotted mass of scar tissue, mortician-grafted augmetics and raw flesh, the result of a close encounter with a bolter shell and a collapsing tunnel. What might once have been considered roguish was now pulled into a permanently sardonic leer. One arm was encased in Mark IV plate pulled from the body of a dead Iron Warrior, the other a perfect replica of an arm fashioned from silver mercury.

Honsou saw Bronn’s attention and lifted the arm up before him.

‘This whole cave could fall and this arm wouldn’t have a scratch on it if you dug it out.’

‘The rest of us would be crushed, though,’ pointed out Bronn.

Honsou grinned. ‘Always so literal,’ he said. ‘I think that’s the real reason the Iron Warriors followed the Warmaster into rebellion. Horus probably said it as a joke and Perturabo took him at his word.’

‘Then that just shows how little you know,’ snapped Dassadra.

Bronn held up a fist to prevent Dassadra speaking again, but Honsou appeared to be amused rather than angered at his aide’s outburst.

‘He has spark, this one,’ said Honsou.

‘One of Berossus’s men,’ answered Bronn.

‘Ah.’

Before Honsou could provoke Dassadra again, Bronn said, ‘Is there something you needed, Warsmith?’

Honsou nodded, acquiescing to Bronn’s authority here. ‘You are ready to begin the advance?’

‘I am,’ confirmed Bronn. ‘Just give the word and I’ll have a wall built across that ridge inside a day.’

‘Good. Who’s leading the first push?’

‘Jaegoth Ghent.’

Honsou nodded. Ghent was a good man under fire. Lord Toramino had had most of his nervous system stripped out by adepts of the Dark Mechanicus and replaced with artificial receptors. It made him a dour battle-brother, but a warrior who wouldn’t flinch if an artillery shell landed right next to him. Ghent had directed the approach saps to Khalan-Ghol, and Honsou had been careful to spare his life in the wake of the carnage surrounding the last days of his former abode.

‘Tell him to stand down,’ said Honsou.

‘What? Why?’

‘You and I are going lead the push from the cavern,’ said Honsou.

‘Are you insane?’ demanded Bronn. ‘Why would you order such a thing?’

‘It’s been too long since I got my hands dirty with a pick and broke the earth of an enemy world,’ said Honsou. ‘I need to get back to what I do best, building walls for big guns. And if I’m going to do that, I need someone who knows the rock better than anyone else at my side.’

‘If the half-breed wants to die, let him,’ said Dassadra. ‘No-one will mourn him.’

Bronn expected Honsou to kill Dassadra for his temerity, but Honsou just laughed.

‘Maybe not,’ said Honsou. ‘The daemon lord may command the Bloodborn, but I lead this host, and one of the benefits of that is being able to do what I damn well please. Bronn, get this little bastard away from me before he spoils my good mood and I kill him.’

Bronn ordered Dassadra away with a curt nod, and stared at Honsou.

‘Why are you really doing this?’ he asked once Dassadra was out of earshot.

‘Do I need a reason?’ countered Honsou.

‘If you’re going to lead my machines out there, I need to know you’re doing it for the right reasons. I’m not going to let you get them destroyed just to prove a point to the daemon lord or the Legion.’

‘And what point would I be proving?’

‘That you’re an Iron Warrior,’ said Bronn. ‘A true son of Perturabo.’

‘Do I need to prove that? Look at where we are. Not even Perturabo brought the iron and the stone to Ultramar.’

Bronn shook his head and lowered his voice so that no-one but Honsou would hear him.

‘No matter how many escalades you make, no matter how many breaches you storm or fortresses you raze, they will never respect you as an Iron Warrior. This will make no difference to how these warriors see you. To them you will always be the half-breed.’

Honsou put a hand on Bronn’s shoulder and turned him towards the light at the cavern mouth. Rippling shafts of sunlight danced in the blue-hazed fumes of the grumbling bulldozers and lifter rigs.

‘Beyond that opening are my enemies,’ said Honsou. ‘Behind me are warriors who would happily turn their weapons on me if they thought they could get away with it. Do you really think I’m doing this to try and impress anyone? I know who I am, and I don’t give a greenskin’s fart what anyone thinks of me.’

‘Then what do you hope to achieve?’

‘I need them to see me make war like an Iron Warrior,’ said Honsou, leaning in close and baring his teeth in sudden anger. ‘Even if they never accept me as one, I need them to know that I fight like one. I need them to understand that if anything happens to me, if any of them make a move against me, then they’re all going to die on this forsaken rock. I’m the only one who can win the war on Calth, and I want them to know that. Without me, this invasion is over.’

‘And if we die out there?’ asked Bronn as Honsou walked away. ‘What happens then?’

‘We’ll be dead,’ said Honsou. ‘What does it matter what happens after that?’

Leaving Soltarn Vull Bronn to oversee the last preparations for the assault, Honsou made his way back through the cavern, relishing the sudden sense of excitement that filled him. It had been a spur of the moment decision to lead the assault into the great underground cavern, but it felt right. It felt good. Every word he had said to Bronn was true, but there was more to it than that.

Honsou cared little for the esteem of his fellow Iron Warriors, but the voices that harped at him from the darkest recesses of his mind demanded he prove his worth every moment of every day.

They are right to hate you…

The Clonelord should never have wrought you…

You are nothing but an aborted experiment that escaped the furnace…

Most of these voices made no sense to Honsou, for he remembered nothing but disjointed scraps of his birth as an Iron Warrior. Nor could he recall the life he had lived before being transformed into a thing reviled by those he had been crafted from and those he had been created for. No, the drive – the obsession – he had to place himself in harm’s way came from the need to prove those voices wrong.

He was as good as any Iron Warrior.

He could fight as hard and with as much cunning and dogged determination as any of those crafted from Perturabo’s gene-seed. And if he had to set the galaxy afire from one spiral arm to the other to prove it, then so be it.

Honsou had long ago come to this realisation, but had never voiced it to another soul. Let them think he wanted to be like them. Let them think he wanted to be one of them. Their hate only spurred him on, and their sneering condescension only made him stronger.

His fists clenched and he unsheathed the monstrous, night-bladed axe from its leather harness at his shoulder. The weapon had belonged to a warrior of the Black Legion, but like most of the accoutrements of war Honsou now sported, it had been taken as a trophy of murder. His augmetic eye had been plucked from the ruined skull of a Savage Mortician, and the impervious, silver-steel arm had been sawn from the body of a captive Ultramarine.

Further back in the long tunnel that led to the irradiated surface of Calth, a series of armoured blockhouses had been built in staggered chevrons. The Iron Warriors never paused on the march without constructing solid walls to protect their fighters. M’kar might have an inexhaustible army of daemons to call upon, but Honsou needed to husband his resources.

Warriors in burnished plate ran mock assaults with tiny clockwork armies thrown against miniature fortresses, cleaned weapons that had been cleaned a thousand times already or simply stood like ageless statues and waited for the order to attack. Honsou saw Cadaras Grendel and the Newborn working through a series of combat drills before a blockhouse at the centre of the ugly constructions of steel and stone.

Grendel had taken over the Newborn’s training since Ardaric Vaanes’ capture, but his methods were far from subtle, and he did not have the fluid panache of the former Raven Guard. Where Vaanes had sought to teach the Newborn from a standpoint of making it a better warrior, all Grendel wanted was to make it a better killer.

A subtle difference, and one that mattered little in the crucible of combat, but a difference nonetheless. Honsou had often watched the Newborn train with Vaanes, grudgingly enjoying the ballet of limbs and blades, the lethal choreography of death and the bouts that were more like dances than brutal combats. The Newborn had tried to learn more than just battle skills from Vaanes; it wanted to learn of its soul and how it could rise above its nature to become something more. No such teachings were to be found in Grendel’s sparring, only bloody, bruising lessons in killing. If the Newborn sought any higher truths to its existence in Grendel’s tutelage, it was having those desires beaten out of it.

Honsou found it hard to look upon the creature, seeing the face of his nemesis in its lopsided features and dead skin mask.

Hot-housed in the nightmarish Daemonculaba womb-slaves, the Newborn was a dark mirror of Uriel Ventris, a hybrid by-blow of warp spawned genetics. No-one had expected it to survive, but it had lived and become stronger than anyone could have foreseen. Better to harness and mould such a creature in the ways of its masters before allowing it to become something of its own.

Honsou paused to watch Grendel and the Newborn fight.

It wasn’t pretty, a brawl of superhumans who fought without the drag of honour, rules or the need to play fair. Knowing the skill of Grendel and the Newborn, it was likely the bout had been going on for quite some time. Elbows, knees and heads were weapons, a moment of weakness an opening. Their fight was not about who was the best, but about who was left standing. Grendel sent a vicious right cross at the Newborn’s jaw, the fist driving with enough force to pulp rock. The Newborn swayed aside, but Grendel’s elbow jabbed, cracking it in the jaw and hurling it from its feet.

Grendel followed up with a crushing knee to the groin and a thundering series of rabbit punches to the Newborn’s throat. Honsou grimaced as he heard bone break and flesh rupture. The bout was over, but Grendel kept up his furious assault without pause.

‘I think you beat him,’ called Honsou, and Grendel turned to look at him with a grin of triumph. The mohawked warrior’s chest heaved with the adrenaline of battle as the Newborn spat a geyser of brackish fluid and rolled onto its side.

‘Remind me never to get into a fight with you, Grendel,’ said Honsou, holding a hand out to his lieutenant. Grendel looked up, his malignantly scarred features a clenched fist of venomous anger.

Honsou saw the look and said, ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Grendel shrugged and took Honsou’s silver hand. His fists were coated in blood that vanished into the depths of the alien limb as Honsou pulled him to his feet.

‘After we’re done here, you and I need to get in the ring,’ said Grendel. ‘Ever since Khalan-Ghol I’ve wanted to beat you bloody.’

‘Trust me,’ said Honsou. ‘The feeling’s mutual, but I need you alive.’

Grendel twisted his neck and spat a mouthful of crimson spittle as the Newborn climbed to its feet. A faint luminosity shimmered beneath its skin, as though its heart were a lumen globe buried beneath its armour instead of a beating organ. The bones Grendel had broken were already healing, and the cuts his mailed fists had opened on the Newborn’s face were sealing even as Honsou watched. He’d long been aware of the Newborn’s ability to undo the most horrific damage, but it never failed to unsettle him.

‘Is it time to launch the attack?’ it asked.

Honsou nodded, but kept his eyes on Grendel.

Though its skin hung loosely on the bone beneath with a mannequin’s artificiality, there was no mistaking the patrician cast of its inherited features. He didn’t know what the creature had looked like before its transformation in the Daemonculaba, but it bore the unmistakable gene-cast of Uriel Ventris.

‘Bronn has everything in place, and we’re ready to move,’ said Honsou.

‘I don’t like Bronn,’ said Grendel.

‘You don’t like anyone,’ pointed out Honsou.

‘True,’ admitted Grendel. ‘But he really gets under my skin.’

‘Why?’ asked the Newborn. ‘From what I have seen, Soltarn Vull Bronn is a highly competent warrior. His geophysical knowledge is second to none. Better even than yours, Warsmith.’

Honsou wanted to feel slighted, but he knew the Newborn was right.

‘There’s a trace of the witch to him,’ said Grendel, swinging his shoulders to loosen the muscles and twisting his neck from side to side. ‘I don’t care how many sieges a man’s fought, you can’t know the heart of a planet’s rock just by touching it and looking at it.’

‘I don’t care how he does it,’ said Honsou. ‘He’s never wrong.’

‘There’s truth in that,’ nodded Grendel with customary capriciousness. ‘How long before he gets a practicable wall up?’

‘It won’t be long, no more than a day,’ said Honsou.

‘We will lose a great deal of men to complete a wall in so short a time,’ said the Newborn.

‘We stand to lose a lot more than just men if we don’t get this done quickly.’

The Newborn nodded, accepting Honsou’s logic, but its head cocked to one side as it read a hidden truth behind his expression.

‘What are you not telling us?’ it asked.

The attack began, as all Iron Warrior attacks began, with a punishing artillery barrage. The guns at the tunnel mouth boomed and roared, filling the cavern with choking banks of acrid propellant smoke. Vast, ceiling-mounted extraction units sucked great lungfuls of the smoke and pumped it back through the rock to the surface of Calth, though no amount of machinery could totally eliminate the chemical reek of explosives fashioned in the heart of a daemon world. No sooner had the first barrage been launched than the second was away. Mutants and adrenal-boosted mecha-slaves fed the voracious appetite of the guns, hauling heavy flatbeds of shells to the artillery line.

Bronn watched the thundering power of the artillery and knew the field of fire was woefully narrow for the task at hand, but with the restricted frontage allowed by the cave mouth, there was little that could be done to widen it. The vibration of the shellfire was titanic, and the cavern shook with the violence of it. Dust and fragments of stone fell from the ceiling, and Dassadra looked up with a critical eye.

‘Don’t waste your energy worrying about the cavern,’ said Bronn over the helm vox. ‘The rock above will hold.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

Dassadra looked unconvinced, but Bronn had little time to waste in reassuring him. Any Iron Warrior who couldn’t read the structural strength of a cavern like this wasn’t worthy of the name. Bronn heard the sound of distant explosions, a subtle change in the pitch of the unending pounding that filled the cavern.

‘Earth and deep rock,’ he said, angrily. ‘We’re hitting their earthworks.’

‘You want the guns realigned?’

Bronn considered Dassadra’s request. It was not a suggestion without merit, for the shellfire was killing nothing of note; maybe a few units of the Ultramar soldiery, but certainly none of the Space Marines sure to be in the valley beyond.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘but remember that these volleys aren’t about killing, they’re about keeping the bastards’ heads down. Move the guns forward and increase the tempo as the flanking artillery widens its fields of fire.’

Dassadra passed the word to the gun crews, and moments later the rapid tempo of the guns stepped up as yet more shells arced into the valley. Dust and pulverised rock hung in the air like heavy fog as the artillery line moved forward with mathematical precision. Bronn felt the vibration of footsteps behind him, and knew from the weight and length of them that his Warsmith was approaching.

Bronn turned to see Honsou hefting a short-handled entrenching tool. Like Earthbreaker, it was as much a weapon as a tool of siege.

‘Yours?’ asked Bronn.

Honsou nodded, and hefted the tool up for him to see. The haft was scored steel and its blade was notched with repeated impacts on hard earth and brittle bones. Flaking brown stains coated its edges, the residue of a thousand or more deaths, and the dirt of myriad worlds encrusted its ragged edge.

‘I crafted it myself,’ said Honsou proudly, offering it to Bronn.

‘As any proper Iron Warrior should,’ agreed Bronn, feeling the heft of the entrenching tool. ‘It’s shorter than most I’ve seen.’

‘All the entrenching tools made in the weapon forges of Warsmith Tarasios were short. Made them better weapons for fighting in a trench.’

Bronn’s eyes widened in respect for the lost Warsmith.

‘The Warsmith who broke open the Jade Bastion,’ said Bronn with an admiring nod. ‘I forgot he trained you. That explains why it’s weighted towards the digging end.’

‘You know as well as I do that battles fought in the trenches are bloody toe-to-toe affairs,’ said Honsou, taking back his entrenching tool. ‘Brute strength, ferocity and a short swing are more important than skill.’

‘And you lack for none of these qualities,’ laughed Bronn. ‘You are a scrapper and a brawler.’

‘Is that a compliment or an insult?’ asked Honsou.

‘You decide,’ replied Bronn. ‘Now are you ready to use that thing?’

Honsou grinned and tucked it in tight to his chest. ‘Give the word, Soltarn Vull Bronn.’

Bronn lifted Earthbreaker and held it aloft for long moments before ramming it down into the hard rock of the cavern floor. The vitrified stone split apart and as the cracks spread out from his feet, a mighty roar went up from the thousands of workers gathered behind him.

As the guns fired once more, Bronn jogged with heavy, mile-eating footfalls towards the mouth of the cave. The rocky floor shook with the force of the heavy digging machines moving through the gaps between the artillery pieces, and trumpeting, honking, screaming war horns blared in unison as the Iron Warriors advanced into the teeth of the Ultramarines defences.

Bronn ran at a relentless pace, stolid and inexorable, with Honsou on one side and Teth Dassadra on the other. They moved without haste, but with a terrible inevitability that had seen even the mightiest citadels humbled. Howitzers spoke with thunderous booms, and the roar of engines echoed from the cavern sides like the howling of an army of daemons.

The light at the cavern mouth swelled before them. The noise was deafening, a titanic hammerblow of shockwaves that made a mockery of any attempt of their armour’s auto-senses to attenuate the crescendo of destruction. Bronn felt the percussive body-slam of artillery fire as they ran past the forward line of emplaced Basilisk guns. Spewing clouds of ejected smoke billowed in chaotic vortices, hauled and yanked by the extractors and subterranean atmospherics.

‘Iron Within!’ shouted Honsou.

‘Iron Without!’ answered Bronn.

Honsou had seen Four Valleys Gorge before through the eyes of remote drone servitors, each time a fleeting glance before a lethally accurate artillery round atomised it, but this was the first time he had seen it with his own eyes. In times of peace, it would have been place of bucolic splendour that led deeper into the caverns beneath Calth, but now it was like a page from Perturabo’s great Castellum Arcanicus, with entrenchments spread across the landscape like the sutures on the Newborn’s face.

Earthen redoubts and permacrete strongpoints occupied the high ground, while firing trenches, automated pillboxes and armoured brochs covered the dead ground where landscape did not conform to the needs of defence. By any estimation, it was a fearsome array of textbook defences, but what was textbook to the Ultramarines was predictable to an Iron Warrior. Three fortresses of green marble barred further passage downwards at the cardinal points of the enormous cavern, and though each was a powerful bastion, with overlapping fields of enfilading fire, none offered serious impediment to the Iron Warriors.

Honsou saw this in an instant, spotting where the defences were weakest, where an approach might be made – though he would not be making it himself – and where the Ultramarines were hoping to lure them into attack. His view was obliterated a second later as a thundering series of hammerblow detonations marched across the landscape, booming mushroom clouds of geysering earth and fire and smoke.

The sound rolled over Honsou and he grinned at the visceral thrill of fighting at the sharp end of a charge. The plateau before him was empty and shaped like a flat oval, a place for visitors to Calth’s underground to marvel in the sheer technical bravura that had shaped so vast a space for human habitation from the rock of a lethal world and rendered it as hospitable and welcoming as any heavenly paradise.

In a heartbeat that vision changed from a place of wonder to a place of death.

The first enemy artillery shells screamed down and exploded above the plateau in a storm of deafening horror. Air-bursting warheads flensed the ground with a hellstorm of red-hot steel fragments; some no larger than a fingernail, others like scything axe-heads, and the carnage wreaked amongst the slave workers was horrendous. Honsou saw a man shredded to the bone, his skeleton pulped to a rubbery mass a second later by the pounding shockwave of detonation.

A group of near-naked slaves with heavy picks slung over their shoulders vanished in a fiery mass of swirling fragments, their remains no longer recognisable as human. Hundreds died in the first instants of the barrage, and a hundred more in the rippling firestorm that followed. Honsou heard their screams, but paid them no mind. Mortal flesh was of no consequence to him. He would sacrifice a million lives on the altar of his ambition, and then a million more.

Shredded carcasses littered the ground, dancing bloody jigs as the ground shook and the air buckled with the bludgeoning force of the blasts. Black streaks of burned smoke and the sucking heaves of pressure drops, sudden vacuums and bangs of displaced air made all sense of direction meaningless. Any sense of up or down, left and right was obliterated in the terrifying disorientation of overloading sound and light and pressure.

Honsou’s armour saved him from the worst of the hellish thunder, but it could not fully mask the cataclysmic hammering. His every plate rang with impacts, as though someone was unloading shotgun shells against the back of his helmet with every step. The ground heaved as though in the grip of a powerful earthquake, and fires erupted sporadically from the ignited clothing of the dead.

He could see little before him save banks of shrapnel-twitched smoke and sheeting knives of fire from above that lit fresh scenes of suffering and bloodshed with every strobing flash. Black gashes torn in the ground filled with boiling blood and severed limbs, headless trunks and bones shorn of their flesh. He lost sight of Bronn and the few other Iron Warriors who had made this charge with him. It was impossible to tell if they were still alive or were unrecognisable chunks of gouged meat and metal.

Adrenaline surged around Honsou’s body, driving him on through the nightmarish blitzing hurricane of pounding blast waves and fizzing shrapnel. He knew it was foolish to expose himself like this, that he was risking the success of the invasion of Calth with his reckless theatrics, but there was little choice but to show the warriors who followed him that he was willing to risk his own life and that he could fight like an Iron Warrior.

Something struck the side of Honsou’s helmet like the thunder hammer of a Dreadnought and he was sent flying. A body flashed past him, and he braced for impact as the clashing, intersecting waves of force flung him about like a leaf in a storm.

He hit the ground hard and skidded across the cratered rubble of the plateau. After a quick check to make sure he still had all his limbs, Honsou pushed himself to his knees with his entrenching tool. The sky rippled with orange and red streamers of arcing shells and fiery detonations, but it felt distant and somehow unreal.

The smell of cooking meat came to him, and Honsou looked down to see a long shard of shell casing jutting from the centre of his breastplate. The metal sizzled, and it was still possible to make out a white eagle and read the stencilled lettering on its side. He grunted and pulled the fragment from his body. Its tip was sharpened to a dagger point, the last ten centimetres coated in blood.

‘You don’t get me that easy,’ he snarled, standing calmly in the midst of the barrage.

Along the length of the plateau, Bronn’s earth-moving machines were advancing through the constant rain of artillery shells. The air-bursting shells were having little effect on their up-armoured topsides, and they were driving ever-increasing heaps of rubble and pulverised rock towards the edge of the plateau. A waist-high berm of Calth’s earth was being pushed out before the machines, and would swiftly give the mortal slaves a measure of protection while they built up the more permanent defences.

Dozens of machines had been crippled with lucky strikes to vital components, while others had been comprehensively wrecked by enemy gun crews who’d realised the futility of air-bursting man-killers and switched their weapons to high-explosive shells. He saw Teth Dassadra waving more diggers forwards, allocating them work space in lieu of wrecked machines. Honsou remembered Dassadra from the final days of Khalan-Ghol, a warrior who had only too readily switched his allegiance from one master to another. Honsou couldn’t fault him for that, where was the sense in staying with a master whose star had been eclipsed?

Honsou would have done the same, but it meant keeping such a man appeased with victory and enough scope for his own ambition to prevent him from turning to bite the hand that fed. Honsou remembered Huron Blackheart’s last words to him, and decided that when the time came to abandon this front, he would leave Teth Dassadra behind.

‘Are you just going to stand there or are you going to use that damn tool?’ demanded Soltarn Vull Bronn, emerging from the smoke and hanging fog of dust particles. Honsou grinned and took a two-handed grip on its short haft.

‘Show me where to dig,’ he said, and Bronn gestured towards the forward edge of the plateau. Honsou and Bronn ran past a blazing digger, its cab a mass of fused metal and molten rubber pouring from its conduits and exposed pipework. Something writhed within the operator’s cabin, something still alive and unable to die in the killing fires. Thick black smoke obscured the horror, and it was behind them before Honsou could make out more than a blackened skull twisting on a serpentine neck, screaming in pain that would never end.

‘That trench needs to be another metre deep, and at least half a metre wider if the foundations are going to hold up to a barrage!’ shouted Bronn. ‘See it done.’

Honsou felt no anger towards Bronn at his brusque tone. This part of the campaign was Bronn’s to run as he saw fit, and if that meant dragging the Warsmith towards a trench then so be it.

‘Consider it done,’ said Honsou, dropping into the trench. A hundred or more mortals in shredded work wear hacked at the earth, picks battering the bedrock of Calth in a staccato rhythm. Some looked up as he landed among them, but most kept their heads to the earth, terrified that if they looked up and acknowledged the carnage going on around them it might reach out and pluck them from their illusory safety.

‘Dig together!’ shouted Honsou, though he had no idea how many heard him over the constant pummelling of artillery. ‘With me!’

Honsou bent his back and drove his entrenching tool into the earth, the blade biting deep and parting the soil of Calth like the softest flesh. He twisted and tossed the earth backwards without breaking the rhythm of his swing, and even before it landed, his shovel blade was embedded in the earth once again.

‘Together!’ bellowed Honsou, his digging like the regular piston strokes of a battle engine. Dig, lift, twist, thrust. The motion never changed, and Honsou grinned as the memory of his early days in the Legion returned to him. He remembered days spent digging on his belly, pushing approach trenches forward, filling sandbags and gabions with turned earth. Instinctive muscle memory drove his arms, his strength working his body like a perpetual motion machine. There was purity in this work, a singular purpose that allowed for none of the infighting between warbands or any rancour of past betrayals to interfere.

All that mattered was the man and the soil, and the powerful strokes to shift it.

Honsou glanced to his left, and saw the men around him were attempting to mimic his pattern of dig, lift, twist and thrust. They couldn’t match his speed or apparently effortless rhythm, but they were at least working together. The trench was already widened and getting deeper with every passing minute.

He heard a screaming whine, louder than the others that blended together in a banshee’s chorus, and looked up. Through the billowing, dancing clouds of smoke and dust, Honsou saw a bright streamer of a shell’s contrail as it arced over with agonising slowness and aimed its warhead down towards his trench. It should have been moving too fast to see. There should have been little more than a split second’s warning, but Honsou saw the gently spinning shell as though upon a slow-motion pict-capture. Its wide body was tapered at both ends, spinning slowly and painted sky blue. Its tip was gold, which struck him as needlessly ornate for a weapon of war, and he had time to wonder whether it would be better to be killed by a precious metal or a base one.

‘Incoming!’ he shouted, though few would hear his warning or be able to respond to it in time. Honsou threw himself into the forward wall of the trench he had just dug, pressing his body into the earthen rampart and hoping the shell wouldn’t be one of the lucky ones to score a direct hit. He clutched his entrenching tool tight to his chest as the scream of the shell’s terminal approach battered through the endless thunder of impacts and detonations.

Honsou knew artillery sounds, and this was the sound of a shell coming right at him.

He closed his eyes and exhaled as the shell struck.

The high-explosive shell slashed down and struck the centre of the trench, as though a mathematician had plotted its trajectory. Confined by the high walls, the blast roared out along the trench, incinerating those closest to its point of impact, and shredding those beyond in tightly packed storms of tumbling metal. The shockwave blew men out of their overalls, leaving them naked and twisted into grotesque knots of liquefied bone and shattered limbs.

Honsou was plucked from the trench and hurled into the air. Dozens of red icons flashed to life on his visor as the reflecting blast waves pulled his body in a hundred different directions. Seams split, plates cracked and pressurised coils beneath his breastplate ruptured, venting corrosive gases and precious oxygen. He lost all perception of spatial awareness, and only knew which way was down when he slammed into a line of prefabricated, mesh-wrapped blocks of wall being driven forwards by the second wave of diggers.

Gathered up in the tumbling debris before the blocks, Honsou had no control over his movement. His body was still paralysed by the numbing force of the explosion, and he roared in frustration as he was pushed back towards the trench line. Earth and rock gathered around him, pinning his arms in place, but every nerve in his body was still reverberating in the aftermath of the blast, and he couldn’t move.

The yawning black line approached, and Honsou knew there was nothing he could do to prevent his being buried in the trench. A fitting end to his short-lived reign as Warsmith or a bitter irony to be buried in the foundations of a siegework? He kept struggling, though there was nothing he could do to prevent being buried alive. To the last breath he would fight, even as hundreds of tonnes of rubble crushed him to death in the depths of an invaded world.

The harsh rumble of the digger’s engine changed pitch, changing from the throaty roar of a corpulent dragon to a squealing wail of a denied hedonist. Honsou teetered on the brink of the abyss, a rain of pebbles, soil and permacrete drooling into the trench in front of him. He let out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and felt sensation return to his limbs. A hand reached out to him. He grabbed it unquestioningly and hauled himself upright, steadying himself with his entrenching tool.

‘Getting buried in the foundations of a fortress wall is one way to prove you are a true Iron Warrior,’ said Soltarn Vull Bronn. ‘But I wouldn’t recommend it.’

Honsou gasped, his body now his to control again, but his racing senses too stupefied to reply. He nodded his thanks as Bronn pulled him away from the front of the earth-moving machine as its engine revved up again, vomiting a petulant blast of exhaust fumes in his face.

‘Brother Lacuna does not like to be stopped in his tracks,’ explained Bronn, as the machine’s horns emitted a series of angry honks and squirts of binary static.

Honsou saw a hostile pair of cybernetic eyes glaring at him from the thin slit cut into the armour of the operator’s compartment, and moved away from the machine as its tracked wheels spun and bit. Its feed pipes retched as they poured sludgy grey permacrete into the trench. The oozing mixture set almost instantaneously to form a foundation bed for the blocks coming in on the mass-loaders.

‘Won’t happen again,’ promised Honsou. ‘He’s bigger than me.’

‘When has that ever stopped you getting in a fight?’

‘Never,’ grinned Honsou, taking stock of the work around him.

Despite the continuous bombardment, the shape of the fortification was taking shape all along the plateau. The trench line was filled with rubble and rapid-setting permacrete, onto which hundreds of rectangular, mesh-wrapped blocks of debris were being fixed. Already they formed a waist-high wall embedded with iron spikes and the beginnings of gun ports. The artillery duel was still ongoing, with the Ultramarines having the better of the exchange in terms of lives taken.

But this first sortie had never been about taking lives.

Booming reports exploded overhead, and hammering detonations shook the plateau, but kinetic mantlets were now in place, sheltering the slave workers from the worst of the barrage. As the ground level smoke began to thin, Honsou saw the plateau was a cratered no-man’s-land of torn up rock, craters filled with steaming blood and bobbing body parts. A vision of desolation, ruin and death.

‘You have your bridgehead, Warsmith,’ said Bronn proudly.

‘What’s the cost?’

‘Negligible,’ replied Bronn, picking his way over the broken ground to stand in the outline of a gun tower yet to be built. ‘Perhaps two thousand slave workers, but there are plenty more on the surface yet to be brought down.’

‘Machines?’

Here, Bronn looked concerned. ‘At least fifty out of action, and maybe half of those will never raise earthworks again.’

‘Fifty? So many?’

Bronn shrugged. ‘As I told Dassadra, this is not a normal foe we face. These are warriors of Ultramar. They fight hard, just like us.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Honsou. ‘They don’t fight like me.’

‘Maybe not, but it’s going to be a hard bloody slog to reach those fortresses, no matter how you fight. That I can promise.’

Honsou unsnapped the ruptured seals at his gorget and pulled off his helmet. Dried blood streaked his face and he felt a fragment of green glass embedded in his cheek. He had long ago become inured to pain and tore it clear without even noticing.

‘The fortresses are unimportant, Bronn,’ said Honsou, marching back through the mass of rumbling machines. Milling warriors and bustling slaves jostled in the smouldering ruins as they dragged more and more blocks forwards to raise the fortifications still higher. Much remained to be done on the wall before it could be called practicable, but the hard work had been done. The foundations had been laid and mortared with blood. All that remained was simply a matter of arithmetic and the cold hard logic of war.

‘Unimportant?’ repeated Bronn. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

Iron Warriors stood tall as Honsou passed, and he knew he had, if not won their unquestioning loyalty, at least earned a measure of temporary respect for his willingness to fight at the lethal edge of battle. The weapons of war may change, knew Honsou, but every war needed a powerful will of bone and muscle and living flesh to win it. No matter how big the guns, or towering the war machines, every siege came down to men putting themselves in harm’s way and breaking open the soil of an enemy world. Since the first wooden palisade walls had been raised on hilltops by savages in a forgotten, lightless age it had ever been thus, and always would be.

‘It will make sense all in good time, Bronn,’ promised Honsou.

‘Speak plainly,’ demanded Bronn, taking hold of his arm. ‘How can the fortresses be unimportant? How else are we going to get below the surface except by breaking them open?’

‘We aren’t getting below the surface,’ said Honsou. ‘I am.’

‘Have you gone mad?’ stormed Bronn. ‘Ardaric Vaanes was your master of stealth and even he failed to insert himself behind the enemy lines.’

‘I’m not planning on doing it stealthily, it’ll be in plain sight, but they’ll not see me coming,’ said Honsou, shrugging off Bronn’s hand. ‘But this is where I need you to trust me like you have never trusted anyone. Can you do that?’

Bronn stopped to remove his helm, and tucked it under his arm. He looked at Honsou with a resigned expression that spoke of a lifetime of bitter disappointments.

‘I would rather not,’ he said.

‘Honest, at least,’ laughed Honsou.

‘What did you expect? You didn’t get to become Warsmith by being a model of trust and honour.’

‘True,’ admitted Honsou. ‘But I need you to fight in a way you’ve never fought before.’

‘What way is that?’

‘I want you to attack this cavern like you’re looking to win, but fight simply to hold.’

‘What is the point of that? If I attack, it will be to win.’

‘I don’t need that,’ said Honsou.

‘Why? There is no purpose to war if not to crush the enemy.’

‘Listen well, Bronn,’ said Honsou. ‘There is something beneath this world the daemon lord requires me to destroy, and I can’t do that if I have a host of Ultramarines in pursuit. They need to be kept here, pinned in place for as long as I’m gone. I need them to think this is our true purpose in coming here.’

‘Then what is our purpose if not to conquer this world?’

‘Better you don’t know,’ said Honsou. ‘We’re here for one thing, and it’s something I can only do without an army at my back.’

‘You’re leaving the army?’ asked Bronn in disbelief. ‘Who will command? The Grand Company won’t accept Grendel as their leader; the man’s a brute. And that… creature from Medrengard you keep around. It’s an abomination and it insults every son of Perturabo that you allow it to wear our Legion’s colours.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Honsou with the grin of a man who knows the punchline of a joke no-one even knew he was telling. ‘Grendel and the Newborn are coming with me.’

‘So who will command?’

‘You will,’ said Honsou.

It took another fifteen hours for the wall to rise to its prescribed height, twenty metres of hard-packed blocks sheathed in molten metal, strengthened with adamantium reinforcement, and built upon bloody permacrete footings hacked deep into the flesh of Calth. Circular towers with angled abutments, deflector hoardings and numerous loopholes where heavy guns could launch explosive warheads into the valley punctuated its length. Deep artillery pits were dug in the shadow of the banner-topped wall, and into them masked slaves dragged wide-barrelled howitzers on bloody chains. Shaven headed madmen attended these guns, iron-visored priests of the Dark Mechanicus and corrupted calculus-logi with eyes that saw not in hues of mortality, but in angles, trajectories and degrees of deflection.

The Bloodborn army was now ready for battle, thousands of soldiers clad in combat fatigues, gore-smeared armour, fright masks and ragged semblances of uniforms stitched with the daemon lord’s rune. Entire regiments were poised in the shadow of the wall, eager to spill the blood of their enemies. Scattered through the host, impatient squadrons of battle tanks, hulking daemon engines and weaponised servitor-things blared their hatred from saw-toothed augmitters. Ten thousand Bloodborn swords clattered on spiked shields, and a rhythmic chanting of meaningless doggerel filled the air beneath the rumble of gunfire.

While the Bloodborn waited for the order to attack and the Iron Warriors busied themselves with the mortal mechanics of their craft, other beings made their way to the centre of the wall. Clad in flesh-sewn robes, they were an incongruous sight amid such industrial activity and mechanistic surroundings. They moved with the lurching, awkward gait of cripples, broken clockwork automatons or things that were unsuited to using mortal bodies for locomotion.

An unnaturally tall being in a fuliginous robe of crimson led them, skeletally thin and hunched over as though made from twisted wire. Its hood flapped loose, as though draped over the long skull of a crocodylus. Wheezing breath escaped from beneath the hood, cold as the grave and just as lifeless.

Bronn and Teth Dassadra watched the approaching warlocks from the centre of the wall with more than a measure of distaste.

‘It offends the rites of advance that we use such unnatural means to fight the enemy,’ said Dassadra. His hand rested on the butt of his boltgun, as though he was considering turning it upon the witches.

Bronn shrugged. ‘We are at war, and we use what weapons are made available to us.’ But he too was irked at the appearance of these lurching, wiry figures. Though they were ready to storm the valley, Honsou had postponed the attack until these daemonic sorcerers had done their work.

‘What can warpcraft do that our guns cannot achieve?’ pressed Dassadra.

‘Wait and find out.’

‘Where did they even come from? They weren’t on any of the ships that came to Calth.’

‘You know that for sure, do you?’ said Bronn, growing tired of Dassadra’s constant harping. ‘You searched every scrap of darkness aboard our warships and know they were not among us?’

‘I didn’t see them when we took Ultimus Prime,’ said Dassadra more warily. ‘Where were they when we had to fight through an army of skitarii and battle-servitors?’

‘Perhaps you should ask M’kar himself,’ said Bronn. ‘I’m sure the daemon lord would welcome your questions.’

Dassadra fell silent at the mention of M’kar’s name, and watched as the figures formed a circle, into which was led a group of slaves who walked with the sluggish, dragging footsteps of sleepwalkers. Their flesh was excoriated and raw, cut with symbols that meant nothing to Bronn, but which he presumed were of significance to the warlocks. The slaves dropped to their knees, idiot grins plastered across their willing faces as they bared their necks.

The leader of the skin-robed witches stepped into the circle of sacrifices and a long blade of a finger unfurled from his ragged sleeve. Part organic, part sharpened wire, it flicked out like a scorpion’s stinger, and a throat was opened with a whip-crack of metal on flesh.

‘M’kar tothyar magas tarani uthar!’ screamed the warlock as blood squirted from the slave’s ruined artery. Before the first drop hit the ground, the pack of thrall-warlocks fell upon the slaves in a jagged, jerky frenzy of stabbing blades and shrieking wire-claws.

Like a shoal of ripper fish, they tore the slaves to gory tatters, letting their blood fill them like water pumped into empty bladders. The bodies of the warlocks, once so skeletal and thin, now swelled with black life as they gorged themselves on the slaves’ life force. They howled with perverse satisfaction, but their joy was short-lived as the master of the sorcerers supped greedily from their newfound well of power.

The blood was drawn from them like dark mist, pulled towards the master of the warlocks like spiralling ribbons of oil in an ocean maelstrom. His hunched form gradually straightened until he stood taller than a Dreadnought, his once frail-looking frame now made monstrous. He raised his curling arms to the cavern’s roof and loosed a piercing scream that split the air like the sonic boom of a Hell Talon.

The beat of a thousand Bloodborn drums echoed from the cavern walls in answer as roiling thunderheads formed just below the rocky ceiling. Bronn had quickly adjusted to the changeable weather patterns of the cave, but this was something else entirely.

Arcing bolts of lightning leapt from cloud to cloud, gathering strength and frequency with every passing second. The temperature in the cave dropped sharply, and a cold wind blew from the mouth of the tunnel that led back to the surface.

‘Blood of Iron,’ cursed Dassadra. ‘Lightning? With this much metal? They’ll kill us all!’

Bronn said nothing, knowing that this was no ordinary lightning to be drawn to iron as metal is drawn to a magnet. This was warp lightning, brought into being and directed by the towering figure at the heart of the sorcerers. A booming peal of thunder eclipsed the maddened drumming, and a sheet of dazzling lightning blazed from the clouds. The atmosphere in the cavern twisted as though some fundamental aspect of it had changed, and blinding traceries spat from the unnatural clouds. Black rain fell in torrents, turning much of the cavern floor to quagmire and slicking the armour of the Iron Warriors with an oily, rainbow sheen.

Instead of striking amid the Bloodborn as Dassadra had feared, the lightning slammed down again and again over the upland ridges where the enemy artillery pieces were sited. Mushrooming flares of explosions curled into the air, followed moments later by the crack of detonating munitions. Fire raced over the high ground as weapon after weapon went up, vanishing in a spreading bloom of electrical fire. Explosions lit the underside of the clouds, and Bronn blinked away dazzling afterimages of darting, invisible forms; all black wings, reptilian bodies and screaming fangs.

‘Now do you see the worth of these warlocks?’ asked Bronn.

Dassadra nodded curtly. ‘They are effective, I’ll give them that.’

That was as much as Dassadra would allow, and Bronn grinned as the ridges between the three fortresses burned in the fires of the warp.

‘Order the advance,’ said Bronn. ‘Tanks and infantry only.’

Dassadra looked up, puzzled. ‘Only tanks and infantry? Why not the daemon engines?’

‘Because that is the order,’ said Bronn.

‘We should attack with everything we have,’ protested Dassadra. ‘First Wave doctrine requires overwhelming force to break the will of the defenders.’

‘I know Perturabo’s doctrines, Dassadra, I need no lessons from you.’

‘Then why–’

‘Carry out your orders!’ snapped Bronn.

The sounds of battle were muted by the rain and distance, but even from behind the high wall he had built, Bronn could hear sharp exchanges of gunfire, explosions and screams. Dassadra remained on the wall, and though the man had balked at Bronn’s seemingly inexplicable orders, Bronn had given him no choice but to obey.

Bronn marched through the screaming, stamping mass of cyborg battle engines Votheer Tark had contributed to the invasion of Calth, knowing better than to stare too long at the binding symbols hacked into the meat and iron of their bodies. Some were restrained by chains of cold iron, others by more esoteric means, but every one was a lethal engine of bloody death that could fight for an eternity without tiring of the carnage.

Had these machines been sent into the fight, the enemy might already be broken, but Honsou did not want the enemy broken. It seemed like folly of the highest order, but Bronn forced himself to stop second-guessing Honsou’s plans. The Warsmith had the favour of the daemon lord, and the workings of such a mind were not for mortals to know.

Bronn entered the vast arch that led back towards the surface, following the sound of shrieking hydraulics, low-grade melta cutters and clattering armour. Arc lights riveted to the cavern walls illuminated ammunition and explosives gathered in towering stacks, and the light reflected dazzlingly from vast iron plates being bolted to the rock of the cavern. The metal roadway was being laid in readiness for the arrival of the Black Basilica, the hulking leviathan that was part mobile cathedral to the great gods of the warp, part awesomely destructive war engine with the power to level cities.

The Iron Warriors and the Bloodborn had reached the valley through tunnels dug by subterranean Hellbore diggers, but the Black Basilica needed the rubble blocking the full girth of the tunnel cleared before it could take part in the battle. Its overwhelming firepower would be decisive, and Bronn wondered how he could possibly maintain the stalemate Honsou desired with so powerful a weapon at his disposal.

He paused in his journey to place a hand on the cavern wall, letting the soul of the planet come to him through his gauntlet. The rock glistened in the glow of the arc lights, the quartz and nephrite shimmering like specks of sickly gold. Bronn pressed his cheek to the stone, feeling every tiny vibration, every imperfection and every teasing ripple from afar. The Black Basilica was close; he could feel the tremors of its monstrous weight and the core-deep rumble of its engines.

‘Two hours perhaps,’ he said quietly. ‘No more than three.’

This world was hurting, and every pick, shovel and drill that pierced its skin was a wound that would never heal. Though Calth was a planet honeycombed by tunnels burrowed through its mantle, they were passages opened by people that had once called its surface home before Lorgar’s spite had poisoned its sun. Calth had not resented those intrusions, but the Iron Warriors were unwelcome visitors, and every grain of soil they dug was begrudged.

Bronn pushed himself away from the wall and continued deeper into the cavern until he came to a row of five tubular machines shaped like enormous torpedoes with rock-drilling conical snouts. Each Hellbore was as long as a Stormbird, but wider in beam and more heavily armoured. Their flanks were bare, scraped iron and all five had their crew ramps splayed wide as the assault forces boarded.

Only the nearest of the Hellbores would be carrying Iron Warriors, the others transporting Bloodborn shock-troops or Astartes warriors from the renegade Legions spawned in the aftermath of the Great Betrayal. None of these latter warriors were closer than six foundings to the first Legions, and yet they called themselves Space Marines. Mixed in with these inferior copies were a bastard mix of xenos species, some bipedal and birdlike, crested with spines of many colours, others arachnid, quadruped or unclassifiable in form.

Bronn shook his head at such a mongrel mix of killers.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Honsou, approaching from the nearest Hellbore. ‘It’s an ugly looking army.’

‘Ugly doesn’t even begin to cover it,’ said Bronn. ‘I can accept a great many things, but to know that we have fallen so far is… galling. We once fought alongside the primarchs, gods of the battlefield, and now we draft sub-par warriors who call themselves Space Marines and unclean species from who knows where in the galaxy to fight our battles.’

‘These are cannon fodder,’ said Honsou. ‘And if it makes you feel any better, they’re all going to die.’

‘Yet you are going with them into the valley.’

Honsou shook his head. ‘No, these are just a distraction, something to keep the Ultramarines looking straight ahead while I go beneath them.’

‘Hiding in plain sight,’ said Bronn with a slow smile of understanding.

‘Just so,’ agreed Honsou.

Bronn’s hand unconsciously moved towards his pistol as Cadaras Grendel and the creature Honsou called the Newborn approached. Both saw the gesture and their posture changed immediately. Grendel grinned in anticipation of a fight, while the Newborn looked at him curiously, as though trying to decide which limb to remove first. It took an effort of will, but Bronn removed his hand from his weapon.

Grendel laughed and jerked his thumb in the direction of the Newborn. ‘Very wise, this one would have ripped your head off before that gun could clear its holster.’

Bronn ignored Grendel, watching as the sinuous forms of the blade dancers climbed into the last Hellbore. Each was a swordmaster of sublime skill that had followed their champion, Notha Etassay, to New Badab in search of enemies worthy of their blades. Bound to Honsou after he had defeated Etassay during the final duel of the Skull Harvest, they were devotees of the Dark Prince and therefore not to be trusted.

Honsou followed his gaze and said, ‘This is war; and I’ll make use of such weapons or warriors as I have without care or regret.’

‘I said the same thing to Dassadra,’ replied Bronn. ‘But I was lying.’

Honsou shrugged. ‘You still believe in the old ways, Bronn. That’s always been your problem.’

‘The old ways were good enough for Lord Perturabo,’ said Bronn.

‘And look where that got him,’ said Honsou with sudden anger. ‘Stuck in a dead city on Medrengard, imprisoned by his own bitterness and resentment. If he cared so much about the wrongs done to him, why isn’t he out bringing every Imperial stronghold to ruin? There isn’t one fortress wall left standing that he couldn’t put to rubble in a day.’

Honsou’s vehemence surprised Bronn. He hadn’t thought the Warsmith cared anything for the Long War or Perturabo’s notable absence from its battles. Had Bronn misjudged him or was this yet another piece of theatre designed to achieve an end that could not yet be seen?

‘The ways of our master are not for us to judge,’ he said, though words sounded hollow even to him.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Honsou. ‘They are ours to judge. And one day someone will take Perturabo to task for his lack of action.’

That made Bronn laugh. ‘Really? And who will that be? You?’

Honsou’s anger vanished, and Bronn was reminded how unpredictable Honsou could be, as violent as a berserker or as capricious as a pleasure-seeker of the Dark Prince.

‘Who knows?’ said Honsou with a broken-toothed grin. ‘Maybe I will one day. Wouldn’t that be delicious? A half-breed mongrel bastard sat atop the Ivory Throne. What I wouldn’t give to see old Forrix’s face if he could have lived to see that!’

‘You’re insane,’ said Bronn, as sure of that fact as he was about the composition of Calth’s bedrock.

‘You might be right,’ said Honsou, turning away and making his way towards the assault ramp of the Hellbore. ‘But I have a shrine to find and you have a battle to prolong.’

A group of perhaps forty Iron Warriors marched ahead of Honsou, filing into the Hellbore with unquestioning discipline. Bronn knew a great many of these warriors; they were among the finest killers left to the Legion. All had fought on Terra, and each had sworn personal oaths of moment before the Ivory Throne. A pang of bitter and solemn regret touched Bronn to see such warriors engaged in such an ignoble war.

Honsou climbed to the top of the ramp and turned as Grendel and the Newborn went inside. He raised a fist to Bronn and slammed it hard against his breastplate.

‘Give me a day,’ said Honsou. ‘Give me a day, and I’ll give you a victory that will make you forget there ever were any “old ways”.’

Bronn nodded as the assault ramp folded up into the body of the Hellbore, but his heart sank as he heard the lie in the Warsmith’s voice.

Honsou was leaving them to die.

NOW

The pain was getting worse.

His armour was non-functional, and he could barely move. His strength, once so formidable, was deserting him. Plates that had once protected him from harm were now a burden his weakening body could no longer endure. He remembered being presented with his armour in the columned majesty of the Gallery of Stone, kneeling with thousands of his fellow warriors before the burnished form of the primarch.

Bronn remembered the unbreakable pride he had felt, the sense of belonging to something greater that had sustained him all through the darkest days of the Great Betrayal. The Long War and the decline of the Legion had shown him there was no such thing as unbreakable. Even the greatest pride could be humbled, even the mightiest fortress could be breached, and even the staunchest faith could be shattered in the face of betrayal.

How had he failed…?

The attack of the Bloodborn had been defeated, broken and hurled back by the combined might of the Ultramarines and their mortal armies. The savage warriors of the Mechanicus had fallen upon their dark brothers, fighting with a ferocious hatred born of the knowledge that their foes had once been like them. Yet even as the battle turned in the favour of the Imperial forces, the Black Basilica had joined the fight, and its vast array of guns had wrought fearful carnage upon the defenders, bringing them to the verge of destruction.

But even that mighty weapon had been lost…

Pieces of the dark leviathan lay scattered around the cavern, its priceless debris left to rust in the moist atmosphere, for no adepts of the Dark Mechanicus remained alive to gather them. Bronn should have anticipated a stealthy insertion, after all the Raven Guard had always been the masters of the shadow strike and the infiltration of the most heavily defended citadels.

Bronn remembered fighting alongside Corax and his warriors many years ago, in battles that had been forgotten by that primarch’s sons, but which were still fresh in his mind. For all that the Space Marines of this stagnant Imperium were pale shadows of the great Legions of old, the man who had led his team into the heart of the Black Basilica was a warrior worthy of the title. Professional admiration gave way to pain as he coughed a wad of blood onto his chest.

With the destruction of the Black Basilica, the fight had gone out of the Bloodborn, and Bronn cursed Honsou for allying what little strength remained to their fragment of the Legion to such dross. Dassadra had slaughtered scores as they fell back over the wall, bloodied and broken against the ceramite and blue lines of the cavern’s defenders.

A gloomy status quo had fallen between the two armies as Bronn and Dassadra sought to re-establish control over the shattered mortals of the Bloodborn. Threats, promises of plunder and a number of strategic executions had brought order back to the host, and Bronn had drawn up plans for a second assault when yet another disaster had struck.

With the Bloodborn drawn up in readiness to assault the valley once again, word came of an attack from the rear. Sporadic explosions and gunfire drifted from the tunnel they had fought to clear for the Black Basilica, the rattle of small-arms fire and the heavier blasts of wide-bore guns belonging to battle tanks. It should have been impossible. Hadn’t the Ultramarines been broken on the surface? But as more contact reports screamed over the vox, it became impossible to deny the reality of the catastrophe.

A ragtag host of scavenged armoured vehicles, ad-hoc battalions and Ultramarines surged from the tunnel mouth and fell upon the Bloodborn with the fury of berserkers. Bronn knew some form of communication must have passed between these Ultramarines and the defenders of the valley when an answering battle cry went up from the three fortresses.

Their gates had opened and thousands of blue-armoured soldiers had charged out with squads of Ultramarines at their head. Despite the best efforts of Bronn and Dassadra, the sight of two forces closing on them had shattered the last courage of the Bloodborn and they had scattered into disparate warbands, striking out for their own survival, little realising that by doing so they had doomed themselves.

Hammer and anvil, both forces of Ultramarines had smashed together, crushing the Bloodborn between them, and they had not been merciful. Yet for all that the battle was lost, the Iron Warriors were not about to lay down their weapons and go quietly into defeat. Knowing that Honsou had left them to die, Bronn had prepared for such a moment and waited until the time was right to vent his last breath of hatred.

The traitor Warsmith Dantioch had called it the final solution to any siege, and in that at least he had been right.

A vast array of explosives rigged along the length of the tunnel awaited his trigger signal, and as Bronn saw an Ultramarines sergeant coming for him with murder in his stride, he had known that time had come. With one last look at the fortifications he had fought and bled to build, Bronn mashed the firing trigger and the world ended in fire, falling rock and thunder. He expected to die in the collapse, but he had lived, though it was to be only a brief respite.

Bronn blinked away afterimages of crackling detonations, strobing flashes of secondary explosions and crackling ammo fires.

He knew he was dying, but to die for this?

To be nothing more than… what, a distraction for a mission that had clearly failed?

That was galling for a warrior of his heritage.

He felt the earth shake again, and his eyes flicked towards the roof of the cavern. Dust fell in a dry rain, and spalling flakes of glassy stone sounded like sand trickling through an hourglass as it slowly coated the battlefield. Though the cavern’s structure was sound, Bronn wished for the cave to collapse, to bury this moment of infamy beneath millions of tonnes of rock and deny his foes any succour in triumph.

The ground shook again, but this was no aftershock of his final solution, this was a tremor of something moving beneath the earth. Bronn knew rock well enough to know the difference, and he pressed his palm to the ground, letting it speak to him as it had on countless occasions before. He felt the seismic communication, the echoes and the gnawing bite of melta-bladed cutters as they clove the rock like a pack of subterranean borer-ambulls.

Beyond the mangled remains of a trio of Basilisk artillery pieces, the earth heaved upwards, and a geyser of spraying stone and mud exploded into the air as something iron and yellow heaved its bulk into the cavern. Bronn instantly recognised the conical snout and flared rock scoops of a Hellbore drilling rig.

‘Careful, you idiot…’ he hissed. ‘The soil is always thinner nearer the surface.’

Whoever was driving the Hellbore was unskilled in the finer points of its operation, handling it like a runaway Land Raider instead of a precision tunnelling device. Sparks flew as its drill cogs tore through a wrecked chassis of a smouldering battle tank. Metal shavings flew like glittering decoy chaff ejected from the defence pod of a Thunderhawk.

The Hellbore vanished from sight as it lurched past its centre of gravity and crashed down onto its side. An explosion ripped up from the mangled tank as an ammo cache exploded. More than likely, the occupants of the Hellbore were now trapped within. If the Ultramarines didn’t kill them, the lack of oxygen would eventually see them dead.

Whoever had brought the machine back to Four Valleys Gorge had returned to defeat and death, and Bronn dismissed the tunneller as he heard the voices of Ultramarines, curt orders barked in a battle cant that had not changed in ten thousand years.

Such a span of time was almost incomprehensible. To Bronn, those days of gods and heroes were a past he had lived in the span of a single lifetime, but these warriors had only half-remembered myths to tell them of such long ago days. They could not remember what was a recent memory for him…

I was there when the walls of the Imperial Palace fell.

Bronn turned his head, searching for a weapon to hold as he died. A bolter lay within easy reach, but beyond it he caught sight of Earthbreaker, the weapon that had cast unnumbered fortresses down and raised myriad others to the skies. His gauntlet closed on the T-shaped pommel, and he dragged it over the broken ground with his fingertips. The blade scraped over the black stone brought down from the cavern’s ceiling, high-density igneous rock laid down in volcanic eruptions before men had set foot on this world.

‘Fused metamorphic stone from close to the surface,’ he said with a wheezing, frothed breath that told him his lungs had finally collapsed. With only his secondary organ dragging oxygen to his broken body, it was only a matter of time until hypoxia killed him.

‘Aurelian’s sons were thorough in their spite,’ he noted, seeing fragments of irradiated flakes mixed in with the rock.

‘Yet still they were defeated,’ said a cultured, perfectly enunciated voice above him.

A foot stamped down on Earthbreaker’s haft, snapping the weapon in two. Anger engulfed Bronn, and he rolled onto his back, ignoring the shooting spikes of searing pain that engulfed his chest, yet left his body below untouched. He looked up at a broad-shouldered warrior in the azure battle plate of the Ultramarines. A golden eagle glittered at his chest and star-bleached emerald trim lined the notched edges of his shoulder guards.

‘Things might have been different had the Iron Warriors been with them,’ hissed Bronn, clutching the broken handle of Earthbreaker to his chest. The warrior shook his head and removed his laurel-wreathed helm, revealing a face of classic patrician proportions, symmetrical and with high cheekbones, a strong chin and close-cropped blond hair that framed eyes of milky blue. Every inch an Ultramarine.

‘You are defeated here,’ said the warrior, sliding a fresh magazine into his pistol. ‘I do not think the outcome then would have been much different had a wretch like you been there.’

‘You are wrong, whelp, iron is forever,’ said Bronn, letting his head loll to one side. ‘From iron cometh strength. From strength cometh will. From will cometh faith. From faith cometh honour. From honour cometh iron.’

‘What is that?’ asked the warrior, his voice dripping with contempt. ‘A prayer?’

‘It is the Unbreakable Litany,’ said Bronn, his strength fading. ‘And may it forever be so.’

Through the dancing flames of defeat, Bronn saw a darting figure slip through the wreckage of the Basilisks crushed by the Hellbore, a half-glimpsed shadow with a limb that threw the firelight queerly from its mercurial surface. Though it should have been impossible, Bronn thought he saw a pale blue glow of an augmetic eye through the sheeting dust and ash.

Your mission is complete, the eye seemed to say. But mine goes on…

‘Why did you come here?’ demanded the Ultramarine. ‘You must have know you could not defeat the true sons of Guilliman.’

‘Why did we come here?’ smiled Bronn, shaking his head as a weight lifted from his broken body. ‘Better you don’t know.’

He loosened his grip on the iron will that held his life anchored to his flesh, staring up at the Ultramarines warrior with a last breath of defiance.

‘You think you have won a victory here?’ he said.

‘I know we have,’ said the warrior. ‘Your force is destroyed, and Calth is ours again. All across Ultramar, your master’s armies are being pushed from our worlds. Yes, I would say this is a victory.’

‘The years have not been kind to the Ultramarines,’ said Bronn. ‘Once they were the Battle Kings of Macragge, but you are just poor shadows of those giants.’

The warrior levelled his pistol at Bronn.

‘I should leave you to suffer your pain, but it insults me to let you sully this world with your life a moment longer.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Bronn. ‘Tell me the name of the man who is going to kill me.’

The warrior considered his request for a moment before nodding.

‘I am Learchus Abantes, sergeant of the Ultramarines Fourth Company.’

Bronn smiled. ‘The Fourth, yes. Of course it would be one of you.’

Learchus pulled the trigger, and Bronn died knowing yet more blood would be spilled before the Iron Warriors were done with Calth.

Stromfel’s Teeth

Josh Reynolds

It was the afternoon of the eve of Mitterfruhl and the sound that rose from the streets was as deep and as black as the ocean bottom. Those who heard it first, mistook it for thunder. For the voice of the storm that had rolled in moments earlier from the Sea of Claws. The sound stalked beneath the celebratory ringing of the city’s bells like a sea-beast through the shallows and tore the holiday cheer from the hearts of every citizen who heard it. And as the last, dull echoes drifted out to sea, Marienburg erupted in blood and terror.

Near the docklands, hooves struck sparks from rain-slick cobbles as the evening market crowd screamed and parted. A grocer flew into the air, conducting a lazy somersault, trailing red the entire way. A matron was slapped from Manann’s realm to Morr’s by a flick of inhuman claws. Something pearly grey and wet-skinned swam through the sea of humanity like a sword through flesh, leaving mangled wreckage in its wake. Saw-edged teeth slammed home on an outthrust arm, tearing and masticating.

The hooves thundered on, like an oncoming wave. Black, dead eyes rolled in tight sockets and the thing turned to face its pursuers as they burst out of the drover’s way, their mounts lathered and snorting. Steam rolled off of the animals in the rain. The horses were clad in emerald and turquoise barding and carrying men in heavy armour of similar hues. The knights carried tridents and their armour was engraved with piscine designs. At their head, a bulldog figure leaned over his horse’s neck and roared, ‘There’s the bugger!’

Manann take me if he’s not a master of the obvious, Erkhart Dubnitz thought. The broad-shouldered knight grinned behind his visor as he looked at the stocky shape of Dietrich Ogg, Grandmaster of the most humble, and violent, Order of Manann galloping next to him. Ogg would spit him on a hook and use him for bait if he made such a crack out loud. Ogg’s temper wasn’t the best even when he hadn’t been pulled from a warm feast-hall to ride through a storm in full armour, in pursuit of something with entirely too many teeth.

‘Speaking of which,’ Dubnitz muttered as the creature rose to its full height, gill slits flaring and its wedge-shaped head swinging around. It wore the tattered trousers of a sailor, now stretched and torn. It had the form of a man, though much distorted by muscle, but its head was utterly inhuman. As it spread its arms, the horses skidded to a stop, issuing alarmed neighs as their hooves splashed in the rainwater.

The knights had pursued the thing from the red ruins of a tavern deep in Marienburg’s bowels, and it had left a trail of death through the Narrows as it made its way towards the North Dock. Monsters of one sort or another weren’t uncommon in Marienburg; things with too many limbs or too few clustered beneath the docklands like barnacles and there were stories of rats of unusual size in the sewers. Not to mention those one-eyed devils in the marshes.

But this was something else again. It stood in the rain, barrel torso heaving, as if it were having trouble breathing. To Dubnitz, it looked as if someone had sewn a shark onto a bear and then beaten it until it got angry.

‘Manann’s scaly nethers, Dubnitz,’ one of the knights breathed as he fought to control his agitated mount. ‘He’s a big one!’ Dubnitz glanced at him. Gunter was young. A merchant’s second son, his dreams of adventure in the great wide world had been sewn up tight and kicked out of reach by a handsome donation to the Order from his father. Still, once he’d come out of his pout, the boy had taken to the spurs quickly enough.

‘Bigger they are, Gunter,’ Dubnitz said, absently dropping his fist between his horse’s ears. The animal snorted and calmed. Dubnitz flipped up his visor and peered at the creature that waited for them at the other end of the market square. ‘Is that thing wearing trousers?’

‘I do believe it is,’ another knight said, cradling his trident in the crook of his arm as he lit a scrimshaw pipe. He sucked thoughtfully on the stem. ‘You don’t suppose it’s a modest beastie, do you?’

‘If it is, it’s doing a bad job of it, Ernst,’ Dubnitz snorted. ‘I can see it’s–’

‘Silence in the ranks.’ Ogg gestured towards the creature with the small trident that occupied the stump of his left hand. ‘If you’re quite finished mooning over it, would someone go and whack its bloody ugly head off?’ he snarled, his pudgy features bathed in rain, torchlight and sweat. ‘There’s a Mitterfruhl feast I’d like to get back to, thank you very much.’

The half-dozen knights all looked at one another surreptitiously. One of the first rules you learned in the Order was never, ever, under any circumstances, volunteer for anything. Unfortunately, some took longer to learn that lesson than others.

‘Right, one spitted shark coming up,’ Gunter said, kicking his horse into motion before Dubnitz could stop him. The too-wide mouth gaped as the young knight drew close. It lunged and tackled his horse, wrapping grey arms around its neck and chest. As Gunter gave a yell and jabbed at it with its trident, the creature turned, yanking the whinnying horse off its feet and smashing both it and its hapless rider into the hard cobbles in a crash of metal. Black talons snatched at the tangled knight’s head. The ornate helmet burst, as did the skull within.

‘Manann gather his poor, stupid soul,’ Dubnitz snarled, slapping his visor down. He’d liked the lad. He dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The creature tore Gunter’s corpse free of the thrashing horse and swung it about before hurling it at the others. Horses reared as the body hit the street. The shark-thing did not pause, but dove on towards Ogg, jaws wide.

The Grandmaster tried to sidestep the creature, but the square was too crowded and it was too quick. It was on him a moment later, its talons tangled in his horse’s barding. The jaws champed at him and Ogg cried out.

Dubnitz jerked his horse’s reins, causing his mount to bump against Ogg’s and both horses stumbled. The shark-thing lost its grip and rolled beneath the stamping hooves. The other knights had gotten over their shock and they closed in, hemming the creature in from all sides.

Tridents plunged towards it, driving it back before it could rise. It retreated, still silent; its eyes were empty of everything save raw, wild hunger. Its blunt snout rose and it audibly sniffed the salty air. Then it spun about and began to lope away.

‘It’s heading for the sea. Cut it off,’ Ogg said.

‘I’ll do more than that,’ Dubnitz said, urging his horse into a gallop. The crowded streets were rapidly emptying as the creature raced on. It had fallen onto all fours, its heavily muscled limbs pumping. It shouldered aside a fruit wagon and toppled a night soil cart, spilling dung across the street. Dubnitz cocked back his arm, hefting his trident as his horse leapt over the fallen cart. ‘Manann guide my aim,’ he muttered, blinking rain out of his eyes. With a grunt, he hurled the trident, catching the creature in the back. It stumbled and caromed off a wall. It twisted around, snapping at the weapon that had suddenly sprouted from its back.

Dubnitz circled it and his horse snorted and shied as the thing snapped blindly at it. The shark-thing shook its head and darted forward. Dubnitz’s horse reared and he was almost thrown from the saddle. The knight reached out and grabbed the haft of his trident, hoping to pin the creature down. Instead, he was ripped off his horse as the creature began to thrash.

Dubnitz hit the ground hard, his armour scraping on the cobbles. A clawed foot stomped down, nearly doing for his head the way it had done for poor Gunter’s. Dubnitz rolled awkwardly to his feet even as the shark-thing loomed over him. Foul breath washed over him and he swept his sword from its sheath in a wild, wide arc. Blood sprayed the far side of the street and the monster staggered, clutching at its split, hopefully useless jaw. Dubnitz didn’t give it a chance to recover. He sprang past it and grabbed for the trident, kicking it in the back of its leg as he did so.

It toppled with a wheeze. He shoved on the trident, knocking the thing flat. It squirmed beneath him, gnawing at the cobbles. A sharp elbow hit his cuirass hard enough to put a dent in it. Dubnitz staggered, wheezing. The creature yanked itself off the street and whirled towards him. He swung his sword at it, but it caught his wrist in an unyielding grip. He dug his free hand into its throat, but it didn’t seem to notice, so intent was it on getting its teeth into him. Its weight drove him back and began to bend him double as it leaned against him. It stank of the deep places of the sea.

Dubnitz glared through the eye-slits in his faceplate, meeting the thing’s eyes. For an instant, just an instant, he thought he caught sight of something in them other than hunger. Then its bloody, shattered jaws spread wide and it bent its head towards him.

A moment later, its skull ruptured like an overripe fruit, splattering him with cold blood. He tore himself free of its grip and let the body slump. As it fell, it revealed a tall, one-eyed man who thrust a smoking Hochland hunting rifle into the hands of one of the soldiers behind him. The latter were clad in the uniforms of the Marsh Watch, and bore the insignia of Manann’s golden trident on their uniforms.

‘Dubnitz,’ the one-eyed man said, stripping off his gloves as he approached the body of the shark-thing. One of the men accompanying him trotted close behind with an upraised shield to keep the rain off of his master. Dubnitz stood and saluted with his sword.

‘Lord Justicar,’ Dubnitz said. ‘It is, as ever, a delight and a joy to see you.’

Aloysious Ambrosius, Master of the Marsh Watch and Lord Justicar of Marienburg, grunted and squatted, looking at the dead creature. Dubnitz turned as Ogg and the other knights rode up. Ogg’s face went through a number of contortions as he caught sight of Ambrosius before settling on what he likely thought was an expression of pleasure. ‘Aloysious,’ Ogg grated.

‘Dietrich. Lovely weather we’re having,’ Ambrosius said as he examined the creature.

‘At least it’s not raining cuttlefish again,’ Ogg said. ‘What are you doing?’

Ambrosius didn’t answer. ‘What have we here?’ he said as he reached beneath the creature and jerked loose something small. Holding it up to the rain to clean the blood off, it was revealed to be a shark’s tooth on a thin cord.

‘A shark with a shark-tooth amulet,’ Dubnitz said. ‘That’s not odd at all, is it?’

‘Coincidence is the bugbear of lazy minds,’ Ambrosius said, rising to his feet. He rubbed his eye-patch with the heel of his hand. ‘One of these things just attacked me in the opera house, Dietrich.’

‘And it escaped?’ Ogg demanded. He turned in his saddle. ‘Mount up! We’ll–’

‘Calm down,’ Ambrosius snorted. ‘Of course it didn’t escape; I dispatched it. Cost me a cape of fine Cathayan silk though,’ he added regretfully. ‘And it ruined my evening.’

‘Manann forfend,’ Dubnitz said. Ogg and Ambrosius looked at him. The latter snorted and kicked the creature’s body.

‘Indeed. I–’

The sound was as deep and as solid as a punch to the gut, and it interrupted the Lord Justicar just as effectively. The first toll shuddered through those gathered in the square and lumbered on towards the docks. Dubnitz staggered, feeling ill. It tolled again, and the street seemed to shiver. Distant screams erupted, and an alarm bell began to ring. ‘What was that?’ Dubnitz said, looking around. More alarm bells began to sound, ranging from the silvery peal of the fire bell on the Street of Mercy to the deep, grim boom of the Mourners’ Bell in the Garden of Morr near the Marsh Gate. And then, finally, the long, low melodious sound of the ship’s bell mounted above the doors of Manann’s own temple.

‘It’s the Tide Bell,’ Ogg said. His eyes were wide with dismay. ‘Erkhart, Ernst, get going. The rest of you, pair off in squads and ride for the other temples.’

‘I just got my pipe lit!’ Ernst complained as he dumped the contents of his pipe on the street and stuffed it back within his saddle.

‘Isn’t that always the way of it?’ Dubnitz said as he climbed back into the saddle. Moments later he and Ernst were riding hard for the Temple of Manann. Smoke from dozens of fires rolled through the city streets, and the rain beat it down into a slushy scum of ash. People ran through the streets, fleeing in panic. The celebratory mood of Mitterfruhl had turned into terrified anarchy.

‘Pity about Gunter,’ Ernst said as they forced their horses through a choked square. ‘Lad had real promise, I thought.’

‘Promise is no proof against teeth and claws,’ Dubnitz said sourly. ‘Or against bad wagers. Did you know he still owed me five Karls?’

‘Owed–’ Ernst began as his eyes widened in sudden realization. ‘By Manann’s sea cucumber, that little rat owed me as well!’ He began to curse virulently. Dubnitz nodded sympathetically.

‘Do you think his family might cover his debts?’ Ernst said hopefully a moment later.

‘One thing at a time,’ Dubnitz said, pointing.

The square before the Temple of Manann was packed with a heaving crowd. It was an undeniably angry heaving crowd at that and it pressed close about the doors of the temple. Several pale-faced temple guards stood between the crowd and the doors, their tridents locked to form a makeshift barrier. ‘This looks bad,’ Ernst said, gripping his own trident more tightly.

‘Get between those guards and the crowd,’ Dubnitz said, kicking his horse into motion. He swatted about him with the flat of his trident, causing the fringe of the crowd to contract. People were yelling and screaming in a mingled cacophony of fear and anger. In times of trouble, people looked to their gods, but such a mob had been too quick to form. There was something other than blind panic at work here.

‘Get back or get trampled,’ he roared as he nudged his horse into the current of curses, boils and rude gestures. ‘Don’t make me come down there.’ Probing hands went for his legs and his saddle and he gave a portly fishmonger a jab with the business end of his trident. ‘This horse is church property, get off.’

As his horse spun, lashing out with its back-hooves, Dubnitz caught sight of several priests of the sea-god standing on the marble steps of the temple, watching in consternation. Only one of them was a familiar face. ‘Goodweather,’ Dubnitz bellowed, ‘Fancy seeing you here!’

The young woman, slim and dark, blinked in surprise as she caught sight of Dubnitz. She gave a half-hearted wave as Dubnitz urged his horse closer to the line of temple guards. ‘Goodweather, can’t you summon one of those winds of yours, or how about something nastier?’ Dubnitz said, leaning over in his saddle.

‘What are you doing here, Erkhart?’ she hissed, gathering up her robes and stalking down the steps. ‘I thought I told you to–’

‘What? Stay away from a temple dedicated to my patron god?’ Dubnitz said in mock disbelief. ‘And just because of a simple misunderstanding,’ he continued.

‘Is that what you call it?’ Goodweather snapped, glaring at him. Dubnitz flipped up his visor.

‘Of course,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘It was dark. Mistakes were made.’

Her fingers curled into claws. ‘Mistakes,’ she repeated darkly.

‘Yes. I thought she was you, obviously. Forgive me?’ he said, leaning down towards her. Her punch, when it came, nearly knocked him off his horse. She hopped back as he righted himself, clutching her hand and cursing. He rubbed his jaw. ‘Is that a no?’

‘Yes,’ she snarled.

‘Yes you forgive me, or yes it’s a no?’ Dubnitz said.

‘We don’t need your help!’ Goodweather said.

‘Looks to me like you do,’ Dubnitz said, looking back at the crowd. The faces of the crowd were studies in frustration, fear and anger. Most of them were just scared. Some of them were trouble-makers looking to make whatever was going on worse. And others… his eyes narrowed as he caught sight of a particular, peculiar figure, standing on an overturned cart and gesticulating in a frenzied fashion.

The man was all ribs and shoulders, with coarse clothing and a dozen shark-tooth necklaces clattering around his scrawny neck. Strange tattoos covered his puckered, tough looking skin and warning bells went off in Dubnitz’s head. ‘Oh that’s not right,’ he muttered. He turned back to the fuming Goodweather. ‘See that skinny fellow on the cart there, Goodweather? What do you make of him?’ he said.

Before she could reply, someone hurled a cobblestone into the head of one of the temple guards. The man’s head snapped back and he toppled like a felled tree. Dubnitz cursed and jerked around in his saddle as Goodweather rushed towards the fallen man.

‘If you’re finished fraternising, Erkhart, I could use some bloody help!’ Ernst shouted, flailing about with his trident. His horse snorted as a human wave surged up around him, hands grabbing and improvised weapons stabbing, hacking or thumping. The crowd, unpleasant looking before, had turned ugly in a matter of moments. More cobblestones flew, accompanied by dung, bricks and several contradictory political slogans. Someone somewhere was beating a drum in time to the sound of the Tide Bell ringing. Dubnitz rode to the aid of his fellow-knight, but as he cut through the crowd, his horse gave a terrified snort and reared up.

The sickening sound tolled again, rattling his teeth in his jaw and causing the world to spin before his eyes. His stomach felt like it had the first time he had ever climbed to a crow’s nest, as if it were full and falling all at the same time. His horse reared again, screaming and lashing out at something he couldn’t see.

He heard cries of fright and saw bodies tumble past, trailing blood through the rain. A familiar smell bit into his sinuses and he forced his horse to drop down, revealing the hideous shape that was blossoming before him. The man was no different from any other; he had the look of a sailor or a sea-jack. He screamed and thrashed, his ballooning limbs snapping out to swat aside anyone who got too close. His eyes met Dubnitz’s and he reached out with fingers that looked like overcooked sausages.

‘Huh-help muh-meeee…’ he whined. His words spiralled up into a wordless shriek as pink flesh turned grey as twitching limbs wobbled in an unpleasant fashion. Bones cracked, splintered and re-knit even as the flesh on them puffed up and split and the face, once human, tore in half to reveal a great triangular maw full of razor teeth.

‘Gods below,’ Dubnitz hissed. The creature, obviously in agony, thrashed about as it tore too-tight clothing off. It was the spitting image of the monster from earlier; possibly uglier, in fact, if it was possible. Before it could realise he was there, he stabbed down at its roiling flesh with his trident. The prongs sank into the mutating meat and the trident was jerked from his grip as the creature whipped around. Talons fastened on his horse’s snout and a single, savage jerk snapped the animal’s neck and nearly decapitated it.

Dubnitz roared as he was forced to drop out of the saddle. He hit the street and immediately found himself being trampled upon by fleeing people. Luckily, his armour kept the damage to a minimum and he soon forced himself to his feet, just in time to meet the monster’s awkward, flopping charge. Moving quickly in full armour was difficult, but a strong desire not to be disembowelled lent him speed. He stumbled aside as the creature bounded past him, pouncing on a luckless man. The creature’s victim screamed just once before the shark-thing bit his head off in a single wide-mouthed bite. Dubnitz waited for the nearest bystanders to clear out of the way and then drew his sword.

The shark-thing stuffed the rest of the body into its maw, chewing noisily. Its black eyes scanned the crowd like those of the animal it resembled; there was no glee there, no sadistic pleasure, nothing to imply that the thing gained any enjoyment from its actions. It had no impetus but cold, pure hunger.

Dubnitz advanced towards it, sword held out before him. It turned, slurping a twitching foot down its gullet. Dubnitz grimaced and then blinked as he caught sight of a shark’s-tooth necklace dangling from its bulbous throat, the material of the necklace itself biting into the thing’s gray skin. He wanted to look around, to see if the skinny man with his many necklaces was capering about somewhere, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the monster.

It gazed at him hungrily and started forward, picking up speed as it came. Dubnitz ducked under a wild sweep of its claws and his sword drew a red line across its barrel chest. The creature gave no indication that it felt any pain as it dropped a fist on him, knocking him to one knee. It snagged a fleeing woman as Dubnitz fought the catch his breath and took a leisurely bite out of her neck.

‘Monster,’ Dubnitz snarled. He lunged and the beast flung the woman’s body at him, sending him stumbling. It jumped at him with a quickness that belied its size and its claws sank into his armour.

‘Hold fast, Erkhart,’ Ernst shouted, galloping towards Dubnitz and his opponent. The other knight threw his trident, catching the shark-thing in its thigh. It shoved Dubnitz aside and turned, yanking the weapon loose in a spray of blood. As Ernst rode past, chopping down on it with his sword, it slapped him out of the saddle with the trident. Ernst crashed into the street and lay unmoving. The creature stalked towards him, still clutching the trident.

Dubnitz rushed towards it and drove his sword between its shoulder-blades. It shuddered and threw its arms wide. He threw himself against the hilt, forcing the blade in deeper, hoping to shatter its spine or pierce something vital. It hunched over, chomping at the air. He was nearly pulled off of his feet, but he drove a boot into the small of its back and ripped his sword free. The shark-thing turned and grabbed for him. He backpedalled and chopped into its wrist. The blade cut halfway through its limb and stopped. It whipped its arm aside, pulling his sword out of his grip and stabbing at him with the trident. The tines scraped off of his cuirass and he tripped over his own feet, landing heavily.

Coughing blood, the creature raised the trident over him. It dove towards his head and his palms slapped together around the outer tines. Jerking his head to the side, he guided the points into the street and kicked at the creature’s belly. It was like kicking a wall, but it rocked back, off balance. Desperate, he grabbed the head of the trident and snatched it out of the creature’s slack grip. Spinning the weapon around, he jammed it into the creature’s belly. It loomed over him, jaws snapping, and began to pull itself down the length of the trident.

‘Dubnitz, get the necklace!’ Goodweather screamed from somewhere just out of sight. ‘Get the necklace you great oaf!’

He lunged for the necklace and hooked it with a finger even as the thing’s saw-edged teeth scraped his visor. Dubnitz ripped it free and the creature convulsed as if he’d removed a limb. It bucked and thrashed and he rolled it off of him with a grunt of disgust. It curled around the trident and its heels thudded into the street as steam began to boil off of it, carrying a strange stench into the air.

Dubnitz watched in horrified fascination as the creature began to shrink back to human proportions. It sloughed off the corrupted grey hide, revealing bloody pink flesh beneath. The man gasped and gazed at him blankly. His wounds had not disappeared and as Dubnitz sank down beside him, he coughed, muttered and went still. He didn’t look much like a cultist; then, they never did.

Still, he had asked for help. What cultist or mutant would do that? The knight closed the corpse’s staring eyes and stood as Goodweather moved quickly towards Ernst’s splayed form. Moving towards her, Dubnitz said, ‘Is he…?’

‘No. Just had his lights put out is all,’ she said, looking at him over her shoulder. ‘More than I can say for some.’ Dubnitz looked around. The square was now host to a scene of carnage – bodies laid heaped here and there, mostly the result of the crowd’s panic at the creature’s initial appearance. The survivors had cleared out quick enough, and the other priests were endeavouring to help those that they could, while the temple guard looked on warily. The air stank of smoke and blood, despite the rain washing both away. Alarm bells were still ringing, and he could hear the crackle of fire and the clash of weapons. The latter was likely the Dock Watch or Ambrosius’s Marsh Watch snapping into action with all the speed an underpaid, unenthusiastic autocratic body could muster.

He looked back at Goodweather. She was an altogether more pleasant sight. Women weren’t a common fixture in the Grand Temple of Manann. Thus, Goodweather was, in many ways, an uncommon woman. She knew the holy sea-shanties backwards and forwards, even the rude bits most priests left out. And she had a punch like a mule.

‘We’ve sent for the priestesses of Shallya, but they’re in the same situation we were,’ Goodweather said, wiping her hands on her robes and standing. ‘There’re mobs at every temple. What,’ she said, noticing the look on his face.

Dubnitz coughed and shook his head. ‘We might want to send runners and warn them to be on the look-out for more individuals wearing these little beauties,’ Dubnitz said, letting the shark’s tooth necklace dangle from his fingers. ‘How did you know, by the way?’

‘I guessed,’ she said with a shrug.

‘Dubnitz blinked. ‘What?’

‘In the stories, it’s always the amulet. Or the crown, or the glove or the ring, some out of place innocuous thing,’ she said, turning back towards the temple. She gestured to two of the guards. ‘Pick him up,’ she said, motioning to Ernst. They hastened to obey.

‘Well, regardless of your astonishing disregard for my safety, you were right,’ Dubnitz said, hurrying after her. ‘The question is, why?’

‘Stories are stories for a reason,’ she said. She stopped and looked at him. ‘There’s something moving in the city. It’s in the air and the water; it’s in the rain, Erkhart,’ she said, holding out a hand. The rain filled her palm and gleamed greasily before she dumped it onto the street. ‘It’s moving through Marienburg, just out of sight and sense.’

‘Like a shark in the shallows,’ Dubnitz said, holding up the necklace and eyeing it.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ she snapped.

‘No,’ he said. He bounced the shark’s tooth on his palm. It felt warm. He turned, prompted by some instinct. ‘Hunh,’ he said.

‘What?’ Goodweather said.

‘I wonder what happened to our friend with a neck full of necklaces just like this one, the skinny wastrel on the cart. I suppose it’s too much to hope he got trampled.’ He looked at her. ‘Did you see him?’

‘No, I was distracted by the monster,’ she said tersely. ‘Give me that!’ She snatched the necklace out of his hands. A moment later she grunted and almost dropped it.

‘What?’ Dubnitz said.

‘Stromfels,’ she hissed, turning the tooth over to reveal a curiously shaped scratch in the surface. The tooth seemed to squirm in the rain, and Dubnitz felt a prickling, crawling sensation in his gut.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said. Stromfels… the god of pirates, storms and sharks. Every sailor’s least favourite things. The worship of the shark-god had long been outlawed in Marienburg, thought furtive sects still worshipped him in badly lit back rooms and isolated tributaries out in the marshes. It was a name that every follower of Manann, devout or otherwise, knew well. Stromfels was the bogeyman… the dark of the deep sea and the doom that waited down below the white-capped waves. ‘Was he just some deranged cultist then? Daemon-possessed?’ he said, his mouth suddenly dry. He looked back towards the body of the man who’d been a shark. Was that what it had been? He thought again of the confused, despairing look in the man’s eyes and shuddered.

‘If he was, then he was not alone,’ someone said. Dubnitz turned and his eyes went cross as he stared down the tip of a sword. On the blade dangled a half-dozen more necklaces like the one Goodweather held. Most of them were bloody. Dubnitz looked up.

‘Lord Justicar,’ he said. ‘Ah, I ¬– that is to say, we–’

‘I see,’ Ambrosius said, leaning across the pommel of his saddle, his sword blade resting on his forearm. Dots of blood marred his cheek and armour. His horse whickered softly and stamped a hoof dangerously close to Dubnitz’s instep. Past the animal’s rump, Dubnitz saw members of the Marsh Watch, mostly looking worse for wear, moving through the carnage of the temple square, arresting those who weren’t dead or dying. Ambrosius tilted his blade, spilling the necklaces into Goodweather’s hands. ‘We have reports of more of the creatures, though we’ve only managed to kill a few. Their numbers are increasing. I am alarmed by this,’ he said calmly. ‘Ogg and the others are protecting the other temples in the district, as well as certain other, ah, strategically important areas.’ That meant they’d be guarding the richest and most influential members of Marienburg society, Dubnitz knew. Even in the midst of a crisis, Ambrosius was keenly aware of which side his bread was buttered on.

Goodweather looked at the pile of teeth in her cupped palms and her face took on a slightly queasy look. Dubnitz looked up at the Lord Justicar. ‘That’s a lot of monsters,’ he said.

‘One is more than this city needs,’ Ambrosius said grimly.

‘Mitterfruhl,’ Goodweather said suddenly. The two men looked at her. She made a face. ‘Mitterfruhl – the beginning of the rainy season-is a day sacred to Stromfels. Traditionally, it’s when his worshippers made their sacrifices.’ She looked up. ‘Storms were a sign of Stromfels’s pleasure.’

Thunder grumbled and the grey sky looked swollen and ill as Dubnitz looked up at it. ‘Sacrifices,’ he said. ‘As in more than one, you mean.’

‘Stromfels is a hungry god,’ Goodweather said. ‘He is as hungry as the ocean and twice as wild.’

‘Very poetic,’ Ambrosius said, sheathing his sword. ‘These amulets then are… what? Signs of his favour?’

‘That poor bastard didn’t seem very favoured to me,’ Dubnitz said, nodding towards the body of the former shark-man. Several more of Goodweather’s fellow priests surrounded the body and were engaged in a purification ritual involving sea-salt and crushed seagull bones. ‘More surprised really,’ he murmured.

‘What?’ Goodweather said, looking annoyed.

He looked again at the necklaces. ‘They’re all the same, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘What are you getting at, Dubnitz?’ Ambrosius said.

‘They’re all the same!’ Dubnitz said, gesturing to the teeth. He grabbed one of the amulets and pulled the cord tight. ‘Look at this.’

‘It’s made of horse hair,’ Goodweather said, looking puzzled.

‘Not what it’s made of but how it was made,’ Dubnitz said. ‘I grew up in the Tannery, remember?’ Located in the maze of streets that played host to the city’s tanneries, the Tannery was a squalid, foul-smelling territory and the gangs of mule-skinners and cat’s meat-men who made it their home were as dangerous as any dock-tough or river-rat. ‘Weave-men have particular ways of making cords. It’s like a signature of sorts.’

‘And these all have the same signature,’ Goodweather said, examining the others. She looked at him in shock. ‘Manann carry me, but your head might be useful for something other than balance.’

‘Now do you forgive me?’ he said. She glared at him but didn’t reply. Dubnitz looked at Ambrosius. ‘These were all made by the same person,’ he said.

‘I gathered, thank you,’ Ambrosius said. ‘The question would be, who?’

‘No idea,’ Dubnitz said, grinning. ‘But I know how to find out.’ Dubnitz pointed towards one of the large marble statues of Manann that stood watch around the temple square. ‘If anyone will know where these are coming from it’s that little mud-puppy,’ he said, indicating the boy who was crouched on the statue and watching the goings-on in the square. His blue coat was unbuttoned, likely because the brass buttons had been pawned. A ragged sash was wrapped around his waist, with a rust-dotted sailing knife thrust through it. Bare feet and fingers clung to Manann’s marble beard, despite the rain.

The blue-coats were omnipresent on the streets of Marienburg, especially when there was trouble afoot. If there was a riot or a festival or a brawl, they’d be there, on the fringes. People no longer even noticed them. Whether orphaned or abandoned, they all wore the same blue-dyed coats given to them by the priests who ran the Tar Street workhouses, and they all scampered through the streets like miniature northern savages, yelping and howling when those houses emptied for the evening.

‘What would a street-cur know about Stromfels?’ Ambrosius said.

‘Likely a surprising amount,’ Dubnitz said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘You wouldn’t believe what people let slip around little shell-like ears.’ Without waiting for a reply, Dubnitz strode towards the statue. When he reached it, he looked up at the boy. ‘Renaldo, you little snake. Get down here. I need to talk to you.’

‘Talk to me from down there, steel-fish,’ Renaldo said, sticking out his tongue. Renaldo was a regular face in the Temple of Manann. Dubnitz knew he begged alms from the merchants and picked the pockets of drunken seamen in the square. He’d boxed the boy’s ears more than once for trying the latter on Dubnitz himself.

Dubnitz grunted. ‘I have a job for you, you ungrateful little eel.’

‘Does it pay in food or fancies?’ Renaldo said, shimmying along Manann’s outthrust arm. He hung upside down from the extended trident, his dark eyes narrowed cunningly.

‘Both. Either,’ Dubnitz said. He let the shark’s tooth amulet dangle from his fingers. The effect on Renaldo was immediate. The boy hissed like the stray cat he resembled and scooted back up the statue. Dubnitz blinked. ‘That was unexpected. Renaldo, get back here!’

‘I ain’t taking that, steel-fish! I saw what those things do!’

‘And what’s that?’ Dubnitz pressed, circling the statue in pursuit of the boy.

‘They’re cursed!’ Renaldo barked.

‘Yes, well, I need to know where they’re coming from,’ Dubnitz said. ‘You don’t have to fondle the damn thing, just tell me where they’re coming from!’

‘Ikel!’ Renaldo crowed, eyeing Dubnitz suspiciously from behind Manann’s crown.

‘What’s an Ikel?’ Dubnitz said.

‘It’s not a what, steel-fish, it’s a who,’ Renaldo said. He stood on Manann’s shoulder and leaned against the statue’s head. ‘Ikel the marsh-man. He came into the Tannery about a week ago. He’s been shilling those teeth in the Beggar’s Market. Oleg the blind beggar tried to filch a few and Ikel cut him a sharp smile over his kidneys.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time Oleg had to digest a bit of steel,’ Dubnitz grunted. ‘The Beggar’s Market, you say?’ A thought occurred to him. ‘What’s Ikel look like? Is he an inked-up gentleman, perchance?’

‘Like a squid shat on him,’ Renaldo said, nodding.

‘Wonderful,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Best scarper Renaldo, lest the Marsh Watch get hold of you.’ Dubnitz watched the boy slide away into the growing dusk and turned back to Ambrosius and Goodweather. ‘Beggar’s Market,’ he called out, tossing the amulet up and catching it. ‘Fellow called Ikel.’

‘You have a way with children,’ Goodweather said.

‘I’m something of a hero to the downtrodden, yes,’ Dubnitz said, puffing out his chest.

‘Be that as it may, is the boy’s information good?’ Ambrosius demanded. ‘Can we trust it?’

‘As much as anything heard on the streets,’ Dubnitz said, tossing the necklace back to Goodweather. ‘I think Ikel was here earlier. Watching the festivities.’

Ambrosius’s eye narrowed. ‘Hnf. Priestess Goodweather?’

‘Stromfels is an enemy of Manann,’ Goodweather said, dumping the necklaces into the pouch on her belt. ‘Our missionaries in the marshes and in the north have been attacked before.’

Ambrosius sighed. ‘Fine. You two will go to the Beggar’s Market. Find this Ikel. Take him into custody.’ He looked at Dubnitz. ‘That means I want him alive, Dubnitz.’

‘But of course, Lord Justicar,’ Dubnitz said, banging a fist against his cuirass smartly.

‘You want me to go with him?’ Goodweather said, her tone implying that she hadn’t heard Ambrosius correctly.

‘You have worked together before, yes?’ Ambrosius said, pulling on his horse’s reins and turning about. ‘Far be it from me to break up a successful partnership. Get me Ikel.’

‘But–’ Goodweather began, following Ambrosius.

‘And do hurry,’ Ambrosius said, ignoring the priestess.

‘But-but–’ Goodweather said, watching Ambrosius ride away.

Dubnitz coughed into his fist. Goodweather turned and glared at him. ‘What?’ Dubnitz said.

‘Let’s just be about this,’ Goodweather snarled.

Luckily, the Tannery was close to the docklands. Marienburg was in a tumult. The streets were packed with people fleeing in one direction or another; some sought the safety of the temples while others huddled in taverns and shops. Though the shark-things were few, the rumours of them were flying thick through the canal-streets. Looters were mistaken for daemon-worshippers and the armoured knights of the Order of Manann for the black-iron clad warriors of the north. Mobs of panic-stricken citizens burned the buildings of their neighbours as old grudges blossomed into violence. Through it all, the rain pounded down like the tears of Marienburg’s many gods.

Several times Dubnitz was forced to fend off the attentions of the opportunistic and terror-maddened. His sword was heavy with blood as he forced Goodweather through the throngs clogging the streets. However, those throngs thinned as they entered the Tannery, eventually disappearing entirely.

The Beggar’s Market occupied a natural meeting point between several side streets in the Tannery. The stink of boiling fat and rotting meat was thick on the wet air. The streets were empty of life, save the scrabbling of rats in the gutters. Something crashed in the distance. Dubnitz wondered if another of the shark-things was loose somewhere. Ambrosius had said as much. The thought made his muscles tense. The haze of still-burning fires danced above the rooftops like a false dawn.

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ Goodweather said. She had her hood pulled low, and the symbol of Manann was displayed prominently on her chest. ‘I should be at the temple. There are things to be done.’

‘Are they more important than countering the machinations of the minions of the shark-god?’ Dubnitz said, his palm resting on his sword hilt. Drying blood dotted his armour, hiding the piscine designs beneath red splashes.

‘Minions,’ Goodweather repeated, looking at him.

‘What would you call them?’ Dubnitz said.

Goodweather merely shook her head and looked around. Empty stalls lined the walls of the buildings on either side of the street. On any other night, rain or not, those stalls would be crammed with men and women selling their wares. The Beggar’s Market was almost a parody of the great mercantile squares that occupied other parts of Marienburg. Here was where the poor came to buy and sell their pitiful wares; they were doing neither tonight.

‘How do we tell which stall we’re looking for? And where is everyone?’ Goodweather said.

‘As to the latter, I can only guess. But as to the former… there!’ He pointed. The shark’s jaws were larger than any beast Dubnitz had had the misfortune to meet in the sea or otherwise. They spread wide on a rough cut wooden post mounted over a dingy stall. ‘They’re not a subtle folk, these worshippers of the shark-god.’

‘No,’ Goodweather said grimly. ‘Stromfels is as subtle as the oncoming storm.’

‘And as remorseless,’ Dubnitz said. ‘That explains that. The people of the Tannery have always had a nose for trouble. They go to ground like rats when trouble rears its head.’ He held up a hand. ‘Hsst…we’re being watched,’ he said softly. Goodweather twitched and looked around, her fingers sliding towards the knife on her belt.

‘Why didn’t the Lord Justicar send any men with us?’ she muttered. The knife in her hand was hooked and serrated, the blade engraved with the name of Manann.

‘Probably because he had none to spare, Goodweather,’ Dubnitz said, his eyes flickering across the street. ‘The whole city is going up in flames and inundated with monsters. Finding one man, no matter how important, isn’t high on his list of priorities.’

‘There’s no guarantee that Ikel is even here!’ Goodweather snapped, looking around warily.

‘So who’s watching us then, hmm?’ Dubnitz said. The two of them had moved back to back instinctively. The rain had picked up, coming down now in semi-opaque sheets. Thunder snarled and then, the deep tolling rolled through Dubnitz’s bones. Goodweather gasped and clutched at her chest. The puddles of water collecting on the street rippled and the rain wavered into weird shapes.

Shapes rose suddenly from the street, clad in rags and trash, their faces masked by blackened peat bags. Swords, axes and clubs were gripped tight in grimy hands. In silence, they rushed towards the duo. Dubnitz drew his sword and chopped upwards into an attacker’s skull in one smooth motion, cutting the man in two from chin to pate. He turned as another, carrying a rusty billhook, leapt wildly at Goodweather. The priestess flung out a hand, and a fistful of fish-scales drifted towards her attacker. The flimsy, tiny scales pierced the man’s chest, arms and face like tiny arrows, leaving blisters and burns in their wake. The man screamed and fell, clawing at himself. Goodweather swept her hooked knife out and cut his throat with one economic bend of her elbow.

Dubnitz shoved her aside as an axe dropped towards her head. He caught the blade on his own, and sparks dripped into his face as the two weapons slid across one another with a squeal. He kicked out and was rewarded with the sound of snapping bone. The axe-man fell, and Dubnitz caught him on the back of the neck with his sword. The head rolled loose into the gutter.

There was a scream from behind him and as he turned he saw a cultist stagger, clawing at the billhook sticking up from his back. Goodweather put a boot and jerked the confiscated weapon loose. Dubnitz inclined his head and she gave him a sharp nod. Then, her eyes widened and she hurled the billhook.

Dubnitz cursed and fell backwards. The billhook scraped across his cuirass as it caught his attacker in the throat, dropping the man into a heap. ‘Nice throw,’ he said, straightening up and turning towards her.

‘Not really,’ she said, as the last of their attackers pressed the edge of his notched cutlass to her throat meaningfully.

‘Drop your sword,’ the man growled, his voice muffled by his mask.

‘No,’ Dubnitz said, starting forward.

‘I’ll kill her,’ the other said.

‘He’ll kill me,’ Goodweather added.

‘No he won’t,’ Dubnitz said, drawing closer, the rain pattering across his armour.

‘He won’t?’ Goodweather said.

‘I will!’ the cultist said.

‘You won’t,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Because if you do kill her, I’ll hurt you for it.’

‘I do not fear death,’ the cultist said.

‘I didn’t say anything about death. I said I’d hurt you. And I will. I will personally oversee your sentence in the Temple of Manann. I will put the Question to you again and again, until you are nothing more than shark-chum. Your every moment will be an eternity of agony, my friend, and I will not let it end,’ Dubnitz said mildly. He stopped and extended his sword. ‘It’s your choice, of course.’

The cultist shoved aside Goodweather with a cry and launched himself at Dubnitz. Dubnitz beat aside the cutlass with an almost gentle gesture and spun around, swatting the man on the back of the head with the flat of his blade. The cultist dropped onto the water-logged street like a pole-axed ox. Dubnitz looked at Goodweather, who was rubbing her throat. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Nice speech,’ she said.

‘I meant every word,’ he said softly.

‘Of course you meant it. You always mean what you say, when you say it. That’s the problem, Erkhart,’ Goodweather said. Dubnitz fell silent. He occupied himself with jerking the cultist to his feet and shaking him into sensibility.

‘Up,’ Dubnitz barked. The man groaned and Dubnitz prodded him with the tip of his sword. ‘Where’s Ikel? Did he know we were coming?’

The cultist didn’t answer, shaking his head. Dubnitz lifted the man’s chin with his sword. ‘Talk, or I’ll begin carving the Litanies of the Sea on you, friend. And my friend here has enough salt to do the job properly.’

‘Erkhart…’ Goodweather began.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Dubnitz said, glancing at her. She shook her head.

‘So do I. Hold him,’ she said. As Dubnitz swung the weakly struggling cultist around, Goodweather scooped up two handfuls of rainwater. She murmured into her cupped hands, and the water bubbled in a strange fashion as she placed it beneath the cultist’s nose. Steam rose from the water. ‘Take off his mask,’ she said. Dubnitz complied. The cultist was a pale faced, pop-eyed man, with strange ritualistic scars on his cheeks and forehead. The steam wavered in the rain and then plunged up into his nose and eyes. The cultist shuddered and gurgled.

The hairs on the back of Dubnitz’s neck rose as the body in his grip went slack. ‘What are you–’ he began. Goodweather silenced him with a look.

Finally, she stepped back. ‘Release him.’

Dubnitz did, and gladly. The prayers of the servants of Manann were a strange, wild thing and though he served the god, Dubnitz knew that there were mysteries that he would never be privy to. The cultist jerked back and forth, gurgling. ‘Lead us to Ikel,’ Goodweather said, her face slick with rain and sweat. Her eyes showed the strain of what she was doing. The cultist spun and staggered, like a marionette. Then, with a moan, he stumbled off.

‘Let’s go,’ Goodweather said hoarsely. Dubnitz followed her.

‘What did you do to him?’

‘A simple trick, though I’ve never tried it with anything larger than a seagull,’ she said. She rubbed her head. ‘As long as the steam stays in him, he’ll do as we say. Manann will compel him. But once it escapes…’

‘Hopefully he’ll get us to where we need to go then,’ Dubnitz said.

The cultist led them on a crooked, circuitous route through the Tannery. As they entered a badly lit cul-de-sac, the deep, black tolling happened again, and it made Dubnitz’s head feel as if it were fit to burst. Goodweather grabbed her head and nearly sank to her knees. Prayers to Manann burst from her lips in desperate speed. The cultist shuddered to a stop as it happened, steam rising from his ears, mouth and nose. The street seemed to be submerged beneath murky water and vast, terrifying shapes slid between the buildings, swimming from shadow to shadow.

Dubnitz opened his mouth to speak, and bubbles flowed into the air around his head. The rain had become something else entirely. His limbs felt sluggish and leaden and as the echoes of the deep boom faded, and those immense, terrible shapes shot past and over him into the city faster than any bird, the world snapped back to normality.

Goodweather clutched at her amulet, her thumbs pressed tight to the trident symbol of Manann. She looked at him, her face pale and her eyes wide with horror. Dubnitz knew that his own face was likely the mirror image of hers, but he shook it off.

The cultist lay limp on the street, his body contorted and rigid. Dubnitz didn’t have to examine him to know he was dead. ‘I think we’ve found the place,’ he rasped.

The store front had seen better years. It was shabby even by the standards of the Tannery and it smelled of rotting fish. A number of the latter had been nailed to the lintel, their blank eyes staring out at the street. It was only by looking carefully that Dubnitz could tell that the fish had been nailed up in the shape of Stromfels’s symbol. He felt cold and sick and he hesitated before the door.

‘We could go back. We could get help,’ Goodweather said from behind him.

‘And what would happen between now and then, eh?’ Dubnitz growled, all humour gone. He looked up into the rain. There was a feeling on the air, like sailors got just before that first storm-tossed wave crested the bow and caused the boat to dip alarmingly. ‘Those bells – whatever they are – are becoming stronger. You felt it as well as I did.’

‘We’re at the eye of the storm,’ Goodweather said. She gingerly touched one of the fish and then drew her fingers back as if they’d been burned. She looked at him. ‘Erkhart…’

‘I know,’ he said. Then he lifted a boot and kicked the door in. Sword at the ready, he shouldered his way in. Rain dripped down through the sagging ceiling and ran in rusty runnels across the mouldy wooden planks of the floor. There was a vile smell, like a pig left too long on the butcher’s block in the summer air. ‘You’d think there’d be more guards,’ he said quietly.

Goodweather stepped past him. She pulled a gull feather from her pouch and released it. A cool breeze, smelling of the clean sea, took it and carried it through the shop towards the back of the room. The feather dropped to the floor and spun gently in a small circle. Dubnitz stood over it, his eyes narrowed. He dropped to his haunches and, with his sword-point he traced the edges of a trapdoor out in the thin skin of mould that covered the floor.

Carefully, he levered it open with his blade, revealing an unpleasant looking set of stairs. A foul stink wafted upwards-he smelled blood, and stale water. He looked at Goodweather. ‘Ladies first,’ he said.

‘Manann’s sword before Manann’s shield,’ she said piously.

‘Bloody dark down there,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it?’ she said. Dubnitz sighed and started down. The smooth stone of the foundations were wet to the touch, sweating with the stuff of the canals which criss-crossed the city. No place in Marienburg was more than a few feet from the water, whether it was fresh or salt, canal, marsh or sea. The city floated on moist foundations, the stones eroded century by century. Dubnitz paused at the curve of the stairs. Weak torchlight illuminated the bottom steps and he could hear the steady slap-slap of water against stone. Some places in the Tannery had underground docks, for moving illicit goods into the marshes or deep wells that provided water.

Goodweather pressed against his back. He continued down. Goodweather gasped as they caught sight of the first body. The man lay sprawled in the corner across from the steps. His hands were curled around the handle of the knife buried to the hilt in his belly. He was not alone. A dozen more bodies filled the oddly angled confines of the cellar. More than a dozen, in fact. Bodies were heaped upon bodies, all with self-inflicted wounds and all surrounding the deep well of scummy water that occupied the centre of the cellar.

In fact only three living forms occupied the cellar as Dubnitz and Goodweather reached it. A man easily recognizable as Ikel was one and the other two were soon of no consequence. As Dubnitz stepped forward, the two cultists stabbed each other and fell in a heap.

As they fell, the strange, fang-like shard of black stone that thrust out of the dark water of the pool shuddered and vibrated with a hideous bell-like peal of noise. It was thunderous in the confines of the cellar, causing the stones to grind against one another. The water swirled suddenly with a number of water-spouts and Dubnitz shielded his face as shadowy immensities burst free of the pool as the bell-noise pounded at his bones and eardrums. The shadow-things shot upwards, passing through the upper floor and away as the echoes of the bell faded.

Blinking through the pain of the sound, Dubnitz focused on Ikel, who smiled at him in apparent recognition. The cultist grinned, revealing crudely filed teeth. ‘You’re too late,’ he said. ‘Stromfels’s teeth dig deep into the meat of Manann’s realm. The King of Sharks will have his Mitterfruhl feast.’

‘Looks like he’ll be doing it sans guests,’ Dubnitz said, kicking a body. Ikel chuckled.

‘Blood must enter the water to bring the sharks,’ the cultist said.

Dubnitz caught Goodweather’s eye. Her face was as stiff as those of the corpses that lay around them. ‘They needed a sacrifice.’

‘Blood calls to beasts,’ Ikel cackled, rattling the shark’s teeth necklaces he wore. ‘We gave them away freely. Good luck charms we called them, and aye, so they are… Stromfels’s luck!’ Dubnitz saw that the black stone was studded with such teeth. Indeed they almost seemed to be growing from the rock like barnacles. Hundreds, thousands of sharp shark’s teeth poked through the slick surface of the stone and the sight of them made his flesh prickle.

‘What?’ he said.

‘The necklaces,’ Goodweather breathed. Her voice was full of horror and loathing. ‘The teeth are parts of Stromfels, parts of his power, even as this symbol I wear is Manann’s.’

The realization hit Dubnitz like a fist. ‘Then everyone wearing one of those…’

‘They belong to Stromfels now!’ Ikel yelped. ‘They are Stromfels. Or they will be. It takes blood, so much blood…’ Dubnitz froze, remembering the great shadows he had seen. Moving like sharks through the streets. Had they been seeking the wearers of the necklaces? Were they daemons hunting hosts to use to feed and ravage the city of the sea-god?

‘What was the point?’ Dubnitz said, tearing his eyes from the stone and moving closer to Ikel, who sidled aside, his fingers tapping on the hilt of the knife thrust through his belt.

‘Careful Erkhart,’ Goodweather said. ‘Don’t let him do it.’

‘Don’t let him do what?’ Dubnitz snapped.

‘Don’t let him kill himself. If he kills himself, the sacrifice will be completed,’ Goodweather said. ‘And those who haven’t been transformed yet will be.’

‘Silence,’ Ikel snapped. ‘Manann has no voice here. This is Stromfels’s place. Stromfels’s temple!’ He gestured wildly at the black stone. ‘His teeth pierce the veil of Manann’s flesh, opening the way for us… for all of us!’

‘To do what then?’ Dubnitz said harshly, his eyes on the knife in Ikel’s belt. If he could keep him talking…

‘To feed the god,’ Ikel said. ‘Stromfels is as hungry as the ocean, and like the ocean he must be fed.’ He drew the knife. ‘His children burst through the veil and feed on the unworthy. And it is our honour to help them.’ Ikel lifted the knife to his throat. ‘It is my honour–’

‘No!’ Goodweather shouted, flinging her own blade. It slid across Ikel’s wrist and he yelped and dropped his knife. Goodweather leapt on him, robes flapping. ‘Erkhart, get the stone,’ she said.

‘And do what with it?’ Dubnitz roared, plunging into the water. It closed about his legs greedily, and his limbs went immediately numb, nearly causing him to fall. Things brushed against his knees and he nearly fell forward into the stone. He caught himself at the last minute, his hands shooting out against the stone. Impossibly, the metal and thick leather of his gauntlets gave way before the teeth like thin paper and Dubnitz snarled in pain. He jerked his throbbing hands back. His palms bled freely.

Goodweather, struggling with Ikel, shouted, ‘Get it out of the water. Hurry!’

Dubnitz looked at her and then at the stone. It gleamed nastily and he hesitated to touch it again. But, not knowing what else to do, he sank down into the water, digging for its base. His blood coloured the water as his fingers were shredded. Pain ran wild up his forearms and sparks bounced at the edges of his vision. It felt like his hands were being chewed.

‘Dubnitz, hurry!’ Goodweather called from behind him.

With a groan, Dubnitz lifted the stone. His chest and shoulders swelled and his feet slid beneath the water as he ripped it free of the pool. Fangs fastened into his thigh as some unseen something coiled about his legs. He stamped blindly, and a powerful blow crashed into his back, nearly knocking him over. He staggered forward, still holding the stone aloft. It seemed to grow heavier, its weight doubling and tripling. His arms trembled as he fought to reach the edge of the pool.

In his head, he heard the slash of a shark’s fin through eternal waters and the thunder of a great, gluttonous heart. His lungs were full of water and the smell of his blood spread across the spirit-sea that held Stromfels and his progeny. Shadow-things spun around him, darting at the edges of his vision and fear cut through him like a knife. ‘Manann help me,’ he muttered. For the first time in his life, the prayer was a sincere one.

He caught a glimpse of movement, and saw Goodweather on her back among the bodies, Ikel straddling her, his filed teeth darting for her throat. Dubnitz, reacting on instinct, bellowed and hurled the stone at the cultist. It caught Ikel in the head and shoulders and he fell without a sound, the black stone settling on him with an almost hungry squelching sound. Despite the blood, there was no toll of sound. No shadow-things springing from the water’s depths to rampage through his city. Nothing, save a disappointed silence.

The waters of the pool thrashed suddenly and then went still. The oppressive feeling of the cellar faded slowly, as if whatever presence had been causing it were receding. Dubnitz collapsed, half in and half out of the water. He coughed and looked at Goodweather, who got to her feet slowly. ‘Did it work?’ he said, pulling himself out of the water.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking around. ‘I think so.’

‘You think so? You seemed bloody certain when you were ordering me in there!’ Dubnitz growled, trying to get to his feet and failing. His hands and legs were covered in blood and the shredded remnants of his armour.

She helped him sit up. ‘It seemed like the thing to do.’

‘Seemed like the…’ Dubnitz gaped at her. ‘Are you saying you guessed?’

‘I suppose I did, yes,’ Goodweather said hesitantly.

Dubnitz began to laugh, softly at first, and then great, echoing guffaws. Goodweather joined him and the sound of their mingled laughter drove the last lingering shadows back into the depths.

An Extract from Knight of the Blazing Sun

Josh Reynolds

The orcs came down out of the Worlds Edge Mountains into Ostermark like a green tide, sweeping villages and towns before them in a cascade of flame and pillage. But the men of the Mark stood firm and met the orcs with pike, shot and sword. Soldiers in purple and yellow livery crashed against barbaric green-skinned savages, matching Imperial steel and age-old strategy against inhuman muscle and brute cunning. Men and orcs screamed and died as the frozen ground turned to mud and the sun swung high in the sky.

Elsewhere, horses pawed the frost-covered earth in nervous anticipation. Their breath escaped in bursts of steam which drifted haphazardly through the close-set scrub trees that surrounded them and their riders. Hector Goetz reached down and stroked his mount’s muscular neck. The warhorse whinnied eagerly. ‘Easy Kaspar,’ he said. ‘Easy. Miles to go yet.’ Goetz was a tall man, and he wore the gilded armour of a knight of the Order of the Blazing Sun easily, if not entirely comfort¬ably. He glanced down the row of similarly armoured riders that

spread out to either side of him and wished he felt more confident in his chances of surviving the coming engagement.

‘Just give him a thump, boy,’ someone said. Goetz twisted in his saddle, meeting the cheerful gaze of his hochmeister. Tancred Berlich was a big, bluff man with a grey-streaked beard and a wide grin. Red cheeks and a splotchy nose completed the image of a man more concerned with food and drink than fighting and death. He had commanded the Kappelburg Komturie for as long as Goetz could remember. ‘Horses are like soldiers… a thump or three is good for morale.’

Goetz chuckled as Berlich gave a booming laugh. His smile faded as Berlich’s opposite number from the Bechafen Komturie glared at them through the open visor of his ornate helmet.

‘I know that proper military discipline is difficult for you, Tancred, but I would like to remind you that this is an ambush!’ the man hissed through gritted teeth. Of an age with his fellow Hochmeister, Alfonse Wiscard looked older. His face was a hatchet made of wrinkles and his eyes were like chips of ice. Those cool orbs swivelled to Goetz a moment later. ‘Control your hochmeister, brother, or the orcs will be on us far sooner than we anticipate,’ he said.

‘Leave the boy alone, Wiscard,’ Berlich said before Goetz could reply. ‘He’s got more experience than all of the puppies you brought along combined. Don’t you boy?’

‘I… have seen my share,’ Goetz said, looking straight ahead. ‘More than most perhaps.’

‘The Talabeclander insults us!’ one of Wiscard’s men said.

‘Quiet,’ Wiscard snapped. His face was twisted into as sour an expression as Goetz had ever seen. He felt impressed despite himself. ‘Quiet, all of you. We are here to fight orcs, not rehash old grudges.’ The prov¬inces of Talabecland and Ostermark had been at each other’s throats for decades, for one reason or another. While the only loyalties the members of the Order were supposed to hold were to Myrmidia, the Order itself and the Emperor, in that order, occasionally the old traditional disagreements crept in.

‘Besides, the boy’s not really a Talabeclander; he’s from Solland!’ Berlich said, pounding Goetz on the shoulder.

‘Solland hasn’t existed for a long time. Longer than my lifetime,’ Goetz protested.

‘Modesty. I think he’s the heir,’ Berlich whispered loudly to Wiscard. ‘Old Helborg owes the boy a sword, or my name isn’t Tanty!’

‘Sudenland is gone, hochmeister. As is its elector,’ Goetz said patiently. ‘Sudenland’ was how his mother had insisted on referring to the dead province, now long since absorbed by Wissenland. It was a peculiar¬ity of the old families, and one Goetz had never been able to shake. ‘And your name is Tancred. I have never heard anyone refer to you as “Tanty”.’

‘See? See? Only royalty talks down its nose like that! Boy’ll be Emperor if he survives,’ Berlich laughed.

Goetz craned his neck as a young pistolier rode up. Both horse and rider were clearly exhausted. The pistolier had sweat dripping down his youthful fea¬tures, cutting tracks in the grime that otherwise covered his face. ‘Milords,’ he wheezed. ‘The Lord Elec¬tor Hertwig requests that you see to the flank!’

‘Ha! Finally!’ Berlich growled, slamming a fist into his thigh.

Goetz watched the young man lead his horse away, both of them covered in sweat and reeking of a hard ride and exhaustion. It hadn’t been so long ago that he himself had ridden among the ranks of the pistolkorps. They had taught him the art of riding and of the use¬fulness of black powder. Thinking of that last one, he wondered what he wouldn’t give for a brace of pistols now. Even just one would mean one less orc to face up close. Unfortunately, while Myrmidia was a goddess of battlefield innovation, her followers were forced to follow the law of the land. Gunpowder was far too rare and unstable to be given to a force prone to reckless headlong charges into the maw of the enemy army.

Goetz sighed. He’d earned his spurs as a pistolier, against orcs then as well. Of course, the raiders he and his compatriots had put to flight then had been as noth¬ing compared to the horde that now crawled across his field of vision, from horizon to horizon. He was sud¬denly quite thankful for the heavy plate he wore, with all of its dwarf-forged strength between him and the crude axes of the green-skinned savages he was even now readying himself to face. He’d seen what an orc could do to an unarmoured man – and an armoured one, come to that – and the more layers between him and that gruesome fate was well worth the inevitable sweat and chafing. Not to mention the smell.

Still, a pistol would have been nice.

‘Don’t look so glum, boy,’ Berlich said, jostling him out of his reverie. ‘Cheer up! We’ll be charging any minute now!’ The hochmeister grinned eagerly, and bounced slightly in his saddle like an excited urchin. ‘Blood and thunder, we’ll turn them into so much paste!’

Goetz turned back around, peering through the pro¬tective embrace of the thicket where they were waiting. While most of the orc army was already engaged in the swirling melee beyond, some canny boss had managed to restrain his impetuous followers. That was impres¬sive, and slightly frightening. Orcs usually had all the restraint of a rabid hound. When one proved capable of thinking beyond putting its axe through the near¬est skull, it meant trouble for anyone unlucky enough to be caught in its path. Right at that moment, the unlucky ones looked to be the eastern flank of elec¬tor Hertwig’s battered force, as a stomping, snorting, squealing flood of orcish Boar Riders hurtled towards the purple-and-gold lines. Goetz tightened his grip on his reins and took hold of his lance, jerking it up from where he’d stabbed it into the ground.

‘Thunder and lightning, that’s how it’ll be!’ Berlich said, lifting his own lance. Goetz took a deep breath and set his shield. He caught Wiscard’s eye, and the hochmeister nodded briskly.

‘We go where we are needed,’ Wiscard said, intoning the first part of the Order’s creed.

‘We do what must be done,’ Goetz replied along with all the rest.

‘And Myrmidia have mercy on those green buggers because I’ll have none!’ Berlich roared, standing up in his saddle. ‘Let’s have at them! Hyah!’ Then, with a slow rumble that built to a thunderous crescendo, the Order of the Blazing Sun rode to war. They brushed aside the thicket with the force of their passage and the Order’s specially-bred warhorses bugled bloodthirsty cries as they launched forwards.

Seconds later, wood met flesh with a thunderous roar, and the ground trembled at the point of impact. Lances cracked and splintered as they tore through the orc lines, shoving bodies back atop bodies and creating eddies in the green tide. Goetz’s teeth rattled inside his helmet as his lance was reduced to a jagged stump of brightly painted wood. He tossed it aside and drew his sword, wheeling his horse around even as the broken weapon struck the ground. Goetz lashed out as a green shape crashed against him in the press of combat.

The orc’s mouth gaped wide, its foul breath spill¬ing out from between a gate of yellowed tusks as the sword passed between its bulbous head and its sloped shoulders. The head, still mouthing now-silent curses, tumbled forward, striking Goetz’s shield and springing away into the depths of the melee.

The body, its neck-stump spurting blood, was car¬ried in the opposite direction by the snorting, kicking boar its legs were still clamped around. Goetz hauled on his horse’s reins, forcing the trained destrier to side¬step the grunting beast. The horse bucked and kicked at the fleeing pig and then swung around at Goetz’s signal, lunging towards the next opponent with a sav¬age whinny.

Goetz’s sword chopped down left and right until his arm began to ache from the strain. The orcs kept coming, treading on the bodies of their dead or dying fellows in their excitement as they fought to get to grips with the men who had crashed into their flank.

It had been a bold move, and a necessary one, but Goetz wasn’t so sure that it had been a smart one. Fifty men, even fifty fully-armoured knights of the Order of the Blazing Sun, could not stand against the full weight of an orc horde, no matter how righteous their cause or how strong their sword-arms. Now, with their task accomplished, they found themselves surrounded by an army of angry berserkers as the rest of the elector’s forces attempted to reach them. It was not a position that Goetz enjoyed being in.

A crude spear crashed against his thigh and skittered off his armour, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. Goetz swung his horse around and iron-shod hooves snapped out, pulping a malformed green skull with deadly efficiency. He brought his shield up instinc¬tively as a swift movement caught his eye. Arrows sprouted from the already battered face of the shield and Goetz chopped his sword down, slicing through the hafts as he whispered a quiet prayer to Myrmidia.

‘Hear me, Lady of Battle; keep me from harm and kill my enemy, if you please,’ he said as he took a moment to catch his breath. He looked around. The battle had devolved into a chaotic melee, with ranks and order forgotten in the heat of battle. A volley of handguns barked nearby; men screamed and died, their cries barely audible above the cacophony of the orcish battle-cries. He caught sight of Hertwig’s standard, waving above the battle.

‘Ware!’ someone yelled. Another knight, his armour flecked with gore, gestured wildly and Goetz twisted in his saddle, catching a gnaw-toothed axe on the edge of his sword. His arm went numb from the force of the blow and he was forced to bring his shield around to catch a second blow.

The shield crumpled inward as the axe crashed against it. The orc who wielded it was as large a mon¬ster as Goetz had ever seen. It had a dull, dark hue to its thick hide and heavy armour decorating its mus¬cular limbs. The beast was large enough to attack a mounted man without difficulty and as Goetz’s horse shied away, the brute roared out a challenge in its own barbarous tongue.

‘Come on then!’ Goetz shouted back. He kneed his mount and the warhorse reared, lashing out. The orc howled as a knife-edged hoof plucked one of its bat-like ears from its head. It drove one massive shoulder into the horse’s belly, toppling it onto its side. Goetz rolled from the saddle as his horse fell, losing hold of his shield. He retained his sword however and man¬aged to block a blow that would have taken his head from his shoulders.

The orc loomed over him, its teeth bared in a grin. The edge of the axe inched downwards towards Goetz’s face, despite the interposed sword blade. Muscles screaming, he drove a fist into the orc’s jaw, surprising it as well as numbing his hand in the process. It had been like punching a sack of granite.

The beast stepped aside, more from shock than pain, but the hesitation was enough. Goetz swung around, chopping his sword into the orc’s side. It roared and backhanded him, denting his helm and sending it fly¬ing. He fell onto his back, skull ringing.

Bellowing in agony, the orc jerked at the sword, trying to pull it free. It gave up after a moment and, bloody froth decorating its jaws, swung its axe up for a killing blow despite the presence of Goetz’s sword still buried hilt-deep in its side. Before the blow could land a lance point burst through the orc’s throat. It dropped its axe and grabbed at the jagged mass of wood, bending dou¬ble and nearly yanking its wielder from his saddle.

‘Are you just going to sit there all day, brother, or are you going to help me?’ the knight cried out as Goetz looked up at him. Goetz’s reply was to throw himself towards the hilt of his sword. The orc arched its back, gagging as it tried to remove the obstruction in its throat. Even now, nearly chopped in two and with a lance through the neck it was still fighting… and still more than capable of killing.

Goetz caught the hilt with his palms and shoulder and thrust forward with all of his weight. The orc’s roar turned shrill as the sword resumed its path through the beast’s midsection. Goetz stumbled as dark blood sprayed him. The orc fell in two directions, fists and heels thumping the ground spasmodically.

Rising, Goetz caught his horse’s bridle. ‘Easy, Kaspar, easy,’ he murmured, knuckling the horse at the base of its jaw as it nuzzled him. He hauled himself awk¬wardly up into the saddle. Muscles aching, he turned to his rescuer.

‘My thanks, brother,’ he said, jerking on his mount’s reins and turning it. The other man raised his visor and snorted. Goetz recognised the fine-boned features as those of the man who had taken offence at Berlich’s comments earlier. Velk, he thought the man was called.

‘Save your thanks, Talabeclander,’ Velk said. ‘If I’d known it was one of you lot, I might have let the brute finish you off.’

Goetz spat out a mouthful of dust and shook his head. ‘I see the hospitality of the Mark is as generous as ever.’

Velk glared at him and opened his mouth to reply when a sharp voice interrupted. ‘Brothers! Cease this nonsense. There are still orcs to kill.’ Goetz turned and saw Wiscard, riding towards them, a blood-stained warhammer dangling loosely from his hand. Three other knights trailed after him, including Berlich, who looked as cheerful as ever despite the blood matting his beard.

As Wiscard drew close, he motioned with the ham¬mer and said, ‘Look!’ Goetz followed the gesture and saw a crude standard rising above a cloud of dust. The tattered remnants of a number of banners, some from regiments native to the Empire, others from Bre¬tonnia and one or two from places that Goetz didn’t recognise, hung from the crossbeam of the standard, flapping amidst an assortment of skulls and gewgaws. As they watched, the elector’s standard, gleaming gold and purple, hurtled towards the other.

‘Must be their warlord,’ Berlich said, setting his horse into motion with a swift kick. ‘Having fun, Brother Goetz?’ he said, grinning at the younger knight.

‘More than is decent, hochmeister,’ Goetz said. The knights began to trot forward as a solid wedge, resting their horses for a moment. Even the strongest animal could only do so much carrying the weight of a fully armoured knight.

Berlich laughed and slapped Goetz a ringing blow on the shoulder. He looked at Wiscard. ‘Didn’t I tell you the boy had spirit?’

‘As a matter of fact, no,’ Wiscard said. ‘Then, I rarely pay attention to your blathering, Tancred.’

‘Blathering?’ Berlich said with a guffaw. ‘Do I blather, Brother Goetz?’

‘Incessantly, Hochmeister Berlich,’ Goetz said, rec¬ognising the game. Berlich liked to pretend he was nothing more than a common soldier, despite having more titles than fingers. The Kappelburg Komturie was a place of little truck with authority or discipline.

Berlich clutched his chest. ‘Cut to the quick! And by a fellow knight… the ignominy of it all.’

‘From what I know of Talabeclanders, you should have expected as much,’ Velk interjected. ‘Traitorous pack of killers, the lot of you.’

Berlich ignored him. ‘What say we introduce our¬selves to yon beastie, Wiscard you old stick?’ he said, gesturing with his sword to the warlord’s standard.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ Wiscard said. He slapped his visor down and the other knights did the same. ‘Velk, Goetz, form up on me.’

As one, they charged. They crashed into the orcs from behind, bowling several over. Goetz leaned over his horse’s neck, chopping down on those orcs not quick enough to get out of the way. Surprised, several of the creatures ran, and those that didn’t fell soon enough.

One of the creatures, however, spun and chopped down on Velk’s horse with a vicious looking double-bladed axe. The horse fell squealing and rolled over its rider, leaving him in the dust. Goetz yanked hard on the reins and sent his own horse leaping between the downed knight and his would-be slayer. ‘Haro Talabe¬cland!’ he roared, shouting the battle-cry of his home province. ‘Up, Talabheim!’

The orc yowled as Goetz’s sword took its hands off at the wrists. His second blow cracked its skull. Velk was on his feet by then, his face tight with pain. One arm hung at an awkward angle, and he grudgingly nodded at Goetz. A moment later, his eyes widened as a mas¬sive shape loomed up out of the dust.

A stone-headed maul crashed against the armoured head of Goetz’s horse, killing the animal instantly and throwing Goetz to the ground for a second time. He skidded across the rocky ground, narrowly avoiding being trampled by the other combatants. His eyes wid¬ened as he looked up at what had to be the leader of the orc horde.

The creature was far larger than the dark-skinned brute from earlier, and its skin gleamed like polished obsidian. A horned, crimson-crested helmet rode on its square head and made it look even taller as it spread its ape-like arms and bellowed. The motion and the sound caused the oddments of plate and mail that it wore to clatter loudly. With a start, Goetz realised that the beast had its standard strapped to its back, as well as a basket full of smaller, vicious looking creatures, all clad in black cloaks and hoods and armed with crude bows. Goblins, he realised, as he rolled out of the way of a spatter of arrows.

‘Myrmidia’s oath,’ Velk said, stumbling back. ‘It’s huge!’

‘That just means it’s easier to hit!’ Berlich roared, swooping past them towards the warlord. Whooping, the hochmeister swung his sword overhand, shearing off one of the horns on the orc’s helmet. The monster howled in outrage and spun much more quickly than Goetz thought possible for a creature that size.

Berlich grunted as the stone maul rose up and rang down on his shield, shattering both it and the arm it had been strapped to. Goetz watched in horror as Berlich’s horse sank to its knees from the force of the impact and a second blow swept the knight from his saddle and sent him sailing. Berlich landed with a sick¬ening thump several dozen yards away and did not move.

‘No!’ Goetz surged to his feet and brought his sword down on the side of the orc warlord’s head, cutting a divot out of its helmet and its face. The maul swung out at him and he leapt back, ignoring the weight of his armour and the growing ache in his limbs.

‘The Mark! The Mark!’ Velk shouted, sounding his own province’s battle-cry and stumbling towards the creature from the other side. His sword struck sparks off the orc’s mail, but did little else. An almost casual jab of a titanic elbow sent him tumbling.

The orc made to finish Velk off and Goetz hacked through the haft of its weapon, more through luck than intention. He swung again, slicing links from the brute’s rusty suit of mail. The creature’s spade-sized hands crashed against his shoulders and he was hoisted into the air. As it opened its mouth, he realised that in absence of its weapon it intended to bite his head off.

‘Myrmidia make me lucky rather than stupid,’ he hissed as he kicked out, driving a foot into its teeth. The blow shattered several tusks. Squirming, Goetz freed his sword-arm and stabbed clumsily at the orc’s face. Most of the blows landed on its helmet, but one found a yellow eye, popping it like a blister. Yellow pus erupted from the creature’s socket and it shrieked and dropped Goetz.

‘Ha!’ Gripping his sword with both hands, he rammed it into the creature’s belly and cut upwards. The orc’s shriek grew louder as Goetz dug the blade in, trying to pierce its heart. Great fists crashed down on him, snapping off a pauldron and cracking his shoulder.

Goetz ignored the pain and forced the blade in deeper, until, at last, the brute’s cries faded and it went limp. He staggered back as it fell, its remaining eye glazed over and its jaws wide. One hand clawed momentarily at the earth but then splayed flat.

Somewhere a cheer went up. Goetz turned, exhausted, and raised his sword over his head. A moment later a sharp pain flared through him and he grunted. He stumbled forward, reaching towards his back.

A thin shaft had sprouted from a gap in his armour. A second shaft, and then a third and a fourth thud¬ded home. A burning sensation erupted from the points of impact and slithered through him. He wob¬bled around, body going numb. His sword slid from nerveless fingers and he sank to his knees. He saw the goblins clamber out of the crumpled basket on the warlord’s back. He clawed awkwardly for his sword.

Evil green faces glared at him in malicious glee as sev¬eral dark shapes darted forward, crude blades drawn. As the goblins closed in, chuckling and slinking, Goetz collapsed, his world melting into fire.

Conrad Balk, Hochmeister of the Svunum Komturie and knight of the Order of the Blazing Sun, shivered as the chill of the sea wrapped around him. He clutched his axe more tightly and kept his eyes on the horizon. It was not meet to watch the goddess’s representative when she was about her business. Nor was it particu¬larly conducive to a restful night’s sleep. The first time he had seen the twitching, spasming ordeal of a trance, he had been horrified. But age and familiarity had brought the reassurance that the priestess could not – would not – harm herself. Still, it always raised his hackles.

Swallowing his nervousness, he draped his fingers over the head of his axe and leaned forward, peering out of the mouth of the cavern. The mist that clung to the surface of the Sea of Claws was as thick as stone, but Balk knew where the southern coast of Norsca was. In his head, a map unfolded and he saw the scars of memory. He saw the place where his predecessor Hochmeister Greisen had died, the place Greisen’s own predecessor, Kluger, had fallen; in both cases, the Norscans were to blame.

In his darker moments, Balk supposed that they would be responsible for his own death as well. He took a breath and pushed the thought aside. Death was unavoidable. Better to think about what could be accomplished before that moment, whenever it came.

Better to think about what could yet be built.

A crow swooped into the cavern and hopped onto a rock near Balk. It cocked its head and croaked. Balk nodded and stepped aside. The crow flew past him and a few moments later he heard the priestess stand.

‘Well, Lady Myrma?’ he said, not turning. He knew what he would see… a young woman, lithe and limber, shrouded in a feathered cloak with her face covered in tribal tattoos. As she moved into the light, the tat¬toos briefly seemed to writhe into a different pattern, though he knew that was impossible. Lady Myrma, the latest in a long line of priestesses and the third by that name known to the men of his Order.

‘Dead,’ she said, her youthful timbre touched with an inhuman resonance.

Balk closed his eyes and said a quick prayer. Then he said, ‘How?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes. Did he die well?’ Balk said intently.

‘As well as can be expected,’ the priestess said, pull¬ing the edges of her cloak more tightly about her. She tapped two fingers against her temple. ‘He felt nothing.’

Balk sighed and kissed the flat of his axe. ‘Good.’

‘Do not indulge in guilt, Master Balk. It is a use¬less thing and self-indulgent.’ She looked at him and stroked the crow that sat on her shoulder. ‘Besides, it will be forgotten soon enough. The Enemy is at our gate.’

‘The–’ Balk’s eyes widened. ‘You felt something? Learned something?’

‘Felt, tasted and chased,’ Myrma purred, licking her fingers. She frowned. ‘Unfortunately, I did not catch him. He is cunning and cruel, that one.’

‘A shame,’ Balk said. He looked out at the sea and gestured with his axe. ‘Well, he will be waiting on us, I suppose. Whoever he is.’ He pulled the axe back and let it rest on his shoulder. ‘They all will. Goddess pity them…’

‘For we will not,’ Myrma said, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Norsca will be burned clean in the fires of her wrath, Master Balk. It will be your hand that sets those fires alight come the Witching Night.’

Balk hesitated. ‘I still dislike that aspect of it. As nights go, that’s not an auspicious one…’

‘Is it not? A night where the winds of magic roar and where the gods themselves can step onto the skin of the world?’ Myrma said. ‘What other night could it be?’

Balk grunted and made his way towards the roughly hewn stone steps that led upwards to the komturie. The woman watched him go, her dark eyes consider¬ing. Then, as if coming to a decision, she shook her head.

‘No. He is not the one, is he?’

She cocked her head, as if listening to the roar of the surf as it thundered against the rock. Beneath her feet, the bedrock of the island trembled slightly. ‘No, you are right as ever, Mistress,’ she said, stroking the crow. It croaked in pleasure and flapped its wings. Myrma looked at it and smiled.

‘But the one is coming, eh?’ Her smile split, reveal¬ing cruelly filed teeth in a carnivorous grin. ‘Yes. He is coming.’

THE LION

Part One

‘There is but one reason and one reason alone in the exercise of power: to further one’s agenda. Be it selfish or altruistic, such agenda should be the whole of one’s concern without distraction if power is to be expended to its benefit. One need only look to the example of the Emperor’s Great Crusade for proof of this eternal truth; when distraction came it was to the ruin of all.’

– Lyaedes, Intermissions, M31

I

The lord of the First Legion sat as he so often sat these nights, leaning back in his ornate throne of ivory and obsidian. His elbows rested upon the throne’s sculpted arms, while his fingers were steepled before his face, just barely touching his lips. Unblinking eyes, the brutal green of Caliban’s forests, stared dead ahead, watching the flickering hololith of embattled stars.

Aboard the Invincible Reason, flagship of the Dark Angels, Lion El’Jonson thought long and hard. There were many things for him to reason out, yet no matter how hard he tried to stay focused on the military effort to bring the Night Lords to battle, his mind was drawn back to an imponderable dilemma.

Eighty-two days had passed since his confrontation with Konrad Curze on the desolate world of Tsagualsa. Eighty-two days had been enough for his body to heal, for the most part, the grievous wounds the Night Haunter’s claws had inflicted upon the Lion’s superhuman flesh. The armour he wore had been repaired and refurbished and repainted, so that not a mark of Curze’s violence showed upon its ebon surface.

On the outside, the Lion was fully recovered, but within lay the most hideous injuries, inflicted not by the Night Haunter’s weapons but by his words.

No risk of the fair Angels falling? When did you last walk upon the soil of Caliban, oh proud one?

The tides of the warp influenced communication as much as they did travel, and no sure word had been heard from Caliban for two years. In times past, the hateful words of Curze would have been easy to dismiss. The loyalty of the Dark Angels had been beyond question. They were the First Legion, ever the noblest in the eyes of all; even when the Luna Wolves earned great praise and Horus was raised to Warmaster, no others could claim the title of First Legion.

Yet such times seemed a lifetime ago now; civil war and schism tore apart the Imperium, and the surety of the past was no guarantee of the present, or the future. Could the Lion trust that his Legion remained loyal to him? Trust was not a natural state for the primarch. Was there some deeper purpose to the Night Lords’ endless war in the Thramas system? Did Curze speak the truth and keep the Lion occupied here while agents of Horus swayed the loyalty of the Dark Angels to another cause?

Trust had been a scarce commodity for the Lion before Horus’s betrayal, and even then he had been taken for a fool. Perturabo had used his status as a brother to trick the Lion, taking control of the devastating war engines of Diamat under the guise of alliance, only to turn those weapons against the servants of the Emperor. The shame of being so manipulated gnawed at the Lion’s conscience, and he would never again accept the simple word of his brothers.

It was an impossible question and an impossible predicament. The Lion had pondered the meaning of the Night Haunter’s words every night, even as he analysed the movements and strategy of his foe, trying to get one step ahead of his elusive enemy. The Night Haunter had had no reason to lie; Curze had been trying to kill his brother as he spoke. Yet they might just be random spite, as had so often spilled from the lips of Konrad Curze, who had used falsehood as a weapon long before he had turned from the grace of the Emperor; lies were second nature to the primarch and came to him as easily as breaths.

The Lion despised himself for giving credence to the lie, creating the poison that ate away at his resolve. It was simple enough to vow that Thramas would not be surrendered to the Night Lords; it was another matter entirely to prosecute a war against an enemy determined not to fight. With every night that passed, the prospect of decisive battle lessened and the desire to return to Caliban and ensure everything was in order strengthened. Yet the Lion could not abandon the war, if only because it might be a return to Caliban that the Night Haunter desired.

While these thoughts vexed the primarch, at the appointed hour three of his little brothers arrived to brief him on the current situation.

The first to enter was Corswain, former Champion of the Ninth Order, recently appointed as the Primarch’s Seneschal. Across the back of his armour he wore the white pelt of a fanged Calibanite beast, and beneath that hung a white robe split at the back, its breast adorned with an embroidered winged sword. His helm hung on his belt, revealing a broad face and close-cropped blond hair.

Just behind Corswain came Captain Stenius, commander of the Invincible Reason. His face was a literal mask of flesh, almost immobile due to nerve damage suffered during the Great Crusade. His eyes had been replaced with smoky silver lenses that glittered in the lights of the chamber, as inscrutable as the rest of his expression.

The last of the trio was Captain Tragan of the Ninth Order, who had been raised to the position by the primarch following the debacle at Tsagualsa. The captain’s soft brown eyes were at odds with his stern demeanour, his curls of dark brown hair cut to shoulder-length and kept from his aquiline face with a band of black-enamelled metal. It was Tragan that spoke first.

‘The Night Lords refused engagement at Parthac, my liege, but we arrived too late to stop the destruction of the primary orbital station there. The remaining docking facilities cannot cope with anything larger than a frigate, as I suspect was the enemy’s intent.’

‘That’s three major docks they have taken out in the past six months,’ said Stenius. ‘It is clear that they are denying us refitting and resupply stations.’

‘The question is why,’ said the Lion, stroking his chin. ‘The Night Lords cruisers and battle-barges require such stations as much as ours. I am forced to conclude that they have abandoned any ambition of claiming Parthac, Questios and Biamere and seek to hamper our fleet movements for some manoeuvre in the future.’

‘I would say that it has the hint of desperation, a stellar scorched earth policy,’ said Stenius.

‘We cannot rule out Curze commanding such attacks simply out of spite,’ added Corswain. ‘Perhaps there is no deeper meaning behind these recent attacks, except to exasperate and confuse us.’

‘Yet that will still be a part of a bigger plan,’ said the Lion. ‘For more than two years we have duelled across the stars, and throughout that war the Night Haunter has always been moving towards some endgame I have not yet fathomed. I will think on this latest development. What else have you to report?’

‘The normal fleet movements and scouting reports are in my latest briefing, my liege,’ said Tragan. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, if there is such a thing.’

‘There was one report that I found odd, my liege,’ said Corswain. ‘A broken astropathic message, barely discernable from the background traffic. It would be unremarkable except that it contains mention of the Death Guard Legion.’

‘Mortarion’s Legion is in Thramas?’ The Lion growled and glared at his subordinates. ‘You think this is not a matter to bring to me immediately?’

‘Not the Legion, my liege,’ said Tragan. ‘A handful of ships, a few thousand warriors at most. The transmission does not seem to originate from the Thramas theatre, my liege, but from a system several hundred light years from Balaam.’

‘The message fragments also mention a task force from the Iron Hands in the same vicinity,’ said Corswain. ‘Some skirmish I think, unlikely to impact on our conflict here.’

‘The system, what was it called?’ said the Lion. The primarch’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he asked the question.

Tragan consulted the data-slate he held in his hand.

‘Perditus, my liege,’ said the Ninth Order captain.

‘It’s barely inhabited, my liege,’ added Stenius. ‘A small Mechanicum research facility, nothing of import.’

‘You are wrong,’ said the Lion, standing up. ‘I know Perditus. I claimed the system for the Emperor, alongside warriors of the Death Guard. What your records do not show, Captain Stenius, is the nature of the research undertaken by the Mechanicum there. Perditus was meant to be kept secret, off-limits to every Legion, but it seems that the Death Guard have other plans.’

‘Off-limits, my liege?’ Tragan was taken aback by the notion. ‘What could be so dangerous?’

‘Knowledge, my little brother,’ replied the Lion. ‘Knowledge of a technology that cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the traitors. We must assemble a task force at Balaam. A force that can overwhelm anything the Death Guard or Iron Hands have in the area.’

‘What of the Night Lords, my liege?’ asked Corswain.

‘If we relent in our hunt across this sector, or weaken our forces here too much, Curze will make fine sport of the systems we cannot protect.’

‘That is a risk I must take,’ replied the primarch. ‘Perditus is a prize that we must seize from the traitors. I had almost forgotten about it, but now it is brought to mind, I think that perhaps Perditus may hold the key to victory in Thramas too. I shall lead the task force personally. The Invincible Reason will be my flagship, Captain Stenius. The Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Thirtieth Orders are to muster at Balaam.’

‘More than thirty thousand warriors!’ said Tragan, forgetting himself. He bowed his head in apology when the Lion directed a sharp glare at him.

‘When, my liege?’ asked Corswain.

‘As soon as they can,’ said the Lion. He strode towards the door. ‘We cannot afford to arrive too late at Perditus.’

II

Although almost as tall as the Legiones Astartes warriors with whom she travelled the warp, Theralyn Fiana of House Ne’iocene was far slighter, willowy of build with slender fingers. Her hair was copper in colour, as were her eyes; her normal eyes, at least. In the middle of her high forehead, from which her hair was swept back by a silver band, was her Navigator’s eye. To call it an eye was to compare a glass of water to the ocean. This orb, translucent white but dappled with swirling colours, did not look upon frequencies of light, but delved through the barrier that bounded the warp, looking upon the raw stuff of the immaterial realm.

Now that warp-sight was employed moving the Invincible Reason away from the translation point at Balaam. The streaming threads of the warp currents were tugging hard at the ship, which sat cocooned within an egg-shaped psychic field, buoyed upon the immaterial waves like a piece of flotsam on the ocean tides. She sat in the navigational spire high above the superstructure of the battle-barge. Out of instinct, Fiana looked for the bright beacon of the Astronomican, and as she had done for the last two and a half years she felt a part of her soul grow dim at the realisation that it could not be found. That the light of Terra no longer burned had been a source of constant argument amongst the Navigators attached to the Dark Angels Legion, with Fiana amongst the growing camp who believed that the only explanation was that the Emperor was no longer alive. This was not a popular viewpoint, and one not to be raised with the primarch, but the logic was inescapable to Fiana.

In the absence of the galaxy-spanning Astronomican, the Navigators relied on warp beacons – tiny lanterns of psychic brightness from relay stations in real space. They were candles compared to the star of the Astronomican, and only one in ten systems in the sector had them, but they were better than moving wholly blind; so much so that both the Night Lords and Dark Angels had tacitly agreed to treat the beacon stations as no-go areas. The risk of stranding one’s own ships in the warp was too great to chance the destruction of the fragile orbital stations.

Perditus was not a beaconed system, and was located only one hundred and fourteen light years from Balaam, on a two-hundred-and-thirty-degrees, seven-point incline heading from the Drebbel beacon, which in turn would be found on a path at one-hundred-and-eighty-seven degrees, eighteen-point negative incline three days out towards the Nemo system. Glancing at a hand-drawn chart draped over the edge of her rotatable chair, Fiana confirmed this and examined the currents lapping at the barrier of the Geller field surrounding the Invincible Reason.

The warp did not look like its true state, even to her. Yet Fiana’s warp sight allowed her to sense an approximation of its tidal powers and whorls of immaterial confluence. The Balaam system had been chosen for the rendezvous because from here a near-constant current ran through the warp almost as far as Nhyarin, nearly three thousand light years away. Nothing was ever certain with the warp, and its strange ways meant that sometimes the Nhyarin Flow ran backwards or could not be located at all, but eight times out of ten it could be relied upon to speed travel to the galactic south-west, fully across Aegis and two other subsectors. The worlds along its route were amongst the most hotly contested between the Night Lords and the Dark Angels.

Fiana punched in a series of coded orders for the piloting team situated in the command deck. A few minutes later, the Geller field bulged to starboard, its psychic harmonics adjusting to the controls of the crew so that the Invincible Reason edged out of its current course and into the outlying streams of the Nhyarin Flow. Psychic power gripped at the shields like waves tugging at a leaf, and though there was no real sensation of movement, Fiana felt in her thoughts the battle-barge surging ahead, flung forwards across time and space at incredible speed.

Around her, the pinpricks of light that had been the other ships of the fleet winked out of existence. Within half a dozen minutes, nothing could be seen of the flotilla, scattered to the four points of the compass and stretched through time by the eerie workings of warp space.

Turning in place, Fiana conducted a quick scan for storm activity. The whole of the warp was alive with tempests, but the Nhyarin Flow seemed stable enough for the moment. There was no horizon, no distance or perspective, and for just a moment Fiana teetered on the brink of being swallowed by the abyssal nature of the warp. She reeled her mind back into her skull, pulling down the velvet-padded silver band so that its psychic-circuitry-impregnated metal covered her third eye.

Just before her othersense was curtailed she thought she glimpsed another ship, riding on a swirl of energy behind the battle-barge. It was probably another Dark Angels vessel, caught by fortune on the same timeflow as the Invincible Reason. She made a note of it in her log and signalled for her half-brother Assaryn Coiden to ascend the pilaster and take over. As the senior member of the household, it was her responsibility to see that the ship was safe during transitions, but now that the task was complete, she was glad to be able to delegate to her younger siblings. Things were far more peaceful in her quarters, and ever since Horus’s rebellion had begun and the storms had come, just an hour of exposure to the warp had left her with splitting headaches and a soul-draining fatigue.

There had always been talk amongst the household, of what the warp really was, and whispered stories of the strange phenomena that the Navigators sometimes glimpsed on their travels. Now Fiana was certain that there was something else out there; not just aliens living in the warp as she had been warned, but something that existed as part of the immaterium itself.

And the stories had grown in number, and in horror. Ships had always gone missing, but the frequency with which they were now lost was frightening, as if the warp itself was rebelling at their presence. Having felt dark swirls and malignant tendrils tugging at the edges of her thoughts, Fiana knew too well that the warp was far from a welcoming place.

The Lion’s stare was cold as it fell upon the chief Navigator, Theralyn Fiana. This was the fourth audience in seven days that he had granted her, and twice also had he received representation from her through Captain Stenius. Her complaints were becoming tiresome, and made all the more irritating because there was nothing the Lion could do to alleviate the problems she and her fellow Navigators were experiencing. She had joined the Invincible Reason at Balaam, highly regarded as an expert of the warp tides they were travelling, but so far the Lion’s only impression was of a thin-faced woman who had nothing but excuses to offer for their slow progress.

This time she had Captain Stenius for company, and looked even more agitated than normal. The Lion waved Fiana forwards with a gauntleted hand, suppressing a sigh of annoyance. The Navigator stopped five metres from the primarch’s throne, the ship’s captain a few paces behind. She was dressed in a flowing gown of green and blue, of a material that shimmered like water when she walked. Her bare arms were painted with rings of varying design from shoulder to elbow and the backs of her hands were tattooed with intricate intersecting geometric shapes copied by a cluster of pendants that hung on a thin chain around her neck.

Fiana’s third eye was concealed by a broad silver band across her brow, but the Lion could feel its touch upon him, like a spark of heat on his flesh. Navigators, and all psykers for that matter, caused him pause; he was not well disposed to those who might see him in ways that normal men did not. Only the Emperor did he trust with such knowledge.

‘What is it?’ said the Lion. He fluttered a hand towards Corswain, who had just arrived and was due to brief his leader on the latest intelligence concerning Perditus. ‘Be quick, there are other matters demanding my attention. If you wish me to still the warp with a wave of my hand, I must disappoint you again, Navigator.’

‘It is on another matter, an urgent one, that we must converse,’ said Fiana as she rose from her bow. She glanced at Captain Stenius and received a curt nod of reassurance. ‘Lauded primarch, for the past several days, since we translated from Balaam, I and my family have witnessed a ship following in our wake. At first we thought it coincidence; a companion vessel of the fleet that happenstance had tossed upon the same course as ours.’

‘But you no longer believe this to be the case?’ said the Lion, leaning forwards. ‘It is my understanding that it is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to trail a vessel in warp space.’

‘That was our understanding also, lauded primarch. Many times have Navigators attempted to stay within reach of each other, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred all sight is lost within a day, and always within two days. We sometimes make analogy between the warp and the currents of the sea, but it is a simplistic comparison. The warp flows not only through space, within another realm beside our own, but also upon different streams of time.’

‘This I know,’ snapped the Lion, growing impatient. ‘An hour passes in the warp and several days have turned in real space. If a ship translates a day before another, it could be weeks ahead in its journey. You have not yet explained why coincidence is not a suitable explanation, Navigator. I have made hundreds of warp jumps in my life; it is not remarkable that on one journey another ship might be caught upon the same current.’

‘No, lauded primarch, it is not,’ replied Fiana. She straightened to her full height and met the primarch’s glare, though only for a moment before the intensity of his eyes forced her to look away again. ‘It is remarkable that we have changed stream four times in the last five days, seeking the fastest current to Perditus, and within the hour the ship is behind us again. It is following us, lauded primarch, and I know of nobody who possesses that capability.’

The Lion did not waste time asking if she was certain; the forthright tone of her voice and hard look in her eye convinced him that she spoke the truth as she believed it. He nodded and gestured for Captain Stenius to step closer.

‘I am sorry, Lady Fiana, for my curtness. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. Captain, I believe that you were already aware of this?’

‘Lady Fiana brought her suspicions to me yesterday, my liege. I asked her to confirm her findings for another day and decided it was worthy of bringing to you.’

‘It is an impossibility, lauded primarch,’ said Fiana. ‘No Navigator can track another vessel in the warp with such accuracy. We work on suggestions and instincts far too vague for such precision.’

No Navigator, thought the Lion, but not impossible.

During his infancy on Caliban, growing up alone in the dark, monster-infested forests, he had learned quickly that some beasts did not need to see to hunt. Some possessed senses other than sight and hearing and smell; they could stalk their prey by the spoor of their soul. Such creatures were the deadliest he had faced, not wholly physical. The knights of Caliban called them nephilla and it was only with great effort that they could be slain, though the Lion in his youth had killed several.

It was a stretch from nephilla roaming the dark forests of Caliban to a ship that could unerringly track another through the warp but, like Fiana, the Lion did not trust anything to coincidence. There were forces at play – forces unleashed by Horus and his allies – that he did not fully understand, and until proven to the contrary the Lion was willing to believe his foes capable of anything.

‘For the moment it is sensible to assume that our mysterious pursuer is a Night Lords ship,’ the Lion said after a half-second of contemplation. ‘Do you think it is possible to elude this enemy without undue risk or excessive delay to our journey? I would not have the foe learn of our destination and the secret held there.’

‘I am not sure I would know what to do, lauded primarch,’ said Fiana. ‘It is not something a Navigator learns.’

‘Surely you have experienced pursuit by other than a ship?’ said the Lion. ‘There are denizens of the warp that are known to chase vessels.’

‘Of course,’ said Fiana. ‘I know a small repertoire of evasive manoeuvres, but the usual response when facing such a crisis is an emergency translation into real space.’

‘That will be our second option,’ said the Lion. ‘I would rather avoid the delay that would add to our journey. You have two days to shake our hunter. Report your progress directly to me, Lady Fiana.’

‘As you command, lauded primarch,’ said the Navigator, sweeping down into a long bow.

When Captain Stenius and Lady Fiana had departed, the Lion called to his seneschal to attend him.

‘I am deeply suspicious of this craft that follows us, Cor,’ the primarch said. ‘Have the weapons crews sleeping beside their guns, and double the watch strength.’

‘As you command, my liege,’ said Corswain. ‘If you have time, we should discuss the strategy you wish to employ when we arrive at Perditus. The last contact we have shows that the Iron Hands and Death Guard were just beginning hostilities. It is possible that one side or the other may have gained the upper hand since then.’

The Lion pushed aside thoughts of phantom ships and concentrated on the wider task.

‘We treat Perditus as hostile,’ he declared. ‘It is impossible to say for which cause any other force fights. Death Guard, Mechanicum, Iron Hands: all are to be treated as enemy until I say otherwise.’

For two days Fiana and the other three Navigators aboard the Invincible Reason performed several manoeuvres that would, in normal circumstances, separate them from the following ship. They frequently changed flows within the warp, shifting the battle-barge from the fast-moving stream of the Nhyarin Flow to the more sedate currents that drifted from its outer edges. They dived into swirling eddies, a risky proposition even before the recent tumults that had engulfed warp space. Twice they turned the ship fully about and forged into counter-flows, taking them away from the route to Perditus. Always the other ship found them again, sometimes never breaking away, other times vanishing only to appear on the edge of detection an hour or two later, following unerringly in the battle-barge’s wake.

After the two days allowed by the Lion, Fiana and Stenius convened again with the primarch to discuss the next course of action. With the Lion was Corswain, summoned by his master. It was Stenius who spoke first.

‘Whatever force guides our pursuer, it is beyond our means to shake them loose, my liege,’ announced the ship’s captain.

‘Not wholly beyond our means,’ said Fiana, earning herself a sharp look from Stenius; enough to betray the existence of a previous argument between the two, though his partial facial paralysis prevented any more meaningful expression.

‘I will not risk my ship,’ Stenius said flatly.

‘You have an alternative?’ said the Lion, directing his gaze to Fiana.

‘Three days ahead, perhaps four, there is a well-known anomaly, which we call the Morican Gulf. It corresponds roughly to the Morican star, a dead system. There is a region that is like a gap in the warp, a bottomless gulf surrounded by a turbulent maelstrom. It is possible to run the outer edges of this whirl, and the storm should mask our departure route.’

‘And the risks?’ asked Corswain.

‘The null space, the void in the eye of the storm, can becalm a ship, leave it stranded for days, for weeks, sometimes forever,’ said Stenius, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘It should not be considered at the best of times, and our mission at Perditus is too important to risk delays or worse.’

The Lion considered this, weighing up the merits of losing the pursuer against potential calamity. He disregarded the Navigator’s plan, but remembered the earlier conversation he had shared with Fiana.

‘Lady Fiana, you suggested before that we might make an emergency jump to real space. Is it possible that we could do so whilst the other ship has been blinded by one of your manoeuvres?’

‘Possible, yes, lauded primarch,’ said Fiana.

‘There is no guarantee that our phantom ship has not the means to detect such a thing,’ said Corswain. ‘We have no idea of their capabilities. As I understand it, any translating ship creates ripples, an echo along the warp currents. If the Night Lords have a psyker or some other means to track our normal movements, a translation would be as clear as a summer day to them.’

‘An emergency jump even more so, lauded primarch,’ added Fiana. ‘The backwash would be like dropping a boulder into a lake; even an inexperienced Navigator could detect it.’

‘There is also the danger that our warp engine rift will collide with the Geller field of the other ship,’ said Stenius. ‘Whatever means they have to follow us, they have to stay close to use it.’

‘Interesting,’ said the Lion, a chain of thought set in motion by the Captain’s warning. He looked first at Corswain and then fixed his eyes on Stenius. ‘Little brothers, have the ship secured for an emergency translation, but keep the gunnery crews at their stations. Lady Fiana, I want you to position the ship in a particular way. Find a swift-moving warp current from which you can quickly move to a contra-flowing one.’

‘What is your intent, lauded primarch?’ asked Fiana, a worried frown creasing her pale skin beneath the silver of her headband.

‘Our enemy shadow our movements closely but not instantaneously,’ explained the Lion. ‘We will move in such a way as to draw them extremely close, and then we will activate the warp engines to jump back to real space. The other vessel should be caught in our exit wake and drawn from the warp after us. In real space our enemy will become vulnerable to attack.’

‘If both ships are not torn apart, my liege!’ said Captain Stenius. He was about to continue his objections, but the Lion cut him off with a sharp gesture.

‘You know my intent. The plan is not a subject for discussion. Lady Fiana, it will be up to you to choose the optimum moment for translation. From everything I have heard of your skill previously, I expect success.’

‘Of course, lauded primarch,’ said the Navigator, her face set with determination. Her reputation had been placed on the line, and for a Navigator aspiring to be the next Matriarch of her House there was no commodity more valuable than the praise of a primarch.

The Lion looked at Stenius and leaned forwards, his voice dropping low.

‘You understand my orders, captain?’ asked the primarch.

‘I do, my liege,’ Stenius replied quietly.

‘Then you are both dismissed,’ said the Lion. He reached a hand out towards Corswain. ‘Stay a moment longer, little brother.’

When the ship’s captain and Navigator had departed, the Lion motioned for Corswain to approach the throne.

‘I am worried about Stenius,’ confessed the primarch. ‘At first he delays bringing the fact of our pursuit to my attention, and now he seems reluctant to resolve our predicament.’

‘I am sure there are no grounds for suspicion, my liege,’ said Corswain, affecting a formal tone, disquieted by the subject of Stenius’s loyalty.

‘Sure, little brother? One hundred per cent certain? You would vouch for Stenius yourself?’

Corswain hesitated at the challenge in the Lion’s voice. After a moment, he lowered to one knee and bowed his head.

‘I have no doubt about Captain Stenius, my liege. However, to allay any reservations you may harbour, I shall have Brother-Redemptor Nemiel report to you.’

‘As you see fit, little brother,’ the Lion said, offering a rare smile.

III

The narrow chamber atop the navigational pilaster could barely hold all four of the Navigators. What the primarch had asked for required a very specific set of circumstances. Fiana and her fellow Navigators each surveyed a stretch of the warp, seeking the conjunction of flows needed to bring the Invincible Reason quickly back towards the phantom ship. All other preparations had been made; the ship’s company were braced for the potentially devastating drop back into real space, while Fiana had warned her companions of the deleterious effect it could have on their minds.

‘I have something,’ said Ardal Aneis, Fiana’s younger brother. ‘A counter-nebulous promontory, on the port bow.’

Fiana directed her unnatural gaze in the direction Aneis had mentioned and saw what had caught his attention. Three warp streams, one very strong, the other two weaker but approaching each other at steep angles, came together to create a three-dimensional whirlpool. The outflow curved back over the battle-barge’s path and intersected with a dead pool that slowly leached back into the Nhyarin Flow.

‘Captain Stenius, please direct primary navigational control to my console.’ The communications pick-up buzzed in Fiana’s shaking hand and she resolutely avoided the concerned looks in the eyes of her fellow Navigators. She received the affirmative from Stenius and a few seconds later the screen below her left arm flickered into life. A diagnostic sub-routine scrolled quickly across the pale green glass and then the screen went blank.

Fiana’s voice dropped to a whisper as she keyed in the manoeuvre required to plunge the ship into the heart of the promontory. ‘Remember the pride of House Ne’iocene.’

There was no sound, in the warp. No real tidal pressures or inertia pulled at metal and ferrocrete, but even so Fiana could sense the tortured mass of the Invincible Reason as its Geller field realigned, shoving the battle-barge from one streaming eddy of warp energy into another. Fiana felt a moment of sickness as her othersense lurched and spun, while all around her, the clashing currents of the psychic promontory smashed together like the slavering jaws of an immense, immaterial beast.

Kiafan, youngest of her siblings, fell to his knees beside the chief Navigator, emptying the contents of his stomach upon the floor between snarled gasps of pain. Fiana ignored the distraction and keyed in another instruction on her runepad. The ship settled into a trough of psychic power for several seconds, before rising up, ejected from the promontory like a grain of sand caught in the spume of a breaching whale.

Fiana gritted her teeth and made a final adjustment to their course, forcing herself to peer along the unwinding threads of energy that unravelled before her. She anchored the Geller field onto the strongest and then pushed aside her companions to collapse into the only chair in the chamber.

‘Captain, we are on our new heading,’ she gasped over the comm. Steadying herself, she looked for the bobbing mote of energy that was the other ship’s warp signature. She located it ahead, approaching quickly. There was no time to waste. Even from their prepared idling state, it would take several minutes for the warp engines to charge to full power. Any longer and they would be right on top of the phantom ship, their Geller fields merging. The effect of translating in such close proximity to another vessel would be certain destruction for both ships.

‘Translate now, captain! Activate the warp engines!’

Trying to emulatethe example set by his primarch, Corswain stood immobile on the gallery above the Invincible Reason’s strategium, just behind and to the left of the statuesque Lion. On the other side of the primarch was Brother-Redemptor Nemiel. The Chaplain wore a skull-faced helm, so that nothing could be seen of his expression, concerned or otherwise. Lady Fiana’s snarled command had not helped settle Corswain’s mood, and had set the command crew below into frenetic activity. The navigation aides moved quickly from station to station in the bright glow of their screens, monitoring power outputs and safety thresholds as the plasma reactors of the battle-barge went up above one hundred per cent output in preparation for the warp engine activation.

Corswain clenched his jaw as he felt an ill-defined pressure building in his skull. It was not like a concussive shockwave or the pull felt in a plunging drop-pod, but more like a container slowly being filled, reaching its capacity and yet not bursting. The ache was behind his eyes, mental not physical. Aside from the brain-juddering dislocation of teleportation, it was the most unpleasant sensation he had ever encountered in his long years of service to the Legion.

A glance at the Lion confirmed that if the primarch suffered the same discomforts as his little brothers, he showed no outward sign of it. The commander of the First Legion stood with legs braced apart, arms folded across his breastplate, eyes fixed on the multiple screens that made up the strategium’s main display wall. The aides working below acted and interacted like organic parts of a complex machine, the hub of which was Captain Stenius in the command throne. Inquiry and reply, report and command all flowed through the ship’s captain, who orchestrated the whole endeavour with curt responses and clipped orders.

Corswain could only imagine the thoughts occupying Stenius at the moment. Warp translation was difficult enough in perfect conditions, and the current conditions were far from perfect. Another glance at the Lion showed Corswain that the primarch’s attention had moved, from the grey blankness of the screens to Stenius.

It was impossible to discern real meaning from the primarch’s inscrutable glare, but that did not stop Corswain from speculating, occupying his mind with such idle thoughts in order to distract himself from the coming moment when reality and unreality would clash and they might all be wiped from existence.

The Lion’s comments regarding Stenius concerned Corswain on two levels. At first hand, he wondered what he had missed that had been seen by the primarch’s insight. Corswain was, for the moment at least until they were reunited with Luther and the rest of the Legion on Caliban, the right hand of the primarch. It was his duty to foresee his master’s commands and act before they required the Lion’s attention. If there was some facet of Stenius’s manner that he had missed, Corswain felt he was not properly fulfilling his duties.

Contrary to this was the worry that there was nothing amiss in Stenius’s behaviour, which did not bode well for the Lion’s current state of mind. Since Tsagualsa the primarch had brooded, even more than Corswain had become accustomed to. His master had said nothing of what preoccupied his thoughts, speaking only of the ongoing campaign against the Night Lords, but even those conversations had been touched by a new determination, bordering on a hunger for victory that Corswain had not seen in the Lion since the earliest days of the Crusade. The seneschal’s brush with death had forced Corswain to acknowledge his own shortcomings and apply himself to his duties with greater endeavour; perhaps the primarch felt the same.

‘Warp translation in ten seconds.’

Stenius’s monotone declaration cut through Corswain’s meandering thoughts. He balled his hands into fists, knowing what was to come. The Lion stepped forwards, gripping the balcony rail in both hands as he stared down at Stenius, eyes narrowed. The primarch opened his mouth a little, as if he was about to speak. He said nothing and shook his head slightly, lips pursed.

‘Beginning translation to real space.’

This was the part Corswain hated the most, in sensation most alike to the disembodied lurch of teleportation. For an endless moment the Invincible Reason was held between two dimensions, perched on the precipice between the material and immaterial like a wanderer standing at the crossroads of fate. A moment before, it had been adrift on the tides of the warp, cocooned within a bubble of reality kept intact by its Geller field. Now it was in the true universe, plucked from the unnatural currents, its Geller-borne reality imploding as real space engulfed the vessel.

Corswain’s head reeled for several seconds, dizzied by a sense of unreality, his surroundings seeming out of step with him, disjointed and fragile.

The sensation passed, leaving a faint pulsing behind Corswain’s eyes.

The Lion was already barking orders for the short-range scanners to be brought online, eager to see whether his plan had worked and the phantom ship had been dragged out of the warp by the risky manoeuvre.

‘All power to local augurs and broad-band auspex sweeps,’ said the primarch, striding towards the long sweep of stairs that led down into the main chamber of the strategium. ‘Redirect long-range signalling and sensors to comm-net scans. Find me that ship!’

The systems of the Invincible Reason scoured the surrounding space for seven minutes. Corswain and Nemiel had followed their primarch down to the main floor, and had been joined by Captain Stenius who had surrendered his position of direct command to the Lion. Nothing was said for those seven minutes, as the scanner technicians worked feverishly to determine whether the plan had succeeded.

‘Legiones Astartes ident-contact, my liege,’ announced one of the strategium attendants. ‘Twenty-two thousand kilometres from starboard bow. Eclipse-class light cruiser. Night Lords. Broadcasting as the Avenging Shadow.’

‘Monitoring warp field fluctuations, my liege,’ said another. ‘Transferring to main display.’

The largest of the strategium’s screens blurred into life, filled with an expanse of stars. In the bottom right corner, a shifting corona of light silhouetted the enemy light cruiser, trapped in a vortex between real space and the warp.

‘Hard starboard, thirty degrees, down-plane twelve degrees,’ snapped the Lion, having made the navigational calculations in only a couple of seconds; even with the aid of a trigometric cogitator Stenius would have taken at least two minutes to get the exact heading required. ‘Ready torpedoes, tubes three and four. Flight crews to Thunderhawks and Stormbirds.’

The primarch’s orders rang across the strategium, setting teams of officers and functionaries into motion. As this new activity settled, the Lion crossed the floor to the weapons control consoles. Stenius took a step after him.

‘My liege, a full torpedo salvo will have a much greater chance of destroying the enemy.’

‘I do not wish to destroy them, captain. We will capture the ship and seize whatever technology they have employed to track us here. I am inputting the torpedo guidance codes; they will not miss.’

‘Of course not, my liege,’ said Stenius, stepping back, only the tone of his voice betraying his chagrin.

‘I request permission to lead the boarding parties, my liege,’ said Corswain.

‘Denied, little brother.’ The primarch did not look up, his fingers dancing across the rune keys of the main weapons console. ‘We will cripple their ship and I will lead the attack myself.’

‘I do not think that is a good idea, my liege,’ said Corswain, daring his master’s displeasure. ‘The warp interference surrounding the enemy vessel is highly unstable. The ship could be dragged back into the warp while you are aboard.’

The Lion’s fingers stopped their tapping for a moment and the primarch straightened. Corswain prepared himself for a rebuke.

‘Denied, little brother,’ said the Lion, resuming his work. ‘I will need you to remain on board the Invincible Reason.’

Corswain automatically glanced at Stenius, guessing his primarch’s intent. The Lion’s distrust remained.

‘Brother-Redemptor Ne–’

‘Is not a command-level officer, little brother.’ The Lion’s words were curt but not harsh. He finished his task and turned towards Corswain, deep green eyes boring into the seneschal’s skull. ‘You will remain on board, Cor. Unless you have any other reason why that should not be the case?’

‘Torpedoes bearing on target, my liege,’ declared a weapons tech, stilling any reply that Corswain might utter; he had none. ‘Firing solution has been plotted as per your calculations.’

‘Launch when at optimum angle,’ said the Lion. ‘Engines all ahead full towards the enemy.’

‘Aye, my liege,’ replied Stenius. He activated the internal communication system and repeated the order to the Techmarines manning the reactor chambers.

‘Tube three cycling. Tube three launching. Tube four cycling. Tube four launching.’ The words were spat mechanically from the mouth grille of a half-human servitor enmeshed by a tangle of wires to the weapons bank. The haggard figure was little more than a torso and head protruding from a cylindrical console, his eyes stapled shut, ears replaced with antenna-jutting vocal receivers.

On the main screen, the beleaguered Night Lords ship was dead ahead, the streak of the two torpedoes racing from the battle-barge towards it.

‘Twenty-three seconds to torpedo separation. Twenty-seven seconds to impact,’ grated the weapons servitor. Already the blazing plasma drives of the torpedoes were just another glimmering pair of stars against the backdrop of the galaxy, gradually dwindling with distance.

‘My liege, I have Lady Fiana requesting contact on the internal comm,’ said an aide.

‘Direct through speakers,’ replied the Lion, long strides taking him back across the strategium to stand beside the command throne.

‘The Night Lords ship is doing something strange with its warp engines,’ the Navigator reported over the internal address system. Corswain saw his primarch frown at her imprecise language.

‘Be more specific, Lady Fiana,’ said the Lion. ‘What can you see?’

‘Forgive my vagueness, lauded primarch. It is hard to describe to one possessed of normal sight alone. There is something – some things – moving in the Geller field around the enemy ship. It looks like fragments of warp space are actually inside the ship, but that is impossible.’

‘I have heard the word too often lately,’ snarled the primarch. ‘What is the significance of this to us?’

Before Fiana could reply, the Lion’s attention was drawn elsewhere.

‘My liege, the enemy ship is turning, trying to break free from the warp breach. They are closing quickly with our position.’

‘Detecting an incoming hail, my liege.’

The two reports came almost at the same moment and the Lion hesitated for the first time since coming to the strategium, unsure which piece of information to respond to first. The pause only lasted a fraction of a heartbeat before the decision was made.

‘Adjust course by two points to port and ready starboard batteries,’ ordered the primarch. ‘Decrypt hail and transfer to main speakers.’

The air was filled with static hiss for several seconds while the automated decryption systems deciphered the incoming transmission. What came out of the speakers sounded like the garbled hissing of a snake, every syllable spat with derision. The Lion’s face twisted in a lopsided smile and he looked at Corswain.

‘I never cared much for Nostraman, Cor. You have studied it, I know. Tell me, what do they say? I cannot imagine that they are begging for mercy.’

‘They praise you for the trick in dragging them into the light, but then there come the obtuse threats. They say that they will have a reckoning in Slathissin and we will all meet our doom.’

‘I do not recall any system called Slathissin, in Thramas or elsewhere,’ said the Lion.

‘It is a reference to their barbaric past, my liege,’ explained Corswain. ‘It is the lowest hell, where the souls of the fallen exact vengeance on those that wronged them, reserved for traitors, patricides and worse.’

‘There is no such place, their threats are empty,’ said Nemiel, speaking for the first time since he had arrived at the strategium. He looked at Corswain through the lenses of his skull-shaped helm, his expression hidden. ‘There is no hell, and there are no such things as souls.’

A few seconds later, laughter sounded over the transmission, edged with insanity.

‘You are wrong, son of Caliban. So wrong. As you will find out very soon. Slathissin opens its gates for you all.’

‘I gave no order to transmit,’ said the Lion. ‘Cut the feed now!’

‘We have ears nonetheless, proud Lion.’

‘We are not transmitting any signal,’ confirmed one of the communications attendants.

‘My blade waits for your throat, disbeliever. I am Nias Korvali, and at the last midnight I will have a bloody revenge.’

There was a shout from one of the technicians monitoring the scanning arrays, just a few seconds before an automated siren blared across the strategium.

‘The enemy ship is activating its void shields and warp engines, my liege!’ came the panicked cry.

‘Madness,’ muttered Nemiel. ‘The feedback from the void shields will tear them apart.’

‘Fire arrestors, full turn to port!’ snarled the Lion. ‘That same feedback will create a wave in the warp breach, ripping it apart. Activate Geller fields, prepare for unplanned translation!’

‘Torpedoes separating.’ The servitor’s monotone declaration cut through the activity, and Corswain looked up at the main screen, as did the Lion, Stenius and several others.

There was a brief twinkling as thrusters fired and the torpedoes ejected their multiple warheads towards the Night Lords ship. As if in response, the multicoloured bruise on reality that surrounded the target vessel shimmered violently, waves of kaleidoscopic energy pouring from the warp breach in iridescent flares.

The light cruiser appeared to fold in upon itself, the implosion releasing another blast of warp power as its void shields tried to shunt raw psychic energy back into the warp itself, creating a loop that fed into the breach between universes. One moment Corswain was looking at the enemy vessel in the heart of an ever-moving circular rainbow, the next the whole screen was filled with rippling lines and coils of pulsing warp energy; and then he realised that the convocation of energy was not on the screen, but in the air around him.

IV

‘Stay calm.’

The Lion spoke without haste, pouring reassurance and strength into those two words as he felt the touch of panic settling upon the dozens of crew manning the strategium. There was not a man or woman aboard the ship that had not faced death more than once, but being engulfed in the warp breach was a test that none of them had faced before.

He activated the internal comms system with a flick of a finger.

‘All captains and other officers maintain discipline in your sections. We are experiencing a temporary situation that will be resolved swiftly. You have your standing orders, obey them.’

The primarch felt his heart beating a little faster than normal, but it was just an expected response to an emergency. He took a moment to review the situation.

The Invincible Reason was caught betwixt the warp and real space, trapped in a rift caused by the Night Lords’ detonation of their warp engines. The Lion could feel the energy of the warp pulsing through and around him, suffusing the material of the ship, the air, his body. Only a few seconds had passed since the warp tide had engulfed them and everything seemed slightly distorted, as if he was standing at an angle to normality, looking in from a slightly different place.

The lights on the display consoles winked strangely, fluttering to an aberrant rhythm that represented no system on the ship. The muted voices of the crew were dislocated, sounding as though they came from a great distance. The visual screens had gone blank, unable to replicate the vortex of power that was whirling about the ship. Captain Stenius stepped up beside the primarch, a faint afterglow left in his wake, trails of glimmering sparks falling from the edges of his armour as he moved.

‘Status report,’ said the Lion. ‘Void shields. Geller field. Warp engines.’

‘Aye, my liege,’ replied Stenius, his voice echoing for a moment inside the Lion’s head. More fiery trails danced in the air as the captain raised his fist to his chest in salute.

‘We have reports of fighting!’ This came from Corswain, who had moved to one of the main monitoring stations, his voice sounding like a distant shout though he was less than ten metres away. ‘Starboard gun decks, levels eight and nine.’

‘Enemy?’ snapped the Lion. ‘A Night Lords teleport attack?’

‘No clear report, my liege,’ said Corswain. ‘It is very confusing.’

‘Get down there and establish some order, little brother. Clear head, discipline and courage.’

Corswain nodded and headed towards the doors while the Lion turned his attention back to Stenius, one eyebrow raised in question.

‘Warp interference prevents us raising void shields, my liege. We would suffer the fate of the Night Lords. The same is true of the Geller field; we’ve not fully translated and to activate it would risk a massive feedback loop. Warp engines are still cycling back to potential from our translation.’ Though the captain’s face was immobile, his shoulders sagged. ‘We are trapped here for the moment, my liege.’

The Lion absorbed this without comment, the reality of the situation brought home by the captain’s stark words. He formed a plan of action.

‘We cannot break free from this storm, so we must ride it to the heart. Have the warp engines readied as soon as possible. We will make a full translation back into warp space and activate the Geller field to stabilise normality. Have Lady Fiana report to me immediately. Understood?’

‘Yes, my liege.’

The main doors hissed open and fifteen Dark Angels in Terminator armour entered, combi-bolters and power fists at the ready. Their immense armour was black as pitch and trimmed with silver, broken only by the sigils of the Legion on their shoulder pads and the scarlet skull emblems on their huge chestplates; the personal blazon of Brother-Redemptor Nemiel who was there to meet them.

‘Maintain order, brothers,’ the Chaplain told his bodyguard. ‘Be watchful and show no hesitation.’

Stepping offtheconveyor at gun deck nine, his retinue of ten legionaries in close step behind him, Corswain still had no better idea what was happening or who had attacked the ship. The comm-feed was alive with reports of the unidentified assailants sweeping from bastion to bastion and he could hear bolter fire and heavier weapons echoing along the corridor from the gun platforms towards the prow. It was possible, though highly unlikely, that the Night Lords had managed some form of long-range teleport as a last-ditch act before their ship was destroyed; it would not be the most unbelievable act the Night Lords had performed recently.

The gun deck was composed of a main corridor nearly a kilometre long, with access passages every two hundred metres leading to each of the gun turrets, which in turn were self-contained keeps housing the macro-cannons and missile pods used for close attack against enemy ships. They were designed to withstand boarding and Corswain could see that the defence bulkheads had been dropped on the closest platforms, isolating them from the rest of the ship. How any attacker had managed to breach several platforms at once in such a short space was beyond his reckoning.

Several dozen unarmed crew members wearing plain black livery came streaming past, heading to aft, fleeing the fighting. There was a wild look in their eyes and they paid him no heed as he called for them to stop and explain what was happening. Corswain had never seen such terror in the eyes of seasoned men before.

Another burst of furious gunfire sounded ahead as the seneschal and his bodyguard pounded down the corridor towards the fighting. Deck Captain Isaases was supposed to be in charge, but was not responding to Corswain’s calls on the comm; probably already dead.

Amidst the detonation of grenades, a handful of Dark Angels backed into the main passage, bolters blazing into the turret doorway of Gun Keep Four fifty metres away, two flamers licking promethium fire into the opening.

Corswain’s auto-senses dimmed his sight for an instant as a flare of bright energy erupted from the opening; pink and blue flames exploded into the passageway, carrying with them the burning bodies of two more Dark Angels. The seneschal had never seen any weapon like it, and broke into a sprint, readying his pistol and power sword as he closed with the group of legionaries. The two warriors who had been caught in the attack flailed around on the floor as multicoloured flames danced across their armour, melting through their suits like a plasma blast.

A demand for a report died on Corswain’s lips as he came level with the turret doorway and saw what was within, all reason driven from his thoughts for a moment.

The interior of the gun keep was ablaze with multicoloured flames, and in the heart of the blinding inferno cavorted strange shapes. They were like nothing Corswain had seen before, and he had encountered many strange enemies in his years of service to the First Legion. The alien creatures seemed to be composed of the fire itself; headless, legless bodies with faces in their chests and long gangling arms that spouted more fire from maw-like openings at their ends. Their torsos flared out to frilled edges where legs should have been, jumping to and fro with contorted twists. The creatures were setting everything ablaze with abandon, the crackling of the fires accompanied by inhuman screeching and cackling.

Corswain’s pistol felt heavy in his hand as he raised it and for the first time since he had been old enough to hold a weapon his hand trembled as he took aim. Eyes that were made of pure white fire regarded him malignly from the heart of the inferno, burning into his psyche as surely as the flames had melted through the armour of the dead Dark Angels. It seemed as if Corswain looked into a bottomless abyss of flame, the sight searing into his memory like a brand.

He opened fire, but the explosive bolts detonated in the flames before they reached their targets.

The creatures were at the doorway, flames licking at the floor of the main passage. Corswain adjusted his aim and sent two bolts hammering into the emergency release controls. The bulkhead slammed down just in front of the maniacal aliens, cutting off the infernal fire, and eerie silence descended.

Trying to make sense of what he had seen, Corswain noticed that the bulkhead was starting to glow at its centre, the unnatural flames of the attackers now turned to the purpose of burning through the metres-thick portal. As he watched the glow spreading, droplets of molten material starting to stand out on the plasteel like the sweat on his brow, the seneschal judged that it would only be a matter of a few short minutes before the creatures escaped their temporary prison.

In the quiet that had descended, he looked at the other Dark Angels, but like them could think of nothing to say, no orders to give, numbed by the bizarreness of what they had encountered.

‘Seneschal!’ The warning came from Brother Alartes, one of his personal guard.

Turning to look aft, Corswain saw the air swirling with power, as it had done when the warp rift had first engulfed the ship. Shapes were forming in the miasma: monstrous red hounds with scaled flesh and fangs of iron, their tails tipped with venom-dripping barbs, heads surrounded by an armoured frill. The infernal hounds were almost fully formed now, their growls and snarls resounding along the passageway. In moments they would be upon them.

The apparitions reminded him of old tales from Caliban and a word sprang to mind, loaded with loathing and fear: nephilla. Corswain found himself speaking, issuing a command out of instinct that he thought he would never utter as a Dark Angel.

‘Fall back! Retreat and seal the gun deck.’

He stepped back towards the closest conveyor, firing his pistol at the monstrous dogs, though he knew his bolts would have little effect. The other Dark Angels were with him, filling the corridor with the flicker of bolts.

The swish of the conveyor doors opening behind him flooded the seneschal with relief in a way he had never thought possible. He gratefully backed into the chamber as the enormous, incorporeal hounds bounded down the corridor towards him.

To stay would be to die.

The walls of the Navigator’s lounge shimmered with pre-echoes of what was to come. Fiana could see before-images of monstrous creatures pawing at the substance of the ship, her third eye granting her a vision of what was to be. Coiden stood at the door, a laspistol dangling pointlessly in his left hand, his right on the frame of the open portal as he peered into the antechamber, looking not so much with his eyes as his othersense.

‘It’s clear,’ said Coiden, turning to look at Fiana past the high collar of his long vermillion coat.

‘Kiafan, follow Coiden; Aneis, stay with me.’ Fiana ushered her siblings towards the door with a last look back to the spiralway that led up to the navigation pilaster. Something large and slug-like was heaving its bulk through the metal of the escalator steps, becoming more solid as it pushed through from the warp.

Fiana slid up the metal band blocking her third eye and opened the leathery eyelid covering the orb. She concentrated on the solidifying apparition, channelling the energy stream that allowed her to pierce the veils of the warp. Here, in real space, that stream erupted as a scourging beam of black light that struck the beast between the waving fronds surrounding its fanged maw. The thing withered under Fiana’s psychic glare. Its insubstantial form scattered into tattered mist as the energy that bound it to the material plane was thrust back into warp space.

A cry from Kiafan alerted her to more creatures in the passageway outside and she joined the others at a run. Winged, hook-clawed spectres hung from the vents in the ceiling, having seized the hood of Kiafan’s robe to drag him into the air. With her normal eyes, Fiana could see a smudge of movement above Kiafan as the desperate Navigator tried to turn his third eye on the two creatures who had seized him from behind; with her othersense she saw gargoyle-like creatures with long bony limbs and stone-like flesh.

Coiden and Aneis combined their third eyes to blast the hideous creatures back into their immaterial realm, causing Kiafan to fall heavily to the floor. He grasped his ankle and looked up at Fiana with tear-filled eyes.

‘I think it’s broken,’ he moaned.

‘They’re coming through the walls,’ said Aneis. Humanoid and other shapes were coalescing through the bare plasteel bulkheads around the Navigators; too many to destroy.

‘Pick up your brother,’ Fiana told Coiden. She grabbed Aneis by the shoulder and dragged her brother past the pair. She gave him a shove towards the door leading through the next bulkhead. Something pot-bellied and cyclopean was forming out of a dark pool of rust and slime spreading across the floor of the passage beyond.

‘Clear a path,’ Fiana said.

‘Where to?’ Aneis asked, his youthful face almost white with fear.

‘The strategium,’ replied Fiana. ‘We must reach the protection of the Lion.’

Having recovered someof his equilibrium, Corswain did all that he could to organise a defence of the gun decks, but the mysterious invaders were all but impossible to confront. From the scattered outbreaks across the Invincible Reason, it was clear that the attack was not confined to the gun batteries, or even the starboard decks. Pockets of foes were appearing across the vessel, with a large number seemingly intent on taking over the warp core chamber. With foes materialising behind defensive lines, making a mockery of any physical barrier that could be erected, Corswain had mobilised the ship’s company into hundred-strong patrols.

Not far from the strategium, he and his bodyguard came across Lady Fiana and her family. They were being escorted by Sergeant Ammael and his squad and though the Navigators looked distraught and haggard none of them seemed to be seriously injured. The seneschal relieved Ammael of his obligation and sent him to the engine decks where the fighting was becoming protracted.

When the group reached the strategium, they were confronted by an unexpected sight. There were no signs of fighting here; the technicians went about their duties with crisp calmness, diligently ignoring the scene that was playing out in their midst.

The Lion stood at the centre of the main chamber, and before him knelt a Dark Angel, a white tabard over his black armour, head bowed in obeisance. Surrounded by his personal guard, Brother-Redemptor Nemiel stood over the kneeling legionary, his pistol and crozius in his hands.

‘Wait here,’ Corswain quietly told the Navigators, motioning for them to stand to one side. The Lion heard the whispered words and looked across at Corswain.

‘Your timing is unintentionally impeccable, little brother,’ said the primarch. ‘I am faced with a dilemma.’

‘My liege, I do not know what is happening here, but I am sure it can wait a while. We need your guidance. The ship is under sustained attack, from creatures that are almost impervious to our weapons.’

‘The punishment of oath-breakers brooks no delay,’ said Nemiel. As he approached, Corswain recognised the kneeling legionary. His helm was under his arm, his face half-hidden behind long waves of black hair. It was Brother Asmodeus, formerly of the Librarium.

‘Oath-breaker?’ said Corswain. ‘I do not understand.’

‘My little brother has transgressed,’ said the Lion, though there seemed no anger in his voice. ‘Upon being attacked, he broke the Edict of Nikaea and unleashed the powers of his mind.’

‘He performed sorcery,’ snarled Nemiel. ‘The same vileness perpetrated by the Night Lords that now threatens our ship!’

‘That is to be decided, Brother-Redemptor,’ said the Lion. ‘I have not yet delivered my verdict.’

‘The Edict of Nikaea was absolute, my liege,’ said Nemiel. ‘Warriors of the Librarium were to curtail their powers. Asmodeus has breached the oath he swore.’

‘Did it work?’ said Corswain.

‘What?’ said Nemiel, turning his skull-faced helm in the direction of the seneschal.

‘Asmodeus, did your powers destroy the enemy?’

The former Librarian said nothing, but looked up at the primarch and nodded.

‘Interesting,’ said the primarch, his green eyes fixing on Corswain as if to see into his thoughts.

‘I have seen first-hand what these things can do. They are…’ said the seneschal, hesitating to use the word. He took a breath and continued. ‘We face nephilla, my liege, or something akin to them. They are not wholly physical and our weapons do little damage to their unnatural flesh.’

‘They are creatures of the warp, lauded primarch.’ The group of Dark Angels turned as Lady Fiana approached. ‘They are made of warp-stuff, and the breach has allowed them to manifest in our world. They cannot be destroyed, only sent back. The gaze of our third eyes can harm them.’

‘Is this true?’ asked the Lion, stooping to lay a hand on the shoulder of Asmodeus. ‘Were your powers capable of harming our attackers?’

‘From the warp they come, and with the power of the warp they can be banished again,’ said the Librarian. He stood as the Lion changed his grip and guided the legionary to his feet. He met the primarch’s gaze for a moment and then looked away again. ‘Brother-Redemptor Nemiel is right, my liege. I have broken the oath I swore.’

‘A grave crime, and one that I will be sure to prosecute properly when the current situation has been resolved,’ said the Lion. He looked at Nemiel. ‘There are two others of the Librarium aboard: Hasfael and Alberein. Bring them here.’

‘This is a mistake, my liege,’ said Nemiel, shaking his head. ‘The abominations that attack us, these nephilla, are a conjuration of sorceries. I swore an oath also, to uphold the Edict of Nikaea. To unleash further sorcery will endanger us even more. Think again, my liege!’

‘I have issued an order, Brother-Redemptor,’ said the Lion, drawing himself up to his full height.

‘One that I cannot follow,’ said Nemiel, his tone hard, though Corswain could see the Chaplain’s hands were trembling with the effort of defying his primarch.

‘My authority is absolute,’ the Lion said, clenching his fists, his lips drawn back to reveal gleaming teeth.

‘The Edict of Nikaea was issued by the Emperor, my liege,’ said Nemiel. ‘There is no higher authority.’

‘Enough!’ The Lion’s roar was so loud it caused Corswain’s auto-senses to dampen his hearing, as they would if he was caught in a potentially deafening detonation.

The seneschal was not entirely sure what happened next. The Lion moved and a split-second later a cracked skull-faced helm was spinning through the dull-glowing lights of the strategium, cutting a bloody arc through the air. Nemiel’s headless corpse clattered to the floor as the Lion held up his hand, pieces of ceramite embedded in the fingertips of his gore-spattered gauntlet.

Corswain looked at the face of his primarch, horrified by what had happened. For a moment he saw a vision of satisfaction, the Lion’s eyes gleaming as he stared at his handiwork. It passed in a second. The Lion seemed to realise what he had done and his face twisted with pain as he knelt beside the remains of the Brother-Redemptor.

‘My liege?’ Corswain was not sure what to say, but as seneschal he knew he had to act.

‘We will mourn him later,’ said the Lion. The primarch stood up, his gaze still on Nemiel’s body. He broke his stare and looked at Lady Fiana, who flinched as if struck. There were three droplets of blood across the pale flesh of her right cheek. ‘Tell the Librarians they are relieved of their Nikaean oaths. Lady Fiana, you and your family will each lead a company of my warriors. Cor, assemble eight counter-attack forces.’

‘Eight, my liege? Three for the Librarians, and one each for the Navigators, I understand. Am I to lead the other?’

‘I am,’ said the Lion. ‘No creature, nephilla or any other, attacks my ship without retribution.’

THE OBERWALD RIPPER

Laurie Goulding

An air of unease had hung in the taproom that evening, and the locals spoke in hushed, reticent tones as they supped from their tankards. The inn was renowned for its fine brew, but the prevailing topic of conversation at the bar and the low wooden tables was rather more grim – word had apparently spread of the town’s troubles, and the usual crowd of tired and thirsty travellers was thin on the ground as a result. Those that had turned out were none too jovial, either.

Through the haze of pipe smoke and the dark little windows that opened out onto the main street, Felix had watched the lamplighters at work as he nursed his ale. They had hurried along in the fading evening light, glancing frantically left and right into the gloom as they went. Each had been accompanied by a similarly skittish watchman, who would regularly implore them to work faster while brandishing his sword and barking on about a curfew every time someone crossed their path. As darkness had fallen, Felix had wandered back to the bar to have his tankard refilled.

These people were terrified. That much was clear. He could see it in their gaunt, haggard expressions and in the way their gazes would dart towards the door every time a stranger entered. Cold food sat untouched upon grubby platters. Trembling fingers toyed with prayer beads.

As an outsider, Felix had felt their suspicious eyes upon him from the moment he stepped over the threshold. It was, therefore, no surprise when the inevitable confrontation came.

‘Who are you to say what’s best for this town?’ demanded a burly labourer, slamming his drink down upon the bar with a splash of spilled ale. ‘You come wandering in ’ere, just like the rest of ’em, full of your own opinions and trying to tell us how to deal with things.’

A few other locals, variously seated at tables or leaning against the bar, murmured in agreement. Tension had been growing in Oberwald as more and more of the day’s traders had moved on rather than remain after dark. For a market community dependent upon out-of-town custom, news of the horror still at large had cut deep into their earnings of late.

The innkeeper, a rotund little man in a grubby apron, tried to placate the irate labourer.

‘Now then, Till – I’m sure the gentleman didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s let him finish his drink in peace.’

Felix narrowed his eyes. He sized up Till, and his potential allies: the bearded man clutching a bottle by the hearth, and the thin, reedy fellow sat on a stool with a poorly concealed knife in his breeches.

Till gritted his teeth and glared, ignoring the innkeeper entirely. ‘Don’t you think we ’aven’t tried to catch him? You think your fancy Reikland soldiers would do any better?’ He jabbed a finger at the unfortunate middle-aged merchant he was accosting, and the man winced.

Felix, sat in a high-backed pew by the window, set down his tankard as the labourer continued. His hand strayed to the hilt of Karaghul beneath his cloak almost without thought, though he found Till’s words intriguing.

‘They say the Ripper’s got eyes that burn with an ungodly fire. They say he’s quick as lightning, and half as kind. If he ain’t a daemon given flesh, then he’s sold his soul to something wicked…’

His reedy friend rose from his stool. ‘Aye, they say you can see right through him,’ he chimed in.

‘And he flies!’ added someone else.

Silence had fallen over the inn. The merchant adjusted his coat, and made a small gesture to the well-dressed young woman standing behind him.

‘I… I’m very sorry to have offended you,’ he said in a thick Reikland accent. ‘Please, mein herr, I see that your tankard is almost empty. Let me buy you another ale.’

Till snorted, but his mood seemed to soften and he grunted in agreement.

As the subdued atmosphere of the taproom returned, Felix caught the gaze of the young woman. She smiled at him and nodded, clearly having noticed him preparing to step in on their behalf. He returned the gesture and picked up his tankard once more.

Felix was glad that Gotrek had been elsewhere. The presence of a belligerent, one-eyed dwarf with a fiery mohawk could well have turned the minor altercation into a full-on brawl, and that sort of attention was exactly what they needed to avoid. Rather than join him at the inn, the dour old Slayer had stomped off into the town in search of a gambling den, or ‘somewhere a dwarf might get a flagon of proper ale, manling’.

Though sometimes tiresome, Gotrek’s demeanour often gave Felix pause to consider their surroundings more carefully. It was unlikely that a town the size of Oberwald would offer anything that Gotrek would particularly enjoy – in spite of its market trade, it was somewhat parochial and rather unremarkable.

But ‘unremarkable’ was good, as far as Felix was concerned. Unremarkable meant that he and Gotrek could disappear with a minimum of effort and notice. Given the events of the past few weeks, that was the best they could hope for.

More to the point, it was a convenient layover and a welcome break from making camp in the sparse pinewoods, or on the bare hillsides beyond.

Felix just hoped that Gotrek would remember to keep himself covered up. It was hard to remain inconspicuous when one of the pair was so… remarkable. They had spent a whole evening by the campfire in stony silence a few nights before, when Felix had dared to suggest that the proud, honourable and fearless Slayer might consider wearing a disguise while gallivanting around in public. Not that it would do much good anyway, really – he was still unmistakable as a heavily set dwarf, even in a hooded cloak.

He drained the last of his ale, resolving to speak to the innkeeper about lodgings for the night. Just as he was about to make for the bar one final time, the young woman appeared over him, two foaming tankards in hand.

‘It seems my father has set the locals all aflutter, hasn’t he?’ she said, smiling but sounding slightly awkward nonetheless. Felix rose, but before he could speak she thrust one of the tankards at him. ‘I’m sure you would have come to my rescue, had they given us any trouble. I’m Sabine, by the way.’

‘I’m–’ he began, but caught himself. His mind raced. ‘I’m Max. Max Schreiber. Pleased to meet you, Sabine.’

The two of them sat at his little table, and drank long into the night. Though her manner was initially coy, Sabine’s intentions were obvious enough to a seasoned bohemian like Felix. Nonetheless, he found something endearing about the girlish naiveté with which she tried to keep him engaged in trivial conversation while plying him with yet more ale. Her occasional excited outbursts about poetry and all their other supposedly shared interests drew disapproving looks from the locals, but they left the pair of outsiders well alone.

She was not long past twenty, and though her father’s work held little interest for her she had abandoned her studies of the arts and travelled out with his entourage on business across the province. When Felix told her of his father’s own enterprise – being careful to mention no names – and his role as the family’s black sheep, she had practically squealed with delight and confessed that she too yearned to run away and follow her own dreams. Felix had smiled politely, though inside he felt some annoyance at her immature posturing. Still, he saw a reflection of his own youth in the girl’s innocence. As she had eagerly recounted tales of her non-adventures, most of which seemed to culminate in the consumption of wine or ale with her collegiate friends, his thoughts wandered back to the days when he too had lived only for such things, and he studied her as she spoke.

Maybe it was the ale, but she did look… unconventionally attractive in the firelight. The curve of her cheek, and the flash of rebellion in her eyes; the tumble of blonde hair that she would periodically brush from her face…

He had recoiled slightly when she ran her hand gently over his forearm in mid-conversation, but he caught himself and relented to her touch. After so long on the road with Gotrek, it soothed his ego to know that he still looked presentable enough to attract any female company at all. Besides, when he tried to blink away the pleasant, drunken haze, he realised just how close she had edged towards him along the pew. It’d be rude to push her away now, he thought. She had been buying the drinks all night, after all.

When Sabine’s father eventually made to retire up to his rooms, he stopped and regarded Felix coldly. ‘Sabine, liebchen. Time for us to leave.’

‘Oh, father, I can’t go yet,’ she protested, pouting almost theatrically. ‘I’ve still got a half-tankard left.’

Felix snorted into his own drink. Sabine nudged him in the ribs.

‘Besides, this is Max. He’s a poet from Altdorf. He’s just about to show me some of his best verses.’

Making a valiant attempt to appear sober, Felix stood. He still had enough sense to keep his sword concealed beneath his cloak.

‘Max Schreiber,’ he said, offering a hand to the merchant. ‘Your daughter speaks very highly of you, sir.’ Sabine discreetly pinched his behind, making him flinch.

Her father looked down at Felix’s proffered hand, then rolled his eyes and strode towards the door, sighing as he went. ‘By Sigmar, what have I done to deserve such a daughter? Just be ready to leave in the morning, Sabine. We must be in Lindeshof by noon.’

Felix stood swaying for a few moments. He glanced blearily around the taproom and saw that most of the others had already left. How long had the two of them been drinking? Where the hell had Gotrek gotten t–

Sabine pulled him down onto the seat and planted a long, cloying kiss on his lips. He guessed that she had probably meant it to be passionate, though all he could focus on was the fact that the room suddenly appeared to be spinning.

Oberwald ale, he thought. Stronger than it seems.

She gazed at him for slightly longer than was comfortable, and then bit her lip coyly before dragging him back to his feet. ‘Come on, you,’ she said. ‘Come and try out some of your fine words on me.’

Gotrek clutched his cards tightly in his thick, stubby fingers, squinting at them in the candlelight. He ground his teeth and tried to remember what he had played on the previous hand. Numbers and suits blurred together in his mind, and he rubbed at his forehead in frustration.

A gleek is three of kind, and the mournival four…

They had already vied the ruff, whatever that meant, and he had lost a handful of crowns to the dealer because apparently they had turned over a ‘tiddy’ on the trump draw. Gotrek would have been happy to pass each round and watch the others play until he got a better handle on the rules, but as the all-too-helpful backseat gamblers sat nearby kept pointing out, there was no point in passing in the same round as the opening vie.

‘Well then, Mast’r Dwarf – it’s your bid,’ said the dealer, eyeing Gotrek over the top of his thin eyeglasses. ‘The sun’ll be up, ere we finish. And I don’t know about you two, but I’d rather spend my winnings and be bedded down afore dawn.’ He grinned and patted the small pile of coins on the table in front of him, a pile that Gotrek noted contained a fair contribution from his own pocket.

The third player, a scrawny, bearded manling with fast eyes, twitched nervously and sipped from a small tin cup at his elbow before impatiently drumming his fingers on the edge of the table.

Gotrek returned his attention to his cards. He could feel every pair of eyes in the room upon him, and in all honesty he had no idea what he was doing. He was familiar with most of the games played in taverns and inns across the Empire, but this one – Gleek? Gleich? – was new to him, and it seemed to be infuriatingly complicated. Felix was the one with a head for things like that: trivial, calculating affairs that were as much to do with posturing as they were to do with adding up numbers and such.

Well then, he thought, may as well forget the rules and play the players instead.

He sniffed productively, and slid all nine of his remaining crowns across the table, fixing the dealer with his one good eye. ‘It’s to you, then. I’m cleaned out.’

The bid was high, much higher than the ante. High enough, he hoped, to make them all think twice before proceeding.

The man let out a short laugh, but withered under the dwarf’s iron glare after only a moment. His own gaze flickered to the other player, and then off to somewhere behind Gotrek. He shifted in his seat. Ran his fingers over the edges of his cards. Coughed once, then cleared his throat rather more affectedly.

There it was.

Gotrek narrowed his eye. The dealer had glanced back to the same point, just behind him. His demeanour then seemed to change noticeably.

‘In that case, Mast’r Dwarf,’ he grinned slyly, ‘I’m afraid that’s that. I’ll see your bid and let’s name those pairs, though I reckon you can’t beat this hand. With respect.’

Gotrek didn’t even wait for him to count out the coins. He simply laid his cards down and planted a meaty fist into the man’s nose.

Bone cracked, and blood splattered onto the pile of gold. The man made a shocked sound – not quite a yelp and yet more than a gasp – as he sprawled backwards with the force of the blow, his boots whacking up into the underside of the table, sending the cards and coins flying as it flipped over.

Before this had truly registered with the other patrons of the den, Gotrek whirled around from his stool and grabbed the nearest one by the collar of his rough tunic. There was a chance that it might not have been the dealer’s unseen card-reading accomplice, but that didn’t really matter – with a throaty, wordless shout, Gotrek heaved and laid him out cold with a solid headbutt.

Pandemonium erupted. Other brawls broke out at the tables and shadowed booths where other games had been going on, and accusations of cheating were bandied back and forth between the punches. Although Oberwald was home to several dubiously regulated gambling dens such as this, the watch would only turn a blind eye for as long as the activity remained quiet, and a fracas which spilled onto the streets or got too out of hand would likely bring them running. Felix had been going on about keeping a low profile for weeks, since the recent unpleasantness that had forced the pair of them onto the road north; Gotrek knew that he should probably teach these cheating swine a lesson and recover his gold quickly, before heading off into the night.

He shot his hand out to seize the third player from their game – the scrawny manling with the fast eyes – but his fingers closed on empty air. He turned his head to see that, indeed, the man was gone. His seat was empty.

Gotrek’s confusion lasted only a single heartbeat before someone broke a cheap wooden cudgel over the back of his head. He let out another wordless roar and launched himself at the new assailant in a whirl of fists, tattoos and fiery orange hair.

Off to his left, he saw a knife flash in the gloom and an agonised shriek cut through the din. As was to be expected in a room full of cut-throats, things had turned nasty very quickly. Already, many of the more savvy brawlers were scuttling for the low arched doorway which led back up to the street, leaving only a few bewildered out-of-towners and those locals who looked like they could afford to buy their way out of trouble regardless.

With a renewed sense of urgency, Gotrek sent another manling reeling to the floor with a blow to the temple, and then rounded on the injured dealer who was still thrashing about on his back amidst the debris from their upended table.

Clutching his shattered nose, the man was choking back blood and half-blind with pain, scrabbling about for his broken eyeglass frames. Gotrek noted that no one seemed to have come to his aid.

He pulled the manling up by the front of his leather jerkin and, ignoring his pitiful protestations, gave him a gentle slap on the forehead to get his full attention.

‘So you want to cheat me, eh?’ he growled. ‘Want to steal my hard-earned gold, you misbegotten little thief?’ He hauled him up close and stared hard into his eyes. ‘You’re lucky – I’m supposed to be behaving myself tonight.’

He let his words sink in for a moment before dropping the weakly struggling man to the floor once more, and scooping up as many of the fallen gold pieces as he could stuff into his belt. It was more than he’d had when he entered the den, but he considered that to be the price this daft human would pay for a lesson in honesty.

‘You just watch yourself, thief,’ he continued, yanking his pack and bedroll from under the bench against the wall. ‘I may come back for another game.’

Chuckling to himself, Gotrek hopped up the stone steps to street level and into the first paling light of dawn. It was still a good few hours until sunrise, and there would be plenty of time yet to seek out Felix at the inn.

A small group of stragglers from the gambling den darted away into the night as the unmistakable whistles of the watch echoed in the distance, and Gotrek ducked through the arch of a nearby building to avoid them all.

Aye, a good few hours still.

For the most part, the buildings in this part of town were in the half-timbered style, with high gabled roofs of grey and red shingles, and ornamental finials that spoke of a quiet, self-congratulatory smugness among the more permanent residents. It was shoddy human worksmanship, true enough, but it suggested that this was where the money was.

If he could find another den, he might indeed have enough time to try his hand at a new game, and maybe win a few more crowns for the pot.

It was the cold that Felix noticed first.

He was shivering, and lying on damp cobblestones – they pressed painfully into his hip and shoulder, and his face felt bruised. He had slept rough under the stars plenty of times before, but something here was strangely amiss.

Only when he attempted to pull his cloak tighter did the nausea hit him.

Felix gagged. His head was pounding.

He let out a long moan, full of all the remorse of the inebriate who cannot yet recall the night before but who knows that even merely in its telling it would most likely break him all over again.

Rolling slowly and delicately onto his front, he tried to take deep, cleansing breaths of the chill morning air as the world spun unforgivingly around him.

Who was making all that commotion? Blowing whistles and shouting, at this damned hour! Oh sweet, merciful Shallya! Deliver me from this wretchedness!

He drew his knees up and buried his face in his hands, almost sobbing at the pain behind his eyes. His hair hung wet and sticky against his clammy forehead, and he had the taste of bile and rancid ale in his throat. He gagged again.

Angry voices echoed in the alleyway around him. An alarming number of angry voices. Felix wanted to open his eyes, but he was certain that the effort would cause his brain to explode inside his skull.

When he finally did open them, the outcome was far worse.

Sabine lay before him on the cobblestones, in a wide pool of rain-watered blood. Her face was contorted, and her innards hung through a wide slash across her belly, which seemed to have almost cleaved her in two. Felix’s sword lay nearby.

As the watchmen came for him, their pitiless hands yanking him up from the ground, he was suddenly, horribly aware that his own hands and face were also smeared with Sabine’s blood.

He vomited copiously over the man who restrained his left arm, earning Felix a blow to the stomach that felled him instantly. Gasping and choking in the gutter, he saw that a horrified mob was being held back by the local watch commander at the entrance to the alley, and that they were crying out for vengeance.

It’s the Ripper! They’ve caught the Ripper!

Felix’s head hung at a maddening angle, and his vision swam. He needed time to think, just a few moments to–

Gotrek.

Felix caught sight of his dwarf companion’s grizzled face in the crowd, and his heart leapt. The Slayer was cowled in a dark hood, his single eye wide and his jaw set in a stern manner; most surprisingly to Felix, the dwarf’s expression was somewhere between anger and bitter disappointment. The sight was unnerving.

They had been so careful, tried so hard to remain inconspicuous…

Gotrek met his gaze, but said nothing. Solemnly he shook his head and slipped away into the baying throng.

Felix cried out in horror and anguish. One of the watchmen gripped him by his bloody hair, and bashed his face into the pavement.

As consciousness deserted him, away in the shadows Felix fancied he saw a lone figure: a skulking wraith of a man with piercing eyes.

Watching.

Gotrek stomped his way through the oncoming rabble; word was spreading fast, and in response more and more of the people of Oberwald were heading out onto the streets from their early morning duties. They were clearly agitated, although it seemed to be more fear than excitement that was gripping them.

Stupid manling. Stupid, stupid manling.

There had been a good deal of talk about a ‘ripper’ while they had been in the town, but Gotrek had simply assumed it was a harmless local legend or just another name that the humans had given to some wandering beast of Chaos. Who knows, he thought. It didn’t really matter now, anyway.

Felix had been stupid. Careless. You don’t cavort with taproom floozies when the whole district is on edge and looking for a scapegoat.

Always thinking with his tallywhacker, that one.

Up ahead, a young lad in a grocer’s apron had hauled himself up onto the low roof of a stone outbuilding and was pointing down to the corner where the cobbled alleyway met the main thoroughfare.

‘He’s there! They’ve caught him! They’re going to string him up!’

Gotrek sagged at the words. Hysterical shouts echoed from the half-timbered frontages which lined the street, and some of the bolder citizens began to jostle and run towards the apparent spectacle. He noted with grim inevitability that some of them were armed – an assortment of hand tools, pitchforks and kitchen knives gripped in trembling, white-knuckled hands.

There was a strange feeling in the air, an unusual dynamic to this crowd. This was not the usual lynch-mob, thirsty for blood; it was almost as if they were more afraid of this local terror now that they thought him cornered, more so than when he had supposedly stalked among them…

Fear was unfamiliar to Gotrek, and even humans themselves were a puzzle at times. He cast his gaze about as the people hurried by. A watchman with a hand firmly on the hilt of his sword. A housemaid, her face streaked with tears. Two youths in fine clothing. A blacksmith with a forge hammer and a curiously haunted expression, followed by his gloved apprentice.

The dwarf slowed, and turned back to see the burgeoning crowd at the mouth of the alley. Most of these people didn’t have vengeance on their minds, nor likely did they mean Felix any harm. Not directly, anyway.

They simply couldn’t believe that their Ripper had been caught.

They just had to see it with their own eyes, to witness him being dragged away in chains. They needed to finally banish the horror that had haunted them for so long, to restore their faith in the men who were supposedly employed to keep them safe at night. They needed to know that it was all over.

Somewhere further up the street, someone – most likely one of the watch trying to maintain order – fired a pistol skywards. The report rang down the street, and unfortunately had quite the opposite effect on the crowd. Screams filled the air, and then panicked cries as the thoroughfare was suddenly turned into a stampede.

‘It’s the Ripper! The daemon is loose again! Run for your lives!’

Gotrek groaned and shouldered the blacksmith aside as the lumbering brute almost ran him down, but even the doughty Slayer couldn’t weather the press of frantic bodies that surged around him. Being sure to keep a tight grip on his pack and the familiar weight of his axe strapped beneath it, he allowed himself to be swept along with the crowd.

Though he could barely think over the bleating and yammering and breathless prayers of the fleeing townspeople, Gotrek knew that he couldn’t just abandon his lanky companion to the hangman’s noose. First and foremost, young Felix had been locked up for a crime that – Gotrek hoped – he hadn’t committed. Secondly, if the watch held Felix for long enough, they might realise just who he actually was… and then, of course, they’d soon come looking for the mohawked Slayer too. There were plenty of things that the pair of them had done which would land them both in any gaol in the Empire, no question.

Finally, Gotrek realised, since Felix wasn’t this notorious murderer that the people had figured him to be, it meant that someone – or something – else was.

The Oberwald Ripper was still at large.

Time passed for Felix in a roiling, nauseous haze. He was unsure where the throbbing pain of his injuries ended, and the dull ache of his hangover began. He found that he couldn’t turn his head without the sensation that he was whirling down some hellish chasm to an unspecified but particularly unpleasant end.

It was like those things. You know. The dwarf machines. With the spinning blade things on top…

He whimpered before retching onto the floor.

Gyrocopters. That was it. It was like being attacked by gyrocopters every time he closed his eyes. Gyrocopters flying in a gale. With drunken pilots.

The watchmen had taken his cloak, taken his mail shirt and his sword. They had even taken his boots and his belt and clapped him in rusty manacles and leg-irons, although it was a mystery as to what kind of escape they thought he might attempt in his current condition.

Misery. He coughed and heaved again, and snorted out a clot of black blood.

He lay curled on a bare wooden bench, his face towards a rough-hewn stone wall that was slick with moisture and covered in blooms of lichen. The sound of dripping water in the cell was constant, like the ticking of some bizarre timepiece. Faintly, he was aware of thunder rumbling in the distance, and when he managed to turn his head far enough, he saw rain beating down upon the sill of the small, barred window set high up in the wall.

The only mercy that he felt was the cold draught that blew in through that opening. Though it might normally have wracked his body with chills, for now it was refreshing and he drew in long, deep breaths of it to steady himself before daring to move again.

‘You look unwell, friend.’

Felix started at the sound of the voice, started so hard that he almost fell off the bench and into the various puddles of his own making. His eyes slid in and out of focus as he peered into the shadows for the anonymous speaker, though the effort sent new jabs of pain lancing through his skull. His stomach tightened with the effort, but he managed to stifle another dry retch.

‘Who… who’s there?’ he managed at length, only to be met with a thin trickle of laughter.

In the far corner of the gaol was an empty bench, and heaped against the wall was a bundle of rags and detritus. Where the floor dipped in the middle, a pool of silty water had collected from the dripping ceiling, and looked to be at least a few inches deep. The heavy wooden door to the cell was bound with great iron hinges and bolts, and a battered little tin bowl containing a few mouldy crusts lay beside it.

But of the phantom speaker, there was no sign.

Felix gripped the edge of his bench tightly and tried to muster the strength to rise, but footsteps and angry words echoed in the space outside the cell, and underneath the heavy door he saw the suggestion of candlelight moving beyond.

With an iron rumble to rival the thunder outside, the bolts were pulled back and the door swung outwards to reveal several watchmen armed with spears, and the swarthy old watch commander in his brocaded coat, holding a lantern aloft. They entered cautiously, almost like a battlefield phalanx approaching him as they would a dragon or greater daemon, spears levelled.

‘This is him,’ spat the commander. ‘This is the cold-blooded bastard we found in the alley.’ He gestured at Felix, before spitefully kicking up a spray of the silty water in his direction. One of the spearmen jabbed at Felix, driving him from the bench and onto the filthy floor with a piteous cry.

Felix covered his eyes against the light of the lantern, and tried to ward off the spears of his captors and plead his innocence, the chains of his heavy manacles trailing on the stone flags.

‘N-no, you’ve got the wrong man! I didn’t do anything…’

The closest spearman, a potato-faced thug with one milky eye, leered in closer. ‘Shut yer mouth, devil, or I’ll cut out yer filthy tongue!’

Recoiling into the corner, Felix tried to think quickly. It was clear that they thought him to be this fiendish Ripper who had apparently plagued the town for so long. Of course, he could hardly blame them – here was an unknown outsider who could not have given a good account of himself even if he had been telling the truth.

The watch commander turned and spoke to someone standing in the passageway beyond the cell. ‘Is this the one, Herr Lieferen? Is this the man you saw?’

Felix almost didn’t dare to look.

Dishevelled, grief-stricken, with his eyes reddened and his hands trembling, Sabine’s father stooped in through the doorway and let his gaze fall upon Felix. It was a mournful gaze stung with tears and rage.

‘That’s him, that’s the poet! He’s to blame!’ he shrieked, wiping his eyes with the cuff of his fine shirt. ‘He killed my Sabine!’

The watch commander laid a hand on the sobbing merchant’s shoulder, causing him to flinch slightly, and ushered him back into the passageway.

‘Thank you, mein herr. We’ll see to him from here. This Ripper’s a crafty one, eluded us for a long time. We even thought of calling on the Witch Hunters – there were many as said he weren’t a man, but a ghoul or a daemon, or a vampire…’

Felix’s heart missed a beat.

The commander turned back and looked down at him with a sneer. ‘But he bleeds good enough, and I don’t see him flying up out of that little window any time soon. He’ll swing from the gallows before nightfall, you have my word.’

The watchmen began to back out of the cell, leaving Felix cowering and shivering in the corner. The commander swung his boot at the pile of rags near the far bench, eliciting a yelp of pain from it.

‘And you, how are you liking it in here? This must be a dream come true for you, eh? You simple-minded little pervert.’

To Felix’s surprise, the bundle unfurled into the form of a man – an emaciated, grimy vagrant in a tattered coat and cap. The man trembled and pawed beseechingly at the commander as he withdrew.

‘Please, your honour, I beg you,’ he bawled, ‘don’t leave me alone in here with him! He’s dangerous, he’ll kill me and take my soul for a plaything!’ He prostrated himself before the commander, splashing at the edge of the silty puddle and fawning over his grimy boots. ‘I saw him – when you were outside and couldn’t have known – he was licking the blood off his hands, and laughing! Oh, Sigmar preserve me, you can’t leave me in here with the Ripper!’

One of the other watchmen hauled him up by the scruff of his neck and sent him tumbling back into the corner. The commander blew out his lantern and reached for the ring of keys at his belt.

‘I ought to hang you alongside him. Be thankful you didn’t do nothing wrong, other than upset the common, decent folk.’

The heavy door slammed shut, and the bolts were racked back into place. The muffled sound of grim laughter and of spear hafts on the stone floor faded into the distance, leaving only Felix’s ragged breathing and the rainstorm outside the tiny window, and the endless drip-drip-drip of the vaulted ceiling.

Felix blinked in the sudden darkness, trying to locate the vagrant again. The man had fallen curiously silent, in spite of his desperate outburst in front of the watchmen.

With a sudden sharp intake of breath, Felix saw him.

He was sat slightly closer than Felix had expected, calm and cross-legged on the edge of the pool which still rippled from his little display moments earlier. He seemed bigger, somehow rangier than before – Felix supposed this was because he had initially mistaken him for a pile of gaol-cell rubbish. In the gloom, he saw the man’s shoulders rise and fall in slow, measured breaths, but not a sound did he make compared to Felix’s own laboured gasps.

Most unsettling of all were his eyes. His face was cloaked in shadow, but his beady little eyes peered out quite visibly.

Unblinking.

Felix pulled his manacled limbs up, edging back onto his bench in spite of his pounding head and the dizziness which threatened to pitch him to the floor without warning. The man’s eyes never left him all the while.

‘Well then, friend,’ came his cold voice once more. ‘This is quite a turn-up, is it not?’

A new sickness spread in Felix’s gut – it was not the ongoing legacy of his ale binge, nor was it at the prospect of his impending execution. It was not because Gotrek had abandoned him to the watch, nor because that poor girl lay dead or because he couldn’t even remember rightly how or when it had happened.

This new sickness was at the thought of having to spend his last hours locked up with this sinister figure whose predatory gaze never faltered, and whose breath did not seem to fog in the cold air of their gaol.

And no matter how sick Felix felt, he knew that he did not want to turn his back upon this monster for even a moment.

As thick as thieves, so the saying went. It was true throughout all the cities of men, in the Empire and beyond; in Gotrek’s experience, criminals tended to prefer the company of their own kind. Professional assassins, hired thugs, rogues, smugglers and footpads – they were all cut from the same cloth, and whatever twisted code of honour they followed, you could always count on them to cover for their fellows. At least until their interests conflicted.

And once you had a hold over one, you could find out more about another. Like this Ripper character, perhaps?

The problem was that Gotrek was never sure where the trail began, in these sorts of situations. That had always been Felix’s strong suit. The dwarf himself just wasn’t cut out for sleuthing.

Too much faffing around, like in those card games.

That, of course, had given Gotrek his flash of inspiration. There was a criminal type that he knew he could lean on, without fear of reprisal from the watch or whatever limited seedy underworld there was in this backwoods burg.

He cast a quick look about him, and then rapped hard on the door at the bottom of the stone steps just off the market square. Rain beat down upon his woollen hood.

No response. He kicked the bottom of the door three times with his boot, rocking it in its frame.

There came a scuffling from within, and the peephole set into the wood flipped open to reveal a bloodshot eye. After a moment, the eye settled on the diminutive Slayer, and widened in alarm. The peephole snapped shut again.

‘Go away!’ came a hoarse voice. ‘We’re closed, by order of the watch.’

Gotrek laughed pointedly. ‘Ha! I find that hard to believe.’

Hushed voices spoke quickly behind the door, followed by the faint creak of floorboards further in.

‘Believe what you like. You ain’t coming in. You just ’bout wrecked the place last night, with your shenanigans. New house policy – no dwarfs allowed.’

‘You’ve not to worry, manling. I’m not looking for another game.’ Gotrek dropped his voice to a stage whisper as a market cart trundled past on the muddy street above, and opened his pack to reveal the blade of his axe. ‘Now you let me in, quick as you like, or I’ll smash this door to splinters and–’

His words were cut short by a crash in the alleyway at the side of the den, and he lumbered up the steps to block the obvious escape route. Sure enough, he found the bruised and battered dealer from the previous night, picking himself up from a heap of tumbled crates just outside the building’s side door.

Gotrek barrelled into the man without hesitation, and with a fearsome growl he drew his axe from the pack and let his hood fall to reveal his flattened mohawk.

The battered man whimpered and screeched, producing gold crowns and sundry trinkets from his pockets and thrusting them at the Slayer in desperation.

‘Be still, you fool,’ Gotrek hissed, all too aware that their scuffle might attract attention from the people on the street behind them. ‘I’m not interested in your money. Back inside.’

He pulled the door shut behind them, and knocked the man’s legs out from under him with the flat of his axe. Although they were in a backroom which smelled suspiciously bad anyway, Gotrek realised that the man had just pissed himself in fear.

‘You filthy little thief! Is this how you want to meet your death? On your knees, with soggy pantaloons. What kind of an end is that, eh?’

The man gabbled incoherently, and began to weep from his puffy black eyes.

Gotrek made a theatrical show of lowering his weapon. ‘All right, all right. I’ll give you one last chance, thief. You can walk – or waddle – out of here alive, if you tell me more about this “Ripper” of yours.’

Sniffing and trembling uncontrollably, the man gingerly wiped his swollen nose and nodded frantically.

‘The R-Ripper, yes! They c-caught him this m-morning. The watch caught him.’

Gotrek leaned in, almost conspiratorially, and clucked his tongue.

‘See now, thief, I don’t think they did.’

The man frowned. ‘I don’t know w-what you mean,’ he said.

‘I think they got the wrong man, see? I mean, you tell me what you know about this Ripper. You ever seen him?’

‘No sir, Mast’r Dwarf! F-few have. Fewer still who’ve lived long enough to–’

‘Anyone you know?’

The man paused, still sobbing softly.

‘One fellow, maybe. He talked about the Ripper often enough. Talked about how his eyes blazed colder than a winter frost, and about how he could outrun the fastest horse on the forest roads, when he had a mind to.’

‘Who told you this?’ Gotrek demanded.

‘I don’t know his name – he sometimes comes in to try his hand at the tables though. Thin fellow, always nervous. Wears a cloth cap.’

The scrawny manling with the fast eyes.

‘He was here last night, was he not?’ said Gotrek.

‘Aye, that he was, though he didn’t stick around long after the… trouble began, Mast’r Dwarf. With respect.’

Slippery fellow, thought Gotrek. Too fast for me, and that’s saying something.

‘So, thief, where would the watchmen have taken this Ripper they’ve caught?’

‘Most likely to the gaol to await his execution, if any gaol will hold him. You know the town gibbet?’

‘I saw it. In front of the gallows in the market square.’

‘The cells are in the stone building at the eastern facing. You won’t miss them.’

Gotrek shouldered his axe, and tossed a grubby rag into the man’s face.

‘There you go, thief. Clean yourself up.’

Cautiously, Felix took a handful of water from the puddle and splashed it over his bare neck, never taking his eyes off the shadowy figure sat in front of him.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I saw you in the alleyway when the watch came.’

A spread of teeth emerged into a wicked grin in the gloom.

‘Indeed you did, friend, though I saw you and the girl a good while before that.’

Felix pointed at him in the most intimidatory manner he could. ‘For a start, you can stop calling me “friend”. You don’t even know me, and on balance I have to say that most of the people I call my friends don’t smell half as foul as you. Damned vagrant.’

The vagrant laughed his thin little laugh again. Felix ignored it.

‘Secondly, if you saw me there with Sabine then you know that I never touched her. I’m to be executed for something I didn’t do, and if you were half the “friend” you pretend to be, you’d tell that to the watchmen and clear my name.’ He sank back onto the bench, and waved dismissively. ‘But for whatever reason, you’ve decided to incriminate me further. I’m not sure what you hope to gain from that, but I’ll thank you to leave me alone. “Friend”.’

A tense moment passed between them, and Felix managed to match the vagrant’s unblinking stare.

He noticed that the smile had vanished.

‘Ungrateful,’ the vagrant hissed.

‘What?’

‘I’m giving you the gift of infamy. Your name will live on for generations – Max Schreiber, the legendary Ripper of Oberwald. You never even had to kill a single one of those… immoral citizens, and yet you will take all of the glory.’

‘But how–’

‘Oh, she did squirm so, your little lady. She was quite taken with you. Even after you passed out, I don’t think she even noticed me until I was already upon her.’

Felix’s stomach lurched. He tried to mask his horror.

‘And I must say, Herr Schreiber–’ the Ripper grinned again, ‘–your name is most apt for a poet. Is it a pen name, perchance?’ He chuckled, before snapping back to a humourless deadpan. ‘What, then, would your real name be, I wonder…’

Felix sprang to his feet, holding his manacled fists out before him, but the Ripper was lightning-fast and already stooped in a low crouch in the silty puddle. For what seemed an eternity, they stood facing one another in that dark gaol cell.

‘You stay away from me, do you hear?’ Felix gasped, his hair hanging limply in his bloodied face. He looked to the heavy door, and raised his voice. ‘Guard! Guard! He’s the Ripper! The filthy, stinking–’

Two heavy thuds on the wood. The milky-eyed watchman’s voice echoed in the passageway beyond.

‘Quiet in there, you murderin’ wretch.’

Now that he stood in the half-light from the small window, Felix could see the Ripper’s features more clearly: a gaunt, thin face with a straggly beard, cap pulled low over his brow. His gaze was just as intense as it had been, almost hypnotic, like that of an adder or viper. When he spoke again, his words sent chills down Felix’s spine.

‘Have you any idea how pitiful your gallows accusations will seem? How mad they will make you sound?’

‘Do not speak to me of madness,’ Felix spat. ‘You’ve stalked this provincial little town for months, and for what? You are deluded if you think anyone outside of Oberwald will ever hear of your exploits.’

The Ripper started forwards suddenly, his hands outstretched like grasping claws, but he held back. Nonetheless, Felix flinched and stumbled in his leg-irons – his opponent had the advantage of complete mobility, and he clearly intended to make the most of it.

‘Months?’ the Ripper sneered, his eyes narrow. ‘Try years. And what makes you think Oberwald is the only town to have enjoyed my particular attentions?’ He gestured widely. ‘In my time, I travelled throughout the Empire and the Border Princes, and further still. You have the air of the traveller about you too, “Herr Schreiber”. I wonder if you have also seen the things that I have seen.’

Felix shrugged, hoping to stall him. ‘Pray tell, what would that be?’

‘I have seen the worst in mankind. I have seen men rut like the beasts of the Drakwald, or wage war like the greenskins and dwarfs up in the mountains.’ He raised a hand, and closed it slowly into a fist. ‘But worst of all, I have seen the slow eradication of our innocence, even out here in the rural provinces. Take this town – no more than a crossroads between the local villages, and then later a market settlement. Traders, farmers; honest folk living by the toil of their own hand.

‘But then it grows. Money to be made, you see. The landowners and innkeepers creep in, start to make a killing by renting out their yards and frontages to the travelling vendors. How do you think these fine roads and buildings are maintained?’

The Ripper’s eyes had glazed somewhat, and he stared into the middle distance, no doubt imagining some apocalyptic end to his ranting monologue.

‘But the population is transient – market is only a few days each week, so they begin to specialise in their offer. Aside from food and lodging, the more wealthy visitor might even find himself with amenable female company for an evening… and suddenly there are whores and disease on every corner!

‘And all the while, there are still those who cannot afford even the most basic comforts. They are forced to huddle in the streets by night, bedding down in muddy straw bales or sleeping beneath their empty market wagons and shivering in the bitter wind. They die out there, while the rich continue to grow fat by their roaring hearths.’

Absently, he adjusted his coat against some dimly remembered chill.

‘It speaks of a base inequality. It is the soulless values of the big cities like Altdorf and Talabheim cast in microcosm. Without something to fear, without a beast at their door, men become greedy. I will give them all something to fear.’

Felix merely laughed. ‘I tell you what – you are mad.’

The Ripper’s eyes snapped back to him, fixing him with their cold, predatory glare once more. Still, he let Felix continue.

‘You say you’ve travelled the Old World, and yet you say that men have nothing to fear, out here in the provinces? You guess rightly – I’ve wandered these lands long enough to find nothing but bloodthirsty beasts and unspeakable horrors under every mountain and upon every plain.’

He pointed at the Ripper, who twitched nervously.

‘You’re not some saviour of men. You’re just a murderous lunatic.’

‘Wrong,’ he replied in a heartbeat. ‘You’re the murderer, remember? You’ll swing from the gibbet before the day is out, and I’ll be set free.’ He laughed again. ‘I’m just the vagrant caught skulking at the scene of your latest murder. Aside from offending the sensibilities of the townsfolk with my morbid curiosity, I am apparently innocent.’

Felix could stand it no longer. He bellowed and lunged at the Ripper, but the sinister figure flashed out of his path and sent him careening into the opposite bench. As Felix fell, his leg-irons yanked free from their rusted mounting on the wall and the chains splashed loosely into the pool of silty water.

The Ripper stood over him, partially silhouetted against the light from the window and yet with his pale eyes still noticeably visible beneath the brim of his cap. As Felix rolled onto his back and tried to stand, with a flick of the wrist his tormentor produced a long, serrated knife from beneath his coat.

‘Stay down, friend. You don’t want to taste this steel.’

Before Felix could formulate a suitably witty riposte, an unmistakable voice came down through the bars of the high window.

‘Manling? What’s going on in there?’

He let out an involuntary gasp of joy. The Ripper turned to look up at the tiny opening, but Felix yelled past him.

‘Gotrek? Gotrek! It’s the Ripper! He’s in here with me!’

As Felix began to tug the rusted remains of the leg-irons from his ankles, the Ripper looked slowly back towards him, confusion clear in his eyes.

‘Gotrek… the dwarfen Slayer…?’ he whispered.

Finally free, Felix leapt back to his feet, though his wrists were still manacled. The Ripper drew back into a vicious stance, his knife held out between them.

‘Felix Jaeger.’

Famous for all the wrong reasons, Felix lamented. He wound the chains of his manacles around his fists in readiness for combat.

Much to his surprise, the Ripper lunged for the heavy wooden door and began to beat upon it with the hilt of his knife.

‘Guard, raise the alarm! Send for the State Troops! He’s a wanted man!’

In an effort to silence him, Felix dived onto his back and the two of them crashed to the slick stone floor. With the wind knocked from his lungs, Felix couldn’t quite summon the strength to force his manacles over the Ripper’s head and around his neck, and so he grasped at his throat instead.

The flesh felt clammy and cold.

Letting his cap fall to the floor, the Ripper threw Felix aside as though he were a child, and stabbed down cruelly with his knife. The blade sliced through Felix’s sodden undershirt and grazed his ribs.

Felix let out a cry of pain, and punched the Ripper squarely in the jaw with a chain-wrapped fist. The blow knocked the fiend insensible, and the knife skittered from his grasp and into the murky puddle, out of sight. Felix hauled him up by the front of his coat, and sent him crashing into the nearest bench.

The frame gave way and shattered into damp kindling, but the Ripper was on his feet before Felix could recover. His eyes burned pale in the gloom as he grabbed Felix by the hair and plunged him face-first into the pool.

Felix gasped a lungful of the cold, brackish water, but his already bruised forehead struck the submerged flagstones and knocked the fight clean out of him. Icy hands on the back of his neck ground his face into the gritty stone, pinning his manacled arms beneath him. He tasted his own blood, fresh in the water.

Darkness began to creep in at the edges of his vision. He felt his heartbeat slowing, in the cold clutches of death. Somewhere in the distance he heard the whistles of the watchmen…

Too late. The Ripper had him now.

It was a strangely calming realisation. Soon, he thought. It will all be over soon.

Deep cold, like the bleakest Kislev winter.

From out of the shadows of a thousand haunted nights, he recalled her face. She was beckoning Felix into the embrace of whatever lay beyond this life, and he longed to go to her…

A pinprick of pain pierced the numbness of his hands in the water. His fingers closed around a blade.

Not yet. Not dead yet.

With every last ounce of strength he could summon, he kicked and pushed himself clear of the pool, and rolled around with the knife thrust out in both hands. The Ripper gasped as Felix plunged it between his ribs, into his heart.

Felix choked and spluttered and heaved the silty water from his lungs, even as the Ripper convulsed and fell forwards on top of him. The dead weight pinned Felix on his back in the puddle with the spreading warmth of his foe’s lifeblood soaking into his shirt, and he let his head sink to the stone flags in exhaustion.

Seconds later, the door to the cell burst inwards, torn from its hinges by the lifeless body of the milky-eyed watchman. Gotrek appeared in the vacant doorway, his tattooed muscles rippling as he dusted off his hands.

‘Oh, by my ancestors, manling,’ he barked. ‘You look terrible. Let’s get out of here.’

As they fled towards the low stone walls which marked the edge of Oberwald and the beginnings of the pine-wooded wilderness beyond, Gotrek steadied Felix as he wheezed and limped through the mud. In the fading light of early evening, the town’s alarum bell was ringing, although exactly whom the terrified citizens hoped to summon was a mystery.

‘You know… what they’ll say… don’t you?’ Felix panted, refastening his sword belt. ‘They’ll tell their grandchildren… that the Ripper… escaped from the gallows.’

Gotrek frowned.

The Oberwald Ripper – a folk-devil in the making, Felix thought. He hoped against hope that his old friend Max Schreiber, the real Max Schreiber, would never stray this far into the provinces, or at least that he would have the good sense not to go by that particular name.

‘So what was he?’ Gotrek asked. ‘Chaos cultist? A sorcerer collecting souls for his daemon-magic?’

Felix laughed. They clambered over a fence and into a field of dead grass.

‘What’s funny?’ said the dwarf. ‘Was he a degenerate mutant, then? A beastman sympathiser? No, wait – a druchii agent, masquerading as a human!’

‘No, sadly not,’ replied Felix, shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it seems that he was just a man.’

‘But what about all this stuff he’s supposed to have done? He can jump forty feet over a house, and shoot lightning from his fingertips, from what I heard…’

Felix thought of Sabine for a moment. Poor, poor Sabine.

‘People need monsters,’ he shrugged, ‘and even when they’re lucky enough not to have any, they create their own... or they become them.’

Gotrek sneered.

‘Ha! Your kind are a strange bunch, manling.’

THE LION

Part Two

V

While his seneschal organised the forces of the Dark Angels, the Lion made his way to his personal arming chamber. Five Legion serfs were awaiting him inside the stone-clad room, dressed in dark green surplices, with heavy boots and gloves. Each wore a pistol at his belt too, though the Lion had encountered no enemy on his way there and they appeared unmolested.

The reports of attacks were growing in frequency as the nephilla – or whatever their immaterial assailants were – seemed to be widening the breach from warp space to allow more of their kind to manifest.

The walls of the chamber were covered with weapons of dazzling variety, either made for the primarch or seized as spoils of conquest from the hundreds of cultures he had encountered during the Great Crusade. It had begun with his first Calibanite short sword, presented to him by Luther on acceptance into the knightly order; that simple blade held pride of place at the centre of the display.

It was the one affectation he allowed himself, this collection of weaponry. He had spent long times here contemplating the many ways mankind had devised to kill an enemy, though of late his throne chamber had been a more regular haunt. He paused for a moment of thought, moving along the walls, touching a hand to favourite pieces, running a gauntleted finger along blades and spikes in appreciation of their craftsmanship. In war, just as in other pursuits, mankind was creative, showing insight and genius even with the most barbaric level of technology.

Many of the weapons were too small for his fist and were mounted for ornamentation only, while others served a different purpose in his hands: swords for normal men wielded as knives by the Lion. Some were traditional, ancient designs, while others had monomolecular edges, power field generators, electro-fields and other technological improvements.

There were spatha, longswords, bastard swords, mortuary swords, flambards, rapiers, sabres, scimitars, khopeshes, colichmardes, tulwars, shotels, falchions, misericordes and cutlasses; myrmex, cestus and knuckle dusters; baselards, stilettos, dirks and daggers; cleavers, sickles and kopis; mattocks, clubs, picks, maces, flails, morning stars, mauls and war hammers; hatchets, tomahawks, hand axes, double-bladed axes, long-bearded axes and adzes; pikes, partisans, fauchards, sarissas, voulges, Lochaber axes, boarspears, tridents, halberds, scythes, half pikes and hastas.

He did not rush himself, but took the time to collect his thoughts, considering the enemy of the day. In his youth he had slain nephilla with his bare hands out of necessity, though they were all but impervious to most mortal weapons; another benefit of his primarch heritage. This day he would go armed, and he took up two blades, heavy hand-and-a-half broadswords by the reckoning of normal men but easily held in each fist by the giant primarch. They were superbly crafted, the product of a Calibanite artisan whose name had been lost to history. Their names were inscribed along the edge of each blade in florid lettering: Hope and Despair. Each had a long fuller to lighten the blade weight, and they were edged with a crystalline compound sharper than any metal, unbreakable and never needing to be sharpened. The Lion had found the pair of swords used as ceremonial pieces by one of the order masters, and becoming enchanted by their glittering edges had insisted on a trade, gaining them for the exchange of an unblemished sablesabre pelt the primarch had prepared by his own hand.

Armed with the twin blades, the Lion joined his allotted company at the main gateway above the reactor rooms and warp core, where the fighting was fiercest. Several wounded legionaries were being dragged up the access ramp, suffering a variety of horrendous wounds: burns and slashes through their armour that had gouged down to the bone.

‘Fight with pride, die with honour,’ said the Lion, raising his swords in salute to his little brothers. They fell in behind their primarch, forming five lines each fifty strong.

The corridors were littered with the dead; unarmoured serfs and crew for the most part. Their ragged bodies were heaped in bloody piles and choked the doorways to side chambers. Some had heads or limbs missing, others were little more than blackened lumps of charred flesh. Some were arranged in lewd poses with each other, eliciting a growl of disgust from the primarch.

Here and there, flies and maggots were already crawling through the filth of the dead, burrowing beneath the skin of the fallen and feasting on lifeless eyes. The Lion heard muttered curses uttered by his company, but had no desire to silence them, for he felt like cursing also.

He stopped as he came across the form of two dead Dark Angels. He knelt beside them. Their armour was half-melted as if by acid, and their skin was pock-marked by blisters and buboes. Caliban had occasionally been wracked by strange plagues, and the clusters of triple pustules that corrupted the skin of the pair of dead Space Marines struck a chord in the memory of the Lion.

‘We have to burn the dead, lest corruption spread,’ he said solemnly as he straightened. A trail of slime, like that of a snail, only a metre wide, led away from the bodies and passed into one of the passages leading away from the main corridor. The primarch detailed a squad to hunt down the creature that had left the trail and pressed on towards the main engine rooms several hundred metres ahead.

From nowhere, eight nephilla sprang into being ahead of the primarch. The warp rift had become so strong that it took almost no time at all for the attackers to materialise. These creatures were vaguely humanoid in shape, with lean, hunched bodies and wiry arms. They had legs like those of a dog and their flesh was the colour of blood and faintly scaled. Their heads were elongated, with black horns running back along the sides. In clawed hands they held triangular swords of gleaming bronze. Eyes of pure white regarded the Lion for a moment while forked tongues licked needle-like teeth.

With snarling war cries the nephilla attacked as one, raising their swords as they rushed towards the Lion. He did not wait for the enemy to come to him, but sprang forwards to meet them. In his left hand, Hope parried two blades swinging towards his groin, while Despair hacked through the neck of one of the creatures, parting the immaterial tissue of its body without pause.

The Lion felt a shock of energy ripple through him from his hand as the creature exploded into a shower of blood, coating the floor and the Lion’s armour with crimson. There was no pause to marvel at this strange death, for the remaining seven creatures were trying to encircle the primarch.

Bolt shells whined and cracked as the other Dark Angels did their best to help their commander. The detonations had little effect on the nephilla, but provided distraction. Sweeping Hope in a wide arc, the Lion sheared through an upraised blade and parted the bodies of two more attackers even as he stabbed Despair through the face of another. The blades of the nephilla bit at his black-and-gold armour, cutting deep into the enamelled plates in a way no mortal weapon had ever done, though the Lion’s flesh remained unmarked.

Parrying another swing of an infernal blade, the Lion twisted and brought Despair down onto the head of a nephilla circling behind him, cleaving through black horn and red skin. There was no skull beneath the flesh, and the creature collapsed into a crimson pool like the others. In two more seconds and a flurry of blows, the Lion had despatched the rest of his assailants, and his armour was awash with sticky red fluid. It smelt like blood, but he knew it could not be; the creatures had possessed no veins or arteries or hearts to carry such a thing.

Perturbed by this discovery, the Lion continued on, calling for his guard to follow swiftly as he splashed through the slick of red. He signalled Stenius, who had remained in the strategium.

‘How long until the warp drive is operational, captain?’

‘Less than twenty minutes, my liege,’ came the reply after a few seconds. ‘We have a problem, though. The enemy have driven the engineers from the warp core and are attempting to break into the containment chamber. Lord Corswain and Lady Fiana are trying to break through from the aft decks, my liege.’

‘I will meet them in the main core chamber, captain.’ The Lion broke into a run, his long strides quickly leaving behind his company of Dark Angels.

Corswain felt only a little better that he had Lady Fiana for company. The gaze of her third eye was devastating to the enemy, but she tired quickly and had to rest for several minutes between bursts. For those periods, it was up to him and the other Dark Angels to protect her with their mundane weapons. It was not impossible – the nephilla could be destroyed by weight of fire or a particularly powerful blast of a lascannon or such – but it was hard work and the force was expending ammunition and power packs at a prodigious rate. They had less than half the stores they had set out with by the time they reached the conveyors and stairwells that dropped down into the warp core chambers.

They had encountered all manner of horrifying foes on the two-kilometre journey aftwards: soaring disc-like beasts ringed with razor-sharp claws and possessing mouths that could chew through a legionary’s armour in a few seconds, six-limbed entities with giant lobster claws and lashing tongues coated with venom, ever-changing apparitions with leering faces in their torsos that cavorted and wheeled about whilst spitting sorcerous fire from their fingertips.

Corswain’s original force of two hundred Dark Angels now numbered just over half that; twenty-eight had been slain or were in the apothecarion, the others had been left as rearguard to defend against the enemy who could materialise anywhere.

With his personal guard close by him, the seneschal descended the main stairway into the bowels of the engine decks while other squads split to clear out secondary access routes. The steps were littered with the bodies of dead crew. Amongst the decapitated and disembowelled corpses were a few legionaries, their black armour rent open, their flesh hideously corrupted and twisted. Corswain had no idea what could have caused such horrendous injuries, and agitation caused him to tighten his grip on his bolt pistol and power sword as they reached the deck below.

All was clear, save for the stench of death coming from the bloated corpses of engineers and serfs. The passages here were lined with power conduits, piping and cables, which all showed signs of decay and disrepair, marked by patches of corrosion and slicks of moss and algae. Knowing that Stenius would never allow such a poor state to exist on his ship, Corswain was forced to conclude that the decrepitude was somehow a side effect of the nephilla’s presence.

The same was true on the next level down, and still no foe could be found. Meeting up with sixty of his Dark Angels, Corswain readied himself for the descent to the warp core deck. The corridor and stairwells thrummed with energy, but not just the power of the reactor that was being fed into the area; there was a tension in the air, an intangible shadow that clouded his thoughts.

‘The warp presence is almost total here,’ warned Fiana. Her face was screwed up with effort, sweat running down her brow and cheeks, her lip trembling. ‘If it were not for the lack of alarms, I would think the warp core had been breached.’

‘Everybody stay alert,’ Corswain told his warriors; somewhat unnecessarily he realised, as everybody was on edge. ‘No friendlies. Destroy everything that moves.’

He led the force down into the warp core sector. The walls were plated here, thick ferrocrete layered with adamantium. In layout, the deck was oval, a main corridor running around the core room itself, with branching passageways leading to monitoring stations and watch rooms.

The dead were everywhere, some of them so horrendously mutilated that it was hard to tell that they had once been men and women. In the first hundred metres, Corswain counted seven dead Dark Angels, two of them in the livery of Techmarines. The first door to the warp core was another hundred and fifty metres ahead and the piles of the deceased grew larger the closer they came to the gate.

Gunfire sounded from behind, and at the same time a wave of nephilla poured from the doorway leading to the main core chamber. They were of a type, all small creatures with faces in their chests, their unnatural flesh a glowing pink colour. Sparks and trickles of fire dripped from the open ends of their splayed fingers as they gambolled and cartwheeled along the corridor.

The Dark Angels opened fire, a hail of bolts meeting the nephilla fifty metres away. Corswain fired his pistol repeatedly, directing his shots against the same target until finally the creature ruptured, clouds of pink mist erupting from the wounds. Rather than fall, the nephilla started to shudder and spin crazily, a juddering shriek emitted from its lipless mouth.

Corswain stopped firing, shocked by what happened next.

The pink nephilla was mutating, growing an extra head, splitting into two other forms. Its pinkness turned purple and then into a deep blue as two smaller versions of its former shape snapped into existence with an audible popping noise. The blue creatures snarled and frowned at their attackers, fingers flexing menacingly. The same was happening to others, turning the pink tide into a wash of pink and blue as other nephilla were torn apart by gunfire only to re-emerge in their newer forms.

Firing on semi-automatic, Corswain plunged forwards, sword raised. He was just a few strides from the front of the blue mass when a black beam seared past him; the third eye of Lady Fiana. It tore a gouge through the mass of nephilla squeezed into the passageway, causing their bodies to disperse into blue and pink sparks where it touched them.

His pistol empty, Corswain swung his sword at the closest enemy, the power-field-edged blade hitting the outstretched arm of the creature. The impact felt strange, not at all like the slowing of a sword cutting into flesh, nor like the sudden jar of a strike against armour; it felt as though Corswain struck some fantastic rubber that bent under the strength of the blow before rebounding into its former shape.

Fiana’s third eye blazed again, opening up a gap for the Dark Angels to plunge forwards into the midst of the foe, their bolters roaring, the sergeants’ chain-swords whirring and power fists crackling. Fire engulfed them, purple and red, crackling along the edges of their armour, seeping into the cracks and joins. Corswain’s right greave was set alight, the paint peeling away to reveal the ceramite beneath, which started to slough away. As he chopped his sword into the leering face of a nephilla, he noticed in a detached way that the flame gave off no smoke, and that unsettled him even more than the fact that his leg was on fire.

The edge of the pelt hanging down his back caught fire, but before the flames spread, they dissipated, vanishing as swiftly as they had materialised. Turning his attention back to the enemy, he realised that they had all been destroyed. A multicoloured mist hung in the air, like droplets of dye in a zero-gravity environment.

As he reloaded his pistol, Corswain signalled his primarch on the direct command channel.

‘My liege, we are about to enter the main core chamber,’ he reported. ‘How close are you?’

‘Two decks down, little brother.’ The Lion’s voice betrayed no strain, though his next words were a testament to the ferocity of the opposition ranged against him. Corswain could hear feral howling and inhuman shrieking in the background, much of it cut abruptly short. ‘I am facing several dozen enemies at the moment. It will take me some time to slay them all. My force is moving up, about three hundred metres behind me. Secure the core chamber and I will meet you there shortly.’

Acknowledging his primarch’s reply, Corswain reloaded his pistol and gathered his warriors – seven fewer after the latest encounter – and headed towards the gateway to the core chamber. The gate itself was several metres high, the blast doors that had been brought down still in place but torn and melted through, leaving a hole large enough to step through.

Corswain expected the portal to be held against them, but no nephilla opposed the Dark Angels as they entered the portalway. High pitched shrieking and wailing sounded from the main chamber beyond, a sound impossible for humans to make. Stepping through the breached barrier, weapons at the ready, Corswain moved into the hall housing the warp core.

The core itself was in a heavily shielded octagonal structure at the centre of the high-domed chamber, enclosed by layer after layer of protective sheaths. Mechanicum symbols were etched into the housing, forming an intricate web of lines and shapes filled with gleaming metal against the obsidian-like stone of the warp core.

Dozens of nephilla – the pink and blue creatures they had just fought – were frenziedly hurling themselves at the core, clawing at it with their hands, trying to burn their way through with jets of pink flame. Their screeches were utterances of rage and frustration. Other creatures swirled about the upper gantries surrounding the core, swooping and climbing like Gadian skysharks. The nephilla paid the Dark Angels no heed as they strode into the chamber, weapons levelled, intent as they were on breaching the warp core.

‘Destroy them all!’ barked Corswain, opening fire with his pistol.

The fusillade of the Dark Angels – bolters, heavy bolters, lascannons and missiles – ripped into the mass of creatures gathered around the core structure. Spreading out along the walkways, the legionaries kept up the murderous rain of fire, some turning their weapons towards the ceiling as the circling beasts above dived down with piercing screams, their tails lashing, the barbs and serrations that ringed their manta-like bodies undulating as they descended.

The chamber filled with a swirling miasma of dissipating energy as the Dark Angels let fly with their fury, billowing clouds of warp power streaming upwards. Through the mist, Corswain saw something else moving, coalescing from the floating fragments that drifted up like embers from a fire. Something larger than anything he had yet seen, towering above the Space Marines, even taller than the Lion yet not so bulky.

Red lightning flared from the mist, ripping through Sergeant Lennian’s squad, cracking open armour and searing flesh in a long burst of raging energy. Their smoking bodies were flung through the air by the blast, smashing high up against the ferrocrete walls.

The thing that emerged from the swirling maelstrom of dying nephilla looked like a giant, nightmarish bird, at least four metres tall. It stood upright like a man, but its thin, twisted body was supported on legs like those of a hawk or eagle, taloned feet scarring the metal floor, leaving sparks in its wake as it advanced. Robes of fire hung from its torso, blown about by some unnatural wind. Its arms were long and sinewy, and in its clawed hands the creature held a staff made of solidified flame, ever-changing in colour. A pair of wings spread from the beast’s back, almost reaching from one side of the chamber to the other, iridescent feathers trailing on the ground.

It had two heads on long scaled necks, one like some grotesque vulture, the other serpentine, both crested with long multi-coloured feathers that dripped red and blue droplets of fire. And its eyes… Corswain regretted meeting that abominable gaze in an instant, but was unable to look away. The nephilla’s eyes were black: the black of the gulf between stars, the black of the darkest cave of Caliban. The seneschal saw himself reflected in those ebon orbs, a tiny figure against the huge expanse of the universe – a tiny, insignificant mote surrounded by the enormity of existence.

The nephilla lashed out with the tip of its staff and more lightning filled the chamber, ripping apart another half a dozen legionaries. Bolter rounds exploded without effect against its ever-shifting hide and lascannon beams reflected harmlessly from its wings.

Lady Fiana stepped past Corswain, her whole body shaking as she pulled free her headband to reveal her third eye. The seneschal ripped away his gaze from her just before that warp eye was opened, and watched the beam of darkness that sprang towards the nephilla. It struck the creature full in the chest, detonating with a flare of dark energy, rocking it back a step but doing no more.

With a horrified gasp, Fiana unleashed her warp sight again, but this time the nephilla released one hand from its staff and stopped the beam with its palm. The energy coalesced around its fingers, playing from fingertip to fingertip like a miniature storm, while its snake head arched down to examine the flashing cloud of power. Eyes narrowing, it looked up at Fiana and thrust its hand back towards her, releasing the energy.

The Navigator shrieked as her body was engulfed by blackness, veins and arteries pulsing under her skin, blood streaming from eyes, ears and nose. She fell, and lay unmoving.

Corswain turned his attention back to the nephilla, and raised his pistol. Both of the creature’s pairs of eyes were scanning around the chamber, necks craning to take in all of the Dark Angels. With a sweeping gesture, it sent a wave of power surging across the hall, smashing the legionaries from their feet. Corswain was hurled back with the others, crashing to his back beside the portalway.

Stretching up to its full height, the nephilla turned both heads towards the seneschal. It seemed to relax, staff held out to one side in one hand, the other stroking through the fires of its robes.

As all four of those black eyes fixed upon him, Corswain felt something inside his head, like a warp translation but sharper, like a pinprick in the centre of his mind. He tried to block out the sensation of fingers pulling apart his thoughts and memories, examining them one by one, but could not stop the creature’s mental assault.

Suddenly the seneschal’s limbs went numb. He stood up, with no volition, but was otherwise immobile. Around him, the other Dark Angels were just recovering from the shockwave of the creature’s last attack.

Corswain tried his best to resign himself to his death, but it was hard. He never had thought his life would end like this, as helpless as a newborn, facing an enemy that he could not even begin to comprehend. He wanted to spit a curse, or dedicate his last breaths to his primarch and Emperor, but he was denied even this honour. His body was not his to control.

The nephilla reached out a bony finger and beckoned him forwards.

Lashing out withan armoured boot, the Lion sent the hound-like beast tumbling down the corridor. Taking half a dozen strides, the primarch brought both of his swords down across its back as it tried to right itself, carving it into three pieces that spattered into gore across the decking.

He stopped for a moment to assess the situation. The flight of stairs down to the main core chamber was only fifty metres ahead, and the passageway was free of enemies. He could hear his company fighting behind him, the retort of bolters echoing up from the stairwell he had just left. Though he knew his little brothers were in a dire situation, he had to focus on his objective: regaining control of the core so that the warp engines and Geller field could be engaged.

The comm buzzed as he stepped forwards, and he heard Corswain’s voice. The seneschal sounded strained, as if speaking through gritted teeth.

‘My liege, the way is clear to the warp core. You must come at once. There is something else here, something we cannot destroy.’ The comm-link hissed for a few seconds. ‘It… It wants to speak with you.’

TheLion entered the warp core chamber at a full run, taking in the scene in a few moments. Several dozen Dark Angels were stood around the perimeter, their weapons directed at a monstrous bird-like nephilla but not firing. In front of the creature was Corswain, standing immobile just a few metres from it, arms hanging limply by his sides.

Cease your attack or this one will be destroyed.

The words came to the Lion’s thoughts directly, bypassing his ears. Their tone was soft and melodic, in contrast to the haggard, harsh-looking creature that had undoubtedly sent them. The nephilla’s intent was immediately clear and he skidded to a halt, coming to a stop with his swords held ready to defend himself. There was no reaction from his warriors, and he guessed that the words were directed to him alone. He did not know whether their passivity was voluntary or enforced, but it was clear they were in grave danger.

‘It is not I that launched an attack,’ said the Lion, taking a step closer to the apparition. ‘Leave now.’

And make a waste of all the effort that it took to reach this place? I have been searching for you a long time, Lion of Caliban.

There was something familiar about the creature’s voice, like a half-remembered dream. The Lion could not place from where, but it was not the first time he had heard this. His mind stirred with vague recollections, of pleading and entreaty.

Yes, that is true. I have come to you before.

‘Get out of my thoughts.’ The Lion stepped to his left and focused on blocking the creature from his mind, mentally bringing up a shield as though he were defending himself against a physical attack. It was a trick he had learnt as he had stalked nephilla on Caliban. One of the bird-beast’s heads followed him with its inscrutable gaze, the other stayed fixed upon Corswain.

That might work in the real universe, but not here. You are in my realm now, or at least teetering upon the brink of it. You cannot ignore me this time.

‘I do not treat with aliens,’ said the Lion, taking a few more steps to his left, closing the gap between himself and the nephilla.

Alien? Alien? There was despair in the voice. I am more than some simple creature of your universe. I am the giver and the receiver, the crux of fate, the master of the parallels. The past and the future are laid before me. Do not mistake me for some petty foe to be vanquished by mere might of arms.

‘You have nothing to offer that I will accept.’ The Lion was directly behind the creature now, its snake head still regarding him with an unblinking stare while the vulture transfixed Corswain.

That is not true. However, you do not desire power, that much is plain. Your ambition is woefully stunted for one of your abilities. You are happy to let your brothers dwell in the light of your father’s adoration. You even sacrifice your own to stay true to the memory of what once was.

The two necks were starting to cross each other as the Lion continued his circling. He resisted the lure of the accusation in the creature’s words, which echoed with the taunt made by the Night Haunter.

Freedom, Lion of Caliban. I can give you freedom. You know that you do not really care for these lesser beings. They are a distraction to you. Their frailties, their petty squabbles, are unnecessary trifles to be avoided. Even this war that you fight, it is without consequence.

‘Horus cannot be allowed victory.’

Horus’s victory is not your concern. All things are fleeting, even the lives of great Warmasters. I have witnessed the rise and fall of every civilisation in the universe. None of them can endure, Chaos always consumes them in the end.

That word – Chaos – resonated through the Lion’s thoughts. He had a fleeting glimpse of eternity, of the entropy of the universe, ever-changing, new lives born out of death, of stars decaying to create worlds and worlds dying to form new stars, all in constant flux.

‘The Emperor has shown us a new way. The Imperial Truth will endure for eternity.’

Laughter resounded inside the primarch’s skull.

Foolish! Your Emperor is nothing more than a fraudster with grand ambitions. His empire is no greater than any other edifice of Mankind, and it will tumble just as easily.

The words were spoken with scorn yet they lit a spark of hope in the Lion’s breast – the creature spoke of the Emperor in the present tense. It thought that the Master of Mankind still lived.

The nephilla could not follow the Lion’s progress any further with its snake eyes, and for a moment it broke its gaze from Corswain, serpentine head swinging towards the seneschal while its vulture-like visage fixed on the primarch.

It was only a split second but it was all the Lion needed.

Before its gaze was on Corswain again, the Lion launched himself at the nephilla, sword outstretched. With astounding speed it reacted, twisting its whole body in his direction, staff coming up to spew forth a sheet of forking energy.

‘Kill it, Cor!’ snarled the Lion as wreaths of crackling energy enveloped him, sending pain coursing through every limb, surging into his chest and pounding in his head.

With a roar, the primarch broke free from the net of lightning that surrounded him, still lancing his sword towards the nephilla’s body. A hail of fire hammered into the creature from the encircling Dark Angels as Corswain leapt away, the seneschal’s bolt pistol spitting rounds.

Predictable fool.

The nephilla’s staff swept out, turning aside the Lion’s first blow. Twisting, wings furling, the creature side-stepped the Lion’s charge, its serpent head lashing out towards his throat with bared fangs.

The Lion turned mid-stride, dropping Hope which had been deflected by the nephilla’s parry. His gauntleted fingers curled around the slender serpentine neck as the primarch allowed himself to fall to the ground. His grasp unbreakable, the Lion dragged the nephilla down with him, its chest plunging onto the waiting point of Despair.

Harmed but not slain, the nephilla reared up, taking the sword from the primarch’s grasp, wings spreading once more, now bat-like and shimmering gold. Its vulture’s beak rammed into the side of the Lion’s helm as it sought to pull its other head free from his grip. Wings beating fiercely, it tried to lift away, but the Lion’s grasp held firm as he was pulled back to his feet.

‘Did you see this coming?’ snarled the Lion, hammering his fist into the pommel of the half-buried sword, driving the blade fully into the nephilla. The primarch felt a moment of contact, something deep within him connecting with the substance of the nephilla. His anger raged, finding conduit through his arm, into his fist, given vent along the blade of the buried sword like white fire pulsing from the Lion’s heart.

The creature’s piercing shrieks ripped through the Lion’s mind. Its body burst into a globe of power, filling the chamber with expanding flame that sent the primarch reeling, droplets of the molten sword pattering against his armour.

Silence descended. The black of his armour was covered with a patina of roasted gore and his mind was still throbbing with the death-scream of the nephilla. The primarch picked himself up, retrieved Hope from where it lay on the deck and made his way over to the warp core control panel. Much of it was scorched and broken, and he started to pull away cracked panels to expose the circuitry beneath. He made a quick assessment of the damage and activated the comm.

‘Captain Stenius, I will have the warp engines operational in seven minutes. Ready the Geller field and prepare for translation.’

VI

Once the Invincible Reason had translated fully into the warp, protected from the maelstrom of energy by its Geller field, the Dark Angels took the offensive. As had been proposed by Lady Fiana, the nephilla were much weakened, unable to draw on the power of their realm, making them vulnerable to the weapons of the Dark Angels. With the newly-restored Librarians and the Lion leading the purge, every part of the battle-barge was scoured, the remnants of the attackers driven out of hiding to be gunned down. For two days the scourging continued, passageways and gun decks, engine rooms and mess halls, dormitories and drill ranges resounding to the roar of bolters and the vengeful battle cries of the First Legion.

Nearly three hundred Dark Angels had fallen during the fighting, many of them within the first hours of the assault. More than twice that number of Legion serfs and crew had also been slain. The apothecarion was filled with those legionaries who had survived, some of them with hideous, grotesque wounds that festered with unnatural decay or continued to blister and bleed despite the best efforts of the Apothecaries.

Amongst those being treated was Fiana, who had survived the backlash of her third eye, but only barely. She looked to be a wizened, aged crone as she lay in her bunk, her body otherwise undamaged but her mind dislocated by the psychic assault suffered at the whim of the nephilla. Despite this, she and her fellow Navigators did all they could to assist the legionaries. Cut off from the warp by the Geller field, the nephilla’s presence was easily discernable by their othersight, and they guided the Dark Angels kill squads unerringly to their targets, no matter how dark and isolated their hiding places. On top of this, the Navigators had to guide the Invincible Reason to Perditus, pressed to find the utmost speed by the urging of the Dark Angels’ primarch.

It was eight more days of travel before the Navigators announced that they were in the vicinity of Perditus. Lady Fiana had recovered a little more from her ordeal, and was able to take her place in the rota of Navigators steering the ship. On reaching their destination, she requested an audience with the Lion before she would allow the Invincible Reason to translate back to real space. As before, the Lion met with her in his throne chamber, attended to by Stenius and Corswain. Fiana had noticed the seneschal check on her condition several times when she had been in the apothecarion, but she had not had the opportunity to discuss what they had encountered. Now was not the time, the Lion was clearly impatient with the delay in translation.

‘There is something amiss, lauded primarch,’ Fiana explained when the primarch demanded to know the cause of her hesitation. She was forced to lean heavily on a cane that one of the Techmarines had constructed for her from a length of ribbed piping, its finial fashioned from a piece of jet-black stone, the ferrule made from a carefully cut section of the material used in the joints of power armour. Her voice had become a wheezing whisper, her words punctuated by heavy gasps. ‘By all calculation and observation, we have reached Perditus, yet for the last three hours we have been unable to sight any warp beacon to confirm this categorically.’

‘The storms?’ suggested Corswain.

‘On the contrary, the warp is incredibly placid in this locale, disturbingly so. There is almost no movement whatsoever, as if the currents have been flattened, stretched into non-existence. It is this dampening effect that I believe obstructs the beacon signals.’

‘It is no mystery,’ said the Lion, his expression easing into a less agitated state. ‘We observed the same when we first came here. This pooling phenomenon is, I was led to believe by the Mechanicum, a side effect of the work they are performing at Perditus. It confirms that we have arrived. Make arrangements for translation as soon as possible, Captain Stenius.’

‘There is something in the warp causing this oddity, lauded primarch,’ insisted Fiana, taking a laboured step towards the primarch. ‘I and the others can feel its presence, sense the pressure it is placing on the warp. The stability here is hiding a far more turbulent undercurrent.’

‘Your observations have been noted, Lady Fiana,’ said the primarch. He stood up, ending the conversation. ‘Please continue to make your reports on the matter to Captain Stenius.’

Fiana railed against this casual dismissal, unable to shake the disquiet she had felt at this sinister discovery, but knew better than to debate the matter with the primarch. He was already turning his attention to Corswain. She dipped her head in acquiescence, understanding that the mystery would have to be solved another day.

Several Dark Angels ships had already made transition to the Perditus system when the Invincible Reason broke through into real space and established contact, though nearly a dozen vessels were still in transit in the warp. Fleet movements had never been easy through the warp, and the storms had exacerbated the problem considerably. It was one of the main reasons the Dark Angels had been unable to force a decisive encounter with the Night Lords in Thramas; by the time sufficient vessels arrived in a system to confront the enemy the elusive Night Lords had time to escape direct conflict.

The Lion weighed up his options: to wait for more of his flotilla to arrive or to press on towards the Mechanicum station on Perditus Ultima. Surmising that the Iron Hands and the Death Guard would both be aware of their arrival, the primarch saw no cause for delay and directed the five ships present in his fleet to advance in-system at full speed.

Passing the uninhabitable gas giants at the edge of the system, the Dark Angels picked up sensor readings of two fleets engaged in a protracted manoeuvre for position around Perditus Ultima, the closest planet to the star, on the very edge of the habitable zone. Ident-codes and intrafleet signals marked out the vessels as Iron Hands and Death Guard ships, each flotilla numbering no more than half a dozen ships; even combined they would be no match for the might of the Dark Angels that would be arriving. Despite hails, communications could not be established with either fleet, or the ground station on Ultima.

Crossing the orbit of Perditus Secundus, just five days from their destination, the warriors of the First Legion were in range to detect forces deployed onto the surface of Perditus Ultima. Comm-intercepts indicated that a stalemate persisted there as well as in space. The ships of both the Iron Hands and Death Guard were conducting an extra-orbital ballet, each trying to gain position over the world to support their troops on an offensive action, but neither was able to gain the upper hand without risking a decisive, and potentially devastating, space-borne engagement; thus the two sides were locked together at arm’s length, neither prepared to wager possible defeat against a push for victory.

Summoning a council of his captains, the Lion determined a course of action for the Dark Angels.

‘We will position our fleet directly between the Iron Hands and Death Guard, and announce that all hostilities are to cease,’ he told the assembly of officers gathered in his throne room aboard the Invincible Reason. ‘If neither side is willing to risk an engagement with each other, for certain they will not be keen to take on a fresh foe.’

‘A risky proposition, my liege,’ said Captain Masurbael, commanding the frigate Intervention. ‘What is to be gained by placing ourselves in harm’s way? Our arrival and numbers will be known to both sides already, there is no reason to expose ourselves to the danger of direct attack.’

‘Purpose and threat,’ replied the Lion, smiling coldly. ‘We are to make our intent and determination crystal clear from the outset, lest our adversaries think we issue idle demands. Perditus is under the aegis of the Dark Angels and the sooner we establish the fact, the swifter we will conclude our business here and return to the battle with the Night Lords.’

‘What of the Death Guard, my liege?’ asked Corswain. ‘Should we not simply attack, with the aid of the Iron Hands? They are known to have declared with Horus from the earliest days of the rebellion.’

‘Until we can establish the loyalty of both factions here, and that of the Mechanicum as well, we should not suppose any aid from either side. The Iron Hands have been leaderless since Manus was slain at Isstvan. Who can say what their current agenda is or where their true loyalties lie? Similarly, it has been reported that those Legions that sided with Horus did not do so wholly. Whole companies and fleets have been spread far across the galaxy, and with the warp storms isolating many sectors we must not hastily pre-judge any situation, little brother. It may be the case that in Perditus, it is the Death Guard who are loyal and the Iron Hands who have turned from the Emperor’s cause.’

Corswain absorbed his primarch’s wisdom with a nod, while Captain Stenius took up the conversation.

‘Is it your intent that we also gain position to place troops on Perditus Ultima, my liege?’ said Stenius. ‘Are we to break through the Iron Hands and Death Guard cordons for low orbit?’

‘That is exactly my intent, Captain Stenius,’ replied the Lion. ‘The Invincible Reason will spearhead the thrust to Perditus Ultima, passing between the lead elements of the two enemy fleets. We shall broadcast warnings that any hostile action will be met immediately and decisively with overwhelming force. I will issue fleet instructions when we have concluded here. Are there any more questions?’

The tone of the Lion indicated that he did not expect any further debate and the assembled captains lowered to their knees to accept their primarch’s command. When the others were dismissed Corswain loitered in the audience chamber, wishing to speak with his lord in private. The Lion waved for him to speak his mind.

‘It is possible that what you say is true, my liege, but the likelihood of the situation is that the Iron Hands are loyal to Terra and the Death Guard are sworn to Horus,’ said the seneschal. ‘We should arrange our advance to favour defence against attack from the Death Guard.’

‘As you say, little brother,’ said the Lion. ‘Yet do not be so sure in the loyalties of the Iron Hands. We are living in complex times, Cor, and there is no easy division between those who fight on our side and those who fight against us. Antagonism towards Horus and his Legions no longer guarantees fealty to the Emperor. There are other powers exercising their right to dominion.’

‘I don’t understand, my liege,’ confessed Corswain. ‘Who else would one swear loyalty to, other than Horus or the Emperor?’

‘Whom do you serve?’ the Lion asked in reply to the question.

‘Terra, my liege, and the cause of the Emperor,’ Corswain replied immediately, drawing himself up straight as if accused.

‘What of your oaths to me, little brother?’ The Lion’s voice was quiet, contemplative. ‘Are you not loyal to the Dark Angels?’

‘Of course, my liege!’ Corswain was taken aback by the suggestion that he might think otherwise.

‘And so there are other forces whose foremost concern is their primarch and Legion, and for some perhaps not even that,’ the Lion explained. ‘If I told you we would abandon any pretence of defending Terra, what would you say?’

‘Please do not joke about such things,’ said Corswain, shaking his head. ‘We cannot allow Horus to prevail in this war.’

‘Who mentioned Horus?’ said the primarch. He closed his eyes and rubbed his brow for a few moments and then looked at Corswain, gauging his mettle. ‘It is not for you to concern yourself, little brother. Prepare the task force for the attack, and let wider burdens sit upon my shoulders alone.’

From his vantagepoint behind the armoured windows that pierced the central tower of Magellix station, Captain Lasko Midoa had an uninterrupted view of the whole Mechanicum complex. His attention was directed to the south and east, towards outposts Seven, Eight and Nine, currently occupied by his Death Guard adversaries. Behind the low octagonal structures spread the mirrored screens that ran the circumference of the entire facility, creating a micro-climate of thermal updrafts that assisted in keeping down the temperature at Magellix, making it inhabitable if not tolerable. Beyond were the upthrusts of Perditus Ultima’s mountains, their bases hidden behind a blanket of dense greenish fog a thousand kilometres across, their summits many kilometres above the plain glistening from golden refractive materials that coated the rock.

The ever-present mist layer distorted the distances, so that although the outer stretches of the facility were several kilometres away, their bulk was magnified to make them seem almost within bolter range. Heat shimmer from the mirror wall compounded the problem. It did not help the captain’s sense of perspective to know that his foes were inside the stubby keeps, ready and able to launch an attack at any moment. With Midoa stood Captain Casalir Lorramech, commander of the Ninety-Eighth Company. The two Iron Hands officers had their helms removed, making the most of the processed atmosphere inside Magellix; for the bulk of the thirty-eight days since they had arrived on Perditus Ultima they had been in full battle gear. The pair were almost identical, with close-cropped silvery hair, broad faces and leathery skin. Only two features separated them. Lorramech had natural blue eyes while Midoa had silver-lensed inserts. Midoa also had a tracheal respirator replacing his lower jaw and throat, which hissed rhythmically with his breathing. When he spoke, his voice issued from a small speaker-comm unit set into the bone of his right cheek. The speech device transmitted Midoa’s words in a sing-song cadence that was quite at odds with his mechanical appearance.

‘And you are sure that they are heading directly for orbit?’ Midoa asked, responding to Lorramech’s report that the Dark Angels had continued towards Ultima at full speed.

‘Yes, Iron Father,’ said Lorramech, whose voice was deep and gravelly, each word uttered with gritted teeth and barely moving lips. Midoa was incapable of smiling at the use of the ancient honorific, but it was a source of pride that his fellow captains had chosen to raise him up to command of this expedition. ‘Course and speed are consistent with an orbital heading. They will be in high orbit in less than three hours.’

‘But they still have not breached the comm-dampening shell?’

‘We have not yet been able to directly communicate with the Dark Angels.’

‘And what of them?’ said Midoa, pointing out through the window at the Death Guard positions. ‘What are they doing?’

‘The enemy seem intent on an intercept course,’ replied Lorramech. ‘With your permission, I will signal the fleet to counter-manoeuvre. We will engage the Death Guard ships and provide a screen for the arriving Dark Angels. They have two battle-barges amongst their flotilla, which would be valuable orbital support.’

‘You have my permission,’ said Midoa. ‘We have an unforeseen and fortuitous opportunity, Casalir. Have all but one in ten squads drawn down from their patrols and garrisons and mustered in the main vehicle pool. It is my intent to launch an attack.’

‘It will be as you say, Iron Father,’ said Lorramech. ‘With the aid of the Dark Angels, we will drive the Death Guard from Perditus and secure the Tuchulcha engine.’

It took most of the next hour for Midoa to gather together the forces he required for the counter-offensive. Squads and companies were drawn in from their positions across Magellix and the surrounding rocky plateau, moving in secret along underground highways that had been dug beneath the surface of Perditus Ultima long before the Emperor’s compliance fleet had arrived.

The Iron Hands sallied forth from the main gateway of Tower Two, Predator battle tanks and Land Raider armoured carriers spearheading the thrust, while the force’s Rhinos and the larger Mastodon transports followed behind the more heavily armed screen.

Almost immediately, defensive fire from Tower Eight punched through the gloom of Perditus’s atmosphere: stabs of laser and the flare of heavy cannon fire. The vanguard of the column spread out into covering positions, the tanks taking up stations behind enormous scattered boulders, jagged escarpments and the shallow ferrocrete blocks that housed the station’s atmosphere filtration fans. Soon the return fire of the Iron Hands was lancing into the slab walls of the outer towers, ripping trails through ferrocrete and cracking massive glassite observation decks.

Behind the storm of fire, the next wave charged onwards in their Rhinos, hatches and doors battened down as the transports roared across the undulating rocky ground at full speed. Midoa was in the lead vehicle, keen to set an example for his warriors to follow. The slower, bulkier Mastodons, each quadruple-tracked and towering above the Land Raiders, powered through the dust and fog as quickly as they could, their heavy tracks carving fresh ruts in the baked surface of Perditus Ultima.

Before they reached Tower Eight, the Iron Hands came into range of the guns at Tower Nine. Midoa had known this and speed was the best defence against the strengthening crossfire. There were three hundred metres of ground to cover where both towers could fire at full intensity, before the bulk of Tower Eight obscured the arcs of fire of its neighbours.

Being first across the killing zone had its advantages. The gunners were unable to adjust their aim quickly enough to target Midoa’s Rhino, but ten metres behind him Sergeant Haultiz’s transport was struck full-on by a lascannon beam. Engine boiling smoke, the breached Rhino skidded to a halt, the black-and-silver armoured warriors within spilling out onto the dusty rock while more transports poured past them. Midoa’s orders had been simple: stop for nothing. The Iron Hands in the other transports barrelled past their stranded brethren, knowing that the surest way to protect their fellow legionaries was to mount an assault on the gun positions manned by the Death Guard.

The fifteen seconds it took to dash through the blazing kill zone was the longest fifteen seconds Midoa had felt in his life. He was crouched in the rear compartment with his command squad, all of them tensed and ready to extract if a hit forced them to bail from their transport even while it was moving. Over the comm, Midoa learnt of a second Rhino being hit, and then a third, but by the time the lead transports were within a hundred metres of Tower Eight’s secondary gate, seven of the Rhinos and three Land Raiders had pierced the cordon of fire. A further eight Mastodons followed behind, each carrying forty Iron Hands warriors, their power fields soaking up autocannon shells and lascannon blasts with actinic flashes of energy.

As the Rhinos slewed to a halt beneath the guns of Tower Eight, Captain Tadurig and his squad disembarked swiftly, approaching the wall of the tower ahead. With them they had brought a phase field generator; a device Midoa had overseen the creation of since arriving, with the aid of his Mechanicum allies. It took only a few seconds for the Iron Hands legionaries to assemble the four-legged platform and install the phase field generator, the bulk of the machine taken up with an energy distillation dish at the centre of which were thousands of wire coils to transmit the phase field into place.

Joining his warriors, Midoa made a last few adjustments to the machine which he had painstakingly assembled and rigged from old tunnel-delvers and other pieces of warp-tech machinery left over by Perditus’s previous inhabitants. They had used the channelled power of the warp as freely as the Imperium employed plasma and electricity, much to the amazement of Midoa.

With a thrum of magnetic actuators sliding into position, Midoa pulled the activation lever and stepped back. He had not yet had time to test the device – he had been planning on using it during a subterranean assault on Tower Nine in a few days’ time – but he knew that in theory it would work. Muttering an old Medusan proverb, he waited for the power capacitors to reach full potential and then switched on the conductor coils.

The phase field sprang into life, looking like a cone of pearlescent energy. Everything within the field disappeared, including a circle of the Tower Eight wall some three metres in diameter. After a few seconds, Midoa signalled for the machine to be shut down and with his squad on his heels, stepped through the newly-made gap.

Inside, the phase field had displaced a swathe of the room within the tower, along with another interior wall and the ceiling twenty metres further on, exposing the floor above and a basement level below. Neatly severed cables sparked while sliced atmosphere recycling pipes dribbled contaminant-laden steam into the air. Their suit lamps piercing the darkness inside the tower, the Iron Hands pushed on with weapons ready.

‘What do you mean, Tower Eight has been breached?’ Calas Typhon, First Captain of the Death Guard Legion, Commander of the Grave Wardens, was in a foul mood already, and the news of the Iron Hands’ success did not improve his humour.

‘A phase field generator, commander,’ replied his second, Captain Vioss, who was forced to take a step back as his senior turned; Typhon and his subordinate’s massive suits of Terminator armour almost filled the command blister on the top of Tower Seven. Vioss’s voice was a low, slurred hiss, his speech impaired by an ugly suppurating wound in the right side of his jaw. ‘Sarrin had too much focus on the gateways and the breach through the wall has him outflanked.’

‘Why now?’ demanded Typhon, his top-knot of dark hair flicking like a horse’s tail as he twitched his head in annoyance. ‘Have they received some signal from the Dark Angels?’

‘Impossible, commander,’ said Vioss. ‘The Terminus Est’s dearthfield is still functioning, no communication is able to pass from surface to outer orbit.’

‘And the Dark Angels continue on their course directly towards Perditus Ultima?’

Vioss nodded, his sallow face deeply creased by a scowl.

‘They will have orbit in less than two hours, commander.’

‘Then we have less than two hours to punish our idiot foe for his foolhardiness. He should have waited until orbital supremacy was guaranteed. Signal the fleet and tell them to stave off engagement as long as possible. That should afford us an extra hour at least while the Dark Angels are forced to consider their options.’

‘You plan to bring forward the next attack, commander?’

‘Yes, right now, may the Father take your eyes!’ Typhon crashed his fist into Vioss’s shoulder, sending him reeling into the wall of the glassite-domed cupola. Motes of rust drifted in the air from the impact, shed from the corroded edges of Vioss’s armour. ‘We must free Tuchulcha while we have the chance. A lot depends on our success here. Tell Ghrusul to assault from Tower Nine, we will trap our enemy between us and drive onwards to the central facility.’

‘For the Father,’ said Vioss, bowing his head. ‘The Grave Wardens will not fail.’

Thesubterranean passageway was five metres high and twice as broad, lit by thin, dust-covered yellow strips in the floor and ceiling. The rails of an ancient locomotive system rusted at the centre of the tunnel and raised platforms ran along the walls to either side. Normally it was a gloomy place, but the arrival of the Iron Hands and Death Guard had turned it into a place of pyrotechnic brilliance.

Bolter fire echoed along the five-hundred-metre length of the interchange, the shells expelled by the exchange hurtling in both directions in a criss-cross of bright flares. Now and then the miniature blue star of a plasma shot shrieked across the gap or the red flare of a missile trail illuminated the murkiness. Blossoms of frag missile detonations appeared amongst the line of twenty Death Guard Terminators advancing on Tower Eight.

At their head, Commander Typhon roared his men onwards. Like his warriors, he was protected by the massive bulk of his modified cataphractii armour, painted white in the colours of the Death Guard.

Rounded plates that heaped up higher than the top of his knightly helm protected his shoulders, his chest and gut encased in segmented slabs of ceramite, arms and legs sheathed in thick greaves and vambraces. Adamantium mail hung in sheets across the joints of his armour. The left arm of his suit was incorporated into the bulk of a reaper autocannon, its twin barrels spitting a rapid-fire hail of shells towards the Iron Hands, chewing through the ammunition belt like a starving dog devouring a strip of sinew. In his right Typhon held a manreaper, a wickedly-bladed power scythe, symbol of his rank, and a smaller copy of the weapon wielded by his primarch, Mortarion. The glow of its power field shone a sickly yellow light on the white Terminators around him.

Heavy support Terminators backed up the twenty warriors of the spearhead, their cyclone launchers sending showers of missiles over the heads of their companions, detonations cracking the plastite sheathing of the tunnel walls and tossing silver-and-black armoured legionaries into the air. Combi-bolters spat rapid-fire rounds as the Grave Wardens continued to close, marching unharmed into the teeth of the enemies’ fire.

The Iron Hands fell back, unable to match the Grave Wardens with their heavier armour and weaponry, but progress was slow. Ghrusul had reported entering Tower Eight twenty minutes earlier, yet Typhon was still two interchanges from breaching the tower from below. He was expecting word from Vioss at any moment, telling him that the Dark Angels were in orbit, but until then he was determined to press on with the attack.

The leading squads of the Grave Wardens were within fifty metres of the end of the interchange held by the Iron Hands when Typhon’s helm crackled with the signal of an incoming comm-link. Rather than the sibilant whisper of Vioss, he heard a deep voice filled with authority that caused him to involuntarily stop in his tracks. Around him, the rest of the Death Guard were similarly immobilised and the fire from the Iron Hands died away within seconds.

‘The world of Perditus Ultima is under the protection of Lion El’Jonson of the First Legion,’ boomed the message. ‘You are to immediately cease all warring and quit this planet. Any resistance will be met with ultimate force and there will be no prisoners taken. Failure to comply with my demands will result in your immediate destruction.’

As if breaking from a trance, Typhon staggered forwards a step, almost losing his footing. Only in the presence of Mortarion had he ever experienced anything like the reaction he had just felt and he quickly realised that it was not just the Dark Angels that had arrived: their primarch was with them. He could sense the unease of his warriors as they came to the same conclusion, and the advance that had shuffled to a halt was slowly turning into a withdrawal. Ahead, the Iron Hands were backing away from their positions too, cowed by the same tone of authority that had pierced the minds of the Death Guard.

Typhon gritted his teeth and shook his head to rid himself of the fugue that had descended on him following the Lion’s proclamation. He knew that there was something else at work here, not just the innate command of a primarch. Typhon opened up his mind to the warp, sensing the waves of energy that were part of, yet separated from, everything in the material universe. When he had been a member of the Librarius his powers had been considerable. Mortarion’s hatred of warpcraft had finished Typhon’s exploration of his other nature when the Dusk Raiders became Death Guard, and so he had committed himself to becoming First Captain. Now, with the encouragement of darker sponsors, Typhon had once again embraced the warp-born side of his powers, learning far more about the universe and its mysterious ways than he had ever thought possible.

It was this that had first brought him in contact with the Father, and it was his warp-self that now detected the gentle interplay of energies being directed at the surface of Perditus Ultima. It seemed the Lion was no longer impressed by the Council of Nikaea’s decision either and had allowed his Librarians to reclaim their birthright.

With this knowledge, Typhon was able to extend a little of his will, seeking a means to block the resolve-weakening presence of the Dark Angels Librarians. Despite his personal prowess, he was up against several trained minds, and so he turned to that shadowy force that had accompanied him these past years. He asked the Father for help, and help was granted.

With a surge of psychic energy buzzing through him, its touch like the tread of a thousand tiny insects in his mind, Typhon cast a pall of shadow over his Grave Wardens, shielding them from the assault of the Dark Angels psykers. Almost immediately they ceased their withdrawal and turned to him, expecting orders.

‘Fools!’ he rasped, pointing his manreaper at the retreating Iron Hands. ‘Now is not the time to step back, now is the time to attack! Slay them all.’

In a darkened chamber in the bowels of the Invincible Reason, the Lion stood between four of his Librarians, listening to their murmuring voices. All of the psykers had donned their old ceremonial robes of blue, their faces hidden by the shadows of the cowls pulled over their heads. It was better that this was kept from the sight of the ordinary battle-brethren. Confusion and hearsay could breed superstition faster than any explanation could thwart it.

Corswain stood to one side, his agitation audible as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, his armour creaking with each movement. The Lion ignored his seneschal’s discomfort. This way was better, cleaner. If the Death Guard and Iron Hands could be forced to parley without fighting, it would be in the best interests of the Dark Angels.

The Lion sensed Corswain straighten and he turned his gaze upon the seneschal.

‘It’s not working, my liege,’ said Corswain, sounding relieved by the fact. ‘Sensors show that the Iron Hands are retreating from a renewed Death Guard assault. They are being pushed back into the main facility.’

‘I warned them,’ snarled the Lion. ‘None will doubt my authority.’

‘Shall I signal Captain Stenius, my liege?’

‘Yes. If the Death Guard do not comply with my wishes, Magellix station will be obliterated. Tell Stenius to launch the torpedo.’

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter 5

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

By all that’s good and holy, by Sigmar’s beard and Ulric’s teeth, and by blessed Aenarion, it pains me to repeat the events and traumas that Gilead suffered at any hand, but these cursed tales are the most hellish of all to tell. Were I not on my deathbed, facing the end of my time in these environs, I would not choose to recount such stories, but I am honour-bound by the tenets and laws of the bardic guilds to impart all that I have learned and all that has been entrusted to me by those that came before, however addled their minds in the telling and however young I might have been in the hearing.

Listen if you dare, but be aware of what you will hear and how it will affect your lives. Pass this dread mantle I must, but with a weary heart made heavy by promises pledged too easily, many years ago.

Gilead lay too long in that place. He was bound so tight that it was impossible for him to move. He was barely able to breathe, and if he had not had his wits about him, and inhaled deeply as soon as he was aware that the skaven hordes sought to bury him beneath their combined weight, he would surely have died of asphyxiation; either at the time of his capture or shortly after his bindings were secured. There was barely an eighth of an inch movement in the bindings of his chest, so his breaths must be shallow and controlled, and no unnecessary energy must be expended before he was able to escape his captivity.

The first time he gained consciousness, Gilead kept his eyes closed while he carried out a detailed inventory of his ailments, wounds and vulnerabilities. They were many and took some time to innumerate and assess, but the worst of them was the tight, restricting bandage of greasy cloth, sodden rope, and leather straps and thongs that held him in the tightest of grips. He could neither straighten his knees nor flex his ankles. He could not rotate his wrists, tied tightly behind him, nor push his elbows away from where they were strapped to his sides. He could not turn his head nor flex it back or forth on his neck. He could not take a deep breath to settle his mind or relax his body. He could barely breathe deeply enough to lift smells out of the air around him. He could see, if he chose to open his eyes, but, most importantly of all, he could hear. He could hear, but he could not respond.

‘He has come, so he has. He has come. Now he has come, for come he has, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever,’ said the skaven Rat King.

Gilead did not need to open his eyes to know who was speaking. The rat’s voice had become impossibly high-pitched with excitement, and the words kept tripping out of his mouth, over and over, the speaker apparently caught in some spell that made him repeat the little speech, ad infinitum, as if it were some kind of unholy mantra.

Gilead did not open his eyes. He did not respond. He continued to take shallow breaths. His mouth was dry and somewhat tacky from the noxious smells that he had inhaled underground and could not rid himself of, but he did not swallow, nor did he lick his parched lips. His mouth remained firmly, but casually closed, as if he continued in his unconscious state in some still and dreamless existence. The skaven had not killed him. Their King had been stronger and more powerful than Gilead could ever have expected; more in control of his horde than any Rat King had a right to be, and far more cunning than the average enemy creature, and yet the elf had not died at their hands. Since he was not dead yet, the skaven clearly had other plans for the elf. He knew not what they were, but he did know that there was time enough to find out, and, in the meantime, his best course of action was to rest as much as he could, regain some strength, and formulate a plan of escape.

Gilead rolled his closed eyes back into his head, and adjusted a twinge or two with some small exertions and a little fine muscle control. The Rat King could, no doubt, detect his movements, but dormant creatures stirred too, and the skaven would surely think nothing of the elf moving a little in his sleep.

The elf fell, voluntarily, into a restful and invigorating sleep-state, one from which he could wake at will, should the need present itself.

Gilead woke again when the chanting stopped. He lay still for an hour or two, listening, and opened his eyes only when he knew that he was likely to remain alone for some time to come.

Aware that the skaven could detect the smallest of movements through the vibrations carried by earth, brick and rock in their underground fastnesses, Gilead made no attempts to free himself from the confines of the ties that bound him. He did not thrash or squirm. He lay as still as he could and felt the earth floor beneath his body. He had to concentrate long and hard to feel any vibrations at all, and when he did feel something, he was able to deduce that the crowds in the great hall had dispersed and there were few or no skaven close by.

Gilead had been lying on his side, curled slightly, as his bindings pulled his knees towards his chest. He opened his eyes into the faint green light that hung in the air of the antechamber. He could see very little apart from the legs of an oddly formed piece of furniture close to his face. The Rat King had clearly taken pleasure in looking down on the elf’s face, for Gilead cast his eyes upwards to see that the tangle of wood and blades and handles, and parts of tools and weapons strapped together, formed an impressively grotesque throne, of sorts.

The faint smell that drifted around Gilead as he flexed the muscles down the left side of his body in an attempt to roll onto his back, told him that the Rat King had left the room four or five hours previously and had not returned. There was only one scent signature in the room, so the King was clearly a lone creature, keen to maintain a private space. There could be only one reason for that.

Gilead flexed again, breathing out as hard as his bounds would allow, and slowly rolled off his side and onto his back, trapping his hands beneath him. His feet were raised slightly off the ground and his knees tucked up. It was not the most elegant of postures, but it was a possible position of strength against the bindings when the time came.

For the moment, Gilead allowed the back of his head to rest on the cold dank earth and began to cast his eyes around the room, since there was very little movement in his head and neck.

The room was spartan. It had only one door to serve as both entrance and exit, so must be an antechamber to a larger space, possibly the great hall, since the few sounds that came to Gilead appeared to do so from an echoing distance.

The room held only the chair for furniture, but was too small to be used as a throne room for the skaven to kneel and bow before their leader, besides, Gilead had already determined that the room had only one inhabitant. As his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light in the room, Gilead began to cast his gaze into the deeper recesses. He could not see into the corners beyond his head, at floor level, but he could look up into the low ceiling of dark, crusting earth above him. He followed the line of the ceiling until he was able to peer into the corners, albeit there were only three of them and they curved away rather than met the walls at regular angles. Then a dark spot caught his eye, just below the rim where the ceiling met the curving, irregular wall to his left. He cast his eye further along the wall and spotted another dark spot, and then a lighter one. He counted six anomalies along the top of the wall.

Concentrating first on the lightest of the patches high on the wall, Gilead quickly realised that he was looking at an opening or a niche from which a small amount of light was emanating. He took two or three shallow breaths and blinked twice, taking his time to examine the area of the wall, thoroughly.

He saw a faint spark, and thought he heard a low hum. He stopped breathing and closed his eyes for a moment so that he could concentrate on fully hearing the sound. It was a click, so slow and pitched so low as to be almost inaudible and easily mistaken for a low buzz or hum. Gilead took a breath, drawing in as much of the stale air around him as he could, and listened again while he exhaled impossibly slowly.

There was a pattern to the clicks, a rhythm, a pace, not like a heartbeat, but more like music, like a skilled percussionist picking out a complex tune with intricate phrasing. It was beautiful, and Gilead found his mind following the pattern, trying to decipher its meaning. It must mean something.

His eyes firmly closed, his breathing abated and only his hearing informing his consciousness, Gilead was mesmerised by the sound until he stopped counting the clicks, stopped trying to work out the pattern, and simply became absorbed by it. It filled his mind’s eye with a swarming carpet of gleaming, glossy carapaces, an oil-slick of rainbow colours refracting impossibly from the backs and wing-cases of a tidal wave of chittering insects. Suddenly, the low click separated into thousands, millions of squeaks and squeals as armoured limbs rubbed against one another and proboscises and antennae twitched and flexed.

Then, at the apex of the crescendo, a thousand million wing-cases unfolded, releasing gossamer wings in thousands of shades of blue, yellow and green. The sound changed again as millions of pairs of wings extended into the air, moving and shifting great swathes of it and causing a deafening susurrus as if an exodus were under way.

Gilead wondered in the moment, afraid of nothing, steeped in the pleasure of so magical an event.

Eventually, the elf had to breathe again, and his mind returned to him, only the low hum and the greenish light, a reminder of what he had witnessed. He blinked and an image flashed against his retina. He could not see it, not from this angle low to the floor, and yet he knew that the niche from which the faint greenish light emanated held a bell jar in which was imprisoned a single, mature, winged beetle of a type that he had never seen before, and which he believed he would never see again. It was magical, talismanic and beautiful, and it was as far from home as he was, and almost as ancient.

Gilead cast his eyes along the wall to the left of the lit niche, and concentrated hard on the first of the dark patches; if the lit patch was a niche and in that niche was the captive insect, what else might the Rat King have collected? What else could Gilead learn about his captor?

Gilead concentrated for what, to skaven scum would have seemed like a very long time, but Gilead was a mature example of one of the longest living of species, and minutes, hours, days, even, were as nothing to him. Time was always on his side. He dilated his pupils as far as he could, until his vision became slightly blurry at the very edges, casting an aura around the niche he was focusing on, making it appear even more magical, more dreamlike. His flexed pupils grabbed all the light that they could out of the air, deep in the shadows of the niche in the wall, and he began to discern a shape there. He saw a ‘V’ of some lightweight chain or other, from which hung something so fragile it seemed to shift in some invisible, imperceptible breeze in the room, although it was only the smallest movement in the air caused by Gilead’s measured, shallow breathing. It looked like a feather... No, a lock of hair. It was a lock of the finest, brightest, lightest of hair, like the down that grew on the most precious of elf-infants’ heads.

Gilead’s blink captured everything the elf could wish to know about the pale lock of hair, the single sweeping curl that hung by the side of a glorious face... glorious even for a human, for the curl did not belong to an infant elf, but to a beautiful human girl. An abundance of soft curls crowned a delicate, porcelain-perfect head. Suddenly, the face broke into a stunning smile of perfect pink lips and tiny teeth, plumping and rouging apple-cheeks and reaching into the palest of pale blue eyes, with devastating effect. The girl tossed her head, and the cascading curls bounced around her face. Gilead noticed a discreet circlet of fine gold wirework with pink sweet-water pearls and an abundance of pave-set diamonds. The hair did not belong to any beautiful girl, it belonged to a special girl, a girl of fine breeding and finer habits, a girl of great expectations and exemplary deportment; it belonged to a singular girl, a girl who could change the Empire forever.

Gilead’s eyes opened at the end of the blink, and he sighed slightly. The girl, so clear in his mind, so complete, so real, was gone, and he was back in the dark, underground bolthole of the skaven scum.

Gilead wondered whether he wanted to look into any of the other niches in the wall. He had seen such wonders in the first two, and did not want to break the spell, and yet, he needed to know, felt compelled to scrutinise the niches, not only for the sake of the Rat King, not only because he thought he’d gain a greater insight into the machinations of the creature, but for the sake of the objects themselves, so that he might experience their wonders.

An hour passed in the moments that Gilead took to prepare himself for another bout of concentration, and for the possibility of losing himself in his mind once more.

As Gilead looked up at the third niche, a warm, orange-red glow began to emanate from it. The glow trickled and then poured out of the wall. It appeared to turn into a stream of clear orange liquid, and then began to steam and coalesce, and before he knew what was happening, Gilead was being drowned in a confetti of cascading leaves. They were red and yellow and a bright, sappy green. The light seemed to come from within them, flickering brightly, making the leaves seem transparent, showing the skeletons of their perfectly symmetrical veins. The leaves continued to fall, pouring from the niche as if blown through it in great gusts.

Gilead was soon covered in the leaves, too light for him to feel them falling, but warming him in a blanket of feathery silk. When they fell close to his eyes, Gilead barely needed to breathe out to shift the trajectory of the leaves, keeping his face clear of them, although a little part of him longed to be buried forever in the subtle, comforting embrace of whatever natural force had created such a wonder.

He continued to watch, unblinking, as more leaves were ejected from the niche, but, as they met the foetid air of the antechamber, they began to spark and dance. One by one, the leaves began to ignite in bright, smokeless flames. They changed colour to subtle ashy greys and blues, and then floated up into the curved ceiling before their lights were extinguished and they vanished into the air, leaving behind only the faintest whiff of warm clouds and clean ozone.

As the air cleared, more and more of the leaves began to ignite. They jumped and skittered over Gilead’s form like benign fleas before combusting and floating away in brilliant, waving, dancing patterns before his eyes.

As the last of the sparks and flames and the last wisps of light disappeared, Gilead saw the outline of a climbing plant imprinted on the wall. It was like a sky clematis, espaliered against the wall in an endless ladder formation, branches twisting, and tendrils sending out enough shoots to accommodate the abundance of leaves that had been shed into the room. The illusion was there in the last flames of light, and gone just as quickly. The niche held... what? A single leaf? No, Gilead saw that the niche contained a tall glass vial sealed at both ends, suspended in a soupy shaft of light that almost obscured the contents: a single tendril with a lone bud-node and a barely formed leaf.

The fourth niche, the highest and largest of them, was more than simply a cavity, with its cleanly defined arched shape and its protruding shelf. Initially, Gilead could detect nothing there, except the shadow of something ancient, cold, long-dead. The shadow began to dissipate and the air to flex and, suddenly, Gilead was looking at a reflection of himself in a dense, smoky pane. The reflection stood to the foreground, and beyond it, the elf could see the antechamber with him lying on the floor looking up at the niches, each glowing brightly, displaying its wares. The arched niche through the glass was reflecting light and the faint image of another supine Gilead.

Gilead did not dwell upon the images, but something primal made his mind stir, and, for an instant, he felt the urge to shiver. There was not room to accomplish the feat in the confines of the ties that bound him, so he contented himself with the sensation of someone walking stolidly over his grave.

The fifth niche was a ragged black hole in the wall. Gilead stretched his mind into it, dilating his pupils and concentrating for several minutes in an unblinking state. He was shadowfast in his will, lying perfectly still, but performing a great many checks and manoeuvres in his mind to eliminate the possibility of anything at all emerging from the fifth anomaly in the wall, barely a niche, just a roughly scooped out hollow. In those several minutes, the niche disclosed nothing of its contents, past, present or future. It was as if it had never held anything, including the hands and tools that had dug it out of the wall, and that it never would house anything. Gilead had never witnessed anything so empty; it was as if the very air refused to fill the aperture.

With some unease, Gilead relaxed his mind away from the niche, pushing his head gently into the earth beneath it in order to relax the muscles in his neck. They had become firm with his extended bout of concentration, not that he had been able to move his head more than a fraction of an inch, but the fine muscle control was part of an elf warrior’s training and it stood him in good stead. When the shackles came off, when the bindings were cut or unravelled, he would not rub at sore joints and creak at the knees and elbows, his head would not ache from the pressures on his neck and shoulders, and he would be able to stand both feet firmly on the ground without tendons and ligaments crying out for mercy.

The rest he had taken had worn away to nothing as Gilead dissected the contents of the various cavities in the antechamber’s wall. He cast his ears out of the space once more, listening for echoing sounds of life in the great hall and the warrens, corridors and burrows beyond. Hearing nothing, he rested again, turning his eyes back into his head and succumbing to the self-induced sleep state that would refresh his mind and body.

Gilead woke. For several seconds, he thought about nothing except what might have disturbed his sleep. When he did think, it was to assess his position again. He was well-rested, and, from his condition, he deduced that several more hours had passed. A quick check of his physical state confirmed that he had sustained no lasting injuries, but that some of the many minor wounds inflicted on him by the skaven were beginning to fester with the inevitable infections that their filth bred.

He could only guess to the nearest hour or two what time it was. He did not know for sure whether it was daylight outside or for how long he had been tied up and left on the cold earth floor, but it must have been some time as the ground beneath his body had taken some of his heat and he no longer felt the dankness there. Sleep and hyper-consciousness, and the shifts in time they caused, elongating or diminishing it, like a concertina being played by some over-zealous drinking-hole musician, made time almost infinitely flexible.

Gilead waited for whatever had woken him to stir again, but nothing happened. He felt none but the faintest of vibrations through his back and his hands trapped beneath him, between his spine and the floor of the antechamber.

He looked up at the last of the niches, but could barely discern its outline against the dark, uneven wall. With half of his faculties directed at the possible return of the Rat King, looking into the niche was proving impossible.

Gilead rocked slightly, releasing the increasing pressure on his hands, lifting his head off the floor in a series of complex callisthenic micro-movements. Despite being locked in bindings so tight as to make almost all movement impossible, the elf had rested his body well, and was not suffering stiffness, muscle cramp, loss of blood flow or any other minor ailments that might afflict humans, or even other, older, less-fit elves.

Satisfied that his body was sound, and that there was no immediate threat from the other side of the antechamber door, Gilead allowed his mind to concentrate entirely on the final niche. The others told only parts of stories, and not the whole, and the elf believed that the artifacts collected by the Rat King would afford him a greater insight into the ratman leader’s intentions, and a better opportunity to defeat him and quash his obvious ambitions.

Gilead breathed rhythmically, closed his eyes to focus on listening, and then opened them wide, concentrating on his sight at the expense of his other senses. His eyes penetrated the darkness and, within moments, it was as if he was standing with his chin at the lip of the niche, peering in, with an unhindered view of what was inside.

Two small objects lay in the aperture, side-by-side. To begin with, Gilead could not see a connection between them. The first object was a small, perfect sphere hewed from some kind of stone. It was unexceptional, save that it was lapped to a mirror finish so bright as to surpass understanding of the craftsmanship that must have gone into making it. The second object looked like an entire eggshell with the egg removed. It was white and matt, and so transparent that Gilead could barely follow the curve of its form. There was a tiny pinprick hole in one end that allowed a fine shaft of light to penetrate it, and it sat on a larger hole in its flat end.

Gilead breathed in and concentrated harder. In the next instant, he was trying to pick up the tiny sphere. Its surface was so smooth as to make it impossible to get a grip on the little object, but it was cold and preternaturally hard. At once, Gilead knew that the little ball was made of the rarest of all rocks, carved by a dwarf craftsman of the very first and finest order. Instinctively, he knew what the other object was. It was not an eggshell at all. The other object was the antithesis of the first. The little rock ball was the most perfect sphere with the most perfect surface made of the densest, hardest and heaviest of all organic rocks. The egg, though also made of stone, was hewn from the lightest, softest and most friable of the organic rocks, also carved by a fine craftsman, probably by the same man that had carved the sphere. These two objects represented the alpha and omega of the stonecutter’s craft. Gilead knew, without further investigation that he could never lift or hold the sphere; that its smooth surface would roll it out of his hands, even if he could hold its weight. Nor could he touch the egg without it crumbling to dust before it fell into his open palm.

Gilead was reminded of the great hall where he had been captured by the skaven rat hordes. The high, vaulted ceiling was beautifully, perfectly carved whole out of the rock. The walls were as smooth as silk and the floor was flat and level. The great expanses of the room were almost impossibly large between the pillars that held the ceiling aloft, and this, too, reflected the dwarf stonecutters’ arts.

As his mind moved around the great room, Gilead’s ears pricked. He could hear an odd rhythmic chant, a strange ululating call, and the echo of it across the space. Then he heard footfalls, clicking with claws in a scurry that could only be made by skaven feet, punctuated by the rhythmic tap of the Rat King’s staff, like a third foot beating syncopated time.

‘He has come,’ he heard.

‘He has come, so he has. He has come. Now he has come, for come he has, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever.’

Gilead opened his eyes and ears, and found himself back in the antechamber. The Rat King was returning, and the elf planned to be ready for the hunched, hairy, grotesque figure to walk through the door.

Gilead expected the chant to end. Surely the Rat King couldn’t keep up his singsong prognostications indefinitely?

Then he realised that the chant was in the air, embedded somehow, in the room around him. It was as if there was a zone around the skaven leader that followed wherever he went. The surest evidence of it was the chant, the mantra that alluded to Gilead. He wondered if there had been other chants for other missions, for it was clearly the Rat King’s fervent wish to trap the elf in some demeaning form of servitude or, perhaps, as some captive specimen.

Gilead breathed in as long and deeply as he was able, and then breathed out again. He emptied his body of every last atom of air, and relaxed his muscles until they were almost unbearably slack. Then he repeated the exercise. He did this three, four, five times more, and then listened again.

It was taking some time for the Rat King to cross the great hall, but Gilead was in no doubt that he was heading for his antechamber, and for the elf.

One by one, Gilead tensed all of his muscles individually, beginning with his hands and feet, and working his way towards his body mass and his centre of gravity. When he had tensed all the muscles individually, he tensed them all in unison, breathing in as deeply as he could while doing so.

The bounds around the elf’s body felt extraordinarily tight, and, where they were of the narrowest gauge, they began to cut into his skin and the almost imperceptible layer of subcutaneous fat that covered his muscles.

The elf was not concerned that the Rat King could hear him, only what he could hear of the Rat King. He was still minutes away, and the chant continued unabated.

Then Gilead felt a breeze on his face, and looked up at the door to see if he could locate the source of it. The door was firmly shut, but Gilead could see the shadows of leaves, falling on a breeze. They were the same leaves that had cascaded down on him from one of the wall-niches. The same, but different. The leaves were not red and yellow and sappy green, they were brown and black, like gossamer lace, ragged and punctured with ugly holes.

The leaves fell around him, disappearing in the air, leaving a putrid smell behind of rotting vegetation, and, oddly, of stale urine. He looked around, trying to work out what was going on, and saw a massive root system growing down through the ceiling from the earth above, and into the room. The roots appeared to be growing strong and true in the same ladder-like formation as the plant above ground, except that dozens of rats were playing around the roots. They were pulling on the finer roots, as if they were playing some strange game of tug-of-war; they were scratching away at them, trying to gnaw through them, and pissing on them. Several young skaven were laughing and playing, and seeing who could piss the highest up the root system. Where their urine fell, it burned like acid, making the roots shrink and fume with the reek of ammonia and sulphur. Where there were tooth marks in the roots, and chunks bitten away, the white fleshy part of the plant was turning brown and shriveling before Gilead’s eyes. The magical tree did not stand a chance under the skaven onslaught, and they seemed to be treating the destruction of the beautiful, rare and ancient organism as a game.

The odours in the room thickened as the tree, first the leaves, and then the branches, and, in what seemed like no time at all, the entire plant, roots and all, turned to dust and ashes.

Gilead turned his attention back to his predicament. He was bound with ropes made of hemp, leather and rags . The rags were heavily greased, and much of the leather had moldered in the dank conditions underground. Some of the hemp ropes were little more than oakum ready for the picking. The rot and filth of the skaven existence below ground, and never far from the water table, meant that conditions were forever dank and moist, and that all organic materials rotted easily and quickly.

The ropes that were whole, complete, were new to a life below ground, unwilling to fall apart and shred, nevertheless they had a deep and penetrating dampness about them that made them soft and pliable. As Gilead breathed in and flexed his muscles, over and over again, he began to hear the creak of the ropes as they flexed and stretched.

The whisper of dying leaves and crumbling roots subsided, and beyond the sounds, Gilead heard a faint, pitiful cry. He smelt a salt-sweet tear cutting across the malodorous plant smells of organic death and ammonia, and he saw a tendril of silvery hair bobbing. The cry gave way to wracking, wretched sobs, and Gilead saw a string of snot finding its way between lips that should have been pink and pert, but were, instead, pale and pursed in a grey, frightened face. Only the eyes, the huge, pale blue eyes of the child princess were as he had seen them before.

Then he saw a pink, fleshy, padded paw with black claws and scrappy grey/brown fur, and he felt wet onyx eyes staring malevolently into the porcelain blue ones. One claw traced a trail down the girl’s cheek, leaving first a livid white line and then a thread of crimson blood. The girl closed her eyes, squeezing her nose up so high that it looked for all the world as if she were baring her small, pretty teeth, but her gums were almost blue as she hyperventilated herself into a state of raw panic. The claw that had sliced the flesh of her cheek, however shallowly, now went to work on her hair and on the pale, silky sheen of the fabric of her simple dress, trimmed with lace too old and too perfectly and intricately made to be of recent manufacture, and the colour of good paper to prove its age. Curls of hair and ribbons of silk began to float through the air as the child screamed. More padded paws with more filthy claws began to grab at her hair and clothes. She screamed, shrill and sudden, and a gold wire circlet of pink pearls and glittering diamonds dropped to the floor with a sound like tiny bells, scattering gems everywhere.

As the Rat King wove his path across the great hall, the images in Gilead’s visions became bigger and more garishly coloured, and the sounds resonated less hollowly, seeming more real. Gilead could almost see the waves of scents on the air, the sweet, honeyed aroma of the girl’s peachy skin and recently laundered garments, the clean salt of her tears, and the sour smell of her abject horror. If the skaven hadn’t chosen to kill her, the experience very well might have. Gilead confronted the events, knowing that they had happened deep in the past, and that there was no way to change what had gone before.

The Rat King’s past actions, the means by which he had retrieved the various strange, magical objects that occupied the niches in the wall above Gilead, hung heavily in the air.

Gilead breathed again, deeply and quickly, swelling his torso and making hard bunches of the muscles in his arms and legs, putting pressure on the bindings until wrinkles and then cracks began to appear across the leather thongs that bound his legs. As much as it was possible to be still and yet shadowfast, the elf had achieved that state. He used his speed to flex and relax his muscles, spasming them at an alarming rate in order to manipulate the ties and thongs that bound his arms to his torso. Finally, one by one, the leather straps began to twist, and stress fractures began to appear in several places in the ties around his wrists and elbows.

Then the knocking began, the sound of axes against rock, of wedges and pegs being driven into fissures with hardwood mallets, and of water dripping from rotary drills driven into rock by short, heavyset creatures with stone in their hearts. Gilead saw the sheen of sweat on low brows topped with abundant hair, and droplets forming on full beards and moustaches. Then he looked down at his hands, and they were the hands of a dwarf holding a diamond file in his right, the left stained with the lapping powder that had been scattered onto whatever he was holding in it. Gilead blinked hard, and looked around. The faces of a dozen dwarfs around him, each mason wielding a tool of his trade, began to fade and flicker out, until Gilead was alone. He looked down and saw that he was sitting at a bench on which sat the eggshell that he had seen in the niche. The elf was disconcerted for a moment to see through the eyes of a foreigner, but he persisted in opening his left hand and looking down at what was held there.

He caught the merest glimpse of a small, hard spherical object, and then became aware of its extraordinary weight. Gilead loitered for a moment in the nameless dwarf’s mind, and there he saw the great sadness of a man who had lost his companions. This dwarf was the last of them, the others all lost in battle to the hugely abundant ratkin. It was a war of convenience; the skaven were multiplying beyond all that was reasonable, and sought to annex whatever underground spaces they could colonise. The dwarfs had been the greatest architects of the Empire for millennia, but they were a dying breed, and the skaven were willing and eager to capitalise on that.

With no one to defend him from the hordes, the dwarf fought bravely and well. He would not have had the opportunity to fight at all if Gilead had not been in his head when the skaven ambushed him, but the elf could not fight for him. Gilead blinked hard and stepped out of the dwarf’s mind.

The skaven quickly disarmed the dwarf of his file, but not before he had brained several of the marauding ratmen. When all that remained to him was the little ball of heavy stone in his left hand, the dwarf closed his fist around it and punched his way through the heads of a dozen more of the rat-scum before he was overwhelmed and taken down. After the dwarf had fallen, the Rat King pried his fingers aside to expose the magical sphere of rock. It took several of his coterie to roll the little ball onto an improvised litter so that it could be transported back to the Rat King’s lair. Gilead could not bear to watch what became of the dwarf’s body, but when next he opened his eyes, there was no dwarf corpse to be seen among the dozens of dead ratmen.

Gilead returned, resolutely, to the antechamber and to his corporeal form, bracing himself for what he must do to escape his bindings, once and for all. The elf concentrated on his breathing again, and every new breath that he took came longer and deeper into his chest until he no longer needed to rely on filling his lungs to expand his chest, but only had to flex his muscles. In a matter of a few minutes all of the leather ropes and thongs had torn through under the pressure of his muscles under tension, and he was moving freely. Only the oiled rags resisted stretching and breaking, but once the leather and hemp ropes had been desiccated and destroyed, it was only a matter of a few minutes and a little extra exertion before the elf was able to shrug off the stinking rags.

Gilead got to his feet and kicked the ropes, thongs and cloth bindings that had held him so rigidly into a corner out of the way. There was no getting away from the filth and stink of the ties that had bound him from his neck down, but he took a moment to straighten his clothes and to run his fingers through his hair, which appeared to be yellowing from the miasma of grease smoke in the atmosphere.

Gilead’s weapons had been wrested from his hands as he’d fought to breathe beneath the dozens of writhing bodies that had pinned him to the floor of the great hall. He did not know or care how many of the ratmen had died, suffocated or crushed to death in their efforts to subdue him. He did care that they had managed to take his weapons from him. But, the Rat King was clearly a scavenger, a collector of objects, and elf-made blades must surely be as prized as many another artifact. It took Gilead a matter of moments to find his sword and dagger slotted into gaps in the throne chair. He was surprised that he had not seen them there sooner among the poorly made, rusting and broken pieces of weaponry that the chair was constructed from.

As he passed the flat of the blade against his thumb, reassured by the cool, smooth steel, he heard the whisper of gusting breath between the words that the Rat King was still mouthing.

‘He has come, so he has. He has come. Now he has come, for come he has, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever.’

The Rat King held his amulet in his left paw, and sniffed and twitched at the smell of burning flesh that emanated from it. He could not stop grinning, and nor could he stop repeating, over and over again, the words that meant so much to him.

He clipped down the short spiral staircase to his little chamber, and pushed at the door with the end of the staff that he held in his right hand. He could not wait to cast his eyes down on the elf once more. He had almost been too excited to leave him, but he had no choice but to appoint new men at every level of his horde. So very many had died for him in capturing the Fell One, so many little sparks of life force had been gathered and added to his immortality. They had died for him, but now he had to be certain that they would die for him again, and that required a hierarchy. If his captains, lieutenants and leaders were not in place then the skaven would turn on each other in a free-for-all of devastating proportions. The Rat King’s power base, painstakingly built up over years, decades, would be lost forever if he had no one to keep the troops in line.

He had spent most of the previous day watching fierce young skaven clawing and hacking each other to death in a series of gladiatorial bouts that ended with the last ratman standing being awarded the highest military honours and the best positions in the Rat King’s bodyguard.

He was going to live forever, and the Fell One would keep.

Gilead did not wait for the door to open to take up a belligerent stance with a weapon in each hand. He only wondered that the Rat King did not feel the need to bring a phalanx of fighting men with him.

The door swung open, and the hunched figure of the Rat King appeared in front of Gilead. He was not armed, except for the long staff that he used as a walking aid, and for ceremonial appearances. It was a badge of office as much as it was a useful weapon, and he was certainly not wielding it in anger, or using it as a defence as he walked into the antechamber.

Gilead could not see what was in the Rat King’s other hand; nevertheless, he knew that it was the reason he was in the skaven stronghold. He also knew that the Rat King believed the object could control the elf, and hold him in its thrall. Gilead knew no such thing. After all, had not the amulet given him visions of the Rat King’s little collection of artifacts? Had it not opened his eyes and ears, and warned him of the Rat King’s return?

Gilead looked hard into the Rat King’s eyes, but heard only the words tripping inexorably from the foul creature’s maw.

‘You have come, so you have. You have come. Now you have come, for come you have, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever,’ it said.

Gilead saw the little skip in the Rat King’s step as if it was attempting to dance a jig, and detected a greedy glint in its eyes as it looked down at its paw where it held the single perfect curl from the girl’s innocent head. The lock of hair bounced and jiggled as the ratman’s body jostled up and down to some spastic rhythm, all its own. He saw the wracked, battered and bruised corpse of the girl-child at the Rat King’s feet, and he saw the group of skaven fighting to be the first to taste her sweet flesh.

His sword still drawn, Gilead held his stance, but could not move to attack the wretched creature that stood before him. The curl was gone from the Rat King’s paw, and in its place was a great handful of brilliant red and orange leaves, spilling over and falling to the ground. As they fell, they blackened and smoked with a noxious, greasy gas. The Rat King rubbed the leaves in his paw, and a rope of drool dripped from his canines and landed in the vegetation, the acidic spittle igniting the foliage in a flaring blue flame that made the leaves fizz and wither.

Gilead wanted to save the leaves, rescue the magical plant, but he knew that it was long gone. He wanted to kill the Rat King, too, the monster who had wrought such evil madness upon the noble, the innocent and the magical. His vision shifted and rippled in front of him, and he stared deep into the Rat King’s eyes once more. The beast appeared to be laughing at him, its eyes wide and glistening, its teeth bared and its tongue dancing around in its maw.

The Rat King let something drop from his paw. The object was suspended from a length of ribbon, apparently made from intricately plaited hair, and it swung and twisted slightly.

Gilead could not tear his gaze from the Rat King’s eyes, but in those eyes he began to see flashes of bright light, sparks bobbing and dancing in the onyx orbs. The sparks coalesced into soft, white lights that seemed to fall on a complex tableau, a fully formed picture of some moment far in the future, appearing simultaneously in the Rat King’s marble-like eyeballs, in stereo.

Gilead wanted nothing more than to kill the Rat King and to destroy the sparkling amulet that was sending shafts of light into the creature’s eyes. The elf did not know whether the amulet was in thrall to the rat or the rat was in thrall to the amulet, it mattered not, for both must perish.

He thought to raise his sword, to lunge, to attack the Rat King, to best him before his loyal horde stormed the antechamber, for he knew, now, that the ratmen had gathered in vast numbers, beyond, in the great hall. He did not know how the knowledge of their gathering had eluded him, only that it had.

The warrior elf knew that if he killed the Rat King and destroyed the amulet, the spell would be broken and the rat hordes would fall into desperate disarray. He would not have to fight his way out of the warrens and burrows below ground, for the ratmen would not choose to fight him and die if they could fight one another and live.

Gilead had to kill but one creature. He looked deeper into the Rat King’s eyes, searching for the motivation to seize the moment and end whatever new tragedy was to come before it had begun.

Gilead beheld the image of a vast, ancient ratman with sleek white fur, glistening teeth and gleaming eyes. The ratman was standing on a mountain of corpses of mesmerising proportions. This was the future if Gilead did not act to end the Rat King here and now.

‘You have come, so you have. You have come. Now you have come, for come you have, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever,’ said the Rat King.

SLAYER OF THE STORM GOD

Nathan Long

‘Knock again, manling,’ said Gotrek Gurnisson.

Felix Jaeger raised his fist and rapped on the door of Hans Euler’s Marienburg town house, louder this time.

A window opened in the house next door and a maid in a winged cap leaned out.

‘Herr Euler is away, mein herren,’ she said. ‘You won’t find him home.’

Felix would have been very surprised if he had, for he had stabbed Euler through the heart on the dark elves’ black ark more than a week ago, and the treacherous pirate was hopefully rotting at the bottom of the sea at the moment.

He was about to tell the girl some lie about leaving a card, or delivering a letter, but then Gotrek turned towards her and her eyes went wide. She disappeared into the house with a squeak of fright.

Felix didn’t blame her. Gotrek was a fearsome sight. He was a dwarf trollslayer, and ugly even for that ugly breed. Short, broad, and muscled like a jungle ape, his scarred, sun-browned flesh was covered in swirling blue tattoos, and a crest of flame-orange hair rose from his shaved head. Add to this an eye-patch, a face like a weathered boulder, and a rune-inscribed battle-axe in a fist the size of a baked ham, and one had a vision to make a hardened veteran blanch, let alone a Marienburg housemaid.

Felix knocked again. Again there was no answer, but this time he thought he heard faint shufflings and thumpings inside.

‘Someone’s after your safe,’ said Gotrek. ‘Stand aside.’

Felix stepped back and the slayer gripped the doorknob, twisting it with slow, inexorable strength. His biceps bulged. The lock mechanism squealed for a moment in pain, then, with a sharp snap, the knob spun loose and the door creaked open.

There were more thumpings and rustlings from within. Felix drew his sword as Gotrek pushed the door wide and stepped into the dim interior. All was as he remembered it – or nearly all. The wood-paneled entry hall was still dark and stuffy, with a spiral staircase to the left and a door that opened into a richly furnished parlour at the back. The parlour’s bay window still had a big hole – now partially boarded up – where Gotrek and Felix had been shoved out of it during their last visit, and the small safe that Gotrek had thrown down the stairs was still half-sunk into the wooden floor where it had smashed through the polished planks.

The dead butler sprawled on the floor was new, however, as were the chisels and hammers and files that were scattered in a puddle of water surrounding the safe. Felix turned away from the butler, whose brains were spilling out of the hole in his head. The thieves must have been hard men indeed to murder the man and then leave him where he fell as they went about their work.

Gotrek snorted as he looked at the safe-cracking tools. ‘Cheap human chisels. No match for dwarf workmanship.’

Felix rolled his eyes at this typical dwarfen bias, but had to admit that the safe showed hardly a mark. Beyond it, a trail of wet footprints led from the broken parlour window to the puddle and back again.

‘They’ve gone out the back,’ he said.

He and Gotrek strode to the back window and looked out. Euler’s back wall dropped straight down to the canal they had plunged into when his bodyguards had thrown them out. If the housebreakers had gone out the window, they’d have had to have gone into the water, but Felix saw no swimmers, only circular ripples spreading out across the calm water.

‘Strange,’ said Felix.

Gotrek shrugged. ‘At least they didn’t get into the safe,’ he said, and turned away, pulling a ring of keys from his belt pouch.

Felix followed the slayer to the safe. They had stolen the keys from Euler on their previous visit, but their abrupt exit had prevented them from using them.

The whole business had been distasteful. Not the sort of thing Felix normally cared to do. Euler had been in possession of some incriminating letter with which he’d attempted to blackmail Felix’s father, and the old man had asked Felix to get it back. If he hadn’t been on his death bed when he’d made the request, Felix would never have done it, but as it was he’d felt obliged, and had come reluctantly to Euler’s house to try to intimidate him into giving it up.

Needless to say, it hadn’t gone well, and then the business with the dark elves had intervened, with Euler chasing them across the Sea of Chaos, thinking that they were on the trail of great treasure, and Felix had been forced to kill the pirate when he had turned on them in the bowels of the black ark.

That nightmare was over, thankfully, and now he and Gotrek were back in Marienburg until the following morning, when they and their old friend Max Schreiber, a magister of the College of Light, and Claudia Pallenberger, a seeress from the Celestial College, would board a riverboat to Altdorf for the last leg of their journey home.

Max and Claudia were staying the night at the house of an acquaintance of Max’s, and Gotrek would have been content to bide his time drinking at their inn, the Pelican’s Perch, but Felix still felt an obligation to recover the letter, even though Euler was dead and there was a distinct possibility that his father was as well. So he had asked the slayer to accompany him back to the smuggler’s house for one last try.

The key turned in its lock with a satisfying click, and Felix knelt as Gotrek hauled on the handle and opened the safe’s heavy steel door. The walls of it were inches thick, and the space inside hardly big enough to hold a loaf of bread, but what lay within glittered in a way that made Felix’s heart race and Gotrek’s ugly face split in a terrifying smile.

‘You can have the letter, manling,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the rest.’

He pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed them to Felix, then began scooping out the treasure and dumping it on the floor – a small spill of jewelry, loose gems, and gold coins of strange foreign design.

Felix sorted through the papers. There were contracts, promissory notes, articles of incorporation, and, at last, an envelope scrawled upon in his father’s scratchy hand. His heart thumping with relief, Felix opened it and made sure there was a letter within, then stuffed it in his belt pouch.

‘I have it,’ he said.

Gotrek just grunted and kept sorting the treasure, entirely engrossed. He held a thick gold circlet up to his single appraising eye. ‘Dwarf gold, human work,’ he said. ‘Not bad for all that.’

Felix looked at the coil as the slayer slipped it on his wrist. He thought it might have once been a necklace, but it barely fit around Gotrek’s meaty arm. It was made of heavy gold wire – eight braided strands branching from a central bezel set with a sea-green gem the size of a walnut. Though it was undeniably beautiful, Felix found he didn’t like the look of the thing. Perhaps he was just sick of anything that reminded him of the sea.

‘Are you sure it’s not elven?’ he asked, hoping to make Gotrek take it off.

Gotrek snorted. ‘Not flimsy enough.’ He tossed a delicate gold necklace into the puddle. ‘That’s elven,’ he said with a sneer, then began picking through the rest and putting the choicer bits in his belt pouch.

Felix thought the elven necklace was beautiful, but he wasn’t going to argue the point with a dwarf. He’d just take it. But as he picked it up, voices reached them from the street.

‘Aye, sergeant,’ came the housemaid’s voice. ‘I saw ‘em. They broke down Herr Euler’s door.’

A man’s voice answered her. ‘Back inside, miss. We’ll take care of this. Swords out, boys.’

‘The watch,’ whispered Felix.

Gotrek grunted angrily, and for a moment Felix was afraid he meant to stay and fight, but instead he just swept up the treasure in his big hands, stuffed it down his breeches, then stumped towards the spiral staircase, jingling with each step.

‘To the roof, manling,’ he said. ‘While they follow the footprints to the canal.’

Felix followed, surprised and relieved. Apparently Gotrek’s lust for gold had momentarily won out over his lust for battle.

As they started up the stairs, Felix paused and looked back at the wet footprints, suddenly wondering why they seemed so wide and splayed. Had the housebreakers used some sort of special shoes to swim the canal?

There was a crash as the front door burst in. Felix hurried after the slayer.

Gotrek shook another ruby out of his trouser leg and put it on the table with the rest. ‘I think that’s the last of them.’

Felix looked up from reading his father’s letter and glanced askance at the little pile of now-pungent treasure the slayer had amassed. Showing so much wealth in a tavern like the Pelican’s Perch would bring nothing but trouble, but perhaps that was what the slayer wanted, or perhaps he just didn’t care.

Even with the sun still up, the taproom was crowded with rowdy revellers. In fact all Marienburg was crowded with rowdy revellers, piling into town for the Storm Festival, a local holiday that culminated with the priests of the sea god Manann leading their congregations in a prayer to spare their fishing and trading fleets from harsh winter storms. Despite the freezing winter winds that whipped spray off the canals and blew it in their faces, the merry celebrants were singing songs in the streets and carousing from inn to inn, red-cheeked and rubber-legged and praising Manann with every bend of their elbows.

A squad of Black Caps pushed into the tavern. Felix hid his face behind his father’s letter, but the watchmen only spoke with the barman, scanned the place cursorily, and headed back out to the street. The watchmen looked on edge – understandable, what with the town full of drunks, and also rumours that some of those drunks were going missing – pulled into the canals by strange assailants, never to be seen again. The Storm Festival Curse, the locals called it, for apparently it happened every year. Felix thought it much more likely that the missing revellers had fallen into the canals after one too many toasts to Manann.

As Gotrek muttered over his glittering hoard, Felix returned to the old letter. So far he hadn’t found anything particularly blackmail-worthy. It was a note from his father, acknowledging that he had received some goods from Euler’s father – a smuggler just like his son. There were lists of Tilean glass, Bretonnian brandy, Cathay silk, and other fancy goods that Felix supposed might have been smuggled or stolen. It didn’t seem enough somehow. His father had been terrified that this letter would rob him of Jaeger and Sons. Nothing here seemed to merit that terror.

Felix turned the letter over. His heart stopped. He had found it. At the top of the page was a list of six books, with a note scrawled to one side in his father’s hand. Felix didn’t recognise all the titles, but even the ones he did were enough to tie his stomach in sailors’ knots – The Maelificarium by Salini. Urbanus’s The Seven Gates, Sudenberg’s Treatise on the Hidden World. All were forbidden texts in the eyes of the Temple of Sigmar – tomes of darkest sorcery. The possession of any one of them would be enough to have a man burned at the stake.

Felix read the note his father had written beside them.

Returning the Urbanus and the Bastory. Estlemann says they are damaged and unsellable. Will want full refund.

GJ

Felix’s head swam. His father had dealt, was perhaps still dealing, in forbidden books! This was indeed something that would destroy Jaeger and Sons if exposed. He was filled once again with loathing for the old man’s greed. This proved beyond a doubt that Gustav would do anything to increase his fortune. Of course, Felix thought with a twinge of guilt, his father might be dead now, and he shouldn’t think ill of him, but the old villain certainly made it difficult to be charitable.

A shadow passed over the letter and a voice jarred Felix from his musings. ‘How much for the bracelet?’

Felix looked up. A piratical old sailor in a long coat stood at the table, jostled on all sides by the crowd that filled the tap room. He was a barrel-chested man, with a bald head, gold earrings, and a clay pipe that stuck out from an enormous white moustache and beard. He pointed a thick finger at Gotrek’s wrist, indicating the bracelet with the sea-green gem.

‘Not for sale,’ said Gotrek. He pushed a small pile of jewelry towards the man. ‘If you want any of that, we can deal. It’s elven.’

The old sailor shook his head. ‘Just the bracelet.’

‘Then you’re out of luck,’ said Gotrek.

The sailor frowned. ‘Double its weight in Altdorf Crowns,’ he said.

Gotrek snorted. ‘Crowns are cut with copper. This is pure. Ten times its weight wouldn’t be enough.’

‘So, you’re willing to haggle?’

‘No,’ said the slayer, and returned his attention to his sorting.

The sailor shrugged. ‘Can’t say I didn’t try.’ He stepped back. ‘Get ‘em, messmates.’

All at once, all the men who had been jostling and laughing and drinking behind the old man turned towards Gotrek and Felix, grinning as they readied cudgels, brass knuckles and saps. Felix had never in his life seen so few teeth among so many men.

Gotrek jumped up, laughing, and snatched up two three-legged stools. ‘Come and get it, you wharf rats!’

The wharf rats obliged him, roaring and leaping over the table at him as bracelets and necklaces scattered everywhere. Felix was shouldered to the floor in the rush. Boots stomped his spine as he rolled under the table, covering his head, and the smack of fists on flesh was loud in his ears.

He took the opportunity to stuff his father’s letter back into his doublet, then looked around for a suitable weapon. Unfortunately, just then, Gotrek heaved up on the table, overturning it and sending the pirates that fought upon it flying – along with the rest of his treasure.

A pirate crashed down on Felix’s ribs, knocking the wind out of him. Felix sucked in a stabbing breath and elbowed the man in the face, then ripped the cudgel from his hands and staggered up, looking around. Pirates were reeling away from Gotrek as he windmilled about him with a stool in each fist, but others still surged in, howling and slashing furiously, as the rest of the tavern-goers pressed to the walls, trying to get away.

Felix waded into the scrum, cracking heads and elbows with his cudgel. The pirates snarled and lashed back at him. He took a punch to the ribs.

Then a woman’s voice shrilled over the cacophony. ‘Gold! The floor’s covered with it!’

Suddenly, all the onlookers, who had been doing their best to keep out of the melee, charged forward, diving under the pirates’ feet and bowling them over in their frenzy to reach the spilled treasure.

‘Keep back, ye lubbers!’ bellowed the old pirate, but no one paid him any heed.

A pirate with a face like a frog leapt on Gotrek’s arm, weighing it down and trying to pull off the braided gold bracelet.

‘Get it!’ roared the old pirate. ‘Throw it here.’

Gotrek brained frog-face with one of his stools and heaved him into the others. He held up his left arm, showing them all the bracelet.

‘It this what you want?’ the slayer roared. ‘Come–!’

He was drowned out by a pair of deafening explosions. The whole room stopped where they were and everyone turned towards the bar. The landlord, a short, round man with sailor’s tattoos and a peg leg, stood upon it, two smoking pistols in his hands as plaster rained down all around him. From the look of the ceiling it wasn’t the first time such measures had been warranted.

‘Right, you wreckers!’ he said, dropping the pistols and taking an enormous bell-mouthed blunderbuss from a serving girl behind the bar. ‘Outside or I’ll give you a volley of shot in yer tender parts!’

The threat worked well enough on most of the patrons – particularly those that already had some of Gotrek’s gold clutched in their hands – and they ran for the exits, but the pirates were made of sterner stuff. One of them pulled a pistol of his own and aimed it at the landlord.

‘And I’ll give you a hole where yer mouth is,’ he snarled.

Felix raised his cudgel to beat the man’s arm down, but just then the Black Caps ran back in, whistles blowing and truncheons at the ready.

The landlord waved them towards the pirates. ‘Them there, Captain Schnell! They’re disturbing the peace!’

The old pirate backed away. ‘Hard about, messmates!’ he croaked, as the watchmen started forward. He shot a glare at Gotrek. ‘We’ll finish this later.’

The pirates scattered in every direction, and the Black Caps raced after them. The taproom was suddenly empty.

Gotrek glared around at the floor, which was conspicuously bare of treasure. ‘All gone,’ he said, disgusted. ‘The dirty thieves.’

‘Serves you right for sorting it in public,’ said Felix wearily. He looked around for a place to sit, but before he could right a bench, the landlord turned his blunderbuss their way.

‘You too, buckos,’ he called, jerking his chin towards the door. ‘You were in the middle of it. On yer way.’

‘But....’ said Felix. ‘But we have a room here.’

‘You had a room here,’ said the landlord.

Felix was about to argue the point, but Gotrek grunted and started towards the door. ‘Forget it, manling. The beer was terrible anyway.’

As they crossed to the door, Gotrek paused, then bent and picked something up from the floor – a wayward topaz. ‘Here,’ he said, flipping it to the surprised landlord, who almost dropped his blunderbuss trying to catch it. ‘For the damages.’

With the old pirate’s vow that he would ‘finish this later’ still ringing in his ears, Felix was afraid that they would be jumped as soon as they left the inn, but apparently the Black Caps had chased the pirates off, for they made their way through the crowded streets without incident.

Unfortunately, because of those crowds, finding another room was difficult, and they spent more than an hour walking from inn to inn, and being turned away at every one. But finally, at the western-most end of the Suiddock, on a street that reeked of tar and rotting fish, they discovered a place that had a vacancy. Felix didn’t wonder why. The Bunk and Binnacle was dreadful. Anyone with any money or sense would never have looked twice at the place.

It was small and cramped and reeked of damp and mildew, and every surface felt like it was covered in a thin layer of slime. Its floors dipped in the centre, its ceilings sagged, and its walls bulged in on either side. Felix was afraid to lean against them for fear they would collapse.

‘This place is a deathtrap,’ he said as he and Gotrek made their way up the three cockeyed flights of stairs to their room.

Gotrek shrugged. ‘No worse than most human places,’ he said.

Felix was too tired to argue. They had been walking forever. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep.

Felix stared around, appalled, as they entered their room. He had been in nicer prison cells. The smell of mildew was even stronger here, and seemed to be coming from the beds. The floor sloped down alarmingly towards the back wall, where the winter wind whistled through a shuttered window. He stepped cautiously down the slippery incline and opened it. One of the shutters tore from its rusty hinges and fell away. Felix looked down and saw it splash into the water of the harbour, directly below him. The inn leaned out over it like a vulture preparing to swoop down on a carcass.

Felix backed cautiously from the drop, wiping his hands on his breeches. ‘I really would have preferred to give up the bracelet and keep our room at the Pelican’s Perch,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t your bracelet,’ said Gotrek, and started laying out his bedroll on the floor.

Felix was dragged from sleep some time later by soft squelching noises and angry dwarfen grunts. He pried open his eyes and peered around at the darkness, feeling for his sword.

‘Gotrek?’

‘Get off me, you snot-skinned invertebrates!’ came the slayer’s voice, followed by the crunch of an axe through bone and a shriek of pain.

Felix jumped to his feet and drew his sword. In the fuzzy dimness of the room he could see a dozen black shapes squirming and thrashing where Gotrek had been lying. The reek of damp, which before had been only unbearable, was now too thick to breathe. ‘Hoy!’ he choked, then stabbed at the back of a flailing form.

The thing snarled and turned on him, lashing out with long arms. It was wearing breeches and a shirt, but that was Felix’s only clue that it had once been human. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that the inner side of its arms and hands were covered with disc-shaped suckers, and it had a head like a trout.

Felix slashed at it, nausea and pity warring within him. The trout-man ducked and caught his blade in a suckered hand. Felix tried to jerk it away, but the discs stuck fast to the smooth steel, and the mutant pulled at it with uncanny strength.

Sounds of terrible violence continued from Gotrek’s side of the room as Felix fought the trout-man for the sword. Then two more mutants charge out of the dark. One had a rusty boarding axe clutched in hands like crab claws. The other was a woman – or had been – with hair like a sea anemone and translucent fins running down the length of her forearms. She slashed at him and they sliced through his clothes to his skin. They were razor sharp!

Felix kicked her in the face, then ducked crab-hands’ rusty axe. Trout-face tried to catch Felix’s neck with his other tentacle. Felix let go of his sword and grabbed the slimy thing, yanking him off his feet and sending him careening into crab-hands. The mutants crashed down on the flimsy bed, collapsing it. Felix stomped on trout-face’s wrist. He yelped and let go of the sword. Felix snatched it up and spun just in time to block another swipe from the fin-woman. His sword tore through her right fin and into her arm. She staggered back, wailing, and fell in a heap against the door.

Felix whipped back and gutted crab-hands and trout-face as they tried to stand. They toppled back into the ruin of the bed, gushing black blood.

Felix stumbled over the uneven floor towards Gotrek. The slayer was in the centre of a whirlwind of crazed mutants. Half a dozen lay dead and dismembered on the floor, but just as many still surrounded him, swinging boathooks, cutlasses and belaying pins at him with wild abandon. One of them, a sleek-skinned, barrel-shaped little runt with flipper arms, had swallowed Gotrek’s left arm up to the elbow in its sphincter-like mouth. Gotrek swung him around like a flesh mace, knocking down his comrades with his bulbous body, then cleaving their heads and chests with his axe as they fell.

Felix leapt into the fray and cut down two of Gotrek’s attackers from behind. Gotrek clubbed three more to the floor and hacked them to pieces. Only the flipper-man remained, stuck on the end of Gotrek’s arm like a living gauntlet.

‘Mutant filth!’ rasped Gotrek, and slammed him down as hard as he could.

The mutant slapped against the planks like a carp against a cutting board, letting go of Gotrek’s arm with a fishy gasp.

Gotrek chopped down at it, but it squirmed wetly down the sloping floor and the slayer’s axe smashed through rotting floorboards. Felix leapt after the thing, but the canted planks were slick with blood and slime and he fell.

‘I’ve got him,’ said Gotrek, skating forward on the film of muck with his axe raised.

But he didn’t, for before the slayer could reach him, the flipper-man humped himself upright against the wall and threw himself out the window.

Gotrek slammed into the sill and looked out and down. He cursed as, from far below, there came a splash.

Felix picked himself up, his clothes wet with blood and noxious fluids. All the remaining mutants seemed to be dead or dying. The battle was over.

‘Is everyone out to get us in this miserable town?’ he sighed. ‘What did they want?’

‘The bracelet,’ said Gotrek. He turned away from the window and held up the arm the flipper-man had been gnawing on. ‘And they took it. That thing swallowed it.’

Felix groaned. The damned bracelet again.

From the door came a shrill cackling. They looked around. The wounded fin woman was grinning at them, a demented gleam in her too-widely-spaced eyes. ‘Though you kill a thousand of us, we will prevail. Stromfels’ will shall not be denied.’

Felix hadn’t heard that name since he and Gotrek had sailed with the pirates of Sartosa. Stromfels was a sea god – a shark god – the evil mirror of Manann, sworn to by pirates up and down the coast of the Old World.

Gotrek strode towards the woman, his axe raised menacingly. ‘Do you know where they took it?’

‘Oh yes,’ she laughed. ‘To the swamps. To the ceremony. To Stromfels’ Reach.’

Gotrek put the axe blade to her throat. ‘You will take us there, wretch.’

The fin-woman tittered. ‘No need for threats, mein herren. I’ll take you. Stromfels welcomes sacrifices.’

By the shifting light of the moons, which peeked occasionally through breaks in the roiling clouds like pale eyes through knotholes, Gotrek and Felix set down their poles and followed the fin-woman as she stepped from the weathered flatboat onto a mist-shrouded mud bank deep in the middle of the Cursed Marshes. Gotrek steadied himself with his axe and spat a fat gob of phlegm.

‘The only thing worse than sitting in a boat,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Is standing in one.’

Felix for once agreed with him. Dwarfs were notoriously unhappy on water, but even for Felix, piloting the wobbly little craft had been a stomach-churning chore.

Something shrieked like a banshee in the middle distance. Felix jumped, heart thudding. Gotrek turned, ready to fight.

The fin-woman paid the noise no attention. ‘Hurry, mien herren,’ she said, beckoning them on. ‘They will beginning soon. They will want you.’

Felix let out a breath, then glared at Gotrek as they followed the fin-woman into the sea of chest-high sawgrass that rippled and whispered around them in all directions. There was no reason for them to be traipsing through a swamp in the middle of the night. They could have been back in Marienburg, asleep in a comfortable bed – or at least looking for one – if not for Gotrek’s stubbornness.

Felix had tried his best to convince him to forget the bracelet and go back to Altdorf, but the slayer would have none of it.

‘No, manling,’ he had said. ‘A slayer cannot stand by when there are mutants to be killed, and a dwarf can never forgive a theft.’

‘But you stole it from Euler,’ Felix had countered.

Gotrek had snorted. ‘Stealing from a thief is not stealing.’

After that faultless display of dwarf logic, Felix had given up. Now he wished he had tried harder. Even on a summer’s day, the Cursed Marshes were unlikely to have been a pleasant place for a stroll, but now, in winter, in the coldest hours of the morning, with a fitful wind spitting icy swamp-water in Felix’s face and the sopping ground sucking at his boots and freezing his toes through the leather, it was a nightmare. Weird rustlings and moanings came from every direction, and writhing arms of mist curled up from the tall grass like looming spectres. He kept looking over his shoulders at things that weren’t there.

‘Careful, mein herren,’ said the fin-woman as Felix almost stepped into a hidden channel. She giggled. ‘Wouldn’t want to deny Stromfels’ Harbinger his snack.’

Felix backed from the channel and followed more carefully behind her. She might once have been attractive, for she had a shapely figure and piercing blue eyes, but now she was repulsive. In addition to the fins that stuck from her wiry forearms, her mouth hung open in a fishy gape, and her eyes were pushed to the sides of her head, peering slyly from under a mop of tiny, translucent tentacles that writhed with a mind of their own.

‘What do your friends want with this bracelet?’ he asked her as they swished through the grass.

‘Stromfels’ Heart?’ she said, chuckling. ‘Why, it’s the centre of the whole thing, mein herr. It calls the Harbinger. Wakes him, y’might say. Gives him his strength. Without it, there ain’t no ceremony.’ Her lower lip pushed out in a pout. ‘Like last year. Very sad, that was, when that false pirate Euler took it.’

‘False pirate?’ said Felix. ‘He seemed piratical enough to me.’

‘A true pirate worships Stromfels,’ she sniffed. ‘That fat lubber was just a thief with a boat, and we’re obliged to you for getting the Heart back from his safe. Most kind of you. Mind the bloodsedge, mein herr,’ she added.

Felix jerked his foot back as a bush in his path rattled to life and extended vine-like tendrils towards him. He hacked at one that tried to snare his ankle, then danced away after Gotrek and the woman. The thing rustled in agitated frustration behind them.

‘I hate this place,’ said Felix.

‘At least were off the cursed boat,’ said Gotrek.

They pressed on.

A half hour later, they came to a dense stand of bulrushes growing from the water of a wide, shallow inlet. The plants were taller than Felix’s head.

‘Just through here, mein herren,’ said the fin-woman, smiling back at them as she stepped down into the water. ‘Hurry now.’ And with that she disappeared into the towering thicket.

They splashed after her and shouldered into the close set plants. The tall stalks bent aside as they parted them, then sprung back after they had passed. Felix couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, and lost sight of the woman almost immediately. He tried to listen for the slosh of her footsteps, but they were drowned out by their own.

Felix looked over his left shoulder, then his right. ‘This is an ambush,’ he muttered.

‘We can only hope,’ said Gotrek.

He lashed out with his axe, hacking a swath through the tall plants. Felix drew his sword and joined him, swinging wide. The bulrushes toppled before them, but didn’t reveal hidden assailants, only more bulrushes.

‘Quicker, mein herren!’ echoed the fin-woman’s voice from far ahead. ‘You don’t want to be late.’

They pressed on, cursing, and a few minutes later came to the far edge of the stand, and a muddy shore that fringed another sea of sawgrass. They stepped warily up out of the water and looked around. The fin-woman was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where are you, woman?’ called Felix. ‘Come out!’

There was no response. Felix cursed and slashed angrily at the sawgrass. ‘She’s tricked us. She’s led us off into the middle of nowhere. I’ll wager the ceremony is miles from here.’

‘No, manling,’ said Gotrek, pointing. ‘It is there.’

Felix turned and followed the slayer’s gaze. Far across the waving grass was a low hill, rising from the marsh like the back of some aquatic behemoth, and behind it, glowing dimly through the shrubs that furred its spine, was an orange flicker of fire.

A short while later, Felix and Gotrek hid among those shrubs and peered at the scene below them. The hill sloped down to a shale beach that curved around a tidal lagoon, hemmed in on all sides by the sawgrass marsh. A bonfire blazed on the beach, illuminating an ancient, sea-weathered standing stone that rose from the shallows. The thing was twice as high as a man and carved to resemble a shark’s head, with a crude triangular notch in the front to delineate a mouth. Around this central stone eight smaller stones, man-high and carved all over with saucer-sized circles, also poked from the waves. An altar to Stromfels, Felix was certain, though it wasn’t clear to him what the lesser stones might represent.

More than a score of fish-featured mutants stood on the beach and in the water around the stone circle, chanting and raising their misshapen arms in exaltation as their long shadows undulated across the water like black snakes. In their centre, standing knee-deep in front of the shark stone, was the old pirate from the Pelican’s Perch, stripped to the waist and holding aloft Gotrek’s bracelet as he shouted an invocation to the sky. Felix wasn’t surprised to see him, nor his men, who stood and chanted along with the other worshippers. In fact, it made the night’s events fall into place. And though it sickened him, he wasn’t surprised that they were mutants either.

With their coats flung off in the heat of the fire, the pirates’ abnormalities were revealed – scales, fins, gills, webbed fingers, eel-like tails, trailing tendrils like those of a jellyfish. It was as if their god was slowly shaping them in his own image.

The old pirate’s mutation was the subtlest, but also the most disturbing. As the man gyrated in his ecstasy, Felix saw what he at first thought were strands from his beard waving in the wind. But a longer look revealed that the strands were actually finger-sized tentacles that ringed his mouth, and which had been hidden within the luxuriousness of his moustaches.

‘It seems you were right not to sell to him,’ said Felix, chagrined.

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, but that was all. The slayer wasn’t one to say ‘I told you so.’

Felix looked further down the beach. At the edge of the firelight, a number of longboats were pulled up on the shale, and near them crouched half a dozen pitiful figures, all bound hand and foot, their ropes staked to the ground so they couldn’t escape. Felix thought he recognised their guide, the fin-woman, among the guards that watched over them. He could see her peering around into the shadows – looking for him and Gotrek no doubt.

‘The vanished revellers?’ Felix asked, nodding towards the six prisoners.

Gotrek nodded. ‘Sacrifices,’ he growled.

Felix feared he was right. He gripped his sword. ‘Then we’d better go stop the ceremony before it is complete.’

‘No,’ said Gotrek. ‘We wait.’

Felix turned to him, confused. ‘But if we wait, they will call their god, and–’

‘Aye,’ Gotrek interrupted. ‘Mutants are nothing. I want to fight this harbinger, whatever it is.’

‘But, the sacrifices,’ said Felix.

‘I’ll kill it before it comes to that,’ said Gotrek dismissively.

Felix shook his head. He sometimes forgot that, though Gotrek generally fought for the good of the Old World, and hated Chaos with a passion, he chose his fights for glory as much as for any other reason.

A rising wail from the mutants returned his attention to the ceremony below. Things seemed to be reaching a climax.

While the mutants writhed and chanted, in the centre of the ring, the old pirate turned to the shore and dropped to his knees in the water, the bracelet raised high over his head.

Felix blinked and squinted at the thing. This far away, it was hard to make out details, but its appearance had definitely changed. The braided gold coil that the central bezel was fixed to seemed to have unwoven itself, the gleaming strands spreading out from the gem like spider legs. They even appeared to be stretching and curling – a grasping hand of yellow wire.

Gotrek edged forward, his single eye glittering eagerly in the firelight.

As the wild chant grew faster and louder, the old pirate lowered the clutching golden thing to his chest and pressed it against his sternum. Felix saw the gold wires clench, digging into his tattooed flesh. The pirate grimaced, but held the jewel in place. The wires gripped harder. He screamed and spasmed, his mouth tentacles trembling. The gold claws dug down into his chest like they were seeking his heart.

The pirate thrashed and convulsed, but made no move to try to pull off the burrowing bracelet. Finally, with a last agonised bellow, he stiffened and pitched face-first into the waves, his head completely submerged.

The mutant worshippers all fell silent, staring, as he floated face down in the water. Felix stared too. Had the old man died? Had the evil jewel killed him?

‘Do you think perhaps that didn’t go as planned?’ he whispered.

‘Quiet, manling,’ said Gotrek.

Felix turned back to the beach. For a long moment there was no movement at all, and no noise but for the crackle of the bonfire. But then, with a splash and a cry, the old pirate twitched and floundered in the water.

Felix could hear an indrawn breath from the mutants, and then a huge cheer as the pirate pushed himself up and stood, streaming with water.

‘The Harbinger!’ they cried. ‘Stromfels’ Harbinger is here!’

Felix did not feel like cheering. He felt like vomiting, for a horrible transformation had come over the old pirate, and was continuing as he watched.

For one thing, he was larger than before, and was growing bigger still. He now towered head and shoulders above his followers, and his body was thickening and turning a dull iron grey. For another, he was distorting hideously. His neck swelled with muscle until it was as wide as his shoulders and his head grew to match. A triangular fin sprouted from his back, and his eyes became black orbs and shifted position, moving above his ears, which shrank into his skull and vanished. His nose widened and lengthened until it took over his whole face, and his mouth stretched along with it, a black, lipless gash filled with razor-sharp teeth. But more horrible still was the transformation of the eight little tentacles that had surrounded his mouth. As he grew and changed, so did they, lengthening and thickening until they were as big around as pythons, while their inner surfaces sprouted cup-sized suckers that clenched and contracted obscenely.

The pirate-turned-monster threw back his head and howled in a voice like a howling winter storm, his arms and tentacles raised in triumph. ‘Bring the offerings!’ he roared. The gem from the evil bracelet glowed blue-green in the centre of his chest.

Gotrek stood and drew his axe from his back, grinning savagely. ‘Now this will be a fight,’ he said, then charged down the slope towards the beach, roaring a wordless battle-cry.

Felix hesitated as the mutants all turned and stared, then he sighed and ran after the slayer. It rankled somewhat that Gotrek seemed to assume that he would automatically follow him into battle. That certainly hadn’t been their original bargain. Felix had sworn to record Gotrek’s doom, not share it. But he had fought so many times at the slayer’s side that it had indeed become second nature, and he did sometimes charge in after him without thinking. Had he, Felix wondered with sudden concern, come to look forward to it?

The pirates and mutants swarmed to meet them as the hulking, shark-mouthed octopoid howled behind them from the water.

‘Bring me the trespassers!’ it cried. ‘They will be first!’

Gotrek ploughed into the horde, driving those at the front back into the rest as his rune axe splintered spears and sheared through swords and arms and stranger appendages in a bloody blur. He didn’t slow to fight them, however, only cut a path through them, his attention entirely on Stromfels’ Harbinger, who surged out of the lagoon to face him.

Felix fell on the mutants before they had recovered from Gotrek’s passage, impaling the wounded and hacking down those who were trying to stand. Not exactly sporting, but then again, they meant to feed him to their god as a snack, so he felt little remorse. The rest turned and leapt at him as, beyond them, Gotrek pounded across the shale at the looming monster.

Now Felix did regret following the slayer, for a dozen weapons were stabbing at him all at once, and he had to whirl like a top with his sword at full extent just to keep them at bay. At least, he thought, there is room enough here to swing and light enough to see, luxuries he hadn’t had in his earlier fights against them.

‘Get ‘im, my darlings!’ screeched a familiar female voice from the edges of the mob. ‘He ain’t nice to ladies!’

Felix cut down a man with gaping fish-heads for hands and dodged past him to the bonfire, then snatched up a burning branch in his left hand and turned to face the rest. A brilliant plan, he thought. With the flames at his back he would only have to defend in front of him.

They charged in, howling, and he stumbled back, nearly falling into the fire as he blocked their blows. A brilliant plan, he thought again, as his backside began to grow unpleasantly warm.

Beyond the mutants, Felix saw Gotrek’s fight in brief glimpses – two heavy, suckered tentacles spinning away in a spray of black blood – the Harbinger of Stromfels howling in agony – Gotrek clubbed into the lagoon by another tentacle.

‘You are fools,’ the fin-backed behemoth shouted as it waded out after him. ‘Just like the damned Marienburgers.’

The slayer jumped up again, axe raised, but to Felix’s horror, the monster’s two severed tentacles had grown back, as thick and strong as before.

‘They think it is their milquetoast prayers to Manann that protect them from the winter gales,’ the monster rumbled as it lashed the slayer with its limbs and drove him back amongst the standing stones. ‘Ha! Only appeasing Stromfels will stop the storms. We are the true protectors of Marienburg!’

Gotrek chopped furiously, severing tentacle after tentacle as he tried to reach the monster’s shark-like trunk, but no matter how many he cut, by the time he had finished cutting the last, the first had grown back again.

Felix, too, was in desperate straits. A woman with stinging whips growing from her neck lashed them at his face while a dozen more mutants stabbed at him. He hacked wildly around at them all while trying to shield his face from the whips. One burned his cheek and he flinched back, crying out. His heel crunched down on a burning log. He smelled burning wool. He was standing in the fire!

An iron-shod staff rammed him in the chest, knocking him further back. He was falling! Desperate, he snatched at the staff, hauling at it with all his might.

Fortunately, the mutant was pulling too, trying to jerk the staff from Felix’s grip. Felix used the momentum to launch himself forward and shouldered the man to the ground, then hurriedly tore off the flaming cloak, his heart pounding, and whirled it over his head.

‘Back, damn you!’ he gasped, fighting for breath. ‘I’ll burn you!’

A mutant snagged the cloak on his spear tip and whipped it contemptuously away. The others pressed in again from all sides. Felix cursed and spun around with his sword, his lungs aching as he tried to hold them all away – right back where he’d started. At least he’d gotten away from the fire.

In the water, the Harbinger of Stromfels shouted in triumph and lifted a struggling Gotrek over his gaping mouth, pinning his right arm and axe with a tentacle.

Felix cursed and charged towards it, trying to break through the ring of mutants to reach the slayer in time.

‘Gotrek!’ he cried, hacking wildly. ‘Hang on!’

The slayer’s left hand scrabbled for the haft his axe, then tore it free and hacked down at the tentacle, severing it. He splashed at the monsters feet and disappeared under the water as it screamed in agony.

It plunged its arms and tentacles below the surface, feeling for him. ‘I will tear you apart!’

Gotrek surged up behind the thing, the severed tentacle still wrapped around him, and aimed a left-handed slash at its spine, but the massive beast turned with surprising speed and the axe blade caught it under the ribs instead, sinking deep. The Harbinger roared in pain and fell back into the water, crashing down by the standing stone.

All around Felix, the mutants wailed and spasmed in eerie unison to their leader’s agony. Felix lashed out at them, trying to take advantage of their weakness, but they staggered away, shrieking. He was too tired to pursue. He stumbled towards the slayer.

Gotrek was wading deeper into the water, axe raised for another strike. Felix sloshed in after him, and they strode out past the circle of stones together, looking all around, but the water remained calm and flat.

‘He has defeated the Harbinger of Stromfels!’ cried the mutants, fleeing into the shadows. ‘He’ll kill us all!’

Gotrek ignored them, chopping at the water with his axe. ‘Come back, you coward!’ he bellowed. ‘I know you’re not dead!’

His voice echoed away across the lagoon, to be answered only with silence. He grunted and spit into the waves, then turned and slogged back to the shore, prying the severed tentacle from his skin with a series of dull pops.

Felix looked around the beach. The mutants had vanished, leaving their dead behind. ‘Well done,’ he said.

‘Bah,’ said the slayer, disgusted. ‘It ran away, and took the bracelet with it.’

Felix nodded, knowing the slayer would accept no sympathy. ‘Well, at least we can bring these poor wretches back to safety.’ He pointed down the beach. ‘They left their boats.’

Gotrek shrugged, not at all consoled. ‘I suppose.’

They walked down the beach to the prisoners, keeping their eyes on the shadows, but the mutants remained hidden.

‘What have you done, you meddlers?’ whined a tired-looking woman in a shopkeeper’s apron as Felix knelt to cut her ropes.

‘Eh?’ said Felix. ‘We’re saving you.’

‘And dooming Marienburg,’ said a captured stevedore. ‘You should have left well enough alone.’

Felix frowned. ‘You came willingly?’ Then why did they tie you down?’

The stevedore hung his head. ‘Some change their minds at the last minute.’

‘Now Stromfels will send the storms,’ said a third captive, a young man in the uniform of the Black Caps. ‘Our deaths would have appeased him, but now....’

Gotrek turned his single baleful eye on him. ‘You worship that abomination?’

‘No,’ said the shop wife. ‘Never. But the swamp men are right. It is he who calls the storms, not Manann, and so we give ourselves up to keep our families safe for another winter.’

Gotrek spat, disgusted. ‘You’re to blame for its power. You make it stronger with your fear.’

‘And you’ve made it angry with your slaughter,’ said the stevedore. ‘Many ships will sink this winter because of you.’

Gotrek snorted and turned away.

Despite their protestations, the rescued prisoners were quite willing to go back to Marienburg with Gotrek and Felix before the mutants returned, so they stole one of the longboats and set off. Gotrek refused to row, or do anything but sit in the stern looking green at the gills, so Felix and the men took up the oars and poles, with the shop wife at the prow, calling out the hazards.

After a long hour of rowing and poling through weed-choked and winding waterways, then fighting the strong currents of the Manannspoort Sea, they pulled wearily into Marienburg’s harbour and rowed through the Brunwasser Kanal just as the first grey light of the day began to tinge the eastern sky.

Already, the big merchant ships that lined the docks were being loaded and unloaded by armies of longshoremen, while huge winches lifted cargo nets full of barrels and burlap sacks from deep holds, and carts and wagons piled to the point of collapse with goods from all over the world creaked away into the city.

It made Felix tired just to look at it all. He was ready to drop. Except for a fitful hour’s sleep on the damp floor of the Bunk and Binnacle, the entire night had been spent walking, rowing, fighting, or slogging across swampy ground.

Finally, they nosed the longboat under the prow of a cargo ship and glided towards a little wooden dock that stuck out from a stone bank. Felix reached out to grab a piling and pull them close as the others backed their oars, but just as he touched the post the boat stopped suddenly, and then jerked backward in the water. Felix stumbled and fell on top of the shop wife.

‘Easy,’ he said, pushing himself upright. ‘No need to...’

He paused as he saw the other rowers looking around too.

‘Who did that?’ Gotrek growled, raising his head.

The boat lurched suddenly down at the stern, and the nose shot up. Felix fell again as the others cried out. Something snaked from the water and curled over the side of the boat. A tentacle.

‘Stromfels’ Harbinger!’ screamed the shop wife.

Felix’s heart lurched as he stood again. More tentacles gripped the boat from all sides.

‘Off!’ roared Gotrek.

‘Onto the dock!’ Felix shouted.

He tried to run to the side, but the boat tilted and rose out of the water. He fought for balance, then threw himself towards the dock, now a man’s height below him. He landed hard on his hands and rolled across the planks. A thud and a curse told him that Gotrek had done the same. A few splashes told him that others had fallen short.

He rolled on his back and looked up. Eight huge tentacles were lifting the longboat as the rescued sacrifices wailed and clung to it. Then, with a splintering crack, the curling limbs ripped the boat asunder, and the men and women fell into the water, flailing and screaming.

A blunt grey island poked up directly under the shop wife, and she clung to it. The island had a mouth. It yawned open and the woman tumbled in, shrieking. Teeth like elven shields closed, crushing her. The shrieks ceased.

The others floundered desperately for the dock, but the huge tentacles caught them and raised them high.

‘Gods,’ said Felix, backing away. ‘It’s grown.’

Gotrek grinned maniacally. ‘Good.’ He drew his axe.

The Harbinger of Stromfels breached the waves, water streaming down it in sheets – a shark’s head and body, twice the height of a man, with tiny, useless arms, but eight tree-trunk tentacles ringing its mouth. The axe wound Gotrek had given it earlier was nothing more than a puckered line on one flank. The gem of the golden bracelet looked as small as a nail head in the centre of its broad grey chest. Felix stared in horrified wonder. The thing could tear down a temple of Sigmar.

‘Did you think Stromfels would let the sea be my grave?’ it roared, turning eyes like black glass cannonballs on them as the shop wife’s blood streamed from its mouth.

All over the docks people ran and screamed. Stevedores abandoned their loads. Merchants and sailors fled their ships. The crew of a winch left a pallet of grain sacks swinging in mid-air as they ran and called for the Black Caps.

‘I’ve come for what is mine!’ the Harbinger rumbled, shaking four of its squirming victims at Gotrek as it stuffed a fifth into its maw.

‘Let them go, fish!’ bellowed Gotrek, sprinting to the end of the dock and swiping at one of the extended tentacles. ‘Fight me!’

The beast howled in pain and jerked the tentacle back as Gotrek’s axe bit deep. It glared at the slayer. ‘Very well,’ it said. ‘They will wait.’

It tossed the captives aside and whipped its tentacles at Gotrek, trying to sweep him off the dock.

The slayer rolled between two sturdy pilings, then lashed out at the Harbinger’s limbs from their cover. Felix ran forward to help him, but leapt back again immediately as a tentacle nearly knocked his legs out from under him. He swiped wildly at it as it passed, opening a red groove in it. The monster roared and grabbed for him, but he dodged out of reach.

Gotrek, however, was in the middle of a tentacle hurricane. Some tried to knock him from between the pilings. Some tried to squash him to the dock. Some tried to grab him. He countered them all, making the beast pay for each attack with bloody, trench-deep gashes. It howled at every strike, but kept flailing. Its tentacles were too thick now to be severed with one blow, and to Felix’s horror, the wounds grew closed in the time it took for it to draw back and strike again. It seemed impossible that Gotrek could kill it before it found some way to pry him from his cover.

A tentacle slammed into the dock, smashing through the planks at Gotrek’s feet. It had found a way.

The slayer jumped back. Another tentacle slapped down and more planks caved in. Gotrek fell back again. The Harbinger came on, hauling itself out of the water with its tentacles and stomping forward on huge human legs that shook the dock with each step.

Felix backed towards the stone embankment with the slayer as the tentacles swatted at them, inches away.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘The fish-woman said the bracelet gives it its power,’ Gotrek rasped. ‘If I can take it, I wager I can kill it.’

They reached the embankment and ducked behind a wall of crates.

‘But how will you get past its tentacles?’

The slayer shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

The monster tore down the crates and hurled them away. Gotrek and Felix dove to the ground as they bounced over their heads and smashed to pieces beyond them. People fled screaming. Felix and Gotrek picked themselves up and joined them. The Harbinger lumbered after them on its tentacles like an ape on its knuckles.

A handful of sailors appeared at the rail of the ship to their left, all armed with long guns. They fired. The beast writhed as the bullets tore into its body, but kept on, not turning from its prey.

Gotrek looked up at the ship and paused, almost taking a tentacle in the small of the back. He spun and lopped off the tip of the thing, then started up the ramp to the big cargo dock. ‘Lead it this way.’

There was no time to wonder what Gotrek’s plan was. The Harbinger was pulling itself up the ramp faster than they could run. Felix slashed behind him at a questing tentacle and missed, then had to leap like a scalded cat to avoid being flattened by a barrel it flung after them.

‘Faster, manling,’ said Gotrek.

Felix grunted, he was going faster.

They topped the ramp and stumbled on, weaving through piles of cargo as the towering mutant smashed barrels and crates into the water. Gotrek looked up as they ran under the pallet of grain sacks that dangled high over the dock, and Felix suddenly knew what the slayer intended.

Gotrek looked over his shoulder. The Harbinger was just ducking under the pallet.

Gotrek chuckled evilly. ‘Away, manling!’

The slayer veered left, sprinting for the winch that held the pallet and raising his axe. Felix dived over a pile of rolled carpets and looked back.

He gaped as Gotrek fell flat on his face, inches from the base of the winch. A tentacle jerked the slayer up off the ground by the ankles and raised him high.

‘You think I’m such a fool?’ laughed the monster.

It stepped out from under the dangling pallet, more tentacles wrapping around Gotrek as it lowered him towards its gaping mouth. The slayer wrenched his axe arm free and slashed around, but the limbs healed as fast as he cut them and didn’t let go.

With a grunt, Gotrek threw his axe at the Harbinger of Stromfels’s head. The weapon spun through the air and chunked into its shark-like snout, right between its oval nostrils, and stuck.

The beast bellowed and staggered back, cracking its head on the pallet as it blundered under it.

‘Manling, get the–’ A tentacle clamped over Gotrek’s face.

Felix ran for the winch, raising his sword.

The monster saw him and swayed forward unsteadily, shooting a pair of unoccupied tentacles after him. Felix dove, slashing. His sword sliced the rope, making it sing like a harp string, but a few strands still held.

Felix cursed and crashed to the dock. A tentacle wrapped around his leg, lifting him into the air. He swiped at the rope again as he was dragged back.

The last strands parted.

Swinging upside down in the Harbinger’s grip, Felix saw the pallet of grain sacks drop as the rope zipped through the pulleys. The monster lurched out of the way, but not fast enough. The pallet hit it on the hip, crushing its right leg and knocking it into a pile of crates. It crashed to the dock on its back, tentacles flailing for balance, and flung Felix away.

He slammed down on the lip of the dock and almost bounced off into the water. Only catching a wooden piling in the ribs stopped him from going over. He gasped as all the air shot out of him and lay there glaze-eyed, clinging feebly to the post.

The monster shoved feebly at the grain sacks with its tentacles, trying to free its legs. For a moment, Felix couldn’t see Gotrek amidst all the coiling limbs, but then he appeared, climbing the monster’s broad chest and reaching for the bracelet.

‘No!’ it roared.

The slayer got his thick fingers around the glowing green gem and pulled as tentacles bludgeoned his shoulders and back. Gotrek only tucked his head and pulled harder.

Felix staggered to his feet, clutching his aching ribs, and stumbled forward. He could see the golden wires of the bracelet pulling from the Harbinger’s flesh as Gotrek hauled on it. They stretched and strained, fighting to maintain their grip.

Felix hacked weakly at a flailing tentacle, hoping to divert the monster’s attention. It worked. It swatted him across the dock. Unfortunately, the rest of its tentacles were not distracted.

As Felix sat up, dazed, he saw the suckered limbs wrap around Gotrek’s arms, legs, torso and head, pulling him in eight directions at once. Felix winced. It was like watching someone being torn apart by horses. The slayer was so wrapped in tentacles that all Felix could see of him was one foot, a bit of orange crest, and his left arm, pinned fast against his back.

With a howl of frustration, Stromfels’ Harbinger pushed Gotrek away from its chest like someone trying to peel off an overly affectionate monkey, but Gotrek was still gripping the gem, and as the monster thrust him away, the bracelet tore from its chest. Felix saw the golden strands waving in the air like the legs of an inverted crab as Gotrek held it high.

The Harbinger screamed and convulsed, whipping its tentacles about in a frenzy and slamming Gotrek down on the deck of a nearby ship like a sack of wet clay. The bracelet spun away from Gotrek’s slack fingers and bounced down to the dock as the massive monster pushed up and looked around, the rune axe still sticking from its snout.

‘My heart!’ the Harbinger roared, as it saw the golden bracelet rolling along the planks.

Felix blanched. The cursed bauble was coming right towards him!

The beast surged up and thundered after it. ‘You will pay for this! All will pay!’

Felix scrambled between some crates as the Harbinger loomed over him, but it only snatched up the bracelet in a tentacle and held it high, its black eyes glittering triumphantly.

Felix gripped his sword, preparing to dash out and sever the tip of the tentacle that held the evil thing, but then he saw movement above and behind the monster.

Gotrek was running along the rail of the merchant ship. He leapt and landed on the beast’s broad back, clambering up its triangular fin towards its snout. The harbinger spun around, nearly throwing him off, but the slayer held tight and wrenched his axe free, then hacked down at its skull.

The monster roared and stumbled as the axe struck bone. Its tentacles whipped around, trying to dislodge the slayer. Gotrek struck again, laughing maniacally, and this time shattered the beast’s boney carapace. Blood and ooze soaked his face and beard as he pulled back for another blow.

Felix’s heart pounded with sudden hope. The Harbinger’s wound was not healing! The bracelet was no longer protecting it!

A third stroke and the monster’s tentacles sagged. It weaved on its legs, then toppled to the deck, crushing a pyramid of wine barrels. A pool of red spread out from beneath it as Gotrek rolled off its back and lay panting on the planks. His skin was marked from head to foot with red, saucer-sized rings.

Felix limped out of hiding as the slayer pulled himself to his feet. They looked down at the massive corpse.

‘This time,’ said Felix. ‘I think it’s finished.’

Gotrek shook his head, then turned to scan the dock. ‘There’s still the bracelet.’

Felix stared at him. ‘You’re not going to keep it?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Not after this!’

‘No,’ said Gotrek. He crossed to the tentacle that held the jewel and pulled it free. He held it up. The thing had reverted to its original shape – a coil of woven gold holding a sea-green gem. ‘It needs to be destroyed. Cleansed.’

The slayer turned towards the city. ‘Come on, manling. There has to be a dwarf smith somewhere in this human swamp.’

Three hours later, as a cold wind whipped whitecaps across the harbour, Gotrek and Felix trudged wearily up the gangplank of the Jilfte Bateau, the river boat that would take them up the Reik to Altdorf.

Leaning on the rail at the top of the ramp was their old friend Max Schreiber, smoking a meditative pipe. Beside him was the young seeress, Claudia Pallenberger, still gaunt and weak from their recent adventure on the Sea of Chaos. Max smiled as Felix and the slayer stepped onto the deck.

‘You two look like you visited every taproom in Marienburg,’ he said.

‘Almost,’ answered Felix, too tired to deny his implication.

‘You nearly missed the boat,’ said Claudia.

‘We were busy,’ said Gotrek. ‘Purifying cursed gold.’

Max smirked and blew a stream of smoke into the air. ‘Some euphemism for drinking beer, no doubt,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Felix. ‘Not really.’

He shuffled with Gotrek towards the door to the cabins. He would explain later. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep all the way to Altdorf.

Just as he ducked through the door, raindrops spattered across the deck and the wind pushed hard at his back. He turned and looked to the west. The sky over the Manannspoort Sea was black with clouds. Felix’s chest tightened as they rolled closer. It looked like a terrible storm was about to hit Marienburg.

irixa

Ben Counter

Parchments covered in words of devotion hung everywhere, illuminated prayers from the hands of Terra’s own scribes. They had spent lifetimes hunched over their work, lifetimes scratching out the words of long-dead saints with quills carved from the skulls of penitents, ink distilled from the blood of martyrs. Holiness bled from the parchments, black ink turning red as it dripped onto the floor of the Phalanx’s war archive.

The ritual decontamination of the space station would take years. The evil done to it by the culmination of a daemon’s plan could not simply be washed away. It had to be prayed out of existence, scoured like a wicked man’s sins out of the steel of the Phalanx until it was fit to fly as a flagship of Mankind again. Teams of Imperial Fist Chapter serfs scrubbed the contaminated decks with holy water while Ecclesiarchy priests were suffered to intrude into the Chapter’s world to bless the wargear that had seen the presence of the daemon. But the Phalanx was still a warship, and war did not pause to let its combatants cleanse themselves of the sin that it brought. The Phalanx still had to serve; the Imperial Fists still had to fight.

The parchments waved in the breeze generated by the air recyclers as Captain Lysander entered the war archive. His own wargear, his Terminator armour and the great storm shield currently strapped to his back, gleamed after the day’s maintenance rites. He looked less like a man and more like one of the statues of heroes that lined many of the corridors of the Phalanx, memorials to long-dead Imperial Fists whose acts of heroism had earned them a memorial in the heart of the Chapter. His shaven head looked like it had been chewed up and spat out, but his features had retained the nobility and focus that marked him out as a leader by sight alone.

The novices in the war archive seemed to shrink when they saw him. They were barely out of the earlier stages of physical transformation that would eventually make them Space Marines, and had yet to serve as Scouts or as apprentices to the Chapter’s Techmarines and Librarians. They rarely saw the senior members of the Chapter, let alone stood before one of them as students. For the time being they were still men, not yet members of the Adeptus Astartes, not yet free of the weaknesses that the Emperor had created the Space Marines to overcome.

‘You know who I am,’ said Lysander. ‘And you know why I am here. You are the future of the Chapter. Some of you will one day serve as Imperial Fists, perhaps under me in the First Company. One of you may even wear these laurels as a captain, though I will not let that happen without you first understanding the meaning of war.’

He looked from one face to another. They stood in ranks, facing the tactical display table that took up a good chunk of the war archive’s floorspace. Each novice had been picked as a youth from one of a hundred worlds the Imperial Fists Chaplains had visited, according to the most exacting standards of aggression, fearlessness and physical potential. Now they looked like children compared with the monster that was Lysander.

‘War,’ said Lysander, ‘is sacrifice.’

He waved a hand and the mimetic alloys of the table’s surface reconfigured themselves into a complex topographical map, rising up to form the peaks and valleys of a rugged snarl of mountains. A holo-unit mounted on the ceiling cast hundreds of glowing symbols across the map. Cylinders among the mountain slopes denoted artillery pieces. Airstrips dotted the tops of foothills. Dozens of unit markings swarmed around the valleys and the lower slopes, various colours depicting the many sides of a great, confused battle.

‘What do you see?’ demanded Lysander.

‘I see Valacian Pass,’ said one voice.

Lysander looked at the novice. His jet black hair contrasted with the red of his irises and the greyish tone of his skin. An underhiver, one of a subterranean race of scavengers and gang killers from some Emperor-forsaken hive city’s depths.

‘Novice Apeyo,’ said Lysander. ‘You memorise the Precepts Militant well. But that is not enough. What does Valacian Pass mean to you?’

Apeyo swallowed. ‘Captain Siculus led a force of battle-brothers in evacuating civilians from the Draven Mask rebels. The rebels were engaged in their own war with the Scarlet Moon cultists who…’

‘No,’ said Lysander. ‘The words of the Precepts Militant are well known to me. I have no need of them. I asked you what the battle means.’

Lysander was met with silence that seemed to go on forever until one novice cleared his throat.

‘Novice Arnobius, you alone wish to speak?’ said Lysander.

Arnobius wore the blue-trimmed habit of the Chapter’s Librarium, its hood covering his shaven scalp and the patches of regrafted skin on his face. Behind the scarred but unassuming face burned a mind that might – just might – have the strength to serve as a battle-psyker in the Imperial Fist ranks.

‘Siculus,’ began Arnobius, ‘had a choice.’

‘Enemy air!’ called out Scout-Sergeant Noctis over the vox-channel, and a split second later Captain Siculus heard the scream of the engines overhead.

Ahead was the vast sweep of Valacian Pass, a deep valley cutting through the red stone mountains. From Siculus’s vantage point in the hatch of his Damocles command vehicle, he could see the great train of refugees choking the entrance to the pass, marshalled by priests of the Ecclesiarchy crying out prayers and appeals for calm. Tens of thousands of them were making the march through the pass to the landing fields on the other side, where they could be evacuated from this world and from the rebel forces encroaching on its cities.

They were Ministorum acolytes and Mechanicus fabricators, Administratum clerks, medicae surgeons and orderlies, the law-scribes of the Arbites and guards from the prisons. The Adept class of Key Thol, the latest city to find itself in the path of the Draven Mask.

The people heard the engines, too. They knew what they meant. Siculus could see the panic running through them.

‘Cover!’ shouted Siculus into the vox. ‘Noctis, you are Squad Iason’s eyes!’

The craft screaming down the valley was shaped like a dagger, a cockpit blistering up from the tip of its blade. Siculus glimpsed the face of the pilot, a blank, chromed mask with a single eye drilled into it, as the fighter aimed its nose down the valley and sprayed fire from the guns mounted on its swept-back wings.

A chain of impacts rippled across the valley sides, spiralling down through the massed civilians. Bodies were thrown in the air, screams just audible over the engines as the fighter ripped overhead.

Siculus swung down into the interior of the Damocles. The Damocles was based on the Rhino APC, giving up most of its passenger capacity for boosted comms equipment that let the Imperial Fists force keep vox-contact through the interference caused by the mountainous terrain. Tactical readouts told Siculus that his force was scattering into cover. He had Scout Squad Noctis and the Devastator Squad of Sergeant Iason, along with his own command squad now sheltering in the rocky debris at the foot of the valley wall.

‘It’s a Red Fang,’ said Techmarine Hamoskon. The Techmarine was crammed into the back of the Damocles where there was barely room for the servo-arms folded up around his body. ‘It’ll cut those people to ribbons.’

‘Iason!’ ordered Siculus. ‘Take it down!’

The sound of gunfire hammered closer. A lance of light spitted the Damocles, shearing through between Hamoskon and Siculus. Siculus threw himself backwards as the Damocles was thrown into the air and he felt the shockwave slam into him, driving the inside of the side hatch into the back of his head.

He was out for a moment. His senses swam back into focus and he was being dragged from the burning wreckage by Hamoskon, the Techmarine using his servo-arms to haul the captain behind him.

Siculus rolled to his feet. He went through the battle-drills in his mind, ticking off his limbs and senses. He was not badly hurt and could fight on. The rite completed, Siculus turned his attention to his own squad, who were running from cover to take him to shelter.

They were his closest brothers, those who had fought at his side since he had been able to call himself an Imperial Fist. One man from each squad he had fought in now wore the red helmet of Siculus’s company, and made up his own honour guard.

Brother Achaikos pulled Siculus into cover. ‘It’s coming back for another pass.’

‘Open fire!’ replied Siculus. ‘Keep his eyes off Iason!’

‘Aye, my captain!’ replied Achaikos. He aimed his bolter at the sky and the other six brothers of the command squad did the same, stitching rapid bolter fire up at the silvery dart now wheeling back around to point down the valley.

Siculus could see Scout-Sergeant Noctis, kneeling out of cover watching the enemy fighter through his magnoculars. The sun glinted off the bionic eye of Sergeant Iason as he took the lascannon from the battle-brother beside him.

He was going to take the shot himself. Arrogance, maybe, or simply the knowledge that Iason was the best shot in the company. It mattered not in that moment as long as the shot was true.

More fire spat down from the sky. It blew shards of stone from the valley sides. The civilians were wheeling now, a melee without head or tail, rushing in every direction at once trying to find a way out from the valley that wasn’t there. People were dying there, blown apart by the fire or crushed underfoot. People who were Siculus’s responsibility.

The lascannon fired. A pulse of glittering crimson sliced one of the fighter’s wings off. The fighter kept its course for half a second and then one side dropped, throwing it into a spin that arrowed off-course.

It slammed into the side of the valley in a bloom of red-black smoke. Shards of stone fell in a dark hail over the panicking people. The sound of the impact boomed back and forth across the mountains, shaking snow from the highest peaks.

‘It will not be alone,’ said Siculus. ‘The Draven Mask have the skies of this world, but they have plenty on the ground, too. Noctis! My brothers! Advance, and keep your eyes high!’

Siculus ran past the wreckage of the Damocles towards the edge of the crowd. ‘Citizens!’ he shouted. ‘Listen! The enemy wishes you dead, but it will not find you here! The Emperor is with you, for we are the Emperor’s hand, and we will deliver you! Carry the wounded and leave the dead, obey your priests, and follow us through this valley! We are the Imperial Fists, they who stood at the battlements of Terra and dared the Enemy to attack, and we will not let you down! On this you have my word!’

Perhaps it was Siculus’s words that had an effect, or perhaps the Ministorum preachers got the majority of the crowd back under control. The heaving of the crowd subsided as the people began to move again down the valley, stepping around the heaps of broken bodies and smouldering craters. Siculus could hear the weeping and the wailing of those who had seen their loved ones die, and the crying-out of the wounded. Some were carried on the shoulders of companions; others dragged themselves along or limped in lopsided groups, leaning on one another for support.

‘I have eyes on,’ came a vox from Scout-Sergeant Noctis. His squad was moving rapidly down the valley, scrambling through the rocks that lined the valley side. Siculus scanned along the slope and saw the dark dots swarming there – light infantry, skilled and fearless, at home in the unforgiving terrain of the mountains. They were typical of the Draven Mask. They had infested this place, and now the call had come for them to crawl out from their holes and feast on the weak who limped past beneath them.

‘Noctis, hold and pin them down! Iason, move into position! My brothers, with me!’

‘Wait,’ voxed Noctis. ‘North-west, the second peak. I see him.’

Siculus looked to the north-west. There a shattered peak, like a broken fang, rose among the great flinty slabs of the range. Some ancient cataclysm had broken off its pinnacle and sent deep fissures running down its height.

There, among the broken, scorched rock, stood a coven of figures, their banners and cloaks waving in the cold wind. The augmented vision of a Space Marine could pick them out in every detail.

Seven of them stood there. Six were men, or at least had once been men. They wore plate armour looted from the tombs of this planet, forged into delicate scrollwork now bolted to bulging, mutated muscle. The weapons they bore had been taken from tombs and museums, blades, shields and lances from an empire that had died thousands of years before. Their faces were sagging knots of ragged skin and every one had put out his eyes, the raw, bleeding sockets the badges of their faith. For they had gouged them out at the order of the seventh.

The seventh was the Eternal Guide, the Light in the Darkness, Lord of the Beatifying Fire, Captain Cohpran Vaa’eigoloth of the Emperor’s Children.

He wore a cloak of caged flame, roiling around his shoulders and surrounding him in a heat haze. His armour was that of a Space Marine in bright polished purple, gilded panels bearing prayers to his own power and beauty. One shoulder panel took the form of a bird’s wing, its feathers picked out in pearls and rubies. Emeralds clustered on his chest in the shape of a planet surrounded by eight stars. His helmet was a featureless gold cowl save for the eyeslits, and on its brow sat a crown of silver dripping with gemstones of every colour. In one hand he carried the Corruptor Prince, a daemon bound into the shape of a staff Vaa’eigoloth had taken from the cooling body of Governor Calx of the Subdamnas Sector. In the other he carried a shield he had made from Autarch Ysandrion of Deldrenath Craftworld. The Autarch was still alive and his face, set into the puzzle of body parts making up the shield’s front, wept with pain.

Siculus froze. A Space Marine should never have allowed events to shock him out of his thoughts, but the sudden appearance of the Traitor Legion captain had thrown him. For a moment his mind was full of nothing but the vision of Vaa’eigoloth. This was the Emperor’s Children captain who had looted a thousand relics of the Emperor’s life and assembled them into a vessel for the daemon that still rampaged through the Ghoul Stars. He had raised a vast army of rebels, mutants and pirate vermin, solely to march them into a volcano so he could hear the laughter of his god as they burned. His armour had been forged in a pile of burning pilgrims and quenched in the tears of their orphans.

Siculus tore his eyes away.

‘We can take him,’ said Achaikos beside him. ‘He has the Six Furies with him but we are a match for them, if we move now and falter not.’

Squad Iason had seen the newcomer too. Already their heavy weapons were turning towards the shattered peak.

‘Captain?’ voxed Iason. ‘Your orders?

‘Hold,’ said Siculus.

‘If we take him down now, whatever plan he has for this world will not come to pass.’

‘And we will abandon these people,’ replied Siculus. ‘A planet’s worth of the faithful. Not to mention that Vaa’eigoloth may well be here solely to divert us from our mission.’

‘It matters not,’ said Achaikos. ‘The mission will be forgotten if we bring back his head.’

‘I agree,’ voxed Sergeant Iason. ‘It is clear to me on which path the greatest glory lies.’

Siculus paused. He saw himself carrying Vaa’eigoloth’s scorched helm back to the Phalanx and seeing it mounted as a trophy of war. And he saw the valley ahead of him choked with the refugees’ bodies.

‘I care nothing for glory,’ replied Siculus. ‘Iason, advance and engage at range. Noctis, support us.’ He turned to Achaikos and the other Imperial Fists of his command squad. ‘You are with me,’ he said. ‘Down the valley. Get these people to safety. Those are my orders.’

The Imperial Fists force followed the mass of refugees down the valley, Iason’s guns already hammering fire into the positions of the hidden Draven Mask rebels. Siculus looked back, only once, towards the shattered peak.

Vaa’eigoloth was turning away, perhaps in disappointment, perhaps in satisfaction. And Siculus could not help but wonder if, beneath that faceless helm, there was a smile.

‘A choice,’ said Captain Lysander. He looked between the faces of the novices. They were waiting for the object of the lesson, for Lysander to explain to them what they should have learned. ‘Arnobius?’

‘He was wrong,’ said Arnobius.

‘Explain, novice.’

‘Siculus had the chance to eliminate an enemy of Mankind. By the time the Imperium brought Vaa’eigoloth to battle he had gone between half a dozen more worlds and done countless evils on them all. All that could have been avoided if Siculus had killed him at Valacian Pass.’

‘I see,’ said Lysander. ‘Speak up, novices. Those who cannot express their own opinion in my presence will never dare walk into the guns of the enemy. Speak up.’

‘I disagree,’ said a novice near the back of the room. Novice Kogen was from a world of scattered islands and vicious sea monsters, where bronzed men fought kraken from the shores under two blazing suns. His skin was the colour of copper and tiny pebbles had been inserted under his brow and temples, framing his face in a scarified pattern. ‘Siculus’s mission was clear and he followed it through to the end.’

‘The loss of the adepts would have been regrettable,’ said Arnobius, ‘but that would mean nothing compared to the elimination of Vaa’eigoloth.’

‘But without the faith and trust of the Imperium’s people,’ replied Kogen, ‘the Imperial Fists can do nothing. If they cannot live in hope that we can deliver them, they will be without faith, and the enemy has his roots in the ranks of the faithless.’

‘There is no statue of Siculus among the heroes on the Phalanx,’ countered Apeyo. ‘With a kill like Vaa’eigoloth he would surely be commemorated as a hero. He would have brought great glory to the Chapter!’

‘And what more evil could the heralds of Chaos have done with a population devoid of hope and faith?’ said Kogen. ‘More than one Champion of the Warp could ever do, I would wager.’

‘I would take you up on that wager, Kogen!’ snapped Apeyo.

Lysander held up a hand. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘These were the same voices that Siculus heard in his head as he wrestled with that decision.’

‘Then what is the answer?’ said Apeyo. ‘Was Siculus right or wrong?’

Lysander smiled. He did not do this very often, especially in the presence of novices, and the unease that passed among them showed they were not sure what to make of it. ‘That question,’ he said, ‘will be answered with another.’

Lysander adjusted the map table’s readout. Valacian Pass and its array of tactical markers disappeared. A holo appeared above it, hovering in the air. It was a banner bearing the image of an iron fist against a pair of crossed lightning bolts. Burning xenos skulls were embroidered around the base of the fist, and above it was the symbol of a planetary system with seven planets. The banner pole was topped with an enormous alien skull, taken from a species with a large brain case and complicated mandibles. One of its eye sockets was burned out by a plasma blast and the skull was scrimshawed with hundreds of names.

‘What,’ asked Lysander, ‘do you see?’

For an uncomfortable moment, no novice answered.

‘The Standard of the Seventh,’ said Arnobius at last.

‘Where is it now?’ said Lysander.

‘The Chapel of Hamander.’

‘Why?’

It was another novice, Dacio, who answered. His pallid skin and overlarge eyes were marks of his origin, on a long-night world where the population had evolved to a near-abhuman strain. ‘It was retired as a relic,’ said Dacio. ‘It is brought out only when the whole Seventh is assembled to fight as one, and when its captain deems it fitting.’

‘Partly true, Novice Dacio,’ said Lysander. ‘But not completely. A more accurate answer would be that this standard hangs in the Chapel because of Manufactorum Sigma. I trust that you have read of it, my novices. I am not here to educate you on what happened there. I wish to find out if you understand what Manufactorum Sigma truly means when it comes to leadership. To the status of an Imperial Fist. To your futures in the Chapter.’

Lysander looked among the novices. They were uncertain. Their lessons until now had not been easy, but they had been simple – wargear rites, tactics, history, rote learning and muscle memory. Now they were being asked to think.

Kogen spoke.

‘Hamander had a choice to make, too,’ he said.

The Granite Sprawl was dying all around, and the Imperial Fists, like everything living there, were bleeding out of it. They were a part of its death throes – the last out, of course. The Imperial Guard had already fled on their seaborne transports and troop landers. The Naval airfields had been evacuated shortly before that. The Imperial Fists were the last out. When the last of them embarked on the Thunderhawk gunships waiting to take them back to orbit, there would be no humans in the Granite Sprawl.

The industrial city was a great dark stain across half a continent, its manufactoria standing as titanic cathedrals to the Imperial hunger for munitions and war machines. Though Captain Hamander had no love for this bleak and inhuman place, it wrenched at him to know it would be taken by the xenos.

Manufactorum Sigma had been the last glimmer of the front line. Now it was burning. The alien artillery had thrown beams of crimson light in through windows of shattered stained glass and set light to the very steel of its girders. The flames inside cast strange shadows from the blazing skeleton of the immense building.

‘Count off, brothers! We cannot wait for you!’ Hamander was in command of two companies’ worth of the Imperial Fists – the entirety of the Seventh and elements of the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth. His own captaincy of the Seventh made him the ranking officer but this was an army that could not be led by one man. Each unit operated independently in the withdrawal, brother watching over brother.

The acknowledgement runes flickered against his retinas. Seventeen squads of Imperial Fists were already embarked. The Techmarines and their tech-novices were still on the ground, overseeing the launch of the strikeforce’s eight Thunderhawks.

‘We are not fleeing,’ voxed Hamander as he reached the rear ramp of his command Thunderhawk, the gunship painted in the gold and black of his company. ‘We will return and rain fire on this place! When the xenos are celebrating chasing us off, then we will drop into the heart of them and scatter them in the confusion of dread!’

Hamander looked back at the manufactorum. The xenos were crawling through it. Light shimmered, fractured images shattering and reforming – a form of advanced force field that addled the eye and made them all but impossible to shoot down at range. The fire did not bother them, though the building was falling down around them. No doubt they had some protection from that, too.

Thousands of them were advancing on a front wider than the Imperial commanders had ever imagined they would. Somehow, through cunning or witchcraft, the aliens had smuggled whole armies into the Granite Sprawl and were rolling across those areas they did not already control. They would take it in its entirety, much of it intact, as the Imperium fled before them.

And then the Imperial Fists would return. Perhaps in hours, perhaps days. Whenever the xenos were most vulnerable. They would tear the heart out of the xenos command. All they needed was a good target.

They would return. Hamander would swear it as soon as he was clear, and have his battle-brothers witness the oath.

‘We’re taking fire!’ came a vox from Techmarine Machaon. ‘Evading now!’

Hamander looked back through the closing ramp of his Thunderhawk. Sprays of las-fire were spattering up from the burning manufactorum, and a bolt punched through the tail of the Thunderhawk Blood Star. Hamander’s own craft, the Hymn to Dorn, lifted off, the final Thunderhawk to do so, and the Imperial Fists army was in the air.

‘The Star is wounded but aloft,’ voxed Machaon. ‘Devlan Wrath is hit. She’s going down.’

Hamander ran to the gun port and saw the Devlan Wrath tipping to one side, shedding a hail of shrapnel from a destroyed engine. It dropped into a flat spin and crashed through a nest of antennae on the roof of Manufactorum Sigma.

‘That’s Squad Talthybius,’ said Hamander.

‘They have the standard,’ voxed Machaon in reply. ‘We must return.’

‘No,’ came a vox from Assault-Sergeant Lapithos. ‘Our orders are to withdraw. There is no gain in sending more battle-brothers to die down there.’

Sergeant Talthybius’s icon was still illuminated against Hamander’s retinal display, but he was gone from the vox-net. ‘Talthybius is alive,’ said Hamander.

‘Then avenge him,’ said Lapithos. ‘Do not join him.’

‘And let the standard of the Seventh Company fall into xenos hands?’ retorted Machaon. ‘I will not return to the Phalanx with my head hung low, knowing I let aliens desecrate the symbol of our honour! Knowing I did nothing!’

‘And how many of your brothers’ lives,’ said Lapithos, ‘will you spend to say you did something?’

‘Silence!’ ordered Hamander. ‘The choice is mine alone.’

‘I will go with you,’ said Machaon. ‘Down there, to the cauldron of fire. I will go.’

‘You will stay with the fleet and get us off this world,’ replied Hamander.

‘Do not do this,’ said Lapithos. ‘Losing the standard is a lesser disgrace than throwing your battle-brothers’ lives away for nothing. You can atone for the one, but not the other. Let the xenos have it and return to avenge Talthybius.’

‘He yet lives,’ said Machaon. ‘He fights alone, his brothers faltering when they should bring all rage and fury to the enemy!’

‘I called for silence! I am your captain!’ Hamander gripped the edge of the gun port as he looked down at Manufactorum Sigma. He could just see the crash site of the Devlan Wrath, a tangle of wreckage that had plunged through the roof of the manufactorum and lodged in its upper floors. Sleek alien grav-tanks were emerging from the burning shell of the building, sweeping round to converge on the site.

‘I need twenty brothers,’ said Hamander. He looked back to the Imperial Fists in his own Thunderhawk – the battle-brothers of Squad Sartan. They were covered in soot and mud from the gruelling journey through the burning manufactorum, and now he was asking them to go back there.

‘We go not for a chance of victory,’ he said to them, ‘but for the future. For the brothers who will take inspiration from our actions this day. It is much that I ask.’

‘Not too much,’ replied Sergeant Sartan. Sartan had lost his jaw in action two decades before and his voice was partially artificial, a metallic grating sound that suited him perfectly. ‘And any of my squad who will not stand beside you will have to face me in the afterlife.’

‘Assault Squad Martez are with me,’ said Machaon. ‘Martez has requested he join you.’

‘Then we are ready,’ said Hamander. ‘Take the Hymn down. Machaon, bring the Golden Dagger down with us.’

‘I cannot countermand your order,’ voxed Lapithos. ‘But I can ask you, not as an Imperial Fist, but as a friend. Good lives are not worth this gesture. Your life is not worth it.’

‘Recover my body, Lapithos,’ replied Hamander. ‘If it clutches not the standard of the Seventh in its fist, then do not mourn me too long.’

The two Thunderhawks, the Hymn to Dorn and the Golden Dagger, broke away from the ascending Imperial Fists gunship fleet and weaved through the fire streaking up at them. They swooped down low into the streets in front of Manufactorum Sigma, cutting off the sight lines to the alien artillery tanks gathered around the manufactorum’s main gates. Those streets were half-ruined tumbles of fallen debris with the occasional corpse dotted around. Skirmishes had washed back and forth across the Granite Sprawl before the xenos armies had pushed forward in strength, like the overture to a bloody play. Perhaps that was what the aliens thought this was – a play, a work of art, the battlefield their canvas. Some said that war was a dance to them, and that whether they lived or died mattered less than the artistry with which they made their steps.

The Hymn to Dorn slewed around, landing engines kicking skirls of dust up from the streets below. The main engines howled and the gunship shot forwards, covering the open ground before the manufactorum before the enemy tanks could get it in their sights.

Hamander hung on as the gunship roared up through the main gateway of the manufactorum, ruddy gloom closing in as it passed into the burning building. Alarms were sounding as the gunship wove between rafters and fallen pillars. Fire was everywhere, rushing across the ceiling and pooling in great lakes around the factory floor. Enormous banks of machinery broke the surface like islands.

The Golden Dagger shrieked by into the ceiling, clipping a wing against a pillar and spinning out of control. It smashed through the rafters and disappeared in a shower of debris.

‘Damn it, Machaon!’ yelled Hamander.

The Hymn rose up through a great hole torn in the ceiling. The upper levels were a warren of offices, side chapels and adepts’ quarters, and everything was on fire. The Thunderhawk’s rear ramp opened up and superheated air slammed against Hamander as he leapt out, drawing his power axe from the scabbard along his back.

His lungs burned, even through the filters of his power armour’s helmet. Without the auto-senses of his eyepieces and his ocular augmentations, he would have been blinded by the smoke. The fire was white blooms against the monochrome chaos, his vision sacrificing colour to pick out movement.

Through the fire stumbled the battle-brothers of Squad Martez. Hamander saw Techmarine Machaon among them, obvious by the silhouette of his bulky forgemaster’s armour and servo-arm.

‘Machaon!’ yelled Hamander. ‘You were to drop off your brothers and withdraw!’

‘The Golden Dagger has fallen,’ replied Machaon. ‘Without my steed, I cannot ride! And so fate has decreed I must fight with you!’

‘Strange fortune that fate compels you to defy me.’

‘We can have an open discussion of it back on the Phalanx,’ said Machaon.

Both squads were deployed. Sergeant Martez was rallying his brothers, who while battered and scorched looked like they had made it into the manufactorum’s upper floors at full strength. Hamander saw the last of Squad Sartan jumping from the Hymn to Dorn.

‘Get clear!’ Hamander voxed to the pilot. ‘Join the fleet!’

The Hymn could do nothing here, with no lines of sight to bring its guns to bear. It rose up through the hole in the manufactorum roof, even as the rest of the Thunderhawks passed overhead, silvery sparks reaching the upper atmposphere.

Gunfire spattered from their flank, shredding through carved wood partitions and mounds of flaming ledgers. A missile streaked past, bursting in a spray of fire against a wall.

‘Scatter and advance!’ yelled Hamander. ‘Keep eyes on all sectors!’

‘Do they seek us, or Talthybius?’ voxed Sergeant Sartan.

‘We will know soon enough,’ replied Hamander.

He saw one of the aliens through the flames. It wore close-fitting armour of curved plates, coloured in reds and oranges with a red helmet inset with triangular green eyes. It carried a weapon of unmistakably alien design, a fat tapering barrel hooked up to an ovoid power pack wrapped around with thick cables and circuitry. A gemstone was set in its chestplate. These aliens all had such gemstones displayed on their armour.

‘Fire Dragons,’ growled Sergeant Martez.

Imperial Fists were firing in all directions, aliens running at them through the flames, firing bursts of crimson power. Up close, here in this close-quarters firestorm, they were deadly. One of Squad Sartan – Brother Closs – fell as a blast melted right through his armour and out through his back, leaving a smoking hole straight through him.

Hamander dived through a burning wall, wood splintering under him, and he crashed into the alien who was aiming a shot behind it. His weight drove the alien to its knees and Hamander hacked down with his axe, slicing off one of the alien’s arms.

With his free hand he grabbed the alien by the faceplate, one thumb crunching through its eyepiece. He wrenched the helmet off its head, seals and cables popping as it came away.

The aliens were like parodies of humans. Long, thin faces and large eyes, like those of some feline hunter which some thought beautiful. In the language of the Imperium they were called eldar, but to Hamander, they barely deserved a name at all. He pinned the eldar to the floor with the butt of his axe and wrapped his hand around its face, snapping its neck with a flick of his wrist.

‘I see him!’ came a vox from one of Squad Martez. ‘Talthybius! I see him! To our west!’

Martez jumped up from the alien’s body. The Imperial Fists were already charging through the wreckage, bolter fire streaking through the ruination littered with the corpses of dead xenos. Two Space Marines lay there too, the fusion weapons of the Fire Dragon eldar having melted through their armour and cooked the flesh inside.

Hamander could see Talthybius now. He held the standard of the Seventh as high as he could, but he was wounded, almost lying on his back as he fired seemingly at random around him.

But it was not random. He was surrounded. Aliens darted from the flames, running almost too fast to see, lashing at Talthybius with silver blades. They moved with the spring of acrobats, their armour the colour of bone, and their tall masks were fringed with flowing red hair.

Talthybius shot one down, sending it tumbling into the fire. But a dozen wounds were opened up in his armour. Members of his squad lay all around him, sliced open, armoured limbs and heads cut off and burning.

Hamander had seen battle-brothers fall in combat before, but it seemed that each time, it got worse. Rogal Dorn had taught the first Imperial Fists to take that anger and focus it, only unleashing it when the only tactical option left was relentless, headlong attack.

The battle-brothers of Squads Sartan and Martez were doing that now, sprinting through the flames to reach the enemy. Blades clashed on ceramite. Bolter shells chewed through the burning walls. Aliens were thrown to the ground and a ceramite boot crunched down onto the neck of one of them. Sergeant Martez lanced one through the belly with his power sword.

Machaon walked calmly, firing bursts of rounds from the storm bolter he had built himself in the forges of the Phalanx. Eldar ran at him and tumbled to the floor, blown open by the blessed ammunition.

Hamander ran through the bedlam. He slid to the ground beside Talthybius. The sergeant was one of the biggest men in his command, and in all likelihood would have represented the Chapter at the next Feast of Blades. Now he was cut low. One wound had opened his face from forehead to lip. Another had ripped open his abdomen and his entrails glistened in the flame.

Talthybius looked around, face full of the pain he was holding back.

‘No,’ he said.

‘We are with you, brother,’ said Hamander. ‘We stand together.’

‘No, captain!’ said Talthybius. ‘You should have fled! You should have abandoned us! Only death remains for you here!’

‘Not so, Talthybius. No brother is given up for dead when he and a single Imperial Fist yet live.’

‘Damn it, Hamander! How many lives did you give up to these aliens, so you could die beside me?’

‘They will not take you, brother, and they will not take the standard.’

‘The standard? You throw away your lives for this? For a handful of silk? The battles you could have won, Hamander! The tides you could have turned! And now they are all lost, for you forsook them all for this gesture.’

The Imperial Fists formed up around Talthybius and Hamander. The eldar were disappearing, flipping away through the flames, evading the bolter fire that rattled after them.

‘We will get you out of here,’ said Hamander. ‘You and the standard. And you will be hailed as a hero before your brothers.’

‘I am dead,’ said Talthybius. ‘Leave me. Take the standard. Die with it in your hand.’

Hamander hauled Talthybius to his feet and dragged him behind him. ‘Brothers,’ he voxed. ‘Find a way down. Find us a landing site!’

The whole manufactorum seemed to shudder. A beam of scarlet light ripped up through the floor, bathing everything in a momentary flare of bright red.

When it died down, there was a hole in front of Hamander where a couple of his Imperial Fists had stood. They were gone, vaporised.

On a column of flame and shuddering haze rose a beast three times the height of a man, seemingly clad in molten armour that hissed and spat as it burned. It wore a crown of twisted bone and one of its hands was a bloody steel gauntlet, shedding an endless torrent of gore. In its other it carried an enormous sword, glowing with power that issued from the alien runes inscribed on its blade.

The terrible shrieking that issued from it was almost deafening.

‘Their god!’ yelled Techmarine Machaon over the noise. ‘Summoned to war! Witchcraft, brothers! Alien witchcraft!’

The Imperial Fists had recovered quickly from the shock of the demigod’s appearance. Bolter fire smacked into its molten hide, seemingly making no impact at all. It turned its burning green eyes from one Space Marine to the next, and if Hamander could read anything from its inhuman face it was scorn and anger.

‘You shall not take the standard!’ yelled Hamander, barely able to hear his own voice. ‘Not while one yet lives!’

The demigod thrust its sword down and Hamander rolled to the side, catching the end of its blade under the head of his power axe. Sparks flew as the axe’s power field fought against the energy of the sword. The demigod was strong, monstrously so, and Hamander felt himself being forced back.

‘When your kind have been forgotten,’ snarled Hamander, ‘they will remember us! They will remember this, when all who knew of you are rumours and dust!’

More aliens were storming into the upper floors. Some had chainblades and heavier armour, plated emerald green. Others, in black and purple, walked slowly through the fires to bring their rocket launchers to bear. The Imperial Fists who remained yelled their war-cries and ran into the fray, bolter fire streaking everywhere.

The demigod lunged forwards and threw Hamander onto his back. Its blade came down like a guillotine, reflecting the flames and the sight of his brothers dying.

‘You have seen,’ said Lysander, ‘the Standard of the Seventh. You have heard the name of Captain Hamander of the Seventh Company, and looked on his image, carved in granite, looking down as you knelt in his chapel. What was it worth to put that standard in such a place of honour? To put Hamander’s name among those of our greatest heroes? If you knew you could buy that for yourselves, for the honour of your Chapter and the glory of your Primarch, how much would you spend to get it?’

None of the novices answered.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘You would charge into hell if I demanded it. You would grapple with the alien and lock horns with the daemon. Yet you will not answer a mere question? Apeyo! How much?’

‘The life of any battle-brother who would stand with me,’ replied Apeyo. ‘If they wished to put themselves on the line for such glory, I would not hinder them.’

‘And your own life?’ said Lysander.

‘Of course,’ said Apeyo. ‘My life for the glory of Dorn.’

‘Your life,’ said Lysander. ‘A life selected from a pool of millions of supplicants. Crafted in the image of Dorn, some say crafted from the very flesh of the Emperor Himself. Armed with the best battlegear. Transported on the best spacecraft. The recipient of resources that the Imperium can ill afford to muster, a life owed to the labour of a trillion men to make the existence of the Space Marines possible. This you would spend to purchase something as meaningless as glory?’

‘I do not believe that glory is meaningless, captain,’ replied Apeyo.

‘But compared to the life of an Imperial Fist?’ said Lysander. ‘How much weight does glory have, placed on the balance beside such a life?’ He turned to the other novices. ‘Answers!’ he barked.

‘None,’ said Kogen.

‘Then Hamander was wrong?’ said Lysander.

‘Yes, he was.’

‘This hero before whose statue you have knelt? This man whose battles and lessons have been taught to every novice since his death? He was wrong?’

Kogen could not answer. Lysander walked up to him, looming down over the novice.

‘Tell me,’ said Lysander, ‘that Captain Hamander made the wrong choice. Before me, before your brothers, tell me that.’

Kogen stayed silent. His eyes flickered to the faces of the novices beside him.

‘And if you cannot say it,’ continued Lysander, ‘then say that, too.’

‘I cannot, captain,’ said Kogen.

‘Good,’ said Lysander. ‘The force returned some days later to find the two survivors of the mission to recover the standard. Hamander was not one of them. He died at Manufactorum Sigma. Were it not for his actions, the standard would surely have been lost and a great shame brought upon the Imperial Fists. And yet, twenty Space Marines died for this. For silk and stitching.’

Lysander dismissed the holo-projection with a wave of his hand and the war archive reverted to its normal half-gloom. He walked between the rows of novices – they were already beginning the augmentation of their skeletal and muscular systems, but even so he towered over them. They did not shy away from him. That was good. The cowardice of a normal man was being hammered out of them. A decent proportion of them would receive the armour of a Scout, and of those, many would take on the armour of a full battle-brother. They were not ready yet, of course. Perhaps they never would be, until they wore the black fist of the Chapter in anger before the enemy.

‘One final question,’ he said. He took from an ammo pouch at his waist a single bolter shell. It was inscribed with the initials ‘IRIXA’, inlaid with gold filigree and studded with emeralds. It had been drilled and threaded onto a thin chain, to be worn as a talisman. ‘What do you see?’

He held the bolter shell up. The novices watched but there was no recognition on their faces.

‘Imperator Rex In Xanatar Aeternam,’ said Lysander. ‘What do those words mean to you?’

‘Xanatar is a world on the Eastern Rim,’ said Novice Lukra, a short, stocky lad with huge meaty hands and a square reddish face.

‘And what of Xanatar?’ asked Lysander.

‘I know no more about it, captain,’ said Lukra. ‘Such is my shame.’

‘You want me to tell you what punishment you are to administer to yourself for your ignorance,’ said Lysander, ‘and then explain to all of you what you do not know. There will be no session in the nerve-glove, Novice Lukra. None of you have been told of Xanatar. That is because this bolter shell was one of a hundred created in the forges of the Phalanx for Chaplain Belisar four hundred years ago. If you know of Belisar it is only as one of thousands of names on the rolls of honour, perhaps an inscription on the wall of the Reclusiam. He is not commemorated as a hero here, or recorded as a strategist in our histories. None teach of him at all, save I. I show you this because once, like Siculus and Hamander, Belisar had to make a choice.’

The storms of Xanatar had killed civilisations before, rising up from the flint deserts in blizzards of razor-sharp stone. Every few centuries they would rise, occasionally striking a few decades apart or waiting for millennia, but they always returned and they always wiped out whatever hopeful young culture had sprung up on the rich volcanic slopes of the lava rivers.

They had stripped the Imperial colony of Port Xan of everything above ground. Of those caught in the open, not even bones remained. It had happened three weeks ago and the flurries of stone were still lashing against the chewed foundations. The small population were sheltering in the hazard bunkers underground, or huddled in twos and threes in the basements and storage cellars where they had fled to when the sky first turned dark.

Through the brown-black blur of the storm, the dark red glow of the nearest lava river cast a blood-coloured light. It was a tributary of one of the greater volcanic flows. Xanatar’s volcanoes placed a constantly renewed layer of nutrient minerals on the planet’s surface, making it extremely fertile and a coveted location for conversion by the Administratum into an agri-world to feed the young worlds of the Eastern Rim. And it would be a hugely productive world again, until the next storm came.

Chaplain Belisar walked against the storm, the weight of his Terminator armour alone keeping him on his feet. The black paint on its leading surfaces had been scraped off by the hail of flint, revealing the dull gunmetal of the ceramite underneath. The auto-senses built into the skull-faced helmet struggled to make anything of the storm save for a seething darkness and the deep red ribbon of the lava river up ahead.

Belisar forced his eyes to focus and could just see the shattered foundations of Port Xan nearby. He was in the middle of the settlement, what remained of it. The remains of the tallest structure barely came up to his shin. He tried to find movement in the darkness that was not a part of the storm’s chaos.

A shadow moved against a shadow. Belisar drew his storm bolter, bracing his wrist to hold its twin barrels level against the stone wind.

‘Ill met,’ said Belisar on a broad-channel vox-broadcast. ‘But met as a brother, nonetheless.’

From the darkness coalesced the shape of a Space Marine. In the light his Terminator armour would have been an iridescent black, like the carapace of a beetle. The emblem of a golden fist gripping a hammer was inscribed on his chestplate and the same symbol was sculpted in deep relief on one shoulder pad. Mounted in the Space Marine’s golden helmet were a pair of similarly coloured sensor lenses in which Belisar could see his own reflection. On one knee guard was a campaign badge depicting a storm cloud and lightning bolt, demonstrating that this battle-brother had fought in the crusades among the Imperium’s eastern reaches over the last decade.

‘Chaplain,’ said the Space Marine. The vox-net was distorted but audible. ‘I guessed that they would send you.’

‘At the Feast of Blades when we last met,’ said Belisar, ‘you defeated me and won the laurels for your Chapter. You conducted yourself as an honourable brother in all things. That is why I know you are not what some say you are.’

‘And what,’ came the reply, ‘do they say of us?’

‘That you are traitors,’ replied Belisar. ‘But I know that you are no traitor, Tek’Shal.’

Tek’Shal walked a few paces closer. His marks of rank were visible now. He had a veteran sergeant’s chevrons on the body of the boltgun hanging at his side. Acts of leadership were commemorated by the gilded crux terminatus and winged bolter shell hanging from the brocade across his chest. One greave was carved with the pattern of a spider’s web, with purity seals pinned to it like trapped prey.

‘Because I am a son of Rogal Dorn?’ said Tek’Shal.

‘Because I learn a great deal about those I fight. It is a Chaplain’s role to do so. I know you, Tek’Shal, better than you realise.’

‘So you think you can convince us to kneel as inferiors?’

‘Not kneel,’ said Belisar. ‘No one is asking for your obeisance. Just to take a step back from this path. It is not too late to choose a new one. Step away from it, leave Xanatar and the Eastern Reaches – not for good, just to demonstrate you have no designs upon it yourself. The Imperial Fists have great influence among the Imperium’s military, we will see to it that there are no repercussions. I swear this as a brother.’

‘You cannot swear that,’ said Tek’Shal. ‘Not when you will strip from us all we have earned.’

‘This world means so much to you?’ said Belisar, holding his arms wide to indicate the tortured landscape around them both. ‘This is worth abandoning the Imperium for?’

‘Xanatar is where it starts,’ came the reply. We have laboured years among these stars, fighting the Emperor’s fight, unheralded and unthanked. Not for us the honours of Terra, the fame of Dorn’s favourite sons! These hands that have taken a thousand lives have laid a hundred brothers to rest. All we ask is to keep what we have earned! The worlds of this subsector, in recompense for the war we fought and won here. Is this not what the lowest Imperial Guard regiment is offered – the right of settlement in conquered territory, in recognition of their sacrifice? Thus we claimed Xanatar, the first world in our dominion. Thus we will take what we are owed, nothing more.’

‘We are Space Marines!’ said Belisar. ‘We exist to fight the Emperor’s war. We do not need the power over a world to motivate us to our duty. Where did you learn that you fight for reward? Our duty is its own reward, to see it done or die in the attempt. It is not the place of a Space Marine to seek to rule what he conquers. It is his place to win it back and defend it for the dominion of the Emperor, not his own.’

‘And what of the Ultramarines?’ retorted Tek’Shal. ‘They rule their own empire, do they not?’

‘That is different, brother. You know that.’

‘Is it, Chaplain? Why? Because the Ultramarines have the most glorious of histories, because their word is heard when ours is ignored?’

‘Because the Emperor granted that dominion to Roboute Guilliman! He who does not walk among us cannot cede the worlds of His Imperium to you!’

‘Then what He cannot give us,’ said Tek’Shal, jabbing a finger towards Belisar, ‘we will take!’

‘I see,’ said Belisar. ‘You are certain in the principles of what you do. I must respect that. But the consequences are another matter.’

‘Ah, the consequences!’ replied Tek’Shal. ‘And tell me, what will they be? The Lords Militant will declare us Excommunicate, perhaps? A Naval fleet will appear in a few years’ time to bring us to justice. Every line of ours they cross, we will be waiting. We will storm them and cripple them, one by one, just as we did the xenos and the traitor who once held these stars! Do not speak of consequences, Chaplain Belisar of the Imperial Fists. Those who fight us will feel the consequences of denying us what is ours by right.’

‘No,’ said Belisar. ‘Those are not the consequences of which I speak.’

‘The Imperial Guard, then? A million men sent to drive us out world by world? They will never bring us to battle. As Dorn once taught his scouting corps, we will melt away and emerge again in twos and threes to kill a dozen men and vanish. Every force landed against us will be picked apart and bled white. The lifeless husks of armies will litter these worlds. You know this to be true, Belisar. You know how we fight.’

‘Again,’ said Belisar calmly. ‘That is not the consequence you face.’

Belisar took a single bolter shell from the ammunition pouches around his waist. He held up the shell so Tek’Shal could see it. It was intricately inscribed, and among the scrollwork were the letters ‘IRIXA’.

‘Imperator Rex In Xanatar Aeternam,’ he said. ‘The Emperor Reigns on Xanatar for All Time. Lowly as this world is, it is the Emperor’s. The bleakest rock is His, and it is our duty to keep it His. I came here willing to kill you, Tek’Shal, because my duty to the Emperor and His Imperium is greater than the bond of brotherhood between us.’ Belisar put the shell into the chamber of the storm bolter. ‘I knew that you were a man of honour. But I am not. I will shoot you down here, though you are without a weapon in your hand. I will put you down, be you a fellow son of Dorn or no.’

Tek’Shal could have gone for his own bolter, hanging at his side. But the storm bolter was aimed right at his head, and he could not have drawn his weapon before Belisar’s finger pulled the trigger. The Terminator’s hand did not move.

Belisar sensed that Tek’Shal was smiling beneath the many-eyed faceplate of his helmet. ‘I am not alone on this world,’ said Tek’Shal. ‘What will you do when I am dead?’

‘I forged a hundred bolter shells for Xanatar,’ replied Belisar coolly. ‘When I have killed you, I will have ninety-nine left. How many of your brothers will I kill before they overcome me? I am a Reclusiarch of the Imperial Fists. I have faced members of the Traitor Legions, and unlike any of your men I have killed a Space Marine before. So, how many will I kill? And when I am done, how great a will do you think the Venom Thorns will still have to rule their own empire?’

‘We will weave the web around you, strangle you like prey,’ said Tek’Shal. There was steel in his voice now.

‘Khorhadek, captain of the Skulltakers, took an oath to kill me and give my head to his god,’ replied Belisar. ‘But it was his skull that became the trophy, for I placed it on the Altar of Brotherhood on the Phalanx.’ Belisar kept the storm bolter levelled at Tek-Shal’s face. ‘I will break out of your web as I broke out of his, and stalk you through this storm like the Emperor’s own ghost. All of this will happen unless you leave Xanatar and every other world in this sector to the rightful rule of the Emperor.’

‘You will not kill a Space Marine,’ said Tek’Shal. ‘And we will not give up our right to rule what we have conquered.’

The storm bolter did not waver.

‘I fought you, too, remember,’ continued Tek’Shal. ‘And the man I fought was not one who could kill a battle-brother in cold blood. Chaplain or no, you are a Space Marine. This is not a choice you can make.’

Belisar did not move. Neither did Tek’Shal.

The storm screeched across Xanatar, so dense that it seemed to hide everything on its surface from even the Emperor’s eyes.

‘What did he choose?’ asked Novice Arnobius. The novice’s eyes were still on the bolter shell dangling on its chain.

‘What,’ said Lysander, ‘do you think?’

‘Tek’Shal was a renegade,’ replied Arnobius. ‘A Chaplain would have no choice but to…’

‘To kill another son of Dorn?’ interrupted Lukra. ‘Can any Space Marine do so? Not in combat, in battle, but as an execution?’

‘Then you think, Novice Lukra,’ said Lysander, ‘that Belisar should have let Tek’Shal rebel against the Emperor’s rule?’

‘I think he would not have,’ said Lukra. ‘But as to whether he should have? I think that is another question I cannot answer, captain.’

‘That is because you are a novice, Lukra,’ said Lysander. ‘Because no such choice has been demanded of you. But one day, it will. This I swear. No one who fights in the Emperor’s name can ever do so without making decisions that cost lives, or determine the honour given to the Chapter and to the Emperor, or which can force us against every principle we have devoted our lives to upholding. To answer your question, Novice Arnobius, Belisar left Xanatar alive. That is all anyone knows of the matter. What he did, what befell Tek’Shal and his Chapter, Chapter records do not show. They have been lost to the ages. Nothing but a trace of the incident remains, and that was only recently discovered in the Phalanx’s archives.’ Lysander coiled the chain around the bolter shell and put it away again. ‘I can preach no lesson from Chaplain Belisar’s example. You must draw your own lesson. You must make your own choice.’

Far off, in the distant depths of the Phalanx, a bell tolled.

‘Bolter drill is due,’ said Lysander. ‘The lesson is ended. Go, novices, to your duties. Dismissed.’

The Phalanx was an old ship, one of the oldest in the Imperium. Parts of it, some believed, dated from the Age of Strife before the Emperor had conquered Holy Terra and forged from that darkness the current age of Mankind. Segments of hundreds of ships could be found within the vast mobile space station, and every few decades explorator teams were permitted on board to delve into the most ancient parts, forgotten and unused. Sometimes they turned up fragments of Imperial Fists history thought lost. Sometimes they found whole chapels, barracks decks, training halls and memorials that had been forgotten. In the voids between the mapped and used parts of the space station, there were corners that concealed secrets.

In one such void, choked with slanting support beams and wreathed in centuries of dust, stood a lone statue. Once, perhaps, it had been part of a larger memorial or statuary hall. Now it was all that remained.

It was of a Space Marine in Terminator armour. It was carved from obsidian, with a mask of ivory. The mask was in the form of a skull, the traditional garb of the Chaplain.

Lysander ducked beneath one of the beams to reach the foot of the statue. It was larger than life-sized, and the carved lenses of its eyepieces seemed to stare down at him. There must have been no question of the statue being sculpted with the Chaplain’s face showing – the skull was the face he displayed to the Chapter, the face with which he confronted his foes. That was the way of the Chaplain. On the battlefield he was not a man but an idea, a symbol, a vision of the Chapter incarnate.

The name inscribed on the base of the statue was Belisar.

Lysander knelt.

‘When I was but a novice,’ said Lysander, ‘I taught myself that there is no limit to what we must do for victory. Lives are forfeit to it. Even honour. Even the principles that make a Space Marine what he is. When I read the record of Xanatar, I knew the choice I would have made. And when I found this place, I knew I was right.’

Lysander looked up into the ivory mask. ‘I know that I am right. I pray that I am right. And that those who follow me will be right, too.’

In the statue’s right hand was the storm bolter, inlaid with deep yellow lacquer. In his left hand was another helmet, this one carved from iridescent blue stone – a neat hole was bored through one eyepiece, the impact of a bolter shell right through perhaps the only weak point in a suit of Terminator armour.

At the statue’s feet was an ammunition box. The box stood open and in intricate detail, as if it was the most important part of the whole statue, were rendered the ninety-nine bolter shells that remained.

THE LION

Part Three

Gav Thorpe

VII

Slashing the yellow-gleaming blade of his manreaper across the chest of an Iron Hands sergeant, Typhon shouldered his way through the doorway leading out onto the courtyard in front of Tower Eight. He was swathed by the shadow of the eight great Mastodons, their gun sponsons silenced and their canopied driver’s cabins emptied by the boarding actions of his Grave Wardens, who were now pressing on towards Tower Three. From there the main gate of Magellix would be within reach.

‘Commander, we have received a signal from the fleet.’ Vioss’s tone was urgent.

‘Why have they not yet attacked the Dark Angels?’ snapped Typhon as he lumbered up the gentle slope of the courtyard not far behind the line of his advancing warriors.

‘The Dark Angels have positioned themselves between our ships and the enemy. Any attack against them will allow the Iron Hands to move around the flank of the flotilla. We have more urgent concerns, commander. The Lion’s battle-barge has launched a torpedo towards Magellix.’

‘A bluff,’ Typhon replied instantly. ‘The Lion will not destroy Magellix any sooner than I or my counterpart in the Iron Hands. The contents of that facility are too precious to risk destruction. Continue the attack.’

‘Are you sure, commander? We have detected a cyclotronic warhead. It will obliterate everything at Magellix and a hundred kilometres around. It will destroy Tuchulcha as well as us. The fleet also reports detection of seven more Dark Angels vessels heading in-system.’

Typhon paused, a thought occurring to him. He voiced his doubt to Vioss.

‘What if the Lion does not desire Tuchulcha, but merely wants to prevent us from gaining possession?’

‘Commander, we cannot risk guessing the Lion’s intent. We must pull back. We can achieve nothing if we are annihilated.’

Growling to himself, Typhon activated the company-wide comm-stream. He snapped out a series of commands, pulling back his warriors from their final assault on the main gate. Instead, he established them in positions overlooking the central tower of Magellix and guarding the tunnel network beneath. When he was finished issuing orders, he switched his comm-unit to a general broadcast.

‘Happy now, Lion of the First?’ he snarled. ‘I will respect any ceasefire observed by the enemy. Know now that you intrude upon the business of the Death Guard Legion, and it will go poorly for you.’

Surprising Typhon – he had expected no reply to his invective – the comm crackled with a return signal. It was the same resonant voice as before – the Dark Angels primarch. It was too late to reconsider his scornful words, and his disdain would not allow him to offer any apology for them even if the Lion demanded it.

‘Look to the western skies.’

Typhon turned his gaze as instructed. He saw a flash of light in the upper atmosphere, and what appeared to be a suddenly-spreading electrical storm set the jade clouds roiling. Seconds ticked past before the crack of the torpedo’s detonation reached the commander’s audio pick-ups.

‘You are to pull back all forces from Magellix station. I will grant you safe passage back to your vessels. You, Captain Typhon, will remain at Magellix with a bodyguard of no more than one hundred warriors to attend a parley under my aegis. The rest of your force will remove themselves to two hundred thousand kilometres from orbit. Failure to comply will result in your destruction. The same conditions have been transmitted to Captain Midoa of the Iron Hands.’

The link cut before Typhon could respond, not that he had anything to say in the face of such a bald ultimatum. He watched the dark clouds of super-heated gases expanding like a blue stain across the western sky and realised that the Lion did not make empty threats. For the moment, his mission was compromised, but that did not mean he had to abandon his objective entirely; he had means unknown to the Dark Angels.

‘Vioss, one hundred of the Grave Wardens to form an honour guard. All other forces are to return to orbit. Have the remaining Grave Wardens embark on Terminus Est and I want you to take personal charge of the dearthfield. We shall allow the Lion to believe he is master of Perditus for the time being.’

‘I understand, commander. The Grave Wardens will re-arm and repair in preparation for the next offensive. We will not suffer defeat here.’

Thefog covering the inner courtyard of Magellix station was dispersed by the plasma and steam of a descending Stormbird. The eagle-like craft put down, its landing struts taking the weight as the dust settled around it and the mists began to seep back between the perimeter towers.

There were already a thousand Dark Angels arranged by company between the arriving ship and the main gate of Magellix. To one side of the force waited the Death Guard while the Iron Hands were guarded behind a cordon on the opposite side of the open space. Only Typhon and Midoa had been permitted to approach the Lion’s landing craft, two armoured giants amongst a gaggle of a dozen Mechanicum acolytes dressed in red robes, the heads of all but two encased within breathing domes; those other two had rebreather attachments inserted into their faces and chests and required no further assistance in the thick Perditus atmosphere.

The Lion stepped out on the descending ramp of the Stormbird with Corswain to his right and the recently-arrived Captain Tragan to his left. Behind came a number of banner bearers and other attendants carrying such articles of Caliban as usually accompanied the primarch; plaques, goblets, crowns, shields and other items associated with the Lion’s multitude of ranks and duties. Behind them came the cabal of Librarians, now numbering six from the fleet mustering in orbit, their blue robes flapping in the slow but strong breeze – the higher-pressure air of Perditus turned even a sluggish gust into a wind that could bowl over a normal man. As one the Dark Angels silently lifted bolters, heavy weapons or swords in salute to their commander-in-chief.

The Lion needed no helm, though the air was acrid in his throat and made his lungs feel stretched by its weight. He wanted to impress upon all present that he was a primarch, with the force of an entire Legion to command, and not just any Legion; the Dark Angels, the First Legion. His standard bearers took up station on either side of the route to the main gate, the Lion’s many titles shouted through their external address systems.

The Lion’s armour had been polished to a gleam, the black enamel as glossy as midnight oil alloyed with diamond, the gold shining like the heart of a star. A scarlet cloak draped from his shoulders, its train five metres long, kept aloft by the artifices of Caliban; ten suspensor-floating devices wrought in the shape of short blades etched with the names of the Knightly Orders of his homeworld. On his left hip the Lion wore his greatsword, Adamant, its ruby-encrusted pommels and gold-chased hilt and crosspiece glittering as brightly as his armour. Below the right side of his breastplate the Lion’s belt was hung with six cylinders each the size of a man’s forearm, bound with platinum, the dull red leather cases containing the Proclamations of Caliban; the first laws decreed by the Lion after his ascendancy to command of the Dark Angels, swearing Caliban to the service of the Emperor for eternity.

Sweeping down the ramp with his entourage keeping step as best they could, the Lion advanced on the waiting Mechanicum dignitaries. They introduced themselves in ascending order of rank, so that the Lion instantly dismissed the first eleven shrivelled, half-machine men and women and focused all of his considerably intimidating attention on the last: High Magos Khir Doth Iaxis, Overseer of Magellix and Custodian of Tuchulcha, as his heralds attested.

Iaxis was a tiny man, perhaps no more than a metre tall, taken to be a child attendant by the Lion until the magos had pulled back his hood to reveal a near-conical head and ageing, pinched face. The back of the magos’s skull was extended by a series of segmented plates that came to a rounded point and moved strangely of their own accord, contracting and expanding slightly, perhaps as mood or effort occupied the Mechanicum priest. Thin bony fingers jutting from veined hands rubbed and entwined together, almost hidden in the cuffs of Iaxis’s heavy sleeves, and his slight shoulders were no wider than the Lion’s greave. If the diminutive tech-priest felt at all threatened by the giant looming above him – and the Lion could have easily crushed him with his foot like a titan of myth – the magos did not show any hesitation. His thin, reedy voice was almost muted by the bubble of the breather dome encompassing his small head, but the words were spoken with authority and precision.

‘We are pleased to welcome you again to Perditus Ultima, Lion of Caliban,’ said Iaxis, nodding his head inside the breather dome. ‘Please follow me.’

The Lion felt a moment of impatience, expecting to be forced to check his stride in the company of the minuscule Iaxis, but his fears were misplaced. As the magos’s entourage dispersed, they revealed a set of mechanical legs, which Iaxis ascended quickly by means of a narrow ladder at their rear. Placing his own legs inside the struts of the machine’s pelvic arrangement, his robe rucking up briefly to reveal pale, wiry legs interlaced with reinforcing struts, Iaxis settled into the ambulator. With a hiss of actuators, the legs straightened, bringing Iaxis almost to the height of the Lion’s shoulder. In the presence of his minions, Iaxis would have been above them all, but the primarch still stood taller than the mechanically-bolstered magos.

As they walked to the main gate the Lion became aware of a silver-and-black shadow hovering close to Corswain’s shoulder: Captain Midoa. Glancing to his left, the Lion saw Typhon walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Tragan. The Lion ignored the other captains until they were all inside the entrance chamber behind the main gate. Once inside, the Lion turned and addressed his ‘guests’.

‘Captain Typhon, Captain Midoa…’ The Lion was not sure what he was going to say to them. They were an inconvenience at the moment, but as he had explained to Corswain aboard the Invincible Reason, it did not suit to make hasty or arbitrary judgements about the loyalty and agenda of others. He instead addressed Iaxis. ‘Magos, please convey the two captains to a suitable part of the facility where they may await my return. Little brothers, you will watch them for me. Captains, I remind you that all of Magellix is under the protection of my aegis. Do not think for a moment to dishonour me.’

With that matter perfunctorily dealt with, the Lion turned his back on the two captains and continued across the gate hall. The chamber sloped downwards slightly, the far end broken by three archways, each leading to a set of moving steps that descended further into the bowels of Magellix.

‘The door on the right, primarch,’ prompted Iaxis. ‘Let me show you what all of this fuss is about.’

Most oftheMechanicum facility had not existed the last time the Lion had been on Perditus Ultima, but the tunnels beneath were familiar to the primarch. Though they were now sheathed in plasteel struts and plastite board, the meandering passageways were etched into the Lion’s memories, so that once they disembarked from the fourth internal conveyor, some half a kilometre below the surface, he was able to find the path unerringly towards the cavernous chamber where the machine was kept.

The last time he had walked these tunnels, frenzied machine-cultists had been dying by his hand. The people of Perditus had been enslaved to the machine and died in droves to the guns of the Dark Angels and the newly-renamed Death Guard. The Lion’s first encounter with Mortarion, a tense affair that had ended with neither primarch liking the other, had taken place only three months earlier, and the two Legions had been fighting side-by-side as a display of unity for the Emperor. The Perditians had howled praise to their inanimate overlord even as they perished. Now the tunnels rang only with the boots of the primarch and the thud of Iaxis’s walking apparatus.

Coming to the central cavern, the Lion found further passage barred by an immense doorway, emblazoned with the symbol of the Mechanicum. Iaxis stalked forwards on his artificial legs and pushed a hand towards a reader-plate set into the metal beside the portal. The Lion’s sharp eyes glimpsed a design on the wrist of the tech-priest as he extended his arm; a faint outline almost indiscernible from the rest of the overlying skin. The primarch knew it for what it was immediately: an electoo, a hidden mark that could be realised into being by a pulse of bio-electricity. The Mechanicum made wide use of them – as did some of the more secretive orders on Caliban and many other societies throughout the Imperium – but the Lion had never before seen the design concealed on Iaxis’s arm. It was of a stylised dragon, wings furled, coiled tightly about itself so that its neck merged with its body and its head lay alongside its tail.

‘Your electoo, what is its significance?’ the Lion asked as door locks rumbled into the walls and a heavy clanging sounded from within the door itself. ‘I thought myself learned in the customs of the Mechanicum, but it is a device I do not know.’

Iaxis inhaled sharply and glared at his wrist as if in accusation. His expression mellowed after a moment, becoming one of embarrassment rather than shock as he regarded the primarch with yellowing eyes.

‘A childish totem, Lion, nothing more,’ said Iaxis. He paused and a moment later the dragon appeared prominently on his withered flesh, glowing a deep red. ‘The Order of the Dragon, something of a defunct sect now, I am pleased to say. It is remarkable that you could see that pigmentation beneath my skin, I had quite forgotten it.’

The door opened with a hiss of venting gases, swinging inwards to reveal the cavern etched into the Lion’s memories. Much had changed, but it was unmistakably the same place. The vaulted ceiling, nearly seventy metres high and banded with rock strata of many colours, was pierced now by rings bearing heavy chains from which hung guttering gaslights. The walls, nearly two hundred metres apart at their widest, were obscured behind panels of Mechanicum machinery and devices, so that the bare stone was hidden behind banks of dials and levers, flashing lights and coils of cabling and pipelines.

Gantries and walkways, steps and ladders were arranged around the device itself, with sensor probes, monitoring dishes and scaffolding further enmeshing the centre of the warp device. The thing itself was still there; the sentience, or at least semi-sentience that had enslaved a whole star system hanging in mid-air like a world in the firmament. It was a perfect sphere of marbled black and dark grey, with flecks of gold that moved slowly across its surface. Ten point six-seven metres in diameter – the Lion remembered the Mechanicum’s first measurements exactly – it was made of an unknown material, impenetrable to every sensor, drill and device the Mechanicum had brought with them.

The Lion knew that the thing was regarding him with some alien sense. He was not sure how he could tell, nor how the warp device could sense him in return, but the fact remained that he was convinced it saw him this time as much as he had been convinced the first time he had entered this hall. On that occasion several hundred rag-clad Perditians had died in the next few minutes, unwilling or unable to lay down their primitive weapons, forced to defend their demigod to the last breath and drop of blood.

There was something else different, at first unnoticed amongst the rest of the Mechanicum clutter. Two protuberances now extended from the sphere, one at each pole, each only a few centimetres long. The rounded nodules touched against circuit-covered plates stationed above and below the device, which in turn were linked by a dizzying web of wires and cables to the surrounding machines. On a mat in front of the orb lay a small boy, aged perhaps no more than seven or eight Terran years.

He lay immobile on his side, eyes unblinking, as stiff as a corpse, which he might have been were it not for the gentle rise and fall of his chest; the Lion could hear the boy’s heart beating ever so slowly, and could smell sweat and urine on the air.

A pipe extended from the boy’s back, and another from the base of his skull, joining him with the mechanical array surrounding the warp engine. As soon as the Lion’s eyes fell upon the boy, he sat up, moving jerkily like a badly-controlled marionette. The eyes were glassy, the limbs moving stiffly. With a glance at the alien orb, the primarch saw the golden motes were moving more swiftly than before, forming brief patterns in the dark swirl.

‘You have returned.’ The boy’s voice was flat and devoid of emotion, his face featureless. A hand raised and waved erratically.

‘It talks now?’ said the Lion, the words half-snarled as he turned on Iaxis. The tech-priest shrugged.

‘We could not discern anything of its construction or workings, but it seemed likely that it had some means to communicate with the Perditians before we were forced to wipe out their society. It took us nearly thirty years simply to devise this crude interface. We have learnt a lot from Tuchulcha. It is very cooperative, if a little enigmatic and, well, alien.’

‘I hear too,’ said the boy. ‘You seem displeased.’

‘You remember me,’ said the Lion, before he could stop himself. He glared at Iaxis. ‘Why the boy? We fought to rid Perditus of slaves and you have given it another.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Iaxis with a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘It’s just a servitor, Lion. We tried all manner of computational, logarithmic and cipher-based languages, but none of them worked. When presented with a servitor, though, it was able to tap into the established neural interface in only a few days.’

‘What a coincidence,’ said the Lion.

‘There is no coincidence. I was designed to assimilate with the human form, Lion. May I call you Lion? I overheard the magos use it. Is that the correct form of address for one such as yourself?’

The primarch wanted to ignore the device’s questions, but the boy’s voice lingered in his thoughts.

‘What are you?’ said the Lion, stepping forwards until he was within arm’s reach of the puppet-servitor.

‘I am Tuchulcha, Lion. I am the everything. I believe the magos and I are friends, though he sometimes grows angry with me. I try to remain patient with his outbursts.’

‘I asked what you are, not who you are. Curse you, what am I saying? You are a machine, a sophisticated machine and nothing more.’

‘I am everything, Lion. Everywhere. I was once Servant of the Deadly Seas. Now I am the Friend of the Mechanicum.’

‘You are dangerous,’ said the Lion. ‘A war is being waged for possession of you. I should destroy you and save much turmoil and bloodshed.’

‘You cannot destroy me, Lion. Not physically, nor do you desire it. All things desire to possess me. The one they call Typhon dreams much about me. The mind of the other, Midoa, is closed to me. It contains too much iron for my liking. You… You are neither open nor closed. You scare me, Lion. It was not until you came that I knew what fear was. Your return scares me, Lion. I do not wish to be destroyed.’

It was hard not to imagine the words being uttered were from the boy, but the Lion forced himself to focus on the glistening orb rather than its animated avatar.

‘Iaxis, my puppet needs more nutrients.’ As Tuchulcha said this, the boy’s bladder emptied, sending a watery stream down his leg to puddle on the plasteel floor. ‘My apologies, Lion. I have not yet mastered the basic functions of this form. Its pathways were underdeveloped.’

‘It is the third servitor we have had to attach,’ explained the tech-priest. ‘The previous ones aged unnaturally, hence the youth of this specimen. We are hoping it will survive for a few years longer than the previous interfaces.’

‘You seem to know a lot about what is happening on the surface,’ said the Lion, suppressing the distaste he felt at Iaxis’s uncaring attitude to the expenditure of human lives, even if they were unthinking servitors.

‘They pass through me, and I come to know them,’ said Tuchulcha. ‘Their minds touch upon mine. Yours does too, but it is far too heavy to carry. How do you cope with such a burden?’

‘My intellect?’ said the Lion.

‘Your guilt.’

The Lion did not answer straight away, not trusting himself to reveal something in front of Iaxis that he would rather remained inside his own thoughts.

‘What use is it?’ he demanded of Iaxis, turning away from the boy-puppet. ‘It was agreed with the Mechanicum that Perditus Ultima and the device were spared only because you thought it might have some purpose we could harness for the Imperium.’

‘And it does, it does!’ Iaxis seemed quite animated at this. ‘Tuchulcha, will you please show the primarch what you are capable of.’

Before the Lion could offer any protest, he felt his mind and body lurch, the sensation somewhere between that of a warp translation and a rapid teleportation. Darkness clouded his vision for an instant, and when his eyes were clear, he found himself no longer in the cavern beneath Perditus Ultima.

They were unmistakably in his throne room aboard the Invincible Reason. Tuchulcha and his avatar, minus most of the monitoring equipment, floated behind the throne, while Iaxis stood where he had been, a couple of metres to the primarch’s right. Sirens were blaring and the voice of Captain Stenius was bellowing over the internal speakers.

‘Battle stations! All crew report to battle stations. Geller field is being raised. Five minutes to full enclosure. Repeat, we have unexpectedly translated to the warp, Geller field is being raised, be prepared for attack.’

The Lion was dumbfounded, unable to comprehend what had happened for several seconds. He eventually realised that Tuchulcha must have moved the battle-barge into the warp and displaced itself, the primarch and tech-priest onto the vessel an instant later. Part of the Lion was appalled by the dangerous situation and Iaxis’s naiveté in allowing this to happen; a greater part of him marvelled at the unprecedented power on display.

‘Tuchulcha,’ the Lion said slowly, thinking it would be wise to be ‘friends’ with the unpredictable machine, ‘where are we now?’

‘We are adjoined to the place you call Perditus, Lion.’

The primarch turned to Iaxis, brow furrowed.

‘Adjoined? We are in the warp. How is this possible? We were far too close to the world, to the star, for a translation.’

‘Tuchulcha does not have to worry about that sort of thing, Lion,’ the tech-priest said with a toothless grin. ‘It is able to burrow directly from real space to warp space, without any backwash or graviometric displacement.’

‘Why have I not learnt of this before?’ demanded the Lion.

‘Our studies are far from complete,’ replied Iaxis. ‘At the moment, we are at the whim of Tuchulcha, and as you see it is a little, well, temperamental.’

‘Tuchulcha, I wish you to return us and the ship to Perditus Ultima.’ The Lion kept his tone calm and friendly, suddenly aware of how precarious his position had become.

‘Of course, Lion.’ The boy’s thin, blood-starved lips twisted into an abhorrent approximation of a smile. ‘What do you wish me to do with the rest of your ships?’

VIII

The Lion’s audience chamber was quiet, occupied only by the primarch and his seneschal. The Lion was seated in his throne, betraying no sign of his thoughts or mood, as impassive as a statue. Corswain stood at the primarch’s right, trying his best to conceal his own misgivings at the emerging situation. As time silently ticked past, he could no longer hold his tongue.

‘My liege, I do not question your judgement in this matter, but I must admit to my own ignorance. We have secured Perditus Ultima and possess enough force to destroy the Death Guard outright, yet you invite their commander to a parley? I have an ill feeling about this. And to have the Iron Hands’ captain present at the same time seems counter-productive.’

The Lion turned his head and regarded Corswain for a moment, his expression stern.

‘You are right not to question my judgement, Cor.’ The primarch’s lips formed a thin smile, lightening his demeanour, if only a little. ‘However, my reason for this meeting is straightforward. Before I decide on our following course of action, I must ascertain for myself the extent to which the knowledge of Perditus’s secret has spread. Though he probably does not realise it, I remember that Captain Typhon took part in our original expedition here. He was just a company captain, I recall. That he knows of Tuchulcha’s existence is unsurprising, but I sense that his agenda is not as transparent as it would first appear.’

‘And Captain Midoa, my liege?’

‘His presence here is an oddity, little brother. It might be chance that he intercepted the Death Guard attack, but coincidence does not sit well with me as an explanation. I must know why he came to Perditus, and on whose authority he claims to act. The Iron Hands are leaderless, my brother Ferrus slain at Isstvan, and I thought his Legion rendered inconsequential. It appears that I am wrong, and so I must have answers to questions that nag at me.’

The comm-piece in Corswain’s ear chimed and he listened for a moment to the communiqué from Captain Tragan.

‘Our guests will be here imminently, my liege,’ Corswain said.

‘Good,’ replied the Lion, directing his gaze back to the double doors. A few seconds later, those doors hissed open, revealing Tragan and a guard of thirty Dark Angels. In their midst were Captains Typhon and Midoa; the first easily seen in his huge suit of Terminator armour, a head taller than the surrounding warriors. At first glance, Typhon’s armour appeared in poor repair, much patched and stained, the white of the Death Guard mottled in places with oil and battle damage. A moment’s further inspection, however, revealed to Corswain that the Terminator suit was poorly maintained only on a cosmetic level; Typhon moved freely, every step accompanied by a wheeze of servos and hiss of fibre bundles. A short blade hung at his belt and in his hands he held his scythe-like manreaper.

Midoa followed behind the Death Guard commander, his black-and-silver armour showing signs of fresh paint and polish. His black cloak was tattered at the edges and a fresh scar was healing on his brow. Corswain had expected someone older, Midoa’s fresh features a counterpoint to the seals and marks of honour that adorned the chestplate and shoulder guards of his suit. Like Typhon, he was still armed, with a power sword at his waist and a twin-barrelled combi-bolter slung on a strap over his shoulder.

‘Thank you, Captain Tragan,’ said the Lion. ‘You may leave us.’

Corswain turned in surprise, but his primarch’s attention was fixed on the two newcomers.

‘My liege?’ Tragan could not stop the question before he spoke it.

‘Please return to your duties, captain,’ said the Lion, keeping his tone affable. ‘I am certain that our guests refused to surrender their weapons on principle only. I would expect no less from officers of the Legiones Astartes. They would not be so foolish as to test me on my own ship.’

With a glance at Typhon, Tragan nodded. The Dark Angels fell in behind their commander as he departed. The Lion gestured for Typhon and Midoa to approach.

‘Am I to be your prisoner?’ snapped Typhon, his voice echoing from the external speakers of his suit. ‘If you are to execute me out of hand, then do so and be done with it.’

‘You will address me properly, commander,’ the Lion replied, showing no anger at the Death Guard’s accusation. ‘I have yet to decide your fate. Do not give me cause for upset.’

Typhon said nothing for a few seconds, subjected to an unblinking stare from the primarch. Under the force of that gaze he eventually nodded and slowly lowered to one knee.

‘Lord Jonson, Primarch of the First,’ said Typhon. ‘Forgive my impertinence.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the Lion. He waved a hand for Typhon to stand. ‘What is your purpose in coming to Perditus, commander?’

‘I’m sure you already know it, Lord Jonson,’ said Typhon.

‘And still I wish it heard in your own words.’

‘The warp device, Lord Jonson,’ Typhon said, glancing at Captain Midoa. ‘I came to Perditus to claim possession of it.’

‘Interesting.’

‘The Warmaster desires this device, for reasons that you should know well. It is inopportune that you should seek to thwart his plans in this way. He will take it badly.’

‘Horus will take it badly?’ snarled Corswain, stepping forwards. ‘The Dark Angels do not answer to Horus.’

‘In time they will, I am sure,’ Typhon replied smoothly, looking briefly at the seneschal before returning his attention to the Lion. ‘Your opposition to the Night Lords is expected, but unnecessary. It is an irrelevance, made personal by mutual antagonism. What is Thramas to the Dark Angels?’

‘They are the Emperor’s worlds, and we will protect them,’ said Corswain, laying a hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Treachery does not go unpunished.’

‘Be quiet, little brother,’ said the Lion, shifting in his throne to rest an elbow on the sculpted arm, chin lowered onto his closed fist, eyes still fixed upon Typhon. ‘Let the commander speak freely.’

‘I have nothing more to say, Lord Jonson,’ said the Death Guard.

‘Your threat is meaningless, commander. What you say is irrelevant, but what you do not say is so loud that it deafens me.’

Typhon started to speak but the primarch silenced him with a raised hand.

‘You make no mention of my brother, Mortarion, your primarch. Do you still fight for the Death Guard, commander? Or do you pursue an ambition at odds with your lord? If Mortarion desired the device you mention, he has the resources of an entire Legion at his disposal. Why would he send such a small flotilla to claim such a precious prize? No, Mortarion is not the hand that guided you here, commander.’

Straightening, the Lion rested his hands on his knees and leaned forwards.

‘Similarly, you invoke the name of the Warmaster, but it is not Horus’s will that despatched you to Perditus. Perhaps as you say, I am an irrelevance to my traitorous brother, but that does not mean Horus would wish to pit his sons against mine in open conflict. He destroyed three Legions at Isstvan, but my Dark Angels were not amongst them. Curze, Mortarion, Horus; none of them desire full scale war with my Legion, and for good reason.’

In reply Typhon was silent, perhaps regretting his words, or fearing that further argument would only serve to betray him more deeply. The Lion moved his dark gaze to the Iron Hands commander.

‘And you, Captain Midoa, what purpose brought you here?’

‘To secure Perditus Ultima against the traitors, Lord Jonson,’ replied the captain, looking across to Typhon. ‘We arrived just in time, it appears.’

‘And who set you upon this purpose, captain?’

‘We were part of the four-hundred-and-sixth expeditionary fleet, lord, far from Isstvan when the muster was called. When we learnt of the tragedy that had befallen our Legion, we did what we could, securing such worlds as we had newly brought to compliance, fighting those traitorous forces that we encountered. Six months ago we were intercepted by an Ultramarines fleet near Ojanus, and received summons that Lord Guilliman was gathering all loyal forces at Ultramar. We answered the call, and later the primarch despatched us to Perditus, fearing the traitors might attempt to seize the device held by the Mechanicum.’

The Lion accepted this with a slow nod, deep in thought.

‘And now that you have learnt of Perditus’s secret, what is your intent?’ asked the primarch.

‘It is not safe to leave the warp engine here, lord. It is too powerful to risk its misuse, and so I believe the best course of action is to relocate it to the safety of Macragge.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Lion, eyebrows arching high. ‘You took that decision upon yourself?’

‘Lord Guilliman had intimated that such a course might be necessary, lord.’

Fingers drumming quickly on the arm of his throne, the Lion moved his gaze from one commander to the other and back again, before looking at Corswain.

‘When we have concluded this parley, send word to the captains, little brother. The fleet is to assume formation for the bombardment of Perditus Ultima.’

There were outbursts from Typhon and Midoa, which fell on deaf ears.

‘As you command, my liege,’ said Corswain.

‘You cannot destroy the warp engine!’ said Midoa, taking a step forwards. ‘If its power can be harnessed, it could be the weapon that enables us to turn the tide on the traitors.’

‘You suppose too much, captain,’ the Lion replied sharply. ‘I too received Guilliman’s summons. I do not concur with his plans, and I would no more trust him with this engine than any servant of Horus. I consider Ultramar no safer place for this device than Perditus, and even if Guilliman does not use it for his own purposes I cannot allow it to fall into the hands of the Emperor’s enemies.’

Typhon’s laugh rang around the chamber as Midoa made further protest.

‘Your good humour is misplaced, commander,’ snapped the Lion, silencing Typhon’s mirth and Midoa’s arguments. ‘I am of a mind to let you depart Perditus without the engine, so that you might take word of its destruction to whatever masters you wish to claim. However, slight me again or dishonour my audience and I will be content to allow your lieutenants to perform that errand in your stead.’

Silence greeted this proclamation and the Lion stood up, signalling that the audience was at an end.

‘Perditus Ultima and its prize will be destroyed within hours. Tell my brothers that there is nothing for them here.’

IX

On the main display, the tiny speck of light that was Captain Midoa’s shuttle disappeared behind the shadow of his heavy cruiser, the Fastidious Prosecutor. Looking at a sub-screen, the Lion saw the Terminus Est of the Death Guard powering away, its plasma engines almost lost against the light reflecting from Perditus Ultima’s surface. The primarch was about to turn away, with both Typhon and Midoa now returned to their respective ships, when he overhead a message from Lady Fiana coming through to one of the communications attendants.

‘Relay that connection to speakers,’ the Lion demanded, pointing a finger at the Legion serf, who complied immediately, eyes wide with surprise.

‘Lauded primarch, my family and I are detecting a distortion in the warp around Perditus Ultima,’ Fiana repeated, her voice coming through the address grilles all around the strategium.

‘Tuchulcha?’ asked the primarch.

‘No, this is something different. It is like a miniature vortex, a hole burrowing through the warp.’

‘Burrowing from where? To what does this hole lead?’

‘Give us a moment, lauded primarch. Ardal is ascending the pilaster for a better fix on the location of the disturbance.’

‘Raise void shields,’ snapped Captain Stenius. ‘Arm weapons batteries and sound the call to battle order.’

The Lion was content to let his subordinate take the appropriate defensive measures. He waited with arms crossed, gaze moving between the main screen, the sub-display of the Terminus Est and the speaker located to the right of the display array, as if he could see Lady Fiana beyond.

‘Detecting a power surge from the Terminus Est, captain,’ announced one of the serfs at the scanner consoles.

‘Just raising void shields, captain,’ said another almost immediately after.

‘The warp disturbance is local, very small.’ Navigator Ardal’s voice was reedy over the internal comm. ‘I do not know how, but it seems to be originating from the Death Guard flagship.’

‘Where to?’ snarled the Lion. ‘Where is it directed?’

‘Perditus Ultima, lauded primarch. It’s some kind of warp tunnel, straight into the heart of the facility. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Corswain!’ The Lion’s use of the seneschal’s name automatically switched the battle-barge’s systems to a direct address channel. Almost unnoticed, a tiny icon blinked on a sub-screen, indicating on a schematic of the Invincible Reason that Corswain was in the transit corridor outside the starboard launch bays, having seen off Midoa and Typhon.

‘Yes, my liege?’

‘Assemble your guard, and the Librarians, at teleporter chamber two. I will meet you there.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Lay in coordinates for the Magellix facility. The Death Guard are trying to steal the warp engine.’

Typhon’s manreaper parted the tech-adept from pelvis to throat, the scythe’s power field fizzing and cracking with vaporising blood. The ragged remains of the tech-adept flopped to the bare stone of the floor as a squad of skitarii burst from the doors ahead. The Mechanicum’s bionically-augmented warriors sported a variety of laser weapons and rocket launchers. As red las-blasts seared down the tunnel and the corkscrew contrails of guided rockets followed, the Grave Wardens opened fire. Typhon’s autocannon thundered in his fist while a counter-barrage of missiles and bolts hammered into the half-machine defenders of Perditus Ultima.

The Terminators continued their implacable advance, stepping over the sparking, bloodied remnants of the skitarii, passing into the corridor that led to Tuchulcha’s prison. More skitarii appeared and were cut down, the Grave Wardens all but impervious to the weapons carried by their foes.

At the head of the column, Typhon was still trying to push aside the side effects of the warp-teleportation he had employed to bring his warriors inside the facility. The Father had not been so generous in his gifts this time, and Typhon’s skin felt heavy beneath his armour. His whole body itched and his head occasionally swam with the effort he had expended to punch a hole through reality.

‘Why did we not do this when we first arrived?’ rasped Vioss, striding alongside Typhon to the left. ‘We would have retrieved the device long before the arrival of the Dark Angels.’

‘I did not know that Tuchulcha was awake,’ replied Typhon. ‘It will have to transport itself back to Terminus Est, for I do not have the power. It is of a far greater mass than it looks, the bulk of its construction existing only in warp space.’

‘A feat of engineering,’ said Vioss, his sarcasm plain to hear.

‘A miracle of the Father,’ Typhon corrected him as they came to the chamber of Tuchulcha. The Death Guard commander stopped, seized by a sudden pain in his abdomen. He gritted his teeth as he felt something squirming through his insides; or at least a sensation he considered similar to having his intestines burrowed out by some hellish rodent. In a few seconds the pain had passed and he barrelled forwards through the next set of doors.

The globe of Tuchulcha hung in the centre of the room, surrounded by the entrapments and delving devices of the Mechanicum. Typhon was struck by the beauty of the patterns that flowed across the device’s surface. A melange of oily colours merged and split, creating a hypnotic effect. With some effort, the Death Guard leader broke his gaze from the floating orb, seeing a red-robed figure kneeling before the device, hood covering head and face.

Typhon aimed his reaper autocannon at the kneeling figure, but his finger did not squeeze the trigger as a child’s voice broke the quiet.

‘Stop! Do not harm him!’

A youth had stepped out of the tangle of cables surrounding Tuchulcha, sallow-skinned, connected to the apparatus imprisoning the device. It took a moment for Typhon to realise that the servitor-body was being manipulated by the machine.

‘He is of no consequence,’ said the commander. ‘He has been your jailer, and should be punished.’

A liquid-filled gasping emanated from the servitor-youth, which Typhon realised was laughter.

‘I cannot be imprisoned, not by the likes of this creature,’ said Tuchulcha.

‘Good, then you will be able to come with us.’

The boy did not reply, but looked away, head tilted back as if he was gazing through the rocky ceiling of the hall.

‘You do not have long, Typhon of the Dusk Raiders,’ he said. ‘The Lion comes, seeking your head. Your warriors are being slain.’

As if in confirmation, the first reports crackled across the comm-net. The rearguard of three squads of Grave Wardens were under attack. Their report was short-lived, talking of the blazing sword of the Dark Angels’ primarch, and of nightmare hooded creatures by his side that had eyes of flame and claws of iron. Ten seconds passed and Typhon heard no more from his men.

‘He has brought his psykers with him,’ Typhon told Vioss. ‘I cannot contend with their combined abilities. Warn Charthun and the second line, they must fall back towards this position.’

‘As you wish, commander,’ said Vioss.

‘We are the Death Guard now,’ Typhon corrected Tuchulcha. ‘I cannot take you back to my ship by my own hand. You must come with me if you want to be free.’

‘Free?’ Again there was the strangled gurgling of laughter from the animated boy. ‘I have been waiting a long time for the Lion to return. I saw him, the first time he came, and knew that my saviour had been delivered to me. The Perditians trapped me here, but with the aid of Iaxis I have been able to loose my bonds. I have remained solely because I knew the Lion would return to me.’

‘He seeks to destroy you,’ said Typhon.

‘He seeks to possess me, as all others have before,’ replied Tuchulcha. ‘Fear not for me, brave Typhon. You must fulfil your own destiny. Your primarch awaits you. It would be such a waste for you to be slain here. Here, let me help you.’

Typhon’s protest died in his throat as he felt the surge of translocation. A moment later, he was on the strategium of the Terminus Est, his remaining Grave Wardens around him.

‘What was that about?’ said Vioss, shaking his head. The captain turned to the surprised attendants at the bridge controls. ‘Set course for the nearest translation point. The Dark Angels will be after us soon enough.’

‘No need,’ said Typhon, feeling a pressure in the back of his mind that he recognised well. ‘Tuchulcha has already put us well out of harm’s way.’

Dismissing his serfs, Typhon was left alone in his chambers, the bare metal bulkheads spotted with rust, lit by the unfettered glare of the light strips in the ceiling. He peeled off the last layer of his undersuit, tossing the sodden mesh aside to reveal his pallid flesh. He could not understand what had happened. The Father had sent him to Perditus to rescue Tuchulcha from the clutches of the Mechanicum, but he had failed.

The ache in his gut was still there, and the Death Guard commander looked down at his stomach. Beneath his flesh could be seen the rigid plates of his black carapace. There was something else, pocking his skin just below his breast plate. He could not see so clearly past the curve of his muscled chest, so Typhon turned and looked at himself in the polished bronze of his mirror.

Just beneath his solar plexus were three blisters, each as large as his thumbtip, arranged in a triangle, touching each other. They were dark red, surrounded by a black ring, weeping clear fluid. He felt no pain as he gently prodded one of the buboes with his finger. In fact, the sensation sent a thrill of pleasure through his body.

Typhon had a moment of realisation. He had freed Tuchulcha. By travelling to Perditus, he had turned the Lion’s eye towards the world, setting in motion a course of events that led somewhere Typhon did not know, but was to the grand design of the Father. The trio of blisters on his flesh was a reward; a sign from the Father that Typhon’s loyalty had been noted. He was marked now and forever, marked by the love of the Father.

It was just the beginning, of course. The Grave Wardens were only the first. The Father wanted them all. The Father wanted the love and loyalty of every Death Guard; the love and loyalty of Mortarion above anything else.

‘Areyou surethat was all the message said?’ Captain Lorramech shook his head, eyes fixed on Midoa. The two of them walked back to the strategium, heading from the conveyor that had brought them up from the docking bay.

‘That was all the Lion said I was to say,’ confirmed Midoa. ‘He was very specific. “Tell Guilliman I have a reply for him,” the Lion told me. “Tell him to wait for me. I am coming.” That was it.’

The lord of the First Legion sat as he so often sat these nights, leaning back in his ornate throne of ivory and obsidian. His elbows rested upon the throne’s sculpted arms, while his fingers were steepled before his face, just barely touching his lips. Unblinking eyes, the brutal green of Caliban’s forests, stared dead ahead, watching the flickering hololith of embattled stars.

Iaxis and his device were safely stowed in the deepest holds of the Invincible Reason. Magellix station had been turned to molten slag and rubble in a few hours; nothing was left for any other Legion to claim.

The Lion’s lips moved, so slightly that perhaps a casual observer would not have noticed. Also none but those with the superhuman hearing of a primarch would have heard the words that came from his near-unmoving lips.

‘I have Curze now,’ the Lion said, speaking only to shadows. His monologue stopped every few moments, as though to allow someone else to speak. ‘With Tuchulcha, we will be able to trap the Night Haunter. We have to be careful not to act too swiftly. Yes, when the time is right, but not before. If Curze notices a drastic change in our strategy he will respond, perhaps abandoning Thramas altogether. You are right, that would not be helpful.’

The Lion paused and wiped a fingertip across his brow.

‘Guilliman is a misguided fool at best, and a traitorous dog at worst.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I know that, but I would no sooner bend my knee to him than to Horus. Curze has the truth of it, but I was blinded by my anger. It has fallen to me to be the scale upon which history will be balanced. Every event has its counter, every brother his equal. Curze seeks to sap my morale and the strength of my Legion with unending war. Such shall be the duty of the Dark Angels. Yes, they will be ready for the task. There will be no new Emperor, only a lifetime of war. My brothers will bleed each other dry, contesting for eternity until there can be no victor. No, not even him. There is only the Emperor, none is worthy of inheriting that mantle. I will ensure the Legiones Astartes destroy themselves before another matches the power upon Terra. That is true. Faced with the prospect of mutual annihilation, my brothers may come to terms. Horus will be forced to acknowledge the Emperor again, and Guilliman and the others will not usurp their true master.’

Again the Lion stopped, with a slight shake of the head. He turned his gaze to his left, and out of the shadows appeared a diminutive figure. It was no taller than the height of a man’s knee, clad in an ebon robe, tiny and nimble black-gloved hands visible, but the rest of its body and face hidden in shadow. The diminutive creature looked up at the Lion and two coal-like glows briefly lit the inside of its hood.

‘No, it is too important,’ said the primarch. ‘Even if what you say is true, I cannot return to Caliban yet. Come what may, I have to stop Horus and Guilliman.’

The small figure bowed its head, and the Lion did the same, his whisper full of sorrow.

‘Yes, even if it costs me my Legion.’

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter 6

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Mastering the bardic arts requires such discipline, such breadth and depth of understanding that it falls to the very few, to the most learned, and to those truly in their unfettered prime to invoke a character that is other.

I fell upon my profession as a child at the bedside of a teller of the most magical of elf tales, and I have tried my humble best to invoke the ancient race honestly and honourably.

I weary now, and know that it will take all the energy I have to do justice to this portion of the tale, this most pained and painful of subjects, this creature of the endless night, of enduring darkness, of pity and of pathos.

Forgive me if I falter, for so desolate a character never walked the Empire but he filled these bardic veins with bloodless ice. I feel a glacial blast only anticipating unfurling this tale. Stir the fire, for my chilled hands will not hold the poker steady, and swathe my shoulders in another of your fine blankets, and I will do my very best.

Hail mine liege lord the night

Hail mine liege lady the moon

Hail mine steed of might

Hail mine blades of doom

Hail mine eternity of life

Hail mine eternity of death

Hail mine duty of strife

Hail mine sacrifice of faith

He spoke the words over and over, first aloud, and then silently. For the first half-hour of silent repetitions, his lips moved, but, gradually, the words became a mantra, a meditation in his exhausted mind. Then, his lips were all but stilled, the top, so pale that its edge was invisible, the lip and the surrounding skin the same bloodless, grey hue. His bottom lip swelled slightly at the centre, dark and moist, as if a great black ball of blood was trying to leak out from between his teeth. It quivered from time to time. He longed to feel the words as he had felt them a thousand years ago, but he felt nothing now, nothing but the futility of an existence devoid of all meaning.

He sat in a small clearing with his back exposed. He had long-since given up the practice of sitting with his back against a tree or wall, or into the corner of a room. He had long-since abandoned any desire to defend himself. He relished his vulnerability, however artificial it was. He knew that if he was attacked from behind, he would surely hear his adversary, be on his feet before the attack had happened, and would probably have run his assailant through on his sword before the poor deluded fool had a chance to parry or counter-attack.

He was the consummate fighting machine. He had no heart, no fear, no weaknesses, and above all no worthy opponent.

Everyone was his enemy. Every mortal creature despised him, as he despised himself. Every sentient race cursed him, cowered before him and condemned him, as his own kind had condemned him to this endless round, this interminable existence.

He was nothing. He had nothing. Time had taught him that as it had taught him little else of any value.

He was merely a construct, only the sum of the parts, parts that had been so key to his life once, long ago when they had meant something. He had been the battle. He had been the armour and blade. He had been nobility. He had been service. He had been honour, loyalty, faith. He clung to the tenets of his long-dead existence, not lest he should cease to exist, for he knew that he could never cease to be, but lest his existence become not only futile, but also structure-less. The routine was all that remained. The observances were all that reminded him of what he had once been. He knew not how to pray like a Bretonnian knight, but he knew that a Bretonnian knight must pray, and so he prayed the only prayer that he knew. He knew that a Bretonnian knight must be noble, strong, faithful and brave. He knew that he had once been all of those things. What he was now, what he had been this past millennium was none of those things. That he could act as if he was what he had once been must be enough.

He had not died an honourable death. He would not die in honour, now, and so he must make his observances, follow his routines, and preserve a receding corner of sanity in his hindbrain.

He settled a camp, not because he needed to rest, but because he had been taught how to settle and strike a camp as preparation for his first crusade. He lit a fire, not because he needed the heat or the light, or to cook food, but because fire was the essence of life. He mended his clothes, cleaned his armour and oiled his blade, not because those things made a difference to his capacity for combat, but because the routines made him feel alive, human, humble again for a moment, as if his continued existence mattered, as if he had a cause, a reason for being.

He sat before the fire he had built, a neat, perfectly symmetrical cone of twigs, giving off a warmth that he could not truly feel, and worked lapping powder into the smooth, curving steel of his cuisse. He wove small, regular circles across the metal to the rhythm of the words in his head, trying to think of nothing else.

It was impossible.

He had been sitting like this when the elf had come upon him. He had used this same cuisse as a shield when he was forced to improvise to save himself from the great warrior’s onslaught.

To save himself.

How had he come to save himself?

Why had he fought to save himself?

The Vampire Count sat still, silent, without even the words in his head for company, without the mantra, the improvised prayer that kept all other thoughts from his fragile mind. He polished the armour only because that was what he did, and now the very act that helped to keep him sane brought with it the madness of the question, ‘Why had he fought to save himself?’.

The humans were as nothing. He had never been a man in the prosaic sense. A knight is not a man, for he is so much more, and so much less than other men. He had not sought to defile men in the way that had been so popular among his kind for so long. He had taken the solitary path. He must battle when the battle came to him, but he would not raise the dead nor bring with him the destroyed. For those who were less than nothing, for the hordes that were destroyed only to be brought back to destroy anew, were less than pitiful, less than pathetic.

He had fought to save himself for he could not fail to do what he had been schooled to do. He could not fail to be that knight, that paragon, that exemplar. A few decades as that living, breathing knight could not be wiped away, not even by a thousand years of undeath.

The elf, whose name he knew not, was the closest he had come in a thousand years to real, final, ultimate death.

His face showed no expression. His lip did not quiver, nor did his pupils dilate. His nostrils did not flare, nor did his brow rise. The thought in his head was not visible on his face.

The Vampire Count began his mantra again, his lips working the sounds of the words that he spoke fervently, aloud, filling the clearing with increasingly stentorian tones. With every repetition his voice grew stronger and firmer.

Hail mine liege lord the night

Hail mine liege lady the moon

Hail mine steed of might

Hail mine blades of doom

Hail mine eternity of life

Hail mine eternity of death

Hail mine duty of strife

Hail mine sacrifice of faith

He knew what he must do. He must fight to the death for the right, for the privilege of being expunged, of being removed wholly and completely from existence. He could not sacrifice himself, so he must find a worthy opponent and die at his hand. He must find the elf. He must challenge him, and he must trust that the magical being would finally best him in combat.

The knowledge freed the Vampire Count from the pall of ages, liberated him from the threat of eternal life, and lifted him. He did not know what it was to feel happiness or even contentment, and he did not feel them now. He did feel a little less dread, a little less resignation. He wondered if what he felt was hope, but he dismissed the thought almost before it had a chance to come to life in his mind. The rhythm of his mantra was broken for a moment, and his voice faltered. The feeling did not last, and the undead creature began his prayer again, from the beginning, as he kicked over the remains of his fire, folded away his tin of lapping powder and his polishing cloth, and took up the first piece of armour to strap to his body.

The elf had sought to destroy the skaven. The Vampire Count resolved to descend below ground, and, perhaps, the skaven would find they had an ally, after all.

Despite there being little to party with, there was great reason to party, and party they must.

Dozens of their men had been returned to the community, both to the town and to the surrounding tracts of farmland. The men had returned and borne with them tales of the rout of the skaven.

They did not know who had slaughtered the ratmen in such numbers, or how he had done it. Only one or two of them had seen the warrior, so tall and lean, so ethereally handsome. A very few had seen him wield his weapons, killing and maiming with every thrust and strike. Those few told their stories long and loud to whomever would listen. Their audiences of women and children were large and growing, and, within a day or two, all the men were claiming to have seen the wondrous creature. Some even dared to call him an elf; although so rare and extraordinary a creature had never been seen by any of them before.

Most claimed to have seen him, some claimed to have been standing within feet of him when the tide of skaven was broken on his blade, and a few even claimed to have fought alongside him. One told of how he had been back-to-back with the elf, of how he had been urged on by the creature and then praised in dulcet tones for his bravery.

‘“No man ever fought so bravely”, that’s what he said,’ said Varn Holst, a short, portly man, who had come away from the undercrofts with a long tear in the skin of his shin, which was red and raw and infected. He’d taken the injury falling over a skaven blade abandoned in one of the underground tunnels before he’d even joined the fray. He’d laid low after taking the injury, and had only begun to run for his life when he heard the cries of his fellow humans behind him. Just a few days later his mother-in-law removed the leg below the knee, and only a week after the battle with the skaven, Varn Holst died of a fever. He’d had his moment of glory, had told a good yarn, and there was no shame in that, but everyone knew that if he’d ever actually seen an elf, at best he would have soiled himself or fainted clean away, and, at worst, he would have died of fear where he stood.

The merrymaking continued for days, half-party, half-wake. There was little enough to eat at the best of times, but someone somewhere was always willing to brew beer, and even the hard stuff, from whatever rotten peelings, unripe fruit, or even flaking tree-bark might be available, so there was a surfeit of alcohol. Several of the younger men and one or two women were made sick by ale that was too young to drink, after all the properly brewed stuff was gone. For the rest, there was more than enough alcohol of the kind that burnt all the way down and then all the way up again, and might cause temporary blindness in anyone who had the constitution to drink more than a pint of it. Indeed, it had been a huge help to poor old Varn when his leg had to be amputated.

They did not know what the rout of the skaven meant for the land, for their families or for their futures, but for now, for these few days, the townspeople and folk from the surrounding countryside were content to make merry and celebrate the small victory bestowed on them by the mysterious warrior.

They did not notice the strangers in their midst. They did not see the tall, elderly man or his taller, younger companion. They did not lower their voices when the slumped, hooded interlopers sat quietly in the corners of their drinking holes.

The strangers watched and listened and registered everything. They heard the humans’ drunken stories, as incoherent and elaborated as they often were, and they pieced together some semblance of the truth.

The creature the humans had mistaken for the villain of the piece, the mysterious figure they had shrunk from and feared, the ethereal being that they credited with the decimation of the land and all the other hardships they had suffered these many years, had become their hero, his praises sung in every word that passed their lips.

The unlikely pair of strangers watched and listened. They entered and left the cookshops and drinking holes without being confronted, or even noticed, and they moved from street corner to street corner, from farmstead to lowly hovel to garner as much information as they could. They were not disappointed.

Some of the stories were contradictory, for what elf could be hunted and tracked by the coarse humans? Some stories were embellished to the point of being almost comedy, for what elf had ever worn full plate armour of the type described by one over-zealous story-teller? And still there were mysteries left unanswered.

There were dozens of stories of bravery and derring-do, all involving the mysterious, fearless warrior, often with a phalanx of eager humans in support. There were dozens of descriptions of blades flashing faster than the eye could follow their trajectories, and of ratmen being killed and maimed in the onslaught, or running screaming from the valiant swordsman. One human, surrounded by an eager audience, even blew out every lamp in the windowless hovel, which was his theatre, putting the very last and smallest, with its meagre glow, between his feet under the table, so that everyone could experience the miserable dark below ground in the tunnels that made up the labyrinthine warren the skaven inhabited.

The strangers left under the cover of darkness, after the story-teller began to weave tales so absurd and unbelievable that the older of the two could hardly contain his mirth, while the younger was filled with scorn and indignation.

‘They talk of him as if he had wrought some great magic,’ said the youth.

‘They should,’ said his older companion. ‘He does that.’

‘They do not talk of where he is,’ said the youth, ‘nor of what happened after his great victory.’

‘No,’ said the other.

‘It is him, though?’ asked the youth.

‘You’ve heard the stories. He is the subject of tales that will be told and retold for a thousand years by the humans. If we cared to tell his tales, we would tell them for millennia.’

‘But the discrepancies? There are so many, and they are of the strangest kinds,’ said the youth.

‘The humans tell stories in a particular fashion; the truth is less important to them than the romance of the tale. They know not what an elf truly is, and so they embellish, ornamenting a character in their own terms, in ways that define the sense of a being rather than the reality of it.’

‘So, it is him.’

‘It is him,’ said the older man as they walked into the darkness away from the edges of the town.

‘Do you know where to find him?’ asked the youth.

‘He said that he would find me,’ said the other, ‘but since there is no sign of him, and no word of him leaving the skaven warrens, I fear we shall have to follow him underground.’

The old man stopped suddenly, and watched for a moment or two as the youth, failing to notice that his companion was not at his side, strode purposefully onward.

‘So like him,’ the old man said to himself. ‘So young and tall and headstrong, and so very, very like him.’

The youthful figure stopped and turned to face his old companion.

The old man lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and began to walk towards the youth. He dropped his head, so that no part of his face was visible beneath his hood, and he muttered under his breath, ‘Where are you Gilead te Tuin? Where are you my old friend?’

The Vampire Count had very little in the way of tracking skills. He was drawn by blood, and could smell it on everything, creature, monster, human. He could smell the difference between the carrion-eating, lower mammal life-forms that he had been forced to feed on in the past few years, and the sweeter subtler aroma of the grass-eating mammals whose blood he preferred. The skaven smelt like the lower orders, like the rodents they got their common name from, but even more vile. Nothing would induce him to sate his appetite on those loathsome monsters. Humans, while they had their undead uses for many of his brethren, did not represent the richest of pickings for him, their omnivorous appetites and their indiscretions with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs made their blood tannic and greasy. A young, female vegetarian human who did not sully her blood with drugs and drank only water was the highest prize of all, and virtually impossible to resist, but there were so few of those around that he had not partaken of one in more than a decade.

The elf had not smelt of blood at all, and was so skilled at leaving no evidence of his existence that the only trail he had left was a trail of bodies, of skaven dead.

The Vampire Count stopped for a moment while he allowed this thought to foment. If he could not track the elf by his blood scent, nor recognise the clear, spring-water smell of his adversary, he would simply follow the trail of rat bodies, for the elf would surely be found at the site of the biggest pile of slaughtered skaven.

Fully armed and armoured, the Vampire Count stowed his belongings, and stood beside his war steed, waiting for the sun to set. His best chance to track down an entrance to the skaven labyrinth below the earth was in open ground, since the ratmen were too lazy to dig through the roots of trees. He would have to wait for several hours in the woods before emerging at twilight, but he was used to the passage of great tracts of time and could wait out these hours without recourse to thought or movement, food or rest. As he waited he would recite his mantra, over and over again, and try to remember the true meaning of honour.

Hail mine liege lord the night

Hail mine liege lady the moon

Hail mine steed of might

Hail mine blades of doom

Hail mine eternity of life

Hail mine eternity of death

Hail mine duty of strife

Hail mine sacrifice of faith

‘Tell me of the skaven,’ said the youth as the companions sat together over a small fire, eating the roasted flesh of the tubers and corms that grew in the mulchy layers of earth close to the surface.

‘The ratmen?’ asked the older man. ‘They live no life at all, but fill what little time they have with retched thrashing and mewling and scavenging for carrion. Their weapons are primitive and their usage crude, but predictable. But talk is meaningless. You are well-trained and will confront the skaven soon enough.’

The stench in the air was of putrefaction, animal and vegetable, but there was no smell of fresh blood or of living beings, not even of the skaven.

The Vampire Count stood soft in the knees and low at the shoulders in a dark, earthy tunnel, his eyes glowing, shedding enough light for him to see a yard or two of the path ahead. He could hear nothing, and his touch was impeded by the covering of leather, chain and metal that encased his body. He must rely on being able to smell and taste the air to find his quarry.

The Vampire Count did not draw his weapon in the confined space, since there was nothing nearby to attack nor to defend himself against, but he was eager for the fight. He could move more easily in open spaces, and in tunnels built of brick or hewn from rock rather than dug out of the earth with claws. At every junction, the Count took the wider tunnel with the higher ceiling, while still working his way down into the earth.

The scents changed little, but the confined spaces seemed to concentrate them. Many of the smells were as old as time, unable to escape and dissipate into the air above ground. None of the smells were dry, none clean, none fresh or enticing. The tunnels smelt not of sweet earth or baked brick, or hewn stone, but of rot and decay, of damp and infection and death and putrefaction. It did not dawn on the Vampire Count to wonder what he smelled of. It did not occur to him that his body smelled of age and death, of disease and fear.

None stopped his passage through the tunnels and burrows that drew him deeper underground, for there were none to stop him.

The first skaven that the Vampire Count encountered were a clutch of mewling infants, pink and mottled of skin, crusted of eye, transparent of claw. He drew his sword through their pitiful bodies not in self-defence but in revulsion. They made no sound as they died. The only sound the Count made was to exhale with the stroke, as he had been taught hundreds of years before, despite the fact that breathing was redundant and his lungs were petrified, rendered useless at the time of his undeath. He had maintained his habits forcibly at first, afraid that he would forget his old self as his undead state took precedence over everything that had gone before. Now he wished that he had forgotten, that he could forget. Nothing in his undead life gave him pain so much as the loss of the old way of living.

The Vampire Count took hold of the neck of his scabbard in his left hand, preparing to replace his sword, when he heard a faint, distant scratching noise that brought his nose up to meet the movement in the air to detect any fresh odour.

The smell was of carrion flesh and infection, but newer, more immediate, and more likely to be alive than dead.

The Count adjusted his grip on his sword and surged into the darkness, down a sloping corridor that gave way to another and then another. Two minutes later, he found himself at a junction of four corridors, one sloping upwards, two low and dark, but the fourth... the fourth was wide of mouth and sweeping of curve.

The Count heard a crash and a tumble, and the shriek and screech of narrow jaws and unsheathed claws. He was almost bowled over by a scratching, screaming bundle of several skaven bodies, hurtling from the tunnel like cats in the middle of a fight.

A pair of bloody, shiny eyes looked up at him, and the head they belonged to was suddenly still at the centre of the mayhem. As the ratman opened his mouth to shriek a warning to the other members of the ragged ball of fur that constituted their several bodies, the Count brought his blade across its jaw and out through the back of its head. In one sweeping motion, he separated the ratman from its life by dividing the crown of its head from its mandible. A second ratman lost an eye, and, while it was lamenting its fortune, was lanced through the belly on the end of the Count’s rapidly swinging sword. The Count misjudged his third stroke when one of the ratmen moved faster than he had anticipated, and he took two limbs from the skaven, a lower and an upper on its left side. The ratman tried for a moment to run away from its attacker, but became confused, and could only perform a sudden ragged circle before it bled out. The Count thought he had seen off the last of the little clutch of skaven when the fourth clamped one paw to its face and another to its chest and then literally keeled over in front of him before he had even swung at it. But there was a fifth ratman, who had separated itself from the melee at the first opportunity and was hot-footing it back down the tunnel, bellowing as it went.

The Count followed it, not so quickly, but with steely determination. Any live ratman would surely lead him, eventually, to the great skaven-killer that was the ethereal elf.

The pair of men, tall and slender silhouettes in the fading light, struck camp as soon as they had finished their meal and cleaned their utensils. The elegant dishes went back into their packs, and they left the site of their meal as it had been when they had arrived. The last of the fire was brushed back into the earth and carefully kicked over, and the companions left no trace of themselves as they went in search of an opening in the ground.

Their eyes adjusted quickly from the twilight to the underground gloom, and they soon found themselves navigating a series of earth tunnels, moist to the touch, but eerily quiet.

The older, shorter of the two figures led the way when the tunnels and corridors were too narrow for them to walk side-by-side, and their exceptional height meant that few of the burrows were tall enough for them to stand upright in. The older man kept his entire torso low, so that his head remained upright and level, and the youth behind him followed his lead, soon matching his stride, and growing increasingly confident.

‘How do we track him?’ asked the youth.

‘We don’t. We track death.’

‘Because of the humans?’ asked the youth.

‘Because of the humans’ stories,’ said the older man. ‘If he defended them, if he slew even half as many as they say, if he is still beneath the ground, then we will find him where we find death.’

‘Deeper then?’ asked the youth, as they came to a fork in the tunnel. He hesitated for a moment, resting the palm of his hand against the dark, packed-earth wall, and looked hard at his companion, as if concentrating. ‘There’s movement.’

‘Deeper,’ said his companion, already leading the way.

At the next turn in the tunnel, in a shallow alcove to the left of them, they saw their first dead.

‘What is it?’ asked the youth, steadying his breathing, lest the stench of putrid flesh overwhelm his senses.

‘They,’ said his companion. ‘They’re the young. That’s what their offspring look like, such as they are. Not very different from the adults, smaller of course, but equally pestilential.’

‘He did this?’ asked the youth.

His elder dropped in his knees to look a little more closely at the bundle of blood and downy fur.

‘The kill is clean, efficient, executed with a honed blade. He could have done this. No... He must have done this, for who else in these parts would wield a blade so elegantly? Certainly not the skaven, and the humans carried more tools than weapons below ground when they went into battle.’

‘It isn’t the work of a human hand,’ the youth agreed.

‘The rest might be due to fatigue or the confines of the space. The strokes do not quite conform to his usual pattern or attack, but in the absence of an alternative, we must believe that it is him.’

The pair continued for another quarter of a mile of tunnels, turning this way and that, following the vibrations in the walls. Then the older companion stopped suddenly as he felt a series of thuds through the earth floor.

‘Bodies?’ asked the youth.

‘Falling to the floor. Creatures are dying.’

The youth made to hurry forward, but the old man extended an arm to prevent him. There was a strange, animal cry, and then nothing.

‘He doesn’t need our help,’ said the old man. ‘The battle is over, until the next time.’

‘Should we let him know we’re behind him?’ asked the youth. ‘Should we call out?’

‘Subtle as ever,’ said his companion. ‘He’ll know we’re here. We’re not hiding our footfalls, and we’re speaking together freely. Even an idiot human would have no trouble tracking us down.’

Minutes later, they came upon four skaven corpses, variously annihilated with some bladed weapon.

‘Look here,’ said the youth, pointing to a corpse that had died of its injuries, the limbs on the left side of its body cut cleanly from its body. ‘This is not the work of a consummate warrior.’

His companion looked down at the body.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but the skaven are surprisingly fleet, and singular of purpose. If this rat creature darted swiftly and suddenly enough, especially with a kick of adrenaline behind it, there is just a chance that even an experienced swordsman might miss his target once in a while.’

‘It seems so unlikely,’ said the youth.

‘Perhaps,’ said the old man, ‘but he has been below ground, fighting a massed horde of skaven, for several days, and none of us is perfect... Not even–’

The skaven was almost past them before they had seen it, crossing the junction where they had found the corpses. The youth drew the shorter of his blades, but his companion had drawn a blade and driven it through the creature, high against its collarbone before he had the chance to wield it.

The skaven remained standing, clutching at its shoulder as the older man twisted his blade and opened the wound, making the ratman shriek and fall.

‘You’re right,’ said the youth, ‘they’re fast.’

‘Still not fast enough, though, lad.’

The Count turned as he heard the sudden shriek of a skaven, a ratman under attack. Moments later there was a thud, and the faint sound of words, or perhaps humming. He bent his ear and concentrated on the sounds, but they were not words in any language that he recognised, and nor were they the sudden squeaks and squawks of the skaven. He wondered for a moment if the words might have come from the elf, but dismissed the thought. The sounds came from behind and above him, and the great warrior was surely deep among the ratmen, killing and maiming, and, besides, the elf had been alone, with no one to talk to.

The next junction was a dog-legged right turn down another slope, a marriage of stone and earth that included several ragged steps. The Count hid himself in the shadows at the bottom of the steps and waited.

He heard steps, not the scamper of claws, but the definite strides of upright bipeds. The strides seemed long for any but the tallest humans, but light and confident, more like a dance with a regular beat than simple walking. There were, however, two distinct walkers, the rhythms slightly different.

The strides sounded at first close by, but then deviated before coming back at a right angle to their original position. The corridors were irregular, labyrinthine, and sounds echoed and bounced around in the spaces in a manner that the Count found confusing. He did not trust them.

He moved away down the sloping tunnel that had begun with the stone steps, and could hear nothing.

He stopped again, and the footfalls were audible once more.

He walked back to the steps, and the footfalls stopped.

The Count was sure, now, that he was being followed. His pursuers stopping to listen for his footfalls, and walking towards him when he moved on.

He knew that he could not mask the sound of his steps, or the vibrations he made in the tunnels. He was not built for subtlety and his armour would not allow for it, but he was built to fight, and he would be ready and waiting for the battle when it came to him.

‘Do you hear that?’ asked the youth. ‘That is not the sound of his stride.’

‘Nor that of a ratman,’ said his companion.

‘A human, then?’

‘A super-human if he was responsible for the killing we’ve seen,’ said the old man. ‘A true warrior. I doubt such a man would exist among the towns and villages, and among the people we have seen here.’

‘A traveller, then, a mercenary?’ asked the youth, ‘but then why did the locals tell tales of an elf and not of this mortal?’

‘An exceptional man might seem like an elf to some of them, and might easily become an elf in the telling of their tales. The humans call it “hyperbole”, and they’re wondrous accomplished in the use of it.’

‘We should leave then?’ asked the youth. ‘We should search for him elsewhere?’

‘Where “elsewhere”,’ asked the old man, ‘when there is no word of him anywhere but here. Besides, even the most resourceful human might benefit from our assistance against the skaven.’

‘Have we not a purpose of our own?’ asked the youth.

‘Our purpose has ever been to serve,’ said the old man, ‘and serve is what we shall ever endeavour to do.’

A sheen of red light penetrated the air as the Vampire Count blinked. He knew that they were close, and he knew that he had no choice but to confront them. He expanded the muscles in his chest as if breathing deeply into stone-hard lungs, and he felt a calm descend around him. He would fight. He knew that he would fight, but, for the first time since he had been immortal, he also knew that he could fight and lose.

The youth looked at his companion, his mouth open slightly as if to say something, but his feet stilled against crumbling earth. The passage was to his right, stone steps leading down into it at an angle. He had seen something.

His old companion looked steadily into the youth’s eyes, forbidding him to move or speak.

The reddish light shone faintly but steadily to their right, a little below their head height, but the steps surely allowed for that. The old man moved silently against the wall opposite the tunnel mouth and waved a hand for the youth to stand beside, but behind, him.

They both concentrated hard on the dull light that went out and then returned as if in a blink.

The two men unsheathed their short blades, swords being too long and unwieldy in the confined space.

The youth gestured with his head tilted in the direction of the light, as if asking a question.

His companion shook his head, keeping his eyes on the opening to the tunnel.

Whatever was waiting in the entrance to the tunnel was not human, and nor was it the elf they sought. Whatever was waiting in the entrance was not skaven. It was assuredly not friend, and so it was almost certainly foe.

The old man adjusted his grip on his weapon and, as swift and silent as he could be, he flew down the steps, straight at the red light, ready to defend his life and that of his companion.

A blade came to meet his, mere inches from their faces, as the old man got his first look at his opponent. The youth followed his companion with all haste, but stopped dead in his tracks on the bottom step, stunned by what stood before him.

The youth thrust haphazardly with his blade, but not before his adversary had unsheathed a second weapon, parrying both blades, before turning both of his opponents’ weapons away.

The youth looked from his friend to his foe and back again, unsure of his standing. Should he fight alongside his companion, or should he wait to see what transpired between the two combatants? Honour required that only one of them should do battle with their adversary, that he stand down in favour of the older man, and the first to attack, but their assailant looked like a fierce creature, the stuff of legend.

The old man tossed his short blade to his left hand and drew a second with his right. He did not draw a sword, knowing that it would become an encumbrance in the limited space, and he was not eager to blunt it on steel and stone. The knife he drew from his boot was an all-purpose tool more than it was a weapon, but its long, grooved stiletto blade was honed to an edge for skinning beasts and stripping the bark from saplings, and wielding it would double his chances of striking the Vampire Count a fatal blow.

The Vampire Count came on fast and sure, and the old man had to duck and parry fast and aggressively to prevent the first three strikes of the Vampire Count’s blade from finding the flaws in his defence. Then he was on the attack, looking always for chinks in the warrior’s armour as his blades flashed left and right, aiming at joints and the soft places under the arms and thighs and in the groin. He did not expect to hit his targets against a swordsman who was clearly more than capable, fast, strong and determined, but he might put the beast on the defensive, and slow down the chances that a counter-attack might prove fatal.

The youth had never seen the old man sweat before, and was surprised to see it now. He was even more surprised by the Vampire Count’s prowess with a blade, and his confidence, especially when face to face with so masterly an opponent.

The Vampire Count grunted and feinted, and then came in at an angle across the old man’s body, and the youth finally realised that his companion might be in real trouble. The blade in his hand was ready, and he was as capable as one so young and untried could be. He had certainly proved himself in the training arenas, and had taken more instruction from the old man on their arduous journey to this place. He cut in, instinctively forcing the Vampire Count’s blade wide of his target, slewing the steel across the undead’s body at a clumsy angle, unbalancing him.

The old man got a blade in low, and felt sure that he had torn into the Vampire Count’s calf, despite there being no blood to show for his effort.

The Vampire Count didn’t falter, but stepped into the youth’s next lunge, bringing them virtually nose-to-nose with each other.

The youth breathed in as he prepared to break and thrust, and almost gagged on the rich dry smell of death mixed with the sweet aroma of lapping powders and the musky scent of the fine chamois that the Vampire Count used to polish his armour.

His old companion came to his rescue, blindsiding the Vampire Count with a sweep and a lurch, bringing the blade in his left hand up clumsily, but effectively, into range of those fierce red eyes.

The Vampire Count ducked the old man’s strike, and the youth rallied.

The youth’s next thrust was fierce, but ill-considered. He wanted nothing more than to maim and kill the vile creature, but his disgust had got the better of his fighting prowess, and his desperation to succeed led to a clumsy attack that was easily parried away. The youth found himself without his blade, and had to step back to regroup while the old man held back the Vampire Count as effectively as he could.

The fight slowed.

The old man brought both blades to the battle, lunging and crossing, the first blade skidding off the curving steel of a cuisse, the second barely making contact with the inside of the Vampire Count’s left forearm. The undead warrior parried lightly, making no attempt to separate the old man from his weapons, and failing to take advantage and counter-attack.

The fight slowed further, the old man testing the Vampire Count’s resolve to do him real damage, leaving an opening here, an undefended flank there. He took a tear in his cloak and a nick to an earlobe for his trouble, but no final swing, no fatal blow was struck.

The youth stood and watched, aghast, before coming back into the fray, at which point, the Vampire Count doubled his efforts to take into account his attack.

‘Fight, fiend!’ declared the youth, appalled that such a creature should dare to patronise not only himself, but his revered companion. ‘Attack!’

The old man simply stepped back, leaving the youth to do his best. His best was fine, good even, but it was not the stuff of great legends.

‘Desist,’ said the old man.

The youth fumbled his parry and was rewarded with a long scratch down the length of his right arm, as he reacted in disbelief to his old friend’s command.

The red-eyed creature desisted at once, sheathing his weapon and taking a short step backwards.

The youth attacked once more, a combination of frustration and desperation getting the better of him. He sliced a neat gouge in the Vampire Count’s cheek, and watched, horrified as it failed to fill with blood. A thin trickle of yellowish liquid eventually drizzled out of the curving gash, and the folds of skin separated slightly, but, by that time, the Vampire Count had taken hold of the youth by his shoulders and was holding the stunned boy at arm’s-length. The Vampire Count’s eyes, still red, failed to shine as brightly as they had before, and the youth thought he saw melancholy in them.

Then the moment has past. He shrugged the Vampire Count’s hands off his shoulders and took a step back to stand next to his companion.

The Vampire Count began to turn slowly, confident in the knowledge that he would not come under attack a second time. He felt as weary as he had ever felt, his existence perhaps more futile than it had been only an hour or two ago. He had thought to meet his nemesis, and he had found only another enemy, a worthy enemy, who had given him a fair fight, but these two would have to work longer and harder if they were ever to find a way to best him. The old one, perhaps, for he had clearly been a great warrior in his time, but the youth had a very great deal to learn, and the Vampire Count would rather be a part of that education than end the boy’s life before it had begun. Mortality seemed even more precious to him now, when he viewed it in the eager eyes and strong young limbs of the boy.

If he had been capable of shedding a tear, the Vampire Count might have shed one then, but only for himself, and only because he was thwarted in what might prove his last chance to meet a worthy adversary. Perhaps in another hundred years the boy would be up to the challenge. He did not want to wait another hundred years.

The Vampire Count had taken two or three steps forward before the old man called out to him.

‘Wait,’ he said.

The Vampire Count half-turned, but made no move to walk towards his adversary.

‘You are not he,’ he said over his shoulder, his voice deep and hollow and his tones heavily accented with a guttural intonation that the boy had not heard before.

The old man thought for a moment, and the Vampire Count waited for him to formulate his thought, standing in impressive profile before them.

‘I am not he,’ he said.

‘Nor neither of you be,’ said the Count.

The boy tried to untangle the oddness of the phrase, which, even by the standards of human language felt like a form of torture to his ears. Then he looked from the Vampire Count to the old man.

‘He has seen him,’ he said.

The Vampire Count, failing to understand the boy’s alien language, made to turn from them again.

‘You have seen him, then?’ asked the old man, using the only language the two had in common.

‘Him?’ asked the Vampire Count. ‘I sought out the ancient one, sought out his valour and his wondrous swordplay. I sought to expire at his hand. I sought to count him mine liege lord of death.’

‘You have fought him, then?’ asked the youth.

The Vampire Count turned to face them both, intrigued.

‘Thou art brethren to the ancient one?’ he asked. ‘Brethren, and yet lesser warriors than thou shouldst be.’

‘Older,’ said the old man, ‘or younger.’ He gestured to the youth.

‘Cousins,’ said the youth. ‘I believe we call each other cousin. I am his cousin, and my revered companion is his teacher... and mine too, should I impress him.’

‘Thou, teacher, hast been bested,’ said the Vampire Count, without irony.

‘I was bested a great many years ago,’ said the old man, sheathing his blade and then sitting on the step behind him, stretching his left leg in front of him and pushing his second weapon back into the inside edge of his boot.

‘You are alive,’ said the youth. ‘How come you to be alive. Why would he not kill a monster such as you?’

The old man looked up at the boy.

‘A little respect for the warrior,’ he said in their own language. ‘Talk of being bested might give him cause to best you yet, and me too, should it fall to his will.’

The Vampire Count turned and took a step away from the pair as the youth also made to sheath his blade. Death would not release him from a thousand years of undeath today, and he was tired of talk made so difficult by the version of his language which they spoke, but which he hardly recognised.

Then came the sound.

It filled the corridors with a booming rush that resonated at a frequency lower than anyone would expect from a skaven horde. It was, nonetheless, a cacophony of voices baying and calling as one mind with one intention.

The Vampire Count stood still among the wave of sound as it rolled over him, and then turned to the others. The old man was standing with one hand against the stone wall beside him, and the youth had armed himself and was trying not to cower against the onslaught that was that ferocious cacophony, while clearly intent on getting away from it as fast as he could manage.

The old man stayed the youth with one hand on his arm, a touch both reassuring and commanding. Then he looked hard into the Vampire Count’s eyes for a moment before asking his question.

‘Do they call for him?’ he asked. ‘Is the ancient one still below ground?’

The Vampire Count had an image in his head of Gilead standing in a broad, dark, stinking space, surrounded by tunnels, cutting down ratmen two, three, even four at a time. He remembered the baleful cries as the ancient one wrought his destruction on the petty vermin. He remembered, for a moment, the dual in the forest, and he knew not how the elf had been taken, but every ounce of magic left in his veins told him that he had, that the ancient one would be found below ground, deep in the heart of the Rat King’s empire.

The Vampire Count said nothing, he simply turned on his heel and lumbered off down the tunnel towards the deafening roar that once more assailed their senses, beckoning as he went.

‘No!’ shouted the old man, behind him. His hand was still against the earth wall, and he let go of the youth’s arm in order to point in a direction at a steep angle to the tunnel they were standing in.

The Vampire Count knew that the old man was better equipped than he was to judge the distance and direction of the sound, for he knew something of the constitution and skills of the elf-kind.

The three unlikely companions turned as one, climbed the steps out of the tunnel, and turned into a narrow earthwork, one at a time, descending steeply into they knew not what.

The old elf, Fithvael thought of Gilead, his companion and friend.

The boy, Laban te Tuin Tor Mahone, who had attended Baneth’s funeral and been given into Fithvael’s care, thought of the legend that was his great cousin, Gilead, and hoped that he could somehow prove worthy of the trust that had been placed in him by his community, and of the family connection to his hero, however tenuous it might be.

The Vampire Count thought only of an all-embracing nothingness that would end his misery forever.

THUNDER FROM FENRIS

Nick Kyme

‘No son of Russ should die like this.’

Afger Ironmane was crouched in the snow. He regarded the mangled corpse lying next to him forlornly.

It was Barek Thunderborn, a fellow Space Wolf, his brother.

Steam was rising from the carcass of Barek’s beloved wolf-mount, Gerik. The monstrous beast had been torn apart.

The drifts had lessened in the last hour, and rolled slowly across the tundra. Even so, they had begun to settle over Barek’s corpse. The Space Wolf’s blood, still warm from his recent slaying, created dark-red blossoms in the veiling snow. It did little to hide the lacerations in his battle-plate. Nor did it smother his grievous wounds. Cooling intestines were heaped just below Barek’s groin and trailed a half metre from the murder site.

‘Slain by one of his own.’ Afger bit back his anger, but his gauntleted fist was clenched. Snow dappled his armour, turning blue-grey into dirty white. It piled on his pauldrons, only to loosen and cascade off as he got up. Clods of snow clung to his beard too, the black and iron-grey streaks powdered white.

‘We don’t know that for sure, brother.’

Skeln Icehowl was standing farther away. His voice was deep, like the rumble of slow-moving icebergs. He patted his giant wolf-mount Fenrir as it bristled at the stench of blood.

Like his battle-brother, Skeln wore the blue-grey power armour of the Space Wolves. And also like his brother, it was festooned with fetishes and totems honouring their liege-lord Leman Russ and the fierce, warrior-pride of the Wolf Guard of Fenris. A fanged necklace hung around Skeln’s gorget, and a pelt of thick fur draped down his armoured back. Runic talismans dangled off leather thongs attached to his breastplate, which carried the gilt sigil of a winged, lupine skull.

Skeln’s blond beard was less wild than Afger’s and wreathed by snow. He carried a scar across his forehead and above his left eye – a relic of an earlier battle. Both warrior’s had a feral cast to their features, the echo of their namesake, and went unhooded, preferring to feel the icy caress of the weather.

‘It was Hagni,’ disputed Afger. ‘What else could tear Barek Thunderborn apart like this?’ He gestured to the butchered remains. With Barek’s power amour split like paper, his flesh torn and organs ripped from his body, Skeln found an argument difficult to come by. Instead he snarled, showing long canines. His massive wolf-mount bared its own fangs in empathy.

Afger and Skeln hailed from a rarefied, some said mythical, brotherhood within the Space Wolves. They rode thunderwolves, the greatest of all the Fenrisian wolves, as a man would ride a horse. Such creatures were massive, more monster than wolf, easily twice as large as a Terran bear and many times more ferocious. Thick fur was as strong as steel wire. Long fangs were sharp and broad like swords. Few could master such beasts as those that stalked the Mountains of the Maelstrom, and even then they were not wholly tamed.

‘The Scions of Pestilence are dead. Our mission is ended,’ muttered Skeln. ‘Hagni must be found and captured.’

‘He is wulfen!’ Afger was vehement. ‘He must be killed.’

‘No, Afger,’ Skeln’s voice was firm. ‘The Wolf Priests will judge him. It is not for us to decide.’

‘Barek Thunderborn lies dead and it is not for us to decide? Hagni is our brother no longer. He slew a thunderwolf, Skeln.’

‘I won’t condemn him, Afger. What if it was you we hunted?’

Afger thumped his breastplate. Nearby, his wolf-mount, Skoll, growled and pawed the ground.

‘Then I would welcome death as release from dishonour.’

Fenrir snarled, hackles rising on its muscled neck. A sharp word from Skeln quelled his mount’s ire to a low growl. Any retort would have to wait, as the sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted them.

Both Space Wolves turned and saw a Chimera armoured troop carrier rumbling towards them across a snow-choked road. Several kilometres behind it, south of the Space Wolves’ position, loomed a dark bastion. It was the Imperial command post of the Cadian 154th, the ‘Fusiliers’, and the slab-sided Chimera tank that ground to a halt before the Wolves belonged to the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Vorin Ekhart.

The rear hatch squealed opened on half-frozen hinges, landing with a dull thunk, and a jowly man in the olive drab of the Cadians stepped out.

Colonel Ekhart rubbed his gloved hands together, his breath ghosting the air, as he tried to ward off the cold. Neither the storm coat he wore, nor the thick moustaches framing his upper lip, could keep him from shivering.

‘Your men are as grey as the weather, colonel,’ remarked Skeln, appraising the bedraggled state of the Kasrkin storm troopers accompanying him.

Ekhart looked skyward to a blanket of oppressive platinum, and shrugged. Skeln’s shadow eclipsed the officer, the Space Wolf half again as tall and almost twice as wide. To his credit, Ekhart didn’t look intimidated.

‘A long campaign and this damnable cold,’ he uttered by way of explanation. ‘A few weeks for you, my lord, has been the best part of a year on Skorbad for my men and I.’

The colonel stole a furtive glance at Fenrir, who lathed the air with its long, pink tongue, and tried not to show his disquiet. He was dwarfed by the monstrous wolf. Ekhart would barely be a morsel to a beast like that. Even faced with it now, the colonel couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He hadn’t known such creatures even existed, until he’d seen one. Thunderwolf – the name was mythic, almost otherworldly. Yet here two of them stood, like monsters from some elder age, their masters no less impressive and god-like.

Skeln bared his fangs, grinning, though the gesture failed to reach his eyes.

‘Fenrir…’ he warned in a low growl, before the beast backed down and stopped trying to taste the human meat. ‘The Scions of Pestilence are all dead, colonel,’ Skeln continued. ‘You’ll be leaving this rock soon enough, bound for fresh fields and greater glories in the name of the All Father.’

Skorbad had been in the clutch of a deadly Chaos plague when the Space Wolves had arrived. A cult of Nurgle, one of the Ruinous Powers and the entity that revelled in disease and despoliation, had arisen in one of Skorbad’s monolithic cities. Infection spread quickly, the plague’s victims sickening and dying, before stirring into horrific un-life as mindless flesh-eaters. The Cadians had done their best to staunch its spread but had been unable to locate and destroy the plague’s propagators, a war band of Chaos renegades called the Scions of Pestilence – in truth, bloated monstrosities swelled by Father Nurgle’s corruption.

In three short weeks, the Wolf Guard had trawled the cities of Skorbad, found the renegades and despatched them one by one. Hordes of zombies still haunted the deepest ruins but were waning, and aimless without their Chaos pack masters. The Space Wolves’ role in the conflict was over, until Hagni had turned. So far, only the Space Wolves knew of it.

As for the Cadians, they were to consolidate their position and then hand over control to Skorbad’s Defence Forces, who would mop up what was left of the zombie hordes. The less enviable task of putting back together the shattered world’s infrastructure was the job of its governor and his bureaucratic staff.

Ekhart made the sign of the aquila at the Space Wolf’s utterance of the name the sons of Russ used for the Immortal Emperor of Mankind.

‘Indeed, and I’ll not be sorry to leave this place either,’ he then replied. ‘We caught your coded vox echo over our instruments, and I wanted to come out personally to express my gratitude for–’ the colonel stopped abruptly for a sharp intake of breath. ‘Throne of Earth!’ he swore, ‘Is that…?’ Colonel Ekhart had noticed the visceral remains of Barek, just visible beneath the falling snow.

‘Aye, it is,’ Skeln uttered solemnly, not turning to follow the colonel’s gaze.

Ekhart was shaking his head. Somewhere behind him, a Kasrkin threw up. ‘How could…?’ There was a tremble in the colonel’s voice.

To witness one of the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes, a fearsome Space Wolf at that, killed in such a way was disturbing. Something that could do that, something that could kill one of the mythical wolves must be…

‘A beast,’ answered Afger, having stayed silent until then. He locked eyes with Skeln, ‘One that must be hunted and slain in turn.’

Ekhart averted his gaze to focus on Skeln. His tone was incredulous.

‘I thought you said the Scions of Pestilence were dead.’

‘They are,’ replied Skeln, turning away, not deigning to elaborate.

‘I have heard tales…’ Ekhart began.

Skeln glared back at him.

The colonel licked his lips nervously.

‘Of Space Wolves becoming beasts.’

The curse of the wulfen was the secret burden of the Space Wolves, a genetic flaw handed down by their progenitor that could manifest at any time. Rumours abound, as they always did, but this was one ugly truth to be kept by the Chapter, and the Chapter alone.

‘Go back to your bastion and lock the gates,’ snarled Afger, losing patience. Mounting up, he reined Skoll towards the open tundra. Kilometres distant the black silhouette of Helspire, one of the largest of Skorbad’s cities, blighted the horizon. Hagni would be seeking refuge after his kill. ‘We have lingered here long enough, brother,’ Afger said to Skeln, who nodded.

‘Will you…?’ Ekhart ventured, taking an involuntary step back. His storm troopers levelled their lasguns, as they imagined monsters in the warriors before them.

‘You’d be dead before you’d pull the trigger,’ said a rasping voice.

A Kasrkin put up his hands as he felt the sharp caress of metal at his neck.

A third Space Wolf emerged out of the drifts that had grown more belligerent as they’d been talking, having crept up on Colonel Ekhart’s party.

Skeln scowled, but was inwardly impressed at his brother’s stealth.

‘Thorgard,’ he said.

The Space Wolf lowered his wolf claw and laughed. He hadn’t ignited the blades; at such close proximity, the electrical charge alone would have sheared the Kasrkin’s head off.

Thorgard had a closely-cropped beard with a long mane of ruddy hair, plaited with rune stones and bound by bronze rings. His humour was booming, and showed his perfect white fangs.

‘Your men were sleeping, colonel. Perhaps you should find some better bodyguards,’ he said good-naturedly, tramping past them with a feral glint in his eyes. ‘Brother,’ he added, the grin just for Skeln as he walked on.

Thorgard’s face saddened as he regarded Barek, but was quickly impassive.

‘The All Father will judge him, now. It’s out of our hands.’

Afger growled something under his breath, unimpressed at his brother’s antics.

Skeln ignored their bickering, his attention on Ekhart who had yet to lower his guard.

‘Our will is strong, colonel,’ he assured him. ‘You need have no fear of us.’

‘Can you be certain of that?’ asked Ekhart, craning his neck as Skeln mounted Fenrir.

Skeln noticed Thorgard’s beast pad over to him from where he’d left it hiding amongst the snow so he could play his trick. Its name was Magnin, and it bowed its head to allow Thorgard to straddle it.

Facing the colonel, Skeln’s eyes were dark hollows. ‘Do as Afger said: Go back to your bastion. Lock the gates.’

He urged Fenrir with a firm command and went to join his brothers, leaving Ekhart no less uneasy.

They had tarried long enough. Barek’s slayer must be found and stopped, one way or another. Skeln only hoped there was some of Hagni left to bring back.

Colonel Ekhart shuddered as he watched the thunderwolves lope away. It wasn’t from the cold, either.

A terrible, wracking cough gripped him. It felt like burning acid in his lungs. When Ekhart took his hand away from his mouth, there were traces of blood on his glove.

‘Sir?’ said the sergeant of the Kasrkin, about to go to his colonel’s aid before being waved away.

‘It’s nothing,’ Ekhart lied. ‘Into the Chimera,’ he added, before about facing. ‘We’ll wait for the landers at the bastion and lock our gates.’

‘They’re surrounded,’ hissed Afger, sliding up his bolter to sight down its barrel. ‘I count sixteen left. Estimate thirty dead.’

‘Enemies?’ Skeln’s voice inquired from below.

‘At least sixty… maybe more.’

Following Hagni’s trail, the Wolf Guard had entered Helspire without incident. On the way, Thorgard had told them of his discovery of Warg, Hagni’s thunderwolf, ripped apart like Barek and half-buried by a forlorn roadside. Skeln hoped shame had compelled Hagni to try and conceal the carcass, that some of the warrior yet remained within the flesh of the beast. Shreds of armour had littered the trail, too, discarded by Hagni as he outgrew it, shed like old skin as he metamorphosed beneath.

As it had eclipsed the Space Wolves, the long shadow of Helspire had been a blanket over Skeln’s thoughts. Entering the darkness of the city, he became alert and set his troubles aside.

The sprawling cityscape was ghostlike and silent. Shadowed avenues held potential threats at every turn, huge towers loomed forbiddingly, watching, waiting. Ruins filled the broken streets and plazas, stark evidence of the brutal fight that had unfolded here. It proved little impediment to the monstrous beasts rode by the Wolf Guard. None challenged them. Most of Helspire’s populous was either dead, in hiding or had already fled elsewhere. It made hearing the crack of las-fire and the frantic shouts of Cadians easy to discern. The battle din echoed loudly in the empty city. Tracking it to its source had been even easier.

What might once have been a public auditorium stretched out below Afger. One of its columns, no longer supporting the vaulted ceiling, had half-collapsed. Crashed into the wall and held fast, it offered a high vantage point. Skoll had crawled stealthily up the column and lay on its belly as Afger leaned over to survey the scene beneath him.

There was only room for one thunderwolf at the column’s broken summit, so Skeln waited some fifteen metres or so below with Thorgard and their mounts, hidden by the ruins.

Afger saw a ring of battered-looking Cadian Guardsmen, pulling ever tighter; snapping off sporadic bursts with whatever was left in their weapons’ power packs. Converging on them, a shambling horde of flesh-eaters, their bodies rank with decomposition. The whiff of decay made the Space Wolf’s olfactory senses rankle. The wretched plague victims shuffled on broken limbs, old wounds ragged and dark in their dirty uniforms. Some clutched lasguns like clubs, in parody of their former lives and compelled by degrading muscle memory. Others merely reached with taloned fingers, their sharpened nails piercing their gloves; dried blood masking their grotesque and hungering faces.

‘To be killed by your former comrades in arms…’ Afger whispered, shaking his head, then realised what he was saying. He held his tongue as another Cadian was dragged screaming into the mob and slowly devoured. The rest were fighting hard. They wanted to live.

‘Skeln,’ uttered Afger, ‘High and low.’

Turning to Thorgard, Skeln found his brother was already gone.

‘On my way,’ Thorgard’s voice came through the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear. Always a step ahead was Thorgard.

Skeln mentally traced a route for Fenrir through the ruins that would bring

them to the auditorium floor.

‘We are ready, Afger.’

A second’s pause went by.

‘Now,’ snarled Afger.

Skoll got to its haunches and leapt off the column, a howling battle-cry on the lips of man and monster.

They fell amongst the zombie horde and laid about them with fury. Skoll crushed three of the plague creatures as it landed, dashing out their putrid brains with sweeps of its claws. It seized another in iron-hard jaws, biting it in two and casting aside the remains like unwanted meat. The legs stayed inert, but the zombie’s torso began to crawl along the ground, driven by keening hunger.

Afger paid it no heed. Unleashing his bolter, he gunned down a slavering zombie pack, their bodies exploding as the mass-reactive shells blasted them apart. Gore spattered his armour and Skoll’s brawny, half-cybernetic flanks. Man and beast revelled in it, this baptism of blood, howling for more carnage.

As the creatures moved on Afger, this new prey taking the pressure off the still firing Cadians, Skeln roared into view. He drove Fenrir headlong into the diseased masses, the thunderwolf using its bulk and power to batter through them. Rotting corpses were tossed aside, smashed like kindling against pounding surf, before Fenrir slowed and the real slaughter began.

A zombie leapt at Skeln, having launched itself from a high pile of rubble, only for the Space Wolf to arrest its flight with a blazing retort of fire from his bolt pistol. The creature was held in mid-air, caught in the explosive web from Skeln’s weapon. The muzzle flare lit its gruesome features in monochrome before it disintegrated against the bolt pistol’s power.

A half-second and Skeln swung his weapon around to dispatch another zombie trying to rake Fenrir’s exposed flanks. Decaying talons met adamantium skin and shattered, before Skeln killed it. The monstrous wolf had just torn the head off another plague creature and was spitting out the saliva-drenched skull when Thorgard appeared on the far side of the auditorium, wolf claws crackling.

He sheared through a half-dozen zombies as Magnin carried him low across the floor. Heads, limbs and torsos fell like macabre rain in his wake.

The Space Wolves were three points of a triangle, herding the diminishing zombie horde together, what was left of the Cadians standing at the edge of the corral’s bloody perimeter.

Each time the thunderwolves drove in to the zombie horde they tore out again, wreaking carnage, slaying any stragglers and tightening the noose before charging back in. It was savage and furious, but not an iota of rage was wasted. Every shot was a kill, every blade stroke left a dismembered corpse behind it.

Sixty soon became thirty, then twenty as the Space Wolves butchered with controlled ferocity.

‘For the All Father!’ roared Afger, his snarling face framed by the flare of his bolter’s thunder.

Thorgard echoed him then leapt up onto his beast’s back, balancing on its broad shoulders for a moment like an acrobat at a carnival before catapulting into the zombies. Lightning arcs tore strips in the half-darkness, describing the deadly passage of Thorgard’s wolf claws. Magnin peeled off, loping around the edge of the plague-ridden masses, biting off heads and shredding bodies with its claws.

Skeln had drawn his rune-etched power axe and stormed in, straddling Fenrir’s back. He howled savagely, hacking down to bifurcate a zombie’s skull before decapitating another with the upswing. Cutting the last of the creatures down, he reined Fenrir in. Even then, the thunderwolf worried at the ruined corpses of the twice dead.

It had lasted only minutes, yet the desolation of dismembered bodies swathed the auditorium floor.

Afger was breathing hard, not from exertion but from the feral-rage still fuelling him. He eyed the eight Cadian survivors and motioned to Skeln.

‘What should we do about them?’

The humans were cowering, awestruck and fearful at the same time, faced with the monstrous thunderwolves and their riders. Several were injured, already showing signs of infection. A Space Wolf’s biology was engineered to withstand such contagions. A Cadian’s was not.

Skeln’s body language was resigned as he dropped down off Fenrir and stalked over to the Guardsmen.

‘We can take no chances.’

To succumb to such a flesh plague was horrendous. Skeln could scarcely imagine the dishonour in it should his brothers be susceptible to it; should they ever turn. At least the wulfen curse was pure; at least it embraced the unfettered feral rage that lurked at every Space Wolf’s core. But this… it was ignoble, debased. Grace of Russ that they should be spared such a fate.

Some of the Cadians pleaded for death. Some got to their knees.

The Space Wolf levelled his bolt pistol. A few of the men closed their eyes, their lips moving silently.

‘Receive the Emperor’s Peace,’ Skeln muttered sadly.

A bark of fire silenced any screams and eclipsed the Guardsmen’s lives forever.

‘It had to be done, brother,’ Thorgard said to Skeln as he was tramping back again.

Skeln mounted up.

‘Aye.’

Afger turned his back on the carnage of the dead Cadians. It was a pity they could not save them, but many more would die if they did not find Hagni soon.

‘The plague worsens,’ Afger stated flatly. A burst from his bolter slew the zombie torso labouring to claw across the floor towards them. Eerie silence followed for a moment after.

‘Ekhart’s soldiers,’ he sneered, evidently unimpressed. ‘I wonder how many more have fallen?’

‘It is a small matter,’ replied Skeln. ‘Infected or fully turned, we have to despatch any we come across until Hagni is found. Though the Scions are slain, the plague must not be allowed to spread.’ He fixed Afger with an icy glare. ‘Mercy guides our hand in this, not revenge. You’d do well to remember that, brother.’

Afger snarled and turned away.

‘Lead on Thorgard,’ he growled a moment later.

Skeln regarded the dead Cadians again, the ones he had been forced to kill.

How many did you butcher¸ Hagni?

Thorgard had the wulfen’s trail again. The hunt was back on.

Thorgard sat alone, in the lee of a ruined meat-farm outhouse. It was towards the heart of Helspire and had been badly damaged in the fighting, little more than a broken corner of prefabricated rockcrete with the skeletons of other structures and the shells of destroyed Chimeras half-buried in the snow nearby. A Cadian platoon had come this way, but had got no farther.

The drifts had worsened in the last few hours. An almost total white-out smothered the horizon. Visibility was abysmally poor, even for the Space Wolves’ acute senses.

Thorgard’s head was bowed, as if in contemplation, oblivious to the snow flurries dancing around his head and clinging to his beard like arctic limpets. He’d built a fire, using his body and the ruin to shield it from the ice winds rolling across the urban tundra, and flensed the meat from some shaggy-haired bovine, indigenous to Skorbad and somehow missed in the evacuation. It was messy work; blood painted the ground around him and gave off a coppery stink.

A hundred metres away, two Wolves were watching.

‘Hagni may be a beast, but he hasn’t lost his instincts,’ hissed Afger. ‘The wulfen won’t take the bait. Why do you insist on trying to snare him, Skeln?’

The other Space Wolf crouched alongside him in a ruined warehouse structure. Skeln was staring intently at the perimeter Thorgard had made, at the traps and foils he had set, hidden well in the snow and rubble. They kept low and to the shadows, Fenrir and Skoll lurking just behind their masters.

Of Magnin, there was no sign. Like its rider, the thunderwolf was adept at stealth – an uncanny feat for a monstrous beast that was nearly two and half metres from claw to shoulder.

‘His fate is not ours to decide,’ Sklen replied at length. He glared at Afger. ‘I’ve told you this already, brother. I won’t give up on Hagni. Not yet.’

Due to the escalating drifts, the trail had grown cold in more ways than one. Hagni’s wulfen scent was no longer redolent on the breeze. His tracks had disappeared, as well as any other signs of his passing.

‘You must be prepared to kill him, Skeln. If Thorgard or I fail, you must do it!’

Skeln grunted and went back to surveying Thorgard’s concealed deterrents.

‘Only if there’s no other choice,’ he muttered.

Something niggled at the back of Skeln’s mind. Hagni was leading them further into disputed territory, where the punitive influence of the Imperial Guard had not reached fully. On the way they’d seen entire platoons frozen solid, grimaces etched permanently on the troopers’ faces under the ice. Convoys of vehicles, Chimeras and even battle tanks, were left by the roadside – empty and abandoned. Was Hagni even fleeing from them? Or was it the wulfen that, even now, laid the trap and not the Wolf Guard?

Skeln had no more time to ponder.

Shadows smeared the snowy fog, grey against the drifts. They were heading for Thorgard.

Afger bared his fangs and scowled. Even in the snow storm, he was close enough to detect the stench of putrefaction. The wind rose abruptly, intensifying to a shrieking gale. Thorgard huddled the fire, but made no move, as the shadows approached. A spurt of crimson laced the ground as he sheared away another scrap of raw meat. The shadows jerked and quickened.

They were just a few metres away now… drawn by the blood.

A form emerged, its crooked fingers reaching, shuffling close to Thorgard on bent, misshapen limbs. It was not alone; not nearly alone.

A hundred metres away, Afger reached for his bolter.

Skeln laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘What if he cannot hear them?’ the twitchy Wolf Guard rasped.

The wind had built to a scream. It buffeted Thorgard’s plaits, tossing them around like vipers. Still he flensed, occasionally devouring a strip of the raw meat.

‘He’ll move.’ Skeln’s tone was reassuring, but he reached for his bolt pistol anyway.

Just a metre away – still, Thorgard seemed oblivious.

Could he not scent the creatures?

‘He’ll move…’ The confidence in Skeln’s voice was waning rapidly. The zombie was almost within touching distance… ‘Arse of Russ!’ he swore, powering to his feet and wrenching his bolt pistol free–

–just as Thorgard leapt up, a backhand slash with his wolf claw cutting first through the reaching zombie’s wrist, then driving on into its upper torso and scything through its neck. Its head bounced onto the ground and Thorgard kicked it into the face of another assailant, before launching forward, claws wide, to cleave the plague creature in two.

Thorgard decapitated four more in as many seconds, grinning wildly at the shredded corpses at his feet, and it was over before it had begun. The zombies’ lighter body mass had evidently failed to set off the snares meant for Hagni, but had not been so silent as to fool Thorgard.

Now only fifty metres away and slowing to a walk, Skeln sighed with relief. He and Afger were about to relax when the grey shadows returned. As the zombies appeared in their droves, it became clear by their uniforms what had happened to the crews of the vehicle convoy.

‘Now we go!’ roared Skeln.

Together they plunged into the drifts, weapons booming.

Thorgard rushed forward and bisected a creature from groin to sternum, using his momentum to push through it and leaving the two ragged body hunks flapping impotently, a metre of gore-slicked snow between them.

To his left a zombie stuttered, its advance halted by the staccato fire of Afger’s bolter. A second burst spun it on its broken ankle and pitched the creature back.

An exploding cranium painted Thorgard’s power armour in thick, dead blood and brain matter. The zombie collapsed to its knees like a puppet without its strings and slumped headless in the slushed snow.

The muzzle flash had barely died from Skeln’s bolt pistol as he drew his power axe and went hand-to-hand. Still a few metres from Thorgard, the other Space Wolf found it hard to maintain his brother’s frenetic pace.

Afger sensibly kept his distance, using his bolter’s range to protect his battle-brothers’ flanks. Fenrir and Skoll barrelled past him on either side as he took up a ready stance and switched to rapid fire. As the pair of snarling thunderwolves hit, Magnin rose out of a snow mound, shawled white and growling for blood. The creatures tore into the undead tank crews, ripping off limbs and raking bodies. Any normal enemy would have fled before such carnage, but the plague zombies had long since forgotten fear. They knew nothing now but the urge to feed, the maddening hunger for flesh that was never slaked.

Skeln hacked through a zombie’s spinal column, just as three more of the creatures rammed into him. He was rocked on his heels but kept his footing, splitting the skull of one with his elbow and shredding the other two with a close-range burst of his bolt pistol.

‘Ha!’ Thorgard bellowed, surrounded by plague creatures. ‘Now this is sport!’ He drove a wolf claw into the torso of one, tearing the blades upward and shattering its clavicle. With the other hand, he swiped off a zombie’s head before crushing it to the ground with a heavy boot. One leapt onto his back, scratching at his neck and gorget. Thorgard reached around to seize it and throw it off when another zombie fired a shot into his torso, an old memory triggering the lasgun in its grasp.

Grimacing, the Space Wolf was about to slash it when he found his arm pinned by another creature. A fourth had mounted his right pauldron and was gnawing at the ceramite.

‘Not like this!’ Thorgard raged. ‘Teeth of Russ, my end will be worthy of a saga!’

Heat singed his face as Afger’s bolter shells tore into the zombies clambering over him. The one clinging to his pauldron was torn off, claws still embedded in the ceramite, whilst the creature pinning Thorgard’s arm was struck in the back. The ammo storm rolled up its spine to burst open its head like a rotten fruit. As Thorgard yanked the zombie off his back and then punched his fist through the lasgunner, Magnin leapt to its master’s defence crushing another two.

‘We cannot slay them all.’ Afger’s voice was tinny and cracked with static as it came through on the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear.

‘Agreed,’ he replied. ‘Mount up and break through.’ Afger cut the link when Skeln had finally caught up to Thorgard. ‘It seems your lure was too effective, brother.’

Some of the other Space Wolf’s eagerness had diminished.

‘I had hoped for larger prey,’ he confessed.

Skeln howled and Fenrir bounded to his side, after finishing a zombie with a savage twist of its jaws.

‘We’re done here,’ he told Thorgard as he climbed atop the monstrous thunderwolf’s back. They’d cleared a bloody gap in the horde but had only seconds until the next wave of plague creatures were upon them.

Thorgard nodded reluctantly. He was summoning Magnin when Afger’s voice crashed in on the comm-bead.

‘There!’ he cried, ‘There, I see the beast! Hagni is abroad and in my sight!’

Afger was pointing, even as he slung himself across Skoll’s shoulders and urged the thunderwolf to charge.

Skeln and Thorgard followed his outstretched finger to a dark silhouette crouched on the horizon line. Though distant, the Wolf Guard made out hulking shoulders and a broad back, hirsute with fur. Skeln thought he caught a shimmer from a pauldron hanging loosely off the beast’s shoulder.

There could be no doubt. It was Hagni; now more beast than man.

Howling a battle-cry, Afger hammered past the other two Space Wolves, intent on his prey. Skoll used its muscled bulk to heave zombies out of its way, crushing bodies beneath it as drove inexorably forwards.

By the time Skeln and Thorgard had spurred their mounts, Afger was well ahead of them. They too battered their way through the plague mob, cutting a bloody path to the open ground ahead. Soon, the horde was floundering behind them and an arctic waste beckoned where the chase was on for Hagni.

‘Damn you, Afger,’ hissed Skeln, eyes locked onto his brother, now even farther in front of them.

Hagni’s silhouette had not yet moved. It merely watched its brothers’ approach. At this rate, Afger would reach it well before Skeln and Thorgard. He seemed hell-bent on facing the wulfen alone. And despite the fact he rode Skoll, Skeln recalled all too well the butchered remains of Barek and his thunderwolf. Alone, Afger faced a very uncertain victory.

A sudden cracking arrested Skeln’s thoughts, and a chill entered his spine.

‘Skeln!’ said Thorgard. He was looking downward, already slowing, ‘the ice!’

The snowy tundra they traversed was not solid ground at all. It was a lake, frozen stiff by the cold weather, but now breaking up with the heavy footfalls of the thunderwolves. Skeln saw the ground webbing beneath Fenrir’s massive paws. An ominous cracking sound followed it.

‘Hold!’ he roared, reining the monstrous beast in and stalling the pursuit. Opening up a channel, he shouted into the comm-bead.

‘Afger! Slow down, the ice is cracking.’

‘I have him. The beast won’t escape again.’

‘Afger–’

–wasn’t listening. He severed the link and rode on harder.

‘I’m sorry Skeln,’ he muttered, ‘Barek must be avenged.’ He peered down the end of his bolter, bringing Hagni into his sights–

‘You are mine, wulfen…’

–when the beast slipped away and was gone.

‘No!’

That was when the ground fell away and icy water rose up around them. Weighed down by armour and augmetics, man and beast were dragged into stygian gloom.

Darkness surrounded him, together with a sense of lightness that Afger had not felt for some time. The rage, the grief at Barek’s death, the burning desire for vengeance, all of it seemed muted by the cold. And for a moment, just the briefest of moments, Afger almost gave in.

Something strong and vice-like seized his wrist. He was travelling upwards again. He saw the vague suggestion of light. Air rushed his lungs and raucous noise clamoured into being as Afger breached the freezing surface of the water.

‘Hold on,’ snarled the voice of Skeln, beard dripping icy wet from when he’d plunged in to grab him.

‘Thorgard, I have him,’ he growled, and the other Wolf Guard came into view. He’d removed his wolf claw gauntlets – they lay on the ice nearby – and leaned over to grasp Afger’s power generator.

‘No,’ Afger roared, thrashing. ‘Leave me! Follow Hagni! Avenge Barek!’

Skeln wasn’t listening. Together, he and Thorgard hauled Afger up and onto the fragile ice bank.

Skoll had not been so fortunate. The thunderwolf’s sheer bulk, its cybernetic body fashioned by the Iron Priests, had sunk it like an anchor. With nothing to cling to, the great beast had drowned in the black depths of the lake. It was a poor end for such a noble creature.

Afger’s expression told Skeln that Skoll’s former master thought so too.

For a short while, they sat on the ice, not daring to move should it crack again and swallow them all this time. The zombie hordes were far enough away not to trouble them.

Skeln glared at Afger, his gaze murderous. Thorgard tentatively retrieved his gauntlets. Afger merely lay on his back and stared into the sky. Cold and pitiless, it echoed the feeling in his hollow heart.

Afger had not spoken for over an hour after the incident on the lake. He felt the loss of Skoll keenly, so strong was their bond. A separation of a limb would have been easier to take. When he did finally give voice, now running alongside Skeln on Fenrir’s back, it was clear his mood had not improved.

‘You should have let me sink and gone after the wulfen,’ he growled.

Skeln’s retort was biting.

‘You’ve lost your mount, and we are two brothers down already, Afger. I will not lose another in a vain and foolish sacrifice.’

‘I would not have drowned,’ Afger snapped.

Skeln looked down at him.

‘No, brother, but you would have given up.’

Afger’s shadowed expression betrayed his shame.

Thorgard had found Hagni’s trail again soon after leaving the ice lake, now far behind them, and was leading the Wolf Guard down into the catacombs of Helspire, the urbanisation of the city growing around them suddenly like a virus.

Here, the city was at its darkest. These were its sinks, its bowels, the very bones of its construction. Streets and avenues became tunnels, towers morphed into the sweating columns of foundation stones and the platinum sky was replaced by the rockcrete underbelly of the roads above. A sewer stink pervaded, sullying the icy crispness of the air. Stagnant heat lingered, emanating from the buried fusion generators that ran the benighted city’s power grid.

Thorgard sniffed the air, finding the wulfen’s scent. There was something else, too, something he couldn’t place.

‘It’s strange…’ he muttered, oblivious to his brothers’ arguing.

‘What is?’ asked Skeln.

‘Since killing Barek, Hagni has had many days to get ahead of us. I expected to track him to a lair, not to see him out in the open, especially so blatantly. It’s as if he wants to be caught.’

Afger bristled.

‘He begs for death.’

Skeln’s eyes became cold, hard bergs. His anger made him rasp.

‘No Space Wolf would ever desire that. No Space Wolf would ever die without a fight.’

Chastened, Afger realised he had spoken out of turn.

‘Sorry, brother,’ he admitted. ‘I am not myself.’

Skoll’s death had hit him hard.

‘But what other explanation is there?’

‘No, it doesn’t feel like that,’ offered Thorgard, challenging Afger’s earlier remark. ‘There is no sport in this. I’ve seen whelpling aspirants harder to track. Hagni allows us to catch up, only to then flee.’

‘He’s getting careless then, that’s all,’ said Afger, ‘and hungry. There is only dead flesh here, no fresh meat to sate the beast.’

Skeln was silent and stern. That was when he noticed the sigils daubed on the walls and the rank, pervading stench growing stronger. They were deep into the heart of Helspire now and reaching the end of a long, broad sewer conduit. A chamber loomed ahead, a sickly oval of light announcing it.

‘There’s something else here,’ hissed Thorgard suddenly, reining Magnin to a stop and speaking Skeln’s thoughts aloud. ‘Very large, very strong. Its scent mingles with the wulfen’s…’

Thorgard turned to face his brothers.

‘Hagni wasn’t trying to flee or merely running wild–’

‘He was leading us,’ said Skeln.

‘There may be some of Hagni left after all…’ hissed Afger.

Skeln ignored him.

‘But leading us to what?’

Thorgard ignited his wolf claws. Their electrical glow framed his face in an eerie light.

‘Brothers…’

Misshapen forms were shuffling into the dirty oval of light. In the chamber beyond, Skeln knew in his core they would find Hagni, and whatever it was he had been leading them to.

Skeln had drawn his weapons, Afger too.

‘Thunderwolves!’ he roared, glaring at the approaching zombies, ‘For Fenris and Leman Russ!’

Howling, the Space Wolves charged down the tunnel, making for the opening and whatever waited for them beyond it.

Skeln’s uppercut smashed a plague creature aside, tearing open its torso and spilling diseased innards. He hung down along Fenrir’s flank like a trick-rider from the old clan gatherings of his former life, when he was still human. Another was flung into the tunnel wall, its bones shattered by the force of Fenrir’s swipe. Afger raked three more with controlled bursts from his bolter. The explosive rounds turned the creatures into little more than a visceral mist. Thorgard cut down the rest; by the end of it, his scything wolf claws with slick and red.

‘A vanguard, nothing more,’ he breathed. The actinic glare from his blades pooled deep shadows around his wild eyes. He was ready for more.

Skeln snarled at the miasma of pestilence coming from the chamber entrance.

Howling, and the deep bellowing of something large and unnatural, emanated from it. It was a wolf fighting a monster.

‘Steel yourselves, brothers,’ Skeln growled, and passed through the dirty oval of light riding Fenrir.

The chamber was a confluence of sewer pipes. Rusted openings in the walls disgorged filth. It pooled in a deep basin in the middle of the room. Wallowing in the dark morass was a pustulant giant.

Sloth-like and disgusting, burgeoning rolls of putrescent-yellow flab ruptured the creature’s armour. The fragments of ceramite that still clung to its grotesque bulk were adhered by rivulets of puss, bursting from the boils and sores infesting its blubbery flesh. Horrid and distended, the beast’s mouth was a gaping maw. Several tongues lolled from one encrusted corner. They licked and probed at the sores lasciviously, tendril-like and sentient. Filled with ranks of needle-like teeth, its mouth was like that of a bloated shark.

Skeln saw the potential in those fangs to inflict the wounds that had killed Barek Thunderborn and hope flared that Hagni could still be saved. He wrinkled his nose at the noisome stench emanating from the thing’s corpulent body. Fat flies buzzed around it in a swarm.

Facing it across a river of pestilence was Hagni.

He was not as Skeln remembered him. Hagni’s armour hung off his body in scraps. His lupine form, now covered in thick fur, had simply outgrown it. Fangs were like daggers in his long mouth, stitched around a slightly protruding snout. Sinew throbbed like cords of steel across a brawny body stretched and made more muscular by the changes wrought by the wulfen curse. Horrific as it was, it was as nothing compared to the other monster in the room.

It was one of the Scions of Pestilence, now swelled by plague and decay, favoured by its dark lord and mutated into a hideous plague-spawn, unrecognisable from the traitors the Space Wolves had hunted previously. Even now, before their eyes, it seemed to be growing, absorbing the filth from the tainted sewer pipes. It had not always been this size, and explained how the creature had managed to kill Barek Thunderborn and slip away undetected… almost undetected. The Space Wolves had somehow missed it, but Hagni, turned to wulfen and his preternatural senses enhanced, had not. He could not defeat it alone; there was enough of the Space Wolf remaining to realise this, or perhaps it was merely instinct that had compelled Hagni to seek out allies and draw them to this fight. Skeln hoped for the former.

Skeln processed this in a half-second, before baring his fangs and howling–

‘Slay it!’

A ripple of explosive fire stitched the plague-spawn’s bloated body and a burble of what might have been pain bubbled from its swollen lips. A stream of corruption belched from the creature’s maw by way of riposte, but Fenrir was already moving. An acid-hiss erupted behind Skeln, head down, as his thunderwolf bounded away from the deadly spray. Afger stormed forwards at the same time, working his way through the mire to the plague-spawn’s left.

Zombies stirred in the wretched muck, corpses surfacing like gruesome buoys, animated by the plague-spawn’s presence. Afger shot them down as he moved, shredding them to pieces as he kept an eye on Hagni.

The wulfen ignored him and launched itself upon the creature, raking its rancid flanks. Flesh tore away, wretched and thin with decomposition. Black, sap-like blood started to mat Hagni’s fur as he clawed at it. Like a geyser exploding from the earth, the wulfen was struck in the face by a plume of bile. The force of it pitched Hagni off the plague-spawn’s body and sent him careening into the chamber wall.

Thorgard rode Magnin down the creature’s right flank. Its tongues lashed out like serpents, jabbing at the thunderwolf. The fleshy muscle was laced with barbs and tiny mouths, fang-filled and drooling pus.

Despite its bulk, Magnin turned and weaved to evade the probing tongues. One nicked Thorgard’s pauldron, leaving an acidic scar, as his thunderwolf jinked to the side. He followed its course as it seized a zombie shambling behind them, ripping the creature of its feet and hauling it forwards with a predatory jerk. Swept up in an eye blink into the plague-spawn’s maw, the zombie’s rotten bones crunched as it was devoured.

Head down, Thorgard urged Magnin on.

Skeln ducked another putrid stream from the plague-spawn’s mouth. He had torn out his bolt pistol and the muzzle burned white-hot with the flare of his weapon’s fire. The mass-reactive shells bit deep, sinking, as if in rubber, below the creature’s flesh. Explosions rippled beneath the sickly skin, bulging like tumours but the plague-spawn’s epidermis just stretched to compensate, any damage that had been inflicted regenerated instantly.

Frenzied bolter fire from Afger’s position suggested Skeln’s battle-brother was similarly frustrated.

He unsheathed his power axe and fed a ripple of energy across the rune-etched blade. It was time to get in close.

For Hagni, getting in close was the only way he knew how to fight. Dazed but unbowed, he shook away the wretched bile gumming his fur and drove at the creature again. As wulfen, Hagni was even larger than his Wolf Guard brethren. At over three metres tall, he was a monster. Yet even Hagni was small compared to the plague-spawn, so grotesquely swollen as it was by Nurgle’s taint.

Leaping onto the creature’s back, Hagni slashed and gored, searching for vital organs amidst the blubbery mass. The wulfen was elbow-deep in putrid blood and viscera, but the folds of flab, like fleshy armour, were too thick for him to inflict any serious harm.

Below, Thorgard raced along the plague-spawn’s flank, wolf claws spitting lightning. The stink of burning flesh was redolent in the air, but the long grooves he carved in the creature’s side merely oozed and closed up again, a roll of flab melting down over them.

Skeln was getting dizzy. The vile stench emanating off the creature made the air thick with its contagion. Fat flies buzzed around his face, trying to infest his mouth, ears and nostrils as he sought to get in close. He hacked away a tendril-like tongue and heard a deep yelp of agony from across the chamber. Though his view was occluded by the spawn’s bulk, Skeln recognised the cry of Thorgard’s thunderwolf. Magnin was wounded, possibly even dead.

‘Thorgard!’ he bellowed down the comm-feed.

Crackling static and a half-heard roar of anguish returned to him.

‘Brother, answer me!’

Skeln was pinned by the lashing tongues, oozing fronds attached to the pair that assailed him like the stingers of some rancid cnidaria. He couldn’t get to Thorgard. He couldn’t help his brother.

Another channel opened up in his ear.

‘This isn’t working–’ snarled Afger.

Bolter fire interrupted him.

‘We need to burn it!’

‘With what? We have no flamer, no incendiaries, we–’ Skeln had detected something, a distinctive tang in the mire of sewerage. He fended off a probing tongue, the plague-spawn burbling with laughter. A moment’s respite allowed him to cast about the chamber.

Pipes, everywhere pipes…

Skeln allowed himself a grim smile as he found what he was looking for.

A shadow eclipsed him as the plague-spawn leaned down, the shifting of its mass releasing noxious gases trapped within the rolls of flab. Skeln fought not to gag and reined Fenrir back. The tongue tendrils recoiled and Skeln urged his mount away. Fenrir turned and leapt, narrowly avoiding the burst of corruption vomited from the spawn’s distended mouth. It was still drooling acid as its burbled laughter came again.

But now Skeln was no longer penned in. He used this freedom of movement to ride Fenrir around the plague-spawn’s side, searching for Thorgard, following a pipe kept at the periphery of his vision.

Magnin was dead. The noble beast lay on its side, a brackish liquid trickling from its maw and pooling around its snout. Three, deep puncture wounds were visible in its flank, having entered flesh. They were dark and infected from where the plague-spawn’s tongues had raked it.

Whatever poison was harboured by the plague-spawn, it was more deadly and virulent than that carried by the zombies. If it could kill a mythical thunderwolf, it could kill Skeln and his brothers too.

A desperate roar seized Skeln’s attention and his gaze was drawn upward to where Thorgard and Hagni had mounted the plague-spawn’s back and were tearing at it with their claws.

Lost to grief and vengeance, Thorgard was no further use right now.

A loud crack, followed a shallow crump and the tang of explosive, came from the opposite end of the chamber.

‘Afger?’ Skeln hoped at least one of his battle-brothers still had something left.

‘Bolter’s dry… switching to grenades…’ came the fragmented response.

‘Is it working?’

Fenrir had slowed so Skeln could reload his bolt pistol. Last clip.

Thorgard and Hagni were keeping the creature occupied, eliciting bellows of pain as they tore into its blubbery hide.

Several seconds elapsed before Afger answered. Another explosive rocked the chamber. He sounded annoyed.

‘What do you think?’

Skeln reined Fenrir around, tracing the pipe he had seen earlier to the source of its rupture. He let rip a desultory burst, downing a pair of zombies creeping towards him, before fixing his attention back on the broken pipe.

‘Hang on to whatever grenades you’ve got left. We’re going to need a spark for our accelerant.’

‘What are you talking about, Skeln?’ Afger spoke between thrusts. He’d drawn his combat blade.

‘Can’t you smell it, brother? The tainted water, just below the reek of decay…’

‘Promethium,’ replied Afger a moment later.

Skeln reached the ruptured pipe. It was one of Skorbad’s main fuel lines, fed from its major pumping station. Volatile liquid exuded from it in a slow but steady trickle. They’d need more. Much more.

Skeln jumped down off Fenrir’s back. The thunderwolf turned, guarding its master’s blindside as Skeln sheathed his weapons. He’d have to tear a wider opening in the broken pipe – he couldn’t risk a spark before the tainted water was saturated.

Digging his gauntleted fingers around the ragged hole, he heaved and pulled. The metal screeched but gave instantly. Corruption had ravaged it, degrading the tough housing of the pipe. Promethium was gushing freely now, it lapped onto the floor and spilled eagerly into the morass where the plague-spawn was languishing.

Skeln turned, leaping onto Fenrir’s back again. He unclipped a grenade from his belt. The thunderwolf was barrelling towards a sewer-slicked column at the edge of the room.

‘Find cover,’ he growled to Afger.

Reaching the column, Skeln swivelled his torso and pressed the detonator stud on the grenade. Its parabola took it across the chamber where – a second before it splashed down – it exploded, igniting the promethium drowning the tainted pool.

A burst of incendiary lit up the room, fire sweeping through the water in a purging wave. Through the inferno’s glare, Skeln thought he saw two figures leap free, obscured by smoke and rising flame.

The plague-spawn bucked and thrashed, powerless to heave its monstrous girth away from the burning pool, its efforts only splashing fiery promethium over its waxy skin. It burned, and as it burned, seemed to shrink. Like a diseased candle against the attentions of a blowtorch, the Scion of Pestilence melted away, shrieking rage and denial.

A curtain of fire was left flickering across the surface of the pool; the roaring promethium flames had died quickly. A dark green sludge, polluting the already tainted water, was all that remained of the plague-spawn. Cleansing fire had destroyed it.

Relieved to see Afger alive and well, across the other side of the chamber, Skeln then looked for Thorgard. Another tunnel lay across from them, opposite where the Space Wolves had entered. Diminishing boot steps echoed from the shadows there.

Thorgard was alive, but he had gone after Hagni.

Skeln met Afger’s gaze and the two of them raced towards the tunnel mouth.

Fenrir slowed, keeping pace with the other Wolf Guard, then charged into the gloom of the tunnel.

‘He is a fool!’ snarled Afger. ‘Alone, he is no match for it.’

‘He is blinded by grief. Magnin is dead, Thorgard wants to finish the mission to honour his mount’s sacrifice,’ Skeln countered, adding, ‘Besides, I remember you were determined on facing the beast alone, too.’

Afger sniffed his contempt.

‘So you now acknowledge it is a beast?’

Skeln’s reply was prevented by a scream up ahead.

It was Thorgard.

Fenrir rode on faster–

But was too late.

Thorgard’s half-eviscerated body was lying in the centre of the tunnel, wet and bloody. His torn throat hung open like a second mouth, fixed in a dark red scream.

Afger snarled, walking over to take up one of his fallen brother’s wolf claw gauntlets. He winced as he stooped down, gingerly touching his chest.

‘It’s nothing,’ he growled, before Skeln could say a word. Swiftly, Afger changed the subject back to the wulfen. ‘It’s of the killing mind, now. Hagni is lost to us,’ he said, removing his old gauntlet and pulling the weapon onto his fist.

Skeln was silent, but didn’t linger with Fenrir. There was no time for remorse. The wulfen must be stopped.

The trail was easy to follow. Fenrir tracked the wulfen by the scent of Thorgard’s blood still on the beast. The tunnel took them back up into the snow drifts and arctic tundra of Skorbad. Crimson droplets dotted the landscape at long, loping intervals.

Skeln knew this road, and realised where the wulfen was headed.

‘It returns to its old hunting ground,’ muttered Afger, running alongside them.

Skeln urged Fenrir on and allowed the howling ice-winds to smother his thoughts.

In less than an hour, the bastion loomed on the horizon.

‘Something is wrong,’ said Skeln.

The Imperial command post was dark, as if it had lost all power. Smoke trailed from unseen fires behind the walls and there were no visible sentries. As the Space Wolves drew nearer, they saw the gate was wide open and streaked with bloodstains. A Chimera had slewed to a stop a few metres away, the vehicle’s exit ramps yawning. There was more blood here too.

Two hundred metres of open ground lay between the Space Wolves and the bastion.

Afger was incredulous.

‘Not even the wulfen could’ve got so far ahead and done all of this…’

Skeln eyed the silent battlements. His gaze narrowed.

‘It didn’t.’

Shambling into view where they had laid crumpled and inert, figures wearing the olive drab of the Cadian 154th and cradling lasguns in crooked fingers appeared. Old memories compelled them. The plague had come here, and now the bastion had an undead garrison. In his last act, before the feral aspect of the wulfen had claimed his mind, Hagni had led them here.

Afger grimaced, gripping his chest again, but kept his pain hidden. In the sewer chamber, there hadn’t been enough time to reach cover…

A spark of melancholy flickered suddenly within him. The end of the road was near.

‘I wish Barek and Thorgard were with us.’

‘So do I,’ the solemnity in Skeln’s voice turned to anger, ‘We finish this.’ He outstretched his hand, beckoning to his brother.

Afger seemed reluctant.

‘You’ll never reach the bastion alive on foot, and I need your bolter and blade with me, brother.’

Skeln gestured again.

After a moment, Afger took his hand, seizing Skeln by the wrist and swinging up and onto Fenrir’s broad back.

Skeln spurred Fenrir on just as the zombie-Cadians were levelling their guns.

‘The last charge of the thunderwolves, brother.’

‘Let it be a worthy end, then.’

‘I’ll see you in the halls of Russ, Afger.’

For the first time in weeks, Afger smiled.

‘Aye, that you may.’

Skeln kicked Fenrir’s flanks and the beast began to charge.

If there had been anyone alive to see it, the deed would have been worthy of a saga or two.

Skeln and Afger howled together as las-bolts filled the air around them.

Fenrir died just before they reached the wall. An autocannon burst had opened up its torso in a red mist and the great beast collapsed in the snow, leaving a crimson smear behind it. Their armour punctured and torn by las-blasts, the Wolf Guard burst into the bastion and commenced slaying everything inside.

A ragged firing line, a crippled mockery of disorder, opposed them as they barrelled through the gates. Bolters flaring, the Space Wolves swept the zombies aside and then split up, intent on destruction.

Skeln took the stairway to the battlements. Zombies fell like suicides, heaved from his path as he rose up the steps. He savaged with his fangs, tearing open throats, and split torsos with his power axe to reach the summit. The battlements became a field of slaughter, a reaping of cleaved limbs and staved-in skulls. Russ’s name bellowed loud above the carnage, piercing the blood-red night.

Fires began below. Promethium storage sheds were set ablaze by Afger’s bolter. Explosions cracked, billowing black smoke. Bodies were heaped onto the conflagrations, like heretics onto a pyre. He went to his fists, snapping spines across his knee, wrenching bones from decaying sockets. Afger carved a red ruin with Thorgard’s wolf claw, anointing it in old blood to honour its fallen keeper.

Skeln’s bolt pistol had long been empty when he noticed the wulfen amongst the horde, clawing and shredding with abandon, reunited with its former brothers for one last fight. He’d lost sight of Hagni after that, the need for killing preventing any pursuit.

The Space Wolves were gored and burned, but in less than twenty bloody minutes, the entire Cadian garrison was destroyed. Skeln had not seen Ekhart in the mob, but then could have missed him easily. A haze had fallen upon the Space Wolf, blood-red and frenzied. There was no way to identify any individual amongst the heaped body parts.

Heaving air into his lungs, Skeln was standing at the bastion’s perimeter as it burned. After they’d vanquished the undead Cadians, he and Afger had spread the fires. The roaring flames cast a sombre light on the mound where Skeln had buried Fenrir. He’d wept as he’d done it, Afger looking on, honouring them with stoic silence.

In the aftermath, there was no sign of Hagni. Skeln assumed the beast had loped away once the killing was done. But it was not ended. There was no monster to lead them to, no fight save the one that was left between former brothers. Hagni knew it as well as Skeln did. A reckoning was near.

‘Time to move, brother,’ Skeln said to Afger.

The wulfen was still loose. It was all they had left now to stop it.

‘Brother,’ Skeln repeated when there was no answer. He turned…

Afger was slumped against the hull of the abandoned Chimera. His arms hung down by his sides and his cold eyes were glassy.

For the first time, Skeln noticed the wound in his torso. It was deep and mortal. Afger had held on long enough to finish the fight and see his foes burn. He was with the All Father now, feasting in the halls of Russ.

‘Be at peace, brother,’ Skeln whispered, closing Afger’s eyes.

All dead now, except for him – a lone wolf with but one duty left to it.

Skeln took off his left pauldron, stripped away the arm greave and vambrace of his power armour to leave his skin bare. With a tooth from his fang necklace, Skeln carved the runes of Barek, Thorgard and Afger in his flesh. At the end, he added Hagni.

The bolt pistol was empty, so he dumped it along with his gun belt. Hefting his power axe, he ignited the blade and trudged into the ice wastes.

Somewhere in the drifts, Hagni was waiting.

‘Wulfen!’ His challenge echoed across the tundra.

A few moments later, a feral howl answered.

IN HRONDIR’S TOMB

Mark Clapham

It was the smell he registered first, before the sight or the sound. It was a hot scent, hotter than the sparks coming off his chainblade as it cut through armour, or the warmth of the Tau commander’s blood as the blade dug through the battlesuit and into his flesh.

It was a static smell of air being agitated, of a very heavy weapon powering up, somewhere nearby. A mortal human, or even a Space Marine of a different Chapter, might not have picked the scent out from the many smells of battle.

Anvindr Godrichsson was a wolf brother, and his senses were more finely attuned. His nostrils twitched at the tang of it, catching the scent over the foul aroma of alien gore before him.

He glanced up, for little more than half a second. The sky was a grey blur of falling rain and rising smoke, but Anvindr could see a great, dark shape moving between buildings, a solid ring of light glowing through the mist.

A Tau gunship, its railgun powering up.

‘To shelter,’ Anvindr called to his squad, his voice ringing out through the ruins. He extracted his blood-slicked chainblade from the chest plate of the fallen commander, and dropped to the ground from his position astride the chest of the alien’s battlesuit.

A Space Wolf feared nothing; the Adeptus Astartes fled from no enemy, but there was no glory or honour in meekly allowing a weapon like that to reduce you to a paste. The Tau were notorious for their desire to kill from a distance rather than engage in close combat, and Anvindr would be damned if they would succeed with his pack.

Anvindr’s pack responded to his call without question, although Tormodr approached with bad grace as usual, a scowl across his face and a desultory huff of fire spurting from his flamer. Tormodr moved as fast as any of them, the heavy boots of his armour barely glancing off the rubble as he sprung over an incline into Anvindr’s field of vision, yet he still managed to seem like he was dragging his feet.

Then the rest, all Grey Hunters of the Fourth Company of the Vlka Fenryka, known commonly as Space Wolves: Sindri, eyes gleaming with youth in spite of all his decades, his hair a shock of blond curls, unusual for a Fenrisian; Liulfr, heavy even for a Space Marine, as much immovable object as unstoppable force; and finally Gulbrandr, his skin pale but his hair and beard raven black. They all wore the colours of their Chapter, blue-grey power armour edged with gold, augmented with honour markings and the fur of significant kills.

Although all of them had their eyes out for a safe place of cover, it was Gulbrandr, sharp-eyed as ever, who let out a high whistle, pointing ahead.

They ran as the railgun fired its first shots, the blasts tearing into a city that had already been devastated by ground-level warfare. As the large railgun fired upon the retreating Wolves, buildings already gutted by fire and ordnance were shook to their foundations, and began to crumble altogether.

The Wolves ran through a city that threatened to bury them alive.

Then, following Gulbrandr’s lead, they were on a steep, gravel strewn slope at an angle to the city streets, sliding down towards a weathered stone archway some distance below ground level. Anvindr dug in his heels, controlling his descent as the weight of his armoured body dragged him downwards, throwing up scree in his wake.

Surrounding the archway were a few squat industrial vehicles and stacks of crates, as well as a series of crude arc lights, dull in the afternoon haze.

As the Wolves reached level ground, moving from a controlled slide to a run without a stumble or pause, a blast from the railgun impacted nearby, throwing Anvindr forward. Without his power armour he would have fallen. He wore no helmet, and so closed his eyes against the blazing light and heat that scorched his skin.

Still running he opened his eyes, ears ringing, just in time to see another blast consume the archway they were running under. As they ran under the archway they did so through a rain of rubble; the archway itself collapsed over them, shaken to pieces by the hammering detonations.

The falling wall of shattered rock consumed them in darkness.

His ears still filled with the roar of the explosion, his field of vision obscured by rock dust, Anvindr found himself falling forward, struck in the right pauldron by some unseen chunk of rock. He controlled his fall enough to drop to one knee, steadying himself. He braced himself for further blows, but none came, just a gentle rain of fragments.

Then there was silence, or something like it. The rock fall had totally blocked the way they had come in, cutting off any noise from the surface, although Anvindr could still feel the periodic vibration from explosions above ground.

Anvindr checked himself. One pauldron dented, but otherwise just scrapes to his power armour, and light burns and scratches over his exposed face. He pulled himself to his feet, dust and small pieces of rock falling from his armour as he did so.

As the dust settled, he could make out a large chamber lit by a string of arc lights. The walls were polished stone, but featureless. Around Anvindr, his brothers were recovering themselves. Gulbrandr stood in front, entirely unscathed, and was looking ahead to the chamber’s one exit, a corridor leading downwards. Anvindr ignored him, and turned to see Tormodr rising from the ground, shaking chunks of rock from his pelts while brushing aside a mocking hand of assistance from Sindri. Both seemed battered but intact, although Tormodr’s arm hung limp at his side.

Of Liulfr, there was initially no sign. Where once the chamber led out to the daylight, a sloped wall of broken rock now blocked the way. There was no trace of Liulfr at all, just that wall of rock.

Anvindr approached the rockslide, ears and nose pricked, searching for the slightest sign. Within seconds he was on his knees, rolling away a stone as tall as himself. Sindri and Tormodr aided him in the work, while Gulbrandr hung back, keeping watch.

All this, they did wordlessly, united in a common objective. They uncovered a gloved hand, the fingers twitching at the air as the rocks holding it down were removed, then the rest of an armoured arm, and Liulfr’s head and shoulders. Liulfr’s helmet had buckled and split down one side of his face, and he blinked away dust and took a ragged breath as his face was exposed. His cheek was broken and his face bloodied, but he was alive.

‘Real darkness,’ said Liulfr with a cough of blood. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like. Shame to have it broken by faces such as yours.’ He laughed to himself, coughing blood again, then grunted.

‘We’d have left you in peace if those furs didn’t smell so much,’ said Anvindr, nodding at the torn strips of pelt around the shoulders of Liulfr’s battered armour. ‘A noseless hive dweller could catch the scent of those, rockslide or not.’

During this exchange, Anvindr had been looking at his fellow Wolf closely, and this last insult was delivered with relief. Liulfr was pinned, a giant slab of rock having crushed his lower body. Anvindr knew the look of a brother whose thread was at its end, and Liulfr did not have that look. He would live.

He would not, however, be moving anywhere, as the Wolves discovered when they cleared a space around Liulfr. The rock slab that held him down was huge, taller than the chamber they were in and half as wide. Even the collective strength of the four other Wolves would not be enough to shift it.

Anvindr’s mind was just teasing towards what exactly they might need to aid Liulfr when he heard the sound of someone approaching. The others had heard it too: Anvindr turned to see Gulbrandr already taking a firing position, his boltgun aimed down the tunnel. As footsteps drew closer, Anvindr saw Gulbrandr relax his grip and give a barely perceptible nod: friend, not foe.

The man who emerged up the incline of the tunnel was an Imperial Guardsman, wearing the uniform of the Lacusian Guard, dark green with silver trim. As he approached he looked first at Gulbrandr, towering over him, then at the rest of the Wolves, then at the collapsed archway.

‘My lords,’ said the Lacusian formally. He looked past the Wolves to see the extent of the rockslide that had sealed the entrance.

‘Who are you?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Could you come with me, lords?’ asked the Lacusian, having finished his inspection.

Anvindr bristled at the evasion. He had expected a straight answer. In his experience most Guardsmen, even the sternest veterans, were intimidated by the presence of the Adeptus Astartes, as well they should. Was this man not afraid to defy a Space Marine?

No, Anvindr thought, looking at the Guardsman before him. It wasn’t that the man wasn’t intimidated by Anvindr. It was that there was someone or something else that intimidated him more.

‘Very well,’ grunted Anvindr, nodding for the Lacusian to lead the way.

Leaving Liulfr, the Wolves followed their mortal guide further down the tunnel, which remained broad enough for two Space Marines to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. The Lacusian walked with a slight limp, the sound of grinding gears as his right foot touched the ground indicating an augmetic leg.

Curved corridors broke off from the tunnel as it levelled out, but the Guardsman led them straight ahead. As they passed these corridors, Anvindr could see hollows in the curved stone walls, facing inwards towards their destination. Some of the alcoves were lit with lamps or small fires, and he could hear and smell human life nearby. People were living down here. The war on Beltrasse had raged for months before the Wolves arrived to drive back the Tau, and these were the refugees.

They were led into a wide octagonal chamber, the ceiling of which rose to a high dome. Lights strung around the chamber all pointed to the centre, where a huge stone cube sat on a raised dais. Machinery of a kind Anvindr did not recognise was scattered around the chamber, connected by bundles of cable.

The Lacusian who led them there stepped aside as they entered, and Anvindr climbed the steps of the dais. Carved into one side of the cube was a representation, crude but instantly recognisable, of a Space Marine in Terminator power armour, seated with his hands resting on his knees.

The rest of the chamber was as unadorned as the tunnel that had led them there, the polished stone unmarked by any text. However, one word was carved beneath the engraving of the Space Marine:

HRONDIR

Anvindr looked back at the carving. The markings on one shoulder could have been part of a horned skull motif, seen from the side.

‘His name was Hrondir, of the Exorcists Chapter of loyal Adeptus Astartes,’ pronounced a smooth, clipped voice, as a newcomer entered the chamber. It was a supremely confident voice and the appearance matched: the man who entered was tall, taller than virtually any mortal, but shorter than a Space Marine. He was dark-skinned with chiselled, sharp cheeked features and piercing eyes, beneath one of which was a tattoo of a stylised letter ‘I’ that glowed slightly in the firelight. He wore a plain black robe thrown back over the shoulders of heavy gold armour, the plates of which were inscribed with curved lettering and ornate patterns. A long-handled hammer hung from his belt.

Anvindr recognised the man for what he was: an inquisitor. To Anvindr, it was obvious from his armour, but knowledge of the Inquisition’s existence was privileged information, and few would recognise an inquisitor by sight.

The inquisitor was accompanied by another man, wearing black robes trimmed with silver. The second mortal was shorter, paler and seemed to almost disappear when stood beside his grandiosely clothed companion. He didn’t speak, but instead carried a data-slate which he periodically glanced at.

‘I am Montiyf, and this is Hrondir’s tomb,’ said the inquisitor, making a sweeping gesture. ‘He fell here some three centuries ago, in a battle to save Beltrasse, and the people built this tomb in his honour. As the decades wore on, the catacombs of the tomb were expanded to house the other dead from that battle, so that they might be closer to where Hrondir sits within his sarcophagus, as is the local tradition.’

‘Three centuries,’ repeated Anvindr, still examining the carving on the great cube, Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Had it been that long?

‘Yes,’ said the inquisitor redundantly, scrutinising Anvindr for a few seconds. He then turned to the Guardsman who had led the Wolves into Hrondir’s tomb. ‘Galvern, what is your report?’

‘My lord,’ the Lacusian nodded crisply, and Anvindr could see the hold that the inquisitor had over him. ‘The entrance has been completely sealed by a rockslide, but otherwise the integrity of the tomb is intact.’

‘Heavy fire from a Tau gunship brought down the archway,’ added Anvindr. ‘My brothers and I sought temporary shelter here. We will return to the surface once the threat has passed.’

‘If the entrance is blocked then that will not be possible,’ said the inquisitor. ‘This is a tomb, there is only one entrance, captain. Fortunately it is a very well built and deep tomb, and is unlikely to suffer any further damage from the Tau.’

Anvindr shrugged off the inquisitor’s acknowledgement of his rank, as it wasn’t difficult to read his shoulder markings.

‘If this is a tomb, why are you down here, inquisitor…?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Inquisitor Montiyf of the Ordo Malleus,’ finished the man, gesturing to his companion. ‘This is Interrogator Pranix, and we are here to learn what we can from Hrondir’s victory, to study the enemies he defeated here. As battle-brothers of the honoured Sixth Chapter, you will of course understand the need to learn from a defeated enemy.’

Anvindr did not understand how Montiyf expected to discover anything about a long-dead enemy by skulking around a featureless tomb, but presumably the banks of equipment served some purpose in this respect. It was none of Anvindr’s concern, regardless.

‘We are of Fourth Company, here to fight the Tau,’ said Anvindr. ‘Is there no way back to the surface?’

It would, he thought, be intolerable to rot away down in such a hole, immortal life steadily slipping away in the dark. A perilously dull end to a long life of glorious battle.

‘You will get to fight the xenos again soon enough,’ said Montiyf. ‘My retinue are following another lead, but they know our position and are due to liaise with me in nine days. Once they find the entrance has collapsed they will requisition whatever is needed to dig us out. Until then, the labyrinth of tunnels surrounding the main tomb is large, and there have been over a hundred civilians sheltering down here. They have water, air and food supplies, it should not be difficult to requisition whatever you need.’

Anvindr grunted again. He turned his attention back to the carving of Hrondir.

‘I knew him,’ said Anvindr.

‘You knew Captain Hrondir?’ asked Montiyf. The inquisitor, for all his pomp and threat, could not help but appear surprised.

Anvindr nodded. Although he was no skjald, he could tell what was expected of him, and cleared his throat to tell the tale.

They had fought side by side in the sinking city of Majohah, slaughtering heretic after heretic through flooded streets. Anvindr was a Blood Claw then, he and his young brothers meeting the fanatical savagery of the cultists with a youthful bloodlust of their own.

As the rising waters broke through crumbling walls in polluted torrents, so wave after wave of men and women, their souls bargained away to unspeakable forces, would burst out of buildings or from beneath the waters to assault the Wolves.

The Wolves cut their threads by the hundreds, and Anvindr was at the heart of it, slicing his chainblade back and forth through hordes of fanatics, slicing through corrupted flesh and chopping away at mutated limbs.

For Anvindr and the Wolves, Majohah was a slow, bloody matter of week after week of slaughtering a blighted population. Whether the Wolves hunted down their enemy, or the enemy attacked them, made no difference.

The Exorcists arrived with a different mission. While Fourth Company were spread across the city, killing heretics wherever they were found, the red-armoured Exorcists cut through it in a straight line, moving in on the Great Cathedra at the heart of Majohah.

Anvindr was one of the Wolves drawn into the Exorcists’ assault on the Cathedra. They besieged the desecrated temple for three days, and it was there that Anvindr met Hrondir and the other Terminators of his squad.

The Exorcists were secretive and, compared to the hot-tempered Blood Claws, reserved in their mood, but Anvindr had found them to be determined and relentless warriors. Between his slow, incomprehensible chants and other rituals, Hrondir, looming over Anvindr in his Terminator armour, had spoken a little of his home world of Banish.

When one wall of the Cathedra fell, and the defences scattered, the Exorcists insisted on going in alone, leaving the Wolves to return to their primary mission. Anvindr watched Hrondir and the others cross the flooded square and charge through the breach, but within minutes Anvindr had an enemy by the throat and was preoccupied.

However, in the hours that followed the Exorcists entering the Cathedra, the air above that part of the city was disturbed, storm clouds turning in on themselves unnaturally. The Wolves, out in the streets, sniffed the air and knew something pivotal was going on at the city’s heart.

Then it was done. The sky settled. Their mission complete, the Exorcists departed.

The Wolves fought on, but without the presence of whatever the Exorcists had confronted in the Cathedra, the enemy’s will to fight was gone. The Wolves showed them no mercy, and the heretics fought for their lives as best they could, but within days they were all dead.

The city’s descent halted, the floodwaters left to grow stagnant without further replenishment. The Wolves left Majohah in peace of a sort, a part-flooded ruin devoid of life, its streets clogged with the bloated, tainted bodies of its former residents.

Anvindr left out some details: the chants, the lights in the sky. The mortal, Galvern, was still in earshot, and Anvindr had no desire to see him purged for hearing of matters the Inquisition would rather he did not know. But he kept much of the story intact, the valour of Hrondir and that the battle turned the tide.

As Anvindr had told his story, more mortals had entered the chamber, cautiously keeping their distance from both the inquisitor and the Wolves. By the time the retelling was complete, he had an audience; a few more Guardsmen, standing respectfully to attention in his presence, but mainly civilians, hovering nervously at the edge of the room, rapt to his speech.

‘To these people, Hrondir is a myth,’ explained Montiyf. ‘No official account was ever written down, and even this tomb was lost for over a hundred years. Hrondir’s name has been passed down by word of mouth, little more than a folk tale, and now you are here, talking of meeting Hrondir in your own lifetime. To them, you have stepped out of a legend.’

In the tomb, time passed painfully slowly for the Wolves. Unable to hunt or fight, without even space to properly train, they instead searched every inch of the catacombs to find something that might aid their escape, or help free Liulfr. The web of tunnels sprawling out from the central chamber where Hrondir lay at rest led to dozens of small chambers, and the Wolves searched every one.

Many were occupied by civilians who had descended into the tomb to shelter from the war above. Others had been turned into makeshift supply rooms, or housed water recycling equipment or generators. Some had been left as they had been found, containing nothing but funerary relics. The Beltrassens did not entomb their dead lying down, instead burying them seated, so that they might face the afterlife with dignity, and many of the rooms had square stone sarcophagi set into alcoves.

The Wolves found little of use. They found cracks or pores in the stone that allowed air or a trickle of water into the tomb, but no hidden tunnels, nor any heavy equipment that could help free Liulfr. In spite of this, they continued to prowl the corridors, searching for an advantage.

Even this endless pacing was impeded by the presence of so many mortals. The Wolves could see perfectly well in the low light of the darker tunnels, so carried no light source with them.

When a mortal came walking from the opposite direction, that mortal would walk straight into the towering Space Marines, if not given due warning. Most of the Wolves adopted a terse ‘make way’ to scatter any mortals in their path, with the exception of Sindri, who found it amusing to stay silent and watch the coming mortal bounce off his heavy armour.

For all his sport, even Sindri was not cruel, and he would catch any mortal who fell before they hurt themselves, his reflexes responding before the mortal had any real idea of what had happened.

While the Guardsmen at least had some military training and physical aptitude, the fragility and clumsiness of the civilian mortals retained a fascination for Anvindr. Even in the distant days of his childhood, before the Sky Warriors had made him one of their own, Anvindr had been made of stronger stuff than these city dwellers. Fenrisian young learned survival fast, and Anvindr had been a hunter from virtually the moment he took his first steps.

As a Grey Hunter, so far removed from those beginnings, these mortals with their fast breaths and heartbeats, so involved in the transient concerns of their short lives, were a mystery to him. They fluttered around him like moths, and he tried not to break them.

Blood and scraps of bone.

The chamber was one of many similar rooms, featureless except for three small podiums, each of which held a smooth-surfaced reliquary box. Two were in place, while one had been knocked to the floor. It remained intact, whatever bones or other remains it contained kept safely inside.

The mortals who had rested in this chamber were not so lucky. Blood splattered the walls and floor, and within the streaks of dried blood were scraps of bone, cloth and other, thicker, matter, the shredded remains of skin and organs.

The room was small, at least to Anvindr, and while the mortals walked in and out with ease, he had to duck to enter. Montiyf was standing, arms folded so that Anvindr could see the ruby-eyed skulls engraved on his gauntlets, while Pranix squatted closer to the floor, examining a streak of gore and tapping his data-slate.

‘I am not yours to summon,’ Anvindr growled to Montiyf. It had been three days since the Wolves had entered the tomb, and Montiyf had sent one of the Lacusians to request Anvindr’s presence.

Anvindr didn’t expect any response to this from the inquisitor, any acknowledgement that the Wolves were not a resource at the inquisitor’s disposal, and he didn’t get any beyond an impassive glare.

‘What happened here?’ Anvindr asked.

‘We do not know,’ said Montiyf. ‘Five people were in this room. This is all that is left of them.’

‘You are sure all five?’ asked Anvindr. ‘One didn’t turn on the others?’ Mortal men killed each other for foolish reasons, Anvindr knew this.

‘We have checked the entire tomb, lord,’ said Pranix, with soft formality. He had attached a brass rod to his data-slate with a line of copper wire, and embedded one end in a smear of gore on the ground. ‘This is all that remains of any of them.’

‘Then someone else?’ asked Anvindr, frustrated. ‘Grief, these petty crimes are no concern of mine, and I don’t see why the Inquisition cares either.’

‘If this were a normal crime,’ said Montiyf, running one gloved finger down the tattoo beneath his eye. ‘But look at the remains. Does this strike you as something a normal human could do? Fast enough that no one even heard a scream?’

Anvindr gave a non-committal grunt. There were plenty of things that could kill this fast, beasts and xenos that could rend flesh in a flurry of claws or weapons. Anvindr had seen it happen.

In the heat of battle, he had been that killer himself.

‘There are fears that some savage beast did this, although there is nowhere for such an animal to hide,’ said Montiyf. Anvindr could feel the inquisitor’s gaze on him. ‘Unless that beast lurked beneath a human skin, a hidden animal rage.’

‘You can reassure the mortals, this was not one of us,’ said Anvindr, not rising to the inquisitor’s coy insinuations. ‘We are not animals.’

Anvindr crossed the room, looked more closely at a streak of blood on the wall and opened up his senses. He could smell human blood and a touch of bile, but those fluids didn’t smell fresh, nor did they have the dead scent of stale, dried blood. He rubbed at one of the blood stains with his fingers. His fingers came away stained with powder, the dust leaving a hint of something in the air.

‘This blood was hot as it spilled,’ Anvindr said. ‘Very hot; these stains are burnt.’

‘We must be alert,’ said Inquisitor Montiyf, and with that he left the room. Pranix remained, and Anvindr lingered, thinking of the ways to kill a man, and what might cause such damage, shredding flesh and leaving blood stains burnt into the walls.

A weapon? Someone would have heard.

A psyker? Anvindr had seen mental powers tear an enemy to pieces, or burn them from the inside out. The Inquisition were known for their psychic powers.

Deep in thought, Anvindr picked up the fallen reliquary from the floor. It rattled slightly, the sound of bone fragments moving within. The box seemed tiny in Anvindr’s giant hand, the remains of a mortal life in his palm. He placed the featureless box back on its featureless podium.

‘No names,’ he said, largely to himself.

Pranix looked up from his data-slate. ‘Lord?’

‘There are no names, apart from Hrondir’s,’ said Anvindr. ‘The people who built this tomb made all this effort to lay their dead here, all these boxes and chambers, yet they didn’t mark down the names of the dead?’

Pranix didn’t say anything, but continued to watch Anvindr as he walked away.

‘He insults us!’ complained Gulbrandr, after Anvindr reported the deaths, and his conversation with the inquisitor. ‘As if we were beasts who needed to chew down on these tiny mortals.’

The four Wolves had taken one of the larger chambers in the tomb for themselves, a long room with a long stone altar in the centre. Gulbrandr prowled the room, whilst Tormodr sat in one corner and Sindri leaned nonchalantly against a wall.

‘He did not say he believed this,’ said Anvindr. ‘But I am sure some of the mortals do.’

‘Let them run scared of us,’ said Sindri. ‘Weak little things. Why should we care if a few of them die? This whole world is in ruins.’

‘That depends what killed them,’ said Anvindr. ‘And how we can kill it.’

‘If there is something worth hunting down here after all, then that changes everything,’ said Sindri, grinning widely.

A day later, another mortal died. This time, screams were heard, but by the time any witness arrived, the room from which the scream came was empty.

It was rapidly established that a young woman had gone missing, and a search was organised.

It was Gulbrandr who found the body, collapsed in an alcove on the opposite end of the catacombs. Skinned and gutted, an unnatural heat rose from the corpse.

Of the killer, they could find no sign.

‘He’s gone,’ said Sindri.

It was now four days since they had entered the tomb.

Liulfr would not be able to heal fully until his legs were freed, but his condition was stable, and he certainly didn’t need monitoring, his own remarkable physiology keeping him healthy and in minimal pain even while pinned.

Nonetheless, the Wolves chose to visit Liulfr regularly, recounting old war stories while making futile attempts to discover a way of freeing Liulfr without causing a larger rockslide.

It had been Sindri’s turn to visit Liulfr, but he returned within minutes of departing.

‘If this is one of your jests…’ Anvindr began, but he could see from Sindri’s expression that he wasn’t joking.

‘I must see this for myself,’ said Anvindr.

Liulfr was indeed gone, almost without a trace. Scree had rolled down to fill the gap where Liulfr had been pinned under the stone column, and in spite of digging through the gravel Anvindr couldn’t find even a fragment of ceramite. If Liulfr had somehow been dragged away, there would at least be some part of him left behind.

Instead, there was nothing to mark where Liulfr had been, except a scattering of blackened stones, scarred from exposure to a great and sudden heat.

‘Perhaps he freed himself,’ said Montiyf, when told the news of Liulfr’s disappearance. ‘The explosions above may have shaken the rock above him, allowing your brother to manoeuvre himself free.’

‘And walk away on broken legs?’ scoffed Anvindr. ‘Why even try to drag himself away, when Liulfr knew we would come to him in good time? No, if Liulfr had dragged himself loose, he would have waited for one of his pack to find him.’

‘Then what would you suggest happened?’ asked Montiyf.

The inquisitor and the Wolf circled each other slowly, stood before Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Montiyf’s hammer and Anvindr’s chainblade stayed hanging from their respective belts, but each had a hand free, ready to defend themselves.

‘There are ways to move flesh through walls, to pull that which is solid through matter,’ said Anvindr.

‘A sorcerer?’ asked Montiyf, an eyebrow raised. Matters of daemonic heresy were the business of the Ordo Malleus, and Anvindr was pushing into Montiyf’s territory by even discussing them.

‘Or a psyker,’ said Anvindr. ‘Such power can leave a tang in the air, and create a great excess of heat.’

Anvindr raised one hand in a closed fist, and then opened it to reveal blackened stones in his palm.

It was an accusation, albeit an indirect one. Many inquisitors were psykers, and those abilities could stretch from the reading of mortal minds to the manipulation of objects, and even greater distortions of reality. And the greater those powers, the more likely the psyker would succumb to the dark forces drawn to his unnatural talents.

Tension hung in the air between the two. They were not alone – while the chamber had been cleared so that Anvindr could speak about matters that the inquisitor would execute most subjects of the Imperium for even knowing about, the rest of Anvindr’s pack were present, as was Pranix. While the Wolves outnumbered the representatives of the Inquisition, and their Chapter was known for its defiance, to attack an inquisitor was nonetheless almost unthinkable, treasonous.

Unless that inquisitor had been corrupted by the very forces he was sworn to destroy.

Montiyf was about to speak when a mortal cry echoed from a nearby corridor. There was a momentary exchange of glances between Anvindr and Montiyf, then a nodding agreement to temporarily postpone their conversation.

As the Wolves ran from the chamber, the inquisitor and his interrogator close behind, there was no one to see an icy film develop on the surface of Hrondir’s sarcophagus, then evaporate into the air as quickly as it had formed.

The man whose cry they heard stood, back pressed into the stone wall, shuddering in horror, his eyes locked on the smouldering mass on the floor before him.

‘It just appeared,’ the man said, then proceeded to repeat those three words again and again, staring at the bloody, burning mass. Steam filled the air, and in the dimly lit corridor it was hard to see what was actually there.

Anvindr had his bolter drawn as he approached the twitching shape on the ground, ready to confront whatever horror had materialised, but rapidly lowered his weapon.

‘Liulfr,’ he said. ‘It’s Liulfr.’

The Wolves gathered around their fallen comrade. His armour had been battered and burnt, and was still hot to the touch, dented all over and even cracked in places. The livery of his ceramite plate was blackened beyond recognition, and the pelts he wore around his shoulders were little more than crisped wisps of ashen matter.

From the waist down Liulfr’s legs were indeed crushed, mangled within flattened armour, and where the armour was most cracked burnt flesh was visible beneath.

Liulfr’s head was a scorched-red mass of bruised and burnt flesh, the hair entirely gone and the eyes and mouth reduced to crumpled slits.

As Anvindr leaned over to check Liulfr’s breathing, his mouth and eyes snapped open. His eyes were bloodshot but intact, and a bruised tongue wet burnt-dry lips.

‘Fought it,’ he said, with considerable effort. ‘It dragged me into the dark, but I fought it every step. I wouldn’t let it take me, tried to free him.’

This message delivered, Liulfr slumped back, eyes staring blankly.

Liulfr was dead.

The Wolves carried Liulfr to their chamber, and laid him out on the altar.

‘Tried to free who?’ asked Sindri, breaking the mournful silence that had fallen across them all. ‘He makes no sense.’

‘He was taken somewhere,’ said Anvindr. ‘Pulled away by magic to somewhere dark, then returned.’

‘This is work for a rune priest, not for us,’ rumbled Tormodr.

‘Well, there are no priests here,’ said Anvindr. ‘So it falls to us whether it pleases us or not.’

Anvindr was no inquisitor, nor one of the Adeptus Arbites: he did not sift for truth or search out secrets.

He was a Sky Warrior, a hunter, one of the Vlka Fenryka. His earliest memories were of the hunt, of the endless icy wastes of Fenris, tracking the distant shape of an animal as the cold winds tore through layers of furs. He knew how to seek out prey, to kill, to be aware of a predator’s eyes on you, and strike at them first.

As a young man he had become aware of being observed, and when he sought out his observers they took him away to the Aett, where he was elevated to the ranks of the Sky Warriors.

He had hunted and fought and killed ever since, it was his nature from birth and it would be with him until his death; an endless cycle.

The enemy he faced now seemed to break that simple cycle of his existence, to defy face-to-face confrontation, to leave no trail to follow. It was a riddle, and Anvindr had no use for riddles. It was for Montiyf to unpick such things, and Montiyf showed no sign of understanding any more than Anvindr.

Unless Anvindr was wrong to consider this different to any other threat. There was an enemy, one which ventured from its lair. If it could not be caught while it hunted, then it would need to be found in its den and struck at there.

Perhaps it was all that simple, and there was no mystery, just the hunt.

And if there was no mystery, perhaps there were no riddles to be resolved, and the one person who should have known what was happening, who had been strangely idle, had the knowledge that was expected of them. Perhaps everything was exactly as it should be, and all Anvindr needed to do was resolve the problem in the best way he knew.

‘Hrondir is at the heart of this,’ Anvindr called out to Montiyf as he entered the central chamber of the tomb. The inquisitor and his interrogator were alone, poring over readings on their equipment. ‘We have been looking for enemies in the shadows, but this place is no mystery, it is devoted to the memory of one man alone. Whatever is attacking us, it relates to Hrondir. I don’t know how, but I think you do.’

‘I do?’ asked Montiyf.

‘Why else would you be here?’ said Anvindr. ‘Research on a dead enemy, in the middle of a Tau invasion? No, the Exorcists have always been close to the Inquisition. If your Ordo didn’t send Hrondir here then they at least knew what he faced, and knew enough to come here the moment this tomb was uncovered.’

‘These are matters for the Inqui–’ Montiyf began.

‘Enough,’ Anvindr barked. ‘Keep your secrets from these mortals, but whatever stalks these halls cut the thread of Liulfr, a brother of the Vlka Fenryka. I will not waste time on protocol while a threat like that exists. So speak, so that we may kill this thing and be done with it.’

There was a long silence. Anvindr’s pack had followed him into the chamber, and stood quietly nearby.

Then Montiyf spoke, evenly and surely, as if Anvindr hadn’t needed to wring the truth out of him.

‘Hrondir came here alone,’ said Montiyf. ‘The forces of Chaos sought to break into this sector, and the Exorcists and my ordo were spread thin striking at the gravest heresies wherever they erupted. Hrondir was the last of his squad. By what accounts we have left from that time, he responded to reports of some daemonic emergence here on Beltrasse.’

Montiyf circled the dais at the centre of the room, and the great stone sarcophagus that dominated the chamber.

‘It took three decades to purify this sector, but we were thorough,’ Montiyf continued. ‘No report was left unchecked, no matter how long it took, so decades after Hrondir was sent to Beltrasse the planet was revisited, to see what became of him. This world was clean of heresy, and all that could be gleaned were stories of a single Space Marine destroying a great evil.’

Montiyf gestured to the chamber they were in. ‘This tomb was already buried and forgotten by then, so there was little to be done to follow up the stories. But concerns lingered still, that Beltrasse had too neatly forgotten what occurred here. So when the tomb was uncovered in a Tau attack, we returned. And the events of recent days show that we were right to do so.’

‘Hrondir’s mission remains incomplete,’ said Anvindr. ‘The daemon still lives.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Montiyf. ‘Hrondir may have dealt with the enemy as best he could. If the evil could not be killed, there are other ways to win such battles.’

‘Witchcraft,’ Anvindr said.

‘There are rituals,’ said Montiyf. ‘But these are many, and we do not know which one. But I am certain that whatever lives here in the tomb, it is not fully manifest. It is restrained, or else it would have killed us all days ago and unleashed itself upon the world above.’

Restrained. Something about the word itched at Anvindr’s brain. What had Liulfr said, about being trapped in the darkness? As if the daemon had been drawn back to some cell, and took its victims there with it before reaching out once more to deposit the remains back where it found them. Only Liulfr had fought, and been released with a last breath left in him.

‘There are no hidden rooms or spaces here?’ asked Anvindr, already knowing the answer.

It was Interrogator Pranix who answered, rather than his master.

‘None,’ said Pranix. ‘We have scanned every bit of wall, floor and ceiling. This tomb is buried deep in stony ground.’

‘Then where could this beast be hiding… except in there?’ Anvindr pointed to the sarcophagus. ‘Why else would you be watching that box so closely if the daemon were not in there? The Beltrassens must have known the daemon lay with Hrondir, that’s why this tomb bears not a single word or image or name apart from his, so that the daemon could take no hold of them. So why haven’t you opened the sarcophagus yet?’

‘Because we do not know enough. We have not gathered enough information on this creature,’ said Montiyf. ‘To act prematurely would be foolhardy.’

‘Is that why you have been scouring the scene after every attack, so that you can gather more data while this thing wreaks havoc?’ said Anvindr, turning to Pranix.

‘An unfortunate necessity,’ said Pranix. He barely raised his voice but there was steel behind his words, an absolute self-possession. ‘We could not afford to act prematurely, until we knew exactly–’

‘So you kept your silence while one of us died?’ snarled Anvindr in exasperation, his rage barely contained.

Pranix didn’t respond, but neither did he flinch in the face of Anvindr’s anger.

Anvindr looked between inquisitor and interrogator, both absolutely certain in their authority. He ground his teeth, fangs digging into the inside of his mouth. Then, with a snarl of released anger, he turned to his pack.

‘Well, if caution is the word of the day,’ said Anvindr. ‘We know what we must do, brothers?’

Montiyf and Pranix made no move to stop the Wolves as they surrounded the stone sarcophagus and searched for a way to open it, instead stepping back and preparing themselves for whatever came next. In his peripheral vision Anvindr could see Montiyf detaching the gold hammer from where it hung from his belt, adjusting his grip on its ornate handle.

It was Sindri who found that the front panel of the sarcophagus, the one bearing Hrondir’s likeness and name, could be slowly eased out. Tormodr and Gulbrandr did the heavy lifting, while Anvindr and Sindri stepped back, weapons raised.

Tormodr and Gulbrandr moved the slab aside, resting it against the side of the sarcophagus. Dead air seeped out of the interior, a musty smell but with something else, a more recent stink of burnt flesh and hot blood.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, as the Wolves waited for something to emerge. But nothing did.

Anvindr approached the sarcophagus, bolter raised.

As opposed to the spartan stone of the rest of the tomb, the interior of the sarcophagus was covered with writing, some in languages Anvindr didn’t understand, scratched on every surface. The text was accompanied by arcane signs and symbols, many of which Anvindr did recognise, as marks of warding to hold back evil.

Hold back, or hold in?

The stone interior was blackened by scorch marks, but the set of Terminator armour that occupied the sarcophagus still bore its fierce red livery, the horned skull still displayed on one shoulder.

Matching the engraving on the front of the sarcophagus, Hrondir had been laid to rest seated, his fully armoured body sat on a stone throne strong enough to hold the armour’s vast weight. The helmet was down over Hrondir’s face, and his hands rested, palms down, in his lap.

‘Stay back,’ said Anvindr, stepping towards Hrondir. He reached around the armour’s helmet, finding the release clasps. There was a hiss of released air as the helmet lifted away.

The exposed head was well-preserved. Pallid, dried skin had shrunk over the skull, the eyelids sunken. The emaciated features were recognisably Hrondir’s, and even in death his wide jaw was set in a caricature of stoic determination.

Anvindr’s eyes narrowed, his ears pricked, checking for any sign of life. There was not the murmur of even the slowest heartbeat or breath, no movement at all, but there was still something there. Hrondir was not alive, but neither was he quite dead, in a way that Anvindr could not understand.

‘He is dead… but not dead?’ said Anvindr, realising how absurd this was while standing in Hrondir’s tomb.

‘A tiny spark of his life essence still holds on,’ said Montiyf. ‘His body is long dead, but some part of his soul lingers.’

As Anvindr stepped away from Hrondir’s body, determined to ask Montiyf to explain himself, his heavy boot knocked something aside, a chip of hard material that bounced off the interior wall of the sarcophagus and spun at Anvindr’s feet.

He looked down to see it was a chip of ceramite spinning to a halt. A curved piece of armour plate, painted in the colour of his own Chapter.

A piece of Liulfr’s armour.

And then Anvindr was hit by an incredible rush of force, a surge of heat and violence in the air strong enough to throw even a fully armoured Space Marine off his feet and across the chamber.

Anvindr hit the wall hard, falling to the floor in a shower of stone fragments. He landed on his feet, bolter already raised.

He could see it now, a blur in the air coalescing before the body of Hrondir. It made his eyes itch to look at it, an amorphous blob of fiery, semi-transparent matter, straining to pull itself into existence, the shadows of teeth and claws slashing the air around it.

‘For Russ!’ shouted Anvindr, squeezing the trigger of his bolter to unleash a storm of explosive bolts. Sindri and Gulbrandr fired too, and the daemonic presence squirmed under fire.

Then, it was gone.

‘Too easy?’ asked Sindri, keeping his bolter raised.

‘Far too easy,’ agreed Anvindr. ‘Inquisitor?’

‘Agreed,’ said Montiyf. ‘It will return.’

‘It’s anchored,’ said Pranix.

‘Speak sense,’ snapped Anvindr.

‘The inquisitor said some of Hrondir’s soul remained,’ said Pranix. ‘Hrondir must have been unable to kill the daemon outright, so instead he bound it to his own soul. Even in death that bond still holds, Hrondir’s soul bound to his body, pulling the daemon back to its cell.’

The inquisitor pointed to Hrondir’s body. ‘You can see it, the force holding it here.’

Anvindr looked. Hrondir’s armour seemed lit with a light blue, flickering glow, traces of psychic energy rippling across the surfaces of the ancient armour. The light crackled, as if responding to some opposing force.

‘Pranix is right,’ said Montiyf. ‘That’s the daemon’s anchor.’

The blue light burst forth with a wave of cold air, a brief frost forming around the edges of the sarcophagus, and the daemonic presence reappeared. It was not alone: Anvindr could see Galvern, the first Guardsman they had encountered in the tomb, twisting in the air before Hrondir’s seated figure. Galvern was in agony, his body covered in flames, cuts appearing on his skin as the very air around him attacked with daemonic force.

Anvindr felt rising anger. This must have been what happened to Liulfr and the others, warped to the inside of Hrondir’s sarcophagus to be mauled by this daemon, the remains then returned to where they had come from once its foul work was done.

Anvindr had had enough.

‘Gulbrandr,’ he called to the best shot in the pack. ‘Mercy kill.’

Gulbrandr nodded, fired his bolter once and Galvern’s head exploded. Galvern’s body went limp, and there was a high screech as the daemon tore the body limb from limb, frustrated at having its game cut short.

The daemon itself seemed unaffected by the bolt having penetrated its body to reach Galvern. Instead it dropped to the floor, and disappeared once again, only to emerge at Gulbrandr’s feet, consuming him in a wave of heat.

Gulbrandr struggled against the semi-visible creature that clawed at him with burning, translucent limbs, but it was like wrestling a liquid. Tormodr and Sindri rushed to help, the latter revving his chainblade, which he brought down on to the creature.

Sindri swore as the creature flowed around the blade and it bounced off the chest plate of Gulbrandr’s armour.

‘Great Russ,’ said Sindri. ‘We’re more likely to kill him than it.’

‘Stand back,’ shouted Montiyf, stepping forward. His eyes were faintly glowing with energy, which crackled around the hammer in his grip. He swung the hammer just short of Gulbrandr so that it swept through the creature’s mass without hitting the Space Marine, and the creature recoiled from the psychic charge, disappearing into the floor once again.

It reappeared back in Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Gulbrandr dropped to one knee, his flesh steaming from contact with the thing, his face a mass of bloody cuts.

‘It doesn’t seem scratched,’ said Anvindr bitterly. ‘How do we even hurt this thing?’

‘We need to cut it loose,’ said Pranix. Anvindr registered that he, too, had a flicker of psychic energy running through him. ‘Destroy the anchor, release Hrondir’s spirit and the daemon will manifest fully in our world. The body is untouched, so the daemon must have been unable to set itself free, but that rite won’t prevent anyone else from doing it. Once unleashed, the creature will be far more dangerous than it is now, but it will be vulnerable to attack. Together, we may be able to defeat it.’

It was Anvindr’s turn to swear, uttering under his breath a very old, very obscure Fenrisian curse from his youth about bearing the children from a rival tribe. Montiyf and Pranix had let Liulfr die while they kept their secrets, but the Ordo Malleus knew more about fighting daemons than anyone. The Wolves would need them to destroy the monster that killed Liulfr.

‘Very well,’ said Anvindr. ‘Tormodr, I want you to give my old friend Hrondir a long overdue cremation. The rest of you, draw that thing out.’

Anvindr, Gulbrandr and Sindri opened fire on the creature, which flowed away from the sarcophagus to avoid their shots, slipping in and out of existence as it rolled around the chamber. The Wolves maintained fire, driving it back.

With the creature distracted, Tormodr ran up the steps into the sarcophagus. Hrondir’s helmet sat loosely on his shoulders, as Anvindr hadn’t locked it back into place, so it came off easily as Tormodr pulled it away, revealing the Exorcist’s withered head.

‘Apologies, brother,’ said Tormodr, aiming his flamer and letting loose a gout of flame that consumed Hrondir’s head. The ancient flesh was dry as paper, and the fire not only burned away the skin from his head, but descended down the collar into the armour, burning away the rest of his body.

The Terminator armour fell forward, thick black smoke pouring out of the neck. It crashed to the ground spilling dark cindered fragments across the floor. Anvindr thought he saw a mist of blue energy rise from the ashes, and then dissipate altogether.

The daemon roared, and what had been a ghostly shape in the air began to coalesce into something solid but unstable, a rippling mass of horribly real, pustulant flesh. Pores expanded on the repellent flesh, exhaling foetid air as tubular masses became limbs, razor-edged tips scratching the stone floor as it found purpose. Other limbs expanded and thrashed, while a mass of glassy eyes burst from the centre of the daemon’s body like pustules.

The daemon’s eyes held Anvindr’s gaze and he felt a hot sensation behind his eyes, the touch of Chaos trying to find purchase on his mind.

It would take no hold of him.

‘Now!’ bellowed Anvindr, opening fire on the thing, the cacophony of gunfire rising as the rest of the pack opened fire too.

Anvindr concentrated his fire on that mass of eyes, and boiling ichor sprayed from the wounds as the foul eyeballs were destroyed. However the creature was still in flux, still expanding, and other eyes opened up over its body just as extra limbs flailed around the chamber. Each limb rippled with spines and teeth, the flesh flowing like liquid, so it was hard to tell where the flesh ended and the slime that dripped from it began.

One such limb slashed at Gulbrandr, and a razor-edged claw scythed through the ceramite of his chest plate as if it were old vellum, drawing blood and throwing him backwards. Where the daemon’s claw had cut flesh, the edge of the wound began to blacken with decay.

The creature shifted forward, its flailing limbs dragging it across the chamber at terrifying speed in spite of its bulk, raising a mass of claws to deliver a killing blow to Gulbrandr. The daemon seemed unperturbed by the bolts still exploding all over its body, but was driven back as Montiyf and Pranix stepped into the fray, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that drove back the monster.

The daemon swerved to find another victim to satiate its bloodlust, but found Tormodr and his flamer instead. While previously the creature had coursed with the unnatural heat of its incursion upon reality, now it was a thing of vulnerable flesh, and it howled as Tormodr set it alight.

Anvindr seized Gulbrandr’s arm to prevent him from falling. Steam was rising from his infected wound, and there was a lost, unfocussed look in his eyes.

‘Look at me, brother,’ Anvindr said, and Gulbrandr’s eyes locked on to his. ‘Do not let it take a hold of you, fight it.’

Gulbrandr nodded, focus returning to his eyes, and shook off Anvindr’s supporting arm, raising his bolter to open fire once more.

The daemon was still trying to expand its mass, but the hail of bolter fire was tearing its flesh apart as it did so. The Wolves, along with the inquisitor, attacked the daemon while evading its thrashing limbs, but they were merely holding it in check, not destroying it.

‘We must take it apart,’ said Montiyf, raising his hammer. Anvindr nodded, raising his own chainblade in reply, and they moved in on the creature.

The creature lashed out at them as they closed, but Anvindr jumped over a low-swiping limb to land close to the creature’s torso, while Montiyf smacked aside a claw with his hammer. Anvindr drove his chainblade into the creature’s eyes while Montiyf brought his hammer down on the creature’s head, each blow accompanied by a release of psychic power.

Pranix moved in with a psychic blast of his own, while Tormodr had his own chainblade free, and even Gulbrandr staggered over with a long knife drawn, his other arm held across his bleeding chest.

As Sindri approached a flailing claw caught him behind the knee, a claw that shifted into a tendril and dragged him to the floor, pulling him towards a mouth that opened up in the daemon’s side. As he was dragged towards the daemon, Sindri kept his bolter level, firing ahead as the tendril crushed the power armour and began to dig into his flesh.

Anvindr could feel the malign presence as his chainsword rose and fell, hacking and smashing at vile flesh. Doubts and heresies began to sprout in his mind, bursting forth like an infection. That Hrondir had sold his soul to this daemon to sustain it, that it was a god, the only true god, that it was life, that it could not die.

Lies and heresies from a desperate entity. Anvindr drove his chainsword deeper into the amorphous flesh, and a howl rang out. Beside him, Montiyf brought his hammer down again with another psychic flash. The vile flesh of the thing began to bubble and disintegrate, mouths forming to let out a piteous, monstrous whine.

The creature’s screams rang out through the catacombs. In the sub-chambers of the tomb, mortals sat in the darkness, trickles of blood dripping from their ears at the sound of a daemon being dispatched back to hell.

Anvindr and his pack barely spoke to Montiyf and Pranix in the days that followed, nor when the blockade of the tomb entrance was cleared and they stepped out into the light. While they had come together to destroy the daemon, Anvindr knew that Pranix could have done more to confront the creature earlier, rather than allowing Liulfr to die as part of his strategy.

Anvindr and Tormodr would rejoin the battle against the Tau immediately, but Gulbrandr and Sindri would be out of action for a while. It left a bad taste in Anvindr’s mouth, but he held his tongue. The Inquisition was a dangerous enemy to make, and Anvindr had a war of his own to fight. He decided to redirect his anger at the Tau.

Before they left the tomb, Anvindr removed the pieces of Hrondir’s armour from his sarcophagus. He did not know how, but he would find a way to return them to Banish, so that they might be worn once more by a brother of the Exorcists Chapter.

‘They resent us,’ said Pranix, watching the Wolves walk away. ‘They believe we could have acted sooner, and that our reticence let their brother die.’

Montiyf raised an eyebrow.

‘You were right to counsel caution,’ he said. ‘An excellent strategy, Pranix, and your suggestion to destroy the anchor turned the course of battle. I fear you will be leaving my retinue soon.’

‘Leaving?’ asked Interrogator Pranix.

‘Of course,’ replied Montiyf. ‘I will be recommending your raising to the role of inquisitor, Pranix. You have demonstrated the correct qualities.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pranix. He didn’t meet Montiyf’s eye.

Inquisitor Montiyf felt a slight sense of disquiet at the coolness of his interrogator’s thanks, the slight suspicion that he expected no less than to be raised to the Inquisition. That this was Pranix’s decision, not Montiyf’s.

Then he dismissed the thought. He could hear Tau heavy ordnance not far away. The daemon was dead and it was time for them to withdraw.

Soon, they would depart the planet altogether, and leave Beltrasse to the Wolves.

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter 7

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Don’t clamour so. I promised to finish my story and finish it I shall. Then I can end this sorry existence and join that great brigade of storytellers that shines so brightly in my memory. I am rested and eager to continue, if you could just remind me where I left the story off. It seems like years since Gilead’s name passed my withered lips, and yet I know it was mere hours ago.

The skaven had congregated beneath the ground in the great hall with its crystallised vaults and buttresses and its great, arching black ceiling above. None remained but the youthful and exuberant. All the chaff had been separated; all the old and infirm, and the cowardly, were dead and gone, mostly into the stomachs of the survivors.

All that a skaven had to do to survive was to kill and maim and incapacitate his brothers and cousins, his father and uncles and grandfathers, if he knew who they were. The ratmen were all of one cruel and vicious kind, and gave no thought to the complex biological relationships that might otherwise have tied them to allegiances they hadn’t the capacity to understand.

The only skaven of any age among them was their king. He had been their master for as long as any of them had lived, and for longer than any of them could remember. There were no legends extant of any other ruler. He was all and everything to them. Their stories were short and brutal, their myths bloody, and all contained but one name, and his name was ‘King’.

Gilead stood and flexed as the Rat King entered the room. He had sloughed off the ties that bound him, body and mind, and was refreshed and whole again. His senses were alert, and he was ready to do battle.

The Rat King raised one whiskered brow; his jaw moved quickly back and forth, and around and around, but without making any words.

‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

‘So you have,’ said the Rat King.

Gilead expected more. He expected the ratman to twitch and fidget, and to trip over its words, but it did not. Even its jaw had settled and was still, its whiskers unmoving.

The Rat King took a long, deep breath, and then looked from side to side, as if suspicious of what was happening to him. His eyes swung from left to right, rather than darted, and then they fixed, unblinking, on the Fell One.

‘You are not what you expected to be,’ said Gilead.

The Rat King felt his mind homing in on Gilead in a way that it had never managed before. He found that he was concentrating, taking in the tall, lean figure of the elf, scrutinising his prisoner’s features and stance, and trying to work out what was in his head.

The Rat King shook his head slowly and blinked hard.

‘I have come,’ said Gilead again.

‘So you have,’ said the Rat King, looking startled at the sound of his own lowering voice, his words annunciated more roundly and not repeated.

‘And?’ asked Gilead.

The Rat King sat in the strange throne of weapon blades and handles, staring at Gilead.

‘And I shall live forever,’ said the Rat King.

He had stopped chewing out the words between jaws that twitched and gnawed at an alarming rate. He had stopped blinking so much and so often. Images came to him whole, not broken and strobed by the constant flickering of his eyelids.

The Rat King grasped the arms of his throne with his clawed paws and breathed deeply once more, unused to the flow of air through his lungs and the rush of oxygen into his bloodstream.

The Rat King swallowed. The pink rims of his eyes, the red of his gums and the puce flesh of his tail paled visibly before Gilead’s eyes.

One side of the elf’s mouth curled in a wry smile.

‘Are you quite well, sir?’ Gilead asked the Rat King. ‘You look rather pale.’

‘I shall live forever,’ said the Rat King. His voice was deeper even than it had been moments before and he spoke more slowly, with greater purpose, as if, for the first time, he was formulating words and listening to what he was saying. He had stopped repeating himself over and over, ad infinitum.

‘Is this what it feels like?’ asked the Rat King, turning his paws over in front of his face, examining them as if he had never seen them before. ‘Is this what being immortal feels like?’

‘I am not immortal,’ said Gilead. ‘I will live only as long as any other of my kind, if I am allowed to expire of old age. You plan to kill me, and, if you succeed, I shall prove very mortal, very quickly.’

‘You have come,’ said the Rat King, looking hard at Gilead, who stood over him.

‘Yes,’ said Gilead, ‘I have come.’

Fithvael and Laban dropped into their knees and strode down corridors, tunnels and burrows, following the rumble of thousands of bickering jaws and the vibrations of as many twitching, fidgeting bodies. The Vampire Count was slower and clumsier, his armour making his body bulky and awkward. Fithvael was cautious of their new ally, happy that the Count struggled to keep pace.

‘How could we have mistaken such a beast for our fine cousin?’ Laban asked Fithvael as the two forged ahead.

‘Do not underestimate the Count,’ said Fithvael. ‘He is our ally for now, but, soon, he will be our enemy once more. He is a fine exponent of the blade arts, and it is incumbent upon you not to forget it, lad.’

‘I meant no disrespect,’ said Laban, colouring slightly as he turned to his teacher, and promptly tripped over an exposed root under his left foot.

‘We are all capable of being clumsy,’ said Fithvael, stifling his mirth.

Fithvael and Laban stopped in their tracks, and the Count blundered towards the elves as a great wall of sound came up around them. They had never heard the like of it before, as it boomed and echoed down the tunnels of the underground warren, coming at them from any number of impossible angles. It was rhythmic and shrill with a hard bass note of thousands of stamping paws as they pounded into the hard, earth floor of the great chamber.

‘Come we close?’ asked the Vampire Count, breathing hard onto the back of Fithvael’s neck in the darkness of the tunnel.

Fithvael placed a hand on the wall beside him, although he could feel the vibrations so strongly through his booted feet that there was no doubt in his mind what awaited them if they continued on into the great vaulted space at the centre of the warren.

They had passed no live skaven on their journey into the depths of the earth. The weak and dying had been taken or devoured, and every last remaining ratman had gathered in one place; the one place to which the three unlikely companions were heading.

‘What do we do when we get there?’ asked Laban. ‘We should have a plan.’

‘We have come to attempt to rescue our friend,’ said Fithvael. ‘I have no sense of him in the turmoil that the ratmen are creating.’

‘The Old One resides in these stricken realms,’ said the Vampire Count. ‘He resides at their centre. I know not how I know it, but know it I do.’

‘That still isn’t a plan,’ said Laban, who appeared to have shrunk as the noise around them grew louder. ‘We cannot simply walk into the gathered hosts of skaven. We will surely die.’

‘There is much cunning in their characters,’ said the Vampire Count, ‘and guile aplenty, yet they greatly lack real intelligence, and are frantic and graceless in battle.’

Fithvael turned to the Count.

‘We can kill them?’ he asked.

‘We three can kill and maim their host in great numbers,’ said the Count, drawing his blades.

‘Great numbers, perhaps,’ said Laban, ‘but hordes?’

The Rat King sank back into his throne and did not move for some time. Then, he pushed one paw down inside his clothes and pulled out a long ribbon of plaited hair with a jewel hanging from it. He held it up before his face and watched it, unblinking, for several seconds.

‘Nothing,’ said the Rat King.

‘What did you expect?’ asked Gilead.

‘Something,’ said the King, looking up at the elf. ‘I expected to know something. Now that I stop to think about it… There is nothing to think about.’

‘What did you expect?’ asked Gilead again.

‘Something,’ said the Rat King again.

‘You were going to live forever,’ said Gilead.

‘Not just for now,’ said the Rat King, looking from Gilead’s face to the gem as it turned slowly on its hair ribbon.

‘‘You are not what you expected to be,’ said Gilead.

‘It’s made of hair,’ said the Rat King, peering at the curving locks of the ribbon. He looked sharply up at Gilead again. ‘Whose hair?’

‘I know not,’ said Gilead. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Whose hair was woven into this ribbon?’ asked the Rat King. ‘Why? Is it just any hair? Or is it the hair of someone who matters… or who mattered once?’

‘I know not,’ said Gilead, watching the Rat King carefully.

The Rat King brought the ribbon up to his nose and sniffed at it.

‘It is the hair of my brethren,’ said the Rat King. ‘Of my kind… But whose? Who gave this hair to make this ribbon? Is he dead? Did I belong to him? Was the hair given freely, or taken? Does it matter?’

Gilead did not mean to answer the questions, thinking them rhetorical, but the Rat King looked up at him, sad longing in his eyes, and asked again, ‘Does it matter?’

‘Does it matter to you?’ asked Gilead.

Gilead had never feared for his life, and he did not fear for it now. He took his mortality entirely for granted. He knew that he would die, one day, soon perhaps, and it couldn’t matter less. That he was mortal was a blessing to Gilead, for only in death could he overcome the enduring sadness of too much life lived and too much loss lived through. He thought of Tor Anrok of his family, and of his twin, Galeth, dead these many years. He thought of Fithvael and the agonies they had endured in each others’ company. He remembered Benath and the funeral rites of his dear cousin and honoured friend. He thought of the oldest of his kind and of the youngest of his kin, and he remembered. He knew that with remembrance came knowledge and with knowledge remembrance.

Gilead understood what had befallen the great Rat King, the beast who had dared to live forever, at any cost to himself, at any cost to his kind. He knew that the changes creeping into the Rat King’s consciousness were irreversible, that his skaven adversary would never be the same again. He could not know what effect that would have on the Rat King or on his own mortality.

Gilead looked down into the Rat King’s unblinking eyes as great pools of water gathered in their lower lids. The water brimmed, and yet the Rat King still did not blink. When the tears fell, they fell fat and heavy, and ran off the greasy hair that clung to his thin cheeks, or caught in the great whiskers, riding their lengths and falling, pregnant, from their tapering ends.

The Rat King was crying.

Gilead had not known that was even possible.

The Rat King unwound the hair ribbon from around his neck, and patiently unwove the strands of hair so that the loop became one long plait from which the Rat King removed the gem at its centre. Then he dropped the gem to the floor and began to wrap the plait carefully around his wrist, as if it were the most precious thing in all the world.

‘They are dead,’ said the Rat King. ‘The skaven that gave their hair for this ribbon are dead and gone, long gone, or not so long, they live such short and hectic lives.’

The words seemed incongruous in the skaven’s maw, misplaced and formal, and his tone seemed alien, as if some human was hiding behind the Rat King’s throne, speaking for him in some grotesque joke.

‘You must help me,’ said the skaven, standing suddenly from the throne. He grabbed Gilead by the front of his shirt, looked up into the elf’s eyes, and shook him. ‘You must help me to help them.’

Gilead covered the Rat King’s hands with his own and pried them away from their hold on his clothing. Then he placed the paws together in front of the ratman and let them go. The Rat King held his hands before him, where Gilead had left them, and did not move.

‘Help you?’ asked Gilead, his words dripping scorn upon the Rat King. ‘Nothing and no one can help you, now.’

‘We must know one another, of course,’ said the Rat King, looking beseechingly up at Gilead. ‘We must know ourselves and our brothers and cousins. We must know one another.’

Then the ratman sat suddenly down on his throne. He would have fallen, had not the throne been directly behind him. It was as if he’d had a sudden shock and needed a moment to recover.

The moment came and went as Gilead looked from the Rat King to the gem that lay between its hind paws. The Rat King looked at its wrist and then covered the plaited ribbon tied their, with its other paw, and groaned. The rims of its eyes and the pads of its paws grew whiter than ever, and then it closed its eyes and sat very still.

Gilead watched as the hairs on the Rat King, every last one of them, stood on end. Its whiskers did not arch from its snout, but stood straight out like needles. It bristled all over as if gooseflesh was keeping the follicles taut, causing the hairs to stand proud, making the ratman an inch bigger in every direction. The effect was freakish, and Gilead wanted to look away, but found that he could not. Then, every single hair in the Rat King’s body blanched white from the root to the tip, before Gilead’s very eyes.

The elf could not tell what had caused the change. Whether it was just another side effect of the amulet that seemed to be ruling the Rat King’s thinking, or whether this was happening as a direct result of the ratman’s constitution.

The Rat King opened his eyes and looked once more at Gilead, with wonder and longing, rather than with the empty expressionless eyes that the elf had become used to. This new animation was disconcerting.

‘Are you quite well, sir?’ asked Gilead, the smile returning to his lips; the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on the elf.

He bent at the waist, ostensibly to be on a level with the seated Rat King, but also so that he could retrieve the gem from the floor at his feet.

‘I must know,’ said the Rat King, a vision of pure, ethereal white. ‘I must know it all. I must know who I am and whence I came. I must know all that has gone before me, and all that I can expect from the future.’

‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

‘But can you tell me everything?’ asked the Rat King.

‘There is nothing to tell,’ said Gilead.

‘If we can hear nothing but their shouting and stamping, they can’t hear us at all,’ said Fithvael, striding off down the corridor that gleamed with a faint, greenish light from the far end.

‘But how will we defend ourselves against so many?’ asked Laban.

‘We won’t need to,’ said Fithvael. ‘You’ll see, lad.’

‘If we are to find my cousin, Gilead, what makes you think he’s down among them?’ asked Laban.

‘I don’t think it,’ said Fithvael, turning and staring hard at the boy. ‘I know it, and so does he.’ Fithvael gestured beyond Laban to the Vampire Count who stood several yards distant.

‘Your cousin is among them,’ said the Count. ‘Had he died at their hands, there would be a riot of celebration.’

Fithvael gestured, waving his hand before them.

‘That is not celebration,’ he said. ‘That is blood lust.’

‘And yet you urge me to walk into it,’ said Laban, standing his ground.

‘It’s not your blood they’re baying for,’ said Fithvael.

‘You’re not nearly as important as your fine cousin,’ said the Count, coming up behind Laban, and patting him heavily on the shoulder.

Laban turned to look at where the gauntleted hand had touched him, and tried to hide the shudder of revulsion that passed through him. By the time he turned back, Fithvael was a dozen yards farther down the corridor, his back resolutely turned on his companions.

Laban felt something trickle down the back of his shirt, and raised his hand above his head. At first, he thought that water, or condensation, had gathered and was falling on him. Many of the underground tunnels were wet and muddy, and once or twice, he’d heard a drop of water fall into a puddle below, the sound echoing through the tunnels. Even standing directly below the drip, Laban could hear nothing but the roar and shriek of the skaven horde.

There was no drip. Laban pushed his fingers below his collar at the nape of his neck and felt slightly moist grains of sandy earth. Then, before him, against the greenish gleam at the end of the tunnel, he saw a fall of gritty particles. The young elf touched the arching ceiling of the tunnel and felt a fissure opening in it as the whole structure vibrated with the pulsing throb of the restless crowd.

There was no point calling out, for Fithvael would not hear him, so Laban te Tuin darted the length of the corridor and touched his teacher’s arm. By the time that Fithvael had turned, there was no need for Laban to point; they could both see the Vampire Count stepping through a moving curtain of dust and grit.

There was a booming thud, and the Count was enveloped in a great sooty cataract of dark, moist dust and particulates as the tunnel directly behind him collapsed under the pressure of the skaven vibrations. The Count stepped through the cloud, his armour dulled and marred by the shower, looking more sinister than ever.

‘Well, there’s no turning back, now,’ said Fithvael, drawing the shorter of his blades.

‘Onward!’ exclaimed the Vampire Count raising his sword in salute to his companions.

‘What is our aim?’ asked Laban.

‘The same as it ever was,’ said Fithvael, ‘to find Gilead and to ensure his safety.’

‘How do we do that?’ asked Laban.

He need not have asked. The Vampire Count had skirted the two elves, standing side-by-side in the broad entrance to the great chamber, and had begun cutting down the ratmen that stood in his path. They fell one after another, one on top of another, as the Count carved a path through the throng.

Many of the skaven were not aware of the Count cutting through them until it was too late. They were facing the mound where they expected their great King to emerge, to lead them on to greater battles against wondrous foes. They expected to attack, not to be attacked.

Fithvael and Laban had no choice but to follow in the Count’s footsteps, bringing up his rear, and defending it so that he could not be attacked from behind and have his efforts wasted.

The ratmen were almost too easy to kill. Their attacks, though frantic and unpredictable, were generally poorly aimed and haphazard; as many strikes missed as hit, and when they were on target they tended to be wide of the desired mark, so that Fithvael and Laban defended more attacks to their limbs than to their torsos or heads. The ratmen were also just as likely to attack each other as the elves, either by accident or by design, and fights soon broke out among the skaven closest to the Vampire Count. A wide ‘V’ of bodies was scattered on the floor behind him, like the wake of some great sea-going vessel.

Of the skaven who saw their attacker, many fell dead before they were touched, their blood organs giving out under the pressure of fear and panic. An increasing number of the beasts rendered insane by the power of the rhythm stamped out by their kin, and by the ululating and shrieking of voices, sat among the corpses gorging themselves. The sight sickened Laban, who took considerable pleasure in smiting the cannibals, adding more carrion to the feast.

Several long minutes passed as the Count made progress towards the great mound where the Rat King would appear to address his host. He cut and thrust, and swept through dozens of ratmen; blood ran from his sword and sprays of it clung to the filth on his sullied armour, yet he made little impact on the horde as a whole. The damage he could do, even with Fithvael and Laban at his back, was limited to an insignificant area, to one small section of the crowd.

It would take one Vampire Count and two elves days or weeks to plough through the entire skaven horde. The task was impossible, but there was no sign that the Vampire Count would stop fighting until all of the ratmen were destroyed. There was no subtlety to his craft; he was a killing machine, an automaton, merciless and unmoved by the destruction that surrounded him. He had nothing but contempt for these pitiful creatures, and would gladly kill a thousand of them, or more, for the opportunity to stand opposite the great elf in combat.

‘Your people await,’ said Gilead.

‘Me?’ asked the Rat King, turning the plaited hair ribbon slowly around his narrow wrist. ‘Perhaps they can tell me.’

Gilead handed the Rat King his staff, which had been propped up, forgotten, against the back of the throne. The King grasped it firmly in his hand, and hoisted himself up. His old body was not suited to the slow, ponderous movements of a beast deep in thought, and he seemed not to be aware of the patterns of vibration in the antechamber, which Gilead feared might crumble to dust under the waves of pressure that were bombarding it.

The elf withdrew his sword from its place in the tangle of broken and discarded tools and weapons that comprised the skaven throne, and sheathed it. The Rat King arranged his robes around his body and slowly gathered his newfound wits. He did not see that Gilead was newly armed.

Gilead watched a drizzle of grit fall from somewhere in the ceiling and land on the Rat King’s shoulders. Then he heard the whump of collapsing earth, and a light in the antechamber was extinguished as the first of the niches, high in the chamber wall, collapsed under the weight of vibrations that were thrumming through the underground structures.

The Rat King left the chamber ahead of the elf, climbing the steps and walking out onto the mound. As the skaven host saw their King emerge, the ratmen nearest the mound redoubled their efforts to stamp and wail. The wave of sound rippled through the host, and soon the noise was beyond anything that Gilead had ever encountered. He looked out over the Rat King’s head, across the tightly packed crowd, and watched as gaps began to appear between the ratmens’ heads. Hundreds of the skaven died on their feet, crumbling to the ground to be trampled underfoot. The noise and wonder, the heat of so many bodies, and fear of anything and everything, killed them by the score.

Gilead’s eye was drawn further and further into the crowd as the wave of death spread outwards from the epicentre that was the mound and the royal rat that stood on top of it.

Then, slowly, a kind of hush began to fall.

The Rat King did nothing. He did not twitch or sniff; he did not fidget or shuffle. He did not blink, and he did not speak. The blood organ in his chest was beating remarkably slowly, and he wondered that everyone around him could not hear it thump incessantly, instead of flickering like the buzzing wings of some carrion-eating insect. He did not know if he could stand the beat of his own heart. The quantity of blood reaching his brain was too much. He had too many thoughts, too many questions, and there was no one to answer them. He looked out at the snouts raised before him, but could not find a single pair of eyes that would stay open for long enough for him to focus on a single face, and talk to a single one of his followers.

The skaven were filled with such unfocused expectation, that they were lost in a miasma of frenzy. They were born for destruction, and without a leader, any leader, they would destroy indiscriminately.

They did not recognise their Rat King as he stood before him. He did not look like one of them at all. He should have been a blur of bristling fur and blinking eyes, of gyrating maw and hopping hind paws. He should have been spilling words out at them, over and over, feeding their bloodlust, rallying them to vicious acts of wanton death and destruction, even if it was only their own.

The Rat King turned to look at Gilead, who slowly dropped his head in a deliberate nod, keeping his eyes fixed on the ratman. This seemed to fill the Rat King with more confusion and fear, and he tore his eyes away from the elf’s lean, perfect face and cast them up into the vaulted ceiling. The glossy crystalline surface far above their heads sparkled and scintillated, reflecting every speck of light back into the chamber. The Rat King lost himself in those sparkles for several long moments, composing himself. He wished for the hundredth time that his temples would stop throbbing and his heart would stop beating so heavily.

When he dropped his eyes back to the crowd, the Rat King finally found something that he could focus on. At the distant reaches of the great space, he saw a pair of glowing, red lights at the head of a deep ‘V’ of fallen bodies, bathed in a bloody sheen.

The phalanx of bodyguards standing in a broad circle on the slopes of the mound were facing outwards, into the crowd. They remained tense and fidgeting, their whiskers and tails twitching, their paws jerking and flexing the weapons that they carried, ready to attack. They hissed and snickered, and blinked hard and often, as the skaven before them stopped stamping and wailing, and shuffled and sniffed and became agitated instead. Scores of the ratmen in the first dozen, tightly packed rows began to point and chatter, and elbow one another. Several tried to scale the mound, but were cut down by the strongest and meanest of the bodyguards.

Gilead unsheathed his weapons. He knew what was to come, and he knew his part in it.

The Rat King stood rigid in front of the elf, his snout pointing a little to the left in the direction of his fixed gaze. Gilead followed the Rat King’s line of sight, and then wondered why he had not seen it before. Someone was carving a path to the mound, someone was decimating the skaven horde, killing and maiming his way to… To whom? To the Rat King, in order to destroy him? Or to the elf?

Then Gilead saw the edge of a long, narrow blade as the green lantern-light slid off its surface. He knew the blade, and he knew whom it belonged. He watched for another moment, tracing the arc of the weapon, and knowing that his old friend yet wielded it. Fithvael was in the great chamber, fighting his way towards Gilead.

The moment was lost as Gilead lunged to his left, driving his sword through the torso of the skaven bodyguard pounding towards him. The ratman had turned to see what the hordes were fussing about, and he’d seen what they had seen. Gilead got between the Rat King and his bodyguard-turned enemy.

The Rat King would have to suffer a little more, a little longer, before he was put out of his misery. In the meantime, there was a battle to be joined.

There was much confusion on the mound, but, at its epicentre, the Rat King stood absolutely still, his eyes fixed on the Vampire Count. The only being in the room who didn’t need to blink.

The skaven host had been of one mind. Their leader had made them strong, and they were granted their powers by him. As individuals, the ratmen had no minds of their own, but were drawn to their King, eager for a taste of his power, instinctively knowing that there was no other course for them. They lived only to do his bidding. All the time that the Rat King rallied his host, whipping it into a frenzy with one mind and one body, nothing could defeat his course.

As the skaven looked up at their King, covered in the white hair of the weak and old and infirm, as they took in his immobility and his silence, some knew that his time was at an end. For every ratman with the instinct to attack the old and weak and feeble, their King became just another target.

At the foot of the mound, jostling and bustling turned to nipping and clawing; then to all out fighting, resulting in mass skirmishes between the ratmen. The pounding and stamping and wailing continued throughout a large portion of the great chamber further from the mound, and the whole room shook with the impact of thousands of paws and the waves of sound that battered every surface.

Gilead looked up to see that the lanterns lighting the space were jumping and jiggling as if even the great, dwarf-hewn ceiling above was heaving and flexing to the beat of the skaven paws.

Then, in the far right-hand corner of the chamber, ratmen began to surge into the backs of their kin, and a wave of bodies tightened its formation, heaving a more solid mass of ratmen towards the mound.

Between cutting and thrusting his blades through the bodies of all and any who would take him on, Gilead glanced across the chamber as the air in the room flexed with a great whump. Dust and debris was thrust into the chamber from the pressure of another tunnel collapsing. There were many entrances into and exits from the great chamber, but, one by one, they were collapsing. One by one the underground corridors, the burrows and warrens, the labyrinth of connected passageways, all were succumbing to the vibrations caused by the massed skaven. The pounding and stamping, and the shrieking and screeching, had hit the perfect frequency to resonate through the earth, shifting and vibrating stone and bricks and earth. Moving the dirt and rocks that supported the tunnels, rendering them weak and feeble, and drilling away at their capacity to keep the rooms and chambers and the corridors and passageways open.

The great, vaulted chamber was a remarkable feat of engineering, dwarf-built, hewn from rock to withstand the massive tonnage of earth and buildings above. Yet the crystals in the ceiling shifted and sparkled, scintillating with the micro-movements that were being felt even in this underground fortress.

Through dint of greater fighting prowess, luck and lunacy, any one of the ratmen might come to lead the skaven; instinctively many of them knew it.

There was more than one battle to be fought. Any being who was not a skaven must be a foe, so that Gilead, Fithvael, Laban and the Vampire Count were all under attack as chaos spread throughout the chamber. The skaven no longer had one single purpose, to follow their King, but each had his own purpose, to survive against all-comers. Any ratman with the instinct for ambition or the lust for power must find a foe in every other ratman. Then there was the Rat King. The horde was divided. Many knew only one King and did not question his supremacy; they would fight and die for their leader. The rest thought nothing of renouncing their King for being old and still and alien to them. Skaven was set against skaven.

The mood changed in the chamber.

Gilead fought on the mound, taking on any and all. He sliced through arteries in necks and groins, cut weapon-wielding paws from limbs, plunged his blades into torsos and cut down the bodyguard one at a time, one after another, and the swarming masses that began to rush the mound in twos and threes. Every stroke met its target and no energy was wasted in dispatching the skaven beasts. As the bodies piled up, the elf wove a path across the mound, keeping the Rat King in the corner of his vision, conscious, even in the heaving throng of bodies that one body was singularly still.

Gilead knew not why he was keeping the skaven leader alive, other than to have the pleasure of dispatching the evil ratman when the time came. In the meantime, every ratman that tried to get close to his King, to assassinate his erstwhile leader, was met with the controlled white-heat of Gilead’s intent.

Halfway across the chamber, and making faster progress as the skaven turned on each other, the Vampire Count continued to plunge onward. He was no longer simply cutting down bodies, for some of the ratmen, no longer in thrall to their King, were turning to fight back. The Count was in no danger.

He stood tall and proud in his filthy armour. The damp earth and grit that had marked his armour, covering it in a layer of dust, was caught in every joint and seam of the burnished metal; grinding and marking the armour with a myriad of tiny scratches that would take a week of careful rubbing, and a tub of good lapping powder, to polish out.

Every time the Vampire Count raised his blade to the foe, it came back bloodied. Every time skaven blood gouted from the hundreds of wounds he inflicted, it arced through the air, coming to rest in splashes and droplets all over the armour, smearing the dirt that was already there. He was a gruesome sight to behold. He strode on, hacking and driving through the crowd, one after another of the skaven horde falling to his sword, many before they had a chance to defend themselves.

One at a time, or even in skirmishing groups, there was no hope of the skaven doing the Vampire Count any lasting damage. He took a jolt to a greave from the studded end of a spear haft, and a dink to a rerebrace from a poorly judged swing of a mace, but none of the ratmen came close enough to do any real or lasting damage. If he’d had living flesh beneath the armour, he would have hardly suffered a bruise, and certainly no broken bones.

Other hearts and blood organs beat at their own rates: for the skaven, fast enough to kill the creatures that owned them, for the elves, in the calm, measured manner that allowed them to fight on through the long minutes, balancing the rhythms of their bodies with the swing, thrust and slice of their bladed weapons. The Vampire Count had no heart to rely on, and yet, he too fought to some internal beat, some rhythm of his own.

‘How long must we do battle?’ asked Laban, swinging wildly, and taking down two more skaven.

‘For as long as it takes,’ said Fithvael, inhaling as he withdrew his sword from the side of the skaven that was convulsing on its short fall to the floor of the chamber.

‘There are so many of them,’ said Laban, ‘and they are so easy to kill.’

‘Pathos,’ said Fithvael, ‘can occur on a battlefield. Feel it when we are done with this. Do not succumb to it here, nor now.’

‘They are so wretched,’ said Laban as the figure he was lunging at fell hard on its back, clutching its chest; it avoided being skewered, only in the act of dying. Dying on the edge of an elf blade would have been an honourable end, if the skaven had cared anything for honour.

‘And he frightens me,’ said the young elf, breathing as he spoke, not entirely effortlessly, for he had a blade in each hand, and, though his lower body was moving only a small pace at a time towards the mound, his shoulders, back and arms had built up a fast-paced rhythm. The skaven were coming to him, but there attacks were so ineffectual that they might as well have been throwing themselves on the elfs’ blades.

‘Gilead?’ asked Fithvael, driving his short blade into the skaven scrabbling at his boots, trying to pull himself upright without thought to how he would survive standing before a well-armed elf without a weapon in his paw.

‘The Count,’ said Laban, thrusting his sword across the old elf, and turning his wrist, disarming the skaven on the old elf’s blind side.

‘You should be afraid of him,’ said Fithvael, stepping back to give the young elf room to complete his manoeuvre.

‘What will happen?’ asked Laban, side-stepping away from Fithvael and making a quarter turn to stop three more skaven in their attack, disabling the first before killing the second with a slash to the jugular and the third by disembowelling, the blade flashing across the rounded, grey-furred belly of the old ratman.

‘We finish this, and then we’ll see,’ said Fithvael, quickly taking two steps backwards as the space between him and the Count opened up. ‘The Count is cutting a swathe; keep up, lad.’

Laban noted the glimmer of a mocking smile cross Fithvael’s lips, and realised that the old man was enjoying himself.

The Count glanced unblinking, up at the mound, and locked eyes for a moment with the Rat King. He knew instinctively what the creature was, but felt nothing more than idle loathing for it. The skaven could not, did not, defend themselves against his sword and blade, and he did not need a shield at all. They fell away to left and right, yet more climbed over their kin to fall at the Count’s hand. There was an array of dozens, scores, hundreds of dead behind him in a great wake, but bodies were falling harder and faster, so that they were beginning to fall one on top of another until they were two, three or four deep in places. The Vampire Count was literally up to his waist in bloody bodies.

The Vampire Count did not relish the exercise of slaughter, nor did he care who he killed, or how, or how many. He had but one objective, to face the warrior elf, to kill him or die at his hand. There was almost nothing left of the great knight that he had once been, but there was just enough to drive him onward. His one ambition to die, his one hope to meet his match, to meet Gilead and battle to the death.

The mound was being assaulted from all sides, but the ground was shifting, and part of the dais fell away, taking a score of skaven with it. A fissure opened in the ground, wide enough for clumsy, skittering ratmen to fall foul of its edge and find themselves swallowed into the earth beneath.

Gilead felt the movement in the earth and took his fight to the slope furthest from the Rat King’s antechamber. He remembered the silty earth trickling from the ceiling and saw, in his mind’s eye, the niche in the wall collapsing under the pressure of the vibrations. There was no stamping now, no wall of sound, but the worst of the damage was already done and Gilead knew how fragile the underground structures had become.

As he dropped his shoulder and brought his sword-hand up from his knee, through flesh and air and out above his head, raking through a ratman diagonally from hip to shoulder, Gilead caught the flash of light bouncing off his blade and up into the vaulted ceiling above. The crystal forms scintillated back at him, and the elf was reminded of the gem that the Rat King had worn as an amulet, from which he had cast the magic that had altered the structure of the underground chamber. He remembered the niches and the things they contained, and he knew all and everything that the Rat King had done to preserve his life-force indefinitely.

Gilead planted his feet squarely as he turned his body, swinging his sword at waist-height, carving the blade through the spines of two more ratmen. So much had been lost to the Rat King’s ambition, ambition that Gilead knew could never be realised. The Rat King was not capable of sustaining a long life with all that entailed. It was not a matter of a body outliving its usefulness, it was a matter of the mind. The Rat King had not the mental capacity to learn or to understand. The creature could not stand the beat of its own heart, or the blood-flow to its brain, an organ it had never used for anything more complex than a reaction, an instinct.

Gilead could never forgive such a monster. He could not forgive him for ravaging human history, for unravelling magical nature, for sullying ancient races and their achievements; but most of all, he could not forgive him for crumbling under the weight of his stolen longevity. Time had been a curse to Gilead for much of his long life, but whether it felt like a curse or not, it was always a responsibility, a responsibility that those who understood it took seriously.

Gilead turned and wove in a dance around the Rat King, making smaller and smaller circles around the great bulk of the stationary figure, clad in its coat of white hair, staring, catatonic into the crowd.

At every completion of the circle, Gilead cast his gaze once more out over the heads of the remaining skaven, looking for Fithvael, looking for the Count. With every turn of the circle the elf locked eyes with the Vampire Count, for the merest moment. Gilead knew that the Count understood. He understood a term of years, the sentence of a long life spent alone with thoughts raked up and processed over a millennium or even longer. There was sorrow in his heart for the undead monster, sorrow and sympathy.

As Gilead let his eyes return to the battle, to the next skaven sacrifice and the next, and the one after that, the mound shook once more and the earth began to slip from its sides, reducing its height dramatically. Then came another great crash, not the sound of falling earth but the rumble of masonry dislodged, an avalanche of dressed stone and old brick that burst into the chamber from Gilead’s right, cutting off another exit, filling the chamber with more of everything, more dust, more sound, more debris, and more dead bodies.

Fewer than one in three of the skaven still lived. They were the weakest and the most cowardly. They had kept to the edges of the crowd, their eyes and ears closed as much as possible. They had moved when the crowds moved them, but ducked under arms and crawled between legs so as not to come face to face with any adversary, even their own kind.

They were running now, searching out the few remaining exits, trying not to encounter each other at close quarters, running and squealing. They emerged from under bodies where they had twitched and sniffled, hoping beyond hope not to be noticed. They were desperate now and climbed on each other’s backs to find routes out of the chamber. Another tunnel collapsed, and another; the vaulted ceiling seemed to shimmy and then spread, lowering the surface. Fault lines began to appear in the sparkling black surface. The air shifted in the chamber once more as the steps to the antechamber collapsed, sucking air and dirt and bodies into a hole in the ground that was several yards across. The turbulence made the lanterns swing, then blew them out in a stinking miasma of some combination of gases that was barely breathable.

Gilead tore a rag from his sleeve and wrapped it around the lower part of his face.

Somehow, the elf knew not how, the Rat King was still standing. His kin had given up attacking him. There was nothing left to fight for if they were going to have to dig themselves out, one at a time, over hours or days, simply to survive.

Fithvael and Laban ran through the last of the skaven, the few remaining who, finally understanding their plight, turned to the Fell Ones for their salvation. Fithvael tried not to pity them as he ran them through, but Laban could not countenance killing the ragged, sorry creatures at all, and it was Fithvael and the Vampire Count who finished the last of them, humanely with single killing strokes.

The Vampire Count shifted slightly in his armour and began to stride the last few yards to where the mound had once stood, with Gilead upon it.

‘What’s he doing?’ asked Laban.

‘He plans to challenge Gilead, of course,’ said Fithvael, matter-of-fact.

Laban shrugged, speechless.

‘After all we have been through?’ he asked. ‘After all the killing?’

‘The death of the many means nothing to a warrior such as our beleaguered knight,’ said Fithvael. ‘The death of the one is all that will satisfy him.’

‘He must die,’ said Laban, slowly. ‘He must die, and Gilead must kill him.’

Fithvael looked up, as if at the heavens, but the black firmament with almost no light in it felt oppressively close to their heads, despite what little light there was still sparking off the diamond crystals.

‘We shall all die,’ he said, ‘if we don’t get out of here.’

Gilead stepped between the Rat King and the Vampire Count. He stepped close to the ratman, so close that the skaven could do nothing but blink long and hard, and then look into the elf’s eyes.

‘You have come,’ said the skaven.

‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

‘I cannot live forever,’ said the skaven.

‘No,’ said Gilead.

Gilead drew his sword and looked hard along the length of the blade. It was in imperfect condition, having been well-used over the last few hours, and for the many hours before that, it had been left to rot, thrust into the haphazard web of weapons that made up the skaven throne. This king would not sit on that throne again.

The Rat King watched as Gilead pulled his blade through a strip of cloth and looked at it once more. It looked clean to the Rat King, he wondered at its cleanliness. He wondered how anything might be kept clean. He wondered how he might keep himself clean. Then he saw the blade coming towards him. He had nothing but time. He had the time to step away from the blade as it sliced through the air towards him, but he did not use the time to take a step. He used the time to wonder why he had wanted to live forever. He used the time that Gilead took to arc his blade through the air, horizontally, on its path towards the Rat King’s throat… towards his own, white-furred throat… He used the time to wonder that he knew nothing, and that it was right that he should never know anything.

The blade of Gilead’s sword connected with the fur of the Rat King’s neck a mere inch or two below his snout, for he had no chin to speak of. The blade cut through the fur and shards of the stuff, less than half an inch long fell to the floor, drifting through the air, heavier than feathers, but not so heavy as to fall quite vertically. Then the blade touched flesh and cleaved a path through skin, parting the layers of the dermis, almost bloodlessly. Still the Rat King did not flinch. He knew that the skin of his neck was being parted by the blade, not because he felt it, because he felt nothing, but only because he knew it must be so.

The first and last thing that the Rat King felt was the blade cutting the artery in his neck. He felt the cold of the elf-folded steel, and the heat of his skaven blood. He thought that his blood smelled somehow unclean, but he did not know why.

The Vampire Count stopped two or three yards from Gilead, who had his back turned to him. The Count could see the Rat King’s eyes, but they were no longer staring at him. He had never been the Rat King’s foe, not as the Fell One had been. He would not interfere. He knew the outcome of this encounter. He knew that this was an execution, and, as much as he could relish anything, the Vampire Count relished the thought that the elf was capable of executing the rat-monster; for if he could execute one beast, he could surely execute another.

The Vampire Count waited for the Rat King’s head and body to fall. They fell separately, the head to his left, bouncing and rolling several yards from his foot. The body fell hard and suddenly to the right. It did not bounce or roll, but landed with a thud, throwing up a low cloud of dust.

Gilead nodded to Fithvael and cocked a questioning head at Laban. Then he looked directly at the Vampire Count, and sheathed his sword.

‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Fithvael and Laban looked at each other and then back at Gilead, who had crouched and placed his hand flat on the floor. He stayed there for a moment or two and then darted a look towards the collapsed antechamber. He stood and pointed.

‘We must leave,’ he said. ‘This way.’

The Talon of Khorne

Frank Cavallo

Fog drifted through the fjord, the sickly mist swallowing the Norscan shore in the first rays of dawn and shrouding the jetties and the little boats moored among the rocky inlets. Haze crept up over craggy scrublands, spreading ghostly fingers through the dying forest of bare pines that hugged the coastline.

A scattering of hardscrabble dwellings clung to the rough terrain, overlooking the harbour. Dozens of stone huts topped with weak thatch huddled in the lee of the hillside, dominated by a long-house of roughly-hewn granite blocks and moss-stained oak.

The village of Volfskul roused from its slumber in slow, halting steps. Grey-bearded fishermen emerged first; half-starved old men who’d weathered the night upon the wind-scoured rocks along the coast, guarding their nearly-empty hardfiskur racks from prowling, mangy wolf packs or the scavenging of scrawny sea-birds.

Maidens in tattered, flea-infested shrouds doused the thin torches while older women beat the soot from mammoth-hide blankets, stained with dark patches by generations of household midwifery. Looking out from their doorways, watching the unforgiving hills vanish under the grey, they were the first to notice when the Norscan morning turned foul.

It began with the wind.

A gust rippled through the fog, cascading down from the icy peaks that towered above the village. But it was not a frozen gale. The air smouldered, crackling with cinders.

Another fitful blast followed, and then a third, each howling more loudly than the last.

The villagers abandoned their chores at the first sign of trouble, whispering prayers to the dark gods. But they had little chance to steel themselves against the rising tide.

The morning mist churned, congealing into filthy, dark smog. Brimstone fumes thickened into a rank stench that choked every hint of nature from the air. Lightning tore across the suddenly-roiling sky in blood-red streaks, the crimson flashes casting eerie shadows upon the rocks; shades that seemed to slink and slither of their own accord.

Thunder shook the heavens above and the ground underfoot. It soon gave way to a heavier rumble, a quaking of the earth: the clatter of iron on stone, the din of hooves stomping forwards like a living storm.

Tugging on his mother’s mammoth-hide cloak, a young boy cried out in fear, his innocent voice signalling the arrival of their doom. All eyes followed the boy’s call, turning to the hill pass that wound down from the crags of Broken-Axe Peak, to see a phalanx of faceless, armoured horsemen galloping out from the swirling haze.

At its head there rode a giant among giants, the Chaos warrior that legend knew as Ruaddon. Man and steed alike thundered forth in a nightmarish cacophony that announced him as no herald could ever have.

Like his men, mounted on thick-necked warhorses adorned in iron-studded armour, he betrayed little hint of mortal weakness. His pauldrons and gauntlets boasted wicked rows of iron spikes, and brass and gold engravings were splashed across his hell-forged cuirass with ruinous scrawls, some obscured by the dents and slashes of old battles. A helm crowned with twisted daemon horns and a ghostly circlet of bleached human skulls announced his profane intent.

Behind him the lances and raised battleaxes of his men mixed with wooden pikes bearing tusk-framed battle flags, towering above them in a moving forest of ivory and sharpened steel.

Ruaddon slowed his pace as the black cadre fell into a double column, two-score strong; a malevolent parade that drew the attention of everyone in the village.

Lifting his crimson visor to reveal a face twisted with scars and permanent stitches, Ruaddon looked out upon the townsfolk, who now assembled as if in silent welcome… or protest. Though a bane to any land upon whose soil they trod, the black riders did not provoke so much as a flinch from the steely-eyed villagers of Volfskul. The Norscans held their ground even as more dark warriors streamed down from the hill pass to fill the centre of the village, their mounts growling and belching vile odours as they followed Ruaddon’s lead.

They did not flee, or seek cover. Instead they stood outside the doorways of every humble structure. Some clenched bone totems to their hearts. Others scrawled runes in charcoal and blood upon their pale flesh. A scattering of men, some limping or hobbling on gnarled canes, intermingled with them.

Aside from those few weakened elders, there was not a man between fifteen and fifty summers among them.

Frost-blue eyes met Ruaddon’s gaze at every turn, looking back at him with a fearless resolve. Even the children returned his soulless stare, silent and defiant. For a long moment everything fell still.

Once he had scanned the place, Ruaddon raised his arm – as if in response, a final gust of hot, volcanic wind broke the momentary respite. It came with a deeper howling, a predator’s roar.

It was only as the feral echo died away that a final rider emerged out of the reeking black fog. The other horsemen moved aside as he rode forth, clearing a path for their master: the Chaos lord Vhorgath, Bane of the North.

Seated high upon a snarling black battle-stallion, he wore armour forged in the most ghastly baroque fashion – daemonic skulls glowered from his every joint, and bronze barbs sparkled along the edge of his steel plate. Like Ruaddon, his face was bared to the cold Norscan dawn, but his was a cadaverous complexion of bloodless skin, as white as whalebone. He grew neither hair nor whiskers and his deep-set eyes burned violet under a heavy brow. The flesh of his throat seemed fused to the steel of his gorget; man and armour merged into one.

He declared himself in a peculiar baritone, every word echoing as though chanted by the whispers of a phantom chorus.

‘I am Vhorgath.’

When the mere sound of his name produced no reply, no reaction at all from the townsfolk, he studied them more closely, and like his lieutenant he soon noted the absence of any healthy men.

‘We have come under the banners of the dark gods, not to bring sword and flame to this place, but glory,’ he continued. ‘A new army is forming, a horde that will spread the shadow of the daemon-lords upon the world once more. The name of your tribe has long been a scourge to the weaklings of the southlands. For centuries the deeds of the sons of Ironpelt have been sung by the light of bonfires in halls across the north.

‘But among you I see no warriors, no men to wield the axes and hammers of Chaos that so many legends recall. For months we have scoured these forsaken lands, where snow falls even in summer, yet no sign of such greatness has revealed itself to us.’

Again, he was met with stony silence. Nothing but the relentless stares of a hundred gaunt women and their emaciated young, steady and seemingly without hint of fear.

He motioned to Ruaddon, who had taken up his usual place beside the great warlord.

‘Choose one,’ he said.

The hulking warrior grinned to himself, and wasted no time. Ruaddon scanned the gathered masses and settled upon the nearest thing to an able-bodied man he could find – an aged but barrel-chested individual whose beard still clung to reddish strands among the grey. Spurring his steed onwards, Ruaddon sidled up to the man, reached down and clamped his fist around his throat.

Again he faced no resistance, as he lifted the man and brought him before Vhorgath.

The Chaos lord smiled cruelly as he looked over the old man. Though his face swelled and flushed as Ruaddon held him, he stared back with no less tenacity. Vhorgath addressed him directly, his voice even more threatening in a whisper than in a shout.

‘Your lands are empty, Norscan – all of the other settlements have been abandoned. Tell me where your legendary Ironpelt warriors are. Now.’

The old man struggled to breathe, summoning every ounce of strength he could muster before responding.

‘If it is warriors you seek then there is… nothing for you here,’ he choked. ‘All of our men have… taken to the long-ships to raid the… southern kingdoms.’

‘So it appears,’ Vhorgath replied. ‘What I want to know is… why?’

‘Why?’ the man wheezed.

‘I’m no fool. This is not the raiding season. Tribes across Norsca are already preparing for the winter. The long-ships are back in port, the menfolk fill their beds beside their wives. But not in your lands.’

The man nodded, as best he could with Ruaddon’s fist clenched around his throat.

‘The… plague…’ he managed, just as the light faded from his eyes.

Vhorgath nodded to Ruaddon, who let go of the unconscious old man. His limp body fell into the dirt, and a woman scrambled to tend to him, kneeling beside his head.

She looked up to the towering figures of Vhorgath and his lieutenant, her face twisted with anger.

‘He spoke the truth,’ she said. ‘It came with the last spring thaw. A fever that spread through our entire tribe in one cycle of the whitemoon. All of our lands suffered. Offerings to Neiglen did nothing to stop it.’

Vhorgath narrowed his eyes. ‘But something must have, unless I converse here with a village of ghosts,’ he growled.

‘As the summer faded a great sacrifice was made, a terrible rite that gave the Plague-Lord the best of our tribe, maidens and warriors alike. Only then did the fever leave us. Now we are few. Our herds are nearly gone, our people are weak. Our men did no raiding all summer, and it was only in these last few days, when they should have been returning to us, that those who remain sailed away. Our survival depends on what they can bring back to us.’

‘So the great tribe of Ironpelt dies with the whimper of pox and not the clamour of battle,’ said Ruaddon, some of the nearby warriors laughing mockingly. ‘A pity.’

‘We have nothing for you,’ she wailed, still cradling the old man in her lap. ‘Fight your war without us.’

Vhorgath stared down at her, saying nothing.

‘Do you fail to understand me, or do you still disbelieve what your own cursed eyes see?’ she demanded.

The Chaos lord looked away as if in frustration, or merely boredom. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘I believe every word.’

‘Then begone. Take your foul beasts and go back the way you came. Leave these lands forever,’ she said.

Vhorgath turned back, his eyes flashing like a hawk.

‘That sounds like a command,’ he said. ‘Perhaps my senses do fail me, so long have we been in this forsaken land.’

He turned to his second. ‘Ruaddon, did it not sound to you as though this wench commanded me?’

The armoured giant looked to his master. He’d seen that gaze before. It always heralded violence, and pain. ‘That it did, my lord,’ he said.

‘How amusing.’

Vhorgath turned away from the rebellious woman, addressing all the gathered folk of Volfskul. ‘Since you do not possess the resource we seek, you are worthless to me. And so we will indeed leave you.’

The villagers looked to one another, uncertainly. Vhorgath looked once more to Ruaddon.

‘Knights, scour the village,’ he said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘Take whatever you wish, whatever you can find. Tear down every wall if you must but take anything of value left in this pathetic place. We will leave them whatever remains.’

Vhorgath sneered at the woman, turning away as he left Ruaddon to carry out his orders. He looked out towards the open seas for a moment, before spurring his mount.

A cry of defiance halted him.

It came from behind, the angry yelp of a woman. Another followed, and another. As Vhorgath turned, Ruaddon saw an arrow whistle past his head, so close that the feather fletching cut across his master’s bare cheek.

In an instant the once-passive Norscans had sprung into action. Leaping from every direction, they pounced like a wolf pack. Armed with whatever they could grab – wood-axes, pitchforks and scythes – screeching women and grim-faced old men leapt upon the black riders from all sides. Even maidens and young boys came at them, hurling rocks and striking at the horses’ legs.

‘So, the spirit of Ironpelt is not quite dead after all,’ Ruaddon shouted. ‘Though it soon will be!’

Scores of villagers came at the Chaos warriors, jumping from behind shuttered doors, and leaping out from bales of damp straw. The townsfolk outnumbered them, but Vhorgath rose up in his saddle at the scent of blood on the wind.

‘Feast upon these barbarians, brothers! Bring your swords to bear! Let them quench their thirst with weak Norscan blood!’

The men did not need to be told. The black warriors responded with vigour, setting about them with blade and burning torch.

Ruaddon managed to fall in next to his master as the Norscans raged in a frenzy of blades and screams. Safe for the moment behind the iron wall of his warriors’ defensive circle, he reared on his mount to survey the scene.

The Norscans surged, women and children tearing and slashing at the Chaos warriors with the kind of feral ardor known only among the half-savage tribes of the North. The peasants tore at horses and shields, clawing with their bare hands as the village around them erupted in flames.

Ruaddon howled as he rode out into the heart of the swarm, slashing with his great two-handed sword. Blood and entrails and broken limbs rained down as villagers fell at his every stroke. He bounded through the thick of the fray, killing anew with each step.

Still the crowd swarmed about them, defiant.

Old men, drooling and frothing like rabid dogs, seized his saddle and stirrups, their grip as tenacious as the cold stare in their eyes. He saw one of his comrades pulled from his horse, dragged beneath the press of bodies, sucked into a living riptide. To Ruaddon’s horror, the Norscans tore the screaming warrior apart.

Ruaddon rallied his men. Calling them into formation around him, he led the black riders forth in a merciless counter-attack. Fanning out across the entire expanse of Volfskul, they stomped in lumbering, monstrous strides atop their armoured beasts, hoping to split the mob and drive them across the blood-soaked tundra like rats before a flood. Even so, the Norscans held their ground for as long as they were able to stand, fighting back with boundless, wild aggression.

But the rampaging Chaos warriors cut them down. Severed heads fell among mangled corpses. Bones shattered. Sharpened steel carved flesh in vicious strokes, one after another. Wails of agony eclipsed the whirl of axes. Those few souls not fortunate enough to die by the blade were thrown down into the muck, the life crushed from their bodies by iron-shod hooves as the behemoth warhorses trampled over fields of ruin.

Volfskul was a village no more. It was a field of butchery. More than an hour after the last war-cry had been silenced, the armoured warriors moved between smouldering ruins and crumbling huts slowly, mindful of any survivors lurking in the debris with murder on their minds.

Ruaddon still sat atop his steed, though others were dismounted and tending to the grisly task Vhorgath had set them. He always ordered, at the close of battle, the sign for which he was known – and loathed – all across the frozen northern realms.

As they had done a hundred times before, the warriors used their blades to sharpen the ends of charred timbers, this time the remains of the village long-house. Having readied the pikes, they rammed them through decapitated corpses, throat first. Then they lifted the gruesome poles, jammed the severed heads atop them and drove the opposite ends into the ground, elevating a horrific parody of the human form: beaten, broken cadavers suspended upside-down, their displaced heads crowning their final disgrace.

They would remain there, to rot and feed the scavenger birds until their bones fell away. Until then, any who came upon the savagery would see the dreadful signature of Vhorgath, etched into the landscape in blood and ravaged flesh.

Stalking the far side of the ruins for yet more bodies for his men to defile, Ruaddon caught a glimmer of movement beneath a pile of rubble. The jumble of crumbled stone and burnt wood was heaped beside a half-standing wall, deep enough to hide a person…

As he approached, a hand pushed through the wreckage. A figure followed – cloaked and slight of build, it crawled from the ruins as though hatching from an egg.

‘Hold, Norscan rat!’ Ruaddon called out.

The command went unheeded. Instead the small figure jumped from the rubble and darted across a smoke-filtered alley.

Giving chase, Ruaddon cornered the refugee at the edge of what had once been the main square. The place lay in ruin just as the remainder of the village, the long-house collapsed into a smoking mess of beams and rubble, flanked by a blood-stained scree slope piled up with the bodies that had not yet been impaled.

Bearing down, Ruaddon called out again. ‘Hold!’

The other riders filed in behind him. With his prey trapped in the corner between a sheer face of stone and a pair of broken pillars, Ruaddon reined his mount back. He moved closer, his sword pointed at the lone survivor.

The figure was cornered, but not subdued. Trying to escape through the space between the two columns, its hood fell away, and to Ruaddon’s surprise, he found himself facing a young woman. Though she was backed against the crumbling wall, her eyes seethed with a familiar, defiant fury.

The Chaos warrior approached her, now flanked by two riders with their axes still dripping red. An eerie quiet had descended.

‘Archers, draw.’

‘Ruaddon! Halt your bowmen!’ Vhorgath shouted from across the desolation.

The lieutenant turned to see his master approaching. ‘My lord, she is the last of them. Should we not finish what we have begun?’ he replied.

Vhorgath steered his stallion over and dismounted. He stepped between the hulking warrior and the cowering village girl. Ruaddon supposed he’d seen something that interested him.

‘Not yet,’ Vhorgath said, pointing to the girl. ‘Look at her. She shows no marks of battle. No blood, no sign of wounds endured or inflicted. This one alone among all of her fellow villagers did not join in the fight against us.’

‘Then she is either the smartest of her tribe, or the most cowardly,’ Ruaddon sneered.

Vhorgath lifted his sword, using the point of it to probe at the girl, drawing the flat of his massive steel blade along the length of her arm and then pointing it only inches away from her face. She did not flinch.

‘It appears she is no coward,’ he whispered.

She was ragged and shivering. Her lank blonde hair fell all around the soft features of her face. She was no more than a teenager, but despite Vhorgath’s malevolent appearance, the waif did not quail at the sight of him.

‘Who are you, girl?’ Vhorgath asked.

‘Freya is my name, daughter of the Ironpelt skald Ragnar,’ she said.

‘The child of a poet? Why don’t you fear me, little one?’

She stared back at the sinister knight with a gaze as cold as his own.

‘I fear no man, for my eyes have looked upon the greatest warrior of the Ironpelt tribe. The most fearsome killer ever to sail the seas of the north,’ she said.

‘Have they now?’ he said. ‘We have ridden across all of the Ironpelt lands, and found not a single man worthy of bearing a sword. Who is this warrior you speak of?’

Freya stared back with a kind of daring pride.

‘The Talon of Khorne himself: Scyla Anfingrimm.’

The words brought a pause to Vhorgath and his warriors; a hush of awe among men who had seen the fires of hell itself. For a long moment, no one made a sound. Ruaddon looked to his master, then back at Freya.

‘Scyla Anfingrimm?’ he finally said, breaking the brief silence. ‘The ruthless murderer of Black Gulch? The renowned dwarf-slayer?’

‘The very same. We know that his name is a curse across the southling lands,’ Freya replied.

‘Tell us, little girl, where have you seen this most savage of all Norscans?’ Vhorgath asked.

‘He dwells up in the mountains, on the far side of Broken-Axe Peak, not more than a single day’s journey from here. This village was once his own.’

Ruaddon scoffed, despite the uneasy silence that had fallen over his comrades, but Vhorgath shot him an angry glare.

‘You mock the name of Scyla?’ he said. ‘If any man has laid more skulls at the foot of the Blood God’s throne, I have not heard the tale.’

Ruaddon’s incredulity melted, drifting towards annoyance. ‘Scyla Anfingrimm has not been seen since the slaughter of the gorgers at Undermountain, many years ago,’ he answered. ‘No one knows for certain what became of him.’

‘That was some time ago, this much is true,’ Vhorgath muttered.

‘He could be a broken old man by now, if he still draws breath at all,’ Ruaddon said. ‘And what reason do we have to believe her? Poets are nothing more than liars with silver tongues.’

Vhorgath looked back at Freya.

‘My lieutenant is right, little one. Why should we believe you? Why shouldn’t I just kill you and mount you on a pike for the ravens like the rest of your people?’

‘You don’t have to believe my words alone. I can take you to him,’ she replied. ‘I promise you, the favour of the Blood God has made him more fearsome now than he has ever been.’

‘Intriguing,’ Vhorgath said. ‘Finally, a prize worthy of our time spent in this barren land.’

Ruaddon prickled at his side. ‘You’re taking this girl at her word?’ he protested.

‘She speaks the truth in at least one regard,’ said Vhorgath. ‘Scyla Anfingrimm is said to have been a raider without equal among the Norscans, as merciless and cruel as he was powerful. Though I do not know why he no longer raises his axe with the rest of his tribe, I can think of no better addition to our horde.’

‘And if she’s lying?’

Vhorgath considered this, and placed a hand upon Ruaddon’s skull-faced pauldron. He directed his answer to Freya.

‘If you’re lying, little girl, I’ll give you to Ruaddon. Can you guess what he likes to do to little girls who lie?’

She shook her head.

‘You won’t like it.’ Ruaddon grinned. ‘Only after you’ve begged for death, pleading for hours, will I consider cutting your throat.’

Freya stared back at Ruaddon with an insolent glare. Then she turned her icy-blue eyes to Vhorgath, and pointed to the rocky mountain path.

‘The trail begins there,’ she said.

Vhorgath, Ruaddon and three of their chosen riders formed the delegation which would ride out to meet with Scyla, and in short order Freya led them away from the coastal plains, up to the higher ground beyond the ruins of Volfskul. The rest of the Chaos warriors remained behind to finish the grisly monument to their master’s brutality.

The cold sun climbed in the sky as she ushered them into the skeletal remains of the pine forests. The trees were mostly bare, scattered clumps of brown needles clinging to desiccated branches and winter-ravaged trunks. As promised, the winding trail stretched through the dead woods, bristling on every side with sharp, dry brambles.

After more than an hour the trees began to thin out as the trail took them to an even higher elevation. Rocky, open ground soon prevailed, dotted with patches of yellow grass and thorny brush. Above them they could see the serried peaks of Broken Axe flirting with the clouds, tiers of frozen crags and wind-scourged hills that seemed to vanish in the mist.

Ruaddon held Freya in front of him in his iron saddle, while Vhorgath rode in silence behind them. After some time, as the cold winds eased, the Chaos lord rode up beside them.

‘We have followed your directions for hours now,’ he said. ‘How much further is it to Scyla’s haven?’

‘Still a while,’ she replied.

Ruaddon groaned. He knew that his master grew impatient, but had not yet been brought to ire.

‘There are many tales of Scyla’s deeds, sagas my father told to me as soon as I was old enough to understand them,’ she offered. ‘As our journey is long, might you care to hear one?’

Ruaddon clamped a hand on her shoulder, sending a shudder through her slender frame.

‘Hold your tongue, girl,’ he said. Then he lowered his voice and spoke directly into her ear. ‘Lest I tear it from your mouth.’

Vhorgath laughed. ‘Ruaddon likes people to fear him. It’s one of his better qualities, in fact. And while I admit I enjoy the smell of fear as much as he does, I think in this moment anything you can tell us of Scyla Anfingrimm is worth more than the thrill of watching you beg Ruaddon for mercy.’

Freya looked back at him with an uncertain face. Vhorgath answered her with a call to his men.

‘Pin back your ears, you motherless wretches,’ he said, ‘and hear of the triumphs of Scyla.’

Freya gathered her grimy robes about her, breathing deep as she readied herself to spin the tale. As ordered, the dark riders listened.

‘Back many years, in the waning days of the seventh summer since the Graeling Jarl Grundval Fang-Scar slew his uncle, the usurper Bjarn Baerrok,’ she began, ‘a curse fell upon the folk of the Bay of Blades, and they soon knew a suffering greater than the bane of war or pestil–’

‘Oh, do get to the point, girl,’ Ruaddon bawled, his patience wearing thin. ‘I already strain to hear you over the whistling of this damnable wind.’

Freya continued, ignoring him. ‘For a month, no long-ships put into port. The Graeling raiders, ever the scourge of Bretonnia, did not return with the frost-winds of winter, as they had for as many generations as the tribe had dwelt beneath Stoneclaw Mountain. No ships laden with gold sailed in from the cool mists; no dragon-boats carrying slaves in fetters, barrels of mead and bushels of barley to sustain them through the coming storms.

‘As fear began to spread like a plague, Grundval sent forth three of his own boats. None returned. So again he dispatched his ships – a half-dozen this time, with his own son Kjarval in command of the greatest of the fleet. But they too vanished, sending back no word even after weeks at sea.’

‘What took them?’ Ruaddon demanded, keen to know the point of the story.

‘It was only as the first blizzards swept over the coast that any sign appeared,’ she replied. ‘A single Graeling sea-wolf warrior washed ashore in the storm, clinging to a raft of shattered hull-timbers.

‘Shivering and half-drained from a dozen wounds, he clung to life only long enough to recall the fate of his brothers. They had been ravaged by a beast from the depths, he claimed, or maybe ten beasts, for the tentacles and the claws and the thunderous roars were such that the men of the sea had never seen so fierce a monster. It was said that his eyes widened in a blank, haunted stare as he wheezed his last few breaths, tortured in his final moments by some nightmare memory.

‘Now the Graelings knew why their coffers were empty, why their men had not returned: a leviathan menaced the tempest-addled waters of the bay, devouring anything that dared venture across the green waves.’

‘A curse from the gods?’ Vhorgath said. Ruaddon was perturbed by the concern in his voice.

‘They thought so,’ Freya said. ‘Such a horror was worse than any pox the Plague-Lord might send, and no pleas to any of the dark gods could dispel it. The people begged them to withdraw their curse, to send an invading army in its place, so that even the women of Three-Spear Fjord might meet the anger of the shadows in open battle.

‘But it was not to be. With all his warriors gone, and the gods refusing to hear his calls, Grundval begged the shaman Ulfthras to employ any rite, even the vilest and most corrupt of the old invocations. Thus did the shaman venture out into the tundra, his white beard soaked in the blood of the thirteen finest Graeling maidens and his lungs swollen with the smoke of ogre bones and ghost-root. There, in the daemon-haunted mist, the shaman communed with the will of Khorne himself, and he returned with the black words of the Blood God. And, indeed, with something more.

‘Khorne demanded a champion, a mortal capable of the raw strength and savage heart to slay so fell a beast. And to that dark end, the daemon slaves of the wolf-headed god offered a token – an obsidian tusk on a barbed silver chain. Forged in the fires of Khorne’s own fury and cooled in the bloody sea beneath the Throne of Skulls itself, it would be bestowed upon any man who could slay the leviathan, who would then know the favour of the dark god forevermore.’

Ruaddon groaned just then, grumbling under his breath, loud enough to interrupt Freya’s mellifluous verses once more. For a moment all eyes settled instead upon him where he sat behind her. He placed no credence in the girl’s words, and he cared not who knew it.

‘All of their men were gone, and their lands were cut off from the sea,’ he growled. ‘How then did anyone beyond their villages learn of this challenge?’

Vhorgath turned a curious eye to Freya. Her delicate features remained as serene under inquiry as they had in the face of his threats of brutality – Ruaddon’s annoyed query seemed not to trouble her in the least.

‘It was exactly because the Graeling settlements were so far removed from other tribes that they were able to do so,’ Freya answered. ‘Grundval’s folk had long cultivated a host of crows, trained from hatchlings to carry messages to the furthest lands of Norsca. These black-winged fliers were dispatched in every direction, spreading word of Khorne’s decree.’

Laughter came from further back in the group at the clever explanation. Ruaddon only grunted. Freya clearly took it as permission to continue.

‘Even then, many months passed and the flame of hope continued to fade,’ she said. ‘Riders soon appeared from all over the north realms, and even some from beyond the Norscan barrens answered the call. But all who sailed out to face the beast suffered the same fate. Like every other man who had gone before, none of them were ever seen again.

‘Then came Scyla Anfingrimm, son of Thurrik, warlord of the Ironpelt tribe. Though he had not yet seen twenty-five winters, his name and his sword were already known across the Sea of Claws. Indeed, word came late to his ears of the Blood God’s offering, for that was the summer his dragon-ship raided the undead lands of Khemri. It was said that his attacks were so swift and fierce that the mere sight of his sails struck fear even into the undead hearts of that ghostly kingdom.

‘Though Grundval warned him of the dangers, Scyla is said to have laughed at the starving Graeling chieftain. Having made even the men without souls shiver in terror, Scyla boasted that no power short of the gods could strike fear into his heart. He took the only ship left in Grundval’s harbour, a rickety old sloop, and set off alone to face the horror of the seas.’

‘He sailed into the bay alone,’ Vhorgath said, his voice raised for all to hear. ‘Either quite brave or exceptionally foolish. Much like you, little one.’

Ruaddon laughed then and tugged on Freya’s hair as if to punctuate his master’s words, drawing a gasp from her lips.

‘It has long been the highest of praise among the Norscans to say that a raider was so fierce, he would be unafraid to lead his men into the depths of the underworld,’ she said, ignoring his touch.

‘I have heard that,’ Vhorgath replied.

‘But they say Scyla was unafraid to sail into the underworld by himself.’

The warriors fell silent once more. Vhorgath waved at her to go on.

‘For several days he sailed straight into the fog, and found only empty waves beyond it,’ Freya continued. ‘When the winds died, he rowed on, but still there was nothing but glaciers and brine. Ever fearless, even of the powers behind the shadows, he finally stood in the rickety boat and mocked the gods of Chaos and laughed at their challenge. Silence was his answer, but only for a moment… and then the waters began to churn.’

Abruptly, Freya stopped.

The trail they followed came to an end only a short way ahead, and beyond that there rose a steep climb, a serpentine path leading up into the mist-bathed mountains.

‘What is the delay?’ Ruaddon asked, his anger piqued once more. ‘Have you forgotten the rest of the tale or do you require a few moments to invent yet more wild details?’

She pointed at the precipitous slopes ahead. ‘The remainder of the journey to Scyla’s haven is a perilous climb,’ she said, directing her words to Vhorgath. ‘The horses will be of no use to us. We must continue on foot. Perhaps it is better if I speak no more for now – I do not wish to distract your men while they struggle with the ascent.’

Vhorgath shook his head.

‘Little one, my warriors have trampled fields lost beneath the permanent shadow of Chaos, lands so dangerous that every step would kill a feeble child like you. There is nothing you can show or tell me that would bring them to such caution.’

The armoured giants dismounted, Ruaddon pulling Freya roughly from the saddle and bidding her to move ahead of him. They tethered the horses among the dead trees, and she led them onwards, resuming her tale.

‘So it was, that at first a scaly tentacle reached up from the murk, wrapping itself around mighty Scyla’s leg. He slashed it to pieces with his greatsword, spilling black blood into the sea. For a moment, he was alone upon the waves once more, standing in victory.

‘But only for a moment. From behind him, a second tentacle appeared, and then a third and then more than he could count. His boat creaked and strained under the strangling hold, as he himself fought to remain free of their terrible, deadly grip.

‘In the battle he stole a glimpse of the beast, and what he faced was a fearsome monster indeed: a kraken, as in the legends of old, thrashing across the waves with countless thick tentacles tipped with razor-edged claws.

‘Though Scyla ripped into it, tearing pieces from its scaly hide with every swing of his blade, the kraken did not slow. In a few moments of blood and howls, the fell beast crushed the boat, dumping Scyla into the cold waves in a wash of splinters and broken timber.’

Vhorgath’s warriors muttered and grunted their amusement as they struggled up the incline, but Ruaddon only frowned. Surely they had not been taken in by this girl’s idiotic fiction? She looked back to them, pausing only briefly in the telling.

‘But still Scyla battled. He fought the monster from every piece of flotsam and jetsam upon which he could gain a foothold, swinging his sword left and right… but to no avail.

‘Exhausted, his muscles screaming for rest as the waves threatened to drown him before the tentacles could strangle him, Scyla grabbed hold of a rusted hook from his broken vessel. Tied to a frayed length of rope, he slung it across the water and by the favour of the gods he managed to lodge it between the beast’s chitin-armour plates.

‘Then he dived beneath the waves. For a long while he held his breath, struggling to stay hidden under the cold sea. Soon, as he had hoped, the mindless creature gave up searching for him, and it began to glide back through the depths. Quiet, steady and still, Scyla let the creature drag him through the frosty brine all night.

‘And in time, the beast rewarded his iron stamina. As dawn broke over the Norscan barrens, it hauled itself into a rocky, sheltered cove and clambered up from the depths, and Scyla saw the kraken in all its foul glory. When he–’

Ruaddon yanked her tattered cloak from behind, tightening it around her throat and cutting off her words with a choking gasp. The hulking warrior made as if to strike her, but instead let her fall to the icy ground in a breathless tumble.

He sneered and spat at her, and turned away only to find himself face to face with his master, Vhorgath’s eyes burning a sickly violet as he glared at Ruaddon.

Freya lay sprawled in the dirt, stifling sobs and still rubbing her reddened, bare throat. She did not appear inclined to continue her saga any time soon.

‘What is the problem, lieutenant?’ Vhorgath asked, with a particularly threatening emphasis on his final word.

Ruaddon held his head high. His battle-scarred face was warped with anger.

‘I refuse to listen to this drivel any longer,’ he said. ‘No man, no matter how favoured by the gods of Chaos, could do the things she speaks of. Every word of this tale is a lie.’

‘It’s not a lie, this is the greatest tale of–’ Freya protested, before Ruaddon yanked on her cloak again. This time he held even tighter, cutting off her breath entirely. He did not let go.

‘I will keep my own counsel, on what is truth and what is a lie,’ Vhorgath hissed. ‘Release the girl. She dies only when I order it, and not a moment before.’

Ruaddon growled in frustration. He did not comply. Freya’s cheeks began to turn purple as she flailed her arms behind her, desperate to break Ruaddon’s iron grip.

Vhorgath raised his voice. ‘You defy me.’

Still, Ruaddon did not obey.

Freya struggled to turn her head. A blood vessel burst in the white of her left eye, and she held out her hands in a silent, choked plea.

Vhorgath’s hand closed around the dragon-head pommel of his scimitar. Ruaddon clenched his fists in expectation of combat, but he listened to his master’s words.

‘We have been through the wastes of perdition together, old friend. But if I have to raise my blade to you, I will take your head from your neck and make a trophy of your skull,’ he seethed.

Still Ruaddon did not relent.

‘She’s leading us on a fool’s errand,’ he replied, ‘of that I am certain. The only thing I do not yet know is why.’

‘That is my concern,’ Vhorgath said. The Chaos lord began to draw his blade, with a slow, inexorable motion.

At the sound of the steel breaking free from the top of the scabbard, Ruaddon finally let Freya loose. She collapsed to the frozen ground, wheezing and quivering as she took laboured lungfuls of the cold mountain air.

‘She leads us astray in this barren wilderness!’ he said. ‘Do you not care?’

Vhorgath let his sword slip back into the sheath. Though the pitiful girl looked up to him for aid, he did not offer a hand.

‘There is nothing in these hills that can do us harm, nothing in all of Norsca that can threaten us, least of all a girl telling tales,’ he said. ‘As I promised, if Scyla is not where she says, you will have your way with her. After I’ve had mine, of course.’

Vhorgath then turned his attentions back to Freya, still on her knees.

‘How much further?’ he asked. ‘Do not test me.’

‘Just… ahead… trail leads into a pass… between two peaks,’ she said, her voice reduced to a hoarse rasp. ‘The pass is… narrow. There is room for no more than… two men to walk abreast, perhaps less.’

Vhorgath pointed ahead. Freya evidently understood his meaning, coming to her feet unsteadily and lurching forwards with halting steps.

Taking the lead from his lieutenant, Vhorgath walked beside Freya until they reached the peak of a rocky outcropping. The mountains spread out before them – beyond lay exactly the formation Freya had described.

‘This mountain pass is the final gateway,’ she said. ‘Through here you will find Scyla’s hidden refuge.’

‘Very well,’ Vhorgath said. ‘Then finish your tale. If the man we seek is not beyond these cliffs, then it will be your last.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, still trying to catch her breath. ‘I don’t remember…’

Vhorgath just stared back at her. Ruaddon unexpectedly offered a reply.

‘Scyla looked at the monster by daylight. Let’s have an end to this.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Of course. Well, as he let go of his lifeline and huddled in the surf,’ she said, ‘indeed, what he saw astonished him. There was something familiar about the kraken, a glimmer in the eyes of the thing that was not purely wild. It was not entirely a beast. There was something conscious about it, maybe no more than a remnant of its former life.’

‘The beast had once been a man?’ Vhorgath muttered, as they stepped into the shadows of the pass.

‘So it is said,’ Freya answered. ‘The humanity of even the greatest men can break under the weight of Chaos, and they fall into ruin. As you are no doubt aware.’

The hulking warrior narrowed his eyes, but said nothing more.

‘Soon the monster vanished, hauling itself into the caverns at the edge of the sea, but now Scyla had a trail to follow,’ Freya continued. ‘He tracked the wake of bones, skulls and blood that it left behind like a daemon-slug, deep into the winding caves. Hiding in the cold shadows, Scyla followed the spawn, stalking it, watching as it settled back into its foul nest at the heart of a black hollow.

‘Then, once the beast had rested, it moved out to hunt yet again.’

‘And then Scyla brought his blade to bear?’ Ruaddon asked, impatiently.

‘No, Scyla did not attack,’ Freya replied. ‘Instead he let the monster pass, and while it was gone he secreted himself within its foetid nest, hidden beneath the slimy mass of bones and human detritus. Again he waited.

‘This time, when the spawn returned, he let it come to rest. Then he struck. He impaled the monster from below, piercing its foul heart and letting the cold, black blood wash over him.’

‘As clever as he was deadly,’ Vhorgath said, grinning and flashing his sharpened teeth. ‘I must meet this man.’

‘Soon enough,’ Freya replied. ‘Scyla thus returned in triumph to the Graeling mead hall, carrying the creature’s largest eye on a bone-spear pike. Grateful to him for breaking the foul beast’s grip upon their lands, the Graeling shaman draped the black tusk pendant over his mighty shoulders. From that day forward, he walked the path of a favoured warrior of Khorne.’

Freya’s saga came to a close just as they passed under a natural arch of basalt, striding out into the mountain sun. Beyond, the pass opened into a wide clearing. Ruaddon stepped up, as his men began to file out from the narrow bottleneck.

‘What is this?’ he demanded, turning to the girl.

There was no keep, no stronghold, no place fit for any man. Though the clearing was broad, nothing lay beyond it. On every side the ground dropped off at the edge of a steep precipice, overlooking a chasm. Scattered across the dirt in every direction was a grisly collection of human debris: the broken blades of swords, axes and spears lay jumbled about beside pieces of armour, smashed and rusting, half-buried in the dust. Fragments of bones, some nothing more than splintered shards, lay scattered in haphazard piles, the meat picked clean as though by vultures.

Freya edged back under the stone arch as Vhorgath and his warriors inspected the desolate scene, growing more impatient with every passing moment. Ruaddon drew his sword and called out to her, alerting the rest of the men with his shout.

‘I knew you were lying! There is no champion here!’ He turned to his master, pointing with his notched blade. ‘My lord, let me take her. This has gone on long enough.’

Vhorgath did not answer. Something else stole his attention.

A growl like the deep rumble of a cave bear thundered in the clearing, followed by the dull scrape of claws across dry rock. The Chaos warriors looked all around them, on every side of the chasm walls, but saw nothing. It was Freya who pointed them in the right direction.

Upwards.

Climbing down from the craggy heights above the pass was a stinking, yammering creature. It crept along on reptilian haunches, but the foul beast was no lizard. It was an abomination, a jumble of flayed muscle and scorpion pincers, with a tail ending in a hissing, fang-mouthed asp. The beast’s body was covered in thorny chitin, and around its neck a spiked brass collar glimmered in the weak sunlight. Predatory, feline eyes pulsed with a blood-red fury, glowering from a ruined face.

‘What manner of creature is this?’ Vhorgath demanded, drawing his scimitar.

It was Ruaddon’s keen eye that spied the answer. Dangling from the monster’s throbbing neck, nearly lost in the forest of wet, bristle-like fur upon its chest, was a barbed silver chain. At the end there hung a long black tusk.

‘Scyla,’ he whispered.

Freya smirked, taunting them just beyond their reach as the beast Scyla climbed down next to her, blocking the pass, and the only way in or out of the clearing.

‘Not one word that passed my lips was a lie,’ she said, clearly unafraid of the monster even as it opened its slobbering jaws beside her, revealing a maw lined with dagger-like fangs, scraps of rotten flesh still wedged between them. ‘Can you not see my beloved Scyla is even more fearsome now than ever he was before?’

‘But what…’ Vhorgath began. ‘How did he…?’

Freya ran her hand over Scyla’s gorilla-like shoulders, but the beast never broke its predatory stare.

‘Scyla’s passion for the favour of Khorne brought him many gifts from the Blood God. So many indeed that in the wake of his victory at Undermountain…’

‘He descended into this,’ Ruaddon said.

‘That is the reason for his seclusion, the reason none but his own kinsmen have seen him over the years since. He has been warped by the Ruinous Powers into a far more dangerous beast than those he once hunted,’ she said.

She stroked Scyla along his haunches. Somehow, whether by sight or by scent, he seemed to recognise her, and nuzzled his immense bulk against her slender form.

‘The village you ravaged, my home – it was the last of the Ironpelt tribal lands. Only we have cared for him in the years since.’

‘You cared for this?’ Ruaddon shrieked.

‘Of course. His raids once brought my people honour and riches beyond measure. So now we bring him what he most desires.’

‘And what is that?’ Vhorgath hissed.

Freya smiled, even as she drew further behind the hulking, salivating creature.

‘Stop her! I will hav–’

Scyla roared. His serpent-tail whipped around, striking the first warrior like a viper, tearing the man’s throat out in a mess of bloody cartilage. Just as quickly, he snatched up another with his massive pincers, the man’s armour squealing under the strength of his grip.

Before the third could level a blow, the beast snapped his companion cleanly in half, hurling the bisected body over the precipice and leaping forwards with blinding speed. His jaws snapped open and he sank his great fangs into the warrior’s skull.

Ruaddon stared, wide-eyed, as Scyla effortlessly tore the man’s head away from his shoulders in a fountain of gore.

Dropping the mangled corpse, he turned to face Vhorgath and Ruaddon, a sluice of blood and bone fragments drooling from his hairy chin.

‘Scyla hungers,’ Freya finally said. ‘He always hungers.’

Ruaddon gripped his sword tightly. ‘Damn you,’ he whispered to his master. ‘You’ve doomed us both!’

Vhorgath was speechless beside him.

Freya turned her back, not sparing the two men so much as a glance as she walked away. The clamour of desperate battle and the dying screams of Vhorgath and Ruaddon echoed through the mountain pass after her, blending with the feral roars of the beast that was Scyla Anfingrimm.

LORDS OF THE MARSH

Josh Reynolds

‘I was drunk,’ Erkhart Dubnitz said, stepping back to avoid the rapier’s tip. The deck of the rolled beneath his feet and the rail of the river-barge connected with his hips. He held up his big hands, palm out, trying to look simultaneously innocent and contrite. As a true son of the Most Holy Templar Order of Manann, Dubnitz was equally bad at both, and his expression slid more easily into one of slightly panicked guilt. He wasn’t frightened, but he was worried. It had been miscalculation on his part. It had been enjoyable, but, in retrospect, unwise.

‘That’s no excuse for despoiling my sister, you-you lout!’ Sternhope Sark barked. The Averlander wore what passed for finery in Averheim, but his rapier was real enough and sharp. The tip of the blade scratched across the enamelled sea-green surface of Dubnitz’s cuirass, marring Manann’s face with a thin scar. Dubnitz’s gauntleted hand snapped shut on the blade and jerked it and Sark’s arm forward. The rapier’s tip bit into the rail and Dubnitz’s other fist came down on the flat of the blade where it met the crosspiece, snapping the thin metal.

‘Whoops,’ Dubnitz said, flinging the broken blade into the Reik. There was a heavy mist on the river, and it seemed to reach up and clutch for the rail as Dubnitz turned back to Sark. ‘How clumsy of me, I do apologise.’ There was a murmur of laughter from the nearby crew, and they gathered to watch. There was little to do on a barge, and any entertainment was good entertainment.

Sark gawped at him for a moment. Then, with a hiss, he struck at Dubnitz’s face with the broken end of the blade. Dubnitz grabbed Sark’s wrists and wrestled him around, trapping the smaller man between him and the rail. Dubnitz’s forehead connected briefly with Sark’s and the latter’s limbs went noodle-limp. Dubnitz grunted as a thin trickle of blood ran down from his brow, across his cheek and into his beard. Averlanders were a prickly lot when they were sober, in his experience. They were worse than Reiklanders, in their way, but he couldn’t fault the young man’s determination.

‘And I’d hardly call what I did despoliation,’ Dubnitz said, grabbing the young man’s coat to keep him on his feet. ‘It was more a peaceful transfer of military aid, if anything.’

‘Are all Marienburgers so bad at euphemisms, Erkhart?’

Dubnitz turned and glanced at the woman who had pushed through the throng of sailors who had gathered to watch the confrontation. There was a resemblance about the cheeks to the young man he held, which, given that they were siblings, was no surprise. Sascha Sark was dressed in the latest Nuln had to offer for the upper-class out-of-doors woman, with an exquisitely carved iron and wood hunting crossbow held braced against the ample swell of her hip. She was flanked by two bodyguards, the best money could buy.

‘We’re a simple folk, Sascha. Unsophisticated, even,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Granted, we also manage to keep our private affairs private.’ The light cast over the deck by the lanterns mounted on the mast and swoop of the rail was becoming muted by the evening mist rising from the river. The mist crept across the deck sliding between the feet of those gathered. Something about it pricked at his instincts, but he dismissed it, being more concerned with the matter at hand.

‘We’re on a boat, Erkhart,’ Sascha said glibly.

‘We weren’t on a boat in Nuln, Sascha. In fact, I seem to recall a very soft bed and–’ Dubnitz began, momentarily lost in a bouquet of pleasurable memories. It hadn’t been his idea, but then, he’d never been one to say ‘no’ to a lady.

‘Fiend,’ Sark mumbled, grabbing at Dubnitz. The mist was creeping up his slumped form and Dubnitz waved it away. It had the smell of the Reik on it, which was unpleasant enough, but there was something else just beneath it… the stink of standing water or old stone perhaps.

‘Knight,’ Dubnitz corrected, still looking at Sascha. ‘Why did you tell him?’

‘Why did you bed me?’ she countered.

Dubnitz snorted. ‘Fine, but you could have waited, perhaps, until after the order’s business with your family was concluded.’ The business in question was trained warhorses, specifically the Order of Manann’s lack of them and the Sark family’s possession of some of the finest horseflesh in the Old World. Dubnitz had been sent by Grandmaster Ogg to sweet-talk the horse merchants into opening up a business relationship with the order, which he’d done. ‘More or less,’ he muttered. The mist reared up before him and he had a momentary impression of a striking serpent. He blew the tendril into swirling threads. It was thicker than normal for this time of year.

‘What was that?’ Sascha said.

‘Nothing, my lady,’ Dubnitz said, beaming. ‘I trust that this won’t sour our burgeoning relationship.’ The Sarks had insisted on sending representatives to Marienburg to meet with Ogg and the Masters of the Order. Of those representatives, he found Sascha to be the most convivial for obvious reasons. Her brother, he thought, was mostly along to glower at the proper points during the negotiations.

Sascha laughed. It wasn’t a polite laugh, or a girlish laugh. It was crude and bursting with innuendo. Dubnitz suddenly recalled that it had been that laugh that had led him to his current predicament. ‘I meant in regards to the horses my humble and pious order requires if we are to serve the good folk as Manann, in all of his foamy wisdom, intended.’

‘You’re thugs in armour, Erkhart, nothing more.’ Which was true, as far as it went; the order was a work-in-progress, as Ogg liked to state. It was a halfway professional fighting force, composed of the best of the worst, and dedicated, roughly, to spreading the word of the god of the seas. ‘Nonetheless, we are happy enough to sell you horses, should my brother agree.’ Sascha gestured to her brother, smiling prettily.

Dubnitz looked down at the semi-conscious young man and sighed. ‘Wonderful.’

Sascha was a cunning one. After several weeks in her close company, Dubnitz had become grudgingly aware that there was a very good reason that it was she who had been sent. He wasn’t afraid to admit that she had had him wrapped around her finger within an hour of their first meeting. In Nuln, he had done his level best to abuse his hosts’ hospitality in several tried and true methods, and one or two that he hadn’t even considered, before Sascha had suggested them. It was a game that Dubnitz knew how to play. However, it was disconcerting to discover that his opponent was even better at playing it than he was.

Ogg should really have sent someone else, someone more… pious.

‘I don’t suppose I could convince you to tell him that he slipped?’ he said hopefully.

Before Sascha could reply, there was a crunch. It was a loud sound, and the faces of the sailors turned ashen as the boat shuddered. Dubnitz knew that sound. The bottom of the river boat had struck something. An alarm bell began to ring, the sound of it muffled by the thick blanket of mist that had settled on the boat.

‘What was that?’ Sascha said.

‘It sounds like we’ve run afoul of something,’ Dubnitz said. He peered over the rail. Something splashed, out past the rail. Then something else, there were more splashes and a number of thumps. The mist boiled up over the rail like a billowing curtain. He squinted, thinking he’d seen lights flickering in the mist. Suddenly wary, Dubnitz reached for the sword sheathed on his hip. Sark struggled in his grip and he released the merchant, shoving him towards his sister. ‘Sascha, get your brother back to your cabin and stay there.’

‘What is it?’ Sascha said. Her bodyguards tensed, looking around. Like him, they had sensed something wrong. Both men were veterans of Nuln’s infamous Blacklegs regiment, and as swordsmen, only Dubnitz was their equal. They had enough battlefield experience to know when something went wrong.

‘Maybe nothing,’ Dubnitz said, trying to see through the mist. He could barely make out a shape near the waterline. They had struck something. He saw skeletal trees looming through the mist and the shore was covered in the thick grasses that marked the Cursed Marshes. The Reik was separated from the darker waters of the marsh only by the thickly clustered hummocks and boils of earth and soggy stretches of semi-dry land that the marshes consisted of.

As always, whenever he passed through these narrow waterways, his mind conjured any number of ways in which the trip could go wrong. Now the worst had apparently happened. But not as the result of random happenstance, he suspected. He loosened his sword in its sheath. There were so many stories about the Cursed Marshes that it was hard to know what to be afraid of. It was the haunt of mutants, Chaos-worshippers, goblins and less physical threats. Ghosts clung to forgotten structures and swamp-goblins ambushed Marsh-Watch patrols every full moon.

But this was something different.

‘Erkhart, what is it?’ Sascha said again. The mist seemed to swallow the sound of her voice.

‘Stay back,’ Dubnitz began. His eyes narrowed and then widened.

‘Lady Sark, you should go back to your cabin,’ one of the bodyguards said, grabbing for her arm. She cast a hot glare at him and he sighed and stepped back.

‘Sarks do no cower in cabins, Helmut,’ she snapped.

‘What is it? What do you see?’ Sark demanded, throwing his own glare at Dubnitz. His previous ire had been washed aside by concern. Hot-headed the boy might be, but Averlanders were a practical lot at the bone.

‘Nothing, but that doesn’t mean…’ Dubnitz trailed off. His eyes were tearing up from the strain of trying to see through the mist, and he blinked. Something was moving out there. All he saw were hints and vague bubbles of movement, swelling in the mist. He heard thumps and scrapes and his gaze travelled down, where the soup of the mist clutched at the hull.

Something rose to the surface. Sharp and stiff, it cut into the wood with a dull noise. Dubnitz blinked. Was that–?

More sharp things stabbed the hull. Something metal swooped past him and chopped into the rail – a grappling hook. Dubnitz stepped back with an oath.

‘What is it?’ Sascha said, her voice rising.

‘Get back!’ Dubnitz snapped.

Faces pierced the mist, grinning like wolves. Sabres, cutlasses, spears and axes followed as their attackers gave vent to blood-curdling cries. Dubnitz jerked back as a spear skidded off his pauldron and danced across his earlobe, sending a rush of warmth down the inside of his gorget. He cursed and chopped down, splitting the spear. Its wielder stumbled, off balance, and Dubnitz opened his throat to the bone.

But even as the one fell, more replaced him. Dubnitz was forced back from the rail. ‘Pirates,’ someone yelled. ‘’Ware, pirates,’ the cry bounced from crewman to crewman. In these parts, piracy wasn’t confined to the open ocean. Much trade was moved along the Reik, and where there were valuables there were men who would look to take such for themselves. Still, for pirates to have gotten this close to a fully-crewed barge was astonishing. The river-jackals were normally more cautious, laying breakwater chains and playing wrecker on rougher waters. Perhaps the mist had made them ambitious.

‘Take the big one first!’ a pirate barked, swinging a club towards Dubnitz’s head. Dubnitz caught the blow on his vambrace and the club cracked. As the pirate gawped, Dubnitz split his skull, crown to chin. He kicked the dead man in the midsection and jerked his sword free. More blades and clubs and spears sought him and he grabbed the dying man and flung him into a knot of his attackers. ‘Manann,’ he bellowed, lashing out with his sword.

‘Stromfels,’ someone shouted in reply, invoking the god of pirates and storms. The mist cleared and a broad shape stepped forward, sword extended, gold teeth glinting in the torchlight. He was around Dubnitz’s size, though rangier, with years of hard-living stamped on his face. At his gesture, the pirates retreated.

Dubnitz stiffened, his eyes narrowing in recognition of both the face and the voice. ‘Fulmeyer,’ he growled. ‘I heard that the Reiklanders had stretched your neck.’

‘If it isn’t my old friend Dubnitz,’ the pirate said. ‘Still stringing up honest river-men?’

‘Who is this devil?’ Sark demanded, his hands clutching emptily for the rapier Dubnitz had broken. The two groups faced each other tensely, the pirates on one side, the crew on the other and only the mist separating them, like a thin curtain caught in a breeze.

‘A dead man,’ Dubnitz said tersely.

‘Quintus Fulmeyer, at your service,’ Fulmeyer said, spreading his arms. ‘Some call me the Marsh-Hound, but none do it twice.’ His dark eyes narrowed. ‘Dubnitz here tried to have me hung.’

‘Several times,’ Dubnitz said, tightening his grip on his sword. ‘I should have just done it myself.’

Fulmeyer laughed. ‘Maybe you should have at that. Fancy running into you here,’ he said. ‘The gods truly are kind.’ Fulmeyer was one of those thorns that you never realised was in your side until it began to hurt. He was a pirate’s pirate, and Dubnitz dearly hated pirates, especially ones with the temerity to avoid Manann’s justice on three separate occasions.

‘They are indeed,’ Dubnitz said, starting forward. Fulmeyer stepped back and raised his blade.

‘I have more than twenty men, Dubnitz. And you’ve no troop of mounted knights to aid you this time. Just some poxy sailors and a handful of toffs,’ Fulmeyer said. ‘Surrender, as we’d rather not kill any we don’t have to. We have you fair and square,’ the pirate barked. ‘No need for this to turn bloody.’

Dubnitz was about to comment, but before he could so much as open his mouth, a crossbow suddenly went tung and a bolt spiralled through the mist towards Fulmeyer, who squawked and fell back. The bolt narrowly missed his hunched form. Dubnitz glanced back at Sascha, who was already reloading her crossbow. ‘What was that?’ he said incredulously.

‘You Marienburgers talk too much,’ Sascha said, lifting her reloaded crossbow. Before Dubnitz could reply, the pirates surged forward with a full-throated roar. The fight was brutal, and swift. The had a small crew, and the pirates outnumbered them two to one. Nonetheless, the former fought like born brawlers. Sascha’s bodyguards took a terrible toll also.

But the pirates had other, unnatural advantages on their side. Dubnitz’s skin crawled as the mist seemed to thicken and grip at him, as if to aid the pirates. Coils of wet air snagged his sword-arm, slowing his blows and causing him to stumble. Too, the dank smell of it invaded his head, causing his vision to blur and his lungs to seize. Was it sorcery, he wondered. It wouldn’t be the first time he had faced a daemon-spawned mist, after all.

Thoughts of that brought a longing for absent companions. He wished Goodweather were here with him. The priestess of Manann’s prayers could easily have dispersed the mist, which seemed possessed of an almost malign will. And that will was bent towards hampering the increasingly desperate efforts of the defenders of the river boat. Fulmeyer had never displayed any mystical acumen in their previous encounters, however. This was something new… something dangerous. Perhaps the pirate had hired a hedge-mage or some grave-robbing necromancer to help him. Such criminal activities were well within the Marsh-Hound’s purview.

Dubnitz cursed as he saw one of Sascha’s bodyguards stumble, as if something had pulled on his ankle. A moment later, Fulmeyer brained him with his sword, dropping the ex-soldier to the deck, blood running from his eyes and ears. The other bodyguard gave a coughing roar and swooped to the attack, but Fulmeyer merely stepped back into the mist, avoiding the wild blow.

In his place, a quintet of spears shot from all sides, impaling the hapless warrior. The mist cleared slightly as the pirates jerked their weapons free. Dubnitz was on them a moment later, charging across the blood-slick deck with an agility born of experience. Two of the five fell before the others retreated, leaving Dubnitz surrounded by a muffling wall of mist.

‘Sascha,’ he called out. ‘Sark,’ he tried. No answer from either. The alarm bell had fallen silent. The sounds of combat had faded. Dubnitz’s skin crawled. There was a hint of distant noise, like heavy bodies moving through the water.

‘It’s over, Dubnitz,’ Fulmeyer’s voice said, from close by. ‘Drop your sword.’

‘Or what, you’ll kill me?’ Dubnitz said, his eyes scanning the mist. Were the Sarks still alive? If not, Ogg would kill him.

‘We’ll do that anyway, it’s more a question of the way of it,’ Fulmeyer said.

Dubnitz licked his lips, and tried to pierce the swirling mist. He didn’t like the sound of that. He cleared his throat. ‘If you want my sword, Marsh-Hound… come and take it.’

Feet scraped on the deck. A cutlass chopped into the back of his cuirass, shredding a strap and sending a flare of pain shooting through his back and chest. Dubnitz stumbled forward, his chest striking the rail. He pushed himself around and his sword slashed through the curling mist, releasing a spray of red. A scream faded to a gurgle.

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ Dubnitz said, breathing heavily.

Two men emerged from the mist with twin yells. Dubnitz’s sword cut the head from one’s hand-axe and finished its arc buried in the second man’s side. Dubnitz jerked the dying man around and threw him into his fellow. The moment’s distraction enabled him to deal with the survivor.

Boathooks burst past the falling body of the second man, thumping into his chest. His armour was thick enough that the hooks did little damage. But the rail wasn’t as sturdy. Wood cracked and then Dubnitz was falling backwards. His vision lurched as vertigo conquered his thoughts for several terrified moments and then the mist swallowed him. A moment later, the Reik did the same.

The water was cold as he sank into its embrace. He could taste mud and foulness as he clawed vainly for the surface. His body felt as if it were being crushed in a giant’s fist. His vision blurred as the dark water burned his eyes and seared his sinuses as it sought out his nostrils, ear canals and mouth.

Knights of the order learned early on how to swim in armour. It was a survival skill, when most of your business was done on the decks of ships. But the river had its own ideas. He felt the bottom of the Reik beneath his feet, and mud billowed up around him. His lungs began to burn. He couldn’t see.

Men who were unarmoured and excellent swimmers had drowned in the shallowest areas of the Reik. It was murderous, as bodies of water went. Part of him thought that maybe, just maybe, he should simply acquiesce to fate. Nonetheless, he began to walk. His body throbbed with weakness, but he pushed on, until he saw a ripple of orange light above and he shoved himself upwards, reaching. His face split the surface of the water and he swallowed a gulp of air even as the weight of his armour pulled him back down.

He shoved his panic aside. The river bank wasn’t far, not if the boat had run aground, and surely Manann, bless his scaly nethers, wouldn’t let one of his chosen warriors drown. As the claws of oxygen deprivation squeezed his mind into an ever-shrinking black ball, Dubnitz forced himself forward, fighting against weight and the current’s pull, using his sword as an anchor against the latter.

Something dark spread above him agonising moments later, and things like bony fingers scratched his face and armour and he grabbed at them. The soft solidity of waterlogged wood met his palm and he reached out with sudden hope. His thoughts were sputtering like a candle flame in a wind as he heaved himself up out of the water with the help of the tangled roots of the fallen tree. The tree rested in a bend in the river and it had been newly felled. The boat had struck it, and torn out its hull.

As his vision cleared, Dubnitz saw that the source of light he’d seen from below was the . It had been set ablaze, likely after being picked clean. His heart sank. But just as quickly as it had come, the black mood was swept away by adrenaline. Several shapes moved on the shore, searching through what could only be the ’s cargo. The pirates had dumped it on shore, by the looks of it.

A born pragmatist, Dubnitz reviewed his choices as he clung to the tree. He could attempt to make his way back to Marienburg and return with a force of knights or even Ambrosius’s Marsh-Watch. Granted, if he returned to Marienburg without the Sarks, Ogg would gut him like a fish and Ogg was more frightening than any mist-borne daemon or savage pirate.

There was little for it. Once more, Erkhart Dubnitz was forced by circumstance to play hero. It was not a role he relished, but it beat the alternative.

Carefully, and as quietly as he could, Dubnitz eased himself along the roots, pulling himself towards the dubious safety of shore. The Cursed Marshes weren’t dry land by any stretch of the imagination, being more akin to a scum of slime mould atop the water, but it was safer to be above the mould than below it. Water dripped in runnels down his sea-green armour as he pulled himself up into the light of the burning boat. No one had spotted him yet.

The main body of the pirates were nowhere in sight, leaving only the three scavengers he saw. Stragglers, then, Dubnitz decided. He squinted. The mist was gone as well. There was no sign of the surviving crew or the Sarks, though they could still be aboard the boat. The stink of burning flesh was heavy on the air, weighing it down. He looked at the fire, a swell of mingled emotions rolling through him.

‘Roll it towards the fire,’ one of the pirates said, kicking a crate and interrupting Dubnitz’s ruminations. He was big and bearded, with eyes like ugly coals. ‘Fulmeyer wants what’s left burned while they take the prisoners to the stones.’ There was a certain shuddering emphasis placed on that last word that piqued Dubnitz’s curiosity. Even more importantly, the Sarks were likely still alive. Fulmeyer had an eye for prisoners. Ransoms had been his game early and often.

‘Seems a shame,’ another said, fondling a bolt of Cathayan silk. ‘Was a time when we’d have taken the boat and everything with it,’ he added.

‘Better times,’ added the third.

‘Shut your mouths,’ said the first. ‘We’ve made our bargain now, and it was a good one.’

‘Fulmeyer made the bargain, not us,’ the third pirate said, frowning. ‘We can leave.’

‘And see that mist creeping in my wake? You don’t play foul with the lords of the marsh and get away with it,’ the first retorted, shaking his head.

‘So you say.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ the pirate snapped, reaching for the dagger sheathed on his hip.

Dubnitz didn’t allow the other to reply. He rose to his feet, shedding water, and swept his sword out, chopping through the third pirate’s neck. The man gurgled and slumped. Before the second could do more than gape, Dubnitz ripped the sword free and plunged it into his chest, where it became lodged in bone. The first man howled and leapt, his dagger seeking Dubnitz’s guts.

The knight grabbed the man about the middle and flung him over his hip, into the water. Dropping to his knees in the shallows, Dubnitz held the struggling pirate under the water for a moment. Then he dragged him up.

‘Where are the others?’ he asked the sputtering, gasping man casually.

‘G-go t-to-’ the pirate croaked.

‘Wrong answer,’ Dubnitz said cheerfully. He forced the struggling pirate back under water. Fingers clawed at his pauldrons and cuirass. As the bubbles began to lessen, Dubnitz pulled him back up. ‘Where did they go?’

‘I-into the m-marshes,’ the pirate wheezed.

‘Can you show me where?’

‘No!’

‘Pity,’ Dubnitz said, making to press the man back under the water.

‘No! Wait!’ the pirate gasped.

‘Friend, I’ll be honest, I’m in a foul mood, and I’m all for consigning your soul to Manann’s realm. Play silly beggars with me, and I’ll do just that.’ Dubnitz stood, pulling the pirate up with him. ‘But you help me find Fulmeyer, and maybe you live to do the yardarm jig.’

‘Not much of a choice,’ the pirate rasped.

‘Better than you deserve.’ Dubnitz shook him slightly. The Order of Manann had a special hatred of pirates, worshipping, as they did, a god of the seas and rivers. Dubnitz had hung more than his fair share, and it was one of the few of the order’s activities that he had anything approaching a professional interest in.

‘I’ll lead you to them,’ the pirate said, his eyes closing.

His name was Schafer, and he was a Stirlander by birth but a water-man by choice. He’d been a crewman on a trade skiff for a number of years before he’d grown bored, slit the mate’s throat and taken off with the pay chest. Once he’d drunk the contents of the chest away, he’d signed on with Fulmeyer.

All of this he related unasked and slightly defensively. Dubnitz could have told him that he’d heard worse, but didn’t feel like wasting the breath to reassure a man he fully intended to hang. Instead, he tried to steer the conversation into more productive waters as they made their way through the marsh. ‘What stones were you referring to earlier?’ Dubnitz said.

Schafer looked back at him. The pirate was bound tight by a set of thin chains that Dubnitz had scavenged from what was left of the ’s cargo. ‘What?’

‘The stones, the ones you said Fulmeyer was taking the prisoners to.’

Schafer frowned. ‘They’re just stones. There are lots of stones in the marshes.’

Dubnitz fell silent. That was true, as far as it went. There were stones aplenty in the marshes, piled higher than nature intended. The Cursed Marshes had an ancient history, pre-dating men by a margin that was wider than Dubnitz was comfortable with. He looked around. The trees had thinned as they left the river behind. The ground was spongy beneath their feet, and water filled their tracks as they walked. The air was thick with damp and the sun was hidden behind a grey miasmic curtain.

The water was high here, spilling over the roots of crooked trees and boles of sagging earth. Schafer had said that the pirates used skiffs to manoeuvre through the swamp. Dubnitz wished he had one, but he’d have to settle for foot pursuit.

He blinked stinging beads of sweat out of his eyes. The heat was always surprising. Even in winter, the dark waters of the marsh held in the heat of rot and decay. But edging towards summer as it was now, it was nigh unbearable. Sweat rolled down, causing his skin to itch beneath his armour, which was caked in filth and rusting already. Schafer seemed hardly bothered, but then the pirate was probably used to the heat.

They travelled in silence for a time, Dubnitz moving as quickly as he could in his armour.

‘What do you do with prisoners?’ Dubnitz asked. ‘Is it ransom?’

Schafer was silent. His heavy shoulders hunched forward as if he were thinking of something unpleasant. His jerkin was stained with sweat. Dubnitz narrowed his eyes and jerked the chain, nearly pulling Schafer off of his feet. ‘I asked you a question.’

Schafer glared up at him, but behind the anger, there was fear. Not of him, Dubnitz knew. His eyes widened slightly, and Dubnitz spun, hand on his sword hilt. A low fog clung to the path behind, caressing the trees and sliding across the ground. He caught a hint of movement, but heard nothing and saw no shape. He tensed, filled with a sudden, unreasoning fear.

‘What was that?’ he said, turning back to Schafer.

The pirate licked his lips, but didn’t answer. Dubnitz considered striking him. Instead, he shoved him forward. ‘Keep going, friend; and you’d better not be leading me into a trap.’

Schafer stubbornly refused to answer any more of Dubnitz’s questions as they made their way deeper into the marshes. But his manner became more furtive as they went. Finally Dubnitz jerked him to a halt and said, ‘If you find this place so frightening, why in Manann’s name would Fulmeyer seek sanctuary here?’

Schafer stared at him. ‘No one said anything about sanctuary,’ he said softly.

‘Then where are they going?’ Dubnitz demanded, drawing his sword. He pressed the tip to the pirate’s throat.

Schafer spat. He looked away. ‘They’re paying the toll.’

‘What toll?’ Dubnitz said. He pressed on the sword. A bead of blood spilled down Schafer’s unshaven throat. ‘What are you talking about?’ A sudden thought bobbed to the surface of Dubnitz’s mind. ‘Who are the lords of the marsh?’ he said, recalling Schafer’s earlier words.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ Schafer spat. ‘They’re watching us now. We ain’t safe here. Nobody’s safe, except Fulmeyer, and those with Fulmeyer. And even they ain’t as safe as they like to pretend, damn him.’ Schafer made a sound that was half whine and half growl. ‘Damn him!’ he said again.

‘Who’s watching us? More pirates, perhaps? Is Fulmeyer working for someone?’

Schafer laughed harshly, but didn’t answer. It was getting dark, and the evening mist was rising from the water. Beneath the surface of the water, faint lights shimmered, and Dubnitz shivered slightly. The brightest minds of the best universities stated that the ghost-lights of the Cursed Marsh were nothing more than trapped gases. This close, however, Dubnitz lacked such certainties.

He had scavenged a lantern and wicks from the cargo, as well as the chain that bound Schafer, and he lit it as the darkness closed in. Schafer seemed content to stay close, and the pirate’s eyes darted back and forth like those of a frightened rabbit. ‘We should stop,’ he said. ‘We should stay here until morning.’

‘No,’ Dubnitz said. ‘We go on.’

‘I can’t find my way in the dark,’ Schafer protested.

‘You had better figure it out,’ Dubnitz said, tapping his sword.

‘You’re mad. If you knew–’ he stopped himself abruptly.

‘If I knew what, more about these lords you seem so afraid of?’ Dubnitz said. The mist was rolling across the ground. Something splashed in the water. Schafer started. Dubnitz held the lantern higher, but the mist swallowed the light. ‘What are they? Not men, by the way you’re acting…’

Schafer laughed shrilly. ‘No, not men, but you can ask them what they are yourself!’

Large shapes moved in the mist. The soggy soil squashed under heavy treads. Dubnitz swung the lantern about, but he could see nothing. There were sounds just past the edge of the lantern’s light and he caught a glance at what might have been scaly skin.

‘Here he is!’ Schafer was yelling. ‘Take him! Take him, not me!’

‘Quiet,’ Dubnitz growled. He could feel something watching them. Lights that might have been eyes or marsh gas blinked in and out of sight in the mist. He had his sword half-drawn. The shapes he saw did not evoke familiarity on any level. They were not men or beasts or trees. He could not say what they were.

Abruptly, Schafer lurched forward with a despairing wail. He crashed into Dubnitz, knocking him off balance. Dubnitz stumbled forward, and crashed into something solid. Pain burst through him and he dropped the lantern. Luckily, it didn’t burst. Hastily, he staggered to his feet and snatched it up, catching sight of what he’d run into.

The stone had been shaped at some point and time in the past. Not by human hands, or even those of a member of the elder races, but by something else. Dubnitz examined it as the mist congealed around him. Strange shapes had been carved into the stone, prompting faint memories of the crude trinkets he’d seen in the possession of one of his brother-knights who’d visited a wet little fog-shrouded island to the west. The shapes were man-like in their proportions, but they hinted at something far larger, and more horrible. He saw what might have been representations of standing stones, and what could only have been bodies dangling from them, like some prehistoric gallows.

Whatever the symbols represented, they provoked a feeling of disgust in Dubnitz, and he rose slowly to his feet, his sword out. Schafer had vanished. Dubnitz cursed and raised the lantern. The pirate couldn’t have gotten far, not with the chains on him. As the mist swirled, he saw more stones. Moving towards them, he again heard the sound of distant splashing, as if something were moving with him.

Schafer screamed.

Dubnitz charged into the mist. The pirate’s body laid a-sprawl at the foot of a large example of one of the stones. A dark blotch marked where the pirate had seemingly run headlong into the stone. It was only when he drew closer that Dubnitz realised that the blotch was far too high up on the stone for that to have occurred. Schafer was dead regardless, his skull crushed like an eggshell.

Dubnitz froze, listening. Through the blanket of the mist, he heard the slap of wood on water. The skiffs! Forgetting Schafer, he started forward, splashing into the water. It sucked at his legs and for a moment, he regretted his decision to not wait until morning. There was no telling what he would stumble on in the darkness, even with the lantern.

Forcing himself to be cautious, he slowed. The trees clustered thickly, their mossy branches scraping gently on his armour and across his scalp as he moved. As he walked, he had the impression of large things keeping pace. The lantern’s light flickered and sputtered, as if the wick had grown wet. Dubnitz shook it, but it gave a despairing poof and went out, plunging him into darkness. But only for a moment, as the night was pierced by dancing motes of ghost-green light, that swept almost playfully across his path.

Discarding the useless lantern, he followed the motes and soon learned that they were sparks, rising from the strange flames, the colour of emeralds, which crawled up a number of stones, casting weird shadows across the mist-covered water. Dubnitz hesitated. He knew magic when he saw it, and the tales of popular bards to the contrary, there was little a man, no matter how pure of heart or strong of arm, could do against magic.

The trees had thinned, leaving the water to the stones and the strange grasses which grew around them. There was no moon, but the scene was illuminated well enough by the bale-fires burning on the stones and the mist seemed to absorb and amplify those weird lights. It was almost as bright as day, though not nearly as comforting.

There were a trio of low-hulled skiffs ahead, bobbing gently in the water. There were more than a dozen armed men spread among them and a huddled group Dubnitz took to be the prisoners. On the lead skiff, the steersman stood and let his pole rise. Fulmeyer rose to his feet and stood on the prow. He pulled a strange object from his belt and raised it to his lips. The other two skiffs stopped as Fulmeyer stood.

The horn was small, as horns went. It was curled tight on itself, like a ram’s horn, and bore no decoration save for certain familiar markings. Fulmeyer blew a single, bleating note and the flames on the stones seemed to blaze more brightly. He blew another, and the mist began to thicken and rise. Dubnitz, in his hiding spot, froze. Fear slithered through him; it was an ancient fear, bred into his bones and mixed into his blood. Childhood nightmares bristled in the caves of his mind. ‘The lords of the marsh,’ he murmured. Who, or what, held that title?

‘Where have you brought us?’ Sascha snapped, her voice carrying across the oppressive silence of the marsh. ‘My father will hear of this! He is a personal friend of the Elector of Averland!’

‘Is he now?’ Fulmeyer didn’t sound impressed. Dubnitz restrained a chuckle.

‘He will have you fed to bears!’

‘That’s a new one by me. Remind me to stay away from Averland,’ Fulmeyer said, and several of his men chortled appreciatively. ‘You’re in no position to demand anything,’ he added, grinning, his gold teeth glinting in the light of the bale-fire as he grabbed Sascha’s chin and tilted her head up. She spat in his face and Fulmeyer slapped her, an oath escaping his lips.

Sark shot to his feet and lunged for the pirate. The others fell on him, beating him down as Fulmeyer chuckled. Dubnitz grimaced and looked away.

Across the water, the mist rose and spread like an ocean wave, cresting over the trees and then just as quickly falling to reveal – what? They were stones, but not solitary ones. Instead, they were towers of heaped stone, rising from solid islets in the mere like the grave markers of giants.

They looked flimsy and ill-stacked, but somehow more solid than even the best-built manor house of Marienburg’s aristocracy. Moss and mould grew on them, coating the dull black and brown and grey in sheaths of green and yellow, and on them, and in them and between them, dim shapes moved, as if summoned by Fulmeyer’s horn.

On the skiff, Sark was struggling as Fulmeyer jerked Sascha to her feet and shoved her into the prow. Fulmeyer jerked her head back by her hair and shouted something that the mist swallowed. As he called out, several pirates climbed down from the skiffs, dragging the prisoners with them.

‘They’re paying the toll.’ That was what Schafer had said. But paying it to what? Dubnitz hesitated. The mist was coalescing like a thing alive, and vague, titan shapes seemed to move within it as the echoes of the horn faded. It looked as if he were going to get the answer to his question. The mist was dispersing. He could see the heaps of stone more clearly, noting the profusion of strange dark stains which marred the rocks at the upper levels.

Something about those stains set his stomach to roiling. They looked far too similar to the splash of Schafer’s blood he’d seen on the marker stone earlier. The fear grew in Dubnitz’s gut. He could slip away now. No one would know. He was no hero, to die of shame. A fight you couldn’t win wasn’t glorious, it was foolish.

‘Then again, I’m already here. Besides, fortune favours the bold,’ he muttered. With a shout, Dubnitz shot to his feet and ran towards the closest of the pirates, drawing his sword as he drew close. The man spun around, his jaw dropping. Dubnitz’s sword sprang from its sheath and cut a furrow through the pirate’s chest and face.

Even as the first pirate fell, Dubnitz waded into the others. Surprise and speed were enormous advantages, if you were audacious enough to take advantage of them. Unfortunately, even the smallest thing could take that advantage away. His sword swept up, chopping into a tattooed chest. He cursed as the blade became lodged in a breastbone. Dubnitz jerked at the sword and planted his foot on the twitching body, trying to jerk it loose.

Despite his predicament, however, the remaining pirates weren’t attacking. Dubnitz gave a grunt and finally freed his sword. Water splashed behind him. ‘Erkhart,’ Sascha screamed, struggling with her captors.

Dubnitz turned. A smell, like old deep, wet places, washed over him. A single cyclopean eye burned into his wide ones, and a leathery beak split in what could only be called a smile, revealing dagger-fangs. It shed the mist like water, and its scaly flesh was stretched over inhuman muscle beneath ancient bronze armour that did little to conceal its contorted shape. The armour was engraved with looping patterns that hurt Dubnitz’s eyes to look at. A stone maul, dripping with filthy water, rose, clutched in the thing’s two large hands.

‘Manann preserve me,’ Dubnitz whispered, as certain stories of his childhood suddenly rose to the fore of his fragmented thoughts, stories of terrible marsh-demons, driven into the mists by Sigmar and Marius the Fenwolf, in a time of legends before Marienburg was anything more than a dream.

The maul rose and fell with a monstrous finality and Dubnitz only just dove aside as the weapon set up a splash of water. He turned and a club-headed tail crashed against his side, driving him to one knee. The thing circled him on bowed legs, its heavy shape sending rough ripples through the water. The leathery snout wrinkled and a sound like water gurgling over rocks escaped from between its teeth.

‘What the devil are you then?’ he hissed.

Things that might have been words dripped from between its tusks, bludgeoning his ears. If it had answered his question, he couldn’t say. Nor did it seem particularly important. Dubnitz shoved himself to his feet using his sword. More creatures had joined the first, the mist clinging to them like some vast, communal cloak. They watched him and the first moved forward, raising its maul. Dubnitz extended his sword and stepped back.

There were dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds. Where had they all come from?

‘The mist,’ Fulmeyer called out, as if reading his mind. ‘They live in the mist. That’s where they went when Sigmar and Marius put them to the sword. A good hiding place, if I do say so myself.’

‘You’d know all about hiding,’ Dubnitz muttered.

‘If you put the blade down, they’ll make it quick. They’re not as bad as some,’ Fulmeyer said. The pirate captain had one foot cocked up on the prow of the skiff, and leaned across his knee, the horn dangling from his hand. Dubnitz glanced over his shoulder.

‘When did you begin worshipping daemons, Fulmeyer? I always thought you were an honest rogue…’ he grated.

Fulmeyer gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’ve always had an eye for opportunity, me, you know that Dubnitz.’ His face fell. ‘Of course, sometimes opportunity finds you, rather than the other way around.’

‘What foul hole did you find this particular opportunity in?’ Dubnitz said. The creatures splashed around him, never drawing too close. He wondered if one of them had done for Schafer.

‘Here, actually,’ Fulmeyer said conversationally. He’d always liked to talk, had the Marsh-Hound and Dubnitz intended to keep him barking away until he could figure out how he was going to salvage the situation. ‘I was looking for sanctuary from the damned Altdorf River Patrol. I found it, and allies with it.’

‘Allies, is it?’ Dubnitz said. ‘I didn’t see them helping you take the .’

‘Didn’t you?’ Fulmeyer said. He waved the horn. ‘Then you’re blind as well as stupid. I said they live in the mist, didn’t I, and it does as they ask. And they do as I ask…’

‘And in return, you give them what – human sacrifices?’

Fulmeyer’s glee dissipated. ‘Better them than us,’ he snarled. ‘Everything has a price!’

‘Ah, the rallying cry of every half-baked cultist,’ Dubnitz said. ‘A match made in darkness, to be sure, Marsh-Hound. You get to loot to your black heart’s content, and all you have to do is turn the innocent over to inhuman monstrosities.’

‘I pay the toll required, Dubnitz. And it’s your bad luck that tonight’s toll is you,’ Fulmeyer said, gesturing. The pirates formed up around the skiff, their weapons prodding at Dubnitz, keeping him from coming too close. They did not look so much triumphant as terrified. They had pulled Sascha and her brother off of the skiff and thrust them into the water. With curses and oaths, they shoved them and the other survivors of the towards Dubnitz.

‘I said it before – drop your sword, Dubnitz. Go quiet like, and they’ll be gentle. As gentle as they get…’ Fulmeyer said. Dubnitz ignored him, checking on the others. There was only a quartet of the ’s crew remaining, and two of them were the worse for wear. Sascha and her brother seemed healthy enough, despite their terror.

‘You’re late, Erkhart,’ Sascha said, her voice tight.

‘A horse would have come in handy,’ Dubnitz said.

‘Get us out of this, and you’ll have more horses than you can stable,’ Sark said, his face pale.

Dubnitz didn’t reply. He glanced at the pirates. There were more than a dozen of them, but they looked ready to bolt. Fulmeyer’s protestations to the contrary, his men weren’t entirely comfortable with their ‘allies’.

‘Everyone stays together,’ Dubnitz said. The creatures appeared to be growing impatient and several were splashing forward, their club-tails lashing.

‘Maybe we should run,’ Sascha said, clutching at his arm.

‘I don’t think we’d make it very far,’ Dubnitz muttered.

As if it had overheard them, one of the creatures gave out a great cry and the others followed suit, slapping the water with their tails and stamping their feet. At the sight, one of the sailors sidled away from the bulk of the group, his face tense and pale with fear.

‘Don’t,’ Dubnitz said. The sailor didn’t listen. He turned and began to splash away, uttering prayers to Taal, Manann, and Sigmar as he ran. The mist seemed to solidify in front of the fleeing man and then the shape of one of the creatures lunged from it, incredibly swift. Talons fastened almost gently about the man’s head, cutting off his scream. The creature lifted the struggling man and the other things set up another howl.

‘Damn it let him go!’ Dubnitz roared, lunging forward. He had little hope of helping the sailor, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try. His sword chopped into the rubbery limb and the thing shrieked, more in surprise than pain. It flung its arm out, knocking Dubnitz off his feet.

The stone maul wielded by the first of the beasts he’d encountered smashed down, spraying him with water and nearly mashing his head to paste. It drove him back, away from the one he’d attacked, swinging its maul out in short and brutal arcs. It didn’t seem to want to kill him so much as prevent him from interfering with whatever its companion was doing.

‘Erkhart, be careful!’ Sascha shouted, her brother holding her back.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he yelled back. The maul dropped, nearly crushing his foot. Reacting swiftly, he stepped on the haft and half-threw himself forward, his sword slashing wildly at the glaring, single eye. The creature reared back and the sword barely missed its snout. It jerked the maul out from under him, tumbling him into the water with ease.

A massive three-toed foot slammed down on his chest, pinning him in the water. The creature looked down at him, and there was something that might have been respect in its eye. It gestured with its weapon.

The other creature loped towards the tumble of stone with its captive. It climbed up the stones, displaying none of the awkwardness its ungainly form would imply. As it reached the top, something bent and hidden within thick, sodden animal hides crawled out of the rocks to meet it. Despite the concealing skins, Dubnitz could tell that it was of the same race as the others, though wizened and perhaps crippled. It leaned on a staff and croaked something at the other. The sailor’s screams were muffled by the beast holding him.

The bent beast scooped up what looked like a length of crudely woven rope and set a noose around the writhing, whining sailor’s neck. Then, with a gurgling roar, the first creature sent the sailor tumbling from the stone. The rope pulled taut and the sailor smashed headfirst into the stone, leaving a new stain to join the old ones that Dubnitz had noted earlier.

The creatures howled, clawing at the air or gesticulating with their weapons. The one holding Dubnitz down stepped back, letting him climb slowly to his feet. Rubbing his aching chest, he backed away. The body of the sailor twisted in the muggy breeze, and its heels drummed on the stone.

Behind Dubnitz, Sascha gasped and turned away, leaning against her brother. ‘Stay close, all of you,’ Dubnitz barked as he rejoined the others. He swallowed thickly and put himself between them and the beasts that squatted, waiting.

Why weren’t they attacking? What were they waiting for?

‘Going to fight them all, Dubnitz?’ Fulmeyer called out, half-tauntingly, half-admiringly. ‘That doesn’t work. I know.’

‘Talk your way out of that noose as well, did you?’ Dubnitz shouted back. ‘A trade was it?’

‘And if it was? Is my life – our lives – worth any less than these fine, fancy folk?’ Fulmeyer said.

‘Yes, it is,’ Dubnitz said bluntly. ‘You’re noose-bound, human hangman or otherwise, if I have anything to say about it.’

‘Good thing you don’t, then,’ Fulmeyer said, laughing harshly. ‘The lords of the marsh will do for you!’

As the pirate cackled, the creature that had first confronted Dubnitz gestured with its maul and gave a querulous croak. Fulmeyer stopped laughing. More of the creatures emerged from the mist, appearing on the other side of the pirates’ skiff. Fulmeyer half-lifted the horn, and the creature bellowed. On the high stones, the wizened monster raised its staff and shrieked. The pirate flinched, like a beaten dog. Dubnitz grinned. ‘Will they now? Somehow, I think you spoke too soon, Fulmeyer.’

Dubnitz had seen enough to know that form and ritual were everything where sacrifices were concerned. If the creatures had bothered to bargain with Fulmeyer, they would abide by the rules they had laid down. It seemed that they wanted their sacrifices delivered to them, not just dumped on the doorstep.

Fulmeyer swallowed and hopped off the skiff. He drew his sword as he splashed forward, and gestured with the hand that held the horn. ‘Take them,’ he snarled, and his men moved forward, grimly intent, more than one of them darting a nervous glance at their monstrous allies. Dubnitz realised that he had been wrong earlier. It wasn’t an alliance; the river-pirates were simply hunting dogs and now they were being whipped to the kill.

Fulmeyer and a large, tattooed Nordlander closed on Dubnitz. ‘Don’t kill him,’ Fulmeyer growled. ‘They wouldn’t like that. Just get that sword out of his hand.’ He grinned in a feral fashion. ‘In fact, take the hand as well.’

The Nordlander roared and lunged, his boat-axe swooping down. He was bigger than Dubnitz, and wore a rust-riddled sleeveless suit of mail. Dubnitz lunged forward, and the axe blade skirted down the side of his cuirass at an angle, shaving the metal and creating an ache in Dubnitz’s chest. He smashed the pommel of his sword into the Nordlander’s face, busting teeth. The big man reeled with a moan and Dubnitz cut his leg out from under him. The Nordlander fell with a scream and Dubnitz stepped over him, moving towards Fulmeyer.

More pirates closed in, leaving their captives unattended. Armed and in a foul mood, Dubnitz looked more dangerous than a pack of terrified sailors. Fulmeyer barked orders, trying to regain control of the situation, but to no avail. Dubnitz swept his sword out in a wide arc, spilling red into the water. A pirate screamed and sank, clutching at his ruined hand. The heavy blade in the knight’s hand was little more than a cleaver with a pointed end; Dubnitz had grown to manhood in Marienburg’s tannery district, chopping through the muscle and bone of abattoir animals.

The pirates fell back after a few fraught moments, leaving the dead and dying in their wake. The creatures set up a cry and the mist seemed to vibrate with the frustration inherent in that sound. Fulmeyer’s eyes bulged and he half-lifted the horn.

‘Go on,’ Dubnitz wheezed. Sweat coated his face and his shoulders twitched with strain. His sword blade dipped towards the water. ‘Blow it, Fulmeyer. Send them back. Break your damnable bargain.’

Fulmeyer’s face hardened. ‘It ain’t that simple.’

‘No, it never is,’ Dubnitz said. His armour felt as if it had grown heavier. He looked up. The darkness at the edge of the mist had faded, turning from purple to pink. One of the creatures snarled something unintelligible and pointed a talon at Fulmeyer, who flinched and waved his sword.

‘I’ll do it, damn your eye! Our bargain stands!’ the pirate screamed. He charged awkwardly through the water towards Dubnitz. ‘Take him, you marsh-dogs! Take him or we’re all for having our brains dashed on those cursed stones! Take him before cock-crow!’ His sword rattled off of Dubnitz’s own hastily interposed blade. Several other pirates surged towards them, their obvious panic sharpening their faces to vulpine ferocity.

The creatures seemed to gather close, their heavy shapes moving towards the others. Dubnitz booted Fulmeyer in the belly and spun around. ‘Run!’ he roared. ‘All of you run!’

The sailors needed no prompting. They broke and fled, thrashing towards the skiff, the hale helping the wounded. Sascha, however, snatched up an axe from one of the dead pirates and promptly brained the closest of his still-breathing compatriots. Her brother punched another and jerked the stumbling man’s blade from its sheath. Dubnitz cursed. ‘Get to the boat you fools,’ he snarled, grabbing a pirate’s shirt and jerking the man forward so that their skulls connected.

‘Not without you!’ Sascha said waving her axe as her brother gutted a pirate.

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Dubnitz said.

‘Then there’s no reason to hurry, is there?’ Sark said, driving a pirate back with a swift slash of his purloined blade.

‘You Averlanders are a stubborn bunch,’ Dubnitz said. The creatures were moving towards the skiff now. Before, they had been content to watch, but now they had been prodded into motion – why? Why the sudden urgency, Dubnitz wondered as he blocked a blow that would have sent him to his knees. Why were the pirates suddenly so desperate? ‘Cock-crow,’ Dubnitz said suddenly.

‘What?’ Sascha said.

‘Morning is coming! That’s why they’re so impatient!’ Dubnitz said. ‘If we can just hold on until morning…’

‘I don’t think they’re going to let us!’ Sark yelped. He staggered back as one of the creatures grabbed for him. Sascha screamed. Dubnitz turned and saw her backpedalling from a scaly shape that loomed over her. Before he could go to her, Fulmeyer stepped between them, his eyes wild. The pirate hacked at him with berserk abandon. Dubnitz was forced back, his arm and shoulder throbbing with fatigue-ache as he blocked the wild blows.

‘I’m not going into the mist!’ Fulmeyer howled. ‘Not me, you hear?’

‘I hear,’ Dubnitz grunted, as he caught another blow. His eyes found the horn, clutched in Fulmeyer’s manic grip. With a twist of his wrist, he sent the pirate’s sword sliding from his grip and rammed his shoulder into the other man’s chest. Fulmeyer staggered, and Dubnitz grabbed the horn, yanking it out of Fulmeyer’s hand.

‘No!’ the pirate screamed.

Dubnitz didn’t waste breath replying. Instead, he put the horn to his lips and blew. The note shivered out and the effect was nigh-immediate. The mist seemed to harden, as if frozen, and then it collapsed like a curtain that has had its straps cut. It sank and retreated, like the tide going out. The strange rock formations wavered like heat mirages and faded as the mist writhed past them. The rising sun glared down, its gaze suddenly no longer obscured by the daemon-sent mist.

As one, the creatures gave out a great cry. There was despair in that sound, and a resigned rage. They began to stagger away, covering their bulbous eyes and heads as well as they could. A foul-smelling smoke rose from those not quick enough to reach the mist and their screams caused every man’s heart to shudder. Only one didn’t retreat – the first, the beast clutching its stone-headed maul like a talisman. It rose over Sascha, reaching for her. It didn’t intend to return to the mists without one sacrifice, at least. She screamed and raised her axe.

‘Ho beast! That’s not the one you want,’ Dubnitz bellowed. Its triangular head whipped around. Dubnitz grabbed Fulmeyer and propelled him into the water near the beast. The pirate screamed and tried to run, but the maul flicked out, and bones turned to splinters and he fell, his legs rendered into ruined sacks. He coughed and whined and splashed as the creature stood over him, considering. Its eye found Dubnitz again.

‘Go on, take him you one-eyed son of a frog,’ Dubnitz said. His limbs trembled from his exertions and he wanted nothing more than to fall down. But he forced himself to stay upright. He extended his sword. ‘Take what you’re given, and go.’

The creature’s eye flashed with something that might have been a look of promise, and then it reached down and grabbed Fulmeyer by his scalp. The pirates who hadn’t fled found themselves in much the same predicament. Scaly, abnormally long arms shot from the retreating mist and grabbed ankles, elbows, heads and arms, jerking the terrified pirates into the mist they had earlier so eagerly sheltered in.

The creature hefted Fulmeyer, whose shrieks had dwindled to moans, and pointed at Dubnitz with its maul. Smoke billowed from its heavy shape as it held his gaze for a moment, and then it turned and stalked after its fellows, its club tail sending waves slopping against the side of the skiff.

Dubnitz watched it go, and when it had vanished and the mist had gone, he raised the horn and brought his sword down on it, shattering it.

‘Erkhart–’ Sascha began.

‘Get on the skiff,’ Dubnitz said hollowly. ‘We need to be far away from here by nightfall.’ Sascha and her brother got aboard the skiff, and Dubnitz followed slowly, looking back warily. The creatures might not come after them, but he couldn’t take that chance. He felt ill and tired. He hadn’t had a choice, and he wouldn’t weep for Fulmeyer and his crew, but it sat badly with him nonetheless. They had earned their ending, but he wished that he hadn’t been the one to deliver it in such a fashion.

Even pirates deserved better than that.

In the fading drifts of mist, Dubnitz thought he could see dim forms struggling, and hear distant screams and the thump of skulls on stone. Then he could hear nothing but the sounds of the Cursed Marshes, and the splash of the pole into the water as the skiff began its journey back towards the clean waters of the Reik.

A MUG OF RECAFF

Sandy Mitchell

If anyone had asked Jurgen, which they never did, he would have said the operation had been a great success. As usual, Commissar Cain had outwitted the heretics they were hunting with ease, leading the squad of Guardsmen assigned to escort him straight to the heart of the coven, while the bulk of the raiding force provided a diversion by attacking the heavily-fortified stronghold of the renegades. After a short, intense firefight, most of the cabal lay dead, the few panicked survivors too intent on fleeing for their lives through the corridors of their leader’s mansion to put up any further resistance.

‘Went rather well, sir,’ he ventured as the commissar sheathed his chainsword while making the odd little twitch of the nose he so often did. As always, Cain had made sure he was in the thick of the action, and must be in dire need of a pick-me-up by now.

Fortunately, Jurgen had noticed a kitchen during their initial assault through the servants’ quarters, and was sure he could find his way back there. As soon as the commissar was engrossed in discussing how best to sweep the building for stray cultists with the sergeant in charge of the escort detail, he slipped quietly away in search of it.

The layout of the rambling house was a little confusing, but he found the object of his quest easily enough by the simple expedient of following the trail of combat damage; the path back to their entry point was marked by las-bolt pocks on the walls, many of which had charred the hanging tapestries or scored the intricate marquetry surfaces of the occasional tables scattered about the place. Most of these had once held ceramics, few of which remained intact, particularly around the scorch marks on the carpet and the widespread cratering of walls and furniture where frag grenades had gone off.

Before long, the opulent furnishings gave way to the starker, more utilitarian environs of the servants’ quarters, although Jurgen didn’t expect to meet any of the staff; most of them had fled screaming as soon as the armed Guardsmen appeared, the ones that hadn’t being cut down in short order alongside the masters whose corruption they’d shared.

Too seasoned a campaigner to take anything for granted, Jurgen remained alert, his lasgun held at the ready. The cultists who’d escaped retribution upstairs were almost certainly long gone, but it was always possible that a few had gone to ground, hoping to slip away quietly once the noise had stopped.

So musing, he caught sight of his objective at last, the light gleaming from neatly-shelved pots and pans visible through a half-open doorway.

He was about to walk through it when he hesitated, listening intently. Someone inside was speaking, the voice rising and falling in the unmistakable cadences of a chant.

‘Heyla, heyla sheyla, heyla sheyla, heyla hoh…’

Jurgen had no idea what it meant, but he didn’t really need to. It sounded like warpcraft to him, which boded badly for the Emperor’s loyal servants still in the building. It might even inconvenience the commissar, redoubtable warrior though he was. Better put a stop to it now, he supposed. Besides, he needed the kitchen; too bad for the heretic currently occupying it.

Readying his lasgun, Jurgen dashed through the door, his eyes flicking left and right in search of a target. He’d been right, someone was practicing warpcraft: a tall, elegant man in expensive-looking robes, and far too much jewellery, was waving his arms about in time to the stream of gibberish gushing from his lips. His eyes seemed to flicker with balefire as he glanced up at the unexpected intrusion, and his mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste, as though Jurgen was something he’d just found on the sole of his shoe.

The guardsman’s finger tightened on the lasgun’s trigger, but before he could squeeze it the air between them ripped, sounding, he thought, like the galaxy’s biggest fart. Smelled like it too. Something consisting mainly of eyes, mouths and teeth stepped through the rent in reality and lashed out at him with half a dozen whip-like tentacles.

‘Finish the scum,’ the sorcerer said, disdain dripping from his words like protomatter from the flesh of the newly-incarnate warp-thing.

‘Works for me,’ Jurgen said, holding down the trigger of his lasgun. The daemonspawn reeled back, keening its distress, as the hail of las-bolts chewed its midsection to pieces. It was far from the first such thing Jurgen had encountered in his years of fighting at the commissar’s side, and in his experience they were never as tough as they were made out to be. Apparently that was something the Emperor had gifted him with; Inquisitor Vail had tried to explain it a couple of times, but she used a lot of long words that made his head hurt, and he didn’t really care anyway. The fact that it worked was enough for him.

After a couple more bursts from the lasgun, the warpspawn suddenly vanished, with a pop of imploding air, driven back to the eldritch realm from which the psyker had torn it, just as Jurgen had known it would be. He turned, taking in the rest of the kitchen in a single, rapid glance.

The psyker was still standing in front of the stove, an expression of stupefied astonishment on his face, muttering another string of arcane syllables. Livid green wychfire flared around his upraised fist, then flickered and died as Jurgen took a step towards him.

‘You can frak off and all,’ Jurgen said, and shot him, wiping the stunned expression off the man’s face with a single las-bolt. He slung the weapon as he stepped over the sorcerer’s spasming corpse, freeing his hands to pick up the kettle, which gurgled as he shook it.

Already full. That was a bit of luck. The commissar would definitely be needing a mug of recaff by now, and Jurgen meant to see that he got it.

The Shadow of the Beast

Laurie Goulding

It had become habit, Hornindal realised, to stand before the great lancet ports of the observation deck and measure his breathing against the urgent thrum of the ship’s engines. The adamantium null screens were locked firmly in place, so he could see nothing of the void beyond. Moreover, his eyes were closed.

He gripped the forward rail with both hands, his boots planted squarely on the deck beneath him. Tension gritted his teeth, and made a taut rod of his spine.

Habit. Nothing more. It served no purpose.

Even had he been able to see beyond the crystalflex ports, it was unlikely that the sight would have satisfied his desire – nay, his demand – for haste. Warp space was tricky and dangerous stuff, and rarely gave any sense of real forward momentum; depending on the prevailing currents, it might seem to him as though the Xenophon were utterly becalmed. Or worse still; travelling sideways, or in reverse.

Immortal and beneficent Emperor, grant us speed enough to answer this call.

Hornindal wanted to feel the wind upon his scalp, the crush of inertia pulling him back as they hurtled onwards. He wanted the reassurance that they were making the best possible speed. He wanted to see it with his own eyes.

And since he could not, he stood alone on the shielded observation deck, and imagined all of these things. He needed that distraction. He had not slept in a long time.

He knew that it was only right and proper that he be burdened so; Hornindal stood apart, both philosophically and oft-times literally. He was the bedrock of his brethren; the presence of the Emperor’s guiding light made flesh. He was the example to which they all might aspire. He would not, therefore, demonstrate feelings of doubt or uncertainty, nor give voice to any such concerns. They would arrive in time. Of course they would arrive in time, by His grace.

We are His sword, we are His shield. His benevolence. His wrath.

The vox-bead hung loosely from Hornindal’s ear – though he knew that the Chapter serfs of the small crew were among the best in the fleet, he could no longer listen to the comm-traffic. They worked diligently, burning the ship’s reactor white hot in their attempts to coax more speed from the engines, yet to his transhuman ears their mortal prattling made them sound… inefficient. Amateur. Unworthy of the duty that might soon fall to them, if his most dire projections were proven to be accurate.

It had been almost a year since Captain Theodosios had taken the Fifth Company out onto the periphery – astropathic reports of unrest and civil disobedience to the galactic south-east had prompted their noble Chapter Master Thorcyra to make a show of force, hoping to restore order before it could grow into any real rebellion. But as the weeks turned into months and more desperate calls began to come from across the sector, Thorcyra himself had taken his honour guard and the First and Second Companies into the north, towards the stricken worlds of the Saphir Cluster.

It was as though the Eastern Fringe was erupting into madness, and to those who had witnessed such things before, it was a grim portent indeed. When the final, garbled communication was received from Theodosios and the Fifth, a general recall was issued to the entire Chapter spread throughout the Ultima Segmentum.

‘Sons of Sotha, return home with all haste.’

The entire Chapter. Every last battle-brother, every last serf and retainer.

Not lightly would they be summoned back. Not lightly would Chapter Master Thorcyra have his warriors abandon the myriad crusades and conflicts to which they had been set. As Reclusiarch, Hornindal had been engaged in the liberation of the reliquary world of Egottha, and in his fiery rhetoric he had sworn that this was the gravest duty to which the Scythes of the Emperor could be called. Would Thorcyra now make a liar of him?

It was true that the enemies of the Imperium were many, and strong, and while he and his brothers had nev–

A tremor ran the length of the Xenophon’s hull, and Hornindal’s eyes snapped open. He felt a slight rise in the note of the engines.

The lumen strips on the observation deck flickered and went out, followed by another tremor. With a series of creaking judders, the ship began to list to starboard – the drunken roll of a rudderless wetland skiff.

Without thinking, he replaced the vox-bead in his ear.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron, report immediately.’

No response. Only a cacophony of frantic exchanges. Warning chimes. Tinny, distorted screams.

The Navigator. The Navigator was dead.

An almighty bass rumble shook the deck, echoing through the tortured superstructure, and klaxons blared. The heavy doors ground shut, sealing the chamber and the various other compartments of the ship, and Hornindal felt a familiar electric pressure in the base of his skull as the crew made an emergency jump back into real space.

He gasped, sensing the unclean touch of the warp as it slithered away from his mind and off into the ether, before being almost pitched from his feet by the ship’s sudden deceleration. Natural laws reasserted themselves, though it took him only a moment to recover, and he threw back the deep hood of his robe.

His vox-bead crackled.

‘Lord Reclusiarch, to the bridge!’ came the shipmaster’s voice. ‘We’re moving to evade hostile… objects.’

The twin slaved servitors at the helm chattered wordlessly as they made correction after correction, binaric cant tumbling from their withered lips and only occasionally slurred by ropes of drool. Since they were almost completely immobile in their wired thrones, their increased vocalisation was the only way to gauge the speed of their actions and reactions. For all their vacant, slack-jawed appearances, their internal systems were processing the manoeuvres at incredible rates.

The howl of proximity alarms was deafening in the enclosed space. As the null screens slowly retracted, Kaeron bellowed his orders to a crew that were trying hard not to be transfixed by the horror blooming in the darkness before them.

‘Take us between them! Hard to port, hard to port!’

Behind the command dais, Sub-lieutenant Goss stood bathed in the ruddy glow of the bridge’s emergency lighting, a data-slate gripped tightly under his arm and his mouth agape.

‘Holy Terra,’ he muttered. ‘What are they?’

The shipmaster whirled around to face him.

‘Deck officer. Return to your post immediately,’ he barked over the din.

Another minor impact reverberated through the lower decks, and Goss snapped back to attention. He thrust the data-slate at Kaeron and reached for the edge of his tactical console, hauling himself through the ship’s weakened gravity.

‘Someone call up the system charts. I need local cartography, right now.’

The main bulkhead to the bridge opened with a swirl of equalising pressure, and Goss saw the robed giant Demetrios stride through. The Chaplain made straight for the central dais, but stared all the while out through the armoured viewports before the helm. His eyes were wide and unblinking.

Not in alarm, but in pure, unbridled hatred.

Where Goss and the rest of the bridge crew might be gripped by fear, this mighty hero of the Chapter was filled with a righteous indignation. It was clear enough in his fiery glare and the grim set of his jaw – what right did these monstrosities have to exist in the Emperor’s own universe, let alone to present a direct threat to a ship of the Adeptus Astartes?

As the stars wheeled beyond the frontal ports, the things hung in the void – great organic medusae, each the size of a large hab-block and trailing sickly tendrils hundreds of metres long that grasped at the frozen nothingness. Their livid bodies were bloated and bulbous, ridged with what looked like horned chitin, and yet they each pulsated with an obscene internal rhythm. Even as Goss and the other crewmen looked on, the closest of the things convulsed spastically and swept its tendrils out in a flailing arc, which only narrowly missed the Xenophon’s bladed prow as she banked away.

The helm servitors were running at the limits of their programming merely to avoid each new collision as the things drifted closer. There were thousands of them, and precious little clear space between.

‘Void-born filth!’ Demetrios spat, gripping his rosarius tightly in one hand and pointing defiantly through the main viewport. ‘Shipmaster, ready all weapons.’

Kaeron did not take his attention from the data-slate.

‘My lord, we are too close to obtain a firing solution. I’m working on–’

‘Too close?’ the Chaplain interrupted him. He stalked around the shipmaster’s command throne, gesturing out with a broad sweep of his fist. ‘With all respect, Kaeron, we’re right on top of them! Open the voidlock and I could smite them myself.’

Kaeron held up the data-slate, though Demetrios regarded it coldly. ‘With all due respect, my lord, that is precisely why we must not open fire.’

‘Explain yourself. The Emperor’s will demands that we end these abominations.’

‘Our auspex is still clouded, but short-range scans would suggest that these constructs contain a highly volatile atmosphere within their bodies. Explosive even. If we launch torpedoes or fire the main batteries then I am confident that we could easily destroy them, but the resulting blast would tear this ship apart. Each one of them is almost as wide around as the Xenophon is amidships.’

As if to illustrate his point, the ship soared beneath another raft of tendrils which slithered and twitched over her starboard flank. The contact rang dully through the superstructure, a slew of sensor vanes breaking free of their mountings and clattering against the Xenophon’s armoured skin before they tumbled away into the darkness.

‘And so you allow these unspeakable things to caress our hull, shipmaster?’ Demetrios growled. ‘I will not tolerate this sacrilege.’

Goss glanced over the data scrolling down his console screen. His heart was pounding in his chest.

‘Master Kaeron, the objects are beginning to close in on us. It’s like they’re trying to block our–’

‘Power down the engines.’

All three of them turned to the open bulkhead portal, and Goss saw Reclusiarch Hornindal hunched down beneath the reinforced lintel. He was staring out at the bloated constructs, a look of grim acceptance on his face, almost as though he had been expecting to find just such a nightmare waiting for them.

‘Do it now. They are drawn to the heat and motion.’

Kaeron nodded, and brought the vox-hailer to his lips. ‘This is the shipmaster. Cut main thrust immediately.’ He called out to the enthroned servitors. ‘Helm, set a final escape vector. Short correctional bursts only.’

The pair halted their burbled cant and spoke in eerie mechanical unison.

‘Compliance.’

The vibration of the engines through the deck fell away to almost nothing, and Kaeron silenced the alert klaxons. The Xenophon careened onwards, seeking any gap through which they might make their escape.

Seemingly in response, one of the constructs pulsated one last time before detonating like a gigantic fleshy mine in the void. The blast hurled out cartilaginous shrapnel and slathers of bio-acid in all directions, in a kilometre-wide burst of green flame that licked hungrily at their void shields and rocked the ship from side to side.

Hornindal stepped in behind the shipmaster’s throne. Even as the Xenophon dropped in a slow spiral through the encroaching swarm, he did not let his eyes fall from the grasping, heaving things that reached out towards them as they passed.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron, bring us clear. We must send word to Sotha.’

Kaeron turned to him. ‘Of course, Lord Reclusiarch. It is…’ He paused, appearing unsure whether to speak the words aloud. ‘It is the Great Devourer, is it not?’

Demetrios rankled at the mention of the name. Hornindal merely nodded.

‘Aye. The xenos have returned. Of this alone, I am certain.’

Goss started at the sudden chime of his vox-link, and he realised that he had been holding his breath for several long moments. He listened for a moment. ‘Master Kaeron, I have a report from the sergeant-at-arms. His team cannot gain entry to the Navigator’s chambers. Her killer has likely barricaded himself inside.’

Hornindal shook his head.

‘There is no killer. None but the Navigator herself.’

Another of the giant mines detonated off to their port side, taking out three more in a rapid chain of linked explosions, but the Xenophon had slipped beyond their reach.

‘My lord? Do you mean to say that the Navigator took her own life?’

Ignoring Kaeron’s query, Hornindal placed his immense hand on Goss’s shoulder.

‘Sub-lieutenant,’ he said, grimly. ‘Have the sergeant’s team secure the choir chambers. The astropaths will also be at risk.’

‘At risk from what?’ Kaeron demanded, rising from his seat.

‘See for yourself,’ growled Demetrios, gesturing to the frontal ports.

Cries of dismay and horror spread across the bridge. Goss envied those crewmen who laboured below decks, those who would be spared the sight.

As the Xenophon approached the edge of the vast, living minefield, the kilometre-long Hunter-class destroyer was cast into the shadow of a monster – a true terror of the deep, like the leviathans of legend. It clawed at the void fore and aft with great tentacular limbs many thousands of metres in length, spines running the length of its segmented body and trailing clouds of unwholesome vapour.

‘A hive ship,’ said Hornindal. ‘I had hoped never to see another in my lifetime.’

Lesser vessels clung remora-like around the beast’s great fanged maw, clearly visible even at such immense distance. As the Xenophon’s auspex pulled clear of the minefield, thousands of smaller sensor returns chimed across the board. The space around the hive ship was alive with xenos activity.

Kaeron sank back into the command throne. ‘The void…’ he murmured. ‘It crawls.’

Straightening, Hornindal looked to Demetrios.

‘Brother-Chaplain, call the squads to arms.’

Deep within the belly of the Xenophon, more than thirty Scythes of the Emperor had been billeted for the return journey to Sotha. The Chapter dormitories were sparse and functional, as befit the ethos of the Adeptus Astartes – each warrior was assigned only a sleeping pallet and an arming post. Their empty suits of power armour would stand silent vigil over them on the rare occasion that they entered a full sleep-state, their weapons lying clean and freshly oiled beside them. The scent of incense and lapping powder hung in the air, though it failed to mask the heady aroma of transhuman hormones and acrid sweat that followed them no matter how often they bathed.

Where the human crew filled their own bunk spaces with personal effects and Imperial devotionals, the Space Marines knelt in silent prayer upon the bare floors. Where the Chapter serfs might seek distraction, recreation or sleep during the long hours of the night watch, their masters sparred relentlessly and ate only sparingly, like the ascetics and penitents of monastic tradition.

Many months ago, they had been dispatched across the sector to Egottha, where the bones of Segas, the Chapter’s first honoured Chaplain, had lain in state for centuries. Reclusiarch Hornindal had ignited their faith and led them down to the surface of the contested planet, only to receive word from Sotha of the general recall on the very eve of battle. Like a bolt pistol primed and ready to fire, the Scythes had been holstered once more without unleashing their righteous fury upon the foe.

So it was, that when Chaplain Demetrios summoned his warriors for combat, they were only too ready to respond.

Three full squads now stood assembled in the marshalling hall, in an interlocking sickle formation with armourer serfs scurrying between them. Thirty of the Chapter’s finest, their yellow-and-black battle-plate gleaming in the chamber’s flickering light; casting giant shadows upon the deck.

It was in the shadow of these giants that Milus Ogden felt that he had lived his whole life.

As the Xenophon’s sergeant-at-arms, he and his team had been summoned to the hall along with their Space Marine masters, though it had felt almost like a courtesy. An afterthought. As if they would not also be required to fight and to die, when the time came.

They had abandoned their efforts to break into the Navigator’s chambers, though he had left a pair of his men to watch over the quaking, bleating astropaths in the chantry. At Shipmaster Kaeron’s command, the psykers had attempted to establish communion with noble Sotha, but as they had opened their minds to the warp they began shrieking and wailing, prostrating themselves upon the deck and begging for deliverance from the insidious alien presence that overwhelmed their thoughts.

Even as Ogden stood in the shadow of the Chapter, so now did the shadow of the beast hang over them all. It had blinded them, and silenced their cries in the darkness. Most chillingly, it was possessed of an undying, insatiable hunger, the haggard chief astropath had assured him in no uncertain terms.

It meant to devour every last one of them.

The arched bulkhead doors at the head of the marshalling hall slid open on heavy motors, and Reclusiarch Hornindal entered with Demetrios and a handful of robed Reclusiam serfs. Though their faces were bare, the two Chaplains were decked out in their ebon plate, Hornindal also framed with a great ceremonial cloak of ochre velvet embroidered with the Chapter’s twin-scythe emblem. The thud of their armoured boots upon the deck rang throughout the chamber; every one of the assembled Space Marines stared ahead with impassive ruby helmet optics as they passed, though Ogden could feel the sense of expectation in the air.

Hornindal wasted no time on ceremony or introductions.

‘Brothers. We exited the warp just over twenty-seven minutes ago, approximately six and a half days short of our destination, somewhere between systems in the vicinity of Artaxis. It is my belief that in answering the Chapter’s recall we have encountered the vanguard of a new tyranid hive fleet within Ultima Segmentum, and that their malign psychic presence is responsible for the sudden death of our Navigator.’

Though the Scythes of the Emperor remained characteristically stoic, a few murmurs ran through Ogden’s security officers. He glared sidelong at them, a terse reminder that they stood under the gaze of their masters – Chaplain Demetrios in particular was known to have little patience for ill-disciplined serfs.

‘Though I no longer have any doubt that the xenos’ arrival is in some way linked to the recent troubles along the Eastern Fringe,’ the Reclusiarch continued, ‘this craven, scattered deployment of their forces does not fit with previous models of tyranid fleet activity. The alien is cunning. It learns from its defeats. It already knows that it could not conquer the glorious Imperium with a singular frontal assault, and so now it seeks an alternative.

‘The shipmaster and his officers assure me that no logical trajectory could bring this hive ship and the accompanying swarm so far into the subsector, either from Saphir or the Eastern Fringe regions, without encountering at least some Imperial resistance along the way. Therefore we must assume that the wretched xenos have divided their forces, seeking to harry us along many different fronts and spread their foul influence as widely as possible. They have spawned a vast spore-minefield to blockade the system. Their psychic shadow is growing.’

Ogden felt a curious mix of horror and anger at those words. Though the tyranid menace of Hive Fleet Behemoth was already long vanquished before even his great grandfather had entered the indentured service of the Scythes, whispered tales had spread from battlefronts throughout Ultima Segmentum and gone on to become the stuff of legend. As a child, his cruel siblings had terrified him with stories of the unseen, multi-limbed xenos creatures that they insisted lived in the tunnels beneath the hab-centre, and would gladly feast upon the flesh of soldiers and little boys alike. On many a cold Sothan night, the young Milus had cowered beneath his blanket and started at every imagined noise in the darkness – a far cry from the stern officer who now wore the heraldry of the Chapter with pride.

There was something else, though. Perhaps a more primal fear.

It was akin to the revulsion he felt when even a harmless domestic arachnid would scuttle across the floor of his quarters – the irreconcilable hatred that humanity had nurtured for non-mammalian life since the dawn of time. If that arachnid could master interstellar travel and demand an empire of its own, where then might its predatory gaze fall? What ‘foul influence’ might it exert over the worlds of man?

Ogden steadied himself. He forced his attention back to the grim-faced Reclusiarch, who seemed to tower above even his Space Marine brethren as he spoke.

‘In issuing the general recall, Chapter Master Thorcyra likely summons us to defend the Chapter’s territories to the galactic east from the xenos incursion. However, his eye may have been diverted away from the far greater threat that we have uncovered, here and now – based upon our current position, Shipmaster Kaeron has calculated that our noble homeworld of Sotha already lies within the projected engagement zone.’

Only now did the assembled Space Marines visibly react, with stifled curses and cries of defiance as their tight ranks faltered.

‘Stoke your hatred, brothers!’ cried Demetrios, his gauntleted fist raised high. ‘Save it for the bastard Devourer!’

Many of the mortal serfs were far less restrained in their outcry, and Ogden found himself joining them. Among other less coherent threats that echoed in the chamber, he hefted his lascarbine above his head and vowed the death of the entire tyranid race.

It was unthinkable. Sotha could not fall.

The world was the ancestral home of the Chapter, true, but for many of those present – human and posthuman alike – it was also their birthplace, and for the rest it was at the very least the home of their blood-kin.

In spite of the uproar, Hornindal calmly took up his crozius arcanum from the robed armourer standing ready beside him. With a simple gesture, he ignited the weapon’s crackling power field and held it defiantly aloft, bringing the hall to silence once more. When he spoke again, Ogden noted the old, familiar flicker of restrained zeal in the Reclusiarch’s voice.

‘Brothers, praise be to Him-on-Terra – you and I are of the same mind. We will not allow the hated xenos to lay even a single claw upon our home world! Forewarned, the Scythes of the Emperor will repel any foe, and Chapter Master Thorcyra will lead us in driving the damnable hive fleets from the face of the galaxy forever!’

Cheers, and cries of ‘For Sotha! For the Emperor!’ erupted from the assembly. Chaplain Demetrios bared his teeth in something like a grin, and donned his skull-faced helm before approaching the squads to begin his battle ministrations; first Brother-Sergeant Certes, and then Edios, readily knelt before him to take their solemn oaths.

Turning to marshal his team, Ogden was surprised to see Hornindal approaching him directly. Though he still bore the active crozius, the Reclusiarch did not carry in his manner the same ever-present threat of violence as Demetrios.

‘This duty weighs heavily upon us all, serf-sergeant,’ he said. ‘Without a Navigator, we cannot risk any warp jump to relay our warning to Sotha ourselves. We must, therefore, move through the swarm and beyond the psychic shadow of the hive ship. We must re-establish astropathic communications as soon as possible.’

Ogden nodded. ‘Indeed, my lord… Though that may be just as dangerous as heading back into the xenos minefield…’

He waited for some kind of response, but Hornindal only stared impassively back at him.

‘Where would you have my men deployed, then?’

‘You should prepare for boarding actions.’

‘Board a tyranid vessel, my lord?’ Ogden asked, incredulous. ‘Is such a thing even possible?’

‘No. You misunderstand.’ The Reclusiarch watched absently as the third squad leader, Hekaton, took the knee before Demetrios. ‘If we are not vaporised by bio-plasma or torn apart in the vacuum, then the xenos will try to board us.’

Ogden considered this for a long moment. He could not decide which fate sounded worse.

Like a blade aimed at the heart of the swarm, the Xenophon soared onwards. Her weapons batteries fired until the barrels glowed hot, dashing smaller xenos vessels against the blackness with las-fire and bursts of ordnance; driving the hideous things back in waves.

To Goss’s eyes, they were not even ships in any sense of the word that he could justify. The way they skipped and swam put him in mind of shoals of aquatic hunters, twisting and pirouetting between the Xenophon’s streaking missiles, before wheeling around to strafe her shields with their return fire. They hounded the ship relentlessly, probing the limits of her defences even as they died upon them.

The gunnery officers could not hope to target the vessels with the same fire-patterns they would use to engage traditional craft. The damned things were too fast, too unpredictable; it was like using a boltgun to swat flies. Instead, Shipmaster Kaeron had ordered them to create a kill zone three hundred metres out beyond the ship’s prow – a wall of random fire and timed detonations that would defy whatever morphic intelligence guided the abominations, and either force them aside or tear them to pieces. It was now just a question of whether there was physically enough ordnance on board to see them through to the far side of the swarm. It was far more likely, Goss knew, that the guns would run dry long before that.

As if in confirmation, a warning symbol flashed on the oculus’s hololithic overlay and lent another insistent chiming to the myriad combat alarums that filled the bridge space.

‘The starboard missile racks are empty, sir. We’re down to the reserve magazines.’ He hesitated for a moment, before muttering under his breath. ‘She’s only a destroyer. She’s not built to repel this kind of sustained attack. We’re not going to make it through.’

Kaeron stood in front of his throne, staring up at the tactical display. He replied without shifting his gaze.

‘You don’t know the Xenophon, then. The old girl’s fast, and she’s still got teeth.’

As the hololith refreshed on its three-second combat cycle, flocks of fresh contacts entered the display at the boundaries of auspex range – hosts of new organisms spawned by the larger carriers, or maybe even by the gargantuan hive ship itself? With so many returns it was difficult to tell. Some seemed only to circle at a distance, never even committing to an attack run.

At the centre of the tableau hung the flashing scythe icon representing the beleaguered destroyer, a lone speck of green in an ever-growing ocean of red.

The shipmaster gritted his teeth. ‘Order the starboard crews to reload. I don’t want both racks down at the same time.’

‘Aye, sir.’

A succession of strafing impacts rang through the hull, and one of the foul vessel-creatures swooped in through the void shields to buzz the forecastle before disappearing overhead. Reflexively, several of the bridge crew ducked, but in the instant that it passed the frontal viewports Goss saw a flash of twisted chitin, fused carapace and ice-rimed, horned flesh.

Throne, the horrid thing had even had little leathery fins…

Though the swarm engulfed them, beyond it all lay the lolling bulk of the hive ship; a grossly distended, living horizon. Its great tentacle arms moved languidly in comparison to the rest of the fleet, highlighting the unimaginable difference in scale between them as the Xenophon sped closer. Like some bloated, coddled kraken, the hive ship seemed to watch the unfolding battle with a casual disinterest, the way a fattened Radnarian courtesan might regard a scurrying colony of ants.

Choking back his disgust, Goss reviewed the course that he and his fellow officers had plotted to bring them out of the thing’s shadow. By pulling in close to the gravity well of the planetoid Sigma-Tumbus IV – which was now almost completely eclipsed in their view by the hive ship – they aimed to accelerate beyond the capabilities of the smaller, organic vessels and race for the deep-range shipping lanes beyond. There, Kaeron had reasoned, the astropaths would be free of the alien horror that clouded their minds and could send word to another ship.

Assuming that any ship would hear them.

A renewed proximity alarm sounded, and the Master of Signal called out from his console. ‘Large xenos craft, on direct intercept!’

Coming about from beneath them, a huge, bladed monstrosity turned with surprising agility to bear down into the Xenophon’s kill zone. Seeming to manoeuvre using the largest of its curved appendages, the vessel opened its blunted bow to the void in a silent roar, revealing a fleshy gullet lined with thousands of razored spines. Goss’s stomach lurched as he realised that the thing could likely swallow the ship’s prow and the main batteries along with it.

Kaeron turned and threw himself into the command throne. ‘Finally, something we can target.’ He brought the vox-hailer to his lips with obvious relish. ‘Helm, maintain ahead full. Weapons, make ready for torpedo launch, on my mark.’

Adrenaline surged in Goss’s veins. The razored fiend grew ever larger in the oculus view, scattering the smaller vessels as it came, and the Xenophon was racing to meet it head-on.

‘Enemy vessel at three-fifty metres,’ he said, managing to keep his voice steady.

As the huge creature broke through the edge of the kill zone, las-fire stitching its flanks with deep burns and blasting chunks from the ridged carapace, Kaeron slammed his fist down and shrieked into the vox.

‘Fire! All tubes, fire now!’

The ship lurched as four mighty torpedoes burst from her prow and raced towards the target, though they barely altered her forward velocity.

A seemingly prescient smaller tyranid vessel dived in front of the first projectile, sacrificing itself to save its larger cousin in a burst of ruined flesh and bony shrapnel, but the second, third and fourth found their mark easily. Huge warheads designed to bring down renegade capital ships detonated in the monster’s gullet, blasting the foul thing apart in a flaring bloom of catastrophic, organic ruin. Slathers of flesh and ropes of bloody fluid dozens of metres in length crackled through the Xenophon’s void shields and splattered over her pockmarked hull, to the cheers of the bridge crew.

Kaeron turned to Goss, the thrill of battle written all over his face. ‘She’s got a taste for their blood now, eh?’ he yelled over the furore.

Goss barely heard him, his eyes wide in horror.

One of the dead creature’s wing-like blades, easily two hundred metres long on its own, had spun loose from the bio-wreckage and whirled towards them.

He had meant to call out to the helm for ‘evasive manoeuvres’, but before he could even utter the words the thundering jolt of the impact threw him from his feet. The bone spur sheared through the turrets at the Xenophon’s prow, and cleaved a great gash in the hull-skin down her port flank, before skipping up on the crenellated ridge at her crown and spiralling off into the darkness. Secondary explosions tore through the batteries as their magazines ignited, and warning klaxons howled with renewed vigour throughout the ship.

Ogden was sprinting the length of the ventral transit corridor when the shockwave hit. He felt a ripple of jarred air pressure on his bare face, and just a millisecond later the floor was yanked away from his feet.

He and one of his men – now wearing ship’s issue flak vests and their yellow-striped helmets – had been managing to keep pace with one of the armoured battle-brothers from Sergeant Hekaton’s squad as he ran another pair of boarding shields back from the armoury.

All thought of their task vanished as the deck lurched and the two men were catapulted into the ceiling. Ogden’s head skimmed past a ribbed support beam, but poor old Tyek wasn’t so fortunate – he struck it awkwardly, and the force of the collision snapped his neck and sent him sprawling.

In that same instant, Ogden was wrenched from the air by a rough, vice-like grip around his shoulder; the Space Marine caught him mid-flight and hauled him back down onto the rumbling deck before he could injure himself. Officer Tyek’s body crashed down on top of them both.

The hulking warrior crouched over Ogden for a long moment, shielding his comparatively frail mortal form with his own armoured bulk. His pauldron bore the name Mascios.

‘Are you damaged, honoured serf-sergeant?’ he asked bluntly, the words filtered and distorted by his helmet’s vox-emitters.

Winded, and with his heartbeat hammering loud in his ears, Ogden tried to shake his head. The thunder and crash of distant explosions, somewhere topside, reverberated through the walls and deck plates. Decompression alarms were already sounding.

He felt his ears pop. On board a ship in the deep void, that was a bad sign.

From further up the ventral space – possibly one or two levels above – there came another impact on the Xenophon’s outer hull, but it was the grinding shriek of torn metal that followed it which seized their attention: a localised hull breach, without any doubt.

Where, then, was the roar of venting atmosphere?

Mascios rose, his internal vox clicking audibly as he opened a channel, and Ogden realised that he had lost his own vox-bead in the fall. Finally finding his breath, he weakly pushed Tyek’s body aside and raised his hand, pleading for a moment to recover, but Mascios was already retrieving the two boarding shields.

‘No time,’ he said. ‘We’ve been hit. This entire section is–’

A crash of debris from further down the corridor silenced him, and he whipped around with his boltgun drawn. Ogden was beside him in a splintering second.

A bestial, guttural roar echoed in the gloom, followed by the dull creak of twisted plasteel as something huge and organic heaved its way into the ship.

Smoke filled the bridge, and a burst of sparks fell from somewhere in its vaulted reaches. The helm servitors babbled incoherently to one another.

Rising shakily from the floor, Goss became aware of blood soaking the front of his uniform tunic; he had broken his nose on the deck plates as he fell. He pawed at the fabric in a daze. The rest of the bridge crew, including Shipmaster Kaeron, were moving and talking far too quickly for him to follow. He heard screams and cries for aid over the vox as the forward compartments burned.

His gaze settled on the stuttering tactical display, and he saw that the smaller craft that had been circling the Xenophon were no longer hanging back.

They were moving in, at ramming speeds.

He shook his head, trying to clear his senses. Kaeron was shouting his name.

Off to port, he spotted a handful of them. They were barbed and elongated; fleshy, winged harpoons, each the size of a Thunderhawk. Larger, maybe. They swam through the vacuum like coral rays, rippling their fanned membranes against the nothingness and propelling themselves on to frightening velocities.

Goss fumbled with his console, imploring the remaining gunnery officers to bring them down. Warning symbols flashed all across the hololith.

Hull breach. Hull breach. Decompression. Hull breach.

The closest harpoon-vessel entered a killing dive, folding its wings behind it and rocketing down hard towards the destroyer’s unguarded aft sections. It disappeared from view just as another twirled down into the forecastle and stuck fast, in plain sight of the frontal port – it was like a feathered dart piercing the hide of a lumbering grox, standing proud from the hull and swaying from side to side in the vacuum.

Tech-adepts and their crews were already moving to seal the damaged compartments or to effect what repairs they could. Where the fires still burned, it would perhaps be simpler to lock off the bulkheads and vent the residual atmosphere into the void...

A single voice cut through the chaos of the vox. It was Reclusiarch Hornindal.

‘Security teams to the engineering decks – we are breached. Scythes, to me. Let us show these xenos which of us is the dominant species.’

Coughing in the lingering smoke of some unseen electrical fire, Kaeron appeared at Goss’s side, his left arm clutched limply across his chest.

‘Deck officer!’

Wiping blood on the back of his sleeve, Goss frowned. ‘Sir?’

‘Our course, man,’ Kaeron growled. ‘Can we still reach the gravity well?’

‘With these… things piercing our hull? It’s possible...’ He ran a hand over the console. ‘We’re restoring atmospheric pressure, at least.’

The shipmaster nodded. ‘All power to the engines. Forget the fight. Proceed with our primary objective – we drop our shields and run.’

Following in the footsteps of the armoured battle-brothers, Ogden’s security officers filed quickly down through the access passage to the aft engineering bays. The stench of smoke and hot bile assaulted their nostrils. A strangled scream echoed down from the upper gantries before being ominously cut short.

Ogden checked and rechecked his weapon’s charge.

In the stuttering light from the lumen strips down here, just above the Xenophon’s bilges, it was all too easy to imagine alien horrors lurking at every gloomy intersection they passed.

The five Space Marines – Brother Mascios and the rest of his combat squad – had taken point as soon as the team had entered the narrow passage; Sergeant Hekaton had taken the rest of his men back to the upper levels, where a fourth tyranid vessel had breached the hull-skin. Though the Scythes, equipped with their hefty boarding shields, sought to place themselves between their loyal serfs and whatever alien threat lay in wait, they would only be able to go so far to protect them. Frantic reports from the other teams spoke of entire crew compartments that had either been flooded with xenos toxins or opened up to the vacuum.

Chaplain Demetrios was leading Squad Certes in a desperate counter-offensive on the observation deck, now overrun by chittering, bladed creatures whose inhuman cries could clearly be heard over the combat channels. Edios had fallen, defending tech-crews in the devastated forward sections, though three of his warriors had survived long enough to drag their dying brethren from the inferno.

On the verge of escape through the Sigma-Tumbus gravity well, the Xenophon was being torn apart from the inside. Now Ogden led his combined team in what would be the final attempt to repel the invaders.

Fourteen of them, standing together as one in the face of an unknowable, alien foe.

‘For Sotha,’ he quietly reminded himself.

A staccato burst of gunfire lit up the junction ahead, and the Space Marines heaved their shields into a defensive phoulkon formation. Ogden brought his lascarbine up reflexively, and motioned for his men to hold position.

The heavy thrashing of a large body shook the walls of the passage, followed by a low growl that rapidly turned into a gagging, fluid eruption.

Two crew-serfs in tattered overalls were hurled out into the main passageway by a great gout of bio-acid which scored deep burns into the metal wall. They tumbled to the deck, screaming and clawing at their eyes and mouths even as their flesh came away in sticky handfuls, convulsing their last moments away with rapidly wasting muscles.

Curses and cries of horror among the team were muted as the foul stench washed over them. It smelled like vomit and rotten, burned meat.

Advancing quickly, two of the Scythes turned the corner to block the open junction with their shields while another hurried three of Ogden’s men over to the other side. They picked their way through the growing pool of acidic spoil, hardly daring to steal a glance into the engineering bay as they passed.

Now flanking either side of the tunnel, the two shieldbearers pulled back and hunkered in close to the plasteel uprights as more agitated, titanic thrashing heralded another gout of bio-acid. This time it sluiced over the left-hand wall and corroded the metal plating, and the passageway began to fill with acrid, choking steam.

A series of vox-clicks between the giants betrayed the fact that they were again communicating with one another over closed channels. Frustrated, Ogden used the Chapter’s non-verbal battle language to demand an appraisal from them, his bare hand casting the gesture twice for emphasis.

Brother Mascios stole another glance into the bay, before signing out to the rest of the team.

Single large target. Twenty-five metres, straight ahead.

He leaned towards Ogden, with a gesture of almost paternal concern.

Immobile. Extreme hazard.

Ogden nodded, and divided his men into three fire-groups – one to each flank and one to cover the centre. The Space Marines edged into the groups without instruction, moving instinctively into the perfect tactical deployment.

Frag grenades were suddenly passing between their gauntleted hands. It was to be a frontal assault, then.

At Ogden’s command, the three groups burst from the tunnel by sections, emerging through the shattered remains of the bay’s main hatchway. The fire-groups clustered behind the shieldbearers, keeping their heads down and advancing quickly as the first grenades detonated in the enclosed compartment.

In spite of what they had already heard from the Xenophon’s other security teams and the Space Marine squads engaged throughout the ship, Ogden was still not prepared for the sight that greeted him in that chamber. His pace faltered as his mind tried to process it.

The outer wall, triple-skinned away from the hull with reinforced plasteel and adamantium alloys, had burst inwards where the tyranid ram-vessel had breached the Xenophon, spearing through the inner bulkheads as though they were made from nothing more than wax. Around the breach, amidst the twisted iron debris and jutting rebar, the deck plates were scorched and buckled by the mass of the alien vessel’s living proboscis as it had forced its way in.

And there it lay. A thrashing, mewling thing, easily the size of a great Sothan phantine; recoiling from the frag blasts and bolter fire that peppered its fleshier parts with stinging shrapnel as they began their assault.

Though the majority of its hide was horned and armoured in thick chitin, it had blossomed open to feed upon the soft bodies of the ship’s crew – half-digested human remains and smears of bloody juices fizzed and hissed on the deck before it. Ogden knew that those Chapter serfs who laboured down in the engineering decks under the watchful eye of the tech-adepts would have little access to small arms, and certainly no projectile weapons powerful enough to prevail against a monster such as this. When the main bulkhead portals between sections had sealed in response to the hull breach, they would have been trapped down here with it.

The thing heaved up and roared, its tusked mouthparts snapping wide and lashing at the nearest fire-group as they drew around to the right. It plucked one of them from his feet, to the horror of his comrades, and the man disappeared into the gaping maw with a single ragged scream.

In a panic, the two remaining security officers bolted for the cover of an upended machine cart, their shots flashing harmlessly off the thing’s horned crest as they ran. Their Space Marine shieldbearer bellowed at them to hold position, and in that moment of inattention the beast struck; it splintered the ceramite of his boarding shield and cleaved deep into his armoured torso. The warrior was flung to the deck, choking blood inside his helmet and clutching at his spilled innards.

Horrified, Ogden saw bloated, venous sacs behind the first crest of the proboscis swelling as they filled with liquid. It was preparing to vomit up another gout of digestive acids.

But Mascios had already seen the danger. The armoured giant crossed the wreckage-strewn bay in the space of two heartbeats, avoiding the whipcord feeder tendrils that writhed at the thing’s flanks and leapt in with his combat blade drawn. With a wordless battle-cry he stabbed down into the lowermost sac again and again, spilling gallons of steaming fluid over his armour and onto the deck, robbing the beast of the fuel for its attack.

The horrid mouth clammed shut, the whole proboscis shaking from side to side in an agonised frenzy, batting the Space Marine away with its sheer bulk.

But it was enough. Between the three groups, they poured bolter and las-fire into the gaps between its segmented chitin plates, and stitched the weaker membranous flesh with shots every time it opened its mouthparts to roar. Mascios himself ended it, stuffing a clutch of grenades into the torn flesh behind the armoured crest before diving clear.

The muffled blast almost severed the proboscis entirely. It showered the walls and ceiling with bloody alien filth, and sent the slack, ruined mouth crashing to the deck.

They cheered. Between them all, they had brought the mighty beast low.

Brother Mascios rose, his battle-plate pitted and scored where the powerful acid had worked upon it. The bare metal and ceramite rendered him as a ghost, a pale reflection of his glorious Chapter colours and with wisps of steam rising from the more delicate joint seals. He released the catches on his helmet and pulled it off to reveal reddened, sore features and bloodshot eyes.

Another of the Scythes stood tall and honoured him with the old Sothan salute – right fist closed over the primary heart, then swept out before him. The salute of the reaper, the inevitable victor. Mascios returned the gesture with a thin smile, though he appeared pained by his exertions and the loss of his fallen battle-brother.

Behind him, Ogden saw the flesh of the tyranid vessel twitch. Just once – most likely the post-mortem constrictions of its alien physiology.

Then a second time.

And again.

He tried to speak, to yell out a warning, but no sound left his lips.

The dead flesh was writhing. Churning.

The xenos erupted from the body of their vessel like maggots from a sun-warmed carcass. Ogden froze at the sight. Brother Mascios turned, and in that moment they were upon him. Many-limbed horrors of teeth, claws and glittering, savage eyes, they rose up from Ogden’s childhood nightmares and spilled into reality – so grotesque, so inhuman, and yet… so familiar. They moved and killed with a hunched, insectoid gait, and Mascios’s hot blood splattered across the serf-sergeant’s face.

Gunfire erupted, along with cries of terror and alarm as dozens more of the creatures swarmed into the chamber.

Ogden sank to his knees on the deck, his lascarbine clattering from numbed fingers. He simply could not will himself to rise against them; some primitive, animal part of his brain would not allow it. He was utterly entranced as they lunged and shrieked and tore into his comrades and masters.

It was almost a blessed relief when their scything xenos talons pierced his own flesh and carved him to pieces. Yet in that final moment, he nonetheless felt a strange, cold reassurance that he had done his part.

Hornindal was lost once more in the holy fury of combat.

Without conscious thought he struck left, the powered discharge of his crozius shattering a leaping tyranid’s skull into sticky fragments. He raised his bolt pistol to the right and put two rounds into the central mass of another, before whirling on his heel to strike at a third.

Suffer not the alien to live.

Those words might well have been one of the principal tenets of his faith – nay, the word of the almighty Emperor of Mankind himself! – such was the fervour with which Hornindal now fought.

It seemed, though, that this was to be his end. No glorious death alongside his Chapter brothers on the field of war, no last stand worthy of a small monument in the Reclusiam for his successors to revere. Not that he had pursued such things; he had lived modestly, as a Scythes of the Emperor should, always ready to defend humanity and willing to give his life for that noble cause.

He had made peace with it, as he always did, before he had even drawn his weapons and taken his battle-oaths. But he was going to die here, unknown and unremembered, and for that he would make the xenos pay a hefty price in blood. Another wave of the vile creatures – during the Tyrannic War, they had called them ‘gaunts’ – spilled from the ruptured bulkhead portals at the far end of the corridor. He loosed five shots from his pistol with a steady hand, and five more fell dead.

‘Hold, abominations!’ he cried out through his helmet’s enhanced vox-projectors. ‘You will not cross this threshold. Not while I still draw breath, nor after.’

Even without the gruff burr of the dying klaxons that were sounding in every chamber and compartment throughout the ship, he doubted that the things could have heard or understood him.

The Reclusiarch fought with his back to the sealed portal that led to the astropaths’ chambers. He had made the tech-crews weld it shut, before casting off his cloak to await the skittering, living tide.

Beyond all else, the chantry could not be overrun.

They had to send the warning.

He had left a single armed security officer in with them, to ensure that they did not turn upon one another in some alien madness – a stern man who looked like he would do his duty without remorse. The psykers had gone on howling in terror even as the bulkhead had been sealed. ‘Walled in’, they had called it. Walled in with their shadowy nightmares.

His bolt pistol ran dry. He calmly reloaded it, taking the last clip from his belt, and watching the gaunts scramble over the mounds of their dead that clogged the corridor before he opened fire once more.

When he felt the Xenophon’s engines gutter and die for the last time through the deck beneath his feet, Hornindal gritted his teeth and let out a long, slow breath. He turned to the cowering serf, who fired sporadic and wildly inaccurate laspistol shots from his hiding place in the open wall panel beside the sealed portal.

‘Sub-lieutenant Goss, contact the shipmaster.’

When the ship-wide vox channels had gone down, Kaeron had sent the young officer with a portable wired unit to stand by the Reclusiarch until the very end. To ensure that the lines of communication were not broken, no matter what happened.

The terrified serf patched the link through to Hornindal’s internal vox, gripping the channel monitor close to his ear but unable to tear his eyes away from the encroaching xenos creatures.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron,’ Hornindal said, with a degree of finality in his voice.

There was a burst of static, and it was some moments before any response came.

‘Lord Reclusiarch. We have lost the main engines. The aft decks have fallen.’

Hornindal fired another shot, decapitating a tyranid as it crested the mound.

‘Have we reached the planetoid?’ he asked. ‘Can you complete the escape manoeuvre using auxiliary thrusters?’

There was a long pause. Goss stared up at the Space Marine, a plaintive look on his face. The pandemonium of the bridge was still audible before Kaeron replied.

‘No, my lord. We have entered the Sigma-Tumbus gravity well, but we were already off course and underpowered. We won’t be able to pull away on the far side of the elliptic. Our orbit has begun to decay.’

Hornindal sagged. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said without emotion. ‘It’s over. Launch the beacon.’

‘Of course, Lord Reclusiarch. Will you record a message?’

‘I will.’

Goss screamed in frustration, and snapped off a flurry of shots with his pistol.

‘I should have known, my lord!’ he cried. ‘Tumbus. It means tomb…’

Ignoring the serf’s hysteria, Hornindal checked his own magazine. He could feel a deep rumble building in the walls around them; not the rhythmic hum of the Xenophon’s systems, but the inexorable pull of conflicting gravities and the rush of atmosphere over her hull.

Sixty-five seconds to impact.

‘This is Brother-Chaplain Hornindal, Reclusiarch of the Scythes of the Emperor, Adeptus Astartes. Chapter vessel Xenophon has encountered a tyranid vanguard fleet deep in the Artaxian subsector. The local Mandeville point is mined. Do not attempt to recover this beacon, I repeat: do not attempt to recover this beacon. Advise our home world of Sotha it lies in the path of the xenos invaders. Look to our–’

A screeching burst of static cut the channel, followed only a moment later by a reverberating explosion that rocked the ship. The remaining lumen strips went dark.

‘Kaeron! Confirm beacon launch!’ he bellowed. This time there was no response.

Like rats, the gaunts scattered, disappearing into the gloom.

Thirty-two seconds.

The frantic Goss cried out in alarm as the corridor began to tilt down towards them, and even Hornindal stumbled as the mounds of xenos corpses shifted. The two of them would be buried alive, crushed against the bulkhead by the weight of their kills in the enclosed space.

Another blast tore up from the decks below and sheared metal panels from the corridor’s ceiling, hurling the Reclusiarch bodily into the sealed portal. Debris and foul alien carcasses tumbled down onto the two of them as the Xenophon’s angle of descent increased.

Sotha. Oh, noble Sotha… heed our warning.

Hornindal recalled the horrors he had seen unleashed upon conquered worlds during the Tyrannic War. Seas drained, populations consumed. The horizon blighted by vast xenos towers that pierced the heavens.

He imagined this doom for his home world, and he wept.

Seventeen seconds. Sixteen.

The mighty warrior swatted aside the corpses that slipped and skidded down the slope of the ruined corridor, gripping young Goss by his uniform tunic and dragging him up from the crush.

Protect them always. And when you cannot, simply aid their passing.

The far reaches of the corridor buckled with a deafening groan of tortured metal – the Xenophon’s back was broken. It would not be long now. Deck plates popped free in an undulating wave away from the dorsal ridge, firing rivets and corroded debris into the darkness.

The whole ship lurched as something broke away from the outer hull, and roaring flames swept the length of the corridor; they were ablaze with the heat of atmospheric re-entry.

Hornindal clutched Goss tightly against his broad, armoured chest. The bloodied young officer screamed into the white noise of the inferno, his epaulettes and wrinkled collar smouldering in the heat, his bare face blistering.

Hornindal closed his eyes. He imagined the planet’s surface racing up to meet them as they burned. Something in the ship’s superstructure cracked beneath him.

Holy Emperor, I have failed you. I have failed them all.

He braced both feet against the bulkhead.

Four. Three. Two.

Extract from Fear to Tread

James Swallow

At the start, it had been Horus who called the tune of the battle plans. In the strategium of his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, the master of the Luna Wolves faced his brother across a wide hololithic display and showed him the plan he had conceived to break the will of the nephilim. It was shock and awe, an implacable and showy display of combat might, the kind that Sanguinius’s sibling had made his own time and again throughout the wars of the Great Crusade. In a sea of red and white, Horus wanted the Blood Angels to march shoulder-to-shoulder with their cousins, cowing the aliens with the sight of an army of thousands rolling without pause to the gates of their last bastion. And then through those gates, over the battlements, not stopping, not pausing to parley or hesitate. Like the ocean these things sprang from, Horus had said, we will roll over the aliens, drag them down and drown them.

The sheer bombast of the plan was its greatest strength, but Sanguinius had not been easily swayed to it. Across the hololith, the two brothers had argued and countered, to and fro, one presenting obstacles and challenges to the other. To an outside observer, it might have seemed aloof, almost callous to see these two mighty genhanced soldiers talking over a monumental confrontation as if it were little more than a game of regicide.

But nothing could be further from the truth. The Blood Angel looked into the panes of the holograph and saw the countless icons representing civilian concentrations, the play of the geography, the deceptive desert landscape full of hidden chokepoints and kill-boxes. In his mind, Horus had already weighed the tactics of the engagement and made a regrettable, but necessary choice. He had made the difficult decision and then moved past it, ridden on. Not from heartlessness, but from expedience.

Sanguinius could not do so as easily. The blunt, brute-force approach was better suited to their more intemperate kinsmen, to Russ or to Angron, and neither Sanguinius nor his brother Horus were so artless, so focused upon the target to the detriment of all else.

But it was difficult not to allow the cold rage instilled by the actions of the nephilim to be given its rein. The alien giants, mocking humanity’s great dream with their talk of peace and unity, had left a trail of destruction behind them that had claimed a hundred worlds before they had come to rest upon Melchior.

Sagan, the DeCora Spine, Orpheo Minoris, Beta Rigel II. These planets had been denuded of all human life, populations herded into empath-chapels as big as mountains and then slowly consumed. The true horror of it was that the nephilim used those they preyed upon to do their soldiering for them, snaring the pliant, the lonely, the sorrowful with their ideal of an attainable godhood. They plied them with stories of eternal existence for the faithful, of endless sorrow for the agnostic; and they were very good at it.

Perhaps the xenos really believed that what they were doing was somehow taking them closer to a form beyond flesh, to an afterlife in an eternal heaven-state; it did not matter. With their technologies they implanted bits of themselves into their thralls to further their communion, they cut their own flesh and made the masks to mark their devotees. The nephilim controlled minds, either through the transmitted power of their will or through the weak character of those they chose.

They were an affront to the Emperor’s secular galaxy, not only an offence to the purity of a human ideal but in their insidious cuckoo-nest displacement of those who foolishly gave them fealty.

For what the aliens fed upon, what the scouts of the Blood Angels and Luna Wolves had seen and reported back, were the very lives of those who cherished them. The empty chapels were piled high with stacks of desiccated corpses, bodies aged years in hours as all living essence was siphoned from them. It had sickened the primarchs as the true understanding of the enemy they faced was, at last, revealed.

The nephilim fed on adulation.

Thus, Sanguinius would deny these repellent xenos their sustenance and defeat their arrogance in the same blow. The invaders believed that the Emperor’s sons would never starve them by resorting to the murder of the humans they took as their cattle, and that was so. Yet what the nephilim considered a weakness, the Angel made a strength. So confident were they of their unassailable position, they had met Horus’s arrival with almost the full might of their forces, daring the Luna Wolves to strike at them.

And with the aliens turning their backs, their belief in their victory already blinding them to the unbreakable strength of intent within the warriors they now faced, the true angels fell in fire on Melchior and became the hammer of the Emperor’s wrath.

Running at a charge, the primarch was a hurricane, racing into the thick of the nephilim lines and taking to the air in deft, agile moves. With his sword and the shorter blades of a glaive built into his vambrace he made kill after kill, shouting down those who tried to deafen him with their dirge-waves. Flanking him, Azkaellon and Zuriel, first and second of his personal guard, used their wrist-mounted Angelus bolters to pour cascades of fire into the enemy line. With each hit, the warheads of the mass-reactive bloodshard rounds exploded into hundreds of magno-charged monofilaments; every concussive impact upon the skin of a nephilim caused bloody detonations inside the torsos of the alien creatures. Lakes of bluish, shimmering internal fluids littered the battleground, shrinking slowly as the silver sand absorbed them.

At the heels of the Guard came the captains leading their assault companies. Raldoron, the Blooded of the First, hurled bolter fire from the weapon in his steady hand, his elite veterans emblazoned with ebon fetishes carved in the fashion of the hunter tribes on the Blood Angels home world of Baal. The First Captain was joined by elements of Furio’s Ninth Company shield-bearers, Galan’s men of the 16th with their favoured blade-staves, and Amit with the Fifth, every one of them bearing boltgun and flaying knife.

Heavy weapon barrages concentrated on the copper towers and the walls of the empath-chapels, denying the nephilim the infrastructure of their haven, forcing them to engage head-on. To the south, where Horus had drawn his feint, the great tide of battle was shifting and breaking. The Luna Wolves had first dug in, block-ading any progress or escape by the xenos, and now they advanced. Extending into a wide arc, the line of Horus’s soldiery forced the varicoloured giants back, pressing them on to the blades and the guns of the Blood Angels. With brutal inevitability, the trap the Emperor’s sons had devised aboard the Vengeful Spirit closed like a vice. With each passing minute, they left the aliens less and less room to manoeuvre. Many of the nephilim’s converts began to surrender, droves of them crying out in pain as they tried to peel off the bonded masks; while those too far along the road to worship spent their lives for their masters in a vain and fruitless attempt to slow the pace of the Space Marines.

Sanguinius had no pity for these dupes. They had allowed themselves to be drawn in by pretty words, let themselves be ruled by their fears instead of by their hopes. And in much greater measure, he had only anger for the nephilim themselves.

Over the bodies of the alien dead, the crimson legionaries and their golden warlord turned fury upon the giants. The whickering music of the aliens’ strange songs became an atonal scale of panicked noises punctuated by chugging snarls of aggression. Horus’s landspeeder squadrons raced overhead, bracketing a phalanx of blue-skins with salvoes from their graviton guns and multi-meltas, punching through curls of smoke as the outer rings of the encampment burned.

Galan’s war-cry drew the primarch’s attention and he spared the captain a glance. There was such ferocity, such resolve in the face of the warrior, and Sanguinius felt a surge of pride to be fighting alongside his sons. Legionaries born of Baal and Terra alike, united many years earlier by the Angel himself under a banner of incarnadine, these were his sharpest blades, his brightest minds. In battle they were unparalleled, and for a moment the primarch allowed himself to feel the pure, wild joy of the fight. They were going to win; that had never been in doubt.

The enemy was in disarray, and their villainy was unquestioned. This was a righteous battle, the victory of the Imperium as inevitable as the rising of Melchior’s sun. Sanguinius and Horus would win this day, and a lost world would be brought back into the fold once more. This would be done, by battle-brothers and brothers in blood, by primarch and legionary alike. He could taste the victory on his lips, sweet and dark like good wine.

And so there, on Melchior’s shining sands, the nephilim were put to the sword.

In the aftermath, the freed slaves were isolated from the converts who still remained alive for fear that revenge killings would explode from a mob mentality. Horus took on this deed, in no uncertain terms drilling those who claimed to lead the liberated that justice would be delivered to all turncoats – but it would be Imperial justice, right and true and conducted to the letter of the law.

In the meantime, the convert prisoners were given back-breaking menial work, overseen by troopers from the Imperial Army brigades that had come to support the Legions. The converts carried the dead nephilim to great pyres set about the desert and were made to burn the corpses of the aliens they had worshipped; others were formed into work gangs whose task was to dismantle the copper devotional towers they had forced their fellows to build only days earlier.

Sanguinius stood atop a shallow hill of pale rock and watched the sun dropping towards the distant horizon. His wings were pulled close, and the xenos blood shed upon him as he fought was gone, cleansed from his armour. He nodded to himself. Melchior was safe, the victory secure. Already his thoughts were moving towards the next battle, the next world in need of illumination.

A smile grew on his lips as he sensed his brother’s approach, but he did not turn to look at Horus. ‘There is a question that concerns me greatly,’ said Sanguinius, with false gravity.

‘Oh?’ The lord of the Luna Wolves halted at his side. ‘That sounds troubling.’

Neither of them paid heed to it, but directly below in the shallow canyon beneath the rise, many of the common soldiers, prisoners, even their own legionaries, paused to watch. It was a sight to see a single primarch in the flesh; to behold a pair of these gene-forged transhumans at once was something that many of those watching would remember for as long as they lived. For many different reasons.

‘How can I ease your disquiet, brother?’ Horus went on, affecting a serious mien.

The Angel eyed him. ‘If the grey had done as you asked, if it had set the thralls free… Tell me, would you really have let the aliens go?’

Horus nodded, as if the answer were obvious. ‘I am a man of my word. I would have let them leave the planet’s surface, make for orbit…’ He cocked his head. ‘But when they met your ships up there, well…’ He gave a small shrug, the huge shoulders of his battle plate exaggerating the motion. ‘You’ve never been as agreeable as I.’

The smile became a moment of laughter. Sanguinius gave a slight, mocking bow. ‘So true. I must content myself with merely being the better warrior.’

‘Don’t make me pluck those wings,’ Horus retorted.

‘Perish the thought!’ said Sanguinius. ‘Without them I’d only be as handsome as you are.’

‘That would be tragic,’ Horus agreed.

The moment of levity passed and in the next exchange they had gone from the easy humour of a pair of siblings to the manner of two allied generals. ‘What ships have you chosen to remain to administrate the compliance?’

Horus rubbed his chin. ‘The Sword Argus and the Crimson Spectre, I think. Their Army platoons can garrison here, make sure the nephilim cult is dead and buried. If all goes well, they will disengage and reconnect with my expeditionary fleet in a few months.’

The winged primarch glanced up into the sky. ‘I fear we have not seen the last of these creatures.’

‘The Khan hunts their birth world even as we speak. He will finish what we started here today.’

‘I hope so. The technology the aliens used, the ease with which they infiltrated the minds of these civilians... It’s troubling. We can’t allow it to go unchecked.’ Sanguinius looked back at his sibling. ‘So, where next for you?’

‘The Ullanor Sector. A dozen systems have gone silent, from New Mitama all the way out to Nalkari. I suspect another xenos incursion.’

‘Orks?’

‘Likely. I could use your support, brother.’

Sanguinius smiled again. ‘I doubt that. And I could not oblige even if I wished it. My astropaths have been agitated for days, divining messages from our scouts in the Perseus Null. Compliance is sorely needed there, I have been told.’

‘Father’s great plan… It does not often allow us the chance to cross paths,’ noted Horus. His brother thought he sensed a thread of regret beneath the words. ‘How much glory did we share this day? Not enough.’

‘Agreed.’ There had been a moment when the primarchs had met during the engagement, when a horde of nephilim grey-skins had rushed at them with ear-splitting barrages of noise radiating from the glass spines growing out of their limbs. The brothers stood back to back and weathered every blow, cut down each attacker. The moment had been the fulcrum around which their victory had turned. ‘I confess I would relish the opportunity to share the battleground with you again,’ Sanguinius went on. ‘And not just that. I miss our conversations.’

Horus’s frown deepened. ‘One day we will be done with all this.’ He gestured at the desert sands and the debris of the battle. ‘Then we can talk and play regicide to our hearts’ content. At least until the next crusade.’

Something in his brother’s tone gave Sanguinius pause. There was a meaning buried in there, a moment that he could sense but not grasp; something that perhaps even Horus himself was unaware of.

The chance to examine the thought was lost when a figure in crimson armour came running up the low hill. ‘My lords. Forgive the interruption.’ Raldoron bowed and shot Horus a wary look before turning to his primarch. ‘The Angel’s presence is required… elsewhere.’

‘Is there a problem, First Captain?’ Horus asked the Blood Angels officer.

Raldoron’s expression was unreadable. The warrior had a gaunt, solid face beneath a high queue of grey-white hair, and he betrayed nothing. ‘A Legion matter, sir,’ he said. ‘It requires my lord’s personal attention.’

Sanguinius fixed his captain with a hard stare. He was one of his most trusted men and carried many honours alongside his stewardship of the elite veteran company, hard-won through decades of war in the Emperor’s name. Raldoron was equerry to the primarch and held the new honorific ‘Chapter Master’, serving in a similar role to the warriors of Horus’s advisory cadre, the Mournival. He was not a man given to impulsive and ill-considered actions, so his intrusion here was cause for concern. ‘Speak, Ral.’

There was momentary pause, so tiny, so fractional that only someone who knew Captain Raldoron as well as his liege lord did would pick up on it. But it was enough to signal that something was amiss.

‘One of our brothers has been… lost, sir.’

Sanguinius felt his face become a mask, as cold seeped into his veins. ‘My brother, please excuse me.’

He never registered Horus’s reply; he was already moving, following Raldoron out through the mist of battle-smoke wreathing the darkening desert.

They did not speak, not as they walked, not as they boarded the land speeder that Raldoron had secured for the transit across the warzone. Sanguinius retreated inside his own thoughts and prepared himself for the worst as the First Captain piloted the flyer out across the eastern flank of the conflict area. They moved in the nap of the earth, rolling up and down shallow inclines, skirting the remains of blasted praise-towers and fallen battlements. As the grav motors slowed and they neared their destination, the primarch saw that the matter had been contained exactly as he had wished it to be. Raldoron, ever the planner, had made sure that a wide circular area was secure, a barrier of Blood Angels legionaries standing face-outwards in a wide combat wheel hundreds of metres across. None of them looked up as the speeder passed over their heads and dropped down to settle in the courtyard of a bombed-out empath-chapel.

‘In there.’ Raldoron’s grim words carried over the low hum of the idling engines as he jutted his chin towards the ruin. ‘I isolated him the moment I was certain.’

Sanguinius felt the cold in his blood spread to his hands as they walked towards the slumped shape of the building. The walls had listed to the right and the ceiling had come down, forcing the oval church to sink into the sands beneath. A second, smaller group of legionaries stood around the black maw of the entrance; they were from Raldoron’s honour guard, and they also did not face the site they were guarding nor react to the presence of their primarch.

‘His name?’

‘Alotros,’ said Raldoron. ‘A battle-brother of solid, if unremarkable service. From Captain Tagas’s command, the 111th Company.’

‘What does Tagas know?’ asked Sanguinius.

‘That Brother Alotros is dead, my lord.’ A figure in gold armour emerged from the dark doorway and saluted. Azkaellon’s severe expression spoke volumes as to what had gone on. ‘Killed by the xenos, atomised in an explosion. A noble end.’ The Sanguinary Guard deliberately stepped into the path of his commander and halted, glaring at Raldoron. ‘You should not have brought him here.’

Raldoron opened his mouth to speak, but his primarch talked over him. ‘That is not your place to decide, Guard Commander.’ Azkaellon paled slightly at the force behind Sanguinius’s hard, even tone. ‘Now step aside.’

Azkaellon did as he was told, but he could not remain silent. ‘This should be dealt with by us, sir. Quietly.’

‘Quietly?’ echoed the primarch, his voice suddenly distant. ‘No, my son. No Blood Angel will ever die in silence.’

Inside the fallen alien temple, the stink of fresh blood hung in the air, powerful and metallic. Sanguinius licked his lips; he couldn’t stop the reflex reaction. His omophageaic membrane tasted several different varieties of human vitae, analysing them as instinctively as a vintner would know the ages and textures of a wine’s bouquet. There was alien blood spilled here too, the acrid tang of the nephilim among it all.

He found the golden boots of his warplate casting ripples out across a pool of dark fluid that had formed a small lake in the gloomy interior of the chapel. There were many, many dead in here with him, arranged around the edges of the chamber as if they were an audience watching the stage of a theatre in the round. Smashed fragments of nephilim neuro-tech – synapse sinks, empathic matrices and the like – littered the ruin. But none of the violence wrought here had come from the battle fought through this day. No, the scene here was not one of war, but of madness.

He saw Alotros the moment he entered the temple, the thermal form of him clear to the primarch’s bio-augmented vision against the cold bodies of the dead. The Space Marine was crouched down on one knee as if in a gesture of fealty. With careful, steady actions, Alotros sat in the middle of the lake and mechanically cupped handfuls of the dark fluid, one after another, to his lips. He drank silently, unhurried.

‘Look at me,’ ordered Sanguinius. His heart tightened in his chest and a very specific kind of sorrow gripped him as Alotros slowly obeyed.

The Blood Angel’s armour was badly damaged; fibre-bundle musculature ripped, ceramite cracked. It appeared that the chestplate had been torn open across the sternum and a brutal wound opened beneath it. The primarch recognised the hit pattern of a nephilim shriekpulse, and looking closer he saw the trails of dried blood visible from Alotros’s nostrils, his ears, the corners of his reddened eyes. Such a hit would have boiled the brain matter of an ordinary human, and even for a legionary the impact should have crippled flesh and torn at neural pathways. Alotros was pallid and in obvious pain, but he seemed detached from it. The warrior had taken a point-blank strike from one of the alien weapons and survived, a rare happenstance; but, Sanguinius corrected himself, he had not survived. Not really. At this very moment, somewhere else on the battlefield, Captain Tagas and the men who had been Alotros’s squadmates were making their peace with his death.

His lips, his chin, the exposed flesh of his neck, all were wet with the blood he had been patiently drinking, mouthful by mouthful. Alotros looked at his primarch with bleak, animal eyes. Sanguinius saw a hunger there, the same hunger he had seen before in other eyes, in other places. At first only rarely, but now with a grim regularity.

Alotros released a deep, rumbling growl and slowly came to his feet. His hands tightened into talons and he showed his teeth. Fangs flashed in the gloom. In another time it would have been said that his soul had been usurped by some hellish phantom, that his blood was poisoned, that he was possessed. But such ideas were fantasies. The warping of this good warrior came from something within him, not from a mythical, otherworldly external force.

Sanguinius knew that it was already too late, but he could not go on without trying. He offered his hand. ‘My son,’ he began. ‘Step back, if you can. Step back from the abyss and return to us. I will save you.’

Alotros blinked, as if the words were foreign to him and their meaning difficult to grasp.

‘This is my fault,’ said the primarch. ‘I am to blame. But I will amend this, if you help me.’ He took a step forwards. ‘Will you help me, Alotros?’

It was with a father’s hollow regret that Sanguinius saw his words fall upon stony ground. A feral intent, an impulse drawn up from the very deepest bestial core of the warrior, emerged on the Blood Angel’s face, and finally whatever was left of Brother Alotros of the 111th Company simply went away.

In a berserk, furious rage that exploded out of nothing, the legionary tore across the empath-chapel in great splashing bounds. The primarch hesitated; with power sword, glaive-blade or infernus pistol, it would have been no matter for him to draw a weapon and end the battle-brother’s life before he came within arm’s reach. But something stopped him.

Perhaps it was hope, hope that Alotros would be the one to break the cycle and not do the same as those before; or perhaps it was guilt that stayed his hand, some measure of punishment inflicted on the self to see this horror up close, to know the dying moment of it.

Against all reason, against all possibility of survival, Alotros attacked his gene-father. He was screaming, babbling in fragments of the technomad dialect of Baal’s Low Mesa clans. The warrior wanted only one thing: to bite deep into living flesh and drink his fill of the rich crimson fluid within. He was truly lost.

Sanguinius held Alotros at bay, the warrior’s maddened blows ringing harmlessly off his battle armour, the fires of his rage not fading but burning brighter with every passing moment. The cocktail of blood-fumes on his breath clogged the primarch’s senses, and Sanguinius understood.

He knew where this crimson fury, this red thirst sprang from. He could sense it, coiled like a poisonous thread inside his own genetic helix. A dark bequest that he had passed on to his kin. A recessive death-mark.

‘I am sorry, my son,’ he told Alotros, in the last heartbeat before he broke the legionary’s neck.

Alotros’s snarls ended with a guttural hiss, and at the end there was some brief measure of peace in his eyes. His body fell into the shallow pool; the Blood Angel’s pain was at an end, a final mercy granted to him. But now the darkness in the gloomy alien church seemed shades deeper, heavy with the weight of what had been done there.

For the second time that day, Sanguinius sensed the presence of his brother.

He wheeled, turning to glare into the dimness as a massive shadow broke away from a slumped support column and stood stock-still before him. ‘Horus...?’

‘What did you do?’ His brother’s face caught the light and the ghost of shock was etched upon it. ‘What did you do?’ The sound of his own voice seemed to jolt the other primarch out of his stasis and he rushed towards the fallen warrior. ‘You… killed him.’

In a strangely protective gesture, Sanguinius stepped in front of the corpse, bringing Horus up short. ‘You followed me?’ His tone betrayed anger and surprise, shame and regret and a hundred other emotions. ‘Spied on me?’

It was taking all of Horus’s monumental self-control to stay where he stood, the confusion on his face shifting, changing. He was grasping to comprehend what he had just witnessed, and failing. A primarch executing one of his own sons… The thought of such a thing was terrible to contemplate.

‘You should not be here,’ Sanguinius told him, echoing Azkaellon’s reproach. ‘This was not for the eyes of outsiders.’ His words were dead, bled dry.

‘That seems so.’ Horus gave a glum nod. ‘But I am your brother. I am not an outsider.’ He raised his head and met the Angel’s gaze, challenging him. ‘And I do not understand why you have committed such a hateful deed.’

Sanguinius did not bother to ask how Horus had made it past Raldoron’s guards without raising any alarm; he was a primarch, after all, and the Emperor’s sons had always been adept at going where their will took them.

When Horus looked at him, it was not with anger and disappointment, but with a terrible kind of empathy. ‘I should not have come here, but your reaction when the First Captain spoke… Brother, what I saw in your eyes at that moment gave me cause for concern.’ He stepped around and knelt over Alotros’s body. ‘And now I see I was right to think so.’ Horus studied the dead legionary with a clinical eye, and raised his gauntlet to tap a finger upon his temple. ‘Tell me there was cause. What was wrong with him? Did the nephilim do this, did they cause some great damage to his mind?’

The lie caught in the Angel’s throat. Yes, he could say –

A terrible tragedy. This is the work of the foul xenos. I was forced to take a regrettable action–

‘No.’ The falsehood crumbled before it was fully formed. He could no more lie to his sibling than he could chain Melchior’s sun and pull it from the sky. Horus and Sanguinius knew each other so well that to lie to one another would be a monumental undertaking, a pretence of ultimate artifice. He could not conscience such a thing. ‘No, Horus. This is my fault. The blame lies with me.’

For a long moment, there was only silence between them, and the Angel could see his brother’s train of thought there in his expression, the questions he was asking himself, the answers he found wanting.

At last, Horus stood and placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, the stony lines of his face etched in disquiet. ‘If you wish it, I will leave this place now and never speak again of the matter. Your Legion is your concern, Sanguinius, and I would never question that.’ He paused. ‘But I am your brother and your friend, and it cuts me to see the sorrow in your eyes. I know you are a compassionate soul, that you would not do such a thing unless it was your only choice. But you have a great burden, and I would help you carry it, if only you will let me.’

The Blood Angel’s eyes narrowed. ‘You ask much.’

‘I always do,’ admitted Horus. ‘Speak to me. Make me understand.’ He was almost imploring. ‘I swear to you, on the honour of my Legion, any words spoken here will never pass beyond these walls. I will keep your confidence from all.’

Sanguinius met his gaze. ‘Even from our father?’

The other primarch said nothing for a moment; then at last, he nodded.

With great care, Sanguinius gathered up the body of his fallen warrior and carried him from the pool of shimmering dark to a stone pedestal. The platform had been home to a crystalline devotional statue of a nephilim, but now all that remained of it was a shallow drift of broken shards that crunched underfoot. The primarch arranged the body of the dead legionary in repose, restoring the dignity that his madness had stolen.

At length, Sanguinius turned to face Horus. ‘We were made to be perfect,’ he began. ‘Tools of war. The supreme princes of battle.’ He slowly spread his hands and the white wings curled at his back. ‘Do you think that father succeeded in his design?’

‘Perfection is not a state of being,’ Horus replied. ‘It is a state of striving. The journey is all that has meaning, not the goal.’

‘Did the Phoenician tell you that?’

His brother nodded once. ‘Fulgrim may be a peacock, but when he spoke those words he was right.’

Sanguinius laid a hand on Alotros’s stilled chest. ‘We give so much to our sons. Our aspect, our will, our fortitude. They are the best of us. But they carry our flaws as well.’

‘So they should,’ said Horus. ‘So we should. To be human is to be flawed – no matter what we are or where we came from, we are still human. We share the same ancestry as the people we defend.’

‘Indeed. If we lost that connection… If we truly were beyond humanity, then the Emperor’s sons and the Legiones Astartes would have more kinship to xenos like them–’ Sanguinius gestured towards the corpse of a nephilim blue-skin ‘–than to the children of Terra.’ He shook his head. ‘But for all that we are, we cannot escape what is within.’ The Angel pressed his fingers to his chest. ‘I have bequeathed something dark to my sons, brother.’

‘Speak plainly,’ Horus demanded. ‘I am not Russ who would judge you, or Dorn who would not listen. You and I, we have no need for pretence.’

‘I believe that there is a hidden flaw in the genetic matrix of the Blood Angels gene-seed. Something in my own bio-type. I have looked within myself and seen glimpses of it, brother. A murky core, a trait that lies buried and waits to be awakened.’

Horus’s gaze fell on the dead warrior. ‘This is… the fury that I saw in him?’

‘It cries out for blood. And there is never enough.’

The Luna Wolf turned away, thinking. ‘How many times?’

‘Alotros is one of several that I am certain of. There may have been others who perished in battle without note of it.’

‘A handful, in two hundred years, from a Legion of one hundred and twenty thousand?’ Horus folded his armoured gauntlets together. ‘How can you be sure of–’

Sanguinius held up his hand. ‘I am sure,’ he said gravely. ‘And the incidences are coming closer together. I fear that, in time, it will grow to encompass every one of my sons. In my meditation, I have seen such… possibilities.’

His brother waited for him to continue. Each of the primarchs were touched by their father’s preternatural gifts in a different way, and for Sanguinius, part of that legacy was a certain kind of sight. A hazy, indefinite sense of foreknowledge.

‘The story is always the same,’ he went on. ‘A warrior in the throes of battle succumbs to a rage that builds and builds until his reason is lost. His humanity is stripped away until only a feral core remains. He kills and kills, seeks blood and more blood.’ He paled as he spoke. ‘And at the end, at the very worst of it, he loses every last piece of himself.’

‘Until death is a kindness.’ Horus nodded again. ‘Brother… I understand now. How long have you known?’

Strangely, as Sanguinius had given voice to the words he felt the load upon him lighten, as if the act of confiding in Horus had indeed lessened his burden. ‘I have kept this from our father and brothers for several years. I am searching for a solution. Some among my sons have a measure of the truth. They are united with me in finding a way of undoing this flaw.’ His jaw stiffened. ‘My flaw.’

‘Brother…’ Horus began, framing his words.

Sanguinius shook his head. ‘Don’t say it. You think that I blame myself for something I have no control over, but I do not agree. This is my legacy and I must account for it. A primarch…’ He faltered over the words, his voice thick with emotion.

‘A primarch is father to his Legion,’ said Horus, completing the thought for him. ‘I will not disagree or try to convince you otherwise.’ He paused again. ‘Who else is aware of the full dimensions of this?’ Horus glanced towards the entrance of the fallen empath-chapel.

‘Azkaellon, Captain Raldoron, my Master Apothecary on Baal… and a few others.’

When Horus spoke again, his voice was low. ‘Why in Terra’s name did you not ask for help?’

Sanguinius met his gaze. ‘Tell me, Horus. What is it that you are most afraid of?’

The demand took the other primarch off-guard, and for a moment, the Luna Wolf was on the verge of dismissing the question; then his expression shifted and he gave the brutally truthful answer. ‘Falling short. Of failing my Legion, my Imperium… my Emperor.’

‘Something each of his sons shares, even if many of us would never have the courage to admit it.’ Sanguinius walked away, the shadows lengthening around him. ‘I could not speak of this to any of the others. You know as well as I do that it would diminish my Legion. Some of our brothers would see it as weakness and seek to turn this truth against me.’ He grimaced. ‘Alpharius, Lorgar… They would not be generous.’

‘But why have you kept this from father? If any living being could know the key to it, it would be him!’

Sanguinius rounded on Horus, his seraphic features hardening. ‘You know the reason!’ he answered with a snarl. ‘I will not be responsible for the erasure of the Blood Angels from Imperial history. I will not have a third empty plinth beneath the roof of the Hegemon as my Legion’s only memorial!’

Horus’s eyes widened. ‘It would not come to that.’

Sanguinius shook his head once more. ‘I cannot take the risk. The Emperor has concerns that go far beyond the needs of his individual sons. You know that is so.’ He frowned. ‘We all know that is so.’

Silence fell again, broken only by the hollow wind pulling at the ruined walls of the temple and the distant crash of metal as another nephilim praise-tower was cut down.

Then, with grim finality, Horus offered his hand to the Angel. ‘I swore to you I would say nothing of this. I will keep that promise for as long as you wish me to.’

Sanguinius accepted the gesture, their vambraces clanking together as they shook hands in the old pre-Unity fashion, palms grasping each other’s wrists. ‘I trust no one more than you, Horus,’ he said. ‘Your solidarity means more than I can express.’

‘I will do all I can to help you deal with this matter,’ said the Luna Wolf. ‘However long it takes.’

Raldoron barely covered his shock when not one, but two primarchs exited the ruined building. Without a word to any of the assembled warriors, Sanguinius and Horus walked away across the silver sands, each turning from the other to make for the lines of their Legions’ forces.

At his side, Azkaellon was as rigid as a statue, and the First Captain had no doubt that the leader of the Sanguinary Guard was silently furious. Horus’s appearance could only mean one thing. He knew.

Sensing his scrutiny, Azkaellon shot Raldoron a hard look. ‘Your warriors are ineffective.’

‘Watch your damned tone, bodyguard.’ The captain’s answer came back through gritted teeth. He pointed out beyond the ring of his troops. ‘Your second-in-command is slinking around out there, and he didn’t catch the primarch either.’

‘Zuriel will be reprimanded for his error, have no doubt of that.’

Raldoron didn’t. Azkaellon was so severe in his manner that sometimes it seemed he was utterly inflexible on anything. It was a frequent cause of friction between the warriors of the First Company and the Sanguinary Guard. Raldoron’s fluid, adaptable command style was at odds with Azkaellon’s aloof, rigid comportment, and the two of them reflected that down to the bone.

‘I have work to do,’ said the Guard Commander, striding away from the ruins. ‘I hope I can leave the rest of the details to you without fear of further error.’ Before Raldoron could retort, the flight pack on Azkaellon’s back spat flame and his sculpted wings unfurled. In a flash of gold, the warrior was gone.

The First Captain’s grimace deepened and he dismissed his warriors with a sharp gesture. He gave one of them a glare. ‘Where is the Apothecary? I called for a savant an hour ago!’

‘Here, lord,’ said a voice behind him.

Raldoron turned and found a legionary marching towards him across the rubble-strewn square, emerging from the smoke. The warrior’s crimson armour bore the white trim of a sanctioned Legion medicae, and from his battle plate hung narthecium packs, drug flasks and other flesh-cutter’s tools. His left gauntlet was heavily modified from the standard Mark II Crusade-pattern unit, bulky with the protruding barrel of a reductor. He wore the badge of the Prime Helix and there was a skull sigil on the brow of his helmet showing his status as an Apothecae Minoris, the most junior rank. A labour-servitor ambled after him, listing as it clumped over the uneven ground. The captain studied the Apothecary; he would have preferred a veteran to assist in this matter, but to re-task a more seasoned officer from their duties would have drawn undue attention.

The new arrival gave a salute. ‘Reporting as ordered.’ He gave no sign of having witnessed the departure of the two primarchs, which was just as well. Fewer questions for him to dwell upon, thought the captain.

‘You will follow me,’ ordered Raldoron, ‘and say nothing.’

They entered the fallen chapel and the Apothecary activated the illuminator mounted on his backpack. The cold ray of white light searched the chamber, picking out thousands of motes of rock dust suspended in the heavy air, before shimmering off the great liquid pool in the slumped spaces of the nave. Raldoron saw the beam venture towards the shadowed forms of the dead and he called out, dragging the young Apothecary’s attention and the light to the podium where Alotros’s body lay. The captain grimly stripped the dead battle-brother’s armour of all company marks and personal icons, until there was nothing to show who this warrior might have been or where he had served.

‘The progenoid glands,’ said the captain. ‘Remove them.’

There was a moment of hesitation on the part of the other Blood Angel, but the faceless helmet showed no expression, and soon he was at work. The reductor gave a high-pitched buzz as it bit through exposed flesh, the tip digging into the corpse before it splayed open and snipped out the gene-rich knots of meat. Each progenoid was a collection of DNA metadata expressed in organic form, the raw code of the Blood Angels physiognomy rendered as flesh; similar organs were implanted in every legionary, each tailored to the particular traits and quirks of their brotherhood. They were the most precious resource of a Space Marine Legion, for each progenoid recovered from a fallen warrior would find new life in the body of the next generation of recruits. In that way, they would maintain a genetic lineage with those who came before them and those who would come after, as the organs manifested within them.

The Apothecary reverently placed Alotros’s gene-seed in a hermetic capsule, but before he could drop it into a seal-pouch at his hip, Captain Raldoron reached out and took it from him.

‘What is your name, Apothecary?’ asked the officer, forestalling any reaction.

‘Meros, sir. Of the Ninth Company.’

‘Captain Furio’s command.’ He nodded. ‘A fine warrior. A company of regard.’

‘Thank you, sir. But–’

Raldoron went on as if Meros had not spoken. ‘The men of the Ninth know how to follow orders. So I have no doubt you will follow this one.’ He fixed the young warrior with a steady glare. ‘Never speak of this moment. You and I were never here.’ He held up the capsule. ‘This does not exist. Say it.’

Meros hesitated again, then spoke. ‘You and I were never here. That does not exist.’

‘This is our liege lord’s wish.’

The other Blood Angel saluted again. ‘So ordered.’ He backed away a step as Raldoron beckoned the servitor to come forwards, making ready to gather up the corpse.

But before the machine-slave moved in to do his bidding, the First Captain removed an object from his belt pack. It was a slab of inkstone from the night deserts of Baal Primus, and with quick motions, Raldoron passed it over the dead warrior’s armour, blotting out the crimson with a layer of glistening, smoky black. The action had a strange, ritual quality to it, a finality that deadened everything. However this battle-brother had met his end, it was in a manner that would be forever lost to the Legion’s chronicles.

The captain whispered something, and Meros barely heard him.

‘Rest, brother,’ he told the fallen warrior. ‘You are in the company of death. I hope you find peace there.’

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter 8

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

You couldn’t think that was the end of the tale. There’s always more to come, and Gilead te Tuin Tor Anrok will be making new legends for new storytellers long after I am no longer of this world. Leave now, and you will miss the best of it… or the worst. It is true, I must rest often, but an hour’s sleep here or there is nothing more than anyone of my great age might expect to be allowed.

Draw closer, for, if you give me leave to rest easy in my chair, and speak softly, I will preserve my strength and get to the end of the cursed tales before your patience runs out. There is nothing left to me now but the tale, and the telling of it at the proper pace. Heed or heed not, I can do no better.

Laban did not want to sheath his blades all the time the Vampire Count was their companion, but he soon discovered that he would need hands, feet, knees, elbows, and in some places his fingertips to follow Gilead back above ground.

Gilead led the way, followed by the Vampire Count, with Fithvael and Laban behind. They had fought the skaven long and hard, without sustaining a single meaningful injury between them. They were, nonetheless, weary, and as thousands of corpses were buried beneath as many tons of earth, rock, brick and dust, they faced the arduous task of finding a way back to the surface. The skaven were dead, or buried alive. They had lived below ground and had died below ground. There was nothing to be said about it, and no one to mourn them.

Gilead found portions of tunnels and corridors that had not entirely collapsed, joined by voids and cavities that remained because of the integrity of the great dwarf structure, hewn from the earth and turned to obsidian crystal by the Rat King’s amulet. Gilead wove his way along tunnels, slid between fallen rocks and found cavities behind decaying walls that he dismantled one crumbling brick at a time.

He was conscious, all the time, of the Vampire Count, of his gleaming red eyes on his back, but he felt no threat. The creature would not blindside him; it would not be in its best interests. He was more concerned about his young cousin, Laban, who might seize an opportunity to be a hero. Gilead owed the Vampire Count, not much, but, at the very least, a little respect for his dignity.

At a particularly narrow fissure between the remains of a stone wall and a rock fall, the Vampire Count halted. Gilead had stepped easily through the gap, but, even sideways, the Count was wedged solid before a third of his body had passed to the far side. He turned to Fithvael, behind him, who shrugged.

When the Count continued to look at Fithvael, the elf moved closer and began to examine his armour. It was old, but well-cared for, and of a standard human type with fastenings at the sides of the body and the insides of limbs that had not changed much over the centuries. The armour had been well looked after, by the knight’s squire a millennium ago, and by the Count for many scores of years. The ancient leather straps were supple, as tough as steel, but shaped by the hands that fastened them over decades. They must have been replaced many times, but the buckles and fastenings had been removed from old straps and reused on their replacements. The patina of a thousand years made the metalwork smooth and soft, and an impossibly deep colour. As Fithvael’s nimble fingers worked the buckles and straps, he realised that they didn’t feel clumsy and bulky in his hands as most products of human manufacture did. He wondered, for a moment, where they had originated, but it did not matter.

Fithvael eased the straps on the body armour down the Count’s sides, allowing him to become an inch narrower; it was enough to free him from the clutches of the walls to his chest and back, but did not allow the two parts of the cuirass to collapse far enough for him to pass through the gap.

‘You must remove your armour,’ said Gilead, ‘and quickly.’ Then he placed the palm of his hand on the low roof of the cavity he had climbed into and felt the pulse of the earth around them moving. ‘Help him.’ the elf urged his companions.

The Vampire Count stood with his feet apart and his arms raised, and Laban and Fithvael worked one on each side of him to remove the metal pieces, after first disarming him of a small arsenal of weapons. Laban was surprised at how warm and smooth and ancient the elegantly curved and worked sheets of metal felt; nevertheless, he didn’t care to hold them for any length of time. He was also careful not to touch the flesh of the Count or the clothes he wore beneath the metal. He could feel no life, no warmth, no pulse. The armour was radiating more heat than the body inside it.

Fithvael began the work of strapping the separate pieces of armour together to make a series of bundles that could be carried. For several seconds, the four of them could hear nothing but the sound of metal on metal, and of old leather being threaded through buckles. Then there was a low rumble, and a series of distant whumps

‘Fear not,’ said the Count, looking at Fithvael. ‘I will have no further need of my armour. There is but one fate remaining to me, to be fulfilled, and my nemesis will join me in battle equally ill-equipped.’

‘Your trust in me does me much honour,’ said Gilead, looking directly at the Vampire Count. He looked smaller without his armour, but equally stoic and serious. Somehow, the leather and linen garments that he wore beneath his armour showed only the marks and wear of polished metal. There were no rings of grime at collars or cuffs, no yellow sweat stains beneath the arms or low in the back. There were no oily finger marks, nor blood, saliva, nor any marks made by any bodily fluids.

This was a knight who did not sweat, whose heart did not pound, nor bowels nor bladder open to humiliate him. This was a knight who had been taught how not to shed a tear as a child, and who could not shed one now, even should he desire so to do.

‘You should pass, now,’ said Fithvael, standing the Vampire Count’s breastplate upright against the nearest wall, as if it were some kind of memorial to the creature who had cheated death. There would be no other.

The Vampire Count held out his hand to Laban, who was holding his weapons. The elf looked warily at the Count, and then to Fithvael, who shrugged, and finally to Gilead. There was another rumble, and silty dust began to fall onto the Count’s shoulders, marring his shirt.

‘Quickly, cousin,’ said Gilead. ‘Restore his weapons.’

‘But,’ said Laban, twisted the sheath of the sword in his hand, as if trying to wring something from it.

‘But me no buts,’ said Gilead. ‘Sir Knight will have need of his weapons before another dawn. We can do without our armour, but surely not our swords.’

The Vampire Count bowed his head, and then looked into Gilead’s eyes as he took his weapons from the young elf.

Without the armour, the Vampire Count was firm and sinewy, longer and leaner of frame than he appeared. He did not pass as easily through the gaps and fissures as the elves did, but a little manoeuvring, stretching a limb here, folding at the waist there, and he managed to keep pace with Gilead as they clambered up through ruined passages to reach the surface.

When he saw light for the first time, Gilead blinked and smiled. He was on his hands and knees in a sharply sloping space, the brick floor kicked up, broken and uneven, buckled and shifted by the movement of earth all around. The shaft of light came inbetween two rocks above. It was little more than a pinprick that cast a pool of light on the floor below, no more than the size of a small coin, but slightly elliptical.

‘It is full sun,’ said Gilead, ‘the noon of the day.’

The Vampire Count looked at Gilead and nodded.

‘There will be time enough,’ he said. ‘I shall remain below ground until the dusk.’

‘Indeed,’ said Gilead.

‘You’ll have to get out, now,’ said Fithvael. ‘There is no path to bypass you, sir, and the boy is weary of the confines below ground.’

Gilead crawled under the light, so that it shone an oval on his shoulder. Then he reached up and carefully began to remove bricks and rocks from close to his head, until his entire head and back was bathed in the hard northern sunlight. When the hole was wide enough to allow his shoulders egress, Gilead lifted his hands above his head and stood to his full height, so that half of his body was above ground. The space occupied by the Vampire Count, Fithvael and Laban below was thrust back into darkness as Gilead’s body shut out the light. The Vampire Count’s eyes gleamed and glistened in the darkness, apparently full of life after the draining effect the sunlight had produced in him.

Gilead lifted himself out through the hole, and quickly unwrapped his cloak from around his body. He covered the opening with it, so that no more sunlight could penetrate.

He had emerged in a shallow, waterless ditch that ran along the edge of a dry, dead field. No crops had grown there for years and the ditch, which had once been for irrigation, was sandy and smelled of dust. There was no cover, apart from the depth of the ditch and the hedgerow running alongside it; standing, Gilead could see and hear for miles, and he did not fear being seen. All was still and silent.

A few moments passed, and then Gilead’s cloak lying in the bottom of the ditch began to bulge and move, as if it had a life of its own.

Below ground, Laban had insisted that the Vampire Count hand his weapons back to him. It did not matter that the Count would be weak in the sunlight and quite ineffective in a fight with Gilead. It only mattered that Laban keep his cousin safe and protected, and, to that end, if the Vampire Count was the next to pass out into the world above, as he must be, the young elf was not prepared to take any risks. He and Fithvael would not be able to climb out of the hole in time to fight off the Count if he chose to attack Gilead.

The Vampire Count, naked of his armour and his weapons, lifted his hands above his head, as if in surrender, and pushed up through Gilead’s cloak. He preferred not to be exposed to the sun if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, as it made him feel weak and ill, sending chills through his body and slowing down his responses.

Gilead watched as his cloak began to take on the shape of the man beneath it: first the hands and then the head and shoulders. Finally, the Vampire Count pulled the rest of his body up into the ditch and sat against the side of it, several feet from Gilead, never shifting or removing the cloak from around his head and torso.

Then Fithvael and Laban emerged into the sunlight. Laban blinked and smiled. The sky was clear and grey and as bright as a northern sky could be with the sun directly overhead.

When they were all in the ditch, Gilead touched the Vampire Count’s shoulder through the cloth of his cloak. The Count moved back over the hole, lowering his body into it, and disappearing, leaving the cloak covering the aperture.

Laban reached out a hand to draw the cloak towards him, thinking that he would fold it and return it to his cousin.

‘Leave it,’ said Gilead. ‘Let him rest peacefully until dusk. I owe him that. We all owe him that.’

The three elves climbed easily out of the ditch and set up a small camp close-by, shielded from the worst of the cold wind in the lee of the tall, sparse hedgerow. The straggling, thorny shrubs were pale and almost barren, but, in one or two places, Gilead was able to scratch the surface of the twigs and branches and find patches of green flesh beneath. The hedgerow was alive, if barely, so there must be enough plant material in the area to sustain them for a day or two, if the need arose. For now, they were content to rest and recuperate, and to prepare for what was to come.

‘My cousin,’ began Laban.

‘Cousin, indeed,’ said Gilead, smiling slightly and reaching his arms out to embrace the boy. Laban looked startled for a moment and then walked shyly into the embrace.

‘You honour me, my lord,’ he said, bowing his head.

‘You brought the boy, old man,’ said Gilead, embracing his mentor, servant and faithful friend for the first time in a great many years, for only the third time in their lives.

‘You are much changed, Gilead,’ said Fithvael, surprised by the unexpected warmth of their reception.

‘Not so very much,’ said Gilead. ‘Enough, I hope. Now, explain yourself, old man; why have you brought the boy?’

Gilead, Fithvael and Laban talked, rested, ate and prepared.

As Fithvael honed the blade of Gilead’s second blade, and Laban adjusted the cuffs of his shirt so that they would fall away from his wrists if he was wielding his blades, Gilead spoke to them of the amulet.

‘The boy,’ said Gilead. ‘I shall never forget that boy. “By Sigmar’s beard, it was always the skaven.” That’s what he said. It was always the skaven. He was wrong.’

‘The plague?’ asked Laban. ‘He thought the skaven had caused the plague? How could that be?’

‘It was not so,’ said Fithvael. ‘Gilead has told us that the boy was wrong. What he has not told us is why he was wrong, or why the boy believed that the skaven were responsible.’

Gilead reached two slender fingers into the top of his boot and, a moment later, pulled out the amulet that had hung around the Rat King’s neck on the ribbon of plaited hair. He turned it over and over in his fingers, examining it. It seemed inert; it did not sparkle or glisten, nor did it seem to absorb and deaden the light that hit it. It was matt and darkly colourless. It looked like a rock, a pebble, perfectly elliptical, but unassuming.

After looking at it for several moments, Gilead flicked it at Fithvael, who caught it deftly in his left hand, his right still holding the whet stone with which he was restoring Gilead’s blade in preparation for what was surely to come.

‘What is it?’ asked Gilead. ‘Why would it change the skaven king?’

‘Change him?’ asked Fithvael. ‘How did it change him?’

‘He was old and slow, and confused.’

Fithvael held the amulet up to the light between his thumb and forefinger. It did nothing. He tossed it back to Gilead.

‘He might be able to shed some light on this,’ said Fithvael, gesturing towards the cloak that still covered the hole in the ground.

‘You would rely on a Vampire Count for information?’ asked Laban. ‘That way foolishness lies, surely, cousin?’

‘I have followed a path through the plagued lands for more than a decade,’ said Gilead. ‘They brought me to the creature. I thought he must be an instrument of misery in the lives of the humans. I thought he must be a catalyst for all that has befallen the lands and the crops and creatures. And yet, he fought at my side against the skaven and now he seeks me out to do battle to the death.’

‘What of the stone?’ asked Fithvael.

Gilead held it to the light as Fithvael had done and then dropped it back into his boot.

‘There is power in it… The power to show me great artifacts, fine wonders of the world, wondrous objects of great significance. It showed me how they had been collected. It showed me that it was the greatest of them,’ said Gilead. ‘If you had only seen what I have seen.’

‘Yet I have not,’ said Fithvael.

‘Nor I,’ said Laban.

The older elves looked at the younger, and he returned to his chore.

‘By Sigmar’s beard, it was always the skaven,’ said Gilead. ‘They stole the amulet. The Rat King stole the power of eternal life.’

‘If you deduce correctly,’ said Fithvael. ‘We know the “what” and the “why”, but not the “from whom”. Where did the amulet originate? What is its purpose? Are there others?’

‘Its purpose is evil,’ said Gilead. ‘I have followed the plague, and the amulet is all I found.’

‘The amulet and the Vampire Count,’ said Fithvael.

‘He found me,’ said Gilead.

‘Did he?’ asked Fithvael. ‘Are you sure of that? Was he looking for the same thing you were looking for, or was he hunting the skaven for some other end.’

‘He is already immortal,’ said Gilead. ‘He sought me out, that he might meet his nemesis, and finally rest.’

‘That’s what he found,’ said Fithvael. ‘But, are you sure that’s what he was looking for. Are you sure he followed you until he found you, or did he find you while pursuing some other end?’

‘I know not, old friend,’ said Gilead.

‘Then, may I suggest,’ said Fithvael, ‘that you find out?’

The conversation ended, and the elves returned to their tasks.

‘How will you kill him?’ asked Laban, finally.

‘You assume that I will kill him, and not be killed by him,’ said Gilead. ‘Your confidence is misplaced.’

‘You have fought a thousand enemies before,’ said Laban. ‘You fought a thousand in one day, killing the skaven. How would you doubt your combat skills?’

‘I have fought the knight before, and could not get the better of him.’

‘You walked away from that battle,’ said Laban.

‘And so did he,’ said Gilead. ‘The way to win in combat is to respect your opponent… every opponent. Treat every battle as if it is your last. Fight every inch in every arena. Tire not. Surrender no quarter. Expect neither defeat nor victory.’

‘Show neither fear nor contempt,’ said Fithvael.

The two men were reciting a form of mantra, a prayer.

‘As my master taught me,’ said Gilead.

‘Who was your master?’ asked Laban.

‘You are looking at him,’ said Gilead, and he turned his head to look at his teacher, and, in so doing, directed the young elf’s eyes to his mentor.

‘The old servant?’ asked Laban.

Gilead glared at the youth, who blushed.

‘Begging your forgiveness, sir,’ said Laban.

‘You’ll do more than that,’ said Gilead, tossing Laban his shorter blade.

Laban caught it from the air, and looked puzzled at Gilead.

Gilead smiled at Fithvael.

‘Show the boy,’ he said.

‘It’s neither the time nor the place,’ said Fithvael, chuckling.

‘But I need to rest,’ said Gilead, ‘and what is more relaxing than watching a great show of combat skills? Indulge me.’

‘Hand me the knife, boy,’ said Fithvael.

Laban stood and offered Fithvael the blade, hilt first.

‘You’ll need this, later,’ said Fithvael, sheathing the blade and handing it to Gilead. ‘We will work unarmed.’

Fithvael was on his feet, facing Laban, his stance broad, his shoulders square, his hands hanging loosely by his sides.

‘Need you prepare?’ he asked the boy.

‘For what?’ asked Laban.

‘You heard our master,’ said Fithvael. ‘Let us indulge him with a little play. I ask again. Is there any preparation you would like to do before we commence?’

Laban looked from Gilead to Fithvael. They were both smiling, and the old elf seemed relaxed and unthreatening.

Laban looked down at his body, and at his empty hands. He was unencumbered by a cloak, and his well-fitting travelling clothes did not impede his movements.

‘What are you waiting for, boy?’ asked Gilead.

Laban looked from Gilead to Fithvael again, and Fithvael made a slight gesture with both hands, beckoning.

‘I don’t…’ began Laban.

‘Ah,’ said Gilead, ‘but you must.’ He smiled again. ‘Don’t hurt him, old man,’ he said.

‘Not for anything,’ said Fithvael.

Laban te Tuin Tor Mahone took a step towards Fithvael, keeping his knees soft, and then threw a punch in a long arc into Fithvael’s chest. Fithvael dipped his chest away, bending backwards from the waist. Laban’s fist did not connect. He had not thrown the punch hard for fear of hurting the old elf, but he was humiliated and his face flushed slightly as he cupped his fist in his hand. Next he threw a tight jab to Fithvael’s gut, but, with one step, the old man turned his body sideways and grabbed the jab before it landed against his hip. He threw the fist back at the young elf.

Fithvael stepped into the next punch, stopping Laban’s forearm against his upper arm, and planting a sharp slap on his opponent’s cheek, as if teasing him. Laban countered with a jab and a hook. Fithvael ducked so that the jab cleared his shoulder, throwing Laban against his chest, so that the hook sailed around the old man’s body, and they ended up in a clinch. Fithvael lifted Laban slightly and planted him back on his feet.

He slapped the boy again, once on each cheek, before Laban was ready to be joined once more in combat.

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ said Gilead. ‘Use your speed. He is old and past his prime.’

Laban looked at Gilead, encouraged, and changed his tactics. He flew at Fithvael, turning in the air with a high kick. Again, there was no impact as Fithvael danced out of the line of fire, but, having turned, the mentor caught the boy’s foot out of the air and twisted it. He brought Laban down to earth, as he landed heavily on his chest, his foot still in Fithvael’s hand. The mentor turned the foot, obliging Laban to turn over so that he was lying on his back with Fithvael standing over him.

‘You’re dead,’ said Gilead.

‘I didn’t want to hurt him,’ said Laban.

Fithvael let go of the boy’s foot, and gestured again for Laban to rise and attack.

‘Catch your breath, and try again,’ said Fithvael, standing before the boy; feet shoulder width apart, arms crossed over his chest.

Laban stood, wary. Then he lunged at Fithvael, head-down, as if to throw his shoulder into the old elf’s gut, in a wrestling hold. In one elegant movement, Fithvael ducked low and under Laban, and lifted him off his feet and over his back. Fithvael came up into the standing position, his arms still crossed while Laban sprawled on the ground behind him.

Gilead laughed a low chuckle, which made Fithvael turn for a second in wonder. Laban saw the old elf turn, and chose his moment, hoping to catch the old elf at the apex of his turn, off-balance and off-guard. Fithvael was old, but he was long practised in the arts of combat, and what he lacked in strength or speed he made up for in cunning and an economy of movement. He was neither as off-balance nor as off-guard as Laban had believed him to be, and he snapped back to his stationary position, using the boy’s momentum against him, causing him to stagger out under the old elf’s arm to sprawl on his belly at Gilead’s feet.

‘The pup has much to learn,’ said Gilead. ‘When do you begin?’

‘I believe I just began,’ said Fithvael crouching at the fire they had built, digging in its embers for the tubers roasting there. He flicked one out with his knife, in Laban’s direction. The boy was sitting on the ground close by, and caught it in his hands.

‘Lesson number two,’ said Gilead as Laban dropped the tuber and began to blow on his scorched fingers. ‘Think twice before you ever catch a hot potato.’

Dusk came early in the north, and when it was impossible to distinguish between threads of black and white in the waning sunlight, Fithvael looked to Gilead for permission to lift the cloak from the hole in the ground.

Fithvael and Laban had taken an hour to clear a flat area of ground for the combat to take place in. They had grubbed up the last of the pale weeds, removed the few rocks and stones that had found their way onto the fallow land, and raked through the dusty earth with bunches of hedgerow twigs to level it. There were no makeshift weapons hidden in the ground, no rocks that could be used to add weight to a fist, no lost blades, no detritus of former skirmishes. There were no roots to fall over, and no shade advantage, since the sun was all but set; the moons were high in the sky. The space was even marked out at a distance from the ditch so that no accidental fall could put one or other opponent at an advantage.

Gilead had eaten a light meal and was well-rested and in good spirits. He did not, however, take advantage of Fithvael’s presence and run drills or sparring practice. He would take no advantage that he could not offer to his adversary.

‘Will you talk about the amulet?’ asked Fithvael. ‘Will you ask the knight’s knowledge of it?’

‘If it will further our ends,’ said Gilead. ‘If it will help to banish the plague from these lands… From all land, I will ask. I will not beg.’

‘You won’t have to,’ said Fithvael, straightening the back of the elf’s shirt. Gilead examined the cuffs that Laban had adjusted and nodded his thanks to the boy.

‘You make a fine seamstress,’ he said. ‘Your wife need waste no time in sewing for you.’

Laban dared not scowl.

‘I’ve rarely known you in such high spirits,’ Fithvael said to Gilead. ‘Should I be concerned.’

‘Only for my life,’ said Gilead. ‘I do not relish the thought of my own demise as once I might have, but it holds no fear for me, and still offers some blessed relief. I’m sure you’d rather have me smile in the face of death, than sigh, or cry out.’

‘Is he truly so able?’ asked Fithvael.

‘You saw him,’ said Gilead.

‘I saw him plough through young, stupid creatures, without an ounce of finer feeling,’ said Fithvael.

‘I am sure,’ said Gilead, ‘if he has any feeling at all, it is of the very finest sort.’

They turned to watch as the Vampire Count’s hands emerged from the hole in the ground, holding a sword and a shorter secondary blade. The hands were white, and the fine-boned digits ended in thick cruel talons, shaped like teardrops, as if filed to points. The weapons were those of an ancient Bretonnian knight, beautifully forged from folded steel, and honed to a bright, hard edge. They looked like specimen weapons, never used nor worn, never nicked nor dented. They all knew better. When the Count was waist-deep in the ground, he rested his weapons in the bottom of the ditch, and, planting his hands firmly on either side of the hole, he lifted his body and legs through the aperture.

Laban was young and idealistic, and could not countenance seconding the beast, so he held Gilead’s blades, and Fithvael stood at the Count’s side. No words passed between any of them.

Dressed in nothing but their shirts and breeches, Gilead and the Count took their weapons and saluted one another across several yards of ground. Fithvael and Laban retired to either side of the allotted area.

The combatants circled, first clockwise and then anti-clockwise, neither lifting a weapon to the other. Gilead measured the size of the Count’s stride, the softness in his knees, the weight of his shoulders. He counted his blink. He watched to see which side the Count favoured, which hand was strongest, which leg he trusted his weight to. He detected a flinching of a hamstring in the Count’s right leg, suggesting that he preferred to lunge forward and step backward on the left, so he would tend to fight across his body. Conversely the Count tended to turn his head to the left, suggesting that sight or hearing were more efficient, more acute on the right.

The Vampire Count used his time to stride out the ground, checking the size of the arena in which he must fight, the position of the moons in the sky. He listened for any life-forms that might be close by, any beasts or hidden audience. He eyed up the long, lean forms of the attendants, watching them breathe, discovering who was anxious or likely to intervene in the combat. He knew Gilead already. He knew that the missing digit did not seem to affect the Elf’s blade skills, and that the elf preferred to be the aggressor, attacking, always moving forwards. He knew that his concentration was impeccable, that no bird taking wing, nor clap of thunder would surprise or trouble him, nor the movement of the earth beneath his feet, nor a blade driven hard towards him would throw him off his game.

Gilead was a consummate warrior elf, and he was everything that a knight should be and more.

After several minutes of striding back and forth, and of watching each other, Laban began to relax, wondering if anything would happen, after all. Then the Vampire Count spoke.

‘If I am to die, this night,’ he said, ‘I die with honour at your hand.’

Laban stood up straighter and opened his eyes wider.

‘If I should die before dawn comes,’ said Gilead, ‘I die at the sword-edge of a worthy opponent.’

The Count’s statement was not a matter or form, however, not one of the many rituals he adhered to so fervently to make him feel human again.

‘The skaven,’ said the Count.

‘What of the skaven?’ asked Fithvael. ‘What of the ratmen, bloodless one?’

It was too late, Fithvael’s words were lost in the first crash of steel on steel. The first slide of blade against blade. The first exhalation of breath, the first dance of feet through the dust of the arena.

Gilead turned the Count’s attacking blade, lowering it, and causing his opponent to pull it back closer to his body to prepare for another attack. The second time that swords crossed they did so high. This time, the Count thrust his weight into Gilead, breaking the contact, but the elf was too deft for the knight, and his second blade crossed the first, its tip hooking into the basket hilt of his opponent’s secondary weapon. The Count had to adjust his balance and hold hard to his dagger to prevent its loss.

He escaped and turned, arcing his dagger through the air. Gilead did not try to make weapon contact, he simply moved his head three inches, and the blade whistled past his face, cutting through a thick lock of his white hair. He was inside the Count’s reach, and his opponent had clearly forgotten that he was without his armour. The Count had left his left flank exposed from the armpit to the hip. Gilead drove him the advantage, slicing through the fine linen shirt and into the creature’s tough flesh. There was no blood. Gilead had expected none, but he knew that his blade had hit its target. The Count appeared to feel no pain, but he close his guard and brought both of his blades up in a defensive posture.

Less than a second later, Gilead and the Count were nose to nose, looking through the V-shaped gaps their long blades made in front of their faces.

‘Came you in search of me, my lord?’ Gilead asked, exhaling, and then clenching his teeth as the Count continued to bring pressure to bear on the impasse.

‘I came in search of death,’ said the Count, breaking and bouncing away, out of reach of Gilead’s blades.

The combatants circled one another again, kicking through the mass of footprints left in the dust, marking their combat as if it were a dance.

‘I followed the curse,’ said the Count, lunging forward on his right leg, against the elf’s expectations, catching the deep fold of linen under the arm of Gilead’s shirt, rending a long slit in it, but not touching his skin.

Gilead’s response was a less-well-judged slice of his short blade that tangled with the Count’s sword, the tip of which, embedded in the fabric, did rather more damage to the shirt than was strictly necessary.

Gilead stepped to the side, defending his left arm, and clearing the Count’s reach.

‘The curse?’ asked Gilead. ‘Who is the curse?’

‘Think not whom,’ said the Count, adjusting his grip on his long sword, and resting his left hand on his hip before swinging at the shoulder.

Gilead registered that the left shoulder had some weakness he had exploited by accident and decided that his next move must be to rid the Count of the second of his blades.

Meantime, the Count came forward on his left leg, extending his knee joint and pushing his right shoulder forward into a punishing thrust with the sword. Only Gilead’s slender frame saved him from a potentially fatal injury. The blade pierced skin for the first time, but only skin and an inch thickness of flesh.

‘Think what,’ said the Count. ‘Think of the cursed plague that rids the lands of their riches. Think of the barrenness of the beasts of the field and of the womenfolk.’

Gilead brought his attack heavily to the Count’s left side, wielding both weapons: his sword in a direct attack, his short blade across his body. The Count had no option but to recoil, and withdrew his bloody sword.

Gilead turned his narrow form with his right side, his bloody side, facing the Count, and came in with only his sword, thrusting, parrying and driving onward, forcing the Count to back away across the arena, ensuring that he rely on his right leg, attacking the left shoulder, the weak point.

The Count defended well, parrying hard and rallying for a counter-attack, but a third forward thrust forced him back onto his right leg, and he felt the stiffness of his left shoulder. He must do something to force Gilead to fight on his other side. He tried to turn, but his right leg would not hold, so he shuffled clumsily, and dropped his sword below waist height. Gilead came in fast and strong, flicking the Count’s shorter blade out of his left hand, and catching it by its basket hilt on his sword.

There was a sharp breath sound from the edge of the arena, over Gilead’s shoulder to his right, as Laban gasped. The elf thought his young cousin might even applaud, and it made his lip curl slightly as if in a smile. He raised his sword and flicked the Count’s secondary blade over his shoulder for Laban to hold for him.

‘We call it the plague,’ said Gilead, turning the tip of his sword in small circles at arm’s length, pointing it high at the Count’s head. ‘What know you of it?’

The Count took hold of his sword in a double-handed grip and began to swing it in a great circle from the ground at his right boot-toe to high above his left shoulder. The momentum behind the swing was vast, and the blade arced towards Gilead’s shoulder, making the air sing.

Gilead stepped lightly away from the swing and then brought his own sword down on the Count’s at the bottom of its arc, while driving in at neck level with his dagger. Gilead drove the point of his short blade down inside the Count’s collar bone at an angle, but the small amount of flesh there was dense and leathery, and penetration was not deep enough to do fatal damage.

‘It matters not,’ said the Count, sliding off Gilead’s knife and backing away, rolling the hilt of his sword between his hands, and preparing for a new onslaught. ‘The amulet is buried for all time. It no longer carries its mortal threat.’ With that the Count feinted, and then lunged forward on his strong left leg, attacking low, plunging his blade into Gilead’s thigh. There was a short, sharp spurt of blood, and for a moment, the Count looked painfully disappointed, if, indeed any expression could be read on his undead face.

His disappointment was short-lived. Had Gilead been human and his femoral artery had been as exposed as a man’s was, he might have met his death, but an elf’s artery is protected deep in his thigh in a fine, but virtually impenetrable sheath of cartilage and bone. The damage was superficial.

The Count had made the mistake of taking a step back, thinking that he had bested his opponent, and Gilead quickly drove his advantage, attacking high to the left again, exposing the weakness in the Count’s shoulder.

As Gilead forced the Count backwards, defending wildly, his sword beginning to weigh heavy, even in his experienced hands, the elf spoke again.

‘What if it is not buried?’ he asked.

‘Not buried?’ asked the Count. ‘The Rat King forsook the jewel? Broke faith with his master?’

The Count staggered backwards, blocking another vicious onslaught of paired blades. His hamstring gave way, and he found himself on one knee, leaning away from the blades that must surely finish him.

Laban took a step closer to the Count, watching him carefully, looking for any trick he might still deploy against his cousin. Gilead took a step back from his fallen adversary and thrust his shorter blade into his cousin’s hand.

‘But…’ began Laban.

‘We fight on equal terms,’ said Gilead.

He offered the Vampire Count his hand, and helped him to his feet. His hand was cool and dry and smooth. The grip was strong and firm and the knuckles stood proud, but Gilead felt no revulsion touching it; it was less horrifying than touching the sweaty, flaccid palm of a terrified human.

Gilead swung the Count to his feet and stood back. They had been in close combat for some time, neither had proven stronger than the other. They were at an impasse, except that the Count clearly had information that would be useful to Gilead, and he wanted to tease it out of the undead knight.

Keeping his eyes firmly on the Count, and his blade high, held firmly in his right hand, Gilead teased the fingers of his left hand into his boot and withdrew the stone. He flicked it into the air, and watched as the Vampire Count followed its trajectory with his staring red eyes.

He did not catch it, but let it fall in the dust before him.

‘Is that it?’ asked Gilead.

‘I know not,’ said the Count, adjusting his two-handed grip to one hand, as his eyes flicked back and forth between the amulet and Gilead’s stare.

‘The Rat King wore it around his neck on a hair ribbon,’ said Gilead. ‘It wove a spell around him, and around his people. It altered the very rock that his great hall was hewn from.’

‘Then it is everything his master claimed it must be,’ said the Count. He rocked his weight from one foot to the other, as if limbering up to defend himself from the coming attack, but Gilead stayed where he was, his sword up, but his feet firmly planted.

‘You talk of a master? Another great skaven king? A ratman more powerful than the holder of the charm?’ There was a sneer in Gilead’s voice, as if he didn’t believe the Vampire Count, as if this might be some kind of trick, some form of dissembling. ‘I think not. Are you the master, then, come to claim your prize?’

‘There is no prize,’ said the Count, his gaze dropping and staying low. ‘I followed power, and yet…’

‘And yet?’ asked Gilead, growing impatient, raising his blade in jerking movements, an inch at a time, menacing.

‘I followed power that I might die, and yet…’ said the Count. His voice was fading, as if he were remembering. ‘I wished to honour my liege lord, and more liege lady. I wished only to perform one noble act before I died at the hand of the greatest warrior to ever meet with me in mortal combat.’

‘What noble act?’ asked Gilead.

‘The noble act that you performed in my stead,’ answered the Count. ‘You were taken, and it mattered not, for I knew that you would best the skaven thugs, that you would outwit and outfight them. I knew that you would recognise the amulet for the evil that it might do, for the plague that it has spread through the skaven horde, and I knew that you would destroy it, or return it. I could not restore the world, as you could. I have not the honour nor the nobility I once had.’

‘Return it?’ asked Gilead.

The two warriors were circling each other again. They paced out the arena, watching one another. Laban and Fithvael stood on either side of the space, watching, unable to intervene, but silently praying for Gilead’s life. The battle had been hard-fought in flashes of brilliant swordsmanship, punctuated by long periods of walking and watching, circling and preparing.

Then they were both at the centre of the arena; once more, blades screaming against each other in a flurry of attacks and counter-attacks, of lunges, thrusts, ripostes and parries. One leg of the Count’s breeches was cut away, almost entirely as Gilead turned and drew his sword violently upward and outward, missing his target by the depth of the cloth and leather it was clad in. The Count was faster than Gilead had anticipated without his armour, and nimble too.

Gilead’s reach was longer, so he was at the advantage on the attack, but the Count’s defence was impenetrable. When Gilead did penetrate, the Count’s hide was tough; he did not bleed, and he appeared to feel no pain.

Gilead had a graze on his chin, as if he had shaved badly, his hair was partly shorn away and his shirt was irreparable. The blood in his thigh had clotted quickly, and a clean scab had formed almost instantaneously, or so it seemed to the Count. Other creatures bled long and profusely, even the smaller mammals had served as a decent meal for him, but this elf did not bleed. He could not find his veins and exploit their weaknesses.

Laban had thought to help, to do something, and made to throw his cousin his second blade, but Fithvael, ever watchful, caught the boy’s eye, and slowly shook his head. Laban’s eyes flicked back to the fight; the astonishment on his face made Fithvael turn in the direction that he was looking.

Suddenly, Gilead was no longer visible in one place. He was high and low, wide and fast, close, and then away again. Laban could see the Vampire Count swinging his weapon, always too slowly, never in the right direction. Gilead’s sword had a new momentum. He took a piece of flesh out of an upper arm, carved a hole in a shoulder, hacked away a cheek, and thrust right through the gut.

Gilead was shadow-fast. The world and everything in it seemed to stand still. He could not only see every move the Count would make before he made it, he could counter it and exploit it. The Count was good, his instincts sound, so this would be no easy kill, but Gilead knew, at last, that he would kill the unnatural being.

Laban sat heavily on his backside. He had not seen a shadow-fast elf before. He had known it was part of his family legend, had heard the tales, the old myths, but he had never seen it, and had never thought to see it as long as he lived. He pinched himself, wondering if he was dreaming, at the same time, trying to catch sight of the whirlwind that was his cousin.

The only light was from twin moons suspended high in the sky above. There were few clouds, and nothing more than a breeze in the air, but, in the darkness, Laban could hardly see Fithvael on the other side of the arena, and could see only the glints and flashes of Gilead’s blade. He wondered if the Count could see anything.

And then it stopped.

The Count and Gilead stood as close as two beings can stand one to the other. Laban noted that he could see no blood on the Count’s clothes, and then remembered that the Count did not bleed. The young elf got to his feet and took a careful step closer to his cousin. He almost tripped over the Count’s sword, sticking out of the earth at a low angle, close to his feet.

Laban took the sword by its hilt and freed it from the earth. He held it high in the air that Fithvael might see it, but the old elf was already drawing close.

Gilead had the blade of his sword hard against the Vampire Count’s throat, ready to sever the creature’s head from his body.

‘Do it,’ said the Count, his cold, red eyes, staring into Gilead’s, willing him to end his miserable existence. ‘Raise a pyre for me, that I may not return. Dismember and decapitate my corpse, leave no chance that I might escape this fate.

‘I will do all of those things,’ said Gilead. ‘It will be my honour to serve you in death, but first, tell me what I need to know.’

‘What need you of my knowledge?’ asked the Vampire Count. ‘My tale is apocryphal at best. Trust me not, for I fear, to trust me will do you nothing but harm.’

‘I have nothing else,’ said Gilead. ‘Tell me simply, tell me truly, only that which you know. Embellish nothing. Give me only your truth.’

‘It was always the skaven,’ said the Vampire Count. ‘They spread the plague, but it only resides in them, uses them, and disables them. It originates elsewhere, in the hearts and minds of the southern places, in the lost souls of the sands, in the broken people of the stone sarcophagi, and in their golden leaders.’

Gilead’s hold on the Vampire Count strengthened as the creature began to lose all sense of itself in the bliss that was its demise.

‘Kill me,’ it said. ‘Kill me now. I have nothing more for you. Nothing more to say.’

Gilead gestured to Laban, beckoning him to bring the sword.

When he was close, Gilead let go his grasp on the Count, and, in that same movement, took the warrior’s sword from his cousin and pressed it into his adversary’s hands.

Then Gilead swung, bringing the hilt of his sword from his left shoulder, throwing the blade in a gleaming arc. By the time the hilt of the sword, still held in both hands, was resting against his right shoulder, the Vampire Count’s body was falling.

Gilead had felt the flex in the blade of his sword as it cut through leather and petrified sinew and on through empty veins and a calcified trachea. Then he felt the jarring sensation in his arms as the blade hit something that it could not strike through. The vertebrae still holding the Vampire Count upright were harder than the steel of his sword, and would not be divided by it in one swing.

The Count’s head did not separate from his body, but lolled like some grotesque doll’s head, bloodlessly. The legs buckled beneath the Count, the right first, tilting his torso awkwardly to one side as his head bounced for a moment at the extremity of his spine.

Gilead turned and walked away. He handed his sword to Fithvael and approached the hedgerow, which he began to rip away with his hands, quickly gathering large amounts of dry twisting twigs and lengths of half-dead wood.

‘We must build a pyre,’ said Gilead. ‘We must honour our dead, and when we have held vigil and seen the bones scattered, we turn south.’

Dead Man’s Party

Josh Reynolds

It was Spring Tide, and Marienburg was awash in revelry of both the sublime and more boisterous sort. Poles bearing caged seagulls were hoisted aloft as the celebration unfolded. Cornets and other instruments were played, mostly badly, by over-enthusiastic revellers. Buckets of seawater were sloshed about on the unwary as priests and pilgrims bellowed out the more profane hymns to Manann, popular among sailors.

Steel spheres containing handfuls of incense and hot coals were draped from every available protrusion, and clouds of exotic spices drifted across the streets, battling for dominance with the normal urban stew of the canals. Children threw dried flakes of seaweed and coral into the waters of the Central Canal as the great altar-barge of Manann hove to, the high priest roaring his praises and shaking his gull-pole until the bird’s raucous squawks threatened to drown out his own.

Every citizen was either in the streets or in the taverns, or heading from one to the other. Or so it seemed to Erkhart Dubnitz, knight of the Most Holy Order of Manann-in-Marienburg, as he stiff-armed a red-faced drunk into the canal in order to clear a path for his charge. ‘Right this way, Meneer Lomax,’ he said obsequiously, bowing and sweeping an armour-plated arm out just in time to catch a bucket-bearing priest in the belly. The seawater sloshed across the cobbles and Dubnitz’s charge chuckled.

‘At least the stones are getting a good scouring, hey?’ Bernard Lomax said, rheumy eyes taking in the celebration with a weary air as he leaned on his narwhal-horn cane. He was dressed archaically, in the fashion of his youth, and his clothes showed signs of having been repaired, rather than replaced. Lomax was old, and age weighed heavily on his thin form. He had the heft of a Nehekharan mummy in his twilight years but none of the joie de vivre, as the Bretonnian saying went.

‘Are you enjoying yourself, Meneer Lomax?’ Piet Van Taal said. Like Dubnitz, Piet was a knight of the most holy, and only occasionally violent, Order of Manann. In contrast to Dubnitz’s barrel-chested heft, he was a lean whip of a man with the stamp of one of the lower rungs of Marienburg’s aristocracy on his features. Like Dubnitz, he wore a coat of chainmail beneath an emerald surcoat bearing the trident-and-crown emblem of Manann, god of the seas.

‘Who can enjoy themselves with the stench and the noise?’ Lomax said, coughing into a clenched fist. ‘Is this what you do for fun?’

‘Not quite, no,’ Dubnitz said quickly. ‘Normally our carousing takes place indoors, away from the hurly-burly.’ He spun and punched a celebrant who’d been about to place a wreath of eel-skins and shark fins around his neck.

‘That sounds good,’ Lomax said, watching the wreath clatter across the cobbles.

Piet looked at Dubnitz over the top of Lomax’s head and mouthed, ‘The Scalded Gull?’

Dubnitz nodded. He laid a leather gauntlet on Lomax’s shoulder. ‘Right this way, Meneer Lomax. We’ll have you quaffing in no time.’

‘Are you taking me to a dive? Is it filthy?’

‘The filthiest,’ Dubnitz assured him.

‘Will there be loose women?’

‘The loosest,’ Piet said.

‘It sounds delightful,’ Lomax murmured, clasping his trembling hands together. ‘Lead on Sir Knights! I have a half-century’s worth of abstinence to make up for.’

The knights led him through the crowd into the back alleys that stretched out from the Central Canal, where the noise of the Spring Tide celebration grew muted and the natural odoriferousness of Marienburg reasserted itself. The Scalded Gull clung to a little-used stable on Fishhook Lane like an unsightly growth. It was an overlarge shed, with wide windows and a door that was less an obstacle than a curtain. It wasn’t crowded, for which Dubnitz muttered a silent prayer of thanks to Manann.

The barman grunted an unintelligible greeting and Dubnitz raised three fingers and gestured to a table in the back corner that sat beneath the hide of giant rat that had been stretched across the wall and nailed in place. Lomax looked curiously at the hide as they sat. ‘What is it?’

‘It thought it was a man,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Now it’s a conversation piece. We cleaned out a nest of the pestiferous beasts a few years back in the area, now all of the local swill-sellers let the Order drink for free.’

The drinks arrived and the two knights emptied their mugs in moments, slamming them down almost simultaneously. Lomax blinked at the speed. He hesitated, his fingers gripping his own mug as he looked into the foam as if it hid secrets. Then he jerked it convulsively to his lips and knocked it back. Dubnitz waved his hand, signalling for another round. Lomax went momentarily cross-eyed and coughed. ‘It has been some time since I had anything stronger than turnip juice,’ he said. He licked his lips. ‘I quite liked it.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Dubnitz said, and he was. He examined the old man. Lomax was a man of means. He was also a miser with money to spare. Money which he’d promised to the Order of Manann, money which they desperately needed, if the hollow echoing sound of the tithe coffers was anything to go by. All Lomax had asked in return was one night, just one night of carousing and stupidity, to make up for a lifetime of thrift and denial, because misers like Lomax didn’t make charitable donations without strings attached.

It wasn’t that strange a request, all things considered. Lomax’s ascetic life hadn’t been by choice so much as by necessity. A man without pleasures or vices was a hard man to trap. The life of a dyspeptic shut-in had kept old Lomax toddling along through two generations of greedy grasping relatives who chafed at the tightness of Lomax’s purse strings and weren’t shy about trying to cut, burn or poison their way into said purse. Those same relatives had set up a howl that would have sent invading Norscans scurrying back to their boats when they found out that Lomax was leaving his substantial fortune to the Order of Manann.

It was more out of spite than religious epiphany, Dubnitz knew. Lomax was doing the next best thing to taking it with him, and because greedy relatives didn’t like it when miserly relations loudly announced their intention to change their will and leave the bulk of their substantial fiduciary assets to an up-and-coming order of humble templars, there would be some attempt to stop it.

Thus, strings. A night of sybaritic pleasure, one full night, and then the new will took effect at cockcrow. All the Order had to do was give their new patron the best night of his life. Grandmaster Ogg was filled with a joy that he could barely contain and had ordered his most masterful carousers to take things in hand. Dubnitz and Piet set to it with a will, the former theorizing that Lomax, long having gone without, might mistake quantity for quality, and make the night’s work quick and easy.

By the eighth mug of rotgut, Lomax was cackling and clapping as a Strigany dancing girl spun and shook across the tabletop. The Scalded Gull had grown loud since they’d arrived as celebrants filtered into the alleys from the party outside. Dubnitz watched bleary-eyed as pickpockets plied their trade through the dense crowd and the dancing girl’s ferret-faced kin did the same to the pickpockets. Then, as Lomax started shouting a bawdy tune he’d known in his boyhood, Dubnitz spotted the assassin.

He was a dock-snake, one of the lean, lethal savages who ascribed to no union or guild and who roamed from berth to berth, unloading and loading vessels for under-the-table pay. A hooked fish-knife sprouted from one sinewy hand as he slithered through the crowd, his eyes locked on Lomax with the feral intensity of a starving wharf rat.

Dubnitz roared and shot awkwardly to his feet. Alcohol fumes clouded the edges of his vision. The dock-snake stumbled back as the dancing girl screamed and the crowd began to roll back like ripples spreading from a stone dropped in a rain barrel. Piet, still in his seat, was looking around blearily as he groped blindly for his sword.

Dubnitz’s sword sprang from its sheath in a crooked arc, slicing air rather than flesh as it passed just in front of the dock-snake’s nose. The man sprang past him, one bare foot hooking the table edge as he propelled himself up and at Lomax, who had tipped his head back and was raising a mug all unawares. Dubnitz spun and grabbed the back of the would-be killer’s trousers and, with a roll of his shoulders, sent the dock-snake hurtling backwards into the wall behind the bar with bone-breaking force.

And then, as the echoes of that crash faded, it all went to hell. People screamed. The dancing girl leapt off the table in a splash of silks and a rattle of bangles. Dubnitz spun in a circle, seeking enemies even as he noted that it was taking Lomax a long time to gulp his ale.

‘Dubnitz,’ Piet said. ‘Did something just happen?’

‘Someone tried to kill Lomax,’ Dubnitz mumbled. The room swayed around him.

‘Did you stop them?’

‘Yes,’ Dubnitz said.

‘Are you sure? He looks dead. Is he dead?’ Piet said, gesturing sloppily towards the crossbow bolt that had sprouted from the bottom of Lomax’s mug. The point of said bolt had passed through the mug and between Lomax’s open jaws, piercing the soft tissues of his sinuses on its trek into his brain.

Dubnitz looked blearily over his shoulder. He blinked owlishly and belched. ‘I’d say it’s a definite possibility,’ he said, stumbling over ‘possibility’.

‘Are we sure he’s dead?’

Dubnitz kicked the body, toppling over in the process. From the floor, he said, ‘Almost positively, yes.’

‘We’re dead,’ Piet muttered, shaking his head.

‘I thought he was the one who was dead,’ Dubnitz said, as he heaved himself to his feet.

‘Ogg is going to kill us.’

‘Bound to happen,’ Dubnitz said cheerfully, squinting around at the empty tavern. The evening crowd had chosen discretion over curiosity and fled. The Scalded Gull was empty of life, though the sounds of the Spring Tide celebration still curled through the open windows. ‘Don’t sober up on me now, Piet, it’ll only end in tears.’

Piet cursed and tried to stand, but he only succeeded in windmilling his arms and causing his chair to groan in protest. ‘What are we going to do? Lomax is dead!’

‘Says who?’ Dubnitz said, spreading his arms. ‘Tavern’s empty, Piet.’

‘He’s got an arrow sticking out of his head!’

‘So we pull it out,’ Dubnitz said mildly, striding to the bar and reaching under it. He pulled out a bottle and eyed it, then pulled the stopper with his teeth and knocked back a slug. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he stomped back towards the table. ‘Have some good Sartosian red and calm down,’ he said, tossing the bottle to Piet, who caught it awkwardly.

‘I don’t think more alcohol is the solution here,’ Piet said, taking a long drink.

‘Can’t hurt,’ Dubnitz muttered, taking hold of the end of the bolt transfixing the dead man’s head to the back wall of the tavern. He had been tilting his head back for a swig from his mug when the bolt had perforated his palate and nailed him and his mug to the wall. Dubnitz worked the bolt free with a grunt and squinted at it. ‘Pretty sure he’s dead,’ he said.

‘I thought we’d established that,’ Piet said gloomily.

Dubnitz didn’t reply. He carefully pulled the dead man’s head back down. The eyes had rolled to the white and a trickle of blood seeped from one nostril, but other than that, there was little sign of what had killed him. Unless you got a good luck in his mouth or at the top of his head, Lomax could have simply been dead drunk, as opposed to just plain dead.

‘I’m sorry old man,’ Dubnitz murmured, closing Lomax’s eyes. ‘We promised you a night out to celebrate your generosity and what did you get for it but a bolt to the brainpan. Maybe you should have given the money to the Cult of Morr instead.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Piet said mournfully, staring into the bottle, which he’d managed to half-empty in impressive time. ‘Grandmaster Ogg is going to pickle us like herring.’ He looked blearily at Dubnitz. ‘I don’t want to be pickled.’

‘We won’t get pickled,’ Dubnitz said, peering at Lomax’s body speculatively. He turned, swaying slightly, and sighted down the crossbow bolt. He found the open window of the tavern and said, ‘Aha!’

‘Aha?’ Piet said, blinking.

‘The window,’ Dubnitz said, stumbling towards the window. He stuck his head out and peered at the wall of the stables opposite. The night-stew that passed for fresh air in Marienburg slapped his face, sobering him slightly. ‘The arrow came from outside.’

‘Brilliant deduction,’ Piet said, shoving himself to his feet. ‘Sam Warble himself couldn’t have done it better. Are you sure your name isn’t Zavant Konniger? We’re going to get pickled!’

‘Stop saying pickled. Ogg will jelly us, if anything. Man loves his jellied eels.’ Dubnitz absently scratched his chin with the crossbow bolt, then thought of poison, stared at the bolt and swallowed thickly. ‘What time is it, Piet?’

‘How should I know? Time to find warmer waters,’ Piet said, taking another swig from the bottle. ‘If we ride out now, we can be halfway to Altdorf in a few days.’

‘Don’t put the saddle on the horse just yet,’ Dubnitz said and snatched the bottle from him and knocked back the rest of it in one gulp. He tossed the bottle out of the window and strode back towards the bar. ‘I’ve got a cunning plan.’ He grabbed a broom and number of rags from behind the bar and several more bottles. He used his foot to roll a small keg of Averland Bear’s Milk towards the table.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ Piet said as Dubnitz pulled Lomax’s corpse upright by its shirt-front.

‘Of course it will,’ Dubnitz said, yanking the cork out of a bottle of wine with his teeth and pouring the contents over the body. ‘If he smells like a brewery exploded, no one will give him a second look. And all we need to do is keep him moving until the will goes into effect.’

‘This is madness,’ Piet said as he draped the dead man’s arm over his shoulders. ‘We should alert the watch. Captain Schnell, over at the Three Penny Bridge watch station, is a friend of mine.’

Dubnitz shook his head. ‘I owe Schnell money. Besides, this is Marienburg, and we’ve done worse,’ Dubnitz said, doing the same with Lomax’s other arm. ‘Besides, it’s all for a good cause, Piet. We’re seeing that Lomax’s last request is carried out.’ The body slumped between them, feet dragging. ‘We need twine.’

‘Twine,’ Piet muttered, looking around. ‘Why do we need twine?’

‘Well, to keep him walking, obviously,’ Dubnitz said. ‘It doesn’t have to be twine. See if you can get this broomstick down his trousers.’

‘Couldn’t we just sit here quietly with a few drinks?’ Piet implored.

‘People need to see him up and about,’ Dubnitz said. ‘It is our duty, for the Order and for Manann. Now, in his name find some twine or a broom or... here.’ Dubnitz grabbed up a chair and broke it on the floor, depositing the bulk of Lomax’s weight onto Piet. Taking the pieces of the chair, he stuffed them down the back of Lomax’s trousers and into his boots, stiffening his legs. Then he swiftly tied Lomax’s ankles to Piet’s and his own.

‘With him between us, we should be able to manage it,’ Dubnitz said, draping Lomax’s arm back over him. Awkwardly, he snatched the broom from Piet’s hands and jammed it down the back of Lomax’s jerkin and down into one leg of his trousers. Then he handed a rag to Piet and jerked Lomax’s head up. ‘Now, tie his head to the back of the broom.’

‘People are going to notice!’ Piet protested.

‘Not with his hat on they won’t,’ Dubnitz said assuredly. ‘Trust me, I’ve done this before.’

‘When?’ Piet demanded.

‘I’m not at liberty to say. A woman’s honour was involved. The situation was very uncomfortable for everyone concerned,’ Dubnitz said, stuffing Lomax’s fallen hat on his head. Lomax hung between them, not quite sagging. His head tilted down slightly, and he looked – and smelled – drunk.

‘Now what do we do?’ Piet said.

‘Now we carouse as we’ve never caroused before,’ Dubnitz said. He snatched up Lomax’s cane and spun it with the dexterity of a professional alcoholic.

They shuffled towards the door, Piet first and then Dubnitz, walking Lomax’s corpse between them. As they exited the tavern, a sound from above caused them to look up. A body, dressed in battered leathers, rolled off of the stable roof and thumped into the alleyway. A moment later, a crossbow followed, shattering as it struck the ground. Dubnitz stretched out Lomax’s cane and prodded the fallen man.

‘He’s dead too,’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ Piet said. ‘That’s Giuseppe Giancarlo, the Miragliano Murderist!’

‘How can you tell?’ Dubnitz said, rolling the body over to reveal its mauled face and chest. The man, whatever his identity, looked as if he’d walked face first into an exploding cannon.

‘Only man I know whoever lavished that much affection on his crossbow,’ Piet said, nudging the broken crossbow with his boot. Dubnitz saw that it had been inlaid with silver and the stock was ornately engraved.

‘Didn’t do him much good,’ Dubnitz said, peering up. ‘I suppose we know now who shot Lom– I mean, shot at Lomax.’ Giving in to ghoulish impulse, he grabbed the back of Lomax’s head and made it nod. Piet blanched.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

‘He doesn’t mind.’

‘It’s blasphemous!’

Dubnitz snorted and looked at the body again. ‘Of course, now we’re left with the question of who killed your friend Giuseppe.’

The sound of soft sandals scraping the cobbles caused the two knights to swing around to the darkened end of the alleyway, their burden causing them to almost overbalance. ‘I think we’re about to find out,’ Piet said.

The Arabyan was the first to step forward. He was wreathed in black robes and he stopped and leaned on his scimitar. ‘I want Lomax,’ he said, fluffing his curled beard. A discreet cough caused him to pause, and he turned slightly. ‘We want Lomax, Mock Duck and I,’ he corrected. The Cathayan slid forward to join him, pistols strung from his narrow frame like holy talismans. He drew one and cocked it, aiming it at Dubnitz. His dark eyes found the body of Giuseppe and narrowed. He looked at the Arabyan, who frowned. ‘Which one of you killed Giuseppe?’

Dubnitz and Piet both held up their hands. ‘Not us,’ Dubnitz said. ‘I assumed it was you.’

The Arabyan blinked. Then, he coughed. Something bright protruded from his throat. He reached up with a trembling finger and touched it. Then, with a gurgle, he toppled forward, revealing the wavy-bladed dagger jutting from the back of his neck. The Cathayan spun, drawing a second pistol. He leapt into the darkness, his pistols roaring. More pistol shots sounded, and then, silence.

‘We should go,’ Piet said.

‘I concur,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Make for the alley mouth–’

The shapes were shadows within the darkness at first, blotches of black. As they eased into the torchlight, metal gleamed. Brass masks, wrought in the shape of a daemon’s grinning leer, peered out of ragged cowls. Gauntleted hands emerged from voluminous sleeves, clutching wavy-bladed daggers. There were three of them.

‘Well, there’s a sight I hoped never to see,’ Dubnitz hissed.

‘The Murder-Brothers of Khaine,’ Piet whispered, the colour draining from his face. The murder-brothers, sometimes known as the massacre-monks or the slaughter-priests, were the pre-eminent assassins in Marienburg. Devoted to Khaine, god of murder, they lathered an unhealthy amount of religious fervour onto even the simplest back-alley killing.

‘We’re lucky it’s not all twelve of them,’ Dubnitz said, extending Lomax’s cane. Tiles crashed down from the roof, shattering on the ground. Dubnitz’s eyes flickered upwards and he caught sight of furtive movement. ‘Spoke too soon,’ he added.

‘Oh gods,’ Piet said hoarsely. ‘They’re all around us.’

‘Back away slowly,’ Dubnitz said. ‘If we can get to the mouth of the alley–’

‘Give us the merchant, dogs of Manann,’ one of the murder-brothers croaked, his voice distorted by the contours of his mask. ‘Khaine has no interest in your hearts today.’

‘Glad to hear it, but as you can see, our friend here can barely stand without us, so–’ Dubnitz said, tapping Lomax’s chest with the cane.

There was a rush of feet and a wavy dagger speared out of the darkness to the side. Piet snarled and drew his sword, the motion swinging Dubnitz around to face two more of the murder-brothers as they sprang for him. He lashed out with the cane, catching the tips of both blades in the carved grooves that lined the cane and twisted his wrist, jerking the knives from their wielders’ hands. His metal shod boot came down on a sandaled foot and an assassin yelped. The cane slashed out. Narwhal horn was almost as hard as iron, and a brass mask crumpled.

Piet’s sword chopped out, separating a cowled head from hunched shoulders and then they were galumphing towards the mouth of the alleyway, the hounds of Khaine in hot pursuit. As they ran, Dubnitz was reminded of the three-legged races he’d participated in as a boy, and of the Tannery rats which had pursued the racers along the course. He’d hated it then, and time hadn’t dulled the feeling. Sound and the smell of the canals washed over them as they burst out into the throng. People laughed and jeered and wept. Men draped in flags stumbled past on stilts carved to look like ships’ masts. Clowns clad in paper seaweed gambolled past. Dubnitz, Piet and the corpse between them fit right in to the madness of Spring Tide.

As they awkwardly shoved into the morass of drunken revelry, Dubnitz craned his neck. ‘I think we lost them!’ Adrenaline had burned away the last dregs of drunkenness that had made their current predicament seem like a good plan. Thinking on it, Dubnitz wondered if it might not have been better to simply hide the body somewhere until the next morning.

‘Knife,’ Piet hissed.

‘What?’

‘Knife,’ Piet snarled, flailing his hand. Dubnitz looked down and saw a wavy-bladed dagger jutting from Lomax’s belly.

‘Whoops,’ Dubnitz said, plucking it out and tossing it into the gutter. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was dark. Dubnitz snatched a bottle of something equally dark and strong smelling from the hands of a woman balancing a trained seagull on her nose and splashed it on the wound. Then he knocked back a drink and handed it to Piet, coughing.

‘Are there really twelve of them,’ Piet said, taking a drink.

‘Supposedly,’ Dubnitz said, scanning the crowd. All of the nearby taverns would be cramped and reeking messes, with no room to move, if it came to that, which it likely would, as the murder-cultists of Khaine were nothing if not persistent. ‘Keep your eyes peeled, Piet.’

‘No worries on that score. I won’t be closing them again until we’re done with this farce,’ Piet hissed. ‘This is an idiotic plan, Dubnitz. We were almost killed back there!’

‘Ish-is thath-that-Bernie?’ a voice roared before Dubnitz could reply. ‘Hey! It’s old Penny-Pinch him-himshelf!’ A fat hand, bedecked with rings of varying degrees of vulgarity, grabbed Lomax’s shoulder and tried to turn him. Momentarily panicked, Dubnitz and Piet flailed about, their balance off. They righted themselves and turned as the fat merchant stumbled back, blinking blearily. The man’s chubby features brightened as he blew at the feather that drooped from his shapeless hat out of his face. ‘It is you!’ he said, slurring his words. He ignored Dubnitz and Piet and poked Lomax in the chest. ‘I shaid to myshelf, I said, ‘Rupol-Rudolpho, that can’t be Bernie Lomax, because he hates parties! But it is you and–’ he sniffed Lomax and reeled back extravagantly. ‘And whooh! You’ve been at it!’

Dubnitz grabbed Lomax’s hand and stretched it out to swat playfully at the drunken merchant’s shoulder even as he grabbed the back of Lomax’s head and made it nod. Piet glared at him, but Dubnitz jerked his head towards the merchant and shrugged.

The merchant blinked again. ‘Shay, Bernie you look sort of peaked. I know thish wonnerful cure– ack!’ He reached up to swat his neck and Dubnitz saw a tiny feathered dart pop free of his third chin and bounce into his palm. The man blinked a third time, his eyes out of synch. ‘Down I go,’ he said mournfully, sinking to the street, where he was swiftly swallowed up by the crowd. Dubnitz heard a ‘tink’ and saw another dart rattle off of his cuirass, leaving a tiny trail of fluid in its wake.

‘Time to go,’ he said, using Lomax’s cane to open a path. Piet staggered after him with a strangled curse.

‘What happened?’ the other knight barked. ‘What was that?’

‘Poison dart!’ Dubnitz replied. ‘They use them in the Southlands, I’m told.’

‘I thought the Khaine-lovers only used knives!’

‘They do,’ Dubnitz said. ‘That was someone else.’

‘How many assassins did Lomax’s relatives hire?’ Piet nearly shouted.

‘My guess would be all of them,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Duck!’

‘What?’ Piet said as Dubnitz sank down. Piet, unprepared, was jerked directly into the path of a blow from a pair of iron-shod knuckles. He swayed and tripped over his own feet, pulling Lomax down and forcing Dubnitz to stand. Dubnitz twisted, lashing out with the cane to strike the scar-faced bruiser who’d lunged from the crowd. The weighted knob of the cane bounced off the big man’s brow, and the latter staggered, shaking his head like a fly-stung ox.

‘Get him, Bull!’ a smaller, thinner man dressed in a stylish outfit that had seen better months shouted. ‘I’ll get Lomax.’ The little man had a thin moustache in the style of Estalian duellists and a dagger sprouted from his hand as he dove towards his prey.

‘Piet,’ Dubnitz said, thwacking the big man again. ‘Shake it off Piet! Duty calls!’

Piet, jaw already purpling, reached out with his free hand, grabbing the little assassin’s wrist and slamming it against Lomax’s knee. ‘Middenheim! Get this fool!’ the little man yelled, struggling with Piet. A thick rope dropped over Piet’s free hand with alacrity, and he was jerked around. A lanky Middenheimer who was dressed in wolf skins and wielding a hunting lasso, pulled on the rope, pulling Piet towards him. He frowned as the bonds holding Piet to Lomax and Dubnitz held. ‘He’s stuck, Danzig!’ he shouted.

‘Not for long,’ Danzig snarled, another knife appearing in his hand as if by magic. Dubnitz gave the big man another whack with the cane and the ivory shattered on his broad head, revealing a hidden blade. Dubnitz’s eyes widened and then he whirled, parrying the little man’s blow. Danzig stared in shock and then back-pedalled as Dubnitz swiped at him. Dubnitz jabbed the tip of the blade just beneath Danzig’s chin. ‘Fancy Danzig, as I live and breathe,’ Dubnitz said. ‘And this must be Bull Murkowski and Middenheim Oscar, who’s from Talabheim, if I remember correctly.’

‘Erkhart,’ Middenheim said, still holding Piet’s arm trapped in his lasso.

‘If I recall correctly, there’s a warrant out for all three of you,’ Dubnitz said. The crowd swirled around their island of deadly calm. If anyone noticed the five men and the corpse, no one gave any sign. Fire-eaters belched nearby, filling the air with heat and the smell of sulphur.

‘Just give us the merchant, Dubnitz,’ Danzig growled.

‘He hit me,’ Bull grunted, rubbing his face.

‘I did, and several times at that,’ Dubnitz said, nodding. ‘And I’ll do worse than that if you three jackals don’t scarper.’ He hugged Lomax’s stiffening body close. ‘Bernard Lomax is under the protection of the Order of Manann.’

‘You–’ Danzig began. Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off abruptly by a wave of boiling heat as a tongue of flame shot between them. All of them turned to see a fire-eater gesture with his fire-stick. Then he let loose with another belch of fire. Middenheim cursed as his lasso curled and fried, snapping and sending him tumbling. Piet, free, grabbed for his sword.

‘Dubnitz,’ he snapped. Dubnitz turned from the fire-eater to see the black shapes of the murder-brothers of Khaine prowling through the crowd like sharks.

‘Them again,’ Dubnitz said. ‘They’re like a bloody rash.’

The fire-eater had been joined by a tumbler, clad in silk and humorous pantaloons. The tumbler bobbed and bounced and sent a slipper-clad foot elegantly crunching into Bull’s dumb features. The big man backed away, puzzled, as the tumbler continued to kick, punch and prod him. ‘Lomax is ours Danzig,’ a man clad in a Tilean carnival mask said, levelling a repeating pistol that was so intricately engineered that it qualified as a work of art. The pistol burped and Danzig scrambled away, hands raised as the cobbles beneath his feet were chewed to dust by the pistol.

‘We’re going to be killed by jugglers!’ Piet said. ‘I don’t want to be killed by jugglers!’

Dubnitz didn’t reply. The repeating pistol was swinging towards him, smoke curling from the barrel. The eyes behind the carnival mask were dark and eager. Then, abruptly, they widened. Carnival-mask slumped, a wavy-bladed dagger jutting from his back. A murder-brother vaulted over him, plucking the dagger free as he did so. Dubnitz lunged, spitting the cultist on Lomax’s sword-cane. The move pulled Piet and Lomax out of the path of the fire-eater, who unleashed a titanic flume of heat. A nearby drunkard burst into flame and suddenly the crowd noticed the pandemonium going on in their midst.

Screams mingled with music and prayers as the crowd thrashed in sudden panic. People fell into the canal. Others scrambled for the safety of doorways or open windows. Dubnitz jerked the sword-cane free of the murder-cultist’s chest and narrowly parried a thrust harpoon. A man with the look of a Norscan whale-hunter jabbed the harpoon again, trying to pin Dubnitz to the cobbles. ‘Piet, I need some help here!’ Dubnitz shouted.

‘You’re not the only one,’ Piet said. He’d lost his sword, and now held a broken cobblestone, which he brought across the jaw of a mime that drew too close with a satisfying crunch. ‘I hate mimes.’

‘Was that mime an assassin?’ Dubnitz grunted, the tip of the harpoon nearing his face.

‘I have no idea,’ Piet said, bouncing the cobble on his palm before throwing it at the fire-eater, who unleashed another plume of flame. The cobble bounced off the man’s tattooed skull and he instinctively took a breath, inhaling the fire he should have been spewing. The fire-eater’s screams were cut short as he was cooked inside out.

‘Bad show, monsieur,’ a purple clad Bretonnian snarled, driving his foot into Piet’s armoured chest. Off-balance, he fell, dragging Lomax and Dubnitz with him. ‘The ancient art of mummery is sacred,’ the Bretonnian continued, as the two knights flailed helplessly, trying to get to their feet. Lomax’s dead weight, however, made that difficult. ‘It seems I, Bartok of Bastonne, master of the mystical art of the Athel-Loren war-dance, am granted the honour of collecting the bounty on Monsieur Lomax.’ Bartok blinked. ‘Why are the three of you tied together?’

The harpooner jabbed at Dubnitz while the Bretonnian spoke, and the knight, having lost Lomax’s cane, grabbed the harpoon as it stabbed at him. With a convulsive shove he rammed the handle into its wielder’s face, busting lips and freeing teeth. As the harpooner reeled, Dubnitz swung the harpoon at the Bretonnian who was preparing to launch a kick at Lomax’s wobbling head. The haft of the harpoon caught the assassin on the knee, and he fell with a cry. As he hit the ground, Dubnitz hit him again and again, battering the master of the mystical art of the Athel-Loren war-dance into bloody unconsciousness.

‘Piet, let’s go, up and at them, can’t spend all evening in the gutter,’ Dubnitz roared, using the harpoon to pull himself to his feet and to simultaneously drag Piet up. Lomax bobbed between them like a cork on water. The body was already going stiff and further hampering their movements.

‘I want to go home now,’ Piet said, punching an Estalian knife-man wearing too much green and yellow to be wholly sane. The Estalian staggered back into the crowd and was trampled by yelling drunks.

‘The night’s young yet,’ Dubnitz said. A murder-cultist darted from the screaming, pushing, crowd, twin daggers raised high. Two miniature crossbow bolts caught him and sent him spinning into the canal. A killer in a featureless helm and a red hauberk calmly reloaded the small crossbows attached to his armoured forearms as he stood on the bundle-board of an abandoned wagon. ‘On second thought, you’re right, it’s time to go!’

The Spring Tide crowd around the central canal had thinned as the realization that attempted murder was being committed on a grand scale set in. Outside of the immediate area, however, the party was still in full swing. Dubnitz and Piet lurched towards the crowd. Crossbows twanged and Piet glanced over his shoulder, cursing. ‘He’s got arrows in him,’ he said.

‘He’s got more than that,’ Dubnitz said. ‘I think the harpoon nicked him; he’s leaking all over my armour.’ He snagged a flagon of ale from a tipsy bawd bellowing out a hymn to Manann and knocked it back. ‘Piet, this wasn’t one of your better ideas I must say,’ he said, slopping foam on the street.

‘My idea,’ Piet nearly shrieked, glaring at him. ‘I– pigeon!’

‘I think you mean “duck”,’ Dubnitz said. Piet dove for the ground, yanking Lomax and Dubnitz atop him as a pigeon hurtled through the space occupied by their heads only seconds previously. The pigeon struck the sign of a tavern and exploded in a ball of fire and feathers. Dubnitz gazed at the charred spot that marked the unfortunate avian’s final impact and said in shock, ‘By Manann’s scaly nethers that was a Herstel-Wenckler pigeon bomb.’

‘It’s a swarm!’ Piet yowled, trying to crawl away, his armour clattering. Dubnitz, on his side atop Lomax’s corpse, stared up in horror at the feathered shapes descending towards him like verminous avenging angels. Only a fool or a madman would release pigeon bombs into streets this closely packed.

‘Death by pigeon,’ he murmured, suddenly calm as he faced his imminent doom. ‘Who’d have thought such a thing possible in these civilised times?’

‘Shut up and help me run,’ Piet screamed, shoving Dubnitz off. Lomax flopping between them, the two knights stumble-ran into the safety of the crowd as the first pigeons struck the street and fire erupted. Dubnitz’s foot skidded as he stepped in a cuttlefish. The high priest of the Cult of Manann was flinging the creatures from his altar-barge as it passed along the canal.

‘Get to the barge!’ Dubnitz said, forcing them a path to the canal with the harpoon.

‘But–’ Piet began.

‘Go, go, go,’ Dubnitz said, bashing a set of stilts aside and sending a man dressed as an Arabyan schooner staggering into a low hanging sign. He sensed more than saw the assassins following them. Lomax’s relatives had seemingly spent their inheritance before they’d even gotten it. Every killer in Marienburg was after them and some few from farther afield.

‘Dubnitz, to your left,’ Piet said.

Dubnitz twisted as a man wearing a bronze mask crafted in the shape of a snarling tiger’s head lunged out of the crowd, clawed gauntlets scraping off Dubnitz’s chainmail sleeve. He thrust the harpoon between the assassin’s legs, tripping him up. But even as he fell, a hard-faced killer wielding a notched axe took his place, chopping at Dubnitz. Dubnitz swatted him with the harpoon and as the axe-man stepped back, a pigeon alighted on his shoulder. He had time for a single expression of panic before the pigeon bomb blew him into gory bits. Dubnitz blinked blood out of his eyes as overhead, Cathayan fireworks went off, lighting up the night sky. Somewhere, the great Tidal Bell in the Temple of Manann was ringing.

‘Hear that? It’s almost morning,’ Piet said. ‘We made it, I can’t believe we–’

The crowd thinned at the edge of the canal. They had gotten ahead of the barge, but not of the assassins.

‘Bernard Lomax, you are marked for death,’ an oily duellist said, gesturing with his rapier. ‘Meet it manfully.’

‘Give us the merchant and you can go free,’ a sinister halfling with a dagger spinning between his pudgy fingers said. Around he and the duellist, a half-dozen other would-be bounty killers had eased forward. Like as not, half of them hadn’t even been hired to do the deed and were simply opportunists. Dubnitz could hear sword fights breaking out throughout the crowd as other assassins, too far back to join the fun, turned on one another either in frustration or optimism.

‘I’d be happy to,’ Dubnitz said, keeping the harpoon extended. ‘And I will, as soon as you tell me which of you lot was throwing the pigeons.’

‘What pigeons?’ one of a pair of twin beauties wearing little more than scars and armour said. She and her companion looked up. ‘Oh,’ the other one said softly.

All eyes swivelled upwards as flapping sounds filled the air. Dozens of pigeons swooped over the street, beady eyes looking for perches. ‘Pigeons; thousands of them,’ Piet muttered.

‘Run!’ Dubnitz said, stumbling forward.

Bird droppings and explosions rocked the street and a body pin-wheeled through the air. The explosions weren’t large, but then, neither were halflings, Dubnitz reflected as he loped towards the canal with Piet. Those assassins not caught in the airborne conflagration hurried after them.

Piet was muttering prayers to Manann as he ran. Dubnitz simply cursed, letting flow a shower of creative invective. He cursed Lomax and his relatives, Ogg and his grandiose designs, and Marienburg with its proliferation of professional murderists. He’d always suspected he’d die at the end of a hired blade, the victim of a jealous husband or scorned woman. Possibly a city official with a grudge, or an old enemy, free of prison, or even Grandmaster Ogg, once he figured out what Dubnitz had done with his missing hand. In fairness, it made a lovely candelabrum and the Duchess had been quite appreciative, but Ogg wouldn’t understand. He had no sense of proportion, that man.

But, mostly, Dubnitz cursed Manann, because once again the sea god had given him no luck but bad. Even as he settled into a quiet, snarling rhythm of curses, however, the holy altar-barge of Manann hove into view ahead of him and cuttlefish slapped the stone, hurled by the high priest. ‘Haha! There it is Piet! Get to the barge! It’s our only chance,’ Dubnitz said, trying to hurry them along.

‘The barge? But–’ Piet began.

‘No time for buts, Piet,’ Dubnitz said. The stones were slick near the canal and he had to stop himself from falling head over heels. ‘It’s the barge or the blades.’

‘Maybe we should think about this,’ Piet said.

‘What sort of knight are you? Just jump,’ Dubnitz shouted, grabbing a handful of Lomax’s jerkin and leaping. Piet, despite his protestations, jumped along with him. The barge wasn’t far from the edge of the canal, being as wide a craft as the temple could afford.

A moment of vertigo stretched across eternity before Dubnitz’s foot found the edge of the barge. The altar attendants reached out automatically to grab the knights as they swayed back and forth on the edge of the deck. Dubnitz and Piet staggered forward, nearly knocking over the votive candles and sending an iron pot of blessed seawater spilling across the deck. Priests slipped and slid as the water sloshed around their feet. The high priest turned, mouth open in mid-bellow. His hands were full of cuttlefish and words of benediction died on his lips. He looked at Dubnitz, who grinned sheepishly. ‘Bless a trio of pilgrims, your supremacy?’ he asked.

‘Aren’t you one of Ogg’s bully-boys?’ the high priest said, flinging a cuttlefish over his shoulder. ‘You are! You’re Dubnitz, the one who let that goat–’

‘May I present Bernard Lomax, your excellency,’ Dubnitz interjected. ‘He is a humble merchant and follower of His Most Salty Majesty, Manann.’ He glanced at Lomax’s dangling head. ‘He’s overcome with emotion, your benevolence.’

The high priest waved a hand in front of his nose. ‘He’s overcome with something, I’d say.’ He squinted. ‘Is that a–?’

‘What dagger?’ Piet said, hastily plucking the errant blade out of Lomax’s back and flinging it over the side of the barge.

‘Are those crossbow bolts?’

‘You know how it gets during Spring Tide, your most tidal excellency,’ Dubnitz said swiftly. ‘People go wild. They let their hair down. Sometimes crossbows are involved.’

‘Are you sure he’s–’ the high priest began dubiously.

‘Oh Mighty Manann, Bless Us Your Servants!’ Dubnitz bellowed, falling to his knees and causing the barge to rock as Piet and Lomax followed suit. The latter’s stiffening limbs and joints gave forth a plaintive series of cracks and pops as abused ligaments split. ‘He’s too afraid to ask it of you himself, your saintliness,’ Dubnitz said, cracking one eye open. ‘Could you bless him, perhaps? Let the crowd see that he has your favour?’

‘I–’

‘Oh Mighty Manann, Absolve Us of the Sins of Dry Land!’ Dubnitz shouted, gesturing wildly, making sure to jerk one of Lomax’s hands so that it flopped beseechingly at the high priest’s robe. The crowd was cheering now, every eye on the barge. Seagulls squawked and horns blew. The high priest leaned close.

‘What are you up to, Dubnitz?’ he said.

‘I assure you, it’s for the greater glory of Manann, your pristine parsimoniousness,’ Dubnitz said. The high priest frowned, but straightened and raised his hands in benediction.

‘I expect we’ll be getting a nice donation this week from the Order,’ he muttered before launching into the words of Manann’s Blessing. The noise of the crowd surged in volume, hammering at the ears of those aboard the barge. It was only by the slightest of chances that Dubnitz heard the whine of a bullet. He leapt to his feet, yanking Piet and Lomax up. The bullet punched into Lomax’s back and sent them stumbling forward, into the high priest, who squawked in sudden fear as the corpse lurched into him.

A triumphant assassin leapt to his feet on a ledge overlooking the canal, the Hochland long rifle held over his head as he let out a yell. Dubnitz swept the harpoon’s blade through his bindings, freeing himself from Lomax and then sent the harpoon hurtling towards the assassin. ‘Imperial assassin!’ he roared. ‘He tried to kill the high priest!’

The assassin fell from his perch with a yell as he twisted to avoid the harpoon. Rifle and assassin both tumbled into the canal as the crowd gave a howl like an angry beast. Dubnitz spun and pointed at a familiar black-clad shape. The murder-cultists of Khaine had been following the barge at a distance, picking off their competition with the patience of stalking tigers. ‘More assassins,’ he shouted, and the crowd drew back, suddenly exposing the brass-masked killers, who looked around in confusion. Then, as one, the revellers fell on the killers, dragging them under as surely as the waters of the canal had swallowed the rifleman. Fierce as the murder-cultists were, they were no match for an entire city’s worth of fists and feet putting the boot in. Black-clad shapes sank beneath the press, battered into insensibility by the Spring Tide celebrants.

‘A fine display of the old Marienburg fighting spirit,’ Dubnitz said, hands on his hips. ‘By which I mean filching their valuables while they’re bleeding on the street.’

‘If you’re finished congratulating yourself, I could use some help,’ Piet snarled.

Dubnitz turned to see the other knight fumbling with Lomax’s body, which was tangled in the high priest’s robes. Dubnitz scampered over. ‘One moment your excellency, help is on the way,’ he said, surreptitiously unknotting the bindings that held Piet tied to Lomax. Dubnitz hauled Lomax’s abused corpse off of the high priest and pulled it into an embrace. ‘Bernie! By Manann’s beard, no!’ he said, adding a wail for good measure as he shook the body. Lomax’s head flopped back and forth, his neck having been broken at some point and time. ‘He’s been shot!’ Before the high priest could scoot away, Dubnitz grabbed his hand. ‘Take his hand, excellency, take it and comfort him as he goes to Manann’s realm!’ He grabbed Lomax’s limp hand and slapped it atop the high priest’s. The latter blanched and tried to pull away, but Dubnitz held on, his face the picture of tortured melancholy. ‘Shot, your mercifulness, shot while saving you from a killer!

‘I thought he was–’ the high priest began.

Dubnitz rode over him, shouting, ‘He has given his life for you! For Marienburg! Comfort him as he…’ He paused, watching the horizon. ‘As he – hold on,’ he said, counting the strokes of the Tide Bell in his head. ‘Wait for it – yes, there we go – comfort him as he dies, oh great sage of the Free City!’

The high priest, uncertainty writ on his features, mumbled something as spontaneous weeping broke out amongst those elements of the crowd not busy kicking in the faces of the murder-cultists. Dubnitz shoved the high priest aside and pulled Lomax into another embrace, tears spilling into his beard as he blubbered heroically. Word of mouth was a fine thing, and street corner patterers were already carrying the word of Lomax’s heroic sacrifice across the city, Dubnitz wagered.

The entire city had witnessed Lomax die at cockcrow, and there’d be no contesting of the will by his relatives, not when the manner of his death was known. A hero of the city, dying to rescue the high priest of Manann, and donating his worldly wealth to the templars devoted to said god. ‘Sometimes, I suspect the gods love me,’ Dubnitz said as he blubbered. ‘Do you ever get that feeling, Piet?’

Piet dropped to one knee beside him, a hand placed comfortingly on his shoulder. ‘You’re a horror, Erkhart. A literal horror,’ he muttered.

‘Yes, but what I am not is pickled,’ Dubnitz said. ‘And neither are you, so stop complaining. It all worked out for the best. Now, would you say it’s cockcrow yet?’

Piet sighed and nodded. ‘I think we’re in the clear.’

‘Ah well, Manann giveth and he taketh away, drift into his bosom, be at peace and such, et cetera and so forth,’ Dubnitz said, dropping the body and rising abruptly to his feet. He clapped his hands together and looked around. The rising sun caused the scum on the surface of the canal to sparkle prettily. ‘So… who’s for breakfast?’

Born of Blood

Valkia the Bloody: The legend of the Gorequeen begins

Sarah Cawkwell

Swooping whorls of colour lit the night sky with their vibrant shades. Vivid reds, deep blues and virulent greens twisted and blended into one another, producing an entirely unnatural display unlike anything anywhere else. Only the Northern Wastes could boast such stark, murderous beauty as presented by the snowy tundra. They culminated in this spectacle, the magnificent aurora that crowned the top of the world. Nowhere else was there such magical fallout.

Her eyes wide, the child stared up at the fury of the skies, stricken mute by their very majesty. By her side, the warrior clad in blood-stained furs reached down to scoop her up in his arms. With ease he lifted her onto his shoulders that she might better see. She was getting rather large for such treatment now that she was older, but she was still slender and lightly built. The warrior had no difficulty in bearing her weight. She shifted slightly to make herself comfortable.

‘They say that when the Axefather is pleased with our efforts, the tides of the sky will flow and ebb with darkest red, leached from the blood of our enemies. On the day that happens, Lille Venn, our people will rise far above all others.’

Her father smiled. He did not have to see her to imagine the look of wide-eyed wonder on his ten-year-old daughter’s face. She was a beautiful child and although he loved her dearly, her ever-growing resemblance to her dead mother brought a fresh wave of bitter loathing towards the enemies that the Schwarzvolf faced. The war between the two tribes had raged for nigh on twelve cycles of the moon and the elders of the Schwarzvolf had foreseen that the morrow would see victory or death for Merroc and his people.

The child wound a lock of dark hair around her finger and continued to stare into the skies. Words were few and far between from his daughter. She had always been an introspective and thoughtful child, intelligent and sharp beyond her years. The death of her mother at the hands of their enemy a year ago had hurt her, but with the easy pragmatism of all her people, she had borne it with stoicism. Occasionally she would speak, invariably to make an observation or to ask a question. She was inquisitive and curious and this pleased Merroc. He may have produced no sons of the union with Valkia’s mother but this girl, his first child, was his pride.

‘How does it happen?’ Her question, when it came, was demanding, as though she accused her father of arranging this spectacular show of magic purely for her benefit.

‘None of us truly know, Lille Venn.’ Lille Venn, he called her. Little Friend. ‘There can be little doubt that such a miracle is the work of the gods themselves.’

‘Where are the gods?’ She absently tugged on his scraggly beard, winding it around her little fingers.

‘Far to the north. Further than any of us have ever travelled. None who have ventured there have ever returned to tell of what lies beyond the mountains.’

‘When I grow up,’ she said with the fierce determination of children everywhere, ‘I will go there.’ When Merroc laughed, she narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Why is that funny?’

‘I believe you, Lille Venn,’ said Merroc, his laugh becoming nothing more than a smile. ‘If anybody could make that journey, it would be you.’ His words mollified the little girl and the flash of anger left her eyes. She was like her mother to look at, that much was true. But her bearing, manner and attitude were Merroc’s through and through.

He loved her for that alone.

Together, the two of them watched the winds of magic and the virulent display of colour in a companionable silence for several long minutes. Eventually, the girl spoke and this time it was not the petulant voice of a child, but the self-assured tone of a young woman who knew what she wanted.

‘I want to fight with my people tomorrow,’ she said, tapping Merroc on the shoulder as an indication that she wanted to be lifted down. Within the tribe, it was not unusual for a child of her age to fight. But Valkia, despite her ferocity, was female. It was customary to refrain from allowing any female child of the tribe to enter battle without having produced at least one live offspring.

‘Lille Venn, you know that I cannot allow this thing you ask.’

‘I am not asking you, Papa. I am telling you what I want.’ He indulged her outrageously, but then he always had. He could not help himself. She was utterly charming when she wanted to be and a hard-hearted little bitch the rest of the time. But in this matter, he could not forsake hundreds of years of tradition.

‘I forbid it.’

‘I defy you.’ It was an old game of theirs, one which she could maintain far longer than he could. He would deny her something and she would taunt him until a smile would cross his face and he would give in to her piping demands. But this… was unthinkable.

‘You will not.’ There was a hard tone in her father’s voice that Valkia had never heard before and it shocked her to silence. She had rarely seen her father the chieftain. She was used to Merroc as being just her father. The thought that he would deny her what she wanted brought a pout to her lips. Merroc hunkered down until his eyes were level with hers.

‘You are my only child,’ he said. ‘If I were to take you into battle tomorrow, it would be inviting your death. You have to grow and bear a grandchild before you can take the field of battle.’ He felt briefly awkward discussing this with her; her eyes were like little emeralds, hard and green, and bored into him. ‘Your mother bore you when she had known fourteen summers. You have yet to reach eleven. Do not be so quick to wish for your death, Valkia, for it will come. It comes to us all in time.’

He stood and tucked his long, dark hair which was shot through with threads of silvery-grey, behind one ear. He looked up at the aurora. ‘I can’t give you what you want, my daughter, not this time. You cannot fight. I will not lose you to those animals. You are too precious to me and to the future of our people.’

She looked up at Merroc and considered him. He was tall and broad of shoulder, his well-muscled body made larger by the addition of the furs that he wore as proof against the northern cold. He seemed very old to her, although he was perhaps only twenty-five years of age. If you lived to see thirty summers, the people of the Schwarzvolf considered you ancient.

His face, whilst too battle-scarred to ever be called handsome, was nonetheless proud and arrogant. There was an undeniable purity in his appearance that told of his good stock. The reigning family had held the chieftain’s cape for seven generations, the mantle passed from father to son. Merroc’s marriage to her mother had produced only two living children: Valkia and her sister Anya, who had died before the first year of her life was out. Three sons had been born to Merroc and his wife and none had been born with breath in their lungs. Merroc tried to deny the whispers, but he had come to believe them over time.

He was cursed.

‘I see.’ Valkia’s two words were spoken through pursed lips and he looked down at her fierce, determined little face. He forced the smile from his lips and reached down to take her chin in his hand.

‘I cannot allow you to take up arms and fight in the battle tomorrow, my daughter,’ he said. ‘But I will speak to the Circle this night. They may permit you to take up a shield and join the ranks of the shield maidens.’ She jerked her face free and looked as though she would argue, but Merroc caught her again. ‘Listen to me, Valkia. I don’t care how much fuss you make. You will understand that this is the way it must be or I will beat it into you. I cannot buck the traditions of our people for your childish whims.’

‘I am not a child.’

‘Then stop acting like one.’ She looked crushed and he softened slightly in his attack. ‘I will do what I can, but I make no promises. Come now. The Circle meets soon and I have tarried too long here.’

‘You promise you will speak to them?’ Reluctantly, the little girl relented and slid her hand into her father’s bigger one.

‘When have I ever disappointed you, Lille Venn?’

She had no reply she could give to that, only a cold, penetrating stare which was far too old for her and which left him feeling very uncomfortable.

The Circle was a group of seven tribal elders and leaders. As the tribe’s chieftain, Merroc sat at its head but frequently felt that his words went unheeded. He had come to the mantle at a young age, barely sixteen, and they had never stopped treating him like a youth.

They met in Merroc’s semi-permanent dwelling; a yurt made from animal hides that had spent long hours tanning in the sun. They were stretched across rigid poles and treated with animal fat that acted as proof against the cold and the moisture. A small opening at the top funnelled the smoke from the fire in its centre. The remains of a deer trapped a day or two before turned on a spit over it and the Circle frequently reached up to hack a slice from the animal and gorge noisily upon it.

The conversation had largely been strangely optimistic, given the fact they knew the dawn would bring either success or eradication. None of the Schwarzvolf were given over to pessimism before battle. If they did not believe they would win through, then they would not. It was quite simple.

‘They will strike at first light.’

The words came from Ammon and all eyes swivelled towards him. The tribe’s Warspeaker, he was only a year or so younger than Merroc and the closest that the chieftain had to a true friend. He had guided them through seemingly endless battles against their most rapacious enemies. The tribe who had so hampered them for months had never been granted the honour of being recognised by a name. The warriors of the Schwarzvolf called their enemies ‘they’ or ‘them’. To give them a name was to ascribe something humane to them. And they were anything but.

The Schwarzvolf were widely considered one of the most ferocious tribes in the north lands and with good reason. Tenacious and fearless, their young warriors had been known to fight with limbs severed or their intestines held in by their shield hand. But they... they were of a different ilk. They liked to take prisoners, something which the Schwarzvolf found strange. They harboured a belief that if something was too weak to be free then it was too weak to live. Torture, sometimes followed by slavery, would follow and to Merroc and his people, the concession of freedom was not something they subscribed to.

Ammon got to his feet and moved to the flap of the animal skin tent. He gave a piercing whistle into the darkness and a lithe, slender figure slid from the shadows and entered Merroc’s tent.

‘My chieftain.’ The young man inclined his head with respect in Merroc’s direction. Radek, his name was. He was one of the most shrewd, canny warriors in the tribe and his ability to hunt and scout was so astute that there were occasionally whispers that he must have made particularly dark pacts with the gods to acquire such skill. Fleet of foot and deadly with his bow, he had risen to the position of Pathfinder with alacrity. He was, Merroc recalled, Ammon’s nephew.

‘Radek. What news from beyond the camp? What do we have on our side for tomorrow’s battle?’

‘We have the land with us, but little else. Their numbers equal ours, if not exceed them.’ The scout accepted a cup of wine, mulled and heated in a cauldron that hung over the fire. Not really strong enough to intoxicate, the wine was nonetheless welcome and he took a long sip from it, savouring the flavour. It was sweetened and given its pungent aroma by a mixture of spices, and the berries which made its base were in plentiful supply at this time of the year.

Radek set down the wooden cup and looked at Merroc. A slight smile played on his lips. There was a faint shadow of downy fluff on his chin. He was remarkably young to have come so far. The thought flickered through Merroc’s mind but he almost immediately chided himself. Just because Radek was young was no reason to judge his competencies. ‘There are two things we have that they do not, however. I got as close as I could to their camp earlier tonight.’

‘And those are...?’ Merroc left it hanging and reached forward to flense another slice of venison from the deer. He chewed on the meat, its juices dribbling down his chin and slicking his beard.

‘We have more shields than they do. We can hold our lines far longer.’

Merroc nodded. ‘The line will hold. This is a good start. The other?’

Radek’s faint smile became an impish grin. ‘Sobriety, my chieftain. They are drinking heavily, perhaps as a way to numb the cold in their bones. They are not used to being this far north. Come the dawn, they will be suffering for it.’ This generated a ripple of laughter through the yurt and Merroc nodded, wiping grease from his face.

‘This is excellent,’ he rumbled. ‘None of our warriors will be drinking this night. Tomorrow, when we have watered the earth with their blood... then we will drink.’ The ripple of laughter became a combined grunt of approval. Merroc turned his head to the right. ‘Godspeaker?’

The man sitting at the chieftain’s right hand had been called Fydor at birth, but in this council, he wore the name Godspeaker. The tribe’s shaman and doctor, his knowledge and gift of foresight were deeply revered and respected. Just as Ammon the Warspeaker sat at the chieftain’s left hand, so the Godspeaker took the trusted position on the right.

‘I am yet to read the omens,’ he replied. The Godspeaker was the oldest man currently living within the tribe. He had seen no fewer than forty summers and some whispered he had seen sixty. The hand that reached out to accept a cup of mulled wine was darkly tanned and liver spotted. ‘I will do so shortly.’ His eyes, dark and depthless in his ancient face, bored through Merroc in much the same way that Valkia’s had a few short hours before.

‘You have a question for the Circle,’ observed the Godspeaker. Merroc wound a lock of his beard around one finger and let out an exasperated sigh. There was never any doubt that Fydor was exceptionally gifted. Whether with premonition or the simple art of understanding body language and distraction didn’t matter.

‘Aye,’ replied the chieftain. ‘It is a small thing. I was waiting for a suitable time.’

‘Now is as good a time as any.’ The Godspeaker opened out his hands, palms spread. ‘Speak, chieftain.’

Merroc shifted slightly uncomfortably, uncrossing his legs and re-crossing them. The Circle sat comfortably amidst a number of cushions scattered on the floor. He took up his cup and sipped the wine. As he did so he gathered his thoughts carefully, knowing that how he phrased the next sentence could be instrumental in its success or otherwise.

‘It is not a question,’ he said in due course. ‘My daughter wishes to take her place in the battle tomorrow,’ he said and there was such challenge in his voice that, for a moment, he wondered if he had been too aggressive with it. ‘And I have agreed that she can take her mother’s place as a shield maiden.’

‘You are asking us for our approval?’

‘No, Warspeaker.’ Merroc shifted his gaze to Ammon. ‘I am telling you.’

‘It is unseemly. She is too young. Far too young. She has yet to produce an heir. If she were to fall...’

‘If she falls, then I will take another woman of the Schwarzvolf to wife.’ When Valkia’s mother had died, Merroc had been grief-stricken enough to say that he would not re-marry. The promise he made here was spontaneous and he almost immediately knew regret because it sparked the conversation he had avoided for nearly a year.

‘You know the Circle’s views on this matter, chieftain. We have told you that we feel the time is right for you to take another woman to wife anyway. You need to produce an heir. If you do not and you should die, then there will be great upheaval amid our people.’ It was no exaggeration on his part. Should the line of the chieftain fail, there would be a fight for the mantle that would potentially halve their number. ‘You do not surely wish to impart such a legacy to your people?’ The Godspeaker was calm and his voice measured. Merroc recognised the spark in the older man’s eyes and felt the defiance that had so marked his leadership of the Schwarzvolf bubble to the surface.

‘I already have an heir.’ Merroc’s voice was as fierce and proud as Valkia’s had been when she had made the suggestion in the first place. ‘She will take her place as the leader of our people when the time is right.’

‘Pretenders to your position will kill her before the day she takes up the mantle.’

‘She will likely kill them first.’ Merroc was surprised at how much he believed the words he was saying. His dark-haired daughter was barely ten years old and yet she had already demonstrated great tenacity and courage.

But she was a child still and more – she was female. There had been female leaders of the tribe over the years but every one of them had been assassinated within days, sometimes within hours, of taking their place. Equality was one thing and the Schwarzvolf would gladly fight with their women at their side. But to defer to their command was to call into question centuries of belief and structure.

The odds were not in Valkia’s favour. Not for the first time since she had torn her way into the world, Merroc felt a pang of sorrow for the hardships she must inevitably endure.

An uncomfortable silence had descended on the tent, broken eventually by the chieftain. None of those present had protested and he took that as his cue. ‘Then it is agreed. Valkia may take the field of battle tomorrow.’

A ripple of assent passed across the assemblage. The only man present whose eyes met those of the chieftain’s directly were those of Radek the young scout. Merroc was not sure whether the expression he saw there was a good thing or not, but he did not dwell upon it. He didn’t need the approval of the young. He was the tribe’s chieftain.

The Warspeaker’s prediction had been reasonably accurate bar a single detail. The enemy struck just before dawn rather than at first light. They launched their attack whilst the erratic and forbidding bale-moon was still low in the sky, taking its presence and the absence of its pale cousin as a good battle omen. Fiery gold stained the horizon, tarnishing the sickly green light and cutting shafts of grey which threaded through the velvet night. There was a biting sharpness in the air that carried the threat of more snowfall.

Their early attack earned them no advantage however. The warriors of the Schwarzvolf had been prepared for what felt to one young girl hours already.

Valkia had slept poorly the previous night. She had dozed fitfully whilst waiting for her father’s return from the Circle and when he had ducked his head to enter their yurt, she had sat bolt upright and fixed him with her disturbingly intense stare.

To learn that she was able to take the field of battle had sent a thrill through her. She had never experienced such a feeling before; a surge of adrenaline that set her stomach to churning. She would never have acknowledged that such a sensation was akin to fear because the people of the Schwarzvolf did not know fear; only recognising it as a weakness that needed to be overcome.

Across her right arm was strapped a huge, bronze-shod round shield that was almost as tall when resting against the ground as Valkia herself was. Her left hand remained free, giving her the ability to bear the shield with both hands should it be required. Although she was only a child, she was not so small that she was completely lost in the shield line. To either side of her were women of the tribe she knew by face but not name. They had merely glanced down at the small girl and shown her how to hold the shield correctly.

She wore a thick leather jerkin that was several sizes too large for her but which had been cinched in at the waist with a belt. It was long enough that it came below her knees and there was no flesh visible between the edge of the tunic and the tops of her leather boots. Her tangle of dark curls was slicked back from her face by rendered animal fat and pale woad, in the same style as all the warriors of the tribe. A warrior’s queue, or ponytail, would give an enemy a potential handhold and whilst the fat stank, even in the chill of the morning, it was better by far than having your head removed from your shoulders whilst your enemy held on tightly.

Valkia wrinkled her nose at the smell of the grease on her hair, but none of the others were showing any sort of discomfort so she tried not to let them see. She shifted position slightly, the movement earning reproachful looks from the women either side to her.

‘Keep still,’ the one on her right snapped, not unkindly. ‘Do not fidget. Remain as still and straight as you can manage. If the enemy see a weakness in the shield line, they will exploit it.’

Valkia would normally have snapped back, but instead she nodded, appreciating that the words were given as advice and not admonishment. The woman smiled briefly and reached down with her free left hand to squeeze Valkia’s shoulder. The girl looked up, made slightly bolder by the display of camaraderie.

‘What’s your name?’ The taller woman, seemingly not much older than Valkia herself, seemed surprised by the question.

‘Kata,’ she replied, returning her gaze to the fore. Although they had been prepared for a while, there was still no sign of the enemy. ‘And you are Valkia, chieftain’s daughter. It would seem that you are finally ready for your first taste of battle.’ She looked back down again and the smile was back. ‘It is my first battle, too. When we return victorious, perhaps we can regale one another with stories of our bravery.’

‘I would like that.’

‘So would I,’ Kata replied. She did not need to expand on the fact that she would also like the opportunity to present herself before the chieftain. The entire tribe had gossiped about his need for another woman since the death of his wife and Kata was unwed and of child-bearing age.

There was the sound of approaching running feet and Radek, along with several of the other scouts, emerged from the edge of the thin forest that was the natural border between the Schwarzvolf and their encroaching enemy. The young scout was in a state of dishevelment but still held himself with pride.

‘They are coming,’ was all he said.

‘Then we take the fight to them,’ cried the Warspeaker. ‘We do not stand and let our enemies break upon us!’

A roar of agreement came from the skirmish warriors and the women of the shield line and Valkia raised her own piping voice along with theirs, caught in the thrill of it all. Soon, she would taste war.

Soon, the course of history would change.

First contact came far sooner than Valkia could ever have imagined and for a few heart-racing seconds she wondered if she would live to see her father again. The fore shield line, the more experienced women and younger warriors who bore weapons as well as shields, absorbed the initial impact. Numbering at least a hundred, the enemy tribe were largely armed with the axes so favoured by the people of the north and they hacked repeatedly into wooden shields sending splinters flying in all directions.

The air was filled with the screams and shouts of more people than the little girl had ever seen gathered in one place. It was a riotous clash of sound, sight and smell and she could barely take any of it in. Her world seemed almost to shrink until there was only her and those who stood either side of her.

She tasted a moment of abject terror as she stared around what was rapidly becoming a battlefield. She took in the sights of people she knew wading into the attackers, their own weapons flailing and hacking. Her eyes sought out her father, the bloody red sigil of the Schwarzvolf on his jerkin. The other warriors wore symbols too; but none wore the red of the chieftain’s house.

Merroc was already in the thick of battle, having burst from the shield line with the others and utilised the jarring shock of impact to their advantage. His furs were splattered with blood and what little of his face could be seen behind the leather helm that covered most of his head was similarly stained. The two-handed battle-axe that he wielded with such aplomb swung slowly, decapitating and dismembering wherever it went.

There was so much blood. It ran like a bloody river, saturating the ground underfoot and she slid several times. So much blood. So much death. Everywhere there was the smell of copper as it stained the snow, dirty and slushy from the trudging of hundreds of feet. The scent of it tickled the child’s nostrils and she found herself inhaling deeply rather than trying to avoid it.

Something was fired deep inside her soul as she breathed in. This was what she had been born into, this ceaseless violence and horror. This was her birthright. If only she could take up arms and step into the breaches that were appearing in the battle line as warriors fell, dead or injured...

‘Step!’

The order came from somewhere to the left and Valkia was jarred into alertness once again. Her hold on the shield slipped a little and she groped to catch it again, her small hands tightening around the grip. She found herself moving forward with the rest of the line, her shorter legs meaning she had to half jog to keep up.

‘Step!’

Another shouted order and Valkia moved forward. She looked up at Kata and saw the grim determination on her new friend’s face. Without realising it, she automatically mimicked the expression. The shield line moved forward, closer to the fray, and Valkia felt once again that strange mix of thrill and fear. A few more feet and the line would be close enough to engage and protect the warriors.

Her attention was caught yet again by the flash of her father’s sigil and she turned her head. If she strained hard enough, she could make out broken words. Using her own intelligence and understanding, she filled in the gaps as best she could. He was bellowing at the Warspeaker. They were both shouting at the top of their voices in order to be heard over the cacophony that surrounded them. Ammon was, like her father, covered from head to foot in the blood of the enemy and his face was grim.

‘...barely making an impact on their numbers, my chieftain.’

‘We need to keep... They will fall eventually. They’re undisciplined.’ Merroc indicated around himself, pointing and shouting instructions that Valkia could not fathom. The noise was overpowering, the press of bodies claustrophobic. Daylight was in evidence; a dull, heavy light that was choked with leaden, snow-filled clouds and which would later be filled with the greasy smoke of funeral pyres. There would be no bright sunlight this day.

A sudden dip in the noise level allowed Valkia to catch the tail end of her father’s words.

‘Their leader is in the middle of the attacking warriors. He is surrounded on all sides by his strongest and best. If we chew their force from the sides, then we can get to him. And I want him brought alive.’

‘As my chieftain commands.’ Ammon inclined his head.

Valkia didn’t understand strategy, but her father’s suggestion struck her as remarkably shrewd. The enemy were definitely all facing forwards; even those at the very back – at least as far back as her reduced height would allow her to see – were intent on ploughing through the solid line of the Schwarzvolf.

‘Radek!’ The Warspeaker turned from his chieftain and sought the head scout. He bade the youth carry the message to the outlying warriors and with a sharp nod of his head, the scout set off at a run.

Valkia watched him go and turned her head to meet the gaze of her father. Merroc gave her a tight smile and she felt immediately certain that they would win this battle. There was no way her father, such a great man, could lose to a rabble like this.

She was proved, over the course of the next hour or so, to be quite right. As soon as the skirmish began to break up, as the enemy were forced to meet the new challenges from either side, the rival tribe’s already decidedly scrappy line began to completely lose cohesion. Once that happened, it became easy for the Schwarzvolf fighters to pick them off in droves. The shield line, of which Valkia was a part, was ordered to break and do what they could to aid the slaughter.

Some began to flee, many being cut down before they even made it as far as the woods through which they had marched, but most were killed and left where they fell. Nobody told Valkia that she must not take part in this massacre and as such she took up a dagger dropped by one of the fallen and threw herself into what remained of the fray. Her blade hamstrung several of the enemy and their last sight before they toppled to the ground was that of a dark-haired devil child darting away from them. In her wake came death. Always death, brought swiftly and without mercy by a warrior of the Schwarzvolf. Valkia’s passage did not go unnoticed. On the far right flank, her father watched his daughter and felt great pride in her actions. He moved with alacrity to follow her and joined her. He darted from enemy to enemy, the broad smile of his axe lopping the heads and limbs from enemies with lethal precision.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the noise began to die down as the numbers thinned to a handful. Some had surrendered and they would be judged for suitability for auxiliary warriors. The tribe may not have taken slaves, but they had no compunction when it came to offering a place within their number for those of worth. The females amongst the enemy who had been spared death would be used for breeding. Valkia knew this and although was still somewhat ignorant of the true hardships of the tribal existence, often wondered if death was not a preferable option. The Schwarzvolf would head to the camps of their fallen enemy and claim any breeding women and children for their own. In this way, the tribe expanded.

‘It is over, Valkia.’ Her father stood before her and reached out his hand to take the dagger from her. ‘There is but one thing left to do. Come with me.’

With obvious reluctance, the child handed over the dagger and slid her hand into that of the big warrior. He led her through the fallen, past the dead and the dying.

Valkia was slowly regaining her awareness of the here and now. As well as the corpses of the enemy, there were bodies of her own people. She looked around anxiously for Kata but did not see her. She found herself hoping that her new friend was not dead.

Merroc led Valkia to a group of people who were gathered in an approximate circle around a single man. As big as Merroc and knotted with rangy muscle, this other man was the leader of the enemy. Valkia knew this even before Merroc could tell her. He looked up at their approach. He was lying on his side, his armour in tatters and his body drenched in gore. Something resembling a stylised skull had been crudely branded onto his chest. It was a strange symbol and it appeared to writhe and change even as she stared at it. She looked away, realising that her eyes ached if she attempted to look at it for too long. A great gash in the man’s thigh pumped arterial blood into the ground beneath him. It was more than evident that he was not going to survive.

A string of harsh syllables grated from his lips at Merroc but Valkia could not understand him. The words he spoke were in a language she had never heard and she looked between the dying man and her father. Merroc held himself with even more pride than he usually did and didn’t even flinch when the man on the ground drew back his head, hawking a gobbet of bloody phlegm at the chieftain.

‘A barbarian of the worst kind, my daughter,’ said Merroc and he turned to Ammon, holding out his hand. Ammon put a finely carved spear into it, which Merroc angled thoughtfully at the warrior on the ground. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘No. This kill belongs to you, Valkia. It was your strike to his leg that felled him and the honour of his slaughter is yours.’

Without another word, he handed her the spear. It was bigger than she was and it felt awkward to hold. She felt the weight of expectation on her shoulders and knew, without understanding how, that her actions in the next few moments would somehow define her very future.

The enemy lying at her feet swivelled his gaze from Merroc to the child and the pain and hatred on his face slowly became a sneer. It was all the incentive Valkia needed. How dare this creature treat her with anything less than the respect due to the daughter of the chieftain of the Schwarzvolf? How dare he look at her as though she was beneath his interest?

How dare he?

When the spear slid into his chest, Valkia savoured the sensation of it slipping into his heart. A gout of blood spewed forth from the barbarian’s mouth with projectile force, covering the little girl. But she did not even flinch. Instead, she put her entire weight behind the spear, driving it ever deeper into her enemy’s chest. She twisted the spearhead viciously, opening up the wound, and only released the pressure when she felt it drive through his back and into the soft earth beneath.

The warrior gave several violent spasms and choked up a last mouthful of blood before he died, his eyes staring glassily into space. Valkia returned his earlier gesture and spat on his corpse.

From his vantage point, Merroc watched with pride that could barely be contained. It didn’t matter that she was not a son. His daughter had more than proved her mettle here on the field of battle. She was a warrior at heart and she would rise to greatness. Of that he was sure.

THE MOUTH OF CHAOS

by Chris Dows

The roar of unbreathable air blasted past Zachariah’s ears, rattling the tinted visor on his heavy pressure helmet and blurring his vision. Directly beneath him, more than eighty Elysians plunged towards the gaping maw of Rysgah City two kilometres below in close formation. Fourth Platoon’s captain, distinguished from the others by the outer red banding on the central yellow strip of his helmet, directed the drop from the lowest tier with deft flicks of his gloved hands.

It was too loud to use vox effectively so helmet comms were turned off, chatter and static replaced by the veteran sergeant’s own practised, rhythmic breathing. Despite wearing a thick thermal liner, his arms ached from the freezing cold and the full-reach spread he’d kept up since exiting the drop-ship; it increased stability and reduced fall rate, but the price was a bone-numbing fatigue that would be hard to shake off until well after landing. It was perilous enough dropping into a battle zone; the recovery time from the fall itself was a problem few non-Elysians would understand or appreciate.

Luckily, he knew he could rely on his veteran special weapons team to look after themselves and each other from the second they threw themselves from the belly of their high-altitude Valkyrie troop carrier. Zachariah glanced to his left, taking care not to wrench his neck by presenting too large a profile to the merciless jetstream: demolition experts Adullam and Beor fell gracefully despite their violently rippling dark olive jumpsuits and body-lashed weapons, while to the right the forms of Sojack, Coarto and the massive shape of Melnis kept an effortless perfect distance between each other, seemingly oblivious to their terminal velocity.

Returning his gaze downwards, the view below him was exactly that presented in the briefing room of the Obliteration short hours earlier – the huge, dish-shaped valley containing Rysgah’s capital loomed larger in the crisp dawn light, its towering outer walls striated by aeons of volcanic activity. Rysgah was a black, ugly planet, just the kind of world that Chaos would embrace as its own, and the massive shadows created by the slowly rising sun made the rim of the crater look like a mouth full of broken teeth.

An exaggerated full-arm signal from the captain caught Zachariah’s eye and, as one, all six special weapons veterans pulled their arms tight into their bodies and tipped forwards, increasing speed thanks to their shifted centre of balance. As they hurtled through the layers of falling men, he noticed some of the rookies struggling to keep their bodies under control. They’d get the dressing down of their lives when – or if – they landed safely, and he hoped they wouldn’t be his team’s back-up on this mission – the last thing he needed was having to look out for less experienced troops.

Steering away from the main group with a roll of the shoulders, the six were joined by two standard infantry squads, the twenty-six-strong group hurtling down in a V-shaped formation towards the western flank of the city’s outer wall and a clearing only recently secured by First and Second Platoons.

With the upper rim of the extinct volcano only seconds away to his right, Zachariah could see the shimmering blue void shields dancing around its massive circumference. Somewhere beneath them, penned inside the city’s impossibly cramped streets and crumbling ancient towers, were countless civilians caught up in the Rysgahan planetary defence force’s descent into madness. Facing Chaos forces smashing their way through the neighbouring Arx Gap and fearing the total destruction of their planet, a brutal rebellion had quickly swept through their ranks, ending in this stand-off within the sheer walls of Rysgah City.

The planet’s volcanic nature gave the Rysgahans almost limitless geothermal energy to power their defensive networks, and despite their best efforts to bombard the rebels into submission the Navy had failed to break the stalemate. This waste of effort played nicely into the hands of the insurgents who saw it as a simple waiting game – once the Chaos forces arrived, they would throw in their lot with the agents of evil and embrace the darkness. Unfortunately, those Rysgahans who remained loyal to their beloved Emperor would be surplus to requirements and, as such, executed in their hundreds of thousands, military or civilian.

Well, thought Zachariah, the rebels hadn’t counted on the 158th being called in to stop them.

The massive curved walls of the volcano loomed huge in his vision, pockmarked by vast craters barely visible in the blackened crystalline rock. An earlier plan had been to use the larger holes caused by the aerial bombing as entrances to the interior of the city, but this had been discounted as too risky even for drop-troops.

Something about those holes made him feel uneasy. He motioned a warning to Adullam and Beor, who immediately mimicked the movement to the other three. They dipped and rolled away from the wall, trusting the instincts of their sergeant.

As the infantry squads continued to fall around him, Zachariah’s awareness went into full sniper mode, his gaze darting from point to point, automatically scanning and analysing any and every detail he could see. Some of those holes were very deep, and the angle of the shafts meant they didn’t come from external detonations. No, these looked like they’d been drilled from the inside–

Zachariah’s world went red, a scarlet mist coating his visor. For a split second he couldn’t quite understand what had happened, but then, as he felt the wet impact of exploded flesh hit his side, he knew he’d been caught in the total annihilation of a human body.

Wiping his visor with the back of his gloved hand, he could just make out the perpetrator of the attack through a smudge of blood. Incredibly, the Rysgahans had managed to haul a Hydra tank turret up the inside of the volcanic walls and position it as a makeshift anti-aircraft weapon in the mouth of a cave halfway up the sheer rock face. The quadruple muzzles blazed into life, tracer dancing in lethal lines from the exposed cave and spreading outwards in a deadly arc. By the Emperor – this hadn’t been in the briefing!

Clearly panicked by the last thing they expected and wanted to encounter, some of the less experienced Guardsmen began to bunch together in confusion, forgetting their training and forming a larger, tempting target. The three-strong rebel crew wasted no time in traversing their weapon on its improvised mount towards them, the loader working overtime to maintain the decimating hail of fire.

Projectiles passed through one trooper as if he was wet tissue, spattering tiny gobbets of flesh in all directions and turning the man into a bloody cloud. A second lived just long enough to see the bottom half of his body completely eviscerated, the shock and torrent of blood loss mercifully claiming his life before he had time to scream.

While his own squad was safely out of the way, Zachariah calculated the remainder of Fourth Platoon would pass within range of the weapon even if they’d spotted what was happening from above. Something had to be done, and now. Hitting the thrusters on his grav harness, Zachariah halted his descent with a sickening jolt, the straps cutting into his armpits. In the recesses of his mind, a chrono was running, counting down the time he had to stay in position and, based on what he’d just witnessed, how long it would take the Rysgahans to zero in on his location. He had somewhere around fifteen to twenty seconds, he concluded as more bodies erupted in scarlet plumes around him.

A familiar sensation overwhelmed Zachariah, an uncanny calm that he had practised and mastered through sheer will and determination over his years of active service. Adrenaline and endorphins flooded into his body but he controlled the rush of excitement, instead using the heightened sensations to focus with supreme clarity on the target. Nothing existed other than the three rebels, their weapon and him; he was perfectly aware of the stream of deadly fire creeping closer and closer, of the carnage it would wreak if it hit him, but it simply didn’t matter.

Calculations flooded his mind – angles of potential beam deflection, the instability of his own precarious position, the distance and elevation to the gouged-out hole in the side of the volcanic wall. Heavy-gloved fingers unlatched his lasgun and, despite the extra distortion created by the blood-smeared visor, Zachariah brought the telescopic sight to his eye and regarded the furiously working trio in hazy detail, turning down the image intensifier to minimum in the gradually brightening morning light.

The deadly hail was only seconds away, tearing through the rarefied air as streaks of mortal danger. Like many of his fellow veterans, the sergeant had modified his weapon to suit his style of combat – for him, it meant removing the trigger guard completely, somewhat dangerous for a less experienced soldier but not for a man who’d been serving Elysia and the Emperor for thirty-six years.

The left thruster on his grav-chute sputtered, pitching him diagonally until it cut back in, and he had to track back to the three men; but the shot was ready.

Hold breath. Wait. Exhale. Squeeze.

The rebel he guessed to be the commander was the first to go, with a shot to the upper chest passing neatly through his grubby brown carapace armour and continuing out through the back, spattering fluid and bone into the darkness of the cave. A look of astonishment came over the soldier’s face as he looked down at the smoking hole in his chest, then to the gaping loader who crouched over the makeshift weapon clearly struggling to cope with what he was seeing.

As the commander fell to the floor like a dropped sack, the bottom of the loader’s jaw disappeared in a crimson slash. Clawing wildly at the gushing mess, he staggered to his feet in absolute panic and ran to the back of the cave, any threat he once posed now gone forever.

The third Rysgahan was made of sterner stuff, obviously a veteran of some order, and with teeth gritted he made straight for the firing controls of the Hydra. Zachariah took the opportunity to shoot him right between the eyes, just below the small peak of his close-fitting, tarnished bronze helmet, the beam cutting and cauterising his brain in an instant. Slumping sideways, he fell onto the now silenced Hydra’s feed casing. The blood running from his gaping dead mouth made the heated metal steam with every red drop.

Without hesitation, Zachariah clipped his lasgun back on to his quick-release chest harness and cut power to the thrusters, dropping immediately. Arrowing down head-first with arms flat to his sides, he increased his speed to a plummet, putting some distance between himself and the rest of Fourth Platoon above and behind. Waiting for the very last moment of safe freefall, he slammed his hand onto the grav-chute deployment rune and felt the familiar, sickening jolt of deceleration in his stomach. Looking down between his feet as a guide, he spotted the impossibly small section cordoned off for them within the black, brittle ground of the landing zone.

He hit the surface heavily, staggering forwards with the momentum but managing to avoid the rookie indignity of crashing into one of the many temporary structures and stacks of battered rectangular drop-canisters surrounding the area. Dozens of Elysians milled around, carrying ammunition and supplies towards a large smoking hole at the base of the overwhelming volcanic wall. The noise was deafening: boots crunching on the gritty black sand, shouts and calls from hastily erected tents and shacks, volleys fired into the air from heavy guns towards the few remaining Rysgahan wall emplacements within range.

Pulling off his helmet, he could feel that the air was warming in the morning sun and despite the smell of rotten eggs caused by the engineers’ recent blasting he was glad to shed the weight of his drop-gear. The upper layers of compacted ash had at first allowed Elysian engineers to quickly make an entrance at the base of the wall, but a series of much harder rock striations had slowed them down considerably. He hoped they didn’t have to hang around for long.

Pulling off his right glove, he began nursing some feeling back into his aching limbs, flexing his knuckles and running a calloused hand through his short dark hair. With fingers still numb from the cold, he felt a slick wet patch on his cheek; looking down, he found blood and matter glistening on his dirty hand. He wiped the mess away on the side of his fatigues and with a sigh cleaned off the top of his helmet so the white sergeant’s stripe running down its middle could be seen again.

‘So much for intelligence, sarge. We nearly got pasted there.’ Adullam wasn’t one for holding back his opinion, something that had got him into more than a few situations where his body hadn’t been able to uphold the promises his mouth had made. The craggy, scarred face of Zachariah’s oldest friend and comrade was still pale from the drop, but there was no time for full recovery – he and the shorter, disproportionately wider form of Beor crouched over a dozen Voss-pattern demolition charges just outside the landing zone, checking the flat, metallic discs for impact damage with a speed that would normally suggest a lack of thoroughness.

Not those two, thought Zachariah as he stood before his squad, checking the integrity of his sniper rifle by touch. When they set their minds to blowing someone or something up, they never failed.

‘You know what the Navy’s like, Adullam. Everything’s based on what they can see from their window.’ Melnis barked a laugh at his own joke, lifting the enormous bulk of his MkII plasma gun by the front-mounted bipod with one massive hand and staring straight down the barrel, its charred interior illuminated by the rising sun behind him.

‘Bloody Throne, Melnis. You nearly had our heads off there!’ Sojack snarled up at the hulking form, interrupting the fitting of a specially made extension tube onto his Voss-pattern grenade launcher. Coarto stopped too, his identical MkV unit partially assembled across his thigh.

‘Oh, I’m sorry if I interrupted your playtime, boys. I know how fond you are of those little toys.’

Sojack looked over to his best friend and they shook their heads as one, turning their attention back to improving the accuracy of their well-worn launchers. They weren’t biting – not today.

‘Now don’t be upsetting the Fourth’s finest, Melnis. Just remember how they saved your big, thick neck on Carmelia.’

Melnis snorted over at the smiling Beor, while Coarto and Sojack grinned up at him, still covered by his considerable shadow. Zachariah sighed, having heard it all before a hundred times, but it comforted him to see everyone in good spirits before a battle.

He noticed that Sojack and Coarto had re-inked the tattoos on the backs of their shaven heads. Each had the opposing half of the 158th’s aquila symbol, a stylised, swooping Imperial eagle with the skull of an ork in one talon and an eyepatch-wearing human head in the other. Their party trick was to put their heads together as a prelude for instigating brief, brutal and, to them, hugely enjoyable fist-fights with anyone they could find stupid enough to argue with or insult them.

‘I’d like to invite them on a drop one day, sarge. See how they like the nasty surprises we always seem to get.’

Beor was on his feet now, packing half a dozen of the heavy explosive devices into a rucksack by their stubby handles, breathing heavily as he did so. Built like an Elysian valley ox, his head and neck were virtually the same thickness, leading to the less than flattering nickname ‘Bulldozer Beor’ among his close friends. Despite his outward appearance of being unfit, they all knew this to be a dangerous assumption to make; his girth only added to his destructive potential.

There was no answer from Zachariah, whose attention was drawn to a sudden increase in activity at the mouth of the nearby drill-hole as several Elysian engineers ran from the man-made cavern. Seconds later, the ground shook and a huge, stinking black cloud billowed out of the entrance, bringing an uneasy silence to the encampment which a moment later broke with a roar as Third Platoon began pouring into the hole. Within seconds the unmistakable sound of close-quarter combat echoed into the foetid air.

‘We’ve breached the inner wall of Rysgah City, men. You know your orders: for the 158th and for the Emperor!’ Fourth Platoon’s captain took the lead within seconds of landing, his veteran personal guard shedding their harnesses and readying weapons as they cut a path through the milling soldiers. Zachariah and his squad fell in behind the surviving Guardsmen who had made it through the Hydra assault, assigned as their support for this mission. Zachariah replaced his helmet and buckled up, and before putting on his glove took a swig of water in an attempt to wash away the stench of the planet. It didn’t work.

The Elysians bunched up as they reached the mouth of the entrance in a swarm of dark-green camouflaged bodies, and Adullam looked back to Zachariah with a frown, more cracks than ever thrown into stark relief on his beaten face from the sunrise creeping steadily into the sky behind them. The heat was already stifling inside the poorly lit tunnel; the engineers had done a spectacular job in a short period of time, but it was too narrow and too low for troops to mount a full-on assault. This kind of bottleneck could only mean huge casualties on entering the killzone; which in itself was bad enough, but stepping over the bodies of fellow drop-troops could be too much for rookies and even for veterans never got any easier to face.

‘Weapons ready, squad. This is going to be unpleasant.’

Armed and armoured bodies pressed against each other, all eager to get to the fight. A soft glow of light could be seen in the distance, hazy shadows dancing and crossing in a blur of activity across its radius. Three loud explosions shook the tunnel and it was all Zachariah could do to keep his footing on the smooth, wet rock. Small-arms fire increased significantly after the final boom; screaming and shouting echoed from the walls, but something else could be heard too, a ghostly, amplified voice that drifted in and out of audibility.

‘I am the voice of Rysgah, I am the mouth of Chaos. Do not fight us. Join us. Together we can embrace the darkness...’

The voice rasped on Zachariah’s nerves and he shook his head to clear it, his mouth twisting. Join them? Had the hundreds of thousands of Rysgahan civilians had any real option in the face of their military’s treachery? The rebels had already left entire cities full of bodies in their retreat to the sanctuary of Rysgah City. Zachariah had seen many disturbing things in briefings before, but the sight of innocents not even accorded the decency of a burial or pyre but left to rot in the stinking, corrosive air of this vile planet filled him with a deep but, for him at least, still controllable fury.

‘How do you want to play it, sarge?’ Melnis had taken the lead but was barely able to bring his weapon to bear, such was the crush from the rest of Fourth Platoon before him. His voice had an edge of frustration, something Zachariah knew Melnis continually struggled with. Given the option he’d hop into the largest, most destructive vehicle available and shoot, ram and generally smash his way into and through a combat zone, but in such a confined space, Melnis felt claustrophobic and vulnerable. The best way to deal with him was to be straight and simple.

‘Two threes. Sojack, Coarto, fill your tubes and flank Melnis. Watch your feet on exit as there’ll be bodies all over the place. Fire at anything that moves. Adullam and Beor are with me. Wait for the ranks in front to get clear then move out.’ Turning to the support squad behind him, he told them to await further instruction following their exit. No point in pushing them out first to get uselessly killed, as they’d certainly need as many men as possible when they reached their objective.

Zachariah could hear all five of his men shuffling into position. They were ready.

A deafening volley of fire from the mouth of the tunnel created a gap for Zachariah’s squad to occupy, and they got their first real look at the interior of Rysgah City, much of it in deep morning shadow from the high rim of the extinct volcano’s walls. The geographical conditions had dictated where the tunnel could be dug in such a short time and it was hardly the most advantageous tactical position, opening out onto a line of crumbling black and grey stone buildings thirty metres across from the outer circumference wall.

Several heavy weapons nests were located on the buildings’ parapets and roofs, but many of them were little more than smouldering ruins, having attracted the fire of Third Platoon which currently busied itself with the hastily formed barricades to the left and right of their position. Fire still came from positions built into the towering, striated volcanic interior walls above and behind them, but the continual curve of the crater around the outside of the city and its buildings offered some protection for the moment. As soon as a few upper storeys disappeared, though, they’d be entirely exposed from just about every angle.

An explosion tore into the rockface on their right, showering black pumice over the dead Elysians at their feet. Coarto levelled his launcher and fired off a grenade towards a second-storey window to the left, blasting a huge hole and removing the threat in a shower of glass and brick. With no other fire returning, Zachariah patted the backs of the first three and they ran for the opposite side of the wide road, dodging stray fire until they made it to the relative safety of the buildings’ rough stone walls.

Zachariah trained his scope in a swift 180-degree arc: it looked clear enough so, in a half-crouch, he led Adullam and Beor across the rubble-strewn cobbled road. Catching his breath, he beckoned over to the ten remaining support Guardsmen who wasted no time in joining them.

‘Alpha team will–’ Zachariah’s words were drowned out by a high-pitched squeal of feedback from somewhere above, then the voice returned.

‘Give up, hopeless ones! You all will perish at the hands of Chaos. Surrender while you can!’

Zachariah flicked a glance over to Sojack and nodded his head upwards. Raising his grenade launcher with a grin, Sojack stepped away and into the road without a second’s thought of potential danger. Quickly scanning the roof-line, he spotted the oversized vox amplifier and fired off a single shot into the air.

The second he returned, the wall shook and debris rained down onto the road in front of them. The voice couldn’t be heard any more.

‘That’s what you get for opening your mouth when you shouldn’t.’ The others laughed weakly at Coarto’s joke, but there was no time for levity as Zachariah continued his instructions.

‘As I was saying… Alpha team will hit their objective in fifteen minutes. We’ve got ten to get to ours. It’s the smallest bridge but it’s bound to be heavily defended and it won’t take the Rysgahans long to figure out what we’re doing. We’ll head through the streets as planned but keep low and to the walls. This side of the chasm’s still crawling with the enemy.’

With a nod of the head, five of the Guardsmen filed towards a narrow gap between the shattered buildings as First and Second Platoon emerged from the tunnel exit across the road, respectfully avoiding the dead as best they could and joining the furious melees at the blazing roadblocks to the left and right.

Despite the loss of life Zachariah could see they were making headway on both flanks and, if all went according to plan, they’d pincer out and around this part of the capital and have it under control within half an hour. They only needed to destroy two of the three bridges that linked the uneven sides of the city, divided as it was by a gaping crevasse that dropped down into the extinct throat of the volcano. With only one crossing point for rebel reinforcements to use, they’d soon be able to control and ultimately capture the opposite side – since only one of the three was cramped by restrictive architecture that would hamper larger troop movements at either side, there was no doubt which it would be.

The towering form of Melnis followed the first group of Guardsmen and squeezed his way through the gap into a nearby alleyway formed by the six-storey buildings, again cursing the lack of space but more than comforted by the massive firepower in his hands. Coarto and Adullam followed next, then Beor who had his own issues with the passageway’s width.

Zachariah used his scope to sweep the high ledges as they jogged along, but the lack of good quality light made it difficult to see anything in detail. He could hear Sojack talking to the remaining Guardsmen behind, telling them to keep tight and watch out for anyone doubling back on them. He’d make a good sergeant one day, thought Zachariah.

Penned in as they were, they would have been an easy kill for any Rysgahan traitor who’d spied their position, but luck was with them as they spilled out of the passage into a wide courtyard.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

Fire erupted from all sides of the square, creating a furious crossfire that thumped into the leading group of Guardsmen. Two fell without even raising their lasguns. The third and fourth only managed to squeeze off a couple of wild shots before they, too, were cut down, and had it not been for Melnis’s lethal aim with the plasma gun, they might all have suffered the same fate. His deadly arcing swing completely destroyed three rebel positions, with a withering torrent of grenades from Coarto providing able assistance. Without even being asked, Sojack threw over a couple of shells to Coarto, who immediately loaded them into his weapon.

The light was improving all the time, but the view that presented itself was best left to the darkness. The area had been used for some form of execution, as evidenced by the piles of bodies, their hands tied behind their backs, lying in broken heaps at the base of a smashed statue. Melnis immediately recognised the carven figure’s desecrated remains.

‘De Haan,’ he rumbled dangerously.

Sojack reverently picked up the crumbling head of the martyred inquisitor’s statue, seeing the rest of its parts deliberately scattered between the corpses in a vile imitation of the man’s original, grisly end at the hands of Chaos worshippers. Adullam spat with disgust on the ashen ground and Beor whispered a prayer. Zachariah watched the Guardsmen carefully. This kind of sight was hard enough for veterans to stomach, but younger, less experienced troops could find themselves distracted enough to get themselves – and others – killed.

‘Elysians, fall in.’ Zachariah didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t need to. The remaining six men snapped to, their minds suddenly focused on the frowning face and dark green eyes staring coolly at them.

‘You see this? This is Chaos. You’ve heard of it, you’ve been briefed about it, but now you’ve experienced it. This is how they treat their own, so think of what they’ll do to you.’ One man gulped; another shook his head as he clenched his teeth together. They understood the lesson.

‘Now, I don’t want to lose another man today. Three streets down is the chasm. They’re waiting for us, so get ready to fight for your lives.’

He looked at the smashed figurine, violated and broken in the gloomy shadows.

‘For your Emperor.’

Adullam gave the young men a frightening grin, while Melnis patted one of them on the back so hard he nearly collapsed. Satisfied everyone was suitably motivated, Zachariah nodded towards a wide avenue lined with more tall, decrepit dark buildings and the team jogged its way along the pavement, shielded from the inner volcanic wall emplacements by the looming constructions more by fortune than planning.

The renewed wailing of the infuriating Rysgahan propaganda machine told Zachariah they were getting close to their target. Raising a clenched fist to stop the small column, he pulled out the data-slate that contained the map he’d downloaded during the briefing on the Obliteration and calculated where the avenue would bisect the main road running alongside the volcanic fissure. He saw at once that it would bring them straight into the line of fire from the bridge’s entrance, but there was a narrower street running parallel with this one that could be reached down an alleyway some distance ahead. Unfortunately, that street would only bring them closer to the same position with the added disadvantage of being squeezed together on exit, much like the tunnel they’d used to enter the city.

Zachariah’s options abruptly decreased, as a sudden blast thumped into them and the middle of the deserted street’s surface erupted brick and stone in every direction. Huddling towards the wall with their faces turned away, the team were showered with debris as the ground shook from further detonations.

‘Get into that street up on the left! Move!’

The air turned black with rubble and dust as shells rained down from seemingly every direction. They’d clearly been spotted from a higher position and the enemy were zeroing in with alarming speed. Squeezing into yet another tight alleyway, the panting men found themselves faced with a line of heavily fortified back doors, clearly some form of emergency access for the buildings lining the crevasse. Explosions ripped apart the roofs high above and while it would take a lucky shot to drop a shell straight down on top of them, even one such hit would wipe them out in a heartbeat. Melnis’s frustration boiled over.

‘Let me go and sort this out, sarge. By the Emperor, we’re stuck like rats! I’m not dying like this.’

Sojack’s reply had the edge of calm needed in such a situation. ‘Cool it, Melnis. Why don’t you take it out of that door right in front of you? Pretend it’s mouth almighty over there.’

Coarto laughed at his friend’s suggestion, and Zachariah nodded a confirmation – they couldn’t go back or around, so they needed to go through the building to reach their target. Melnis didn’t even bother to level his weapon; one brief but mighty kick splintered the heavy door like matchwood.

Piling into the gloomy interior, they found the ransacked remains of a bakery. From the shop’s filthy front windows, the dark ragged slash that formed the volcanic chasm could be seen along with the bridge’s entrance. Any thoughts of a surprise attack were lost when they spied half a dozen rebels moving cautiously forwards towards their position, while another six ducked and ran towards the far avenue from their hastily erected barricade. They were heading for the very passageway through which the Elysians had just entered; within minutes they’d be surrounded.

The front windows shattered in a volley of fire, showering glass and brick into the murky interior. Some protection was offered by the large ovens and mixing vats, but it wouldn’t be enough when the rearguard attacked and besides, given time, the artillery could simply level the building. They had to go on the offensive.

‘Sojack, Coarto – make a hole out there. Melnis, Adullam – go see to our friends creeping around the back. You six – get ready to move on the bridge.’

Brief nods and grins from his trusted comrades lifted Zachariah’s spirits. How many times had he come out of a tight spot with these men at his back? He stood back with the sweating Beor as Melnis muscled his way past, his weapon trained straight ahead and looking like a child’s toy in his massive arms. Adullam couldn’t see anything in front of him other than Melnis’s huge bulk, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been more than happy to use his friend as a living shield; something that had been the point of several jokes and, occasionally, fights between them.

Within seconds, battle commenced in the narrow corridor at the back, giving Sojack and Coarto their cue to move forwards through the gloom and deliver a barrage of grenades out of the shattered bakery’s gaping frontage. Years of teamwork showed as they executed a textbook dual-launcher attack, one firing just within the explosive killing radius of the other to create a line of devastation that engulfed the hapless Rysgahans and probed its way spectacularly towards the bridgehead. They didn’t even have to look at each other, such was their familiarity; they knew exactly what the other was doing.

All thoughts of the square put behind them, the six Elysian Guardsmen laid impressive supporting fire, carefully picking their targets as they advanced towards the ornate black ironwork of the bridge.

Moving into the street, Zachariah spotted two rebels wheeling a small cannon up to their defensive line, a third following closely with ammunition. For a split second, Zachariah felt real panic – they were completely exposed and one well-placed shell could wipe out the majority of his forces.

Just as he drew breath to bark a warning, the artillery bombardment returned in force. But instead of shells raining down on them, the Rysgahan barricade erupted in a yellow and black blossom of friendly fire, handily killing the majority of the rebels and clearing a path for the Elysians to enter the wide, two-hundred-metre-long iron walkway across the bottomless ravine.

‘Sarge, did you see that! The Emperor loves the 158th!’

Coarto was laughing at their good fortune, and even Zachariah had to smile – this kind of mistake meant the rebels were panicking, despite the incessant drone coming from the ‘mouth of Chaos’ across the chasm. Even so, if someone with nerve and experience took control things could change very quickly, so Zachariah looked for a high vantage point behind and upwards.

It took seconds for Coarto and Sojack to finish off the remaining rebels, and the six Guardsmen quickly took up crouched positions on either side of the bridge’s entrance. Burning buildings and military equipment made it difficult to see what was happening on the other side of the crevasse, but a deadly concentration of fire straight down the bridge’s length had the team retreating to the relative safety of the raised black stone embankment running along the banks of the inky chasm.

Shafts of sunlight began to streak down over the volcano’s mouth, tinged blue by the still-active void shields and glinting off the tops of buildings on the far side of the city. This would improve the view for the spotters located within the interior walls so, as Melnis and Adullam appeared from around the corner, Zachariah signalled to activate helmet comms.

‘If we can’t get on the bridge we can’t destroy it. Adullam, Beor – get your charges ready. I’ll go up that tower next to the bakery with Sojack and Melnis – no arguments.’

This cut off Melnis’s protestations immediately; he’d have to live without charging head-first down the bridge. His sergeant clearly had a more subtle plan in mind.

‘We’re going to need a lot of firepower up there to cover you. No point in us calling reinforcements as they’ll be too busy and, besides, if the Rysgahans try sending anyone down that bridge we’ll kill them just as easily as they could us. We need to even things out a bit. Coarto – go tell the regulars you’ll be covering Adullam and Beor while they set the charges. Move on my signal. Understood?’

Nods all around; and, on a final raise of the eyebrows and exhalation, he crouch-ran over to the larger, more ornate structure adjoining the now-burning bakery, once some proud municipal building but now a pock-marked, brutalised shell. Melnis threw himself through the thick wooden doors, splintering them on their hinges, and within seconds the three-strong team were running up the staircase of the rectangular tower, the amplified Rysgahan voice louder and clearer as they clattered up the dusty wooden steps.

A trapdoor opened up onto the tower’s exposed roof and Zachariah was immediately relieved to see a chest-high stone wall forming its outer edge. The sheer size of Rysgah City meant they’d be out of range from the far walls, but the accuracy of the recent artillery fire meant someone had a good angle on them close by. This was confirmed in no uncertain terms as they came under immediate fire, a shot hitting Melnis in the thigh and bringing him to his knees in fury.

‘Emperor damn it!’ he spat, crawling to the nearest wall as beams lanced overhead, punching neat holes in the stone above his head. Zachariah watched the angle of fire carefully and, readying his rifle, took a deep breath and edged upwards until he could see over the ledge. He ducked down, counted and visualised the location in his mind to within three metres; then, shifting a little to the right, he sprang up and fired two shots in rapid succession.

The first killed the spotter, the second his sniper protection. It wouldn’t be the end of it, but it gave them some breathing space.

‘Sojack, load up and range the other side of the bridge. Give ’em a good shower. Melnis – can you stand to cover?’

Melnis put weight on his leg and winced, his lower thigh already wrapped in a bloody field dressing. Zachariah immediately knew how bad it was for the big man to show any sign of discomfort, but like every Elysian veteran, he’d fought on with injuries as bad and worse.

Cautiously putting his head above the high ledge facing the fissure, Zachariah took a good look at Rysgah City’s interior. Black and grey stone buildings squeezed within the volcano’s towering walls, winding streets that, only days ago, would have been impossibly busy, brightly lit by the now-dead lamp posts and the buildings warm from the unlimited geothermal power deep below the city’s surface. Now it was a smoking, shadowy hell-hole, dying right before him, only suitable for the darkness to occupy.

Not if they had anything to do with it.

Satisfied they’d bought a few minutes of calm, Zachariah waved down to Adullum, Beor and Coarto who, in turn, saluted back. With a nudge from Zachariah’s boot, Sojack sprang to his feet, made a rough calculation to the other side of the rift and, despite the plumes of smoke hiding the Rysgahans’ movements, loosed a salvo into the air from his weapon.

Three familiar crumps thudded out from the base of the burning buildings lining the opposite bank, accompanied by dim yellow blossoms of flame at the bridge’s far entrance. The rattle of gunfire abruptly ceased, terminating the lethal hail ripping down the bridge but, unfortunately, not silencing the wailing, increasingly deranged Rysgahan broadcasts.

‘Be one with us! Your fight is lost! The mouth of Chaos is the truth!’

‘I swear, sarge, if I get my hands on that bloody traitor, I’ll pull his head off.’

Melnis was getting really annoyed now, which didn’t concern Zachariah unduly as it’d take his attention from his injury. What did worry him was the amount of movement towards the bridgehead on the far side, suggesting this was going to be a shorter respite than he’d hoped. Realising the same, Coarto didn’t waste the opportunity of lobbing a grenade directly, if not blindly, straight back down the bridge and, with the six Guardsmen advancing and firing in a line, Adullam and Beor moved in behind them with their charges.

At least the Rysgahans wouldn’t shell their own bridge – they needed it intact – but, unfortunately, they didn’t feel the same way about the tower in which Zachariah and his two comrades stood. The building shook with a rapid flurry of explosions, knocking Melnis off-balance and sending him sprawling to the cold stone floor with a curse. A loud whistle had the three of them ducking instinctively, but the mortar shell sailed overhead and down into the gaping fissure below the bridge.

With a couple of near hits and a far miss, it wouldn’t take long for the trajectory to be readjusted right on top of their heads, but this meant they had to be in line of sight somewhere relatively close. Zachariah calmly spoke into his comms unit. ‘That came from behind. Sort it out, Sojack.’

Striding over to the opposing wall, Sojack had a view of uneven rooftops and occasional towers all the way back to the massive black striated sheet enclosing the city. The Rysgahan defence troopers weren’t experienced soldiers, at least not by Elysian standards, so he looked for the most obvious launch point.

Within seconds, he spied the domes of helmets belonging to two crouched figures five hundred metres away and ten metres down, partially obscured behind a large ventilation duct on a narrow flat roof. With ammunition running low Sojack knew he had to make the shot count, and he did; the grenade sailed into the air and dropped right on top of their position, the roof of the building collapsing in on itself in a cloud of dust and filth.

Back on the other side of the tower, Melnis was upright once again and swivelling his plasma gun on its bipod along the bridge. The smoke was clearing at the far end, revealing dozens of rebels moving between a wide clearing directly opposite the bridge’s entrance and the tall buildings. One structure in particular caught his eye and he grunted as he shifted position slightly to give him a partial view of a large metallic framework on a high rooftop one street behind, where suggestions of figures moved busily between a network of snaking cables.

‘Listen to the voice of reason! The mouth of Chaos will never be silenced!’

Melnis clenched his teeth in pain, aimed deliberately high and squeezed the trigger. Super-heated plasma arced upwards and over the chasm, the jet losing shape and form as it reached the structure but still destructive enough to blow up the parts he could see. The amplified voice abruptly stopped and Melnis barked a triumphant laugh; it was the transmitter.

Fire flickered out of his line of sight, and his day was made when a flaming rebel plunged from the rooftop to the avenue below. It was wishful thinking, but he very much hoped it was the ‘mouth’.

‘That shut you up.’

Zachariah shook his head with a faint smile. The sun was creeping higher over the huge volcanic walls now, the destruction far below bathed in the first good light of the day. Something glinted in the distance down the street formed by the buildings, and he brought his lasgun’s scope back up with a frown. At exactly the same time, Coarto’s voice crackled in his ear. It was a single, simple word, and absolutely the last thing he wanted hear:

Tanks.

The lead vehicle drifted into focus through the thinning smoke, partially obscured by a milling group of rebels running in a confused swarm. It was low and flat, with the suggestion of a turret on top – a battered and barely functioning Chimera, its armour dented and split. The turret array was clearly no threat, but its hull-mounted heavy flamer looked worryingly intact. It seemed to have difficulty traversing to the right, suggesting the left-hand tracks or the steering mechanism was damaged, and the snub muzzle of its primary weapon seemed to be fixed forwards. At the moment it couldn’t quite bring the heavy flamer to bear but the driver was clearly intent on rectifying this.

Directly behind was an equally decrepit Leman Russ, its main gun missing but the port sponson cannon tracking menacingly. Partially obscured by the Chimera’s laboured manoeuvres, it posed no real threat while the APC stayed forward, and Zachariah assumed it was at the back because it wasn’t as battleworthy as the carrier. Even so, if that managed to get into place, it could wreak havoc over the chasm and into their part of the city.

Flicking his attention back to Adullam and Beor, he could see them working furiously on either side of the bridge, several silver discs now lined across its width and joined by red fuse wire. Beor took an opportunity to look up at precisely the moment the Chimera managed to turn enough to open fire.

Three of the Guardsmen became instant screaming torches as the flamer’s lethal jet consumed them, parts of the bridge’s ornate sidings melting away with the tremendous heat. The remaining three threw themselves to the ground on the right while Coarto fell to one knee and fired his final volley towards the front of the vehicle, blasting the road surface directly in front of the APC and causing it to pitch violently downwards into the smoking hole.

With restricted movement the heavy flamer couldn’t elevate enough to target the Elysians from its new position, but Zachariah could see from Adullam and Beor’s feverish movements that the demolition charges weren’t ready. They needed minutes, not seconds.

Ordering Melnis and Sojack to keep the bridge’s entrance as clear of rebels as possible, Zachariah rested his lasgun on to the tower’s smashed ledge and regarded the straining, shaking vehicle carefully through his image intensifier.

It was reversing out of the hole, tracks chewing on the crater’s shallow sides. The driver would be somewhere to the right, his head below the upper and lower section seam – precisely where a crack had developed at the corner of the viewing hatch, thanks to a number of popped rivets. Coarto’s crater had helped open it up a little more on impact, and with the APC not taking its full weight evenly across the lower section, it parted a few centimetres with the strain of movement.

Zachariah only had one chance at this before the Chimera got back to road level and the gap closed itself under the sheer weight of the turret above. He forced himself to relax; the stock and grip of the lasgun became an extension of his body and thanks to the bipod, he was absolutely static, leaving him to concentrate on timing out the violent rocking motion of the vehicle. He took a breath.

Target moving backwards, forwards, swinging up. Elevation and range calculated. Best angle approaching, largest gap forming… now.

The shot darted through the impossibly small hole formed between the thick armour plates, slicing into the vehicle somewhere around the driver’s seat. An extraordinary shot; one of his best for months, but self-congratulation wasn’t in Zachariah’s nature.

Even if it had been, the dismay he now felt would have quickly quashed his triumph as the APC kept on moving backwards, eventually righting itself with a grinding crunch. Its squat form loomed menacingly for a few seconds, like a predator deciding which prey to devour first, and Zachariah flicked his scope around the Chimera, urgently looking for another weak spot.

Suddenly, the carrier shuddered violently and began to spin wildly around its centre, mercilessly swiping away rebels using its bulk for cover. Tossed in a wide arc, some bounced off the front armour of the Leman Russ while others sailed like thrown dolls into the chasm, their screams quickly fading in the warm morning air.

A final bellow from the Chimera’s engines sent the hulking machine lurching forwards into the embankment, ploughing through a dozen more hapless Rysgahans and crushing several others. A few were pushed straight through the crevasse’s raised wall and followed it down into the bottomless darkness.

Something registered in Zachariah’s brain – he’d missed a critical change. What was–

The air exploded out of Zachariah’s lungs as he hit the floor of the tower face-up. His ears sang and he found he couldn’t focus properly; then he felt huge hands pull him to his feet from behind. The world spun and he pulled off his helmet, trying to shake his vision back to normality.

Melnis was shouting at him but all he could hear was a high-pitched tone, and within seconds he realised what had happened – the Leman Russ had opened fire on them and hit the corner of the tower with its first shot. Sojack crouched to one side of the large ragged hole newly created in the wall, firing the last of his grenades over the chasm, but the tank was just out of range.

Leaning on Melnis, Zachariah retrieved his lasgun and staggered over to Sojack’s position as a second shell hurtled overhead, exploding a hundred metres behind. Melnis pig-headedly stood in the middle of the gaping hole and tried to hit the tank, but his previous repeated firing had left the plasma gun dangerously overheated and it shut down, leaving the huge man bellowing in frustration.

Zachariah grabbed hold of Melnis’s webbing and yanked him back out of the direct field of fire, throwing a warning look at the furious man as he stumbled past.

Down below, Adullam and Beor frantically tried to finish wiring up the munitions while Coarto and the remaining three Guardsmen shuffled backwards towards them, firing sporadically, their ammunition nearly exhausted. The Rysgahans were readying their counter-attack on the bridge, which would surely come the second they had dispatched the three Elysians in the tower.

His head finally clearing, Zachariah rammed on his helmet, grabbed Sojack’s shoulder and pointed over to the roof’s trapdoor. ‘Get down there and give covering fire to the others. Keep out of sight as best you can and they might think we’ve been put out of action up here. I’m going to sort out that tank.’

With a nod, Sojack crawled over to the heavy wooden panel and heaved it open, allowing Melnis to squeeze his bulk into the opening before he, too, disappeared with a salute. Two seconds later, a shell hit the lower side of the tower, blasting a second hole in its heavy walls and collapsing the corner. The integrity of the building was failing and the Leman Russ crew now had Zachariah in their sights – one more shot to his position, possibly two, then they’d turn on the others.

Zachariah reached for a fresh power pack from his webbing, tapped it on his helmet to shake off any dirt it might have picked up in transit and slammed it home with a satisfying clunk. Taking a deep breath, he rolled onto his stomach, presenting as flat a profile as he could to the rebels – but breaking two golden rules of sniping by firing from a known and exposed position.

Time slowed. In his downward peripheral vision, Zachariah half-sensed, half saw the shape of Melnis limping across the avenue towards the entrance of the bridge, pulling out his entirely non-regulation and, at this range at least, entirely useless shotgun from the open holster on his back. Sojack had ditched his grenade launcher and was already firing single shots from his lasgun at the chasm’s far bank, the brilliant flashes flickering in the corner of Zachariah’s eye. All this he was entirely aware of, but it didn’t distract him from his primary focus – the sponson-mounted gun on the mangled port side of the tank. The muzzle’s angle was pointing directly at Zachariah; they couldn’t miss.

Zachariah smiled.

Hold breath. Wait. Exhale. Squeeze.

The lasgun threw a brilliant high-energy beam straight down the centre of the cannon’s muzzle, meeting the nose of the shell as it started its way out of the cannon. Without realising it they’d given Zachariah an absolute gift, the kind of shot he’d hear others tell stories about achieving over too many drinks at a bar, and he smiled as the tank left the ground on the left-hand side. It flipped on its side, smoke hissing out of its cracked shell, and when the magazine ignited the vehicle spectacularly erupted. Rysgahans were flattened on three sides, the remaining windows in nearby buildings blew out and shrapnel hurtled in every direction.

If the devastation wreaked by his single shot was good in itself, the utter shock and confusion on the rebels’ faces as they picked themselves up off the ground was even better. He’d bought Adullam and Beor the time they needed, and they were already using it.

‘Unbelievable, Zach! Unbelievable! We’re done – ten-second fuse starting now. Adullam out.’

Coarto took the lead in front of the three remaining Guardsmen, followed by the heavily panting Beor and Adullam, as Melnis and Sojack gave covering fire. A couple of Rysgahans ventured onto the bridge, clearly forced to try and disarm the charges squatting in a ragged line, but it was too late – the middle of the bridge was torn apart in a tremendous explosion, making Zachariah duck behind the remains of the tower’s roof to avoid the shower of iron fragments and stone thrown into the air. While he was spared the ignominy of being directly caught in his own successful detonation, the blast was clearly too much for the tower’s severely weakened structure, which began to collapse around and below him.

He dived through the open trapdoor. Huge chunks of masonry bounced off his helmet and armoured shoulder pads as he half-ran, half-fell down the disintegrating stairs. Entire blocks of stone plunged down the stairwell’s open centre and, with a deafening crash, a wall fell out into the street below.

Zachariah knew he wasn’t going to make it to the ground floor and so threw himself out of the gaping hole, landing awkwardly on a pile of rubble that had fallen after the Leman Russ’s first shell. Luckily, his sturdy high-ankled drop-boots took much of the twisting strain and the padded sections of his jumpsuit cushioned his untidy fall onto the avenue just as Melnis limped over, supported by Sojack.

Shots still arced overhead but, with a second rumbling explosion filling the air around the unseen bend of the chasm, the Rysgahans must have known the game was up.

Two bridges destroyed, one under Elysian control. They had nowhere left to run.

The quarters assigned to Zachariah and his squad on the Obliteration were cramped, spartan and noisy, but the showers worked and they were only a short walk from the mess hall – more than what they needed. Sitting on the edge of his peeling metal bunk, Zachariah worked on his lasgun’s sight mounting, gently coaxing it back into shape with a pair of pliers after his hasty exit from the crumbling tower. Sojack and Coarto could be heard laughing from the adjoining wash cubicle, their voices echoing around the low ceiling of the six-berth billet. Ignoring the tall tales of impossible deeds, Adullam lay on his bedroll opposite Zachariah’s position, staring at nothing in particular.

Beor lumbered into the room from the corridor outside, reading a fresh mission update from the briefing room three decks above, his laboured breathing pushing his barrel chest out to the limits of his extra-large tunic.

‘Only took an hour to get the shield down after the second bridge blew. The rebels surrendered after two.’

Adullam stretched and yawned, pushing his feet off the edge of the bunk and regarding his filthy outspread toes.

‘I imagine the executions started shortly after. That group of commissars I passed looked like they were going to burst with excitement.’

Zachariah smiled to himself; the Commissariat had, indeed, turned up in force once the 158th had secured the situation, ready to dispense the Emperor’s justice – and rightly so. He’d be surprised if a single traitorous rebel survived the night. It would be swift and brutal, but entirely justified; it was a wonder that the Inquisition hadn’t taken an interest, yet.

Exactly what would happen to the civilian populace far down beneath the orbiting Obliteration was beyond him; the planet was still right in the path of the Chaos forces’ seemingly relentless advance through the Arx Gap, and there was no formalised militia or effective government for them to turn to. Mass evacuation was simply too problematic, as was leaving anything other than a token garrison for protection; but as all of those issues now fell to those of higher rank than him, he shrugged inwardly and turned to re-attaching the sight onto its newly repaired mounting.

Beor looked up from the report, his interest lost now their involvement was over. ‘Any word on Melnis? Are they going to whip the leg off? Imagine what a pain in the arse he’d be with an augmetic one!’

Zachariah had seen Melnis an hour previously in the over-crowded charnel house that passed as the Obliteration’s infirmary. It’d been a lucky escape; while the wound was deep and he’d lost quite a bit of blood, a centimetre to the left and he wouldn’t have got off the planet alive. Not that any of this made the hulking brute any happier; after he’d shouted at the third orderly to get him back on his feet and signed fit for duty, a passing doctor administered a tranq dosage large enough to drop a bull grox and he’d likely be asleep for the following week if they were lucky.

‘He’ll be fine after some rest. Whatever that is.’ Adullam arched his back, the muscles cracking as he regarded a blue-black bruise on his shin. Beor rested himself slowly onto his bunk in the far corner, sighing deeply.

‘Don’t know about you two, but I’m sick of it out here. I can’t wait to get back home. A nice bit of ship-to-ship with some Elysian pirates – now that’s what I call...’

Zachariah was a master of self-control; he had the ability to slow down his pulse at will, reduce his breathing to a shallow whisper, remain completely still in the middle of an explosive maelstrom, but there was one, and only one thing that punched through all of his defences like no other. Any newcomer to the squad would have thought Beor’s comment had gone unheard by the veteran sergeant, but Adullam knew his friend far too well to miss the signs of his anger. The knuckles on his right hand had blanched, blood suddenly restricted by the vice-like grip currently transferred to the screwdriver being used on his lasgun.

It was at that exact moment Beor realised he’d said the wrong thing and met Adullam’s fiery glance; even the singing stopped from Sojack and Coarto in the shower. Everyone knew you didn’t talk about back home to Zachariah.

‘Sarge, I–’

Beor’s apology died in his throat as the tall, rangy form of Captain Makarah, a young but very effective officer from Third Platoon, appeared in the doorway. His darting glance finally rested on Zachariah, who looked up to meet his gaze with a neutral face. Adullam shook his head; he honestly didn’t know how his sergeant did it.

‘Sergeant, we need you in the briefing room right now. There’s a very nasty situation developed on Ophel Minoris – we’re nearest, so it’s up to us to sort it out.’

Placing his lasgun carefully on his bed and replacing his screwdriver on his opened repair kit roll, Zachariah rose to his feet and zipped up his jumpsuit. Without a word, he followed the captain out into the narrow corridor and disappeared from view, leaving Adullam and Beor in silence.

Adullam snorted air through his nose and, reaching under his bunk, pulled out his own lasgun. Beor followed suit, and shortly the only sounds that could be heard echoing off the thick metal bulkheads were the clinks and clacks of parts being dismantled, checked and cleaned.

The Butcher’s Beast

Jordan Ellinger

Men ran through the trees on the opposite river bank, giant men, swarthy men with tangled beards and blood on their lips. At the forest’s edge a regiment of swordsmen hastily assumed formation as screaming berserkers swept into their ranks, hewing about with blackened axes that glowed with savage runic light.

Knights in full armour, caught fording the Schilder, wrestled with their mounts as they tried to emerge from the churning froth and onto the rocky ground beyond. Somewhere close by a horse screamed as it was pulled under, the raging torrent swallowing it and its rider hungrily.

On a hill to the east, General Schalbourg’s fist tightened on the reins of his mount as he surveyed the scene in front of him.

‘The last reports we had were that the Skaelings were two days to the north.’

He kept his voice level, betraying none of the rage and helplessness that churned beneath his usually calm exterior. Men were dying in the valley below, and every moment he spared to indulge his anger meant another life lost. Several advisors sat impotently nearby on mountain ponies.

Only Knight Templar Keller of the Order of Sigmar dared to answer him. ‘The Skaelings aren’t known for their speed, my lord. We have reports that they are fleeing a much larger, unidentified force to the north. If you had allowed me the use of the brass bull when we captured those heretics two days ago, we would know for certain what drives them.’

Schalbourg masked his distaste for the witch hunter’s savagery. ‘Those “heretics” were women and children fleeing before this very horde,’ he muttered.

‘You saw women and children, my lord. I saw spies whose disguises were so cunningly woven that they might fool even a general.’

Schalbourg finally let some of his repressed anger free in the form of a snarl. ‘You tread dangerously close to insubordination, Keller. Knight Templar or not, this army is under my command.’

‘A witch hunter is forever treading on ground where other men fear to walk, for it is there that the enemy is most powerful,’ responded Keller piously.

Schalbourg glared at the man for a moment, trying to determine whether or not he was being insulted. At length, he gave up. While they bickered the Skaelings were tearing his army apart, and now they had word there was another army out there somewhere. Hopefully it was loyal to the Empire.

‘Tell me about this larger force,’ he said. ‘Requests for reinforcements from the Elector Count of Middenland were rebuffed, but who else could it be so close to the Grey Mountains?’

His line of thought was cut off by a scream as a volley of black arrows scythed out of the trees and fell amongst Empire soldiers, killing men where they stood.

‘Never mind,’ he said, a sweep of his hand cutting Keller off before he could answer.

He quickly surveyed the battlefield. Though the bulk of his forces and the entirety of his artillery support were stuck on the wrong side of the river, four units had made it across. Three had broken almost the moment the northmen had hit them, but one had held its ground – a regiment of swordsmen had assumed a tight, square formation that had brought the enemy to a halt and they were now fighting furiously against increasingly desperate odds.

‘Get me Hesberger,’ Schalbourg barked.

An underling kicked the flanks of his mountain pony and darted towards a unit of mounted knights. Their leader separated from the group and galloped up to Schalbourg’s side.

‘My lord!’ he said, flipping up his visor. The man behind it displayed a lined, but honourable face punctuated with a silver moustache.

‘The Enderberg Narrows. Do you know them?’ asked Schalbourg.

‘My squire hails from these lands. He’ll be able to guide us to it.’

‘Go with all haste. We’ll hold until you return. May Sigmar’s grace speed your mounts.’ Schalbourg watched the knights peel away from the rest of the army and gallop downriver.

‘My lord,’ said Keller bitterly, ‘only a single unit of swordsmen still holds the opposite bank. If they fall before Hesberger returns he’ll be charging into the jaws of the Dark Gods.’

Schalbourg felt an icy chill settle into his veins. The witch hunter was right, but what other choice did he have? It was that or lose the battle and three-quarters of his army. All their hopes hinged on those swordsmen. Normally, the general could identify any unit under his command by sight, but the haze of battle had obscured their regimental colours. ‘Keller,’ he said tightly. ‘Which unit is that?’

The witch hunter squinted, and then shielded his eyes against the setting sun.

‘It’s the Carroburgs, my lord.’

Schalbourg felt his shoulders unknot. ‘Thank Sigmar. We have a chance.’

‘Don’t break formation! Don’t break forma–’ Commander Toft’s order was cut off by a grunt as a terrified rhinox, driven by northmen wielding cruel brands against its flanks, slammed into the unit. Three feet of ivory horn lashed out and impaled a swordsman, then hurled the body into Toft, knocking him into the mud.

Anton Erhardt charged the beast’s flanks, dancing on the balls of his feet to avoid its shifting bulk, then brought his sword in an underhand arc that glanced off the brute’s armoured jaw and into the soft flesh of its throat. Warm blood washed across his wrists and hands, making his grip on the weapon slick.

As the rhinox fell he spared a second to look for Toft, but the commander was nowhere in sight. Until he reappeared, Erhardt was in charge of the regiment.

Battle swirled around him, Greatswords wielding five-foot-long steel zweihanders with mastery that betrayed their elite training. Here, the fierce barbarians from the north were being driven back, their primitive fury no match for the precise manoeuvres and coordinated assault of the Empire’s most dedicated troops.

‘Push them back!’ he bellowed. ‘We need to clear space on the riverbank for reinforcements!’

‘Lieutenant!’

Erhardt peered through the melee and caught sight of Kord Gottswain, a massive Nordlander whose dwarf-forged breastplate was spattered by the dark, arterial blood of the men he’d killed.

‘Lieutenant, they’re after the commander!’

Suddenly, the ranks of northmen parted violently as several huge beastmen shouldered their way to the front, swatting at their own soldiers with their axes to make way for their leader. Eight feet tall at the shoulder with a mad tangle of horns curled around its goat-like head like a hellish crown, it held a tree-trunk-sized axe in an arm knotted with muscle. The stinking grey fur that carpeted its chest and back was matted with sweat and filth, and flecks of dried snot flew away from its muzzle as it panted. A necklace of human finger bones circled its neck, and upon this hung a mouldering skull. A broken lance jutted up from the creature’s back, flying a standard depicting a horrifying, fang-filled mouth swallowing a bleeding eyeball.

The beast reached down and almost casually threw aside the massive rhinox carcass, forcing Erhardt to leap back to avoid being crushed, then plucked Toft’s unconscious body off the ground. Sniffing in disgust, it handed the commander to a smaller beast who bellowed in triumph before disappearing back into the throng.

Erhardt swore. Toft was like a father to him, but the only thing keeping the Carroburgs alive was the tight square of their formation. If the beasts broke through the lines, every one of them would die. ‘Hold formation. That’s an order!’ he barked.

‘Chaos take your orders!’ shouted Kord over the sounds of battle. ‘They’ll kill him.’ Ignoring Erhardt, he lunged out of the battle-line, hewing about himself with his blade, carving through ranks of northmen in an effort to engage the beastmen directly.

The surrounding Greatswords couldn’t close the gap in the lines fast enough and a dozen beasts thrust their way past swinging blades and clawed into the men beyond. The lines buckled under their assault, and then slowly dissolved. In mere minutes, it was every man for himself as clusters of Greatswords battled furiously in a sea of northmen.

Before Erhardt could rally his men, a Skaeling berserker loomed in his vision, his mouth a circle of screaming darkness. Erhardt shattered his bone club with a swipe of his zweihander then used the momentum to bury his blade in the man’s guts. He twisted, ensuring the tribesman’s death would be quick enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about a blade in the back, and then kicked him to the ground.

Another northman, dressed in furs and reeking of rancid bear grease, lunged head first at Erhardt, trying to gore him upon a crude helmet of deer antlers, but the Greatsword merely stepped aside and beheaded the fool as he went past.

He caught occasional flashes of Gottswain through the melee. The Nordlander had ducked under the swinging axe of the massive beastman and now faced the monster directly. Though Gottswain was nearly a head taller than Erhardt, he looked like a child next to the creature he faced. Somehow, he had cut down the creature that had taken Toft, and now the commander lay prone at his feet.

Before Erhardt could join him, he spun and came face-to-face with an enemy champion; one of the northmen lords from the look of him, dressed in black plate inscribed with Chaos runes invoking their Dark Gods. He stood silently before Erhardt. Two red points behind the slit in his visor seemed to bore right into the Greatsword’s chest, and the warrior cursed him in some hissing, bestial language before bringing its sword and shield to bear.

The men didn’t talk much about Chaos champions, but many believed that their armour protected them absolutely against ordinary blades. If that was true, Erhardt was a dead man. Still, he raised his blade, unwilling to stand back and let another man take his place.

A distant horn sounded from the left flank.

Mobs of Skaelings cast away their weapons and fled for their lives. Panic spread amongst the Chaosmen as the ground began to shake under the weight of a hundred charging knights. Hesberger had returned from the second ford and caught the enemy force in its unguarded flank. Soon even the black champion was swept away, hissing as he was swallowed up by the tangle of fleeing soldiers.

Erhardt allowed his men a moment’s rest, before smiling grimly.

‘What are we waiting for?’ he bellowed. ‘After them!’

Night crept in slowly over the battlefield. From atop long stakes that had been thrust into the ground, dozens of torches cast ruddy light on a nightmarish scene. The river bank was littered with bodies, and the Order of Sigmar had conscripted teams of donkey handlers – usually used to haul cannon – to pull wagons loaded with enemy dead to massive funeral pyres. The air was heavy with smoke and the stench of burning flesh.

But amidst the horrors of the grim twilight, comradely laughter echoed. While the rest of the army chased small bands of Skaelings through the woodland, Erhardt’s men had been treated like heroes. Schalbourg had ordered for kegs of fine Middenland ale to be brought up from the supply wagons and tapped. In the time it took for the regiment to drain them, patriotic songs of celebration had given way to bawdy tavern tunes.

Erhardt watched them cavort for a while, and then slowly made his way towards the centre of the camp where drovers from the baggage trains had parked their wagons. While the army celebrated, here squires still sweated as they hauled supplies back to their master’s tents. Erhardt passed by stacks of supplies and hastily constructed corrals where wagon horses grazed on small piles of hay. Even though the army had only made camp that evening, the place already stank of offal and horse dung.

Two men bearing a stretcher passed Erhardt, sweating and swearing about the weight of the injured man they carried. He followed them to the edge of the supply area where they set down their charge in a field of many more. The moans of the wounded cut through the night as a fine drizzle washed ooze from suppurated wounds into the muddy soil. Shrouded priests of Morr walked up and down their ranks, tall men with hunched backs who hovered over the dying like ravens at a feast. Erhardt made the sign of the hammer over his chest as he passed them on his way. Not that the priests didn’t serve a valuable purpose in guiding the dying into Morr’s embrace, but he’d just as soon his own journey be delayed as long as possible.

He resisted the temptation to peer amongst the litters to see if he could recognise anyone, and instead made his way to the surgeons’ tents beyond. Once, they’d been pristine white cotton, but months of hard travel had stained them muddy brown and grey, the heart-and-teardrop stencilled in iron gall ink barely visible beneath the grime. It was fitting that the tent he sought lay behind them, as if its occupants were beyond even the powers of Shallya to save. He ducked under the flap and entered.

The air inside reeked of the sickly sweet scent of rot. Woodchips had been scattered on the floor to absorb some of the blood, but these were now foul and damp and added to the miasma. A few anatomical texts lay on a small wooden writing table at the side of the enclosed area, one of them sporting a bloody thumbprint on a page displaying a woodcut of a human cadaver.

Commander Toft lay on a wooden table in the centre of the room. Doktor Prolmann, a small man, almost the size of a child, but with wrinkled skin and a balding pate, carefully cut away Toft’s padded under-armour with a pair of large shears.

Erhardt let the tent flap close behind him and stood nervously to one side. After a moment, Prolmann spoke without looking up.

‘When the time comes, I’m going to need you to hold him down.’

Commander Toft groaned and shifted, trying feebly to fend off the doktor with his one good hand. ‘Erhardt...? Is that you? What... what’s he saying?’

Erhardt approached until he was standing across from the doktor. It was difficult to see Toft in such a state. The man was a hero of countless battles – he’d served as one of the elector count’s household guard before asking to be reassigned to a unit more likely to see combat. Now it appeared he’d gotten more than he bargained for, as commander of the prestigious Carroburg Greatswords. His face was battered and his eyes were stained with blood, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his brow. A trail of crusted blood ran up his forehead, past his hairline to where a patch of scalp hung loose. Prolmann had smeared a greasy substance on it that smelled of mint, but left it otherwise untreated, preferring to focus on the commander’s right arm. It was broken in at least four places and the skin was striped with purpling bruises. Erhardt knew, even without seeing the wicked, crescent-moon-shaped blade on a nearby table, what Prolmann meant.

‘You’re going to lose that arm, old friend.’

Toft grimaced. ‘It’s that bad?’

‘You’re alive.’

‘There’s that, I suppose...’

Prolmann slipped a leather belt over Toft’s bicep and tightened it, bracing a foot on the side of the operating table as leverage. Toft’s eyes widened in pain, and then closed. Erhardt imagined he could hear the commander’s teeth grinding.

‘By Sigmar, man,’ he said angrily. ‘Are you trying to make it drop off on its own?’

‘We need to restrict his humours or he’ll bleed to death,’ said Prolmann with a shrug.

Erhardt scowled. He disliked the mechanical way Prolmann went about his job, as if Toft were a ham that needed to be carved and not a living, breathing human whose career was about to end. There was no way Toft would ever wield a zweihander again and without it, how could he be a Greatsword?

‘Can we have a moment?’ he asked abruptly, not caring if he was being rude.

Prolmann scowled, his fingers tapping against the side of the operating table as he weighed Erhardt’s request. ‘One moment only. The longer we wait, the worse his chances are.’

Erhardt watched him retreat to his books, and then looked back at the commander. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

Toft groaned, then scratched at the belt that Prolmann had tied around his arm so violently that Erhardt was worried he might dislodge it. Gently, he caught the commander’s hand and put it over his chest, then filled a tin cup with water and brought it to Toft’s lips. The cold draught seemed to refocus the commander a little.

‘One of your men broke formation, Anton.’

Erhardt nodded. ‘Gottswain. He’s a good man. I served with him in Ubersreik.’

‘I had him arrested.’

‘That could be a problem. He’s a hero to the men. You would surely be dead if he hadn’t come after you.’

‘Every Greatsword is a hero before he joins us.’ Toft tried to shift to a more dignified position, but after a moment the pain became too great and he collapsed back onto the table. Though his words were pained he spoke clearly. ‘As their commander you must suppress the very qualities that brought them to greatness and instead wield them as a cohesive unit. Gottswain has shown that he cannot be suppressed, and so he must be excised.’

Erhardt hesitated. ‘You sound like the good doktor. Gottswain is hard to control, to be sure, but his skill with a blade, backed up by his enormous frame, is too great an asset to the Empire to simply cast aside. There is no man I’d rather have fighting by my side than Kord Gottswain.’

Toft’s eyes were closed, and for a moment Erhardt worried he had slipped into unconsciousness. When the commander finally spoke, it was so softly that Erhardt had to lean in to make out the words.

‘One man does not a regiment make.’

Prolmann returned with the knife. He offered Toft a folded leather strap to bite down on, which the commander refused. ‘If we wait any longer,’ said the doctor urgently, ‘the stink of Chaos will get into your wounds and they will suppurate.’

‘Erhardt,’ said Toft as Prolmann lined up his blade, ‘you’re in command until we return to Altdorf and someone more suitable can be found.’

Someone more suitable? Erhardt knew the men, knew the regiment – he was Toft’s natural successor. Had Gottswain just cost him his commission?

Prolmann indicated that he should hold down the commander’s legs. Reluctantly, Erhardt set his doubts aside and did his best. After the procedure was done, he gathered his helmet and left Toft unconscious on Prolmann’s table.

Gottswain sat in a rusting cage in a hastily-built shack of untrimmed logs. Erhardt nodded to the guards who stood at attention on either side of the low entrance then, helmet tucked loosely under one arm, ducked his head and entered.

The big Nordlander still wore his under-armour, but his hands had been bound together with thick strips of rawhide. His face was a mask of dirt and blood that extended all the way to his shaven head. He looked up when Erhardt entered, his features only partially lit by the torchlight that seeped through holes in the cut birch. He sneered, then kicked his legs out before him and crossed his arms as well as he could with his wrists bound, miming a relaxed position. ‘What do you want?’

‘Try that act on someone else, Kord,’ said Erhardt. ‘I don’t have the patience for it.’ He thrust a small unstoppered leather canteen through the bars.

Gottswain eyed the vessel suspiciously, then shrugged and dropped the bravado. He took the canteen, sniffed it, and then took a swig.

‘Good grog. What is it?’

‘The general’s own.’ Erhardt stepped away from the bars and crossed his arms. ‘The old wolf tapped his personal vintage to celebrate. This victory is as much yours as his, so I thought you deserved your share.’

Gottswain nodded and took another pull, swigging it against his teeth and gums before swallowing with an appreciative smack of his lips. ‘What about the boss?’

Erhardt studied Gottswain in the dim light. One man does not a regiment make. This one man had done what the regiment couldn’t – rescued the commander from a fate worse than death.

‘Commander Toft survived, thanks to you. That beastman broke his arm in four places, but he’s under the care of Doktor Prolmann.’

Gottswain balanced the canteen on the bench beside him, then leaned back uncomfortably and whistled through his teeth, glancing up at the corners of his cage. ‘So I’m a hero then?’

‘Toft ordered your incarceration from his sick bed. You broke formation. If Hesberger and his men hadn’t arrived at precisely the right moment, the Dark Gods would be sipping our blood right now.’

Gottswain headbutted the iron bars in frustration and began to speak, but Erhardt cut him off.

‘We’re not mercenaries, Kord. We each guard the man on our left. If you break formation, he dies.’

Gottswain stared hard at Erhardt through the bars. For a moment, it looked like the words were penetrating that thick skull. At last he swore. ‘Prolmann’s a butcher. He’ll lose that arm then, won’t he?’

‘Already has,’ Erhardt sighed. He tossed a set of keys through the bars.

Gottswain stared at them before picking them up. ‘You’re in command then?’

Erhardt considered the question for a moment. He fingered the straps of his vambrace, feeling the hard leather under his fingers. It always gave him a comforting feeling, that sensation. Dwarf-forged plate armour might protect a Greatsword in combat, but it was nothing without the web of leather that held it together.

‘For now. Let’s get back to our camp. This place makes me nervous.’

Gottswain closed the door behind him and tossed Erhardt the keys. ‘The hero of Ubersreik? Scared of a few iron bars?’

Erhardt shuddered. ‘They remind me of the Sigmar-be-damned witch hunters.’

Gottswain blinked at the curse, and then shrugged it off. ‘Don’t let them hear you say that, or you’ll be seeing more than the inside of the stockade.’

The company boy met them on the outskirts of the neatly ordered square of tents that was the Carroburg camp. His arms and hands were stained red, and for a moment Erhardt thought young Bert had been wounded.

‘It’s just dye, sir,’ the boy grinned. ‘New uniforms from the capital haven’t bled out yet.’

Bert ran a hand through his hair, absently painting red streaks through it. A double line of laundry hung near a boiling cauldron that had been set in the remains of the cook fire. As far as Erhardt knew, Toft’s Carroburgs were one of the few units who washed their uniforms regularly. At first, the policy had drawn the attentions of the witch hunters, but the unit lost far fewer men to disease than any other. That had gotten General Schalbourg’s attention, and Erhardt believed the practice would soon spread to other units.

‘Need help with your armour, sir?’ asked Bert. ‘Yours is with the quartermaster, Herr Gottswain.’

‘Have it sent to my tent please, Bert,’ said Gottswain. The boy nodded then dashed away down a nearby row of tents. Gottswain turned to Erhardt. ‘A good lad, him.’

‘I think he’s just pleased to work for the Carroburgs. His father is a blacksmith from my village and heard that I’d made the regiment. He paid a scribe what must have been a fortune to write me a letter begging to get Bert assigned to the unit. I was impressed by his sacrifice and I’ve been looking out for the boy ever since.’

A distant horn-call cut through the air. Gottswain looked up, ears pricked. The sound was coming from the direction they’d just come. ‘They’re sounding the attack? There’s no enemy left to fight.’

‘They seem to think there is,’ said Erhardt grimly. He set off in a run, shouting back over his shoulder. ‘Get the men!’

Erhardt got to the scene of the commotion just in time to see a giant creature slam into Doktor Prolmann’s tent, tearing it from its moorings. For one almost comical moment the canvas seemed to move of its own volition as the beast within was blinded. Then, with a horrendous tearing sound, it burst free, knocking aside two terrified swordsmen.

Erhardt could barely see the beast as it moved past the flickering torches. An eerie purple glow emanated from two points within its hulking form, points that seemed to move at random so that its gaze fell first one way, than another.

A trio of halberdiers charged the beast, sinking their weapons deep into its side. A hideous roar bellowed out of some hidden mouth, then the creature shrugged off the blows and was upon them, tearing the men to pieces.

‘Where did that monster come from?’ asked a voice beside him. It was Gottswain. He wore only his under-armour padding, but held a zweihander easily across his shoulder.

Erhardt wondered the same thing. Had the creature torn its way through half the army to get to the surgeons’ tents? It made no sense. Surely the alarm would have been raised long before now.

‘Where are the men?’

‘Mostly drunk,’ Gottswain confessed with a shrug. ‘We’ll have to do this on our own.’

The beast bellowed again and lumbered towards the line of stretchers. Those wounded who could rise under their own strength had already fled the area, leaving those who couldn’t to fend for themselves.

‘Where’s your armour?’ Erhardt demanded.

Gottswain spat. ‘I didn’t have time to put it on. You needed my help.’

‘How long do you think you can last against that beast without armour? I can at least slow it down long enough for you to return with reinforcements.’ Erhardt drew his blade. ‘Go. That’s an order.’

Gottswain’s eyes glittered darkly, but he disappeared into the darkness. Erhardt breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been worried that Gottswain was going to disobey yet another order, except this time his disobedience would probably have proven fatal.

The creature moved towards the stretchers in a kind of tumbling roll. Screams cut through the night as it moved amongst the wounded. Hoping he wasn’t too late, Erhardt charged the beast. Purplish eyes reoriented to track this new threat, but it was too late. Erhardt leaped on top of an overturned crate, then at the beast itself, swinging his zweihander in an overhead arc. Flesh parted before his blade and dark blood squirted across his breastplate. The creature roared and its bulk shifted. Instead of turning to face him, it simply reoriented those two glowing points of purplish light until the orbs glared at the small man who’d hurt it.

Morrslieb, the Chaos Moon, emerged from behind the rainclouds and the camp was illuminated by its sickly green light. For a brief second, Erhardt saw the beast as a twisted mass of flesh and bone. The foetid smell of offal and viscera was almost overwhelming but, taking advantage of the light, he shifted his grip on his zweihander and put his weight behind a thrust. His blade struck something solid, and dark blood poured down the length of the steel. Overcoming his disgust, Erhardt twisted his sword, then put his shoulder behind the blow to try and stab even deeper.

Heedless of the pain, the beast impaled itself further on Erhardt’s weapon. Its bulk slammed into him with enormous force and he fought to maintain his grip on his sword. Something tore at his helmet and he could hear metal scream as the visor bent and distorted under the beast’s weight. His boots dug furrows in the muddy earth as he was borne back. Terror welled up in him at the realisation that he would soon be crushed beneath its weight.

From somewhere behind him a score of thundercracks echoed in the night and Erhardt felt the passage of hot lead close by. A voice that might have belonged to Gottswain bellowed, ‘Hold your fire, by Sigmar! You’ll kill the commander!’

He felt the beast shudder, once twice. Light shifted and danced around Erhardt as dozens of sword blows drove the creature back. Its grip on his blade weakened and then broke, but Erhardt was unrelenting. He thrust deeper, trying to hit something vital. Screams sounded out all around him, some from the creature, and some from the swordsmen who fought it.

Suddenly, its bulk shifted again and Erhardt felt it pull away. He could see now that a score of pistoliers had formed up in double ranks and were pouring lead shot into it as fast as they could reload. Greatswords, Gottswain at their head, had begun streaming out of gaps between the tents, and though the beast was enormous, it couldn’t fight so many. With a moan, it reared backwards, those glowing purple eyes playing across its surface, looking from the pistoliers to the Greatswords, and back again. Finally, it twisted away and fled through the tents with frightening speed.

‘After it, men!’ cried Erhardt. Though the camp was on high alert, there was still the possibility, however remote, that it could break free and disappear into hills. Erhardt could not let that happen.

Ignoring the possibility of an ambush, he ran after the creature, catching sight of it moving between the tents and terrified camp followers. While Erhardt was forced to avoid the laundry lines and cook fires, somehow it passed right over them without slowing, without any loss of momentum. It wasn’t long before Erhardt lost sight of it and had to rely on the cries of alarm its passage provoked to track it. Soon even these disappeared.

He came upon a group of soldiers who were just pulling themselves out of their bedrolls and grabbing up their weapons.

‘Which way did it go?’ he shouted at them, breathlessly.

‘Which way did what go?’ asked a dumbstruck pikeman. He’d seen Erhardt’s gore-covered armour and clearly recognised him as one of the legendary Carroburgs.

Erhardt stared into the darkness in frustration. How could a beast of that size have eluded him? He turned back to the pikeman. ‘Gather your men and search the periphery of the camp.’

‘Aye, sir,’ he replied as Erhardt turned and jogged back the way he’d come. ‘But pray, what are we searching for?’

Erhardt cursed and then listened for more shouts of alarm, but though the camp was filled with bellowing sergeants and the rattle of weapons, he could hear nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that sounded like men repelling an attack at any rate.

Gottswain emerged from the darkness ahead of him, sword drawn. ‘Where did it go?’

Erhardt grimaced in frustration. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t that far ahead of me, but it just disappeared.’

Gottswain’s jawline hardened. ‘We’re still close to the centre of camp. It can’t have escaped.’

Erhardt craned his neck, trying to see between the tents. It was as if the Ruinous Powers had reached down from the heavens and swept the beast into some hidden realm of Chaos. ‘We do a full sweep of the camp,’ he said. ‘It can’t have gone far.’

‘Erhardt. Commander Erhardt.’ The voice that called through the crowd of soldiers sounded gravelly and strained, as if its owner were in some pain. Erhardt was in the middle of a swarm of men, issuing orders to search the camp in groups of half a dozen soldiers – no tent was to be left undisturbed, no stone unturned. Even through the throng, Erhardt could guess at the identity of the man who called for him, simply by the way the others grew quiet. A wide-brimmed hat shielded his face, but he was well armed: the hilt of an enamelled longsword jutted out from his belt, and two pistols hung from a leather cord around his neck. The twin-tailed comet on his breastplate only confirmed Erhardt’s suspicions.

‘Knight Templar Keller,’ he said, struggling to mask his distaste. ‘You’ve run out of little old ladies to burn at the stake in Kemperbad, then?’

‘Is that an impious tone I hear in your voice?’ asked Keller sharply. He had no need to push his way through the crowd of soldiers – they simply melted away before him, finding other, more important things to do, or remembering urgent appointments elsewhere. ‘I hear that you had contact with a creature of Chaos today. Extended contact.’

The threat was ill-disguised, but they both knew it was relatively toothless. The Carroburgs had turned the tide of the battle earlier in the day, and Erhardt himself had charged the beast that had attacked the camp by night while others were running for their lives. ‘You are aware that the creature escaped, are you not?’ he said scornfully. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in your customary position at the rear of the army?’

‘Yes, I am aware that you failed to capture it,’ Keller snapped. Dawn was beginning to break over the hills to the east, and his breath misted the air. He removed his gloves, tucking them under one arm, and looked around at the clutter of broken stretchers and collapsed tents. ‘Eisenschalz,’ he called over his shoulder to a blond-haired lieutenant. ‘Seal off this area. Gather all the witnesses and put them to the question.’

Erhardt felt himself redden. ‘Seal off the area? How can my men conduct an effective search if they can’t leave the area without your permission?’

‘I’ve been told that the beast disappeared without a trace in the centre of the camp.’

One of Keller’s aides brought him a steaming cup of tea, which the witch hunter cupped in his hands for warmth before blowing upon its surface. When he spoke again, it was almost absently, as if he addressed the mug and Erhardt simply overheard. ‘How can such a thing occur without the aid of seditious and traitorous Chaos worshippers within our ranks?’

‘It was dark,’ said Erhardt defensively, ‘and it had already killed most of the soldiers in the area.’ To tell the truth, he wondered the same thing himself. A creature that large could only have found a limited number of places to hide. A search of the wagons was ongoing, but had been so far fruitless – limited by the fact that he was reluctant to commit to smaller search parties for fear that the beast would pick them off one by one.

‘Nevertheless, rooting out Chaos worshippers is within my jurisdiction,’ said Keller. He took a sip of tea, grimaced in disgust, and then poured it onto the ground. He handed the cup back to Eisenschalz with a look that threatened untold misery if he were ever again given such an inferior offering, and then turned back to Erhardt. ‘You are relieved of command.’

Erhardt bristled. He had fought the northmen to a standstill and, in the same night, risked his life against a beast of Chaos. Now this witch hunter thought he could simply swoop in and take over?

‘What does General Schalbourg have to say about this?’ he demanded.

‘General Schalbourg left camp hours ago to investigate reports of more troops to the north,’ said Keller. ‘You are welcome to send a messenger after him, but until he returns you are required to obey me. Anything less than full obedience will be regarded as heretical behaviour, warranting summary punishment.’

To signal that the conversation was over, Keller turned his back on Erhardt, ordering his men to spread out through the surgeons’ tents. Erhardt resented the casual dismissal, but before he could say anything the witch hunter might later use against him, he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

‘It’s not worth it,’ said Gottswain. It was a tribute to his swordsmanship that the big Nordlander had sustained only minor wounds pulling Erhardt out of the clutches of the beast. He had only four red scratches down his cheek, as if he’d been clawed by a scorned wench and not a two-ton beast of Chaos. ‘Let them have their fun. We’ll get some rest, then seek the beast out with fresh eyes on the morrow.’

Erhardt glared at the retreating witch hunter with something close to hatred, and then nodded. ‘That we will, Herr Gottswain. That we will.’

Despite his anger, there didn’t seem to be too much Erhardt could do. The witch hunters argued that the Chaos beast wouldn’t reappear until nightfall, and then only when Morrslieb reared its greenish outline over the horizon. Both he and Gottswain had been up for more than twenty-four hours and participated in two battles. He had to admit that it would be prudent to face the beast again only after snatching a few hours’ sleep.

Bert met him at the entrance to the camp. The boy’s hair looked dishevelled and his muddy cheeks were streaked with pink. Though he’d done his best to hide it, he’d obviously been crying.

‘What’s wrong, Bert?’ asked Erhardt.

‘It’s Commander Toft, sir. Sergeant Pieter found his body after the attack. He’s dead.’

Erhardt felt a deep sadness at the news. In spite of the night’s events, Toft had been something of a father to him. To all of the men, in fact – it would be a sad day indeed in the Carroburg camp.

‘Don’t worry, lad. He’s dining in Sigmar’s longhouse now.’

Though the platitude felt empty, the boy seemed to take some comfort from it as he guided Erhardt to his tent. It took Bert some minutes to help him out of his armour, then he disappeared with a promise to try and buff out some of the dents and to wake up Erhardt at sundown. Almost as soon as he left, Erhardt collapsed into his bedroll.

Years of soldiering had given him the ability to sleep anywhere at any time, and though a military camp during the day was a cacophony of sound and the canvas of his tent did little to keep out the light, he knew enough to stuff his ears with cloth and make do. Soon, he was snoozing fitfully.

When he awoke again, it was dark outside.

He swore, and then headed out in only his armour padding to find another runner to help with his plate, which he donned as quickly as possible. As soon as the last leather strap was tightened, he went off in search of Gottswain.

He found the huge Nordlander in the mess tent, eating salted meat from a trencher with his fingers. ‘Have you seen Bert? He was supposed to wake me.’

Gottswain swallowed, and then wiped grease from his chin. ‘I just woke up, myself. He’s somewhere around camp I suspect. I can never keep track of the runners.’

Erhardt sat, and signalled the cooks. One of the advantages of being an officer was that one could have one’s food delivered, often straight to the command tent. Toft, however, had enjoyed eating with the men and it was a tradition that Erhardt intended to continue. A plate of ham and cheese with a few wilted string beans on the side landed in front of him within moments. ‘Any word on the creature?’ he asked Gottswain.

‘Keller has rounded up every wounded man in the army, anyone who might have been in the vicinity of Prolmann’s tent, and begun interrogating them.’ Gottswain tore off another chunk of meat then stuffed it into his mouth. ‘Not to any measure of success, so I hear.’

Erhardt shook his head. Keller’s methods were famously brutal. ‘We need to find that monster before the witch hunters do any more damage. A beast that large cannot hide forever.’

It was difficult to recognise the area that had once been reserved for the surgeons’ tents. The Order of Sigmar had cleared out a wide area and brought in lumber from other parts of the camp in order to construct a crude gallows, from which the bodies of Empire soldiers already swung. Men displaying the twin-tailed comet on their breastplates balanced bowls of salt on their hips, spreading thick handfuls onto the ground to make sure that nothing could grow on soil they deemed tainted. Elsewhere, torturers seized red-hot brands from iron baskets that dotted the area and pressed them into wounds that good fighting men had suffered battling the forces of Chaos, men whose only crime was to have been present when a Chaos beast had attacked. The smell of blood and burning flesh hung thickly in the air.

The sight of so much suffering sickened Erhardt. They’d already lost too many men to the forces of Chaos, and now Keller’s brutality was destroying the army from the inside. If Erhardt had his way, the Knight Templar would be hanging from his own gallows. He had half reached for the hilt of his zweihander before Gottswain interjected.

‘Remember, commander, that I am the impulsive one,’ he said calmly.

The warning was effective, and Erhardt forced himself to relax. The only thing he could gain by storming into a gathering of witch hunters was a charge of heresy and a quick trip to the gaol. ‘Agreed. Let us find this beast before that butcher takes any more lives.’

Together, they circled around the area the witch hunters had already searched. Normally a unit was considered lucky to secure a spot to pitch their tents near the supply train, but most had quickly relocated once the Order of Sigmar had arrived, leaving behind a wide swath of crushed grass and a few soot-stained fire pits. Gottswain and Erhardt bypassed these and headed towards the area where they’d first seen the beast.

Nothing was left of Prolmann’s tent but a few broken surgical devices. Everything else was gone; not so much as a crushed vial had been left behind. That in itself was strange – surely the witch hunters would have left much of Prolmann’s paraphernalia where it lay? Where were his personal belongings?

Erhardt called over Gottswain. ‘Do you remember if the good doktor was listed among the dead?’

Gottswain shrugged. ‘I’ve got no head for lists, but I don’t remember his name coming up. You think he had something to do with this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Erhardt squinted into the darkness. Maybe Prolmann had met his end when the monster attacked – or maybe not. He pursed his lips and nudged the churned earth with the toe of his boot. ‘Why did it attack here first?’

A few feet away, Gottswain cursed, then bent and scraped dirt away from something that reflected torchlight. He pulled Prolmann’s long amputation knife out of the dirt. ‘Obviously, the good doktor was not as thorough as he thought,’ he said, handing the blade to Erhardt.

Erhardt tucked it into his belt. It wasn’t a lead, but it did tell them that Prolmann had left in some haste. ‘If you were a doktor on the run, where would you go?’

‘To the nearest inn,’ said Gottswain with a smirk. ‘What? Doktor or no, that’s where I’d be.’

‘You’re a great help,’ said Erhardt wryly. Lacking a better idea, he chose the opposite direction to the attack and strode towards a few tents where priestesses of Shallya administered what aid they could to victims of the beast.

One priestess sat on a log outside a nearby tent spooning gruel from a wooden bowl. Her hand shook and her face was drawn and haggard-looking. Her brown hair was clasped behind her head, but it had the look of straw to it that spoke of severe undernourishment. Erhardt guessed that she carried the weight of many souls upon her back. She set aside her gruel and rose when the two Greatswords approached.

‘Evening, sirs. Have you need of the goddess’s aid?’

Erhardt nodded into the night. ‘It’s cold out here tonight. You should be making the most of the warmth inside.’

She blushed guiltily. ‘Sometimes the cries of dying men...’ She paused, realising that what she was saying was not quite right. ‘I find the night air gives me the courage I need to help them once more.’

‘We all need whatever courage we can muster on a night like this,’ said Erhardt.

She nodded, grateful that he’d caught her meaning. ‘I should be getting back.’

Erhardt was about to let her go when the tent flap was pushed aside and two rough-looking men emerged, carrying a stretcher bearing a third. The man in the stretcher was missing an arm, and judging from the pallor of his skin, he’d lost so much blood that even the goddess couldn’t restore him. The two men set the stretcher down just outside the tent and, casting a few suspicious looks at Erhardt and Gottswain, disappeared back inside.

‘Do the priests of Morr collect the dead from you when they pass?’ he asked the priestess, staring at the body on the stretcher.

‘Yes. We ask that they limit their visits to avoid scaring the wounded, but they do come.’

He found himself staring at the dead man’s arm stump. ‘What about the limbs?’

The priestess looked back into the tent, as if she felt she’d spent too much time away from the wounded already. ‘We don’t perform amputations, but I understand there is a limb pit not too far from here where the doktors dispose of them.’

‘A limb pit?’

‘Yes. When a soldier dies from his wounds, the limb is interred with him. When the soldier lives, something must be done with it.’ With that, the priestess begged his pardon and ducked back into the tent, leaving her gruel behind.

Gottswain watched her disappear, and then nudged her wooden bowl with his toe. ‘You never did have much of a way with the wenches, did you?’

Erhardt shrugged. ‘I suppose the idea of a limb pit disturbs her. Sigmar knows it disturbs me. Still, it might be our best chance to find this beast.’

‘By all means then,’ Gottswain said, testing his zweihander in its scabbard. ‘Let’s go find it.’

They were able to locate the limb pit by the stench, and the swarm of biting flies that ringed it. The night air was thick with them, swirling clouds that buzzed frantically in the air above the amputated limbs. The pit itself was ringed by torches set, Erhardt guessed, to provide enough illumination that no one would accidentally mistake its purpose. There was no telling how deep it was, but it was at least twenty feet across and filled with dozens of rotting limbs: legs and arms of every description – some naked, some partially clothed or tied off with scraps of blood-soaked bandage. The smell was awful enough that they had to cover their mouths and noses.

A lone figure worked at one side, next to a heaped pile of dirt. He had a shovel in his hands and was doing his best to fill in the pit. A small man, his actions were frantic and panicked, and his shirt was sodden with mud and sweat.

‘Now there’s an undertaker who earns his pay,’ Gottswain mumbled through the sleeve of his tunic.

‘That’s no undertaker,’ replied Erhardt. He raised his voice. ‘Doktor Prolmann, I presume?’

The figure looked up sharply and his hood fell back, revealing the small, balding man with the wrinkled face who’d treated Toft. His eyes widened when he saw their dwarf-forged plate, then he hurled the shovel at them and ran into the darkness.

‘I’ll get him!’ shouted Gottswain as he raced after the doktor.

Erhardt was about to pursue when he noticed something that brought him to a halt.

The limb pit was moving.

The movement was slight at best, but as he circled the lip of the pit, the limbs rose and fell like a living tide. Erhardt peered deeper, and gasped – the bulk of the thrashing, lumbering Chaos beast that had ravaged the camp was unmistakable in the rotting, stinking depths. He looked to the horizon, remembering the witch hunters’ prediction about the rising of Morrslieb. They knew a thing or two about Chaos, he had to give them that.

Hesitantly, he drew Prolmann’s amputation knife. In the pit, dozens of clawing, dead hands lifted towards it, but the beast did not arise. ‘Oh yes,’ he said to himself. ‘You remember this, don’t you...’

There was a shout, and then Gottswain emerged from the darkness with the doktor in tow. The tiny man struggled furiously, but could not break free from Gottswain’s powerful grip.

The sight of the doktor sickened Erhardt. The little weasel had fled the beast, and then tried to cover up his crimes. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me that digging in the dead of night is good for your health,’ he spat.

Prolmann ceased trying to escape, instead shrinking in on himself until he looked about half his normal size. ‘I have done nothing wrong.’

Gottswain twisted Prolmann’s wrist, eliciting a squeal. ‘I say we toss him in the pit. What do you reckon, boss?’

Prolmann looked as if he were about to protest again, but in the face of two angry Greatswords, he deflated. ‘Look, you have to understand, during the course of a large battle, I see hundreds of wounded men. Some of them are so horribly maimed that the scouts are unable to determine whose side they were on. Inevitably, I end up treating some small number of enemy soldiers.’

‘And you were worried you’d draw the ire of the witch hunters?’ asked Erhardt.

Prolmann shook his head. ‘No. Most of them make allowances, provided you follow procedure. Once treated, Chaosmen are to be separated out from our own soldiers for purgation.’

‘And you failed to do this?’ asked Gottswain with a shake.

‘No,’ replied Erhardt as he gazed out over the limb pit. ‘I believe he did. But there was one thing he forgot to separate.’

‘They were just arms, legs. Not whole men. How could I know...?’

‘Just arms and legs?’ asked Gottswain, grimly. ‘Those arms and legs killed our commander and dozens of men besides.’

Prolmann went white and began shaking uncontrollably. Erhardt felt some pity for him. Though his laziness had brought about an unimaginable horror, his crime was not deliberate. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll take him to Keller. Let the witch hunters figure out an appropriate punishment.’

‘What about the pit?’

‘We have perhaps an hour before the rising of Morrslieb. We’ll come back and burn it.’

Gottswain and Erhardt found Keller in the midst of his devices of misery, standing before a giant brass bull. The statue was larger than a man, and a fire had been lit beneath it, heating the metal to a cherry-red glow. When they arrived, Erhardt thought the bull was actually lowing, but he soon realised to his horror that there was someone within slowly being cooked to death. Cleverly shaped tubes in the snout of the statue had been designed specifically to make the victim’s screams sound like bellowing cattle.

‘I thought I had you banned from the area, Herr Erhardt,’ said Keller, staring intently at the brass bull.

Erhardt couldn’t decide which enraged him more, the bastard’s self-satisfied smirk, or his failure to address him by his title. ‘It’s Commander Erhardt, until Schalbourg says differently.’

He appeared to have attracted Keller’s attention. The witch hunter turned, his eyes falling on Prolmann. ‘What have you brought me, commander?’

‘We’ve only done your bloody job for you, you damned peacock,’ growled Gottswain as he cast the doktor at Keller’s feet.

After they relayed Prolmann’s story, Keller expressed mock regret with a shrug. ‘All this appears to have been unnecessary then.’ He turned to the man feeding the fire beneath the bull. ‘Free the prisoner.’

The fire was quickly scattered and Keller’s servant hauled upon a lever at the statue’s base with a thick leather glove, opening a trap door in its belly. A blackened body with singed blond hair tumbled out, landing hard on the ground. Its skin was seared on its palms and knees, and its eyeballs had melted out of their sockets, painting two shining streaks down its cheeks.

‘Apologies, Commander Erhardt,’ said Keller with a shrug. ‘I had to be sure you weren’t a part of this.’

The comment caught Erhardt off guard. What was Keller apologising for? He stared down at the small body in confusion for some seconds before he realised who it was.

It was young Bert.

Beside him Gottswain made a terrifying sound that was a mixture of sob and roar. He lunged at Keller, throwing him with bone-jarring force into the side of the bull. Perhaps the witch hunter had been expecting some kind of attack, but Gottswain’s speed and strength were surprising. As hard as he’d been hit, Keller was on his feet in an eyeblink, pistol drawn.

Erhardt was only a heartbeat behind, putting his shoulder into Gottswain’s chest to restrain him. The Nordlander was incensed, his strength driving Erhardt back.

‘It’s not worth it, Kord,’ he growled, repeating Gottswain’s advice from the first time the witch hunter had defied them. ‘He’s not worth it.’

Somehow, that got through to the big Greatsword and he gradually began to come to his senses. Nonetheless, Keller was furious.

‘I’ll see you swing for that,’ he yelled.

Erhardt held out his hand to keep them apart. ‘Surely, he deserves punishment, but we have only minutes until Morrslieb rises and the creature is upon us once more. Let us discuss this when the beast is dead.’

Keller considered this and then stared hard at the horizon, where the first greenish glow was making itself apparent. ‘Fine. We go,’ he spat. Then his eyes found Gottswain’s. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’

Keller quickly gathered a score of witch hunters and as much timber and oil as they could carry. Once they were assembled, Erhardt and Gottswain led them back through the camp to the limb pit.

Gottswain was still enraged, but managed to restrain himself at Erhardt’s urging until they were far enough ahead to be out of earshot. ‘He killed Bert,’ he said urgently once they were clear. ‘Bert, who never said a rough word to anyone. You can’t let him walk away from that!’

Though Erhardt had been responsible for the death of many men under his command, Bert’s death weighed most heavily upon his heart. He’d failed in his promise to the boy’s father to look after his son. That Keller had done it for no other reason than to spite him made the pain even worse.

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said angrily.

And it was true. Keller was a Knight Templar of the Order of Sigmar. Merely to discuss causing him harm was heretical, and heresy was a crime punishable by death.

When they finally reached the pit, the witch hunters spread around its edge and began laying out their materials – torches, coal, and barrels of flammable oil. Erhardt remained where he was, petulantly refusing to help. He knew they had mere minutes until the Chaos Moon broke the horizon, but still he did nothing. Maybe he wanted a fight. Maybe he wanted to take out all the rage and pain he felt on something, and if that something was a Chaos beast, so much the better.

Gottswain, too, remained silent, lost in thought. Erhardt was grateful the big man hadn’t tried anything rash.

The Knight Templar stood apart from the others, outside the ring of torches, preferring – Erhardt knew – to lead from behind. Not wanting to let the man out of his sight, Erhardt joined him in the shadows.

They remained silent for a while, observing the preparations. Finally, the witch hunter spoke. ‘Thank you for the assistance with your man, earlier.’

Erhardt had trouble containing his surprise. Was Keller actually thanking him?

‘It wasn’t for your sake, I can assure you. Gottswain is a capable fighter, and I didn’t want him to go to the gallows over someone like you.’

Keller remained quiet, his eyes glittering in the torchlight. When he spoke again, it was with a note of regret. ‘Still, I admire your courage. I’m no coward, but I could never throw myself in the face of danger like you do.’

Erhardt studied Keller. What was this about? Was Keller looking for some kind of sympathy or was he playing a more subtle game? Either was possible. The man was a monster. He could not shake the image of poor Bert, just a few summers shy of his first beard, frying inside that bull. The screams hadn’t ceased until well after they’d arrived, meaning Keller must have continued to let the boy cook while they spoke. It enraged him that the monster who’d tortured an innocent boy to death was now asking for sympathy. He had to look away, simply to avoid throttling him on the spot. His gaze settled once more on the pit, and an idea came to him.

‘I have a confession to make,’ he told Keller, struggling to keep the hatred out of his voice. ‘We have discovered the beast’s weakness.’

Keller’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh?’

‘Prolmann’s amputation knife. The beast fears it.’

‘Why did you not tell me this before?’

Erhardt shrugged. ‘Like you, I too am sometimes afraid, and I believed the knife would protect me against the beast.’ He turned to Keller and looked him in the eye. ‘Gottswain’s actions have forced me to reconsider. I would like to make you a deal: the knife for the life of my man.’ He drew the blade out of his belt pouch and handed it to Keller.

The witch hunter studied it critically. ‘A crude weapon at best.’

Erhardt made to take the knife back, but Keller closed his fist around the handle. ‘If this is an implement of Chaos, then it is my duty to see that it is destroyed.’

‘And Gottswain?’

‘Your man will get what’s coming to him,’ snarled Keller before striding towards the pit, ‘and you’re lucky I don’t report you for possessing it!’

Erhardt watched him go, then as quietly as he could, he stole around the edge of the circle of torches until he stood next to Gottswain. ‘I think you’d better step back,’ he said.

Gottswain shook his head. ‘What?’

A cry came, and one of the witch hunters pointed into the sky. ‘We’re too late! The Chaos Moon rises!’

As the man tossed a burning brand into the pit, a sickly purplish glow erupted from its depths. Scores of limbs began to churn like a whirlpool as the force that had awakened knit them together. Despite himself, Keller stumbled backwards, his hand clutching Prolmann’s knife. The Chaos beast rose slowly before him: huge and dark and terrible. Up and up it heaved, expanding until it seemed to blot out the night sky.

For perhaps the first time in his career, Keller confronted Chaos directly. But only for a moment. Then he screamed and ran.

Before he could take more than a single step, the beast enfolded him in its embrace, completely covering him in thrashing limbs.

Death was not instant. The Chaos beast was incredibly powerful, but each limb bore only the strength of the soldier to whom it had originally belonged. Human hands tipped with sharp nails tore at the witch hunter, leaving deep gouges in his skin, but it was a death by inches. As Keller’s screams grew louder and more frantic, they reminded Erhardt of the cries that had emanated from the brass bull. It was a satisfying thought.

With the other witch hunters too stunned by their commander’s death to intervene, it wasn’t until there was nothing left of Keller but a bunch of torn meat that Gottswain finally drew his zweihander. ‘Why do I get the impression you knew that would happen?’

Erhardt shrugged and drew his own blade. ‘Call it a gift from Doktor Prolmann.’

Moving like a centipede, the Chaos beast turned to face them, a hundred hands opening and closing as it awaited their charge. On the other side of the creature, several witch hunters hacked at it with their swords, but it seemed able to fight any number of them at the same time and they made little progress. It was the Greatswords’ mighty zweihanders it feared.

Gottswain charged in with the force of a thunderbolt, a sweep of his blade showering the ground around him with severed limbs and sour gore. Instantly, he was enfolded, just as Keller had been, by dozens of tearing limbs. But instead of lurching away, Gottswain expertly twisted his body, letting the creature’s hands slide against his plate, then used his momentum to slash again.

Erhardt hit the beast a moment later. His attack was more nuanced then the Nordlander’s – he struck hard then danced backwards out of reach. It was hard to tell whose style was more effective.

On other side of the Chaos beast, he heard a hideous scream as one of the witch hunters was torn apart. The creature lurched backwards, then stopped as more soldiers poured into the clearing. Perhaps, thought Erhardt as he dodged another attack and returned one of his own, the beast was trying to escape? Impossible. Though it had fled once already, that had been because of the setting of the Chaos Moon. Morrslieb had only just broken the horizon.

Curious, he disengaged, then leapt atop the pile of earth. From this vantage point, it was easy to spot what had drawn the beast’s attention – the tents of the priestesses of Shallya. With every man the Chaos beast killed, its own bulk increased. Dozens of wounded would make for easy prey, and make the monster unstoppable. The process was happening even now. As it killed the witch hunters, it consumed their bodies and absorbed their flesh into its own. Sending more soldiers into the battle would be a mistake. But what else could they do?

‘Fire the pit!’ he yelled to a nearby sergeant. ‘Gottswain! We’ve got to drive it back!’

‘Then get down here and give me a hand!’ yelled the Nordlander from the ground.

Erhardt laughed and took his advice, charging into the creature’s flank. He thrust deeply with his zweihander, trying to attack that fleshy centre he’d felt during the first attack. Hands clawed at his helmet visor, blotting out his vision and deafening him with the sound of ragged nails scraping against steel. He thrust again, following five feet of steel deep into the creature’s body. Finally, his blade jarred to a halt and that dark flood poured over his hands once more. An inhuman scream sounded from all around him and the creature reared backwards. The two Greatswords had managed to push it back to the very brink of the pit.

Now Gottswain’s expert swordsmanship came into play. Instead of slashing wildly, his zweihander snickered out, cutting precisely into the limbs that the creature was using to hang onto the edge.

Behind them, several frightened witch hunters had hurled torches into the pit, but the coal was slow to catch without sufficient kindling. Thinking quickly, Erhardt cast around and spotted one of the barrels of oil the witch hunters had stacked on the pit’s edge. He ran over and hacked into it with his zweihander, spilling the contents. A swift kick knocked it into the pit, just as the beast caught hold of Gottswain’s sword by the blade – though the edge cut deep, more limbs tore it from the Nordlander’s grasp. The monster snatched up the now disarmed Greatsword just as it began to topple, and the oil-fuelled flames burst up from the depths.

Yanked to his knees, Gottswain scrabbled backwards, but another of the beast’s grasping hands grabbed onto the edge of his breastplate and dragged him in.

Too far away to help his fellow soldier, Erhardt spotted something in the dirt next to Gottswain that glinted in the light of the fire. It was Prolmann’s blade, half-buried where Keller had dropped it. ‘Gottswain! The knife!’ he called, pointing frantically into the dirt.

Gottswain quickly glanced down and the distraction was almost lethal. Oil had covered the beast’s flank and it was aflame. The Greatsword slid perilously close to the edge, scrabbling in the dirt. Letting out a desperate cry as he lunged, he caught hold of Prolmann’s blade and brought it down hard on the fingers holding onto his breastplate, severing them.

As Gottswain scrambled clear, with a final scream of frustration the Chaos beast collapsed, whatever foul magic that had animated it finally giving out as the flames bit deep into its corrupted flesh.

Hours later, when the smoke and the reek of charred flesh finally cleared, there was nothing but ash at the bottom of the pit. Still the witch hunters stood by, watchful as their acolytes scattered salt over the embers.

After the last spark had gone out, Gottswain pushed aside the flap of the command tent and cleared his throat. Erhardt sat behind Toft’s desk, a quill in his hand. Though he had yet to wash off the grime of combat, he had taken the time to fill out a detailed report, leaving out only the mention of Prolmann’s knife. However much Keller was hated, a Knight Templar of the Order of Sigmar had died tonight and difficult questions would be asked.

‘Some of the boys smuggled a priest of Morr past the guards,’ said Gottswain. ‘They didn’t feel right about Bert not having his prayers.’

‘Good.’ Erhardt said nothing more.

Gottswain hesitated, not knowing if he was being dismissed. ‘So... commander of the Carroburg Greatswords, eh? The men will be pleased. They like you.’ Then, straightening, he corrected himself. ‘They respect you, sir.’

Erhardt dipped his quill into the inkwell, then signed his name and tossed a pinch of sand onto the document to help it set. ‘I’m only commander until Altdorf. Toft wanted someone else in command after we reach the capital.’

Gottswain frowned and scratched his head. ‘Toft died without relaying that order to Schalbourg. As far as the general knows, you’re it.’

‘Nevertheless,’ muttered Erhardt.

The big Greatsword shook his head in confusion. If he lived to see a hundred summers, he’d likely never understand. As far as he was concerned, a promise to a dead man was no promise at all. He clearly knew enough to keep that thought silent, though, and turned to leave.

‘Sergeant,’ said Erhardt.

Gottswain was no sergeant, but there was no one else within earshot, so he stopped and faced Erhardt once more. The new commander smiled.

‘We’re not going to Altdorf quite yet, sergeant. Tell the men we break camp at dawn. The messengers say General Schalbourg has discovered a grand army of ogres heading for the capital. Tomorrow, we march to battle!’

FIREBORN

Nick Kyme

Though it was forbidden, Evangeline ran through the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary.

She ran as if the hounds of Chaos were behind her.

Votive candles lit the way through one of the transepts of remembrance, guttering faintly as she swept by. Statues of martyred saints glared at her disapprovingly from shaded alcoves. As she passed through the holy narthex, Evangeline was trying to piece together what she’d seen. Her sandalled feet rapping on the cold convent floor, louder than incendiary blasts in the silence, muddled her thoughts.

Blood.

She’d seen blood, like red rain coming from the sky.

All shall bleed, the voices had said. Skulls for the throne of–

The last part made her dizzy. She smelled oil, tasted iron and heard the harsh clank of machinery though the convent was quiet as the void.

In the Devotional Gallery, she found Father Lumeon.

‘My child, what in the Emperor’s name is wrong?’

The breathless specimen, a waif of a girl in pale unadorned robes, could only pant.

Father Lumeon, officious in his priestly vestments, drifted from behind his blackwood desk. He’d been labouring over parchments and data-slates, a mechanised lexicanum savant scribing his dictations with a neuro-quill. Sublimation of native belief cultures into the auspices of the Imperial Creed – it was heavy work, gratefully postponed, even for a devoted man like Father Lumeon. Dismissing a pair of cyborganic cherubs who had descended on angelic wings to investigate the sudden fuss, he came before Evangeline and gently lifted her chin.

‘Be at peace…’

Evangeline’s frenzy lessened to an insistent ache.

‘And tell me what the matter is.’

The Sister Hospitaller had tears in her eyes and a tremor in her body.

An answer wasn’t forthcoming.

‘Come with me.’ Father Lumeon led her slowly to an ornate balcony, which looked out over all of Sepulchre IV.

Chapels and cathedra stretched into the distance, castellated bell towers touched the heavens, pilgrims marched over chasm-spanning ornate bridges, fluttering cherub-servitors flocked the skies. Armies of the righteous, adepts of the Ecclesiarchy and its most zealous defenders populated this shrine world. The sight of it gladdened Father Lumeon whenever he beheld it.

Sister Evangeline’s reaction was not as beatific. She wept and shook and looked away, pointing to the sky.

When Father Lumeon followed her gesture he noticed Sepulchre’s sun. It was red, where once it had been yellow. It was red and drenched the pale stone of the cathedrals so they looked as if they’d been fashioned from incarnadine bone.

‘What did you see?’ He seized Evangeline by the shoulder. He was hurting her and knew it. ‘Tell me now!’

Their eyes met, Evangeline’s full of fear and foreboding; Father Lumeon’s red-ringed and fervent.

What had she seen in the dark of the abyss? Why was the sky bleeding?

She confessed everything.

Pinching her under the arm to keep her close, Father Lumeon hurried Evangeline through the quiet corridors of the convent-bastion. Their passage was met by furtive glances from the other Sister Hospitallers of the Order of the Inner Sanctum. Some carried votive candles or pungent censer burners. They kept their eyes low but were obviously dismayed that one of their Order, even a lowly novitiate, was being led off so urgently. Lumeon bustled past them, scarcely stopping as he activated gilded blast doors and mechanised arch-gates. Artefact chambers, stasis-locked reliquary vaults, beautifully illuminated vaulted ceilings and finely sculptured columns went by in a blur of insignificance. Father Lumeon ignored them all.

He said nothing, only frowned with the furrowed expression of a man who’d asked and received an answer he wished to return. He half-glanced at Evangeline. Her face was grey as ash.

Within the Order, it was unprecedented.

Slowly the religious austerity of the convent-bastion gave way to military functionality. Slab-like walls of gunmetal grey rose around them like bulkheads. Steam-stamped barrack markings and warning chevrons provided direction. The distant ring of combat training became a muffled refrain to their softer footfalls.

Evangeline had only ever roamed in the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary and its annexes that included her dormitory. She had never been to this part of the sprawling convent-bastion. It was cold and harsh. Percussive weapons fire from some distant armoury hurt her ears. The clash of blades sent unpleasant jolts down her spine.

Father Lumeon sensed her reluctance to proceed and had to march Evangeline the rest of the way. At the end of a long, stark corridor their journey ended. Before them, a single figure stood silhouetted in the light from overhead lume-globes.

She had the cut and form of a Crusader. Her robes were red to resemble the blood of martyrs running in her veins. Her silver helm occluded her face completely, though her stance suggested it was severe beneath the mailed mask. One gauntleted fist gripped a vast Crusader shield almost the size of her entire body. Only with the augmented strength from her silver armour, which was also swathed with purity seals, devotional chains and holy parchments, could she wield it. The same was true of the Crusader sword in her other hand. Its blade was etched with tiny inscriptions and crackled with energy from an unseen source.

Father Lumeon found it levelled at him when he approached her.

He held up the aquila icon, suspended around his neck by a string of beads. Each one had been fashioned from a saint’s knuckle bone. It was a potent symbol and the staff of his office.

‘In the Emperor’s name, I must speak with Canoness Ignacia immediately. It is a dire matter.’

The slightest inclination of the formidable Crusader’s head suggested she regarded Evangeline cowering beside Father Lumeon. The warrior didn’t move and for a moment the venerable priest feared she might strike them both down.

At a silent command, the blast doors behind the Crusader broke open as if cracked by a bolt of invisible lightning. Lowering her sword, she backed off into the escaping pressure mist.

Wiping his brow with his sleeve, already knowing there’d be more grey in his temples come the morning, Father Lumeon started to drag Evangeline through after him.

The scream of warning klaxons brought them both to an abrupt halt.

The convent-bastion was on sudden alert.

‘It’s already here…’ he breathed.

Heavy booted feet were hammering down the corridor towards them. Canoness Ignacia was marshalling her troops.

Sepulchre IV was under attack.

A mass evacuation was underway. Fleets of ships – lighters, ark-cruisers, speeders, freight-haulers, clippers and gunships – were deserting Sepulchre IV in their droves, like insects fleeing a forest fire. On the ground, those without vessels to ferry them to the starships anchored in low orbit around the planet had to run. Masses of people clogged the roads. Some clung desperately to one another for succour, others screamed for deliverance. The few that had mechanised walkers or personal half-tracks were soon mired in the throng. Horns blared frantically like the wailing of the already damned.

‘Pandemonium reigns.’ Tsu’gan was unable to keep the sneer from his face. It was black. Not dark-skinned but really black, like onyx, and just as hard. The red spike of beard on his chin jutted like an accusing finger as he stared through one of the Implacable’s vision slits.

‘They want to live.’ Praetor’s deep voice was matter-of-fact but dominated over the Thunderhawk gunship’s engine noise. ‘It’s not so weak to cherish your own life,’ he added, guessing what the other Space Marine was thinking.

Tsu’gan turned – his heavy Terminator armour whirred and clanked as the hidden servos went to work shifting his bulk – and his red eyes blazed in the gloomy hold. He found the cumbersome suit a challenge, but relished the power it gave him. Tsu’gan valued strength above all else.

He appraised the rest of his squad in a glance.

Ankar and Kai’ru were as still as sentinels, their grav-harnesses locked and widened to accommodate their bulk.

Gathimu, the ‘spear’, was anointing his heavy flamer with ash. He drew a wide slash with his armoured finger then followed it with a drake’s head. It was Kalimar, the creature he’d slain below Mount Deathfire and whose flesh he now wore as a mantle on his left pauldron. So focused, so honed was Gathimu.

Praetor was his sergeant, a veteran of over a hundred campaigns, a hero of the Chapter. Apart from Tsu’gan, he was the only one yet to don his helmet. Praetor’s face and scalp were bald, polished to mirror sheen by his brander-priest. The scars upon his cheek and the three platinum service studs above his left brow were marks of honour and service. His Terminator armour was more ornate than Tsu’gan’s. Fashioned by a master artificer, it bore the heraldic devices of dragon heads and gilded laurels. It came with a cape of salamander hide that almost went down to the floor.

Praetor glowered.

‘To your harness, brother. It’s not much farther.’

Tsu’gan obeyed, still finding the unfamiliar sensation of walking in Tactical Dreadnought Armour unsettling. Once he was mag-locked and secured by thick metal bracers, he relaxed.

These men, these super-men, were his brothers. Not by blood but by battle. Born in Vulkan’s forge, their bond was stronger than adamantium. They were Salamanders, Fire-born. No, they were more than that. They were the Chapter’s First Company, to which their armour and its proud iconography testified, their Firedrakes.

As Praetor leaned forward to look through one of the vision slits, the green of his Terminator suit caught a shaft of light from outside and turned a lurid purple.

‘The sky is red as blood.’

‘Yet we defy it, going against the tide.’ Gathimu had finished his rituals and looked over at Tsu’gan through the cold lenses of his battle-helm. Ornate drake’s teeth gave the helm a feral snarl. ‘Flex your muscles, cycle through your pre-battle physical routines. It will help.’

‘I am ready,’ Tsu’gan snapped, a little too quickly.

‘You are untempered.’ Gathimu’s even tone suggested he meant no offence.

Tsu’gan bit back a reply. He glared through the vision slit and saw again the red sky of the shrine world. Fat clouds gorged on blood smashed against the gunship’s hull, painting it crimson and riming its edges with a visceral gum. Escaping ships sped past them too, headed away from the battle towards the hopeful salvation in low orbit.

A blockade of enemy starships was already forming around the planet. They planned to slaughter everyone on this world, a glorious sacrifice to their violent potentate. Soon, no one would be getting off alive. It leant the Salamanders’ mission a certain… urgency that Tsu’gan felt more acutely as he looked outside.

Fire wreathed the horizon, casting a ruddy glow on the ruins of chapels and cathedra. Flaming bell towers had crumpled, like broken fingers reaching for the earth. Collapsed bridges were clogged with the dead and the sky blossomed with explosions from faraway aerial battles.

Tsu’gan clenched his power fist. The servos whined within and he thought of the distant war he would not be part of. He’d seen enough. Eyes back in the hold, he saw his battle-brothers felt his frustration too.

The Red Rage had come to Sepulchre IV, and its blood-lust was not easily sated.

Roaring afterburners announced their arrival at the docking pad. Landing stanchions extended quickly as the Implacable touched down. The Salamanders disembarked from the rear hatch, green-armoured giants ploughing through the pneumatic pressure cloud.

An Ecclesiarchy representative met them with two of her fellow Battle Sisters. Backwash from the Thunderhawk’s half-powered down engines tossed her white hair, revealing a jagged scar that made her appear more severe.

Though they came from the Order of the Ardent Veil, these warrior-fanatics looked anything but peaceful. Their white power armour was studded with silver spikes, concomitant bodices drawn tight over their tauht muscles. They were akin to the suits worn by the Firedrakes’ battle and reserve company brothers, only slighter but still potent. Holy signifiers – purity seals, rosarius beads and icons of the Emperor’s aquila – bedecked the armour, defining the Battle Sisters’ purpose and zealous determination. They held bolters low-slung at their hips. The sister superior with the white hair also carried a flanged power mace. Her helmet, mag-locked to her belt, was silver. Whatever force of Chaos had come upon Sepulchre IV must have been dire that these soldiers of faith could not defeat it.

Praetor bowed his head before the Battle Sisters to show his respect. It had not been easy for them or the Ecclesiarchy to ask for help. The veteran sergeant had no wish to make it any more difficult.

The white-haired superior nodded then turned her back on the Salamanders, leading them away from the docking pad towards a thick perimeter wall crowned by razor-wire. Two watchtowers with mounted heavy bolters overlooked a reinforced gate on either side, the docking pad’s only access point. Hard-looking female faces regarded the strangers from within, their mood unreadable.

The docking pad doubled as a barracks and chapel, too. Tsu’gan noticed much of its religious statuary had been ripped down and replaced by ablative armour, sandbags and rockcrete barricades. Anything of significance to the faith of the Order was gone, leaving a blank echo on a wall or a denuded alcove. The fleeing ships transported not only people but Ecclesiastical artefacts too.

‘I’ve had warmer welcome on Fenris.’ Kai’ru kept his voice low.

A glare from Praetor silenced him, before they were led towards the gate.

Tsu’gan had to agree with his battle-brother. A cold wind was blowing through the Order of the Ardent Veil and the white of their battle sisters’ armour reminded him of frost. Salamanders fought with a core of fire in their breast; these warrior-maidens harboured a spike of ice.

Once past the docking pad, Praetor chose to enlighten his brothers over a closed comm-channel.

++Use the senses our father gave you. The Order is mute. They cannot acknowledge you even if they wished to.++

Kai’ru found suddenly that he was similarly afflicted.

‘Deeds not words are the speech of angels.’ Gathimu was quoting from some philosophical treatise he’d read.

Any reply was forestalled as a pair of Immolator battle tanks reversed from the gate, allowing the Salamanders through. Their turret-mounted inferno cannons swivelled as they moved, constantly trained on the gate. One trigger pull from the gunners would engulf the entranceway in a conflagration of burning promethium.

With the churn of hidden gears, the gate cracked and slid open. As they had seen from the air, the carnage of burnt out tanks and twisted corpses lay beyond it. Sepulchre IV was a place of ruins and shades, of scorched earth and blood-tainted air. Some of the fires still flickered in the hollow shells of the broken basilica.

Several Battle Sisters flanked the gate, bolters aimed into the killing ground before them.

The sister superior looked expectantly at Praetor. She wanted to seal the compound again quickly.

Tsu’gan detected no enemies nearby. He scowled behind his battle-helm at what he saw as fear.

Fear is the province of the weak.

‘Ave Imperator,’ he heard Praetor say to the Battle Sister.

She slammed her gauntleted first against her pauldron in salute as the Salamander sergeant led his Firedrakes out.

Deeds not words.

Once outside, the gate ground shut behind them. The gaze of the Battle Sisters in the towers was still upon them, though. Tsu’gan felt their heavy bolter sights like an itch at the back of his neck.

Gathimu released a spit of promethium from his heavy flamer to test the igniter on the nozzle, interrupting Tsu’gan’s thoughts. ‘This place reeks of death.’

Tsu’gan estimated over a thousand dead bodies strewn throughout the perimeter. ‘The battle moved elsewhere?’

‘To the convent-bastion.’ Praetor had donned his battle helm and was consulting a data feed running across his left lens. ‘Our destination.’ Topographical and geographical schemata spooled across his iris at rapid speed. Praetor’s occulobe implant absorbed the information in a single beat, storing it in his eidetic memory for later use. He’d locked in the route to the convent-bastion and was mission ready. He led them to a patch of open ground.

‘How many did they lose trying to get in?’ Ankar took his place in a ritual circle with the others.

Praetor paused to blink the relevant data onto his inner helm lens. ‘Nearly a quarter of their garrison – over a thousand battle sisters. Though I’d suggest that’s a conservative estimate.’

‘And within, defending the bastion?’

‘Celestians, mainly. They may have a few hundred troops inside. There are more beyond its walls. Holding firm… for now.’

‘Such a waste of lives,’ said Kai’ru. ‘No wonder they’re so aggrieved.’

Tsu’gan’s servos protested as he moved towards Praetor, his armour as belligerent as his mood. ‘They’re fools. Mute or not, they should’ve summoned us sooner.’

Gathimu was standing next to him. ‘Would your pride have allowed that, brother? Asking for help?’

‘We need none, we are Adeptus Astartes.’ He stamped heavily into position beside his sergeant. His uneven gait was obvious, especially to Gathimu.

‘Your anger weighs you down more than that armour ever could. Let go of it.’

It’s not anger, thought Tsu’gan. It’s hate.

And it went deep, into his flesh where he’d tried to have the brander-priest’s iron remove it. But no burning, however invasive, could go far enough. Not when the hate and anger was turned inwards…

Behind them, the burst of engine noise signalled the Implacable’s take-off from the docking pad. The gunship had brought them as close as it could without risking being downed by enemy flak. Several Ecclesiarchy craft littered the killing field outside the fortified compound, testament to the wisdom of a foot approach. The rapid deployment of the Terminators to Sepulchre IV prevented any other kind of insertion.

‘And so we are alone.’ Kai’ru lifted his head to watch the slowly vanishing outline of the Thunderhawk. Headed for Sepulchre IV’s spaceport, it would aid the evacuation effort until summoned again by Praetor.

Gathimu was philosophical. ‘In the end brother, we are always alone.’

Praetor looked to him now the Salamanders had formed the ritual circle.

‘Ignite the flame.’

A burst from Gathimu’s heavy flamer lit a column of fire in the wasteland, like a beacon torch.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ Praetor intoned.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ they concluded as one then each thrust their fists into the blaze, allowing their armoured fingers to blacken at the tips before withdrawing them.

‘We are born in fire,’ the sergeant continued, ‘so do we wage war with it clenched in our mailed fist.’

‘Unto the anvil!’ bellowed the Terminators.

Praetor unslung his thunder hammer and storm shield. ‘Firedrakes! In Vulkan’s name!’

The ritual circle broke apart and the Salamanders fell into combat-march formation, Praetor at the front, the others forming a two by two square behind him.

Tsu’gan’s lens display showed ten kilometres to the convent-bastion. The land between them and it was fiercely contested by Ecclesiarchy and enemy troops. The war was close by. There was no way could they reach their destination without encountering it.

It would be a long walk.

Sister Evangeline prayed. She was in one of the convent-bastion’s sanctums kneeling before an icon of her Order’s patron, the martyred Sister Uthraxese. Silver-armoured Celestians surrounded her with ready bolters. Despite their experience and status, the elite Battle Sisters looked edgy.

Father Lumeon was conversing with Canoness Ignacia at the back of the small chamber. The Celestians were Ignacia’s personal guard. She also wore silver armour but of a more ornate design. An antique power sword was sheathed at her hip, next to her battle-helm. Oil censers and a book of scripture hung from her belt by a pearled rosarius string, whilst the scars of battle mapped the Canoness’s face like a continent of past glories.

Father Lumeon looked calm but the way he worried at his aquila betrayed his concern. ‘We could hide.’

Ignacia gave him narrowed eyes.

‘In the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary,’ the priest added.

The Canoness shook her head. The notion of hiding was anathema to her. She wanted to wait. Perhaps with reinforcements from the Space Marines they could break through to the gunships.

In a bout of frustration, Father Lumeon pointed to where Evangeline was praying before the icon. There was a finger bone of the great martyr herself within its coffin-like confines. Some, the particularly devout, suggested some spirit essence still existed within the calcified remains.

‘The relic must be taken from this place. It cannot fall to the enemy. Even now they seek it!’

Ignacia was about to admonish him, when he held up his hand contritely. ‘Our forces dwindle by the minute. Soon there’ll be none left and the Ruinous Powers will not stall long at our barred gates. The Adeptus Astartes are on the way, canoness.’

She scowled at this, ever prideful.

‘If we hide, it might give us more time. We might–’

The hard clang of Ignacia slamming her fist against the wall stopped Father Lumeon mid-plea. Evidently, signing would not convey her meaning accurately enough.

Evangeline didn’t start at the interruption, though it was loud enough. She stayed calm, channelling an inner peace as taught by the sister superior of the Hospitaller.

Anger serves only to promote further anger. Guidance is only found when the mind is still. Serenity breeds truth.

Before the Canoness could go further, a pair of Crusaders from the convent-bastion’s outer wall arrived at the sanctum’s force-shielded doorway.

Both had removed their helmets in the presence of their holy mistress. There was news from the battle-front. From their expressions, it wasn’t good.

The chains tightened around the sorcerer’s torso, forcing him awake. The iron links burned white-hot and sent needles of agony across his bare flesh where his power armour had been removed. Were it not for his enhanced constitution, he’d be dead.

Dreghgor knew that, just as he knew how far he could push his captive. The warlord of the Red Rage was a tyrant and a butcher but he was also wise. Khorne loathed magic, as did he. The collar of black iron around Dreghgor’s neck was inimical to sorcery, but he was not beyond using sorcerers as a tool to further his own ends.

The bitch-maidens of the False Emperor held his warrior legions at bay. No matter how many he threw against their defences, the spiteful whores would not break. Dreghgor knew what lay within their disgusting temple; the sorcerer had scryed its presence after the knives had gone in. Khorne wanted it. Dreghgor would not fail his master, who had seen fit to grant him an armada of ships to bring forth a bloody reign upon the sub-sector. Seven worlds already burned in the wake of his red crusade. He only needed one more… The Eye of the Gods was upon him. He felt it like razorblades under his changed skin.

From the burnt out shell of a shrine, Hagtah Dreghgor had fashioned an arena. The remains of its millennia-old reliquaries were scattered about the bloodied floor like carrion bones. Priceless relic-statues lay broken and beheaded on a carpet of stained-glass fragments. The blood of innocents anointed the shrine’s walls from where they hung impaled on hell-barbs. A Chaos star delineated the battlefield with a freshly flensed skull at each of its eight points.

Two of Dreghgor’s champions clashed within it, chainblade to chainblade. They wore sanguine power armour, chased with brass. Reinforced ribbing between the armour’s plates was as black as sackcloth, and each donned a skull-faced battle-helm in honour of their bloody god.

Dreghgor’s own helm was fashioned into the visage of a snarling hound, a dark iron echo of one of his master’s many forms, and had a single brass horn jutting from its left temple. His armour, scarred from numerous battles, was riddled with studs and barbs. Chains bearing eight skulls from his finest kills hung from plate to plate. He’d scrimshawed marks to represent the lesser ‘achievements’. The tallies resembled little more than deranged scratches there were so many of them. Rib bones were engineered into his vambraces. Alien teeth turned his gauntlets into spiked fists.

Slayer Lord, Ender of Lives – just two of Dreghgor’s well-earned honorifics.

The warlord watched his champions intently from a pile of ruined stone. Something was still twitching beneath him, mewling for a merciful death. He paid it no heed. Let the weak suffer. While the blood flows, Khorne’s will be done.

His warriors fought fiercely, hacking at each other with abandon. Every drop of spilled blood hissed as it touched the unholy circle. Dreghgor saw dark energy coursing through the lines he had carved in the shattered flagstones.

With a grunt, one of the champions severed the head of the other and roared. Though his armour was cut and his body bleeding from countless wounds, the warrior exulted in triumph.

Dreghgor smiled beneath his helm. Khorne would be satisfied. The blood-letting had been prodigious. He turned his gaze upon the shackled sorcerer, who looked on meekly from the opposite end of the arena, caged in an iron gibbet.

The warlord’s eyes burned like balefires, and he nodded.

As the sorcerer began to incant, blood from his ruptured organs flecked the inside of the cage. The victorious champion clutched his chest and went down on one knee.

Vokrhan was a mighty warrior; he would make a strong vessel.

Dark tendrils, like strands of hyperactive electricity, crackled around the circle. When the champion tried to rise, a black bolt felled him. He tried again, and this time the dark energy was more potent. Vokrhan’s roar of triumph had turned into a wail of agony. Despite all of his strength and fortitude, he collapsed and shook.

‘Take his flesh,’ Dreghgor uttered like a curse. ‘Bind it to the engine.’

From below Dreghgor’s ‘throne’ of sundered stone, a suit of dark mechanical armour was wheeled forth by Kharthak the Blood-wrought.

By now the champion’s body was ravaged by daemon-change. Something dark and abyssal had crept into his soul. The essence of the thing manifested in his tortured and mutated flesh. Claws and monstrous faces stretched it as they fought for release, whilst screams heralded every agonised jerk of Vokrhan’s body.

Kharthak released the ribcage of the engine, which sprang opened like a fanged maw. Chains spilled from within like hungry tentacles, driven by a smoke-spewing, oil-spattering device on the back of the armour that also colonised its joints and limbs.

Hooks fashioned at the end of the chains found purchase in the terrified meat-puppet and dragged Vokrhan thrashing into the engine’s iron embrace.

After the ribcage slammed shut with a hard bang, the screaming stopped. A dull glow smouldered in the eyes of the engine’s banded war-helm. Its studded torso, made to resemble bone, heaved as if with a first breath.

Dreghgor leapt from his rocky vantage point and landed in front of it, stone splintering beneath him.

Dominance had always been one of the warlord’s chief credos.

‘Who is your master?’

With a creak of shifting iron, the daemon-engine went down on one knee in front of the warlord and lowered its head.

Dreghgor smiled… then struck it, hard across the temple. Even bowed, the daemon-engine was a head taller than the warlord, but his blow was fearsome enough to send it reeling to its feet and back a step.

Its eyes flared with red-hate and an array of weapons – sharp, spiked and bladed things, festooned with chains and dripping oil – snapped from its arms, greedy for blood. Dreghgor fed it his rage and his fury, it boiled within him like a tempest. He sensed the thing that had hollowed out his champion’s corpse for its own, slaved to the engine. It struggled against its bonds. Let slip, it would devour him and all of his warriors.

Dreghgor liked that. The daemon-engine would cause such carnage. His smile became a snarl.

‘Slay our enemies. Bleed them. Bring me what I seek.’

The streets of Sepulchre IV were drowning in blood. Ecclesiarchy troops lay tangled in the rubble like broken alabaster dolls. Survivors fell back by degrees, sloshing through vital fluids and avoiding the corpses choking up the once proud avenues.

Despite their defiance, the shrine world’s defenders were wilting before the Chaos battalions. The Battle Sisters were losing. Several combat squads were trying to hold their ground in Unity Square of Monast, Sepulchre’s capital. All other cities had been evacuated or overrun. Here in Monast, the Red Rage fell hardest. Here in Monast they bracketed the defenders’ escape routes, destroyed the bridges before reinforcements could be brought in and ensured dominance of the blood-soaked skies. Here in Monast they sought something, a relic to satisfy their warmongering god. The Red Rage surrounded the convent-bastion but, as of yet, hadn’t broken through.

But time, Tsu’gan was acutely aware, was running out.

‘Enhance magnification.’

The image resolved itself in his occulobe.

A bare-headed Battle Sister was holding her power sword aloft, rallying the troops when she took a round to the neck. She fell seconds later as the mass-reactive shell exploded, staining her skull-white armour crimson.

Sustained bolter fire met her demise.

Tsu’gan was reluctantly impressed. The Battle Sisters had adopted a long firing line and kept it steady in spite of casualties. He watched another sister superior step into the dead one’s place and try to anchor the defenders.

No war cries, nor screams. It was… unnerving. At first, Tsu’gan thought it was pique at having to call on the Adeptus Astartes to retrieve their holy artefact. Now, he wasn’t so sure. The Battle Sisters were almost automatons.

A few shattered rockcrete barricades and a pair of half-destroyed tanks stood between them and the enemy. Red Rage Traitor Marines, their power armour baptised in arterial blood, wielding bolt guns and chainblades came at them in a mob. Cultists, those they had brought upon their graven ships and desperate converts, former natives now driven insane by the carnage, ranged ahead of them like pack dogs.

Tsu’gan sneered contemptuously.

Weak.

++Your orders, brother-sergeant?++ Ankar’s voice came across the comm-link.

The Firedrakes were a hundred metres or so from the battle-site, having penetrated Unity Square, and approached down its flank. They could avoid this fight, continue on to the convent-bastion and the mission.

Praetor ignited his thunder hammer. Energy crackled along the head and haft, stirring the weapon’s machine-spirit.

‘Combat formation.’

Tsu’gan rejoiced. Battle at last!

As the Firedrakes advanced, a missile scudded overhead and tore apart one of the immobilised tanks. It detonated the fuel reserves, slinging the warrior-maiden who’d been firing its turret-mounted heavy bolter to the ground where she lay bleeding.

Flamers were brought up, and bathed the onrushing Red Rage with super-heated promethium. The cultists died immediately, like pathetic candles withered by a blow-torch. The Traitor Marines were not so easily felled. One collapsed to a knee, shimmering in the heat haze, his armour wreathed by fire, but the others drove through it. Emerging from the smoke, they looked like daemons born from the fiery hells of the warp. Tendrils of licking flame trailed off their battle-plate.

Chainblades screeching for blood, the Red Rage were about to tear into the Battle Sisters when a second flamer blast smashed into them from the flank, spilling bodies unprepared to meet it.

‘Into the fires of battle!’ Praetor thundered towards the Traitor Marines like an armoured bull.

Tsu’gan was behind him. He felt the resonance of his heavy footfalls through his armour, and those of Kai’ru and Ankar, either side. Gathimu was at the rear, slow enough to scorch the Red Rage with his heavy flamer. Tsu’gan felt him too, saw his ident-rune on the grainy tac-display imposed on his helmet lens.

Advance three steps – fire. Advance three steps – fire.

Gathimu was unfaltering.

Running in Terminator armour was difficult, but not impossible. Unused to the manoeuvre, Tsu’gan found his enhanced physiology stretched but he soon compensated. His breath sounded harsh and reverberant inside his helmet. The enemy were getting closer through the yellow-orange optic lenses.

A spray of blood cascaded from the shattered skull of a Traitor Marine as Praetor connected with his thunder hammer. A second red slash tore from the warrior’s stomach as the Salamanders sergeant used his storm shield to open him up.

Tsu’gan triggered his storm bolter, the hard crash-bang staccato that followed filled his heart with righteous anger.

‘In Vulkan’s name! Glory to Prometheus!’ He strafed a fresh line of cultists rushing to intercept the Salamanders.

The Terminators barrelled through them like they were nothing. One crumpled against Ankar’s armoured bulk. Another disappeared in a visceral mist, torn apart by Kai’ru’s chainfist.

Ahead of them, the Battle Sisters were rallying. But further enemy forces were coming, Havoc squads armed with heavy weapons and a Rhino APC carrying another battle squad. A wall of fire whickered from their ranks. It pinged off the invulnerable Terminators but scythed into the Battle Sisters brutally. Bodies were spun and tossed by the fusillade. They fell in silence despite their wounds.

A trio of Ecclesiarchy tanks rolled up the street to meet the enemy’s secondary force, two Battle Sisters squads running alongside them. Unity Square was packed with troops. A short range fire-fight had erupted across a small patch of open ground. Frantic melta beams stabbed across the debris, generators screaming. Heavy bolters added a grunting chorus to the orchestra of war.

The skirmish was escalating.

In the middle of the storm, the Firedrakes met the enemy proper.

Cracking ceramite, the sound of sundered power armour, accompanied Tsu’gan’s bludgeoning of one of the Traitor Marines. Another came in his wake, firing his combi-bolter point blank into the Salamander’s torso. Tiny insect-like stings were no more than an annoyance.

Tsu’gan’s power fist crushed him into paste.

Buoyed by the sudden appearance of heavily armoured reinforcements, the Battle Sisters advanced beyond their barricades to link up with the Space Marines. Gathimu had reached his battle-brothers too, and sent a plume of burning promethium into the Chaos Rhino. Destroyed tracks and a badly scorched hull brought the vehicle to a skidding halt.

Keeping up the pressure, Gathimu engulfed the stricken Rhino. Smoke-shrouded figures stumbled from its hatches, before the hold ignited and blew out the rear door in a deep foom of exploding incendiary.

The muzzle-flare from Tsu’gan’s storm bolter lit up his armour in a stark glow. Already ablaze, the Traitor Marines from inside the vehicle bucked and spasmed against the bolt storm. Three survived, staggered by shell impacts but unbowed in their durable power armour.

Praetor’s thunder hammer showed no such mercy as he waded in and crushed them.

Emboldened, the Battle Sisters advanced ahead of the more cumbersome Terminators to establish a fresh strong-point beyond Unity Square. Further squads were moving in from the avenues of broken temples and collapsed spires. Rubble provided a natural cordon in which to funnel the Chaos renegades.

Tsu’gan noticed the sister superior he’d seen earlier give a curt nod of thanks to his sergeant before pressing on.

Praetor’s voice rumbled over the comm-link a moment later.

++Fire-born, converge on my position.++

A series of affirmation runes flashed up on Tsu’gan’s helmet lens as the squad tightened its coherency.

++Do we advance?++ Kai’ru sounded eager for more.

He wasn’t alone. Tsu’gan was getting ready to head after their allies when Praetor spoke again.

++Hold position.++

++Brother-sergeant–++

Gathimu cut Tsu’gan off before he made a mistake he’d regret.

‘Be patient, brother. This isn’t over yet.’

Tsu’gan followed his eye-line. A pair of Immolator battle tanks spearheaded the Ecclesiarchy counter-assault. Their inferno cannons were short-ranged but deadly. Shooting gouts of intense fire ahead of them, they laid a path for the warrior-maidens behind. Some rode inside the Rhino APC that followed. Others hung onto its outer rails, holding their bolters one-handed.

Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed. His occulobe filtered out smoke graining and sharpened the image despite the distance and the heat haze. Something was coming, heralded by a squall of blood-crazed cultists. What was left of the Havocs and the few Traitor Marines from the battle squads retreated to consolidate with it.

++Massive heat signature, brother-sergeant.++ Gathimu was calm, the blind sword of utter stillness to Tsu’gan’s font of reckless anger.

++I read++

Threat icons in Tsu’gan’s helmet array flashed insistently.

++Looks like some sort of machine. Dreadnought?++

Tsu’gan locked onto it with his targeter. His tac-display spooled down the metres rapidly.

It was speeding up, and no Dreadnought.

Ankar cranked fresh rounds into his storm bolter. ++An Adeptus Astartes?++

A dense but distant thunk of metal against metal arrested Praetor’s reply. A dark shape was crashing out of the sky towards the Firedrakes. It took Tsu’gan a few seconds to realise it was one of the Immolators.

They were already moving when Praetor bellowed. ++Disperse!++

A hunk of flaming tank landed between them, like so much burning shrapnel. It had literally been torn apart.

++Forward on me, brothers!++ Praetor circled the wreck quickly, overcoming the weight of his armour with sheer strength.

Tsu’gan was first behind him, but Praetor already had a lead. ‘What is that thing?’

It resembled a suit of mechanised armour, a simulacrum of a man, something that might once have been part of the long defunct Legio Cybernetica. And though it had pistons and cogs, wheels and chains, and vented steam and oil like a mag-lev train, it was no robot. Something lived and drew breath in those dark iron confines. Tsu’gan felt it.

‘Unnatural…’ Gathimu sounded almost haunted. ‘It’s possessed.’

Tsu’gan’s teeth clenched. It was a daemon that had a hand in the death of his former captain, Ko’tan Kadai. His ire grew as he vowed this one would be banished back into the warp without taking anyone with it.

A short distance away, the Battle Sisters were levelling everything they had at it. Bolter fire, even melta blasts rolled off like they were nothing. Another Immolator crumpled like parchment when the daemon-engine shoulder-barged its hull. Fuel and ammunition exploded in a vast fireball that Tsu’gan felt in the resulting heat wash.

‘Emperor’s name… It’s strong.’

Praetor was swinging his thunder hammer in a slow but steady arc. ++We are stronger.++

The daemon-engine was relentless. It tossed Battle Sisters like limp marionettes. White-armoured bodies fell like rain, eviscerated by its blades and saws.

Tsu’gan heard Praetor mutter when the Firedrake’s charged.

++Vulkan guide me in my hour of doom.++

Up close, the daemon-engine was massive. It reeked of blood and oil. Smoke and heat exuded off its dark iron flesh in a pall. But it was the eyes that Tsu’gan really noticed. With every blow, as the carnage increased, they blazed brighter with a malign light.

Praetor swung. It was like lightning from the sky when he struck. Tsu’gan expected to see the daemon-engine crumble but instead his sergeant’s battle cry became a roar of agony as he was punched off his feet several metres through the air.

To see the mighty Praetor so humbled made the Firedrakes falter.

Kai’ru recovered quickest, getting ahead of Tsu’gan to ram his chainfist into the daemon-engine’s torso.

‘Taste Vulkan’s wrath, warp spawn.’ The oath died on his lips when one of the thing’s hell-blades punctured his Terminator armour as if it were tin. With his aegis broken, Kai’ru could only watch as the saw-teeth churned his innards to mulch.

Gathimu was advancing fast, Kai’ru’s name a cry of anguish on his lips. The igniter on his heavy flamer was already burning when the daemon-engine levelled its wrist-mounted cannon and unloaded. Dozens of armour-piercing shells, jacketed with hellfire, peppered his armour and detonated the promethium tanks on his back.

Blinded by the sudden explosion, Tsu’gan waited a few seconds before his occulobe implant compensated. Gathimu was burning.

++Ankar.++

The other Firedrake nodded. They would attack the daemon-engine together. Tsu’gan’s tac-display recorded five metres until engagement when a transmission icon flashed urgently on his helmet lens. It had an Imperial signature, emergency coded. The message spooled as rune-text across the display:

Incoming. Fall back five metres and stand fast.

A high-pitched whine broke overhead. No time to retreat. Tsu’gan and Ankar locked their bodies as the ordnance hit. It struck the daemon-engine squarely and it disappeared in a storm of fire and shrapnel.

The explosion billowed outwards, engulfing the Terminators who weathered the blast like a cliff against the tide. When the dust dispersed, the daemon-engine was crouched almost fifty metres away but still intact. It rose slowly. Its dead eyes blazed brighter.

Behind the Salamanders, Ecclesiarchy troops were advancing in force. A stern-faced sister superior appeared from the roof hatch of an Exorcist. It looked more like a grotesque church organ than a battle tank, but there it was, auto-loaders priming for another missile launch.

Another pair of Immolators flanked it, heavy bolter turrets rattling. High velocity, mass reactive shells stitched a thick line all the way to the daemon-engine. The dense impacts never even scratched it. The tanks rolled on past the Salamanders, determined to block it. Two Rhinos sped after them, fully loaded with engines screaming.

‘See to your battle-brother.’ Praetor was on his feet. His battle-helm was shattered and he’d torn it off. He was bloodied, still groggy from the blow. It was incredible he lived, let alone stood.

Praetor scowled when it didn’t happen immediately. ‘Get Gathimu up.’

With some effort, Ankar and Tsu’gan hauled the Firedrake to his feet. His armour was badly damage, blackened by burns, but he nodded his willingness to fight.

Tsu’gan was ready to go again. ‘How do we kill it?’

‘We don’t.’

‘But Brother Kai’ru–’

‘Is gone.’ Praetor’s face was grim. This wasn’t an easy decision. ‘We make for the convent-bastion. They have given us that chance.’ He gestured to where the Battle Sisters fought and died furiously.

Incomprehension and anger warred in Tsu’gan’s burning eyes. ‘What of vengeance? Our brother’s death demands it!’

Praetor snarled, thrusting his thunder hammer in Tsu’gan’s direction. ‘I’ll fell you where you stand. Obey my orders.’

He showed them his back and stalked away. ‘On my lead.’

Despite himself, Tsu’gan was about to protest again, when Gathimu touched his arm.

‘We’ll win no honour for Kai’ru by dying here, our oaths unfulfilled. Sacrifice is not always physical, brother.’

Grief softened Tsu’gan’s face briefly, before the mask returned and his impotent wrath dominated.

The Firedrakes left the battlefield. The convent-bastion wasn’t far. Tsu’gan knew, in their wake, the daemon-engine would be close.

The heavy drumming of explosions outside sounded muffled through the thick convent-bastion walls.

Father Lumeon was pacing.

Why don’t they feel thick enough?

Since departing with the Crusaders, Ignacia had not returned. Five Celestians remained, a full half of her bodyguard, led by Sister Clymene. They eyed the long corridor beyond the force-shield nervously. It was dark, its emergency lighting low.

He looked away when the shadows started to grow and coalesce in his mind. His heart was racing and he gripped his aquila for support.

Evangeline showed no such anxiety. She was kneeling before the reliquary, serene, bereft of all doubt. Though her lips moved in prayer, she made no sound.

Sister Clymene hunched over a tactical console fashioned like a shrine in one corner of the chamber. She turned to Father Lumeon, who then went over to her.

A grainy pict-viewer displayed the situation beyond the convent-bastion’s walls. Flaring bolter fire polluted the image with bright flashes, overloading the external pict-viewer. Static from comm-link chatter obscured it further. But the picture was painfully clear to Father Lumeon. There was no escape. They would all die here. All that mattered was the relic.

He was muttering a prayer to the Emperor when four armoured forms came into view at the edge of the pict. Lumeon had never studied the Adeptus Astartes in any great detail but he recognised the insignia of the Salamanders and offered up his profound thanks.

Despite their bulky armour, the Adeptus Astartes progressed steadily through the Chaos picket lines, shredding foes with their holy bolters and bathing the heinous masses with cleansing flame. Father Lumeon was transfixed as a bald-headed giant smashed his way to the gate, his warrior brothers behind him. As the barrier wall began to open, a force of Celestians came out to meet the Adeptus Astartes. Desperate to get inside, the Red Rage couldn’t get close. The defenders were just too fierce to breach.

Once the Salamanders were through, the Celestians retreated and the gate banged shut again. Pintle-mounted fire from the towers intensified and a battle tank was rolled into the small outer courtyard to watch the gate.

The vox-unit on the tactical console crackled to life.

++This is Sergeant Praetor of the Salamanders First Company Firedrakes – acknowledge.++

Father Lumeon looked to Sister Clymene, who gestured for him to answer.

His relief was almost palpable. ‘Lords, the Emperor’s blessing you have come. I am Father Lumeon, Missionary High Priest attached to the Orders.’

++We are sealing the inner doors now.++

Father Lumeon’s tone betrayed his surprise.

‘Ah… But how will we get out? The relic–’

++Is in safe hands. Be more concerned that the enemy doesn’t get in.++

There was a short pause that filled the priest’s gut with lead.

++Something is following us. There is little time. Ready the relic, we will be with you soon.++

The vox-link died and silence returned.

Something is following us.

Something.

The words replaying in Lumeon’s head chilled him before he found some resolve.

‘Sister Evangeline.’ She was praying in front of the reliquary and looked up. ‘It’s time.’

The force-shield shimmered once then dissipated before Praetor and his Firedrakes stepped into the sanctum. It was quick to resolve itself again, the waft of ozone from its reactivation souring the air.

Tsu’gan scowled at such fear.

‘That won’t save you,’ said Praetor, looking down at the frail, old priest in front of him.

‘Then we shall have to rely on the Emperor’s grace to protect us.’

If Praetor had an opinion about this, he kept it well hidden.

The priest bowed. ‘I am Father Lumeon.’

The Firedrake sergeant kept the introductions brief. He showed him a small, cylindrical device mag-locked to his belt. ‘Teleport homer. Once locked onto its signal, my ship will transport us and the relic aboard.’ Praetor’s expression became regretful. ‘Its localised field is too small for all of us. Besides, you would not survive translation intact. I am truly sorry.’

Lumeon was already resigned to his fate. He had no fear of death, only of losing the relic.

Praetor’s gaze alighted on the reliquary of Sister Uthraxese where a slim novitiate was kneeling.

‘Brothers, make way.’ The Firedrakes standing behind him spread out. A gap for Praetor and the relic formed between them.

‘When translation occurs, there will be a massive exothermic reaction. Stand well back. Better still, leave the chamber.’ Praetor had moved into position. When he turned the novitiate was standing downcast before him.

‘I am tempered in Vulkan’s forge, sister. I have no need of benediction.’ Praetor looked up. ‘Priest, bring forth the relic. Our time is almost up.’

A dull explosion echoed through the convent-bastion walls all the way to the sanctum. Luminal red bathed the chamber from the tactical console. The outer wall had been breached.

Tsu’gan had a decent view of the screen from where he was standing. The ensuing fire-fight was brutal. A familiar form appeared through the carnage of bolter fire and smoke. Celestians fell like porcelain statues, shattered by its irresistible force.

‘The machine has broken through.’

It scythed through the defenders, crushing tanks and swatting Battle Sisters aside, until it reached the inner gate. Flamers and melta guns were brought up, but nothing fazed it. If anything, the daemon-engine looked bigger, a mutating hulk whose unnatural flesh strained at its corporeal bonds. Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed when he caught something through the melee. Before he could analyse it further, a stray explosion killed the pict-feed and the tactical console went dark.

Tsu’gan’s eyes met his sergeant’s.

It will be here soon.

Already, the heavy thump of the daemon-engine’s feet could be heard hammering up the corridor towards them.

Praetor’s face was solemn. None would survive. But retrieve the reliquary and it would all be worth it.

‘Now, priest.’

Father Lumeon looked nonplussed. ‘It is before you, Astartes. Sister Evangeline is the relic.’

What might have been anger crossed Praetor’s face. ‘Don’t mock me, priest. If you’ve lost your mind to Chaos, I’ll vanquish you here… now.’

‘Evangeline is the relic, a living relic! She beheld a vision from the Emperor on Earth and it has awoken her grace.’

Praetor saw the truth in the priest’s eyes, and beseeched Vulkan for his strength.

‘Then we have a problem.’

Father Lumeon was shaking his head. ‘No, no. You’re here now. Rescue Evangeline. The rest of us do not matter. You must do this, lord. I beg of you!’

Praetor ignored the priest’s pleas, addressing his Firedrakes instead. ‘Secure the corridor. Firepoints at every ingress.’

Gathimu and Ankar waited for the force-shield to deactivate again then lumbered through the doorway.

‘Astartes, what are you doing? The living relic–’

‘Is a girl, and thusly will not survive teleportation to my ship.’ Praetor spoke harshly. He wasn’t angry at Lumeon, thrusting the serene-looking novitiate towards him desperately. He was angry at the situation and the fact they faced a foe he knew they couldn’t best with strength of arms. Herculon Praetor was not used to such impasses.

Father Lumeon seemed to shrink with despair. Evangeline, by contrast, was utterly calm. Her serenity and grace emanated outwards. It was slow, but even Tsu’gan was beginning to feel his choler lessen just by being near her.

Praetor felt it too. He reached out to touch Evangeline’s cheek but stopped short.

‘I can see why the Red Rage wants you so badly, child. Have no fear, they won’t claim you.’

Judging by his ambivalent demeanour, Father Lumeon was unsure if that was a good or a bad thing given the circumstances. He looked askance down the corridor where the sounds of battle were growing louder.

‘What do we do?’

Praetor regarded the priest sternly.

‘Return to your reliquary, both of you, and pray.’

Tsu’gan couldn’t avert his gaze from Sister Evangeline as she knelt in prayer. Such poise and calm. She radiated tranquillity. Peace threatened to overcome his rage. Tsu’gan had not experienced such a feeling in a long time.

The din coming from the corridor had lessened in the last few minutes. It could mean only one thing. The Celestians had been defeated.

A ring of explosives rigged from the Battle Sisters’ frag and krak grenades booby trapped the entrance to the sanctum. When the daemon-engine breached the force-shield, it would set them off. By then the Firedrakes and their ward would be withdrawing into the room behind it. Tsu’gan had performed the short reconnoitre himself: from the sanctum to a long gallery, which then led to a transept and finally a chapel. Cloisters and dormitories bled off from this chamber, but the daemon-engine would have caught them at that point and have to be fought.

Tsu’gan didn’t fear it, but nor did he wish to be found wanting when the time came. A desire for flagellation at the brander-priest’s rod had welled up in him during the tour. Upon returning to the sanctum and Sister Evangeline, that masochistic urge had ebbed.

Gathimu’s voice came through on the comm-link. He and Ankar were at the opposite end of the corridor.

++It comes.++ Harsh-sounding bolter fire broke the feed. ++Glory to Vulkan and the Emperor, brothers. I go to them now.++

Gathimu disappeared, wading into the battle that Tsu’gan could only imagine beyond the corridor.

Ankar was behind him.

++Unto the Anvil, brothers.++

Even Evangeline’s presence couldn’t quell Tsu’gan’s anger. He fist was clenched. ‘I will carve their names into its hell-bound flesh.’

Praetor hefted his thunder hammer. ‘Honour their sacrifice with victory, brother.’

Tsu’gan was in no mood for pragmatism.

‘I hope their blood is worth this human’s grace. We don’t even know why she is so important to the Ecclesiarchy.’

Father Lumeon rose from the reliquary where he prayed with Sister Evangeline to approach the Firedrakes.

‘Do you know what true names are, Astartes?’

‘They are a daemon’s weakness, words of power that can banish them into the warp.’

Lumeon faced Praetor. ‘Yes, they are. Sister Evangeline knows true names.’

‘What do you mean, priest? Speak plainly.’

‘By being close to a daemon, she can hear their true names. She can banish the denizens of the warp with but a word! That is why she is so valuable. That is why you must save her.’

Only Evangeline’s presence kept Tsu’gan’s rage from boiling over. He wrenched off his battle-helm. He was livid. Praetor’s outstretched hand warned him to be still.

‘A pity you did not mention this before.’ The sergeant leaned in closer. ‘But what of the fact she is mute? How can she even utter such a word?’

Father Lumeon followed the Firedrake’s gaze to Evangeline then back again.

‘The Emperor’s divine will is not for us to question, it just is. I do not know how.’

Praetor slammed his fist into Tsu’gan’s chest to hold him. ‘Go back to your prayers, but be ready to move.’

He sighed, turning to Tsu’gan as the priest sloped away again. ‘Vulkan give us strength.’

‘There is no way to defeat this thing.’

Praetor’s brow furrowed. ‘Not with the weapons we have here at least.’ He paused, deciding on their final strategy. ‘We hold it as long as we can. Then do what must be done. The enemy must not claim her. Whatever vile sacrifice is in mind for this child will be far worse than death, for her and the sub-sector.’

‘I will do my duty.’

Praetor nodded. ‘If we still live, I will engage the beacon and pull us back to the ship.’

The two ident-runes on both Firedrakes’ tac-displays blinked out.

Tsu’gan’s face was grim. Their brothers were dead. He checked the load on his storm bolter. It was getting low. As Praetor backed away, gesturing for the priest and his novitiate to get up, Tsu’gan stomped into position in front of the force-shield. The five Celestians, including Sister Clymene, formed a firing line with him.

Silence flushed the corridor. Unseen fires sent flickering fingers of dusk across the metal walls. Smoke drizzled outwards like a carpet of fog. The heavy clank of the daemon-engine’s footfalls beat in time with the defenders’ hearts.

Tsu’gan aimed at the end of the corridor. ‘Brace yourselves.’

Five boltguns locked and loaded beside him.

‘Lower the force-shield.’

The energy veil flickered and dissipated at Tsu’gan’s command.

A large silhouette bled onto the gunmetal floor. The daemon-engine lumbered into view.

It was much larger than before. Its flesh strained against the machine shackling it. Blood and oil seeped from every cleft in its armour. Long, hell-runed chains scraped along the floor as it moved. Steam and smoke spewed from the engine on its broad back. And the eyes… the eyes burned with a baleful fire, stoked by the fear and rage of its enemies.

Tsu’gan hesitated for a second.

‘Fire!’

An incandescent bolter storm roared from the sanctum archway. For a few moments the daemon-engine took it, even staggered as the mass reactive shells exploded against it. Then it charged.

Its bulk had slowed it and it took a few seconds to overcome inertia but then it was moving, like a battle tank with engines screaming.

Tsu’gan estimated it would clear the corridor in approximately five more seconds.

‘Back into the sanctum. Now!’

The force-shield was reactivated in their wake.

Reunited with Praetor, Tsu’gan was retreating into the long gallery when the daemon-engine hit the force-shield. The energy veil stretched and crackled, sending jolts of electricity through the abomination’s metal frame. As if it was wading through bands of viscous light, the daemon-engine pushed and strained against the field. Then like rubber put under too much stress, the bands snapped and the veil shut down for the last time.

Tsu’gan’s storm bolter was already blazing halfway down the gallery when the daemon-engine stepped across the sanctum’s threshold and tripped the grenades.

Intensified by the close confines of the chamber, the explosion was deafening and blew smoke and fire in both directions. Shrapnel careened off Tsu’gan’s armour, embedding itself in the walls and floor.

Laying down suppressing fire all the way, Tsu’gan and the Celestians reached the chapel. Nothing stopped the daemon-engine. They didn’t even slow it down.

Three of the Celestians rushed forward, bolters flaring at close range, righteous fury in their eyes.

They were scattered in seconds, smashed and broken against the walls.

‘Protect them, brother!’ Praetor led with his storm shield, the daemon-engine looming ahead.

It went against Tsu’gan’s every instinct to leave his sergeant. But, shielding the non-combatants with his body and backing off from the battle, he obeyed. He was her last defence. Sister Evangeline needed him.

Expecting to slow, rather than smite it, Praetor was lasting longer against the daemon-engine this time. Its bulk actually worked against it, and the Firedrake was able to get in beneath its guard and land a few blows.

Bolter fire raked down the machine’s torso, before the last Celestian was impaled on a hell-blade. Transfixed, she shuddered once and then died.

Sister Clymene made the most of her comrade’s sacrifice by attaching a melta bomb to the daemon-engine’s blind side. Too close to withdraw, she was cooked in her armour while the abomination was rocked but stayed standing.

Only Praetor remained.

Tsu’gan and the others had almost reached the end of the chapel when he saw the sergeant smashed aside. Praetor was lifted off his feet and left a ragged hole in the wall where he’d crashed through it. His thunder hammer was sent spinning loose, embedding itself in the chapel floor just a metre from Tsu’gan’s grasp.

They’d reached the door to one of the dormitories. The daemon-engine had slowed, sensing its prey was near and at its mercy.

Tsu’gan’s storm bolter was empty. He’d have to crush her neck.

‘Shut your eyes.’

He struck Father Lumeon, as hard as he dare without killing him, knocking the priest unconscious before he could protest.

‘Shut your eyes, Evangeline.’

Tsu’gan reached around her tiny neck, sensed the warmth of her skin against his gauntleted fingers… and stopped. He thrust Evangeline into the centre of the chapel, where she stumbled and fell.

As he dragged Father Lumeon and closed the dormitory blast door behind them, he saw the daemon-engine close on Evangeline.

By Vulkan, I hope this works…

Alone, Evangeline faced the daemon-engine. She quietened her fast-beating heart and recovered from her stumble into a kneeling position. She began to pray.

With each silent benediction, the abomination that had been summoned to sacrifice her soul to Khorne slowed. Whereas before, brute force and fury had driven the daemon-engine to impossible feats, now every step was an effort. The closer the machine came to Evangeline, the more it began to shrink. Its grotesque musculature withered and atrophied. The baleful lights in its eyes started to fade, like a candle starved of oxygen.

This was the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary – its borders were anathema to rage and fear. Here, peace and tranquillity held sway. Sister Evangeline was the paragon of that fundamental truth. She was order in place of chaos, serenity opposed to anger. There was nothing in this place or in her for the daemon-engine to feed upon. She had disarmed it, and by the time it reached her it had returned to its former size, hell-blade poised above her bowed head but unable to strike. Ichor was drooling from between the daemon-engine’s armour plates, its body seized as if fossilized. Impotent, dwindling rage smoked away to almost nothing in its eyes.

The blast door opened and in stepped Tsu’gan. His eyes were closed. He felt Evangeline’s aura brush against him, and envelop him, like a cool breeze. Reaching out, he found the thunder hammer in his grasp and released it without effort. He could hear everything, every heart beat, every shallow breath.

A spark ignited in the daemon-engine’s eyes. Hellish hope became neutered fury as it found nothing but calm in the warrior before it.

In a pure moment of awakening, Tsu’gan hurled the thunder hammer.

It spun, end over end, until his righteous blow broke open the machine chassis that bound but also girded the abomination within.

Free of its fetters, fire surged into the now unbound daemon’s eyes. Hellish claws reached out from the shattered rib cage as it pulled loose.

I will feast upon this world.

Evangeline opened her eyes and uttered the first and last words she would ever speak. A true name…

Khartak-shek-hlad-bahkarn…

The daemon shrieked before a harsh corona of light engulfed it. Hot winds, the stench of ash and blood tainted the air, then was gone, the daemon with it. The banishing spilled outwards like a droplet expanding in a massive pool, beyond the chamber, beyond the convent-bastion walls, across all of Sepulchre IV.

In the chapel, only a smouldering hunk of machine metal remained. The scorched remnants of the engine were lifeless and inert.

Praetor staggered in, bloody but with storm shield in hand.

It was over.

Father Lumeon had roused too and stumbled in behind Tsu’gan. What he saw made him weep.

Evangeline’s aura had almost faded.

‘Her grace is spent. By speaking, she violated the most sacred credo of the Order. Her unique gift is lost.’ The priest was distraught, but glad Evangeline was alive.

Tsu’gan saw it differently. ‘A daemon is banished and the Red Rage has been dealt a severe blow.’

Reports were flooding in through his comm-link. He read them aloud. ‘Their forces are in retreat. The skies are clearing and the blockade lifts.’

Praetor scowled. ‘It will not last. We have only a short opportunity.’

Going to the comm-bead in his ear, he contacted the Implacable with extraction coordinates. Praetor turned to the priest and novitiate. ‘You will ride with us.’

Father Lumeon nodded, holding Evangeline close like a child.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Praetor took his thunder hammer from Tsu’gan and nodded.

‘A worthy blow.’

Tsu’gan saw the respect in his eyes and made the most of it. With Evangeline’s grace gone, the old anger was returning. He’d been a fool to believe it was anything more than a temporary reprieve.

‘What’s wrong, brother?’

‘Nothing,’ he lied. By the time the sound of the Implacable’s engines were overhead, his inner-pain, his rage had returned.

LEECHLORD

Frank Cavallo

The man who should have been dead opened his eyes just after sunrise. One of the scouts marching beside Jürgen von Sturm’s stretcher noticed him stirring, craning his neck and reaching out with languid arms. The ranger called out to his superior, a few paces ahead.

‘Sir, he’s coming around.’

The scout captain pulled back on the reins of his horse, slowing its pace until the gurney reached him. The haggard figure that lay upon it looked up at him with bulging, bloodshot eyes. He tried to speak, but the effort produced nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

‘Rest now, my friend. You’re safe,’ the captain said, handing him a flagon of water. ‘And fortunate, by Sigmar. If we hadn’t come upon you when we did, who knows what might have become of you.’

Von Sturm took it, clutching the jug to his lips and drinking every drop without a breath. The instant he was finished, he cast the empty bottle aside. His arms quivering, he grabbed at the captain’s leg, clutching the man’s leather boot with a trembling hand.

Von Sturm stared into the captain’s eyes with a haunted, empty gaze, as though looking right through him.

‘He’s mad, you know,’ he gasped. ‘Brilliant. Wise. So very wise… but quite, quite mad…’ His eyes rolled back. ‘The plague. The daemons. He cares for them like… like his own children.’

The forest trail opened into a clearing just ahead. The weathered battlements of Ferlangen rose up from the woodland with flame-scarred granite walls and a black gate of iron teeth. One of the scouts sounded a brass horn as the city came into view, blaring with the proper signal of three short notes and two long, alerting the sentinels atop the bastions. As the gates began to slowly roll open with the heavy clank of steel chains and pulleys, a pair of guardsmen marched out to meet the scouting party.

‘We have a man in need of attention here!’ the captain shouted. ‘Alert the citadel, and call for the Burgomeister’s doktor at once!’

Despite their disparity in rank, the guardsmen openly balked at the captain’s order.

‘The Burgomeister’s own doktor?’ one of them questioned. ‘With all respect, sir, you can’t expect us to send word to the citadel at the return of every wounded soldier.’

‘This is no common soldier,’ the captain replied.

Von Sturm lurched up from the gurney again, reaching out towards the guardsmen with bony fingers.

‘You’re all in danger here,’ he muttered. ‘The doktor… The rat pox… All of you are in danger…’

One of the guardsmen saw the insignia on von Sturm’s cloak. Though tattered, stained with blood and ripped across the centre, the emblem was unmistakable.

‘He’s one of the Black Eagle Guard?’

‘We think so,’ the captain replied. ‘He was wandering alone on the edge of the Forest of Shadows, babbling just as he is now, talking of daemons and poxes.’

‘The Black Eagle Guard?’ the other sentinel replied. ‘But weren’t they–’

The captain waved off their concerns.

‘That’s a discussion for another time. This man requires care. Take him to the citadel. He must be tended to by the chirurgeon. General Vormann himself will certainly wish to speak with him. He’s the only one who knows what happened to the missing regiments.’

Doktor Matthias Kohlrek shook his head. ‘It’s no use,’ the chirurgeon said. ‘The man’s totally unresponsive. Whatever horror he encountered in the wilderness, it has left him delirious.’

Von Sturm lay on a bed of wool and straw in the musty, crowded room of the Burgomeister’s personal physician. He stared up at the ceiling, apparently caring nothing for the fact that his presence had brought together some of the most powerful men in the city.

General Heinrich Vormann stared down at the pathetic wretch, at a man who had once been one of Ostland’s finest knights. He refused to accept the doktor’s answer.

‘There must be something you can do,’ he said.

‘I’ve tried everything I can think of, for the last twelve hours. Nothing appears to work,’ the doktor replied. ‘It makes no sense. He shows signs of recent injuries, but they all appear to have been healed. If this fever passes and the rashes subsides, he should be just fine.’

‘We need to know what happened to this man, and to his brothers-at-arms,’ Vormann said. ‘Whatever savagery befell them, it still stalks the dark forests beyond these gates.’

Doktor Kohlrek, a hunched and withered old man, rubbed his fingers into his exhausted eyes. For a moment, the general did not press the physician. Then von Sturm turned from his mindless contemplation of the walls to stare directly at the warlord.

‘The enemy is within! Kill me now, or you will all die here,’ he said, before collapsing back onto the bed.

General Vormann’s stoic face paled. He dismissed everyone, sending away his own retainers and the court officials with a wave and a terse command. Once the room had emptied, he looked back to the doktor, now slumped in a chair.

‘There must be something more you can do,’ the general said.

Doktor Kohlrek did not respond.

General Vormann turned and grabbed the doktor by his dirty apron, yanking him from his seat.

‘The rest of the army is rotting out there in the cold mud,’ he seethed. ‘If there is any chance that he might be able to tell us how that happened, then we’ll do it. You’ll do it.’

‘There is a chance,’ the doktor replied. ‘But our only weapon now is patience. If his fever is going to break, it will do so overnight. If it worsens, I’m afraid no medicine in the world can help him.’

General Vormann released his grip. He looked over again at von Sturm, writhing in listless delirium on the bed.

‘How soon will you know?’ the warlord asked.

‘I will stay by his side tonight. Return in the morning. If he lives through the dawn, we may yet learn what happened to him out there,’ Doktor Kohlrek said. ‘Shallya only knows what horrors this man has witnessed. I imagine they will torture his mind as the fever burns itself out.’

Jürgen von Sturm stared into the darkness. He heard laughter, echoing in the distance. He smelled brimstone and torch smoke. He sensed a thousand things, all at once. Everything was a blur, every sight, every sound and every thought.

Then, in an instant, it all came back to him to him. And his ordeal began again…

He was in the forest. He was with his men, riding with his sword unsheathed, though he saw no enemy. On a light-armoured stallion he trailed his comrades as they drove deep into the murky forests of northern Ostland. The grim, familiar parade of the Black Eagle Guard marched ahead; an ordered line of three hundred battle-hardened veterans, always spoiling for a fight.

His fellow mounted knights flanked the marching column. Like him, they wore white tunics over their steel plate, emblazoned with the scarlet bull of the Grand Principality, all of them yellowed and frayed from exposure, caked in dust and soot. The bulk of the ranks were grizzled foot soldiers, pikemen with craggy faces and untrimmed beards. They marched in pairs with their longswords and bedrolls slung across their backs, in mail hauberks and gore-stained leather jerkins.

Strips of wool were tied around arms, legs and torsos, stained red with the blood of wounds endured over the long weeks of their campaign, battle after battle against an inhuman enemy horde that never seemed to tire.

Von Sturm clutched at his own bandaged injury when a gust of cold wind passed over the column. Every time he shifted in his saddle, the steel of his cuirass rubbed against the wound in his side. It brought a wince to his frost-burned face, sweating despite the cold. He grimaced and snarled against the pain, a constant effort to steel himself against the complaints of his own body.

He reached under his plate mail to feel the tender swath of broken flesh, where a dirty ratman blade had ripped across his belly. He inspected his hand – the palm of his glove was slick with bloody pus. The wound wasn’t healing, festering now for the better part of five days, since the cowardly vermin had stormed their camp by night, forcing him into combat without armour for the first time in years. But von Sturm shrugged off the infection, even as a chill sent a shudder through him that had nothing to do with the cold.

He looked ahead, squeezing his eyes tight to make them focus. He scanned the wintry woodlands, seeking any unnatural movement amid the copses of naked trees, clumped together and shivering in the icy wind. His ears caught every rustle in the thorny underbrush and every raspy squawk in the grey skies. A dead carpet of fallen leaves lay underfoot, layer upon layer of wet mulch and dry brambles. Every footstep and hoofbeat crackled and squished in the loam, sending up tiny divots of foul steam from the permanently composting ground.

None of it escaped von Sturm’s awareness, as he kept a mental note of his surroundings: the sights, the smells and the sounds. Ever growing, always changing. It was one of the habits that had kept him alive through more battles than he could name. And the more he concentrated on his environs, the less attention he paid to the pain in his side. Or the chills, the sweats and the cough that now burned in his lungs.

The further his column pressed into the Forest of Shadows, the more the haunted woods seemed to close in around them. Winter-shorn, sclerotic trees huddled in gaunt thickets, grown together in tangled clusters that merged into a low-hanging canopy overhead. The branches rattled with every turn of the wind, as if threatening to reach down and clutch at them as they rode beneath.

For all the macabre eeriness of the woods however, nothing von Sturm saw troubled him – not until an hour past midday. Then something caught his eye that banished all thoughts of his own pains.

It was just a hint at first, a shape in the distance.

The outline was hard to make out, only barely visible over a rocky knoll to the far left of his marching column. For a moment he thought it might be nothing but a twisted tree, half hidden in the mist and shadows. As he rode closer though, beyond the hill, he looked again. And this time von Sturm was certain.

It was a man.

A gauzy curtain of fog shrouded him. Von Sturm squinted, craning his neck and straining to see any detail. Though partly obscured by the dancing shadows of wind-tossed trees, he was able to make out the figure’s shape. What he saw made him shiver.

It was no lean warrior or muscular beast. The man’s height was stunted and his frame was fat; a slovenly girth bulging out of tattered robes that seemed to merge with the mist. Legends of the haunted forests had long spoken of such a watcher-in-the-woods. Von Sturm knew the tales well. He knew to dread the ghastly figure whose very appearance was the most grim of portents, an omen of disease and suffering known by many names.

The Plague-stalker. Old Sawbones. The Fecundite.

He studied the distant figure, mesmerised in a sort of morbid fascination. For a long, eerie moment the stout phantom stood perfectly still, until a shift in the winds broke the fog hanging around him, revealing the mad doktor’s walking staff. Twisted like a petrified black serpent, it was crowned with a daemonic skull marked across the forehead with a blood-rune. As von Sturm strained to see it through the haze, the mist continued to churn behind the ghastly icon, discoloured and fuming as though disturbed by the evil totem.

Von Sturm’s lungs seized up, tightening his chest and forcing a pained cough. As if in response, the skull turned its black, empty eye sockets to stare directly back at him.

His blood ran cold.

An instant later his chest seized again, worse this time. Von Sturm turned away to catch his breath, and to steady his quivering limbs. When he looked again, only a moment later, there was nothing. The strange figure was gone.

He gathered himself, taking several long, ragged breaths until his heart stopped pounding like a warhammer in his chest. Then von Sturm left his lieutenant in command of the rearguard, and he rode double-quick for the front of the column.

He reined his galloping steed back to a trot when he came within a few dozen yards of the command retinue’s crimson and sable flags. The noble in charge of their expedition, Ludwig Ehrenhof, saw him, and called out to von Sturm as he approached. The youth was as unmistakable for his gaudy gold-plated helmet and matching cape as he was for his beardless chin and boyish face. Though he was seventeen years von Sturm’s junior, as the nephew of Count Valmir himself, the young equestrian had been awarded command of their prestigious order.

‘What brings you from your post this hour, Jürgen?’ Ludwig asked.

Von Sturm wasted no time with pleasantries, as he rarely did.

‘My lord, I saw something in the woods. Off to our left, about a mile back,’ he said.

‘Nothing troubling enough for you to sound a general alarm, I see,’ Ludwig replied, no hint of worry evident in his confident tone. ‘What was it?’

Von Sturm pondered the question for a moment.

‘A man,’ he replied at last. ‘At least, it looked like a man. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back he… it was gone.’

‘Just one man?’ Ludwig joked. ‘I think our lads can handle that.’

‘I don’t know that it was a man. I don’t know what it was,’ von Sturm answered, his voice failing as the pain in his infected lungs grew worse. ‘It could have been…’

He let his voice trail off, unsure if he should continue. Ludwig prompted him.

‘It could have been what?’

‘Festus,’ von Sturm muttered, almost ashamed of himself for saying the name out loud.

Ludwig shook his head. ‘Festus? The mad doktor? Are you getting jittery in your old age? My uncle told me that you were the keenest officer he ever rode with. Not a man given to wild imaginings.’ He seemed to take a long moment to look over von Sturm, who was trying hard to fight against the fevered shivering that gripped his bones.

Von Sturm growled at the young noble under his breath, raising his voice in frustration.

‘I’m fine. And I’m telling you that we must be careful in these lands. Dangers of every sort lurk in these woods.’

Ludwig’s bare face flushed. He kicked his mount ahead, near enough to reach out and grab von Sturm by the cloak, pulling him close enough to whisper.

‘You may have known me since I was a child,’ he said. ‘But you must never speak to me as one in front of the men. Do you understand?’

He released the knight only a moment later, taking a moment to look him over a second time, closer now.

‘Is it the fever?’ Ludwig continued. ‘You look pale, old friend. And you’re drenched with sweat on the coldest day we’ve had out here. Let the apothecary have a look at you.’

‘I said I’m fine. Maybe it was nothing. Let me send out a party, so we know for certain,’ von Sturm said.

‘No, our orders are clear. This is not a scouting expedition. My uncle gave us one mission. Search out the warband that savaged Salkalten and destroy every last one of them before they reach any of the villages further south. That’s exactly what I intend to do to those mongrel beasts.’

‘If you’d just allow me to–’

They both stopped. A horn sounded from somewhere in the woods. It was a low-pitched, moaning call and it echoed between the barren trees. The ghostly howl raised a murmur from the men.

‘Steady, men,’ Ludwig called out.

The horn faded away. A tense silence descended, but only for a moment. A shuffling, skittering noise replaced it. The pitter-patter of a thousand footsteps, seeming to come from every side this time.

‘On your guard, men!’ von Sturm commanded, his training and experience taking over. ‘Form up the lines, prepare defensive formation!’ The infantry responded with practised skill – shifting in position, drawing blades and strapping down their shields.

They were just in time. The haunted forest came alive an instant later. A chittering horde teemed out of the mist, as though spawned from the foul earth itself.

Their lean bodies were covered in coarse, prickly fur. Most were pale brown or the dull grey shade of peat smoke, with inhuman snouts flanked by bristle-like whiskers.

Ratmen.

They attacked with the same speed with which they scampered out of the shadows, leaping and pouncing from different directions with every slash and thrust. Most carried no shield, instead whirling rusted blades in each claw-like fist. Most were dressed in filthy rags, with only a few sporting small iron breastplates and coats of rusted mail.

Upon reaching the battle-line, the horde broke off into smaller groups, setting upon knights or pikemen in parties of three or more. Though each stood about the height of a man, the rats preferred to swarm their enemies, shrinking from single combat and striking from multiple angles at once. Von Sturm drew his blade and slew two of the vermin in short order. The third attacker did not press the fight; instead he yelped, threw a handful of dirt in the knight’s face and slunk back into the shadows in their common, cowardly fashion.

Though still coughing and sweating, the ardour of battle brought a surge to von Sturm’s creaking bones. He bounded into the fray atop his stallion, cutting a path through the heart of the swarm. He hacked down at the foul attackers from his saddle, swinging his longsword in a series of practised, deadly arcs. Each punishing sweep ended with the wet thump of edged steel chopping through muscle; the same cruel sound no matter the victim, human, greenskin or beast. Rodent blood splattered across his armour, soaking his riding gloves until every clench of his fists sent red rivulets down his arms.

A single lethal stroke felled two ratmen with one swipe, the first disembowelled and the other decapitated. The moment of respite offered him a chance to pull back his steed, and to once again survey the fight, this time from the far side of the field.

The distraction cost him.

Von Sturm felt his horse lurch and stagger. He turned to find a jagged lance blade sticking through the stallion’s neck. Swathed in warm blood, the halberd was thrust clean through the horse’s flesh, the serrated edge only barely missing von Sturm’s belly.

He saw three ratmen howling in triumph underneath, still twisting the shaft of the spear, trying to direct the great, dying stallion to the ground like a felled cedar. He reached down, grabbing one by the throat, hauling it across the saddle like a rag doll.

He stared at the whimpering ratman for an instant. Even in the midst of battle, with blood-stink filling the air, von Sturm could smell the nasty sewage reek that clung to its fur. A nest of fleas infested its hide, spilling out from its undercoat as von Sturm tightened his fist into a strangling death-grip. Choking as its larynx collapsed, the ratman hissed, opening its mouth to threaten its captor with two pairs of pointed yellow incisors. Von Sturm held fast, grimacing at the rotten-egg breath and the flecks of bloody saliva it spat with every wheeze, until the ratman finally fell still.

Only an instant later, the front legs of his whinnying horse buckled, trapping von Sturm’s left ankle in the stirrup as it twisted on the way down. Von Sturm tried to pull his leg free as the steed fell, and to clutch at his sword simultaneously.

He accomplished neither.

The murdered stallion did not obey the path the ratmen sought for it, instead crumpling into the gully of a dead riverbed, barrelling von Sturm underneath its great girth like a catapult. Agony tore through him – he felt his thighbones snap as the massive beast rolled over him, pulling his ruined left leg from its socket.

He let loose the deepest, longest scream he’d ever uttered.

Then everything went black.

It was hours before von Sturm’s wits returned to him.

He came around slowly, looking out through blurry eyes and muttering what he expected to be his final prayers to Sigmar.

The woodlands were littered in every direction with the remains of his comrades, their corpses hacked to pieces in a wasteland of broken armour and mutilated flesh. Mud and blood blended in putrid puddles. Flies swarmed and carrion birds cried overhead, circling the fields before their rancid feast.

Still trapped under the carcass of his steed, his broken legs had gone numb. His fever swelled. Every breath burned like cinders in his lungs. Lingering somewhere near the edge of delirium, his eyes wandered over the desolation, overwhelmed by the terrible sights, the awful smells and the pained whimpers of those other cursed few who were not yet dead.

But there was something else. Something worse stalked the fields of ruin.

A strange flock of creatures fanned out around him, leaping and crawling over everything in sight; some no larger than horseflies, others as large as hounds. The herd was horrific. Some of the beasts were nothing more than torsos dragging themselves along with claw-like hands. Others rubbed exposed organs and intestinal tracts against the rocks, slurping and lurching and drooling as they moved about. Smaller, faster creatures crept between them, neither insect nor reptile nor bird, but bastardised hybrids of all these things. Some had bulging, bullfrog eyeballs dripping with viscous tears; others were without eyes altogether. Prickly grey tongues dangled to the side of maws lined with broken teeth, nestled beside up-turned fangs, the sharp ivory coated in layers of dried mucus. Those daemons not sniffing for carrion or picking through the human debris mounted their packmates, stroking and grooming one another in unnerving displays of affection.

A familiar, shambling figure trailed the daemon swarm, ragged and moth-eaten.

He ministered arcane rites to the dead and the dying. Carrying his skull-topped staff, the macabre old doktor studied several of the corpses in particular, fiddling with disembodied limbs and scraps of bloody meat like a fishmonger at market.

Festus.

His immense girth was swaddled in grimy, tattered robes; the demands of his grossly distended physique had ripped and stretched everything he wore. The woollen threads were browned with age, their natural colour soiled in shades of dried excrement and crawling with cultures of green and black mould. Barefoot in spite of the cold, his toes were uncommonly large, dirty and tipped with ingrown, thickened nails.

A rusty bandolier chain was slung over his shoulder, dangling boiled human skulls. It was tied with braided scalps to an enormous wooden chest he wore like a rucksack. The open pack rattled with the clinking of dozens of glass vials, most half-filled with milky, bubbling fluids, a few glowing with a poisonous luminescence.

Hissing snakes slithered around the enormous crooked staff he clutched in his left hand. The daemonic skull that had fixed its ghostly sights on von Sturm hours earlier still moved with a sinister, sentient independence.

His own face was a diseased mess – a bulbous nose dribbled slow, sticky mucus onto chapped lips, while cysts drooled pus down his fat cheeks, pock-marked with open sores of necrotic flesh and mouldering ulcers. His jowls slobbered, submerging his jaw under a neck that bulged like a toad’s.

Von Sturm watched him, surrounded by the daemon host, sifting through the bodies of the dead. It was clear that Festus was no thief. He took nothing from the corpses he examined, but he was looking for something. It was only when von Sturm coughed again that he realised what that was.

Festus was looking for him.

Festus turned at the raspy sound of von Sturm’s straining lungs. Even from a distance, in the dim of the gloaming von Sturm could see his wild eyes lighting up at the sound of the putrid phlegm coughed out from the dying knight’s throat.

The fat, dishevelled old doktor ambled closer, navigating the fields of the dead with uncommon grace. He stopped a few feet from von Sturm, looking down at him buried under mud and rotting horseflesh. The mad doktor said nothing; he seemed only to study him, listening to the tortured wheezing that came with every breath, sampling the odours of decay. He appeared to take an interest in even the smallest details of the fallen knight’s predicament, but without any apparent regard for his suffering.

‘I know you,’ von Sturm finally said, his voice hoarse and faltering. ‘I know who you are.’

There was no reply.

‘You’re Doktor Festus,’ he continued. ‘They say you were… the greatest physician in the Empire. That there was no ailment you… couldn’t cure. Yet now, it seems…’

The bloated figure smiled with a wide, crooked grin, exposing irregular rows of rotten teeth, some worn down to stumps, some stained urine-yellow and coated in brown plaque. When he lowered his filthy, green hood his misshapen head was exposed: pallid, veiny skin that had rarely seen the sun, sprouting matted locks blackened from years of sebaceous grease and infested with lice.

He lifted his porcine nose like a bloodhound, sniffing over von Sturm’s hands, then his chest and finally all around his face. As if searching for a scent, or following an invisible trail, he nodded with peculiar satisfaction after every different breath.

‘High fever. Cold sweat,’ he said, as though cataloguing rather than explaining. ‘Dark yellow mucus. Pale green rash spreading outwards from the face and throat, covering the extremities. A raspy cough, high in the chest. Yes, it’s just as I suspected. So very rare, and so very beautiful.’

‘Can you… help me?’ von Sturm muttered. ‘Whatever has become of you now… If it is true that you once mastered the medicine and remedies of every realm… Can you heal my wounds?’

Festus sneered. Rather than answer he continued to study the knight’s symptoms. This time he reached in close and stroked his chubby finger along the edges of von Sturm’s deep, infected wound. A slather of congealed pus and clotted blood coated his digit, which he promptly brought to his lips. Tasting the foetid mélange, Festus nodded again, now with a more certain expression.

Von Sturm feebly brushed his hand aside. ‘I ask again… do you know how to heal me?’

Again there was no reply, other than a derisive shake of the doktor’s bloated head.

‘Please,’ von Sturm begged. ‘Long have I served the Count of Ostland. Whatever you desire, I will see that he makes it yours, but I implore you, if the power is within you, cure me of these foul afflictions!’

The plea brought a snarl from Festus. His eyes bulged with wrath. He recoiled from von Sturm as though taunted by the deepest of insults. For a long, quiet moment the old doktor looked away, clenching his fat fists and muttering to himself. Finally he turned back to the knight, a devious glimmer in his eyes.

‘Have you any children?’ he asked.

Von Sturm puzzled for a moment, afraid of giving away more information than necessary to the deviant, disturbed figure.

‘I did,’ he said. ‘A son and a daughter. They died some years back.’

‘Died... or were killed?’

The question jolted von Sturm as no blade could have. A tear came to his eye.

‘Murdered. During a greenskin raid on our village,’ he answered, barely above a whisper.

The suggestion brought an even more scheming glare to the doktor’s face. ‘It must have been a horrible end,’ he said. ‘Tell me, did you see them die?’

The memory brought an ache to von Sturm’s chest worse than any caused by his injury.

‘No, I was on a campaign north of Kislev when it happened,’ he said.

Festus drew closer, near enough that von Sturm could smell the ammonia fumes of his foul breath with every word. ‘If I told you I could run the sands of time in reverse,’ the mad apothecary began, ‘to wind back the years and let you watch their demise… would you? Would you watch your beloved children being killed?’

Von Sturm recoiled, shaking his head to rid himself of the images, straining to control the anger they sparked in his heart. He clenched his fists, shook his head and whispered under his breath. He looked up at Festus, staring back at him with a knowing, sad glare. Then he looked down to the boils festering on his hands, the pus drooling from the wound in his side, the bloody phlegm he’d coughed up onto his own chest.

‘I would no sooner cure you than you would watch your own children put to the sword,’ Festus said.

The mad doktor turned from von Sturm, raising his staff and muttering under his breath once more, but this time in a foul, dark tongue. In response, the daemon swarm coalesced, drawing inwards to the call of their master’s strange summoning. The motley horde jammed together, scrambling over one another with scaly tails and claws, all eyes turned to Festus, like a pack of docile wolves panting in anticipation of a command.

The Leechlord did not speak. He lowered his staff, pointed it towards von Sturm and nodded. As if in response, the throng surged, lifting themselves in a tide of warped flesh. Roused to action and moving with a single purpose, they descended as one upon von Sturm.

The trunks of two massive oaks stood side by side, intertwining as they rose so that the upper branches had grown together. Like a sentinel of the woods, the twins stood apart from the otherwise dense foliage in a wide clearing.

The conjoined trunks were thick, bloated and bulging outwards with growths sagging from the grey bark. Few branches grew lower than the height of two men. Those that did sprout off the main rise were as wide and round as full trees themselves, reaching out in weird perpendicular growths. Their joining blotted out all but a few slivers of moonlight. It felt like the interior of a cavern, but the whole of the area reeked – the rank, heavy stench of excrement mixed with the stale smell of death.

The daemon-swarm brought the crippled von Sturm there, ferrying him through the woods like a colony of giant ants.

A scream howled through the dimness. It wailed as if suddenly roused to agony, then lapsed, fading into a voiceless whimper. A greenish-yellow gleam ignited at the death-knell of the scream. Von Sturm could see the source of the light and the wail, for they were one and the same – a man hung suspended in an iron gibbet, his limbs shackled and his grey, naked flesh pierced with corroded rods. Fitted around his skull like a battle-helm, the top of the iron coffin merged with his head, fused into one being by some black sorcery.

It was from there that the sickly light emanated, from a translucent, plasma-churning globe that grew from the poor wretch’s brain. Festus was standing beside him, and quite clearly found no horror in the display.

The glow revealed the true nature of his camp. While there were no permanent structures to be seen, it was clearly more than a mere haven in the wilderness; to von Sturm it seemed more like a makeshift workshop, though for only the most foul of experiments.

A dozen human effigies lined the periphery. As far as the green light penetrated, rows of corpses hung suspended from the tree limbs. Rotting away in different stages of decomposition, maggots oozed through the flesh of some, while others, the skin desiccated and blackened, were falling to pieces.

Each body was suspended on hooks and rusty chains, like slabs of slaughtered chattel in a butcher’s pen. Many were incomplete specimens, missing whole limbs, pieces of limbs or merely other, smaller assets – eyes, noses and ears having been severed and stitched over in gruesome acts of surgery.

The swarm laid von Sturm down on a flat section of stone, almost like an altar or a physician’s examination table. He could feel nothing in either leg. Every minute brought new kinds of agony from the wound in his side. His fever had swelled. His vision betrayed him, focusing in and out and settling on a blurry medium, while the cough and the burning in his lungs made him shiver and convulse.

Festus stood over him yet again, dismissing the beast-swarm with a wave. The doktor then set down his massive wooden pack. It opened like a cabinet, revealing a portable laboratory stocked with all manner of foul gear.

Countless vials, tubes and flasks hung in niches, bubbling and fuming. Hundreds of age-worn scrolls were crammed into slots carved from human skulls beside them, the parchment and vellum yellowed and frayed. There were scalpels of varying sizes, along with needles, clamps, pincers and hooks and a pair of bone-saws with dried blood crusting the teeth.

When von Sturm saw the macabre implements, his heart began to race.

‘Foul trickster! What do you intend for me?’ he demanded.

Festus ignored him, tending to his vials and rusty tools.

‘If you mean to torture me for information, I will give you none. Do with me as you wish, but I am a loyal servant of the Empire and I would rather die than betray my lord!’

At length, Festus turned back to von Sturm again.

‘You were cut with a skaven blade, wielded by a rat from the Clan Pestilens,’ he said.

‘How do you–’

‘The metal was coated with rodent saliva, itself infected with a plague that is most common among the short-clawed brown rat populations of the Under-Empire. It is spread among them by the green-winged flea. A particular favourite of mine actually, quite a rare strain indeed.’

‘Rare?’

‘In humans at least. Although it was once deadly to them, the rats have grown to live with it rather well. Among men, however, this pox is quite virulent. You should have died days ago,’ he mused, almost to himself. Then he cocked his head to the side and looked at von Sturm again, as if for the first time. ‘Why haven’t you?’

‘Maybe I’m just lucky,’ von Sturm replied.

Festus shook his head, either missing the attempt at humour or looking past it.

‘Do you know what a plague wants?’ he asked. ‘What it desires the most?’

Von Sturm puzzled, rubbing his increasingly blurry eyes. The question made no sense to him. Given the pain rippling through his chest and his head, he could think of only one reply.

‘To kill?’ he wheezed.

Festus wagged his fat finger like a school teacher.

‘That is what a plague does, not what it desires,’ he answered. ‘Tell me, what would you say are the greatest plagues of all the ages?’

Again, von Sturm struggled to think, fighting through the delirium to force himself to consider.

‘I don’t know… Blacklegge. The ghoulpox. Gnashing fever, perhaps,’ he replied.

‘I treated them all,’ said Festus. ‘And they killed thousands, perhaps tens or even hundreds of thousands. The dead went uncounted.’ Festus drew in closer to von Sturm yet again. ‘Failures all,’ he whispered.

‘I don’t understand,’ von Sturm croaked. ‘If you mean to kill me, then get on with it. I should have died on the field, not like this.’

Still Festus paid his suffering no mind.

‘Can you guess why they failed, all those terrible plagues?’ Festus asked, continuing the exchange with little urgency.

Von Sturm shook his head. He was losing his strength by the moment.

‘It was not because they killed, but because of how they killed. Exactly because they were so very deadly,’ Festus replied. ‘The most successful plague is not the one that kills overnight. On the contrary, the pox that eats through its host too quickly is no use to me at all.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because you aren’t dead,’ Festus replied.

‘By the gods, you really are insane!’

Festus shook his head. ‘A host,’ he said. ‘That is what every plague desires. A home where it can thrive, a strong specimen with enough resistance to stay alive long enough for the pox to grow, to mature. To spread. You see, my friend, the greatest plague of all is the one that can spread without killing, at least not until it has used its host for all that it has to offer, to spawn new disease swarms to continue on, and on and on. For that it needs a sturdy victim, such a rare thing to find. But when one does appear, there is no more wonderful pairing to be had. A perfect symbiosis – the most virulent of poxes spread by the most durable of hosts.’

Horrible realisation began to dawn on von Sturm. ‘No,’ he replied, his breath failing. ‘Kill me. Kill me now.’

‘Kill you? I must say, I fear that you have understood nothing I’ve told you,’ Festus replied. ‘No, in fact killing you is the last thing I mean to do, not when you’ve shown such natural talent. No, I mean to leave you even better than I found you. In my hands, you will become perfect.’

‘Perfect? I don’t understand,’ he wheezed. ‘Do you mean to heal me after all?’

‘I shall shortly bestow a great gift upon you,’ Festus said. ‘You’re a lucky soul – few who have crossed my path have ever been as fortunate as you. The gods have truly blessed you indeed. I intend to see that your blessing is not wasted.’

Festus raised a vial, bubbling with sickly froth and green fluid. In his other hand he lifted a giant rusty needle, smiling and laughing as he brought them near. Von Sturm breathed and tried to speak, but lost consciousness before the words came to his lips.

Von Sturm held his eyes tightly shut. He remembered everything, but he hoped that he was wrong. He hoped he was mistaken. He prayed that it wasn’t true, that all of it was a dream. A nightmare. But when he finally opened his eyes, his worst fears were confirmed.

It was morning. Soft, pale light spilled in through a pair of open windows. Everything was utterly still. He was not in the lair of Festus – instead he lay once more in the care of the Burgomeister’s doktor in Ferlangen, with the physician seated beside him, sleeping in his chair.

Von Sturm rose from the bed and shakily nudged the slumped figure of Doktor Kohlrek. The chirurgeon did not respond. He grabbed the old man with both hands, trying to rouse him, but his head merely sagged. His neck was limp, his body lifeless.

The Black Eagle knight lifted the doktor’s chin, and the reason was immediately clear. Doktor Kohlrek’s face was covered in a pale green rash. His cheeks were swollen with blisters. Yellow phlegm had dried into a crust across his lips.

Von Sturm stumbled across the room, clutching at a mirror hanging from the far wall. He stared at his reflection in the polished glass.

He froze.

His own face was a twisted ruin. Green pustules swelled across his flesh. His hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving patches of mottled, scaly skin. He tore off his tunic, and his blood ran cold. Beneath his clothing he saw that his entire body was mangled by the pox, warped and seething with pus.

But he felt nothing. The burning in his lungs was gone, as was the cough, and the fever. He felt no sickness. No malady of any kind. The strength in his legs had returned.

He bounded across the room and threw open the door, but no guards stood outside. He realised why – they were slumped against the wall, their flesh riddled with weeping sores. Down the hall, more bodies lay sprawled on the floor, all of them dead from the same affliction. From his affliction.

He loped down the corridor, tearing open the heavy front door of the building and stumbling into the open air beyond.

A silent horror greeted him, and an unimaginable stench of rotting flesh.

The city was no more. Corpses littered every street, collapsed against doorways or horse troughs, frozen in their final moments of retching agony. Soldiers, women and even children lay where they had fallen. Bloated flies buzzed in the cold air.

Jürgen von Sturm sank to his knees. The words of Festus echoed in his head.

The most virulent of poxes spread by the most durable of hosts.

He screamed to the heavens, but there was no one else left alive in Ferlangen to hear him.

BLOODLINE

James Swallow

Inside the walls of the sepulchre, time had no meaning.

There were no windows through which to see the passage of night and day across the distant Chalice Mountains and the great red deserts of Baal, no mark of moments from waxen candles, no clock but the beating of Astartes hearts. Light, soft and oily, fell from lume-sconces in the stone walls, eternal and unflickering. It cast hazy shadows over the figures who moved about the chamber, their voices low and intense.

The sepulchre’s perfume was one of metal and rust, a smell like wet copper; blood by the gallon had spilled in this place over the millennia, so much so that the scent of it had penetrated into the stone itself. In the middle of the chamber was a marble table, the white rock stained pink with the vitae of all those who had bled upon it. A Blood Angel lay there now, stripped of his wargear and clad only in thin cotton vestments. Black chains of tempered steel and manacle rings held him in place, for so great were his exertions that without them he would have broken his own limbs as he thrashed and tensed in agony; and yet the warrior lay not awake, not aware, but in some dreamless non-state that was neither wakefulness nor coma. It was only the pain he felt, his cries muffled by a gag of leather across his cracked lips.

Beyond the voices of the Sanguinary Priests and the rattle of the chains, the stifled cries of the warrior were echoed far above, down through the spiral corridors of the minaret that rose up overhead. Screams and shouts that would chill the soul reached into the sepulchre, from the pitiful ones held fast in the cells they could never be allowed to leave.

This place was the Tower of the Lost, the Tower of Amareo. Here it was that the Blood Angels brought their afflicted kinsmen when the nightmare gene-curses of the Black Rage and the Red Thirst became too much for them. The dark bequest of their long-dead Primarch Sanguinius, the Rage and the Thirst lurked in the hearts of every son of Baal – and only in battle, in the final service of the Death Company, could it be given purpose.

But there were some that ventured down the crimson path to such a degree that not even that honourable end would suffice. The tower was their prison, their asylum, their purgatory.

And now another comrade balanced on the verge of joining them.

Corbulo, the highest of the blood priesthood, watched his brethren orbit the body on the marble table, taking readings with auspex devices and supervising the work of the medicae servitors.

Sensing his scrutiny, Brother Salel, one of the Sanguinary Priests, detached from the group and approached him. ‘Master.’ He gave a shallow bow.

‘Lord Dante wishes to know if there has been any change in his condition,’ said Corbulo, without preamble.

The priest gave a grim nod. ‘Aye, and not for the better. The…’ He paused, searching for the right word. ‘The mixture grows more potent with each passing hour. I confess it is beyond the best of us to retard the process, let alone reverse it.’

‘There must be some way…’ Corbulo fell silent as he saw the slow shake of Salel’s head.

‘What he carries within him is like the distillate of a supernova, my lord. It consumes him, burns him from the inside out.’ The other man sighed. ‘No mortal vessel was ever meant to contain such greatness. This was inevitable.’

‘You will turn him over to me, then,’ said a new voice, one heavy and resonant, thick with old pain.

Corbulo turned to see an Astartes stalk out of the shadows, a Blood Angel in the night-black robes of a Chaplain. About him he wore steel honour chains bound to a book of catechism, and at his belt hung an ebon rod ending in a winged, golden chalice – the Blood Crozius, instrument of office for the Guardian of the Lost and the Warden of the Death Company. Brother Lemartes stared out at Corbulo from beneath his hood, his drawn, sunken face reminiscent of the death’s-head skull that adorned his wargear. Lemartes was one of the few men in the history of the Chapter who had fallen into the embrace of the genecurse and survived it – many said he still lived within the shroud of the Black Rage, but so great was his will that he resisted it day and night. As such, he was amply qualified to lead the Death Company into battle time and again. Salel took a step back, unwilling to stand too close to the Chaplain’s fuliginous aura.

Brother Corbulo studied him for a moment, and felt a curious pang of sorrow for Lemartes. What anguish it must be, he thought, to lead your tormented kinsmen into certain death, and each time remain the last man standing.

Lemartes held out his hand. ‘Give him to me. He will find a kind of peace in the cells above.’

Corbulo shook his head, snapping back to the matter. ‘No. No. Not yet, brother.’

‘Then why bring him to my tower at all?’ Lemartes retorted, showing his fangs. He pushed past the Sanguinary Priests to the marble table. ‘Look at him. Release him, Corbulo! It will be a kindness.’

‘It will be a waste!’ retorted the high priest. ‘You understand what he went through to bring the essence back to us? The battles fought and lives lost?’

Lemartes glared at him and spoke in a low whisper. ‘What I understand is that none of that would have been needed if not for the failures of the Sanguinary Priesthood!’ He leaned in. ‘Brother Caecus was one of yours. His hubris opened our home to the forces of Chaos!’ Lemartes spat the last word. ‘You are responsible for the Red Grail, Corbulo. You allowed our enemies to steal a measure of our Primarch’s holy blood.’ He jabbed a finger at the warrior in chains. ‘You brought this upon him!’

Corbulo said nothing. The hateful truth was, there was damning weight to the guardian’s words. The Blood Angel lying before him had been set on a quest to recover a vial of Sanguinius’s precious vitae, kept alive for ten thousand years – and he had done so, wresting it from the grip of the self-styled primogenitor of the eightfold path, the traitor Fabius Bile. But in doing so, the warrior had been forced to find the one safe place in which to protect the holy fluid: he had injected it into his own bloodstream.

And now it was killing him. The powerful essence was too much, even for the enhanced physiology of an Adeptus Astartes. The warrior had barely made it home to the fortress-monastery on Baal before he collapsed in the throes of a crippling fever. The astonishing potency was destroying the Astartes, consuming his own blood and transforming it into something of incredible, lethal power.

‘Rafen.’ Lemartes intoned the warrior’s name. ‘He is strong, but not strong enough. Soon the Rage and the Thirst will consume him, and he will not return. We must let this run its course.’

‘I believe he can survive!’ Corbulo insisted. ‘Each of us, every Blood Angel and successor is a Son of Sanguinius. Each of us carries the smallest measure of our primarch’s blood within us, gifted during our ascension to Astartes–’

‘The smallest measure,’ Lemartes repeated. ‘Aye! A mere drop, and that alone is enough to make a man into an angel of war! But Rafen has taken a dose a million times more potent! He cannot survive that.’

‘So we take it from him,’ said Corbulo, shooting a look at Salel. ‘We purge Rafen of what he fought so hard to recover.’

‘You… mean to employ the sarcophagus?’ said Salel, his expression stiffening. ‘Can such a thing be done?’

Lemartes shook his head. ‘It is foolish to even consider it. If Astorath were here, Rafen would already have found peace at the edge of his axe blade–’

‘But the High Chaplain is not here!’ Corbulo insisted. ‘His duties carry him far from Baal, and so the matter is left to us.’

Lemartes folded his arms over his chest. ‘What would Lord Dante say of this?’

‘He will endorse whatever path brings us back to equilibrium.’ Corbulo looked down at Rafen’s straining, tortured features, and tried to imagine the raging pain of the god-fire coursing through his veins. He could not let the warrior perish; Lemartes had cut him to the quick, and the guilt the priest felt was all too real. He had failed to protect the holy blood and allowed Fabius to steal it. He would not let the Chapter pay another cost by losing one more of their kinsmen to this matter. ‘Take Brother Rafen to the Hall of Sarcophagi,’ he commanded. ‘Find The Touch of Sanguine Dawn, and place him within it.’

With a frown, Lemartes stepped back from the side of the table and allowed the servitors to gather up the twitching body of the Blood Angel. ‘This will only draw out his suffering and make his death twice the agony. Where is your mercy, priest?’

Corbulo looked the Guardian of the Lost in the eye. ‘There will be no death today, Chaplain. I will not permit it.’

The great chamber was some strange melding of hospice and sculpture garden. Dotted with plinths of stone, each crested with a great orb-like carving of gold and brass, the Hall of Sarcophagi pulsed with a heartbeat like a living thing. Trains of thick cables and fluid-carrying conduits snaked from one orb to another, others gathering in bunches that vanished through gridded iron plates in the floor. Above, life-support nodes extended down from ornate silver racks, threading into openings atop each sphere.

The smell of blood and stone was here as well, but somehow not so coarse as it was in the tower. There, it was the smell of death; here, it signified new life, rebirth.

Many of the golden orbs were occupied, each minded by a sleepless menial constantly at work adjusting the flows of gene-active philtres and the operation of nourishment tubules. Corbulo studied the sarcophagus closest to him; he knew it well. It was Angel’s White Sun, one of the oldest in the Chapter’s inventory, forged in the years of the Great Crusade before the Heresy of Horus ten millennia ago. Like each of the orbs around it, Angel’s White Sun was a master-crafted piece of machinery, so advanced that even the Techmarines under the command of Brother Incarael could not fully fathom the intricacies of its workings. It was as much a work of art as it was a device for remaking men. Inside each of the operable spheres lay a Blood Angel aspirant, their flesh drifting in a bath of amnio-fluids mingled with alterants and accelerants that worked at their genetic structure, rewriting their bodies cell by cell. These mechanisms, combined with the powerful implant technologies created for all Adeptus Astartes, could transform a normal human being into the majesty of a Blood Angel. The aspirants who entered the sarcophagi as men would one day emerge as warriors of Sanguinius – at least, those that did not die in the course of the changing.

Some Blood Angels, when not at their duties or called to battle, would come to the Hall of Sarcophagi and slumber inside the very orb where they had been quickened. Many, Corbulo among them, believed that such periodic returns to the womb of their rebirth, spent connected to the blood-sifts, could cleanse the soul and stave off the eventual encroachment of the Rage and the Thirst. The devices had the power to heal a man as well as to change him.

He hoped such a thing might save the life of Brother Rafen.

Corbulo walked the rows of the orbs until he found The Touch of Sanguine Dawn, a fine example of the most noble sarcophagus, tooled in white gold and platinum, plated in brass and polished glassaic. Like Angel’s White Sun, it too dated back to the days before the Heresy, and it had been in service to the Chapter all that time, lovingly cared for by legions of helots and blood-servitors. Legend had it that The Touch was one of several sarcophagi carried into the battles of the Great Crusade itself, aboard the ships of the Blood Angel fleet.

Salel was supervising the menials; they had set Rafen inside and were almost complete in their preparations. Exsanguinator channels and vitae-guides had been bound into his flesh, blood pumps primed and ready to begin.

The senior Sanguinary Priest ran his hand down the open leaf of the sphere. Inside, the surface of the sarcophagus was etched with countless lines of tiny script in High Gothic, each one the name of a brother who had been quickened within it. He searched and found Rafen’s name there, a way down the roll of honour.

‘It is time,’ said Salel.

Corbulo nodded and looked up. He found Rafen staring at him, in the first moment of lucidity he had seen from the Blood Angel in days. ‘Brother-Sergeant…?’

Rafen’s hand gripped his arm. ‘I see…’ he whispered. ‘I see… him.’

‘And he will guide you,’ said the priest, signalling to Salel to seal the sarcophagus. ‘To life… Or elsewhere.’

Rafen’s eyes glazed over and his hand dropped as the orb folded shut like a closing flower. Corbulo heard the throb of fluids filling the interior, the crackle of metal as pressure within changed sharply.

Salel turned away. ‘What now?’

The Touch of Sanguine Dawn shimmered like a jewel. ‘We wait,’ said Corbulo, ‘and let the bloodline do its work.’

They left the chamber, neither of the priests once thinking to glance up at the gallery above; the thought to do such a thing was plucked from their heads and discarded. Unseen by them or any other, a single figure stood up there, half-shrouded in shadow, watching. His preternatural aura made him a ghost, and that was just as he wished it.

Mephiston, Lord of Death, Librarian and master psyker of the Blood Angels Chapter, leaned forward on the balcony and peered into Rafen’s sarcophagus, listening to the turmoil of the mind within.

He saw fire and pain and the colours of raw agony. The psyker’s hands tensed into claws around the stone balustrade of the gallery, knuckles whitening. Rafen’s psychic trace danced there before him like a stark flame in a hurricane, always on the verge of being snuffed out, fighting back with every spark of energy. Mephiston pushed his mind deeper into the maze of sensation, feeling for Rafen’s conscious thoughts.

Rafen was captured in the throes of a terrible fever-dream, a maddening flood of pain that manifested as baking heat and cloying dust. Mephiston could sense the warrior’s self, reaching the echo of it. He saw a measure of what Rafen saw; an unreal, nightmarish landscape of horror and destruction. He saw a battlefield piled high with eviscerated corpses, awash in lakes of freshly spilled blood.

The Flaw. It could only be the power of the gene-curse, he realised. The darkness within every Blood Angel given terrible freedom by the power of the primarch’s blood. The force of it staggered the psyker, and memories of his own boiled to the surface, threatening to pollute the clarity of his telepathic connection – memories of Hades Hive and his own journey toward the madness of the Rage.

Grimly, Mephiston detached the invisible feelers of his psychic power from the turbulent mind of the younger warrior. He could do nothing to help him now.

As he severed the last link, the Librarian took with him one final image from Rafen’s churning psyche – that of an aloof, winged figure clad in a magnificent sheath of golden armour, observing from a distance. Judging him.

‘Take cover!’

Brother-Sergeant Cassiel heard the cry ring out across the landing bay of the starship Hermia, and threw himself into the lee of a support stanchion just as the crimson-hulled Stormbird fell through the atmosphere shield and collided with the deck. The steel beneath his boots resonated with the impact. He flinched as a howling, rising shriek filled the bay: the Stormbird’s forward undercarriage had collapsed and it was riding on a pillar of fat yellow sparks, cutting a gouge through the decking. The proud winged teardrop of blood on the prow was scarred and wreathed in metal-smoke.

The craft slowed and finally halted, moments later to be swarmed by dozens of legion serfs bearing tanks of fire retardants. Cassiel swore a Baalite curse under his breath and approached the wounded craft. Beyond it, he could see the main hatch sliding shut like a gigantic iris; a sliver of green planet vanished out of sight. That would be the last he would see of the world called Nartaba Octus, the last any man would see of it as it was. The final few drop-ships were being taken aboard as the Hermia climbed up to a high combat orbit. From there, the ships of Task Force Ignis and the Blood Angels aboard them would conclude their work. The orders were clear, ratified by Sanguinius himself and struck with the signet of the Warmaster Horus Lupercal.

All human survivors from the scientific colony on Octus had been recovered; the xenos infesting the planet – a horde of dark eldar that had defied full extermination on the ground – would be shown the displeasure of Terra with a space-to-surface barrage from the flotilla’s laser batteries.

The alien reavers had fought hard, and with great tenacity. Cassiel had faced their kind elsewhere during the Great Crusade and punished them, but it seemed the xenos did not learn the Emperor’s lesson. When they were done here, Nartaba Octus would forever bear the scars of this conflict as a warning to those who defied the Master of Mankind and his Sons.

But for the moment, more immediate matters held his attention. Reaching the Stormbird’s hatch, he levered it open and extended his hand to help a brother exit the smoke-filled craft. He knew his face. ‘Sarga? Are you injured?’ he asked.

The warrior shook his head. ‘No, Cassiel. But we have a casualty… Then the reaver scum damaged the ship with a drone… We barely made it back in one piece.’

Cassiel beckoned a medicae servitor to bring a grav-litter closer as a second Astartes emerged from the ship, carrying another over his shoulder. The wounded Blood Angel wore the white and red armour of an Apothecary, but the ceramite was marred with splashes of dark arterial crimson, still wet from the spilling.

Cassiel saw the source of the wound and almost recoiled in disgust. Through a rent at the waist of the warrior’s power armour a length of something that resembled crystal, or perhaps ice, protruded from his body. Gruesome, sickly light glittered within the fragment, casting baleful colour across the Apothecary’s pale face.

‘He was tending to a civilian,’ Sarga explained, his voice flat with anger. ‘One of the sallow-eyed bastards shot him in the back. I killed it, but Meros had already fallen...’

Cassiel leaned closer. ‘Meros? Brother Meros, do you hear me?’

The Blood Angel’s eyes fluttered and he muttered something incoherent.

‘He fought through a raider squad alone,’ Sarga was saying. ‘Must have thought he’d dealt with them all.’

‘He’s not dead yet,’ Cassiel insisted, although Meros’s corpse-like pallor put the question to those words. The sergeant placed him on the litter and moved with it, out toward the infirmary elsewhere on the same deck. His eyes were drawn to the glassy splinter in the Apothecary’s side once more. Cassiel knew it for what it was: a soul-seeker.

The dart was the war-shot from an Eldar splinter gun, the venomous shard poisoned by conventional means, but doubly so by some monstrous form of psionic impregnation. So it was said, the toxin it exuded would not only destroy flesh, but also disintegrate a man’s very soul.

Cassiel, like every servant of the Emperor’s secular Imperium, paid little heed to such superstitious notions as spiritual ephemera, but he had seen the work of a soul-seeker before, seen it dissemble an Astartes from within… and part of him had been left wondering if the weapon had first killed the man’s essence before it murdered his flesh.

Sarga was at his side, his expression bleak. ‘He will die,’ he said.

Cassiel shook his head. ‘No. There’s still time to ensure his survival. We will purge this from him.’

‘How do you propose to do that?’ Sarga demanded. ‘Any attempt to dig out the round will shatter it–’

‘There may be another way,’ said the sergeant.

It seemed strange to see them inside the steel walls of the Hermia’s hull, in the compartment below the starship’s infirmary. The very sight of the great golden sculptures lying here, set upon the deck plates, was somehow wrong, as if the contents of a familiar room had been upset and rearranged.

The lines on Sarga’s worn, leathery face deepened. ‘The sarcophagus…’

Cassiel directed a serf to guide the grav-litter to the closest capsule. ‘Aboard ship on the orders of Master Raldoron himself,’ he said. ‘Several have been distributed among the flotillas, to serve as critical care centres for the fatally injured.’

Sarga shot him a look. ‘A wound that is fatal to an Astartes is a wound that cannot be survived by any man.’

‘We will see.’ Cassiel had the serfs place Meros inside the closest of the orbs.

‘I cannot let this pass without comment,’ Sarga went on. ‘The shard in his side… It is tainted with alien sorcery! What if that taint contaminates the sarcophagus? There is no way to know what effect the psionic spoil may have–’

Cassiel silenced him with a glare. ‘Sorcery? It is only a strain of poison, virulent indeed, but no more than that. It is not magick. And it will be purged.’ He signalled to the helots to close the petals of the orb. ‘The dark eldar took the lives of our brothers down on that blighted world. They will not take this one after the fact, and I will argue the will of my order with the Warmaster himself, should he see fit to challenge it!’

Rafen was buried in sand. The particles were made of ground bone and flecks of metal, glittering redly in the punishing light of a bloated, hellish sun. With slow, deliberate motions, he dragged himself out of the clinging mass, the powder sluicing from him, pooling in the crevices of his wargear.

He found a bolt pistol and a sword nearby, both rusted and decrepit. He wondered if the gun would survive a pull of the trigger. The blade was a pitted, cracked thing.

The Blood Angel lurched forward, shaking off the last of the dust, and he stumbled; the power armour was sluggish, and he felt the full weight of the ceramite and steel across his shoulders. Heat in shimmering waves rose up all about him, and pinpricks of sweat blossomed on his brow.

Rafen grimaced; every movement seemed like a colossal effort. He felt uncharacteristically weak, as if his vitality was draining away. The Blood Angel set his jaw and drew himself up.

He began to walk across the desert battlefield, across the lines of the dunes against the harsh winds that bore gusts of stinging sand. He placed one foot in front of another, moving like an automaton. The masses of corpses and litter of blood he left behind, wandering into the dust and heat, searching. When he ventured to look back, there was nothing behind him but sand and more sand.

Through blurred vision, he glimpsed flashes of stark light off gold armour; or was that some kind of mirage?

No. The figure was still there, remaining beyond his reach, taunting him with its silence. Daring him to come closer.

Rafen looked away, trying to take stock of his circumstances. He had no recollection of arriving in this blighted, lifeless place, no concept of where he was or what purpose had brought him here. He came to a halt, for a moment losing sight of the golden figure as curtains of red dust whirled around him. He dug deep, pushing into his own thoughts, trying to dredge up the truth.

What is the last thing I can remember? He worked at the question, his sweat-filmed brow furrowing.

He remembered the journey back from the Dynikas system aboard the starship Tycho, the days passing in the wilderness of warp space. He remembered the battle on the planet before that, the dispatch of the enemy and the recovery…

He remembered the vial and the blood. Rafen’s hand instinctively reached up and traced the place on his breast where he had stabbed the injector needle home.

He remembered–

–the vial, the holy blood from the Red Grail itself, unfiltered and potent, kept alive for millennia by generations of clerics, coursing through his veins–

–gold and fire, lightning and sun; like nothing he had ever experienced before–

–fear that he would be destroyed by the brilliance–

–what a perfect death–

Rafen gasped and shuddered. The blood of Sanguinius coursed through him, the psychic power within it churning like nuclear flame. It had been too much for his body to contain; it was too much for him. He was like the ancient Terran legend of Ikarus, voyaging too close to the sun, burning and burning.

‘Is… is this place death?’ he shouted, his words ripped from him by the howling winds. ‘Am I to be… punished for my… hubris?’ Rafen found it hard to breathe.

And in answer to his question, the sand became monsters.

The red dust coalesced into things that bore the shape and colour of Space Marines, but they were hazy, nebulous forms that could not hold fine detail for more than a moment. Still, they were coherent enough that Rafen saw them for what they were supposed to be.

They were Blood Angels, after a fashion, but no stripe of that noble Chapter that had ever walked beneath the Imperium’s light. These twisted phantoms were part parody, part monstrosity, hulking and lumbering things that mimicked the majesty of the Sons of Sanguinius through the lens of horror. Inverted, screaming aquilas decorated their armour, blood oozed from joints, and laughing, fanged masks showed eyes of glowing red. Books of blank verse and babbling skulls dangled from the ends of barbed honour chains. The ghost-Astartes were abstracts, sketches made of sand by an insane artist.

They attacked him, laughing in shrill voices.

Rafen fired the old bolter and it croaked, spitting out shells in puffs of flaking rust; but while the tumbling rounds found their mark, they did no damage. The point of each hit became a concave spattering of powder and the phantoms lost solidity, the crumbling mass-reactive bullets passing straight through without detonation.

Snarling, dizzy with pain and the leeching heat, the Blood Angel went to the broken-tipped sword and met the charge of the ghost-Astartes, swinging high-low for a lethal cut that would have opened any foe to the air. The sword bit, he felt it, but the sand-forms gave along the line of the rusted blade and let it fall harmlessly through them. Rafen might as well have been using a rapier made of smoke.

But, to his dismay, the return of blows was by no means equal. The phantoms shifted their mass, compacting the sands almost to the density of rock, a split-second before landing a swinging punch on Rafen’s jaw. As he was knocked back, a second and then a third granite-hard impact landed on his chest and sternum.

He fell back against the rise of the red dunes, light-headed, as they came at him again; and now the phantoms had no helmets to hide their faces. This time, he saw a twisted mirror of his own features snarling back at him, the image shivering and flickering like a poorly-tuned vid-pict.

Rafen threw himself forward and into the mass of one of the ghost-Astartes. It exploded apart in a torrent of grit before he could close his hands around its throat. The sand ripped at the bare skin of his face and neck, clogging his nostrils and mouth, trying to suffocate him. He flailed around, like a man fighting off a swarm of hornets.

Then he heard gunfire, the hard snapping crashes of a bolter, heard the sizzle of shots passing close to him. The dust ebbed away, retreating in a tide, re-forming, as a new figure crested the closest dune and came scrambling down the rise.

Rafen saw another Blood Angel – solid and well defined, caught in the haze of heat but certainly not one of his phantoms.

The new arrival let his weapon swing away on its tether and unlimbered a break-tooth chainaxe. The axe sputtered and choked, but the teeth still spun, and with quick motions he carved into the ghost-Astartes. Where Rafen’s blade had passed through them like air, the other warrior’s weapon hit firmly and shrieked through the mass of clogged dust and sand.

In moments, the grotesques were dissipating on the constant wind, discorporating until at last there was nothing left of them.

Rafen nodded warily to the other man. ‘My… thanks, brother.’ He saw more clearly now: the other Blood Angel wore the white and the crimson of an Apothecary, although the company colours and unit symbology were strange – not wrong, but somehow unfamiliar. The warrior’s wargear was of an elderly design, the old Mark IV Maximus pattern that few Chapters still deployed. He met the Apothecary’s gaze and saw that the other man was measuring him with a similarly questioning stare.

‘Are you injured?’ he asked, holstering the chainaxe. He walked with a limp, Rafen noted, favouring his side, and for the first time he noted the scarring of a deep wound in the Apothecary’s belly. The warrior hid his pain well, though; he had a strong face and eyes that seemed too young for it.

‘No…’ Rafen began. ‘Yes. Perhaps.’ He shook his head, and the world swam around him. ‘The heat…’

‘Aye, the heat,’ agreed the Apothecary, and that was answer enough. He looked around, eyeing the shifting sands suspiciously. ‘Those… things. What were they?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rafen admitted. ‘My weapons were useless against them.’

‘Fortunate that mine were not, then,’ came the reply. The other man managed a wan smile. ‘I’m cheered to find you, brother. When I awoke in this place, for a while I feared I had gone mad.’

‘We may yet, both of us,’ said Rafen grimly. ‘Tell me, how did you come to be here?’

‘I…’ The Apothecary’s face froze as cold understanding gripped him. ‘I… Do not know.’

‘What is the last thing you can recall?’

‘The battle…’ He spoke in hushed, tense tones. ‘The xenos.’ His hand slipped to the wound on his gut. ‘They gave me this…The rest is darkness.’

Before Rafen could speak again, the other warrior caught sight of something over his shoulder and pointed. Even as he turned to see it, Rafen knew it would be the figure in the gold, watching them.

It stood sentinel, seemingly closer without having moved, briefly more defined in the gaps between the veils of dust that flashed past. Gold armour, an unmoving mask, furled silver wings. Watching.

‘Do you see him?’ Rafen asked.

‘Aye. What is it?’ The Apothecary’s words were hushed.

The sands howled and clawed at their faces, forcing them to look away; when the torrent of dust abated, the figure was gone.

Far beyond where it had stood, in the distance a shape rose out of the shimmer. A pinnacle mountain, impossibly tall and wind-carved from stone as red as spilled blood.

‘An omen,’ said Rafen. ‘An objective.’

They walked on together, side by side through the howling cascade of the sandstorm, the distant tower of stone their only guiding marker in the featureless desert. Whatever the nature of this place, Meros’s pragmatism did not waver in the face of it. The mountain was the only landmark in sight, so they would go to it. There was a certainty in that, a logic that the Apothecary could only feel as right. But quite how he could know that was something Brother Meros would not have been able to articulate.

It was strange: everything about him seemed unreal, detached from truth – and yet Meros felt the sure slip of the baking sands under each footfall, he felt his occulobe tighten to tune his eyes against the hard radiation of the great red sun overhead, he felt the relentless heat upon his face. These things seemed very real.

If only I still dreamed, Meros thought. Then perhaps I would know if this was true or some trick of the mind. But Space Marines did not dream, because they did not slumber – not in any manner that common men would understand. The catalepsean nodes implanted in his brain allowed Meros and his kindred to sleep without sleep, ever waking and watchful even as their minds rested. And so, he had no mark against which to measure his current circumstance.

He glanced at the Blood Angel trudging alongside him. An omen, he had said. The words seemed peculiar coming from the mouth of an Astartes, resonant of old idolatry and superstition. And other things were subtly amiss: the other warrior’s wargear was ornate and oddly proportioned, chased with much detailing, and tapers of parchment dense with lines of text that Meros could not read. All this, and his face was unknown to the Apothecary.

That in itself was not unusual – the IX Legiones Astartes numbered over one hundred thousand men under arms in service to Great Sanguinius, and Meros could not know every single one of them – but there was something about the dark-haired warrior that rang a wrong note in his mind. It was as if he did not fit.

Then again, Meros was just as displaced, stranded in this trackless no-man’s-land with no understanding of how he had come to be here. His hand slipped to the place where he had been wounded. The memory of the shard burying itself in his gut was still fresh and he flinched as he recalled it. A sickening throb rang through him and he swallowed a gulp of dry air.

Meros glanced at the other warrior once more, trying to put the echo of the pain aside. ‘I… never asked you your name,’ he said.

‘I am Rafen,’ came the reply. ‘Of the Fifth Company, under Brother-Captain Sendini.’

‘Wh-who?’ Meros forced the word out, his legs turning to lead, stumbling to a halt. The name meant nothing to him. And the commander of the fifth… He was…

‘Are you all right, brother?’ said Rafen, watching him warily.

Meros began to shiver, his skin crawling beneath his armour. ‘I… I…’ A painful, prickling sensation washed up his arms, burning his skin like the touch of acid. With a trembling hand, the Apothecary pulled at his gauntlet and vambrace, disengaging the armour locks, letting them fall to the sand.

His bare arm was a livid red, veins bulging, flesh twitching. Unable to stop himself, Meros clawed at the exposed flesh and ribbons of epidermis came free, fluttering into the wind. He cried out even as the diseased tissue fell, scattering across the sands. Impossibly, the more he scratched away, the more there was.

The decayed skin-threads danced in the air, and then to his horror, they began to unfold. Clever puzzles of discarded flesh split and divided, weaving into thread-thin lines that knit back into obscene forms; spindly humanoid outlines with elongated limbs and narrow, elfin skulls.

‘The reavers!’ Meros shouted. ‘This is… their poison!’

The meshed threads of skin flitted and danced, and then turned back on the Apothecary, lashing out at him like a torrent of barbed whips.

Rafen recoiled at what he saw, his hand snatching up the rusted bolt pistol from his belt, falling back to gain a span of distance from the motions of the strange flesh-forms. He knew the shape and the dance of them – somehow, these apparitions were dark eldar in origin, flashes of their cruel xenos hate appearing and disappearing in the ghosts of their faces. They looked like animated streamers of cloth, perhaps bandages or garlands, coiling and turning to give the impression of a body beneath when in fact there was nothing there.

Whatever animated these forms, it was abhorrent to the Blood Angel. His erstwhile comrade was right on that matter, at the very least – even through the heavy dust of the air, Rafen could taste the sour tang of poison billowing about the lithe monsters. They were toxic horrors, spinning in a grotesque ballet.

The eldar-things rained down blows on the apothecary, lightning-fast and unrelenting. He tried to fight back with the rust-clogged chainaxe, but each sweep of the buzzing blade-head met only air as the threads parted to let it pass.

Rafen forgot the bolt pistol and drew the broken sword. He did not know the origin of the other warrior, but he could not simply stand by and do nothing.

‘Away, daemon!’ he shouted, wading into the whirling cyclone of whipping threads. ‘Begone from here, or face your end!’

The rusted sword rose and fell, and in each place where the chainaxe’s blunt edge had failed to score a hit, Rafen’s blows cut the skin-matter into shreds. He fancied he heard screaming on the wind, coming from some far distant place.

Angry and vicious in their retreat, the tears of discarded flesh fluttered high into the air, coiling upon one another as if caught in the funnel of a whirlwind, and then vanishing into the unceasing murmur of the sandstorm.

The Apothecary was down on one knee, panting. His face was a maze of shallow scratches, and his bare arm a bloody ruin. He looked up. ‘Rafen,’ he rasped. ‘Thank you, brother.’

‘Brother?’ Now the moment of the attack had passed as swiftly as it had begun, Rafen’s confusion turned to ready distrust. He aimed the damaged tip of the sword at the other warrior’s face. ‘Are you really such a thing, or do you only pretend at it?’ He took a step closer, bearing his teeth. ‘Did you bring me here?’ he demanded. ‘I have fought warpspawn before, and won! I will do so again!’

‘I do not… understand…’ said the white-armoured Blood Angel, holding up his hands. ‘You raise a blade to me? Why?’

‘What breed of daemon tainted you?’ Rafen snapped. ‘Answer me!’

The Apothecary shook his head. ‘These things you say, you speak in riddles!’ He staggered to his feet, glaring at Rafen, his strength returning. ‘You accuse me of complicity…’ He shook his head. ‘Those… those creatures… I have never seen the like. They are the avatars of the poison…’ The warrior broke off, becoming pale. ‘Primarch… It still runs in me.’

Rafen’s broken blade was suddenly at his neck. ‘Then perhaps I should end you.’

‘You would do such a thing?’ An expression of utter disgust crossed the other man’s face. ‘An Astartes, killing an Astartes? Brother against a brother?’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps it is you that is tainted and false!’ The Apothecary drew the chainaxe, his voice rising. ‘When I came to your aid against the ghosts in the sand, I did not question your honour! Those phantoms had your face, Rafen! But I did not kill you because of it!’

For a long moment, Rafen wavered on the cusp of drawing back the weapon to strike, but then he relaxed his stance and stepped away.

‘I do not know what you are,’ he said. Rafen turned his back and walked on.

Meros followed him; there was little else he could do.

Once, in the time before he had been raised up to join the Blood Angels, when he had still been a child, still human, Meros had heard a mad old seer speak of darker powers and places beyond the understanding of men. The recall of that moment was so far distant that it was barely even a memory anymore. His past life had been smoothed away by the monumental changes that had made him one of the Emperor’s finest warriors, so now all that remained were impressions.

But clear enough to return to him now, enough to remember the fear in the old seer’s eyes. The warp is the sea of souls, he had said. In it, all things can be made and unmade. Everything is mutable, blood and time like sand…

Like sand…

Meros walked behind Rafen, following him up the lee of a steep dune, the constant buzzing dust plucking at him, ripping what moisture there was from his lips and nostrils. Even the nictating membranes over his eyes were gummed with deposits of blown sand, forcing him to blink and brush at his face. His hand came away red with the powdery deposits. Meros lumbered after the other Blood Angel, the only other sound the labouring of the myoma muscle-quads in their power armour.

He reached the top of the ridge and found Rafen standing still. Meros halted and followed the other warrior’s gaze, up and up.

They stood at the foot of the pinnacle mountain, the spire of red rock reaching away into the clouds of dust–

But it was not a mountain. It had never been one. From a distance, the eye had been tricked to believe that was so, the scraps of the shape and image parsed to form what one expected to see.

Laying his gaze upon it all, however, was a revelation.

Rafen and Meros stood at the foot of a great statue, a carving taller than the highest Titan, the base buried in the red sand, the top visible against the shadow of the crimson sun.

‘My liege,’ breathed Rafen, sinking to one knee. Meros did the same, but unlike the other warrior, he did not turn his face away.

Meros looked up. He saw how the rocky crags formed the shape of voluminous robes that ended in a hood, and the carved planes of an infinitely noble face framed there. The patrician, shining majesty of Sanguinius’s aspect looked down on them in judgement, his hands clasped before him, his mighty wings gathered in around his shoulders like a cloak.

‘How can this be here?’ he breathed.

‘Where is here?’ Rafen replied. ‘I fear this is the answer. This place is death.’

Then Meros saw a glitter of gold and raised his arm to point at it. ‘Who is that?’

Rafen raised his head and saw the warrior in golden armour. He stood upon a ridge along the lower part of the massive statue-mountain, a carved line representing a fold in the robes of the primarch. For the first time, the Blood Angel saw him clearly.

About a beatific face-mask, a broad iron halo described a perfect circle. Intricately tooled armour in gold and brass gave the figure a muscular silhouette that mimicked the finery of a Chapter Master’s ornate ceremonial wargear, but where Lord Dante would wear upon his back the engine of a powerful jetpack, this figure grew wings of shining white steel, glittering with the ruddy light of the swollen sun overhead. Great trains of oath-papers hung from his hips, fluttering on the breeze.

‘No,’ muttered Rafen. He saw it clearly and yet did not wish to believe it. ‘You are a myth,’ he whispered. ‘An illusion.’

‘Who would pretend at the glory of our primarch?’ Rafen heard the Apothecary say the words, disbelief equal in his tone. ‘No one has the right to wear the gold…’

‘Sanguinor.’ The word slipped from his mouth. Rafen had heard the tales of the golden guardian many times, the reports of battles so ancient, so far removed from his experiences that they seemed more like fables, like the folklore of the nomadic Tribes of the Blood on Baal Secundus. He had heard these things, and yet he had never truly believed in them.

The galaxy contained many strange sights, many unknowable truths, and Rafen had lived his life in the face of them without credulity. It was how he had been trained by his late mentor, Koris. To see clearly, to challenge everything. The story of the Sanguinor had remained just that – a story. A tale told by the oldest of the veterans in the lulls between battle, a legend meant to steady the will. A metaphor for honour and courage.

And yet it stood before them now. The stories told of this avatar of all that was good and noble in the character of his Chapter, an undying force of pure will that would give its blessing to warriors fighting against the most hopeless of odds. The golden angel of vengeance who would descend from the skies in the moment of greatest need. The eternal and unending warrior.

Rafen had never truly believed, for he had fought at the speartip of wars that shook the pillars of his Chapter’s history, and never seen the face of this legend; and to see it now, in this place, brought a sudden fury to the Blood Angel. He stepped forward, filling his lungs to shout. ‘What do you want?’ he bellowed, his voice rising over the constant winds to echo off the mountainside. ‘Is this your judgement? Show your face! I will tolerate these illusions no more! Reveal yourself!’ He raised the bolter and took aim. ‘Or must I shed your blood to find the truth?’

Meros saw Rafen draw the pistol and he felt the rush of adrenaline flood through him. The figure in gold could only be one thing, one being – for the strictures of the IX Legiones Astartes forbade any but the primarch himself and his personal guard from donning such armour. It could only be the Lord of the Blood, the Great Angel himself; and here before Meros the warrior Rafen was bringing a weapon to bear upon him.

The Apothecary shot forward and grabbed Rafen’s arm, pulling it up and away. ‘What are you doing?’ he snapped. ‘Are you insane? You dare draw a firearm in the presence of your primarch?’

‘Primarch?’ Rafen turned on him, knocking him back with a savage shove. ‘Whatever you see up there, it is not Sanguinius, the Emperor’s Light find him! It is an echo at best, a shadow of his glory released upon the moment of his death!’

Rafen’s words fell like a rain of stones, the force behind them, the certainty, striking Meros with the power of a physical blow. ‘What did you say?’ he whispered. In the next second he was at Rafen’s throat, shaking him, glaring into his eyes. ‘He is not dead! The Primarch is not dead, how dare you speak such lies? I saw him stride the battleground at Melchior with my own eyes. I heard his voice call me to arms!’ Meros was livid with anger and confusion, unable to comprehend what would possess the other Blood Angel to voice such folly.

Rafen struggled against him. ‘Then either the Rage has taken you, or you are a liar and a fool! My primarch lies dead, ten thousand years and gone–’

‘Falsehood!’ Meros’s towering anger slipped its leash and he struck out at the unspeakable lie as it fell from Rafen’s mouth. His blow hit home, knocking the rusted bolt pistol from the other warrior’s grip. The weapon tumbled away down the incline of the dune and vanished into the sandstorm.

Despite the clinging, parching heat, a sudden chill washed over Meros as he found a moment of new understanding. ‘You…’ He pointed a finger at Rafen’s face. ‘You do not exist. You never did! You are the poison, eating at my brain! You are the soul-seeker’s venom!’ It made a horrific kind of sense; Meros knew full well from his decades in service to the Legion’s medicae corps that the dark eldar were masters of toxins, their cruelty extending to the deliberate, mind-killing methods of their tainted weapons. All this, everything around him – Rafen, the sand-phantoms and the flesh-ghosts, the mountain and the desert and the golden figure – all of it was a hallucination.

He was not here. He was somewhere else, perhaps still on Nartaba Octus, bleeding out his last while his mind lay trapped in a prison of dreams.

But Meros would not meet his end without a fight.

With a roar, the Apothecary came thundering back at him, the decrepit bolter across his back tossed away, the sputtering chainaxe in his grip. Rafen saw the look in the other warrior’s eye and knew the colour of frenzy when he saw it. He met the spinning, broken teeth of the weapon with the cracked edge of the sword. Each of the ruined blades ground against one another, spitting thick sparks, metal howling and crackling as it burned.

They were a match, these two. Blade met blade again and again, each time blunting on the defence of the other, each time scoring no better than nicks and cuts, never to the bone, never deep enough to cripple.

In the endless storm, under the unmoving red sun, they fought for hours, shifting back and forth, gaining and losing ground, their lethal dance without conclusion. Attack and riposte; feint and strike; block and advance. Each form in their battle schema met opposition and reflected back upon the aggressor.

Thick, chemical sweat sluiced from their bio-altered glands, mingling with clotted blood. The howling wind was the chorus to the grunts of their effort, the thud and clang of sword and chainaxe meeting, parting, meeting again. The heat and the pain dragged on both of them, dulling their strength.

‘Why…’ The Apothecary spoke through cracked lips as their weapons locked for the hundredth time. ‘Why will you not leave me? You will not have my death…’

‘Your words,’ Rafen gasped, ‘my thoughts, false one…’

‘You cannot reach me!’ he shouted back. ‘Your words mean nothing! You are the falsehood, you are the darkness in my blood! I am Meros, Blood Angel, Son of Sanguinius, and I deny you!’

‘Meros?’ The name cut like a knife across Rafen’s heart.

The break-tip sword dropped from its raised position, and suddenly the warrior’s guard was open, but the Apothecary did not strike. He held the chainaxe high, wary of this new tactic.

‘What perfidy is this?’ Rafen asked, weary and wrathful in equal measure. ‘Is that name plucked from my thoughts? Does my mind turn against me now?’ He turned and shouted toward the golden figure, who had not wavered from his place of observation. The warrior beat his fist against his chest. ‘I know Meros!’ he bellowed. ‘I know him here!’

Rafen pressed the hilt of the broken sword to his sternum, to the very spot where his vital progenoid gland lay deep within the flesh of his torso. The progenoid, a complex knot of genetic material, was the legacy of countless cohorts of Blood Angels, removed at the point of death and implanted anew in the bodies of the next generation. They were the most precious of the Chapter’s bequests, the living sources of the gene-memory passed on from brother to brother, assuring that the Sons of Sanguinius would live on forever.

The progenoid implanted in Rafen’s flesh was such a thing, and he honoured the stewardship of it – just as the warriors who had borne it before him had honoured it until their deaths. Rafen knew the names of every one of them, every Blood Angel down through the passage of ten thousand years and more.

Meros was one of those names. An Apothecary, a warrior of note and record who had fought during the darkest chapter of mankind’s history; the civil war known as the Horus Heresy.

He shook his head. ‘It… is not possible!’ In this place of delusion and dark nightmare, it could not be real. Rafen struggled to understand. The burning blood that even now coursed through him – was this the way it would destroy him, twisting his mind, unravelling everything about him, clawing at the threads of his history?

He turned back toward Meros, his voice rising. ‘You cannot be here…’

The other Blood Angel did not pay him any heed, for his daemons – and Rafen’s – had emerged from the storms to assault them both once more.

They came, and they brought the night with them.

It was as if the crimson sun had never shone upon the red desert; now there was only a sky ink-black and scarred with stars that burned cold, the watcher upon the towering sculpture rendered in shadow and cool, aloof shades of silver.

Meros’s poison attacked, the thread-things weaving about him, ripping into his skin. His armour… his armour was suddenly gone, and now all he fought in were his duty robes, stained with blood and patches of dark sweat. The heat of the day was gone, replaced by a bone-deep cold that sucked the energy from him.

Meros battled with the chainaxe, his questions to Rafen forgotten for the moment. Each hit missed, each blow went wide; his wraiths, however, scored every strike with perfect accuracy.

The sands were trying to murder him.

Rafen brought up his hands to cover his face as a hurricane exploded out of the dust. Darkness and cold flooded in, as if he had been thrown into an icy lake. Distantly he registered that the dragging weight of his wargear had somehow ceased to pull upon him. All he felt was the scratching agony of the whirling flecks of grit ripping through the robes surrounding him, scoring his flesh.

He did not dwell on the changes that unfolded. In this unreal place, all Rafen could do was to cling to what he knew to be true, and draw that close.

The broken sword in his hand turned and rattled through the air, and did nothing. The sandstorm ejected him with a sound like laughter and breaking stones, mocking him as he stumbled.

The wraiths danced away as they toyed with the Apothecary. Meros lurched from his knees and found Rafen beside him. The Blood Angel extended a hand to him and pulled him up. He met the other man’s gaze.

‘Will you kill me, then?’ he asked. ‘Or let them do the deed?’

‘I understand now,’ Rafen replied, nodding toward the silent watcher in gold. ‘Do you not see, Meros? We are here and our daemons are here. Alone, they will kill us.’

Over Rafen’s shoulder, the sands twisted into the form of a monstrous armoured Astartes, feral and abhorrent. It came on, clawed hands raised in attack. Behind Meros, the threads of skin reformed into something resembling a dark eldar Incubi, hollow-eyed and leering. Both shapes were becoming solid, real. Lethal.

‘What is the bloodline?’ Rafen asked suddenly. The words had a ritual, rote quality to them.

‘The eternal bond of brotherhood,’ Meros said, the reply coming to him from nowhere. ‘The will to survive beyond death.’

Rafen weighed the old, rusted blade in his hand. ‘This is my will, kinsman,’ he told him, and gestured to the axe in Meros’s grip. ‘And that is yours. Do you see?’

A smile formed on Meros’s lips. ‘I do.’

‘To the fight, then,’ said the other Blood Angel, ‘if it may be the last.’ He rocked off his feet, leading with the broken sword, throwing himself not at his twisted doppelganger, but at the avatar of Meros’s pain and anguish.

Meros moved at the same moment, the understanding coming to him. He swung the chainaxe at the phantom that screamed with Rafen’s face, turning the blade toward the neck.

Sword and axe found their marks as one, each killing the nemesis of the other; and in silence, the tainted dreams that tormented the Blood Angels were swiftly ended. The ghostly apparitions dissolved into nothing, captured on the winds and blown to the horizon.

‘It is done,’ said Meros, turning to face Rafen. ‘We are freed. Brother.’ He extended a hand to the warrior and Rafen reached for it–

–and time seemed to become fluid, slow and heavy.

The darkness was closing in, and all around the landscape began to ripple and fade as the certainty that underpinned the unreal place came apart. With no threat to make it whole and give it purpose, the desert was crumbling. The statue-mountain became smoke, dissipating on the never-ending winds.

A great, sudden fear reached into Rafen’s chest and clutched tight around his hearts with claws of ice. Meros saw the look in his eyes and his expression begged the question.

‘Rafen? What is wrong?’

So much, kinsman. Rafen tried to give voice to the words, but he could not move. He was frozen there, his flesh ignoring every command he gave it. So much is wrong. If the Apothecary truly was Meros of the Blood Angels, if he truly was the Astartes who lay as no more than bone and ashes in the halls of the dead on Baal, then in some way Rafen could not fathom, the man lived in another time, another place.

A place before the death of Sanguinius. Oh, what glory to live in that moment. And what horror yet to come.

With all his might, with every last moment of his strength, Rafen fought to utter a warning. From his mouth came a single, strangled word. A curse.

‘Horus–‘

Gold shimmered in the darkness. The figure in armour was there, and Meros did not seem to see him. With infinite slowness, a gauntlet of brass and shining amber raised to place a hand over the silent lips of an unmoving mask. The message was without ambiguity, the command unmistakable.

Silence.

Unaware, Meros held out a hand to touch the other warrior’s shoulder. ‘Rafen? We are victorious… What troubles you?’

But then the moment faded, and the sands became as blood, drowning them both.

The Touch of Sanguine Dawn opened and cast crimson liquid across the flagstones of the Hall of Sarcophagi in a steaming tide.

Wet with fluids, Rafen stumbled from the interior of the golden orb and fell to one knee. He coughed and tore the breather tubes from his nostrils, taking ragged gulps of air. ‘I… I am alive…’

‘Indeed.’ The dark voice drew his gaze up. He found himself looking into burning eyes that dared him to break away. The power of Lord Mephiston’s will was almost impossible to resist.

Finally, he released Rafen and the warrior looked down at the tracks along his arms where numerous vitae guides had been implanted. ‘The… blood…’

‘Gone,’ Mephiston told him. ‘The measure of the Primarch’s sacred vitae has been returned to the Red Grail, to its rightful state. Balance, restored at last.’

Rafen slowly climbed to his feet, as blood-servitors swept in to clean and reconsecrate the ancient sarcophagus. ‘Then at last my mission is complete. I feared it would destroy me.’

The psyker-lord looked up, to the ornate stained-glass windows set in the walls over their heads. ‘You have stood at the edge of death’s abyss for weeks, Rafen. Lemartes and many others believed you would perish, and pass unto the Emperor’s right hand. But you defy the odds once again.’ He turned that baleful gaze back toward the Blood Angel. ‘One might wonder if you were blessed. Or cursed.’

Rafen drew himself up. ‘Whatever the Emperor wills.’

Mephiston came closer. ‘A question, Brother-Sergeant. What did you see in there?’

‘Nothing…’ The lie came to him before he could stop himself. He thought of red sands, a golden warrior, a kinsman millennia-dead. Now, as he stood here in this place of stone and steel, what he had experienced seemed like the fantasy of a fevered mind. Rafen’s hand strayed to his chest, to the place where his progenoid gene-seed implant lay dormant. ‘I… dreamed. Nothing more.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the psyker. ‘It is written that the Great Angel was possessed of a powerful psionic talent. Some say that he read the hearts and minds of his warrior sons as if they were open pages of a book. That he saw his own death at the hands of the Arch-traitor. That to him, even the veil of time was a malleable thing.’ He nodded. ‘The power of Sanguinius resonated through his very blood. Even ten thousand years on, we know this to be true.’ Rafen watched as Mephiston crossed to The Touch of Sanguine Dawn and stroked it with infinite gentleness. ‘These great sarcophagi,’ he went on, ‘they were built to his design. They are links to his will. And one might wonder if, after so many centuries of use, if they might not have absorbed some measure of his eternal power.’ He turned back to face Rafen. ‘Do you understand, Brother-Sergeant?’

When Rafen spoke again, the truth welled up in him. ‘I saw something,’ he admitted.

‘What was it?’

‘A myth,’ Rafen whispered.

‘Open it,’ commanded the warrior in gold. ‘Do it now.’

‘My lord–‘ Brother-Sergeant Cassiel tried to object, but a single sharp look was enough to silence his objections. ‘As you wish.’ He threw a nod to the legion serfs crowded around the flanks of The Touch of Sanguine Dawn, and as one they opened the petals of the sphere.

Dark rivers of crimson flowed from the interior, running away into drain vents. Light from the Hermia’s lumeglobes revealed the figure within, a muscled form pale in flesh, breathing hard. With every passing second, the colour returned to him.

Sarga leaned in. ‘The wound has closed. I see no signs of lingering infection.’

‘What about the shard itself?’ asked Cassiel.

Sarga nodded to himself. ‘Destroyed. The sarcophagus disintegrated it, purged all trace of it from his system. He lives.’

‘Get him out,’ said the gold-armoured warrior.

The serfs did as they were ordered to, and moved to carry the Blood Angel to a grav-litter. He stirred, and pushed them away, standing on his own, blinking in the light.

‘We… are freed…’ He whispered.

Cassiel gave him a fresh robe. ‘Meros. How do you feel, brother?’

He gave a nod. ‘I live. Thanks to you.’

‘It would seem so.’

Meros turned to see who had addressed him, and a flash of shock crossed his face. ‘You–?’ But then in the next moment, he composed himself. ‘Forgive me. The golden armour… I thought you were… Someone else.’

‘You know who I am?’ The warrior was a towering figure, resplendent in the master-crafted wargear of a High Sanguinary Guard – the praetorians of the Primarch himself. Dark, shoulder-length hair fell about his gorget, framing a long, noble aspect.

‘You are Azkaellon,’ said Meros, ‘bearer of the Glaive Encarmine and the banner-master. First among the Sanguinary Guard.’ He met the other man’s gaze. ‘What do you wish of me?’

‘I came to see if you would die,’ Azkaellon replied, his voice cold and steady. ‘I learned of your bravery on Nartaba Octus and wished to see the face of a battle-brother who would meet such odds. With those wounds, I expected to witness your passing… but clearly the strength of the Great Angel himself runs strong in your heart.’

Meros gave a shallow bow. ‘I will not die yet. Sanguinius will tell me when that time is at hand.’

For the first time, Azkaellon showed a flicker of emotion; the briefest of smiles. ‘You seem certain,’ he went on. ‘Tell me, Meros. How do you know that to be so?’ He nodded to the sarcophagus. ‘Did you… see something while you slumbered?’

Meros recalled visions of red sands, a golden warrior and a kinsman he did not know. His hand strayed to where his progenoid gene-seed implant lay beneath his flesh. ‘My own fears made manifest,’ he replied, at length. ‘Now banished forever.’

‘As it should be,’ Azkaellon said, with a nod. ‘Now rest, Meros.’ He looked around at Cassiel and the others. ‘All of you, gather your strength and prepare for battle. I have this hour received orders from our primarch. The Hermia and Task Force Ignis are to rendezvous with the rest of our Legion’s ships.’

‘Which flotilla?’ said Sarga.

Azkaellon did not grace him with a glance. ‘All of them. The Legion musters in its entirety for battle and new glory.’

Meros’s brow furrowed. Such an assemblage of the Sons of Sanguinius was unprecedented. For the primarch to gather them all for war, the deed would be of great import. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘Our liege-lord’s brother, the Warmaster Horus Lupercal, has given us a duty that only the Blood Angels are capable of,’ said the Sanguinary Guard. ‘We are to bring the light of the Imperium to the worlds of the Signus Cluster.’

GILEAD’S CURSE

Chapter Nine

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Every tale must take its twists and turns where they may fall. I have no say in the unfolding of this story, and can only re-tell the events told to me. Gilead’s saga is a long and complex one. He has lived too many life-spans, fought too many foes and saved too many lives, for these tales to take a simple course. The Rat King was dead, and the noble Vampire Count dispatched, and yet the threat was not expunged from the land, and Gilead and his faithful companions made their way to Nuln in pursuit of they knew not what.

Gather round, listen closely, and take heed. A tale has only the value of its telling and of its message, and you might all learn something from Gilead te tuin Tor Anrok. I know that I have.

In a matter of days, Gilead was on the road again with Fithvael and Laban at his side. He had not thought to travel with an entourage, but then he had been confident that he would find his quarry in the great north lands, and was not a little surprised to find he was travelling south again, back through the Empire to the great city of Nuln.

The journey was not a difficult or arduous one. Gilead retrieved his palfrey, and a few hours of tracking brought the elves to the Vampire Count’s war steed, which was broad of back and comfortably seated both Fithvael and the boy. They removed its armour, sigils and other adornments and threw a blanket over its back in place of the heavy saddle that it was accustomed to. The horse was big and bulky, but looked as much like a carthorse as anything else by the time it was stripped of its finery, and it drew few glances on the roads they travelled, mostly in darkness.

‘Why think you to ride to Nuln?’ Laban dared to ask when Gilead advised the elves of his plan.

‘To save my legs,’ said Gilead, clucking at his horse to move a little more quickly as the sun crawled idly over the horizon.

‘I don’t–’ began Laban.

‘In all things, we use our heads to save our legs,’ said Fithvael. ‘Thinking costs less than physical labour. Have you learnt nothing, boy?’

‘Perhaps my education should begin here,’ said Laban, finding his confidence. ‘Perhaps it should begin with an explanation of what we are doing, and why.’

Gilead, who was a length or two ahead of the war steed, turned his horse and stopped so that it filled the path in front of Fithvael and Laban’s shared mount.

‘We are doing what we always do, what we were sworn to do, what we strive to do. When we need not serve ourselves we serve others. Now, we do both, and we do it with a good grace, and with fewer questions, if we know what is good for us,’ said Gilead, glaring at the youth.

‘And by “we”, you mean me?’ asked Laban, making eye contact with Gilead over the Fithvael’s shoulder.

Gilead said no more, but turned his horse back in the direction they were heading. At the first opportunity, he made his way off the road and into a sparse stand of trees.

Once fed and sitting before a small, but comfortable, fire, Gilead explained his purpose in heading for Nuln after spending so much time in the north.

‘The vampire sent me south. He did so for a reason.’

‘I was there,’ said Laban. ‘I heard what the creature said, yet I could make neither head nor tail of it.’

‘You speak like a human,’ said Gilead, an edge of contempt creeping into his voice.

‘Tell the boy,’ said Fithvael, ‘and tell me. I would follow you anywhere, te tuin, and you know it, but I, at least, deserve your confidence.’

‘I have never had anything but confidence in you, old man,’ said Gilead. ‘You have ever been a valued teacher and a faithful friend, and I will not soon forget the great services you have performed for me, or for others besides.’

‘Then tell us,’ said Laban.

Gilead glanced at his young cousin, then turned back to direct his words at Fithvael.

‘There is a scholar in Nuln,’ said Gilead. ‘You must remember him, I’m sure?’

‘Is that wise?’ asked Fithvael. ‘He is a knowledge thief, a scoundrel and a liar… if he is the man I remember.’

‘But he was refined,’ said Gilead, ‘and “genteel”.’

‘By human standards, perhaps,’ said Fithvael. ‘But I fear you are attempting a jest, my lord, and your demeanour confounds me.’

‘Confounded,’ said Gilead. ‘I’m sure that’s the very word, Fithvael. I am confounded, too. I must know where the threat comes from if I am to do battle with it. The land is dying. The creatures of the air, earth and water, the men, women and children of other, lesser, races are perishing, and now the plague has struck our own kind. Our own Baneth has been taken from us. I would he had been longer in our lives and taken a slower route into our memories.

‘Aye,’ said Laban, bowing his head.

‘Aye,’ said Fithvael.

‘The scholar is an imperfect man, more so than many, but if he can help us, if he can direct us and fill the gaps in our knowledge, his debt to me, his debt to all our kind, will be paid.’

‘My fear precisely,’ said Fithvael. ‘Can we gain the knowledge by no other means?’

‘By many means,’ said Gilead. ‘By many means that will eat up time and miles, and lead us on a quest that could take a score of years or more to unweave the clues and mysteries that will no doubt be laid before us. I seek a shorter, surer route.’

‘You seek a dangerous route.’

‘So be it,’ said Gilead. ‘I will not trouble you to enter the city at my side.’

‘It troubles me little,’ said Fithvael, ‘but the boy might be kept from the worst of the dangers.’

‘I’m not a boy,’ said Laban. ‘I was sent to learn. I was given into your care to squire my cousin Gilead and to learn what he might teach me. Spare me nothing.’

‘Fine words,’ said Fithvael, feeding and banking up the small fire so that they might rest beside its warmth during the daylight hours before taking to the road once more.

‘I’ve had no need of a squire these many years,’ said Gilead.

‘You had need of me,’ said Fithvael.

‘Of you, my friend, yes, but I would hardly call your services “squiring”.’

‘It matters little,’ said Fithvael. ‘The boy is right. Baneth was a younger soul than I, and has left us already–’

‘He left us prematurely,’ said Gilead. ‘I will not hear you speak of your death.’

‘Time is short,’ began Fithvael.

‘Not for us,’ said Gilead. ‘Not once this malaise is thwarted.’

‘Then let it be so,’ said Fithvael, ‘but do not deny the boy. He is right. He came to us from the High Council, and it is our duty… it is your duty to further his education, to make of him a strong, noble-minded cousin for our future.’

The roads into Nuln were much travelled. People came from far and wide to benefit from city-life. Artisans came to work, labourers and domestics to serve, and gentlemen to trade or teach in the universities. It was the university that Gilead planned to visit.

It was almost dusk when the three elves travelled the last mile of the Nuln Road to the north gate of the city. It saw more traffic on an hourly basis than any other single gate into the city, and the road was thronging with people exiting and entering Nuln as lights and lanterns began to be lit all over the city. The guard lit the brazier that stood at the gate, partly to keep the soldiers warm, and partly so that light was easily cast on the men and women scurrying back and forth from their places of work or learning, to their homes outside the city, or from their occupations on the surrounding land and beyond to their homes within its walls.

Gilead had chosen the route, because, as busy as it was, there was a good chance that their passing would go unnoticed. On the other hand, if they were stopped, the volume of traffic through the gate would make it easy enough for Gilead to hand the guard a little coin by way of payment for ease of entrance into the town, without it being remarked upon by the hordes of people around them.

On this occasion, no move was made against the two steeds with their three riders, and the elves entered the city unmolested.

They travelled through the industrial district of the city, still busy and noisy despite the plague that had decimated the countryside. The Malaise seemed not to have struck the towns so severely, although it soon became clear that locals were growing food on every available plot of land, and were utilising all outside spaces. Balconies which once held flowering plants now supplemented the household kitchens with small quantities of leafy vegetables and soft fruits. The plants were a little grey and threadbare, but the buildings around them seemed, somehow, to protect them.

The elves kept their hoods up and their sleeves down, covering as much as they could of their heads and hands, and they slumped down onto their mounts, bringing their knees up and curving their backs so as to seem of more human proportions. The postures they adopted were not comfortable and Laban began to suffer quite quickly, but it was imperative that they not be seen or recognised.

In times of strife, prejudices are closer to the surface and more brutal, and anyone could fall under suspicion, any foreigner or non-human.

The elves were singular among the crowds, but went unnoticed.

The safest places in the cities were often also the most dangerous. The slums, the hovels, the out of the way, hole-in-the-wall places could effectively conceal the presence of a thief or murderer or even an elf, while,at the same time, in the same places, the most innocent woman or child might be brutalised physically or mentally for very little reward.

Gilead preferred these places where people chose not to look too closely at anything but coin. A relatively small amount of money could prevent prying eyes from noticing how tall the elves were, how slender, how upright, how pale… how other. Gilead preferred to go to the places in the city where everyone’s eyes were cast down or away, where no one looked for the truth in the eyes of another. His elf eyes could speak true and still his otherness would cause anything from a feint or swoon to an unprovoked attack.

The elves found their route along Commercial Way and around the university into the Maze and the old slum districts of Neuestadt. The streets were narrow and crooked with overhanging roofs and odd junctions, and the three elves soon had to dismount and walk in single file. Gilead led them and Fithvael brought up the rear. Laban walked between them, leading the old war steed.

‘Why has he brought us here?’ Laban asked over his shoulder. ‘This place is full of filth and degradation. Thieves and assassins too, no doubt.’

‘Speak up,’ said Gilead. ‘I’m sure your insults didn’t reach the ears of our hosts.’

Laban turned to Fithvael, colouring slightly.

‘There is much to learn,’ he muttered.

‘You’ll learn it all, in due course. Give it time,’ said Fithvael.

‘“Give it time” will only waste my time and put us all in danger,’ said Gilead. ‘Better teach him to shut his mouth. Make that your first lesson, and learn it quickly.’

Laban scowled, but did not speak again.

Gilead suddenly disappeared through an arched gap in the wall to their left, over an earth step and into a narrow yard with a ramshackle lean-to roof against the wall of the adjacent building.

‘What is this?’ asked Laban.

A human head appeared through a hole in the wall above the makeshift roof. Backlit, it was impossible to determine the human’s sex.

‘Business?’ it asked in a voice which offered no further indication as to the owner’s gender.

‘A room. One bed. Three meals,’ said Gilead, raising neither his head nor his voice.

The little door that covered the hole in the wall closed abruptly.

‘So we all eat, but only one of us sleeps?’ asked Laban.

‘You can sleep,’ said Gilead. ‘But if the horses are taken, you’ll have to find more, and you won’t find them here.’

‘Where’s the ostler?’ asked Laban. ‘The stable boy? The stable for that matter?’

‘What do you suppose that to be?’ asked Gilead, gesturing towards the lean-to roof on the opposite wall. Laban walked over to the wall, stepping under the roof that protruded from it like some semi-permanent awning. He toyed with a wrought-iron tether-ring driven into the wall at waist height and pulled at a sagging bag of old, damp straw. Having disturbed it, he stepped back, away from the unpleasant mouldy smell that emanated from it.

‘You’ll find something more wholesome for them to eat, too,’ said Gilead, handing Laban the reins to his palfrey. ‘You can use the straw for a mattress if you so desire but, from that odour, I suspect an infestation, so I wouldn’t recommend it.’

‘What of the bed?’ asked Laban.

‘For my cousin and faithful companion,’ said Gilead. ‘Have you no respect for your elders and betters?’

‘I only wondered why we should not all benefit from rest,’ said Laban.

‘Rest does not benefit the restless,’ said Gilead. ‘There will be time to sleep when I must and an eternity of rest when I’m dead. For now, there is work to be done, and it is better done by night.’

‘Food first,’ said Fithvael, giving the broad war steed a reassuring slap on the rump to encourage it into the makeshift stable.

Laban strode over to the old elf’s side, throwing his cloak over his shoulder.

‘Not you,’ said Gilead. ‘I’ll have yours sent out.’ He turned back through the arch, followed by Fithvael, and ducked through a low door three or four yards further along the wall.

Laban was left in the small, grubby yard with no one for company but the horses and no light or heat to speak of. He decided that deprivation was something he must be bound to get used to if Gilead was to be his master, but he would not thank him for it.

Gilead stepped into the darkened room. Some light bled in between the badly-drawn drapes; not moonlight, but the light of a hundred lamps and candles lit in the various chambers of the university to enable the most serious of scholars, or the least able, to study long into the night. The university buildings were never truly dark and light escaped from windows and doorways, around ill-fitting doors, or those left ajar, and between partially-drawn curtains or from windows that were left naked. Gilead did not need the light to know how the furniture was arranged in the two small rooms, for nothing had moved, but he was grateful for the chance to see the piles of books and papers that had sprung up all around the little study and adjoining bed-chamber in time to step over or around them. The room had been free of obstacles the last time he had been in it, but that was fifty years ago and men are wont to accumulate things, as if ownership of objects made their lives somehow richer.

There was so much about humankind that Gilead did not understand, nor did he wish to.

The elf was familiar with the university buildings, and with these rooms in particular. He had been stealthy in his approach and had entered the quadrangle without being noticed. He had kept to the shadows and moved silently, close to the high stone walls, standing under one or other of the oriel windows on those occasions when someone appeared from a doorway to cross the quad or duck into a stairwell.

Gilead had taken the narrow, spiral staircase in the north corner of the quad, and walked the length of the corridor on the third floor of the building. It was a more circuitous route than taking the imposing, carved-wooden staircase in the East Hall, erected long ago to commemorate the death of the last grand master of the scholars’ guild. The East Hall was kept very well-lit because it was the main thoroughfare through the building. It was always full of people moving around the university or simply gathering to talk and exchange ideas. On Gilead’s last visit, which had also been his first, Mondelblatt, the newly invested Professor of Ethnological and Corporeal Physick, had taken him to his rooms by the more private route, not wanting to be caught red-handed with one of the elder race and, as a consequence, be found out for the liar and cheat that the elf knew him to be.

Gilead had not forgotten the building, the layout of which was as clear in his mind as if he had visited yesterday, but he had forgotten how it, and the man he had undertaken to visit once more, had made him feel. The whole place made his flesh crawl.

He hadn’t originally sought to frighten Mondelblatt, for he needed something from the man, but once at the university, Gilead felt no compunction, breaking silently into the professor’s rooms by night so that he should be the first thing the so-called scholar saw when he awoke with a start.

Mondelblatt’s eyes widened as he twitched awake, and Gilead thrust his hand over the man’s mouth.

Mondelblatt blinked hard, and stared at Gilead. His mouth relaxed under the elf’s hand and Gilead was confident that the professor would not cry out.

Mondelblatt shook as he sat up, then turned and placed his feet on the floor. Gilead looked down to see gnarled, purplish flesh, the second toe on the left hooked over its neighbour. He saw how thin the man’s skin was, and how frail his hands as he reached for a walking stick that was propped against the nightstand.

The hair that stuck out in tufts from under a yellowing linen nightcap was sparse and white and the professor’s eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy.

‘Is it you?’ asked Mondelblatt. ‘Have you come for me?’

‘I’ve come to talk to you, old man,’ said Gilead.

‘It talks,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘Just as I knew it would.’

He turned to Gilead, standing in front of him barefoot, one hand on his cane and the other resting lightly on the elf’s torso, close to his waist.

‘I knew when my time came, it would be you,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I am ready.’

Mondelblatt took his hand from Gilead’s torso and looked at it.

‘Your flesh is solid… and warm. What are you?’

‘You know what I am, old man. Who I am,’ said Gilead.

‘You are death,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘come to rescue me from this hell-hole. I knew how you’d come to me. I knew I’d never be forgiven for the elf. I have waited a long time. Decades of fear and loathing, and now it is as nothing to me.’

‘What?’ asked Gilead. ‘Of what do you speak, old man?’

‘I am not afraid. I am ready. It is right,’ said Mondelblatt.

Gilead looked down at the shrivelled human, and then around them. He took the old man by his slender, wrinkled wrists and urged him, gently, to sit on the edge of the bed. Then he took a taper and lit the lamp on the nightstand. Next to a pile of books stood a pitcher of water, a tall beaker and a pair of round, wire-rimmed eye-glasses.

Gilead picked up the glasses and put them gently in Mondelblatt’s hands, folded, inert in his lap. Mondelblatt did not move for a minute or two. He simply sat on the edge of the bed, spectacles in his hands.

Gilead stood in front of the old man, next to the nightstand so that the lamp shed a good deal of its yellow light on him.

‘Put them on,’ said Gilead. ‘Take a proper look at me.’

‘What need I of spectacles?’ asked Mondelblatt. ‘I know what you look like, and if you were a being of my imagination or a spectre sent by Morr himself, you would still look the same to me.’

‘You speak of death as if it were nothing,’ said Gilead. ‘Only the living do that.’

‘Then who are you?’ asked Mondelblatt, still calm but fussing with his spectacles to unweave the arms and bring them up to his eyes.

‘I am who you believe me to be,’ said Gilead. ‘But I do not bring death.’

‘Then what do you bring?’ asked the old man, who had risen again from his bed, his glasses on the end of his nose, and was peering up into Gilead’s face, distorted by the shadows cast by the lamplight below.

‘Only questions, and no one else to go to with them,’ said Gilead.

‘I can answer questions,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I used you, I lied my way into this job and, in the end, I learnt a very great deal from it.’

‘How so?’ asked Gilead. ‘You feared I would return, and do you harm?’

‘I feared I would be exposed as a cheat and a liar. I feared being found out, and the only cure for that kind of fear is to begin again, to learn everything and to prove I could earn my scholar’s robes.’

‘And have you, old man?’ asked Gilead.

‘More so than you would ever believe of an old liar,’ said Mondelblatt.

Gilead had shared his stories with Fithvael, and his thoughts, too. The Rat King had been driven insane by his longevity, by the slowing of his manic life, and had died as a consequence, but not before what little brain he had turned to mush. The Vampire Count had tried to warn him too, and that had to be worth something.

Nuln seemed like the obvious place to come, despite Fithvael’s misgivings, but he didn’t have the answers that Gilead was looking for either.

Gilead did not yet trust Laban, and someone ought to stay with the horses lest they be stolen, so when Gilead went out into the night to find Mondelblatt, he and Fithvael left the tiny inn together. Fithvael took his own route in a wide circle around the university district. He skirted the schools, the quads and the buildings that made up the classrooms, lecture theatres and the lodgings of the students. The oldest buildings stood low and squat towards the middle of the quarter and Fithvael made careful mental notes of where they stood in relation to one another, which direction they faced, how they were adorned and ornamented and how alive they were with the activities of the inhabitants.

Fithvael did not trust Mondelblatt, but he understood Gilead’s need to see the old wretch. It was Fithvael’s job to ensure that no harm or ill-will befell his friend. Fithvael walked round and around for an hour, then two. Students and masters came and went, some with books and scrolls under their arms, one or two with flasks or bottles and several with hot, paper-wrapped foodstuffs bought at the pie shop on the south-east corner of the district, closest to the student lodgings.

Fithvael spent several minutes standing against the pie-shop wall, cast in shadow by the tall, apparently windowless building across the alley. Gilead was taking his time, and Fithvael, while not actually hungry, was looking for an excuse to do something, to interact with someone, to learn some titbit of information while he was out and about.

He wondered why Gilead had hired a bed at all, since Fithvael had slept in it for less than three hours and saw no chance of getting back to it any time soon.

Two young men ducked out of the narrow doorway, bringing with them the smell of greasy pasties, the pastry clearly made with animal fats regardless of whether it contained meat or not. Fithvael saw the grease spots on the paper that wrapped at least two rancid-smelling savouries, and possibly more, and the ink on the long-fingered hand that held them. The first boy to emerge was almost as tall and almost as lean as an elf, and Fithvael surmised that the surfeit of pies must have been bought with the view to fattening the fellow up, for his friend, the young man carrying more than enough books for two to study, was quite fat enough already. Fithvael cast his gaze across the lit doorway and could clearly count three chins on the shorter, more rotund of the two humans.

‘Have you heard what they’re saying about old Mondelblatt?’ the tall, lean boy asked the other.

Fithvael’s ears pricked and he took a step closer to the end of the alley.

‘Hear about it?’ asked the rotund student. ‘I was there!’

‘Did it happen the way they’re telling it?’ asked the lean boy.

‘I don’t know,’ said the other. ‘What are they saying?’

‘That he’s insane,’ said the lean boy. ‘They say he was babbling about dust.’

‘Sand,’ said the fat boy. ‘He lectured on sand for three hours, and even then he wouldn’t have stopped if Doctor Kitzinger hadn’t flounced in to claim the hall for his next lecture. Mondelblatt had run over by an hour, but he looked as if he’d barely begun on the subject.’

‘Are you sure it was sand?’ asked the lean boy. ‘Not dust?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the fat boy. ‘Didn’t I tell you I was there? Of course it was sand! Dust indeed. Who lectures about dust for three hours?’

‘Who lectures on sand for three hours?’ asked the lean boy.

‘And his eyes were sparkly the whole time,’ said the fat boy. ‘You’ve never seen the like.’

The boys would soon be out of Fithvael’s hearing, but he had heard enough. He turned in the alley and headed north, back through the precincts of the university, in search of Gilead.

‘Dry as a bone it is,’ said Mondelblatt. He chafed at the neckline of his nightshirt, which didn’t seem to Gilead to be restricting in any way. ‘A man could choke, it’s so dry.’

Gilead poured a tall beaker of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. He’d poured two already and watched Mondelblatt drink them, but nothing seemed to quench the old man’s thirst.

‘What of the skaven? What of the objects the Rat King collected?’ he asked the old professor. ‘Where did they come from? What do they signify?’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘They have no meaning. That’s not what you came for, and you don’t trust me. Without trust, without everything, I can tell you nothing. I know there is more.’

Gilead stood and turned away as the old man downed the beaker of water that the elf had poured for him. Mondelblatt’s nightcap fell from his head as he leaned back to drain the glass. Gilead noticed how thin and ragged his neck was, and how hard his throat worked to swallow the liquid. He also noticed that there was very little hair under the cap, not much more than he had seen around its perimeter, and that the old man’s head shone whitely and was dappled with liver spots.

‘How old you seem,’ said Gilead.

‘You don’t,’ said Mondelblatt. He reached out to place his beaker on the nightstand, but it was further than an arm’s length away, and he was too old and weary to get up, so he simply held it between his hands.

‘You shouldn’t be so old,’ said Gilead.

‘I’m not,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I am… I forget how old. It was my birthday… No, I am not old, not terribly.’

‘Then why?’ asked Gilead.

‘Can you not see that I am parched?’ asked Mondelblatt, throwing the beaker at Gilead in exasperation.

Gilead took a step back, but said nothing.

‘If you will not tell me the whole of it, I cannot… I will not help you,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I thought once to owe you much, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be held to ransom. I knew nothing then, and what I knew I cheated and stole for, but those days are gone, and I am a scholar. I am a scholar I tell you, and as honourable as the next man… more honourable!’

Professor Mondelblatt was becoming agitated and Gilead wondered if the man was quite sane. On the other hand, the elf was holding something back. He was holding something back because he couldn’t quite bring himself to trust the human.

Perhaps it was time. Perhaps it was Mondelblatt’s time. Fifty years had passed easily and quickly enough for the elf, but that was a life to a human, and Gilead began to wonder if he had misjudged the professor. The elf had sought him out, after all, not the other way round.

‘Not here,’ said Gilead.

‘Then where?’ asked Mondelblatt. ‘And while you tell me, pour me some water. I’m more than parched!’

Gilead held Mondelblatt’s beaker of water, which the old man gulped from periodically while he dressed, and finally, after the old man had trickled a thimbleful of urine into his empty chamber pot, the two left the professor’s rooms and made their way back along the corridor and down the little spiral staircase.

Gilead looked left and right at the bottom of the stairs, then placed a firm hand on Mondelblatt’s wrist, indicating that he should stay where he was.

‘Gilead,’ said a voice behind him as the elf turned in the entrance to the stairwell.

‘Fithvael?’ asked Gilead. ‘Why came you here?’

‘A rumour,’ said Fithvael. ‘Nothing more, but we must return to our lodgings and discuss our progress. I fear things are not as you would wish.’

Both the elves heard a shuffling gait to their right and turned to look, stepping back beneath one of the large oriel windows that ran along the lengths of the east and west walls, facing into the quadrangle.

Mondelblatt stood for a moment in the light of the doorway, turning slowly in an odd, skipping dance.

Gilead made to step forward, but Fithvael caught his arm. Gilead placed his hand over his friend’s and said, calmly, ‘It’s Mondelblatt.’

‘Has it been so very long?’ asked Fithvael as the two elves stepped out, taking one of the old man’s arms each and propelling him along the walkway and out at the south gate.

‘Yes and no,’ said Gilead.

‘I heard he was quite mad,’ said Mondelblatt.

‘He is,’ said Gilead, ‘but not in the way that his own kind mean.’

Fithvael looked across the insignificant little man between them at his old friend.

‘He’s paid a price?’ he asked.

‘A high price,’ said Gilead. ‘But only to our advantage.’

‘What now?’ asked Fithvael.

‘Now we take him back to our lodging and tease out more of his truths.’

‘Truths?’ asked Fithvael. ‘Does he know anything about the truth?’

‘Sometimes it is only the dishonest who finally know the meaning of truth.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Fithvael.

‘What are you keeping from me?’ asked Mondelblatt. ‘I know you are keeping something from me… the most important something… the key to everything.’

‘Not so loud, old man,’ said Fithvael, holding Mondelblatt’s wrist so that his agitated hand couldn’t knock over the drinks on the table. The elf gestured with his other hand for the serving girl, the innkeeper’s daughter, to replenish the old man’s beaker yet again.

The girl had looked at Mondelblatt in disgust more than once and had kicked a chamber pot under the table, sure that the old man must need to use it soon, and knowing that she’d be the one to scrub the floors clean if he should lose control of his bladder. She wondered just how much liquid the old man could hold in his gaunt, fragile frame.

The ale she poured was pale and cloudy and tasted of fermentation. There was no distinctive flavour to suggest what it had been made from, but it was as honest as it could be in these troubled times, and they were lucky to have anything to brew with at all.

‘The blonde child, the sky clematis, the orb and egg. I understand them all, but only as parts of a puzzle,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘Humankind, flora, the dwarf, insects, the elf – all are represented by the best, purest examples of their worth in the world, but there is more. There must be more.’

Gilead thought back to the Rat King’s dank chamber deep below ground, of the niches in the wall of the strange ante-room, of the visions that had come so strongly to his mind, of the princess, of the destruction of the plant, of being inside the dwarf’s head, of the shimmering carpet of the insects’ carapaces. He thought of his reflection and of the depth of darkness of the obsidian ceiling in the great underground hall. He thought of the ratman and of his amulet, the same amulet that nestled in the cuff of his breeches, inside his boot.

He had known all along that he would have to show the amulet to Mondelblatt, but he had also known what it had done to the Rat King, how sad and sorry his end had been… And he knew the scholar’s weaknesses.

Gilead knew the prematurely aged man to be weak of will, greedy, selfish and filled with his own importance. He knew that those had been his key character traits fifty short years ago, and he believed that mankind was too brutal and too arrogant even to desire to change, let alone to accomplish any fundamental shift in personality. He doubted that Mondelblatt had changed enough not to be drawn in by the powers of the amulet and by the immortality it seemed to offer.

The elf was also unsure as to how the amulet was activated, since it seemed to have little or no effect on him or his companions. He had taken it out several times, tossed it to Fithvael, held it up to the light, breathed on it, polished it and subjected it to various tests of a more arcane nature dictated by the tenets of his kind.

The amulet had remained inert, dull.

He had also seen its effect on the skaven, on their king, and he had seen the magic that it could produce. He wondered how close to the skaven humankind really were. He wondered what triggered activity in the little stone.

Gilead sighed.

‘I could wonder forever,’ he said, ‘but I fear we have precious little time.’

Gilead motioned to Fithvael and the two put their heads together and lowered their voices.

‘Are you quite sure of our old friend, te tuin?’ Fithvael asked.

‘No,’ said Gilead, ‘I am not. I am sure that this plague must end and I am sure that time is of the essence. There has been enough destruction, and if we can put an end to it, sooner has to be better.’

‘We have time,’ said Fithvael as he saw the dull little stone, extracted from Gilead’s boot, turning in the elf’s fingers.

‘No,’ said Gilead. ‘With Baneth’s death, time, even in our terms, is running short.’

They watched Mondelblatt rubbing his eyes and blinking.

‘What is it, old man?’ he asked.

‘My eyes are dry,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘So very, very dry.’

Fithvael almost felt sorry for Mondelblatt, who seemed older and more frail than he should after fifty years, even for a human. He placed a reassuring hand over one of the old man’s.

‘You’re tired,’ he said, ‘and it’s late. I’ll find a balm for you when we’re done, and take you home to bed.’

Before Mondelblatt could answer, Gilead leaned in, his closed fist resting on the table’s surface, close to the old man’s trembling hands. The human looked from Fithvael to Gilead, then down at the elf’s fist.

‘You have brought me something?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Gilead. ‘I want to show you something. It is not mine to give, but if you can tell me something – anything – about it…’

Mondelblatt turned his hand over for Gilead to drop whatever he was concealing in his fist into it. Instead, the elf simply held the amulet between his finger and thumb, one digit on the bottom of the oval stone and one on the top. When Mondelblatt reached out for it, Gilead moved it out of the old man’s range.

Mondelblatt blinked once more, and when he opened his eyes, Fithvael noticed that large, salty droplets sat upon his lower lashes. Another blink and two bulging tears trickled down the old man’s cheeks.

Mondelblatt blinked again and sighed.

The hand that had been wrapped around his beaker, constantly bringing it to his mouth for long gulps of the poor ale, uncurled and relaxed and both of his hands stopped trembling.

With the last of Mondelblatt’s long exhalation, the small room fell quite quiet.

Then the serving girl with the large jug of ale shouted out.

‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Someone’s got to clean that up. Can’t you make him go in the pot?’

Fithvael looked down to where the serving girl pointed at a growing puddle of pale liquid that was inching out across the worn flags of the floor.

On the other side of the tavern wall, Laban te tuin Tor Mahone started from a light sleep as the horses began to snort and sniff and paw at the smooth-worn cobbles of the yard. The young elf got up and looked around as the first fat raindrop fell from the sky, landing on his shoulder and trickling down the front of his cloak.

The larger horse rocked its neck and stamped its foreleg. As a second drop fell from the sky, then a third, Laban bent to look at the horse’s leg. He was surprised to see a rainbow-sheened, carapaced insect, its shell as black as an oil-slick and iridescent with reflected colour. As he bent to scoop it away, the carapace opened to reveal large bright wings and the insect made a clicking noise before flying away.

Laban patted the horse’s shoulder and whispered in its ear, trying to reassure the beast, while the palfrey huddled as close to the wall under the ramshackle roof as she could manage.

The rain was unlike anything the elf had ever seen. The drops of water were unfeasibly large and apparently filled with light, shining whitely out and then spraying across the darkening cobbles as they landed. As the frequency of the drops increased, the noise became almost deafening.

Laban wanted nothing more than to pull his cloak tightly around him and run to the entrance to the inn, in the hope that he wouldn’t drown in the process, but he dared not disobey Gilead or Fithvael.

Seconds later, as the elf stood with his back pressed against the wall, he felt the water rising around his ankles, falling too fast for it to run off into the drains and soakaways at the lowest points in the yard.

He felt sure that the whole city would be flooded if the rain lasted for more than a few minutes and he dreaded the death and destruction that would inevitably result from such a disaster.

He looked hard through the rain and into the sky beyond and saw clear, bright moonlight, as if the rain was falling in a narrow band that he could see the edge of. He turned and looked in the opposite direction.

Laban stepped out into the rain and dashed over the step and through the opening in the wall. By the time he had crossed the street, he was standing on pale, dry cobbles. He looked up and could see only the blackness of the sky, punctuated by the light of twin moons and the stars that filled the firmament. The elf could see no rain clouds, and certainly none that could produce such a downpour; such clouds would surely have obscured the stars and moons.

Then Laban’s mouth fell open as he watched the progress of the band of rain sweep away across the street and over the yard. Two minutes later, and certainly no longer, Laban was leaning into the yard through the arched opening. The cobbles were bone dry and the horses, standing side-by-side under the awning, seemed as relaxed as ever. The palfrey looked up at him and blinked, then walked across the yard and dropped her head down to drink from the shallow trough in the opposite corner. Laban noticed that it was about half-full, just as it had been when the elves had arrived at the inn.

Laban pushed his cloak over his shoulder and, without a second thought, strode into the tavern. His head was uncovered and his thick, pale hair, cut in a straight line at chin level, looked almost like spun silver in the lamplight.

There was an almighty clatter and splash as the serving girl dropped the half-full jug of poor ale that she was carrying and it fell to the flagstone floor, sloshing its contents into the puddle of urine and making even more mess for her to clean up.

For such a little person, she let out a surprisingly loud scream.

The girl was indeed small, even by human standards, and feisty, too, but her lazy father worked her hard, so she was generally too tired to bother noticing the few odd people that found their way into his tavern. She was only glad to be able to earn an occasional tip from them, since her father always seemed to have some good reason not to pay her; today, it would no doubt be her own fault for spilling so much perfectly drinkable ale, even though her father never touched it and kept the decent stuff for himself.

As the scream and the clatter of the tumbling jug filled the small, low room with a cacophony of sound, Laban, who had to stand with his feet apart and his knees bent to avoid his head coming into contact with the room’s ceiling beams, turned back and forth at the waist. He looked first to Gilead and Fithvael, who scowled at him, and then at the girl. When he looked at Gilead and Fithvael for the second time, he noticed the little old man who sat between them, wearing what appeared to be a nightcap and looking at the oval stone in Gilead’s hand. Still, his companions offered him no assistance.

Before Laban knew what was happening, the girl’s father had vaulted the table that stood across the corner of the room and served as a counter. The short, bulky man had what looked like an ancient musket in his hands, but he wielded it expertly and its working parts were clean and well-oiled.

‘The rain!’ exclaimed Laban. ‘Did you see the rain?’

The serving girl’s face was red and her hips swayed as she began to wield a mop as if it were a deadly weapon, lunging it towards Laban’s legs as if she would take them out from under him with one keen sweep.

‘Never mind the rain,’ said the girl. ‘Did you ever look in a mirror? What’s the likes of you doin’ in a place like this? What’s the likes of you doin’ anywhere in this city?’

Laban looked down at himself as if perhaps he hadn’t looked carefully enough in the mirror, and might be inappropriately dressed.

‘I…’ began the elf. ‘I… It was the rain. You’ve never seen such precipitation!’

‘I’ve never seen the likes of you, neither, and I don’t plan on seein’ you again,’ said the girl, still jabbing at his legs with her filthy mop as her father watched from a slightly safer distance.

Gilead and Fithvael looked at one another, but said nothing. They had been together for long enough to know when their thoughts were in accord without the need to speak, and speaking now, cutting the tension in the air with more singsong elven tones, might not be a good idea. It was never their intention to disturb the people they came into contact with and, in these poorest of places, people rarely looked at one another or listened too carefully to accents and speech patterns.

So far, Gilead and Fithvael had gone more-or-less unnoticed, and they did not want to cause any harm by allying themselves with Laban’s foolishness.

Fithvael still had his hand over Mondelblatt’s, unwilling to make a move lest he draw attention to himself. Mondelblatt blinked and looked around.

‘Foolish girl,’ he said, rather too loudly, cutting the air and causing the owner of the inn to swing his musket back in his direction.

‘Who’re you callin’ foolish?’ asked the innkeeper. ‘And what’s the likes of you doin’ ’ere at this time of night, dressed like that? You’re not one of us. You don’t belong ’ere.’

Emboldened by his speech, the innkeeper stepped closer to the table.

Mondelblatt stood up in a single, rather jerky, movement, but the action coincided badly with his general equilibrium and the pool of piss and poor ale, and his foot slid out from beneath him. His chin came down with an almighty crack on the table and he collapsed into a heap, falling onto his stool before sliding inelegantly to the wet floor.

The crash triggered a series of events, beginning with the serving girl thrusting hard with the end of her mop at Laban’s legs. The elf jumped instinctively over the obstacle, but seemed to have forgotten just how close his head was to the ceiling beams. The impact made a loud cracking sound and Laban, his momentum suddenly halted, landed unceremoniously on the floor. Seeing his daughter strike out at the strange creature, the innkeeper shot at Laban. His aim was good, but his reflexes were somewhat slower than they had been when he was a member of the city watch and the musket shot sprayed in a wide arc over the elf’s head as he came down suddenly, landing on his backside instead of his feet.

Fithvael and Gilead glanced at one another and, with a swivel of the eyes and a slight nod, they silently agreed on their course of action.

Gilead got up from the table, turned and took the warm barrel of the innkeeper’s firearm in his hand. With a tug and a deft twist, the elf had freed the weapon and with one short swing he cuffed the innkeeper across the neck with the stock of the weapon, rendering the man unconscious, but essentially unharmed.

At the same time, Fithvael planted a foot heavily on the head of the mop that the serving girl was still wielding in anger. Her face was flushed and she was clearly more ferocious than afraid, but she should be easy enough to subdue.

The girl raged when she couldn’t free the head of the mop and within moments she had thrust away the handle and flown at Fithvael, fists flailing, screaming like a banshee. He had not expected the assault, despite other experiences that had shown him just how fiercely protective human women could be, how resourceful and how vicious.

Fithvael pulled his head and shoulders up so that the hail of blows fell harmlessly on his chest. Harmlessly to him, at least, but he also gave himself away.

The serving girl gasped, pulled her head back and then spat in his face.

It was enough.

Fithvael stopped playing nice.

He grasped the girl by her shoulders and pinned her arms to her sides. She had landed in the elf’s lap when she had lunged at him and sat there now, pink-cheeked with fury, but also blue-lipped.

Fithvael quickly realised that his grip on the girl was constricting her breathing and that if he hung on to her much longer, she might suffocate. He looked her in the eye and smiled, but when he loosened his grip, she took a deep breath and let out a scream that split the air in the room. The noise roused Mondelblatt, whose head suddenly appeared above the table-top.

Fithvael let go of the girl’s left arm in order to place his hand over her mouth to quiet her, but as soon as his grip loosened, she brought her hand up to slap the elf or pull his hair, or gouge his eye. Fithvael didn’t know what form the attack would take, but he had no trouble seeing it coming and caught the girl’s wrist before she was able to do any damage.

She screamed again, but the cry subsided into sobs and Fithvael couldn’t help feeling sorry for the feisty girl, as well as rather impressed by her. He allowed his grasp on her to slacken a little and, glancing down at his right hand, he noticed that the flesh around the girl’s wrist was already darkening with the bruising that had resulted from his strong, lean hands.

Then Fithvael noticed the girl’s hands. They were misshapen and badly swollen and black bruising was appearing around her knuckles.

‘You’re hurt child,’ he said. ‘Calm yourself. Be still.’

‘What are you? Who are you?’ asked the serving girl between sobs. ‘Take your hands off me! What have you done to my father?’

‘Enough,’ said Gilead, sloughing off the hood of his cloak, and sitting tall in his chair.

The girl stared at him. Between his exotic looks, the pains in her hands and the alien and authoritative tone of his voice, she fainted. She slumped in Fithvael’s grip and he arranged her gently against his narrow chest.

The room was suddenly quiet and still. The three elves listened for several seconds to discover whether the girl’s screams had prompted any investigation from the neighbouring buildings on the narrow street, but they could hear nothing. In the backstreets and alleyways of the slums of most great cities, people pretended not to hear screams.

‘Pick yourself up, boy, and take the old man out of the way,’ Gilead said to Laban. ‘I… I’m sorry…’ said Laban, bowing his head to his better. ‘It was… The rain was so…’

‘You’ve done enough,’ said Gilead, dismissing Laban. ‘Clean up Mondelblatt so we can get him back to his rooms and get out of this place.’

‘We must tend to the girl,’ said Fithvael. ‘She fought so hard, she has broken her hands on me.’

Gilead looked at the girl and then at Fithvael. He raised an eyebrow, almost as impressed as his friend was by the girl’s will to fight against the odds.

‘You’ll have to do it fast and alone,’ said Gilead. ‘And you’ll have to keep him out of it.’ He gestured at the innkeeper, still unconscious on the floor.

Laban tried to pick Mondelblatt up, but the old man waved him off and the elf was content not to have to deal with the professor’s urine- and beer-soaked clothes.

Mondelblatt rubbed at his chin, which had a startling red spot on it but was not blackening.

‘I’m going nowhere,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘except where you go.’

‘You’ll tell us what we need to know, and you’ll go back to the university where you belong,’ said Gilead.

‘Then who will help you?’ asked Mondelblatt. ‘Who will school you in the ways of your enemies? Who will lecture you in the mysteries of the sands?’

‘You speak in riddles, old man,’ said Gilead.

‘Aye,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘and riddles will be your undoing if you do not heed me.’

Fithvael looked at Mondelblatt, remembering the conversation between the two students in the alleyway earlier that evening.

‘Listen to him, te tuin,’ said Fithvael quietly. ‘The old man knows what it is. He knows what the stone can do. He knows who wields its power, and he knows why.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ said Mondelblatt.

‘Then what would you say, old man?’ asked Gilead.

‘I’d say that I know where to begin,’ said Mondelblatt.

LET THE GREAT AXE FALL

Part One

Graham McNeill

In the end, they counted eighty-eight skulls in the pile at the heart of the village: the skulls of children, no larger than a fist, all the way to those of fully grown men and women. The entire settlement had been wiped out in a single act of slaughter. Such feasts of death would usually attract the attention of carrion birds, but the sky above Heofonum was empty of scavengers.

Stacked in a pyramid, with the smallest at the top, the skulls were coated in sticky blood that had run down the bony ridges of empty eye sockets and jawbones to pool beneath this grim shrine to man’s mortality. The wooden homes of the villagers lay in ruins, smashed apart as though a herd of bulls had been driven through them. Even the stone hall at the edge of the settlement had been destroyed.

Their hunting party had ridden the length and breadth of Heofonum, turning over every fallen timber, digging through every collapsed home and raking the debris of its abandoned barns, but they had found nothing of its inhabitants save their fleshless skulls. This was the third such village they had found, and with each bloodied pile of skulls laid before them like monstrous altars of worship, the mood of the hunters darkened still further.

Wenyld leaned against the stone wall of what had been the village alderman’s home. The stonework was simple, imitating the style of Sigmar’s great hall in Reikdorf, but this building had not been crafted by the mountain folk, but by the hands of men and was nowhere near as grand or finely made. It had been built to last, with dutiful care and a cunning eye for defence, but that had not been enough to thwart the monster that had razed Heofonum. Having listened to Leodan’s account of its ferocious strength, Wenyld doubted any wall, no matter whether wrought by man or dwarf, could withstand such dreadful power.

Wenyld pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as a chill blast of wind scudded through the ruined hall. Ever since he’d taken a dead man’s spear to the belly in the last moments of the battle to save the Empire from the necromancer’s undead legions, he’d found it next to impossible to keep the cold at bay. Only perched on a bondsman’s bench at a blazing firepit would any hint of warmth touch him. With winter blowing in over the Vaults to the south, Wenyld knew he was in for a painful season of snow and misery, with aching bones and frost-touched marrow.

‘Great Ulric, you favour the snows, but I’ll be glad to see your brother again with the spring,’ he said with a respectful nod to the ice-white skies of the north.

‘Careful,’ said Cuthwin, emerging from the trees on the far side of the ruined hall. ‘I’d rather we didn’t offend Ulric before we head into the mountains.’

‘Into the mountains?’ said Wenyld, irritated he hadn’t even suspected his friend was near.

Cuthwin had always been the better huntsman, but still it irked Wenyld that he hadn’t heard so much as a broken twig or brittle leaf being crushed underfoot.

‘That’s where the tracks lead,’ said Cuthwin, moving around the building. Clad in worn leather buckskin and a dappled cloak of faded green and brown, he blended with the landscape. His bow was strung, and his long-bladed hunting knife was loose in its sheath.

Wenyld looked up to the blackened, snow-capped summits of the mountains to the south, their craggy peaks like serrated teeth gnawing at the clouds. The Vaults were the edge of the world as far as Wenyld was concerned, a battleground where two vast ranges of mountains met and threw up treacherous valleys, gorges and shadowed canyons.

He didn’t like being too close to the mountains; orcs, goblins and worse made their lairs in the mountains, and no good ever came of going anywhere near such places. Leave such terrain to the Merogens, they were welcome to them.

‘You’re sure?’ he asked, though he knew Cuthwin was never wrong about these things.

‘I’m sure.’

Wenyld sighed. ‘Ah, good. Just what I was looking forward to, a climb into the mountains at the onset of winter.’

‘Could be worse,’ said Cuthwin brightly.

‘Really?’ asked Wenyld. ‘How could it possibly be worse?’

‘You could be doing it without me to guide you.’

‘Aye, there’s that,’ he conceded. ‘You know your way around this terrain. Are you sure there’s not some mountain goat in your family history? Is there some shameful tryst you’ve kept secret all these years?’

‘Only that one night with Ebba,’ returned Cuthwin with a sly wink.

They both smiled. Ebba was a notorious Reikdorf harridan, a mother of ten and as broad as she was tall. She was married to Bryni, a baker of such willowy proportions that it amazed everyone who knew them that they had produced such healthy children, and that he had survived the ordeal.

‘Thank you for that image,’ said Wenyld. ‘Suddenly the idea of hunting a living dead champion of a Norsii blood god doesn’t seem so bad.’

‘There, you see? Told you it could be worse.’

Cuthwin threw his arm over Wenyld’s shoulder as they made their way back to the centre of Heofonum, where the men and horses of their hunting party awaited their leader’s word to move out. Thirty horsemen, clad in gleaming mail shirts and heavy furs, with half-helms of bronzed steel – these were among the finest warriors in all of Reikdorf. Over their armour, they wore white cloaks secured at the neck by a torq stamped with the four-armed cross the former Marshal of the Reik had taken as an informal symbol of their brotherhood.

Many were seasoned veterans, men who had stood in the heaving press of a sword line and lived, which marked them as both skilful and favoured by the gods. A few were little more than youths, the rise of the dead having forced them to manhood before their time.

All were volunteers, none had wives and none had fathered any children.

Sigmar wanted no new orphans and widows in Reikdorf; the war against the dead had created enough already.

One warrior stood apart from the others, a tall, shaven-headed man with a stripe of hair running across his crown to the base of his neck that then became a long, dangling scalp lock, similar to those worn by the Ostagoths. This was Leodan, a horse-warrior of the Taleutens whose Red Scythes rode with Sigmar’s army at the River Reik and who had very nearly met his end at the great axe of the monster they hunted.

Like Wenyld, his wounding had been grievous, and few had expected him to see the dawn. But Taleutens are tougher than seasoned oak, and the horseman’s shattered bones had knitted whole, though he would forever walk with a pronounced limp. Alone of his Red Scythes, Leodan had lived through that hellish night of war-making, and the loss of his brother riders was a wound that could not be healed by poultices and stitches.

Sigmar had once remarked that there was something missing in Leodan, some part of him that wasn’t entirely normal. Wenyld had sensed it too on those few occasions he had cause to speak to the embittered Taleuten. Leodan had remained in Reikdorf following the defeat of the necromancer, a sullen presence at the fire whose shame kept him from returning home and whose pride drove him to relearn his skills as a rider. When Sigmar had asked for volunteers to ride with him, Leodan had been first to offer his lance.

Wenyld and Cuthwin nodded to the warriors as they tightened saddle cinches and fed grain from their panniers to the horses. They all knew that this was likely the last stop before they reached the mountains, and a well-fed horse was a sure-footed horse. None of them had ridden the trails of the Vaults, and Wenyld saw their wariness at venturing into such a hostile environment. The mountains offered a whole host of ways for a warrior to die, none of them glorious. To die falling from a cliff or crushed in a rockslide was no way to enter the eternal hall of Ulric’s kingdom.

Leodan limped over to Cuthwin, his scarred face and ice-blue eyes cold as the grave.

‘What sign?’ he asked.

‘South,’ said Cuthwin. ‘Into the mountains.’

Leodan nodded and turned away, returning to his horse and hauling himself into the saddle with the aid of his lance and an awkwardness the men of Reikdorf pretended not to see. With Leodan gone, two of the younger riders approached, Gorseth and Teon, lads barely old enough to have reached their Blood Night and whose chins were scuffed with only the faintest scraps of beard.

Though they had seen only sixteen summers, Teon had ridden into battle alongside Alfgeir, and earned great renown by standing against the blood drinker that had once been Count Markus of the Menogoths. Gorseth had fought for the Emperor too, standing in the spear line against a host of black riders, and sported a long scar along his shoulder where a rabid corpse-wolf had raked him with its claws.

Both were lads of heart, but they were so young it only reminded Wenyld how old he felt.

‘Did you find any bodies this time?’ asked Teon.

‘No, lad,’ said Cuthwn. ‘We did not.’

‘Where do you think they are?’ said Gorseth. ‘What does the monster do with them?’

‘Best not to think of it,’ said Wenyld. ‘It would give you nightmares that’ll have you weeping at your mother’s teat.’

Gorseth glared at Wenyld. ‘I earned my blooding,’ he said. ‘Same as every man here.’

‘Maybe so, lad,’ snapped Wenyld, suddenly angry. ‘And when you’ve seen more than one battle or can grow more than thistledown on that chin of yours, maybe I’ll treat you as an equal. Until then, stay out of my way and stop asking stupid questions.’

Gorseth’s face flushed ruddy with colour, but he bit down on his anger and turned away. Teon followed his friend without comment, but Wenyld could see the disappointment in the lad’s eyes. He sighed, irked that his temper had got the better of him. Gorseth hadn’t deserved such ire.

‘You were harsh on the boy, Wenyld,’ said Cuthwin, as the two youngsters mounted their horses. ‘Seems like only yesterday we were as inexperienced as him.’

Wenyld grunted. ‘Maybe to you,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember my bones aching in winter so much or feeling the stiffness in my joints yesterday.’

‘Age comes to us all, my friend,’ said Cuthwin.

Wenyld said nothing, his heart heavy. Cuthwin was only a single cycle of the moons younger than him, but a stranger could be forgiven for thinking that a decade or more separated them. War and wounds age men, thought Wenyld, but Cuthwin had somehow avoided the worst ravages of both.

‘How long do you think before they get here?’ asked Wenyld, shielding his eyes against the low sun and looking to the east. ‘I don’t like the idea of too many nights in the open waiting for them.’

Cuthwin shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Not long, I’d hope.’

‘You’d think it would take them longer,’ said Wenyld. ‘What with the shorter legs.’

‘They don’t travel like we do,’ said Cuthwin. ‘They damn near outpaced the Asoborns of Three Hills on the march to Reikdorf.’

Wenyld nodded. He’d heard the story often enough from Wolfgart, the new Marshal’s voice swelling with his pride as he told how his wife and kinfolk had stood fast against the blood drinker’s army on that tree-lined hillside.

‘Aye, and we’ll damn well outpace you and your fancy horses when we get up into the Vaults, manling,’ said a voice from the brush behind Wenyld. He reached for the heavy-bladed sword strapped to his hip. Cuthwin’s hand kept him from drawing the blade, as a stocky figure encased in layered plates of burnished gromril and shimmering links of mail emerged from the scrub as though from thin air. Silver wings flared from the cheek plates of his full-faced helm, and he carried a great axe across his shoulders, with butterfly-winged blades and an edge sharper than even Govannon could fashion to a weapon.

‘Master Alaric,’ said Cuthwin, with a short bow.

‘Cuthwin, isn’t it?’ said the dwarf, his hands planted on his hips. ‘You younglings all look the same to me.’

‘Maybe if you took your helmet off you’d get a better view,’ said Wenyld.

‘Listen to him,’ said Alaric with grim amusement. ‘You’d think with that cook pot he calls a helmet on his head he’d have the good sense to keep his flapping tongue silent about someone else’s armour.’

‘At least my cook pot lets me see who I’m talking to.’

Alaric took a step forward, and a dozen dwarfs in heavy mail shirts with round, steel-rimmed shields stepped from the brush behind him. Each of the mountain folk were like metal statues, and the threat of violence contained in each one was palpable.

Alaric laughed and lifted the visor of his helm and held out his hand.

‘Good to see you again, Wenyld,’ said Alaric. ‘Grungni knows, you’ve lost none of your charm and good manners.’

‘I had few enough to begin with,’ said Wenyld. ‘But at least I had some.’

‘Never had much use for manners, boy,’ said Alaric. ‘Manners only clutter up what I need to say to someone with pretty words and hot air. And what damn use is that?’

‘None at all, master dwarf,’ said Wenyld, taking Alaric’s hand.

Wenyld had met Alaric in the wake of the battle against the necromancer, when Sigmar had carried his wounded body to the Great Hall at the centre of Reikdorf. The healer Elswyth had been swamped with wounded men, and thus it had been Master Alaric of the dwarfs who had stitched his wounds closed. Even one-handed, he had been steadier than most human surgeons, and Wenyld knew he owed the dwarf his life.

‘Is Sigmar here?’ asked Alaric with his customary abruptness.

Cuthwin nodded. ‘He is. The Emperor set out from Reikdorf as soon as he received word from Karaz-a-Karak.’

‘Good to see a manling king still understands the value of an oath,’ grunted Alaric. ‘Take me to him. There’s killing to be done.’

Sigmar knelt with his head bowed beside beside the small stone shrine, one hand over his heart, the other clasping the haft of Ghal-maraz. The plates of the Emperor’s burnished armour shone like silver, and the thickly-furred pelt of a great bear hung from his shoulders. A short-bladed sword was strapped to his side, and his anger at the death of his people hung over him like a lightning-shot thunderstorm.

The shrine itself was a small structure of four stone columns with a pitched roof of grey slate. It stood beside the shattered northern gateway of the village, and Sigmar knew it was lucky to have escaped destruction when the gates had been smashed asunder. No walls enclosed the shrine and at its heart was a statue of the wolf god in his bearded, barbarian aspect. A pair of wolves sat by his side, and he carried his mighty two-handed warhammer over his shoulder, a warrior who has never known his equal and never would.

Sigmar did not pray for himself: he petitioned the god of the northern winds and wolves to look kindly on his subjects that had been murdered in Heofonum.

‘Great Ulric,’ said Sigmar. ‘Your people died here, and they come before you as victims of a terrible evil, one which has escaped Morr’s judgement more than once. I would ask you to welcome them to your halls, where the beer is cold and the roasted meat is always hot. I ask this not for me, but for your loyal people.’

Sigmar received no response, nor had he expected one, for Ulric was a god who rarely answered prayers. His lessons were harsh, and taught a man self-reliance.

A hard god to follow, but a worthy one.

Sigmar stood as he heard someone approaching. From the heavy, mechanical rhythm of the footsteps he had a good idea who that might be. Sigmar did not turn around, and gently touched the heavy, rune-inscribed head of Ghal-maraz to the carved hammer of Ulric with a nod of respect.

‘Praying to the Wolf God can wait. There’s a grudge to be settled,’ said a voice he knew could only belong to one dwarf.

‘Greetings, Alaric,’ said Sigmar, finally turning and descending the short steps of the shrine to the ground. Alaric was just as he remembered him: stout, immovable and utterly dependable. His armour was gold and bronze and silver, and he was not surprised to see the hand he had lost in the battle was restored with a mechanical gauntlet.

‘I see you got yourself a new hand,’ said Sigmar.

‘Aye, lad,’ said the dwarf, flexing a bronzed gauntlet of articulated digits that moved just like a limb of flesh and blood. ‘Can’t have a one-handed dwarf smith, sounds too much like an elf god for my liking.’

‘And that would never do,’ smiled Sigmar, but a moment of melancholy touched him as he was put in mind of the silver fingers the dwarf had crafted for Pendrag. His fallen friend’s replacement hand had been a miracle, but this artefact was clearly of much greater sophistication. None among the dwarfs were as skilled in the craft of the smith or the forging of runes as Alaric, and this piece was a masterpiece of the metalworking arts.

‘They already call me mad,’ said Alaric, his gruff tones not quite concealing his irritation at the name. ‘Can’t have them thinking I’m an elf-friend too. I’d need to shave my head and find the nearest daemon to kill me.’

‘A daemon?’ said Sigmar with a shudder, remembering the terrible creature he had fought atop the Fauschlag rock of Middenheim. He shook his head. ‘I would not be in too much of a hurry to meet such a beast. Even a hero like you might struggle to defeat a daemon.’

‘Maybe so, lad, maybe so,’ agreed Alaric. ‘And we’ve a bastard hard fight ahead of us as it is. Even that bumbling smith of yours couldn’t put him down fully with the baragdonnaz he’d rebuilt. A dwarf-built one might have done it, but he put it together like a blind apprentice with a hangover.’

‘It didn’t kill the monster, but it hurt it.’

‘That it did, lad, that it did,’ conceded Alaric. ‘And if we can hurt it, we can kill it.’

Sigmar nodded slowly, offering a hand to Alaric, who accepted his warrior’s grip and shook it with a grin of real pleasure.

‘Just once it would be pleasant to see you when there’s not killing to be done,’ said Alaric.

‘That it would, my friend, but these are not the times we live in.’

‘There’s truth in that,’ agreed Alaric, striding back to the centre of the village with Sigmar at his side. ‘And I’m glad to see you’ve honoured your oath.’

‘You are my sworn oath-brother, you and King Kurgan both,’ said Sigmar. ‘You should know I would never break my word.’

‘There’s them among your kind don’t know the value of an oath,’ said Alaric. ‘They’d break a promise as soon as break wind, and with just as much thought for those around them. It’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re not all the same.’

‘I’ll try not to be offended by that,’ said Sigmar with a wry grin.

The dwarf looked genuinely puzzled, but said nothing as they reached the centre of the village. Sigmar’s riders stood by their mounts, ready to ride at a moment’s notice, and nine armoured dwarfs stood in a small square by a fallen signpost.

Alaric rejoined his dwarfs and turned to survey the warriors Sigmar had brought with him with a critical eye. Apparently satisfied, the runesmith addressed his words to every one of them.

‘You all know why we’re here,’ he said. ‘There’s a grudge that needs settling, and we’ve all been wronged by the monster that did this killing. These aren’t the first folk its killed, not by a long shot, and my people know that better than anyone. I can see there’s some among you manlings know it too.’

Alaric stared hard at Leodan, and the scarred Taleuten gave a slow nod.

‘Now this monster is more than just a dead thing that’s been lifted from the grave, it’s a monster that’s been steeped in blood for longer than any of you can remember. Longer than a lot of my kin can remember, and that’s saying something.

‘It’s got a name, and names are powerful things. Knowing a thing’s name breaks its hold on you. Once you know its name, you’re not so afraid of it. Well this thing’s called Krell, and he was reaving and slaying in the name of the Blood God centuries before this new Empire of yours was a glint in young Sigmar’s eye. Before your distant kin even came across the mountains, Krell was spilling blood and taking skulls for the Blood God. Grungni alone knows how many dwarfs and men fell before his axe, too many, and every one of those that died needs avenging. Back in my hold, there’s a book. We know it as the Dammaz Kron, what you’d call a Book of Grudges, and everyone and everything that’s done my people wrong is remembered. We dwarfs never forget an insult, and even if it takes a thousand years or more, we get even.’

Alaric paused, his mechanical fingers clattering as he made a bronze fist.

‘Krell’s done your kind great wrong too,’ said the runesmith. ‘He killed your warriors at the River Reik, and he’s butchered hundreds more now that he’s recovered his strength. Wherever it was he hid his dead face these last months, I don’t know. Probably in some dank barrow in the deepest part of the forest or some worm-infested cave beneath the earth. It doesn’t matter, all that’s important is that he’s shown his face again and we can end his slaughters right now.’

‘How do we fight a thing like that?’ asked Teon. Sigmar had been wondering the same thing. He did not see Krell on the battlefield, but had heard the terrible stories of his power and murderous fury. The undead champion of the Dark Gods would not be a foe easily bested.

Alaric unsheathed his axe and brandished it over his head.

‘We fight with heart and courage,’ he said, turning the weapon so that all could see the glittering, frosted sigils on its shimmering blade. ‘And with master runes.’

Alaric swept the axe in the direction of the mountains to the south, and his dwarfs followed him as he set off with a mile-eating stride. Sigmar had seen dwarfs on the march and knew they would be able to maintain that pace for days on end. There would be no danger of the horsemen leaving the foot-slogging dwarfs behind.

Wenyld led a dun gelding to him, the muscular steed that had faithfully borne him into battle against the necromancer. Sigmar had sought the horse out with the dawn, knowing that a horse of such courage and heart was a rare beast indeed. He had found it grazing by a patch of untouched grass at the northern end of the city, and it had welcomed him with a stamp of its hooves. The horse was named Taalhorsa and tossed his mane as Sigmar climbed into the saddle and secured his boots in the stirrups.

With the Emperor atop his steed, the rest of the warriors mounted and awaited the signal to move. Wenyld unfurled the Emperor’s banner, its bright cloth woven anew by the women of Reikdorf in the aftermath of the great victory against the dead. It rippled with gold and blue and crimson, the armoured warrior and wolves adorning the fabric given wondrous animation by the stiff breeze.

Sigmar flicked his reins and Taalhorsa set off after the dwarfs. Wenyld, Leodan and Cuthwin rode alongside the Emperor; his banner bearer, lancer and scout. Leaving Heofonum behind, they rode along little-used and overgrown paths that led inexorably up to the cold, shadow-haunted tracks of the mountains. Sigmar glanced down at the village’s fallen signpost as he passed.

It had once pointed to Reikdorf in the north and somewhere illegible in the east. Though Reikdorf was hundreds of miles away, Sigmar was heartened by what it represented. It showed that even people distant from his capital actively thought of him as their Emperor.

It also reminded him of how he had failed them.

He had promised these people protection, but what protection was there from a monstrous champion of the living dead whose damned soul was sworn to the Blood God?

The ground quickly began to rise in choppy waves of rock-strewn ridges, tree-lined gorges and rough slopes of loose stone that cascaded downhill as the horses trudged ever upward. The dwarfs quickly outpaced the mounted men, but Alaric had the sense to order his warriors to slow their stride and allow the riders to keep up. As chafing to the dwarfs as such a delay was, they knew it would be madness to allow their forces to become separated.

Krell was not the only danger in the mountains.

Alaric had spoken darkly of a tribe of greenskins known as the Necksnappers, and the spoor of rats and the sound of their scuttling claws on rock stretched everyone’s nerves wire-taut. Cuthwin caught the scent of something repellent, and soon came upon signs of its passing – footprints of splayed claws and sharp talons. He had no idea what this beast might be. Sometimes it walked on two legs, sometimes on all four, but its stride was long and its prints deep, which was enough of a reason to stay out of its way.

Krell’s passing was easy enough to discern.

The Vaults had long been a place where the kings of old and their long-vanished tribes had laid their dead to rest. Overgrown barrows, so ancient they had been obscured by rockfalls and the growth of hardy mountains scrub, lay broken open and emptied. Piles of discoloured, dusty bones lay at their entrances and the musty, stagnant air of the darkened tombs was the reek of a spoiled storehouse. Rusted weapons and verdigris-stained armour lay strewn about, as though Krell had thought to loot the tombs and been disappointed by the lack of anything of worth inside. The higher they climbed, the more of these broken barrows they saw, and each one gave Sigmar a shudder of unease as he stared into the darkness beyond their shattered portals. He had stared death in the face, and could not forget the chilling touch of mortality on his soul. Sigmar was a proud man, but he liked to think he was not egotistical. He knew he would not live forever, that he would one day stand before the judgement of Morr in the slabbed necropolis of the dead.

As a warrior and an Emperor, his was a life steeped in battle and blood, and to think that he would live forever was foolish indeed. But as he stared deep into the bleak, emptiness of the cairns of these long forgotten kings, he was touched by an altogether greater worry. He chuckled softly to himself, dispelling the gloom that had crept on him with every step Taalhorsa had taken.

‘Sire?’ asked Wenyld, twisting in his saddle. ‘Did you say something?’

‘No, it’s nothing,’ said Sigmar. ‘I was merely amused by my vanity.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Sigmar pointed to a barrow with a yawning entrance and a crumpled skeleton lying in a heap of brittle bones. ‘I look at these violated tombs and my greatest fear is not dying. Do you know what my greatest fear is, Wenyld?’

‘No, sire.’

‘I fear being forgotten.’

‘You will never be forgotten, my lord,’ Wenyld assured him. ‘How could you be? You are the first Emperor, the founder of the Empire and the ruler of the lands. You and the Empire are one and the same. Without you, there is no Empire.’

Sigmar smiled and said, ‘I imagine the kings buried in these tombs thought the same, but do any of us remember them? Do the saga poets still sing of their mighty deeds? What is left of them but dust and bones? No, Wenyld, it is only the vanity of men that allows us to think we will always be remembered.’

‘I disagree,’ said Cuthwin. ‘These men may have been kings, but what did they do of note? Did they found an empire? Did they save the race of men from extinction time and time again? Their names and deeds may have been forgotten, but armies will march with your name on their lips for as long as there are men to speak it.’

As Sigmar listened to Cuthwin, the image of the vast column of men with bloodied halberds and red swords the necromancer had shown him in the final moments of their battle returned to him. Those men had carried banners with his name emblazoned upon them, and bore talismans of the twin-tailed comet as they marched from a scene of wanton slaughter.

‘You should not speak of such things,’ said Leodan, surprising everyone. The horseman was taciturn at the best of times, but he had barely spoken since they had ridden from Reikdorf all those weeks ago.

‘Why not?’

‘You bring the notice of the gods by speaking of immortality,’ said Leodan. ‘Men should not dream of it, for immortality is for the gods alone and they are jealous of their eternal lives.’

‘We weren’t talking about immortality,’ said Cuthwin.

‘Yes, you were,’ said Leodan, raking back his spurs and riding to the head of the snaking trail of mounted men with his lance-tip glittering in the sun.

‘What was that about?’ wondered Wenyld.

Sigmar had no answer for him and they lapsed into silence as the day wore on and the terrain became ever more difficult. The ground grew rougher and steeper, the path through the tree-shawled gorges getting narrower and narrower. These were mountains that did not suffer living things to move freely through their deep valleys and forests without effort.

At every turn in the path Sigmar felt as though a hundred eyes were upon the hunting party, hidden spies stalking them on the cliffs above or malevolent observers watching from behind every crag or in every shadow. The sense of threat and imminent danger was palpable, and he knew he wasn’t the only one feeling it. Many times, horses stumbled and men cried out as they swung out over towering drops when they took their gaze from the path to seek out what might be a lurking enemy above.

A chill wind howled down through the gorge, a knifing cold that sought out every gap in a cloak or every thin patch of cloth covering a man’s bare skin. Sigmar shivered in his armour and wished he’d worn the padded undershirt Count Marius had sent from Marburg. Ostentatiously decorated with embroidered stitching and needlepoint images of hammers and comets, Wolfgart had laughed at the sight of it, but it was undeniably warm and of sublime quality. Say what you wanted about Marius, he understood the value of quality goods.

Thinking of Wolfgart brought a rueful smile to Sigmar’s lips. He missed his old friend, and dearly wished Wolfgart could have accompanied him on this ride into the mountains. The rogue had wanted to come, but one look at Maedbh’s eyes and her swollen belly had convinced him that to leave Reikdorf would be a mistake. The old women who knew of such things had told Maedbh she was to bear a son, and Wolfgart’s joy was complete. The boy would be born within three cycles of the moon, and Wolfgart had made Sigmar swear he would return in time for his son’s birth.

In any case, Wolfgart had no choice but to remain in Reikdorf. With the departure of Alfgeir into the snow-wilds of the north, someone had to assume the mantle of Marshal of the Reik. Though Wolfgart had protested, Sigmar had known there was no one else who could follow the example Alfgeir had set. In a solemn ceremony, attended by no less than three of the Empire’s counts, Sigmar had presented the glittering sword of the Marshal to his oldest friend, who had grinned like it was his Blood Night all over again.

A clatter of falling rock from ahead shook Sigmar from his nostalgic reverie. He looked for the source of the sound, seeing a scree of loose stone tumbling from the cliffs above them. Sigmar’s eyes narrowed as he saw a flitting shadow in the thick brush that clustered at the edge of the high cliff like the bushy eyebrows of an old man.

Sigmar heard the creak of seasoned yew and looked over to see Cuthwin had his bowstring pulled back and a goose-feathered arrow nocked. The huntsman scanned the clifftop, but eventually eased the string back, but did not replace the arrow in his quiver.

‘What did you see?’ asked Sigmar.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Cuthwin. ‘Maybe a coney or a fox.’

‘Or something more dangerous perhaps?’

Cuthwin nodded, and Sigmar saw how it irked him to be unsure of anything.

‘Keep a wary eye out,’ said Sigmar and Cuthwin nodded, keeping one eye on the narrow path and one on the cliffs above them.

The path continued to wind up the angled slope of a white cliff that glittered with golden dust embedded in the rocks, and Sigmar wondered why none of the dwarf holds had constructed some iron structure to hew it from the cliff. Perhaps it was too dangerous or perhaps it wasn’t even gold. Sigmar was no miner, and the fact that none of Alaric’s dwarfs had given the cliff so much as a second glance told him that it probably wasn’t gold.

Alaric was waiting for him at a bend in the track, where a jutting boulder with a flat face projected out into space. Alaric stood with his hands braced on his hip, standing at the very tip of the boulder, with nothing to prevent him from falling thousands of feet to his death. The winds howled around the dwarf, but he seemed not to notice.

‘Hard going,’ said Sigmar, drawing in the reins.

‘This?’ said Alaric with a distracted air. ‘This is a gentle stroll compared to some of the galleries below Karaz-a-Karak. At least there you have good stone above your head, and not this damned empty sky.’

‘It’s hard going to us,’ said Sigmar.

‘Aye, you’re only manlings, it’s true,’ agreed Alaric. ‘You like your land flat and covered with trees and growing things.’

‘What are you doing out there on that rock?’

Alaric looked around, as though he’d been unaware of where he was standing. He stamped down on the boulder, and Sigmar winced, half expecting it to shear off and carry the dwarf to his doom. Alaric saw his face and grinned.

‘I forget your kind doesn’t know stone like we do,’ he said. ‘I was reading the stone ahead of us, lad.’

‘What is it saying?’ asked Sigmar, who knew not to mock such statements.

‘Hard to say,’ replied Alaric. ‘They don’t speak quietly here. These mountains didn’t just rise up nice and calm. No, they were brought into the world with violence and fire and earthquakes that would split your Empire into shards if they happened now. I still hear the echoes of that.’

Alaric extended his arms to the north and west. ‘The Black Mountains in the north and the Grey Mountains in the west. Tell me what you see when you look at them.’

Sigmar shielded his eyes from the lowering sun with the palm of his hand and looked out over the titanic peaks of the Black Mountains. The jagged, crimson-hued mountain that men of the south knew as Blood Peak reared over a gnarled mob of craggy summits that stretched into the clouds of the far distance. Dots of bird flocks swirled over the nearest peaks, like crows over a battlefield.

Only the misty edges of the Grey Mountains could be seen from here, the sharp slopes cowled in patches of snow. What lay beyond those mountains was a mystery to the men of the Empire. Only the Bretonii had dared venture into the ice-locked passes that led to the lands beyond, and no one had seen or heard from that lost tribe in nearly two decades. Twilight was fast approaching, and there was little Sigmar could see that had attracted Alaric’s attention.

‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see,’ he said at last.

‘Do you see the mountains moving?’ asked Alaric.

‘Moving? No, of course not,’ said Sigmar. ‘Mountains don’t move.’

‘Ah, lad, of course they do,’ said Alaric with the amusement of someone who knows the punchline of a jest. ‘This world is a lot less solid than you manlings think it is. All this land, these mountains and the oceans, they drift on giant beds of stone that float on vast seas of molten rock. They move and grind against each other, and sometimes they collide to raise giant mountain ranges like this. A long time ago, before we dwarfs even built our holds, two of those beds collided, and the shock of that threw up these mountains.’

‘You’re mocking me,’ said Sigmar.

‘Not at all. Aye, these beds of rock move so slowly that you fast-moving races don’t see it, but dig the rock for long enough and you’d soon know. The rock bed to the north scraped up over this one and the tail end of the northern mountains rode roughshod over the mountains of the south to make this almighty snarl-up of peaks and valleys and this pass.’

‘This is a pass?’ said Sigmar. ‘I thought this was just some secret path you knew. Ulric’s breath, the very teeth of winter are blowing down on us.’

‘It’s a pass right enough,’ said Alaric. ‘Yonder to the north-east is Karak Hirn, but our path won’t take us anywhere near there. Shame, I’d have liked to see the great wind cavern and hear it bellow.’

‘Alaric, why are you telling me this?’ asked Sigmar.

‘I’m not sure,’ said the dwarf, with a soft sigh. ‘I suppose I just want you to understand the rock and stone like I do. There’s history here, and memory too. These mountains have seen their fair share of dying, and I can feel there’s more on the way. The monster we’re hunting came this way, and he wasn’t the only one.’

‘My scout didn’t see any signs of anything else,’ said Sigmar.

‘Your scout doesn’t know rock like I do.’

‘You think there’s trouble coming?’

‘In these mountains, there’s always trouble coming,’ said Alaric.

They found a place to camp for the night only a little farther up the pass, a projecting lip of rock that Sigmar would have called a narrow plateau, but which Alaric seemed to think was a sweeping plain. In any case, the point was moot, as there was good water streaming down the cliff in a sparkling waterfall, and screes of tumbled boulders that offered plentiful cover and places for sentries to watch the approaches.

The riders saw to their horses first, hobbling them in the centre of the flat ground and rubbing down their lathered flanks with handfuls of scrub grass warily pulled from the edge of the cliff. Each beast was then led in turn to the natural trough at the base of the waterfall and allowed to slake their thirst in the bitingly cold water.

With the mounts settled, the men attended to their own needs, filling waterskins and breaking out hard bread and salted meat from the horses’ panniers as the darkness began to close on the mountains like a fist. Fires were lit against the cliff and the reflected heat dispelled the worst of the bitter wind blowing down from the heart of the Vaults. Warriors sat close to the fires, untying their heavy furs to allow the warmth to reach their bodies.

Alaric’s dwarfs sat in a small circle around their own fire, though none of them removed their armour or loosened their cloaks. The race of mountain folk and the race of men were bound by powerful oaths, but neither sought out the company of the other. As alike as they were in basic form, there remained – and would always remain – a gulf of understanding between them. Common cause had brought them together, and but for a number of rare instances, few men and dwarfs would count themselves as friends.

Sigmar moved through the campsite, taking the time to stop at each fire and exchange words with the men gathered around it. He knew every man’s name, and though he was exhausted by the time he sat at the fire with Wenyld, Cuthwin, Leodan, Teon and Gorseth, he knew the effort had been worthwhile. The talk around the other fires was animated, and good-natured banter flowed between the men instead of dark muttering and fearful speculation of what tomorrow might bring.

‘Another long day,’ said Cuthwin, as Sigmar sat down.

‘They’re only going to get longer. Alaric says these are just the foothills of the Vaults.’

‘Dwarf humour or dwarf understatement?’ asked Wenyld.

‘The first, I hope,’ said Sigmar, loosening the cords binding his boots and flexing his feet with a relieved sigh. Seeing the men around the fire grinning, Sigmar said, ‘Even Emperors get blisters sometimes.’

‘Even from horseback?’ said Cuthwin, passing Sigmar as bowl of hot oats and goats’ milk. The milk was starting to turn, but Sigmar didn’t mind. A warm meal at the end of a day’s travel did more to restore spirits than anything else, but Sigmar knew they would need to catch Krell soon before lack of supplies forced them to turn back.

They ate their food slowly, letting the aches and pains of the day ease out in the heat and companionable silence. Leodan passed a leather-wrapped bottle around the fire, a powerful Taleuten liquor distilled from grain and root vegetables. Sigmar took the first drink, and Cuthwin and Wenyld gratefully accepted one also. Teon and Gorseth each took a mouthful, and both coughed and retched at the taste of the powerful spirit.

Leodan smiled and said, ‘It’s an acquired taste, lad, but it’ll keep you snug in your bed through a long, cold night.’

‘Not too snug,’ warned Sigmar, as Leodan took another long mouthful. ‘Alaric’s dwarfs are taking the first watch, but we’ll be taking our turn too.’

Leodan shrugged and put the bottle away with a sour look, as the rest of Sigmar’s warriors made themselves as comfortable as they could. With only their saddle blankets between them and the rocky ground, it was going to be a long night. Sigmar arranged his saddle for a pillow before pulling his furs over him.

He closed his eyes, and sleep stole upon him almost instantly.

Sigmar woke with the first touch of chill in the air, a deeper cold than simply that of the mountains. This was a cold that only emanated from beyond the portals of Morr, the breath that accompanies those unquiet souls who do not pass through the god of the dead’s halls to their final rest. His eyes snapped open, and he rolled from his furs with Ghal-maraz leaping to his hand. The rune hammer glimmered with corposant, the bound magics that were inimical to the dead sparkling like snowflakes in a fire.

‘To arms!’ shouted Sigmar. ‘Up! Up!’

Not a soul moved, his men resting where he had left them. The horses stood as still as the carved horses at the end of Lancer Bridge over the Reik, their eyes glassy and lifeless.

‘Up, damn you!’ roared Sigmar, delivering his commands with a boot to hasten his men awake. They grunted and rolled over in their sleep, but did not awaken. Sigmar saw that even Alaric’s dwarfs were still slumbering, and knew that some fell enchantment was at work.

‘Ulric’s bones, get up!’ shouted Sigmar, kneeling beside Cuthwin and shaking the huntsman violently.

‘He can’t hear you, son of Björn, no one can,’ said a rasping voice from the darkness.

‘Show yourself, damn you!’ demanded Sigmar, turning to try and pinpoint the sound.

‘In time, but for now it would be best for you if you kept silent. Yes, silent would be good. Your men and the stunted ones were easy, but you have will that is not easily hidden.’

‘What have you done to them?’ cried Sigmar. ‘Are they dead?’

‘Always so loud, you heroes,’ said the voice. ‘I’m not deaf, and neither are they.’

‘Answer me, damn you!’

‘Of course they’re not dead, dung-for-brains. Look, they still breathe. Their chests still rise and fall and warm air still blows from their lungs.’

‘Come out of the shadows, you coward! Face me!’

‘Face you? Don’t be ridiculous,’ laughed the voice. ‘Would I go to all this trouble just for you to bludgeon me with that hammer of yours? Now be silent, son of Björn. I mean you no harm, but they do! Look behind you, Sigmar Heldenhammer, and find yourself a place to remain silent and still!’

Sigmar cooled his temper towards this invisible speaker, angry at being so manipulated, but as he heard the tramp of marching feet from below, he could still recognise the lesser of two evils. Sigmar ghosted silently to the narrow portion of the thin plateau on which he and his men were resting. Far below, but climbing rapidly, was a seething host of creatures, though Sigmar had difficulty in determining exactly what they were.

Some carried torches, while others bore tall banners of bone. He could hear the clatter of armour and a scratching, squealing sound like a barnful of chittering mice. The wind changed direction, and a verminous reek of stinking, unwashed flesh was carried uphill. Sigmar gagged at the stench, like an exposed midden on a summer’s day. He fought to keep his food down as he smelled rotten meat, excrement and a hundred other fouler aromas. The noise of the approaching host grew louder, a barrage of squeals, squeaks and guttural barks.

Though it was too dark for an accurate gauge of numbers, Sigmar reckoned that at least five hundred or more creatures were marching towards their camp. He looked back over his shoulder to his sleeping warriors, knowing they were dead unless he could get them to move.

But how to rouse men who had been ensorcelled by some nameless enchanter?

Before Sigmar had a chance to think of a solution, he saw the pathway leading back down the mountain ripple and undulate, as though the rock had become suddenly malleable. In the thin light of the torches, he saw a wriggling carpet of mangy rats running ahead of the host: hundreds of disgusting creatures with patchy fur, branded backs and splintered fangs.

He stifled a gasp of horror and pushed himself hard against the cliff, stepping up onto a lip of stone as the seething tide of rats surged past like a furry river of diseased flesh and blood-matted fur. Some were brown, some were black, and yet others were white and furless. Pink tails wriggled like worms, and they snapped and bit at each other, as though driven by the whips of cruel masters. A few turned and sniffed the air as they passed him, and several turned their beady pink eyes upon him. They hissed in puzzlement, but passed on without attacking.

Behind the rats came scuttling beasts that loped and darted in the firelight of the torches. Wretched things in rags and scraps of armour, with their elongated snouts obscured by sackcloth hoods and their eyes made huge by orbs of glass nailed to their skulls. Sigmar held his breath at the sight of these vile monsters, monstrous hybrids of man and rat. They carried rusted swords, crude halberds and heavy cleavers with notched blades and old bloodstains. They hissed and spat with feral glee as they moved past him, but none of them so much as turned a grotesque, rag-swathed head towards him.

Sigmar took a tight grip of his hammer’s haft, but instead of falling upon his men with their brutal cleavers, the rat-things tramped over the narrow plateau as though it were unoccupied. They marched past with their strange, jerking, hopping gait, but paid no mind to the sleeping men and dwarfs in their midst. Though the sleepers were clearly visible to Sigmar, the stinking horde of ratmen ignored them, as though they had no inkling of their presence whatsoever.

Sigmar let out his breath, and regretted it immediately as a rat-thing with black armour and a bronze headpiece, segmented like a beetle’s carapace, paused in its march and stepped close to the cliff. Its nose twitched and its blistered tongue flicked out, as though tasting the air. Stubby whiskers bristled, and it cocked its head to one side. Beneath its helm, Sigmar saw eyes that were the red of a low-burning fire, eyes that narrowed with a loathsome, feral intelligence that horrified him.

The creature stood tall, its furred body twisted in a hideous parody of a man, upright and erect, but still with reverse-jointed legs and a whipping tail that ended in a barbed hook. A wide leather belt at its waist held a collection of skinning knives and a stubby wooden club fitted to an intricate mechanism of bronze and iron with a glowing green light at its heart.

Sigmar leaned back, letting the cold water streaming down the cliff pour over him as the creature took a stalking step closer. The icy chill of the water was freezing, but he did not dare move. How this thing could not see him, he did not know, but he guessed that if he so much as moved a muscle, whatever enchantment was keeping his men from the sight of these beasts would be undone.

The beast’s face was less than an inch from him, its breathing wafting the stench of its last meal in his face. The smell of spoiled dairy and rotten meat made Sigmar want to gag, and its hot, rancid breath was animal and reeked of an open sewer. The flesh of its maw pulled back as it hissed in consternation, revealing two enormous, flat-faced fangs like sharpened chisel blades.

A whip cracked and the dreadful thing flinched, spinning around and rejoining the marching host as it continued its journey into the mountain. Sigmar watched the creature go, as larger beasts and more intricately attired creatures shuffled and scuttled past. Careful to keep his breathing even and his movements to a minimum, Sigmar blinked away the spray of water in his eyes as he tried to make sense of these nightmarish horrors.

Wolfgart had spoken of fighting squealing creatures with the faces of rats in the tunnels beneath Middenheim, and Sigmar – like everyone else – had assumed them to be no more than bestial forest monsters yoked to the Norsii army as it burned its way south. But to see such a horde, moving with such cohesion and discipline forced him to think of these things as something else entirely.

At last the end of the vermin horde passed his place of concealment, and when the last of the hissing, chittering beasts had vanished around the bend in the path farther up the mountain, Sigmar dropped to the hard-packed earth of the path. His body was numb with cold, chilled to the bone by the spray of water from the high peaks. His clothes were soaked through and his flesh was like ice as he stumbled back to his camp.

A fire burned at the centre of the plateau, and he made his way towards it, stripping off his sodden garments and pulling a warm blanket from an open pack. A solitary figure sat cross-legged before the fire, a shaven-headed man whose body was concealed by a voluminous cloak of black feathers. His shorn skull was tattooed with the black, reflective eyes of crows, and his own eyes were no less black.

Sigmar knew this stranger must be the source of the sorcery that had kept his men from the attention of the rat-things, but was too cold to do more than kneel beside the fire and let the heat from the flames thaw his naked flesh.

‘Greetings, son of Björn,’ the man said with a lopsided grin. ‘I am Bransùil the Aeslandeir.’

‘I am Sigmar Heldenhammer, but you already know that, don’t you?’

The man nodded. ‘I know a great many things about you, son of Björn. Much of which you would rather I did not know, but that is not to be the nature of our relationship. I will know all your secrets, and that is why you will trust me.’

‘Trust you?’ laughed Sigmar. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘You will,’ said the man with a sage nod. ‘Or you did. It is hard to be certain sometimes.’

Sigmar looked over to where his men still slept, peaceful and blissfully unaware of the terrible danger that had just passed them in the night.

‘So how is it my men and I are alive?’ asked Sigmar as the fire began to warm him. He had decided against any violence to this Bransùil, guessing that any man who could hide so large a group from so many monsters was not someone to be taken lightly.

‘A simple incantation,’ said the man with a grin that exposed brilliantly white teeth. Sigmar had only ever seen such clean teeth in the mouths of young children, and he was reminded of the leering skull of the dread necromancer. ‘When you spend as long in the far north as I once did, hiding yourself is the first trick you learn from the ravens.’

‘But how did you do it?’ pressed Sigmar.

Bransùil leaned over the fire, and Sigmar saw the darkness of his eyes had receded. In place of the blackness of crows’ eyes, the man’s eyes were now a brilliant, cornflower blue.

‘Magic,’ he said.

The HUNTER

Graeme Lyon

It is whispered that the forest is haunted by all manner of creatures. On the holy days, when we make the sacred rites to appease the gods, the elders tell tales of murderous tree-daemons that lurk in the deep groves, of their twisted roots and grasping branches that can snap a warrior in half. One of the dams claims to have seen huge savages with armoured bellies fighting over the corpse of a deer by the river, beating one another with the bones. I have never believed such stories. I spend my days in the forest. It is my domain and I have never seen anything so outlandish.

Until now.

It was the smell that first alerted me. It was familiar, a reek of unwashed flesh and matted fur, but another scent lay beneath it, something I did not recognise. I followed the odour, and soon saw more signs of the intruders.

They are not subtle, these… things. Whatever they are, they lack my skill in woodcraft. They travel as brazenly as a kid on his first hunt; cracked twigs and broken branches mark their passage. I stayed far behind them and followed their trail, tracking them by the devastation left in their wake, and by that foul lingering scent. Now I have found them.

There are five beasts, I think, and I am alone. But I am a hunter, and they are my prey. I check the string on my shortbow and finger the arrows in the small deerskin quiver that hangs low at my side. My spear sits strapped across my back. I am ready. My instincts tell me to attack, to kill them now and offer their remains to the gods in appeasement for their trespass. I restrain myself and await my chance.

This past night, I crept close enough to see them. I sat outside the circle of flickering firelight and watched as they slept. That they would desecrate this land with fire shows that they do not respect the gods. I would have slit their throats as they slumbered and watched their blood feed the soil, were it not for the guard that paced their camp. I ventured as close as I dared, crouching low and stalking on all fours to watch them closer. Even asleep in the half-light, they were foul.

Now, with the sun high in the sky, I perch in the treetops and watch as they pass below, never knowing I am there. This place is sacred. It is here that I hunt the great stags that the elders butcher for the holy day offerings. That the beasts walk here is an affront to the gods. I observe them. They walk upright, as do I, and use tools and weapons, as do I. But then, so do the greenskinned mountain brutes and the chittering tunnel-rats, and I have little in common with them.

Their flesh, where it is exposed, is ruddy and hardened by the sun. They are covered by patchy fur on their heads and faces, thicker across their bodies. Seeing such a mockery of my own perfect form sickens me. An eremite who lives in seclusion in the sacred groves once told me that we were created by the gods in their own image. I wonder what manner of gods made these fiends.

I see my chance. One of the beasts splits off from the pack and wanders beneath the trees on which I perch. I wonder why, until I smell the tang of urine. Anger flares in me. The monster is defiling this holy ground with its waste. I nock an arrow and take a deep breath as I aim.

My quarry finishes. It turns. I breathe out. My arrow takes it in the throat. I am sure that I see a look of confusion cross its loathsome features. It falls.

One.

I step from the shadows and look down at the corpse as its blood soaks the leaves, deepening their autumn-red. An amulet hangs around its neck, harsh silver against the dark fur. I do not recognise the symbol, but I feel an instinctive fear of it. Perhaps it is an icon of whatever barbaric gods they worship.

From the distance, I hear a bellow, and I dart behind a tree. Another beast comes off the trail, searching. It doesn’t see me as I rise and garrotte it with my bowstring. Its body goes limp in my arms and I let it fall.

Two.

My heartbeat quickens with fear as more come. They know now that I am here. The first is dead before it reaches me, arrows to the chest and leg spilling its life upon the forest floor.

Three

There are two left. I pull my spear from my back.

They lope towards me, carrying broad-bladed axes that could split my skull with a single stroke. They are warriors, bulky and used to killing. One of them brays at me, its language harsh and guttural. A challenge? A question? I do not understand. I do not want to. It lunges, axe swinging towards my neck. It intends to finish this cleanly. It doesn’t get the chance. Surprise and fear war on its monstrous features as my spear pierces its gut. The spear snaps as I pull it out, and the beast’s blood gushes across me, soaking me. It stinks. I can smell and taste nothing else.

Four.

The remaining fiend throws itself at me. I drop the shattered haft of the spear and grab an axe from the ground. I deflect a blow aimed at my leg, and my desperate return stroke splits my foe from groin to throat. More heathen blood feeds the earth, and I feel the gods rejoice at the offering.

I relax.

Five.

The arrow takes me in the throat.

I try to laugh, though I make no sound, as I recall how the first of the beasts died. The gods mock me. I fall to my knees, and my eyes find those of my killer. I see something I recognise in its gaze, and realise that I was not the only hunter in the forest this day.

Six.

Fedor had been tracking the beastman for three days.

He had heard tales that a pack of the subhuman monsters lived in the forest, but he had never believed it until now. He pulled his arrow from the creature’s throat, illuminated by the bright sunlight streaming through a gap in the forest canopy. It was a fusion of man and animal, covered in thick, shaggy fur, with horns coiling from its head. A beastman, the southerners called them. He pulled his thick fur coat tighter about his body.

Pulling his axe from his belt, Fedor raised it to sever the beast’s head. As he looked down at the creature, he met its weak gaze and saw something familiar, something he recognised. For a moment, they were connected, hunter and prey, until Fedor let the axe fall.

NECESSARY EVIL

Rob Sanders

The wraithgate sat in damnation’s darkness, lit only by the dread twilight of the Eye. Dusted in brimstone, its curves and arches cut a skeletal silhouette into the puce yonder. Here, among the perversity of a daemon world – where reality was twisted and the impossible ruled – the portal waited in the gloom. It waited for a visitor: one with reason to leave the interdimensional labyrinth of the webway beyond and step through a gateway to hell. Not many would accept such an invitation, but in a place where time had little meaning, the xenos artefact did not have long to wait.

From the archway’s agitated nothingness proceeded the sizzle of warp static. Immaterial energies arced between the slants and barbs of the wraithgate’s alien architecture, shattering the space between. Drawing on unimaginable power, the portal scorched a hole through the fabric of time and space. Piece by piece, the reality beyond was assembled like the fragments of a stained glass window.

Bronislaw Czevak stepped forth from this new reality and out onto the surface of the daemon world. His eyes were unmistakably ancient, yet his features were those of a much younger man. His coat was an abomination of eldritch design and alien fabric: ankle-length, incorporating a nauseating clash of colour with the insanity of interlocking patterns. As its harlequin tails flapped in the light breeze, the fabric’s surface rippled with a form of alien field technology that played with the eye. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak of the Emperor’s holy Inquisition, interdimensional refugee. Hunted by the Ruinous Powers for what he could do; by the Imperium for what he had done; by the alien eldar for what he might do. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak – known himself to hunt, on occasion.

Taking in his surroundings, Czevak raised one furrowed brow. His shoulders sagged at the indication of a destination reached, before snapping the gilded covers of the Atlas Infernal shut and burying the antique tome in the depths of his alien coat. Still bathed in the protective purity of the book’s power and with the webway portal dying to inactivity behind him, the inquisitor jumped down from the gate and strode out across the hellish surface of an accursed world.

Nereus had once been covered with fertile oceans and even now no sand or soil graced its surface, just rust and sulphur-dust. Stamping, the inquisitor found that beneath the powder was solid metal. Wrinkling his nose at the rotten stench, he climbed an escarpment of reinforced scrap and corroded plating, reaching the irregularity of an apex ridge. From this vantage point, the inquisitor took in the daemonscape. The rusted archipelago extended for some distance and height, reminding Czevak of a volcanic island reaching out of the waters. The blood-red of a brimstone ocean boiled beyond, the sulphurous surf lapping up against the metal shore, encrusting the coast with yellow crystals. The waters thrashed with larval daemons, swarming and snapping like carnivorous fish in an evaporating pool. In the thin skies above, flocks of furies soared on the hunt for soul-prey.

Beyond the predators, Czevak was treated to an unnatural celestial phenomenon. In the night sky, he could see the gaping mouth of the warp rift known to Imperial Navigators as the Craw. While Nereus bathed in the warplight of the rift’s exit point, its twin raged to the galactic south, erupting without warning to snatch vessels on the Imperial trade routes that skirted the Eye. Reports of Imperial ships lost to the Craw had been circulating for nearly a thousand years, with lost vessels forming the mountain of scrap that now reached up from the depths to create the rusted peninsula. Far out to sea, Czevak could hear the mournful drone of daemonsong: monsters of the deep, rumbling below the waves. Above, furies had started to circle, drawn down by the scent of fresh flesh.

The daemons scattered unexpectedly.

Czevak squinted, then shook his head slowly. Against the backdrop of the Craw’s swirling vortex, a silhouette grew. The horror of a doomed vessel, freshly tossed from the mouth of the rift. A freighter. Wreathed in spectral flame, the ship streaked down through the daemon world’s atmosphere, on a crash course for the archipelago.

Czevak dropped down onto an expanse of rust-riddled hull plating and began to run. He felt the impact of the crash through the superstructure of the derelict below. As he sprinted, hurdling twisted scrap, he felt the ship grind its way up behind, cleaving through the hullscape. Time seemed to slow as Czevak became enveloped in the enormity of the catastrophe unfolding around him.

The metal quaked beneath him as the vessel’s prow struck the escarpment. The freighter flipped, its colossal aft section thrown up towards the sky. It balanced for an incredible moment, like a great ferruswood about to topple, before rolling over and crashing awkwardly down on its side. The freighter – already wracked with explosions – erupted, sending a shrapnel-storm rocketing in all directions.

Czevak threw himself to the ground, but a blast wave of debris struck him from behind. Metal bars shot past and sheets of hull plating pranged and rattled off the ground before the inquisitor. A section of decking flew overhead, smacking Czevak on the back.

With nothing but the hiss of the crash in his ears, Czevak lay there. Blood ran down the side of his face. There was also something wrong with his leg. Turning his head he saw that his was not the only body out on the sulphur-dusted expanse. Czevak’s eyes met those of an ejected crew member who was trapped nearby, under a flaming girder. There was little the inquisitor could do to help, but instinct prompted him to go to the man’s aid. He tried to get up but agony shot through his leg and letting loose an involuntary howl, Czevak allowed his throbbing head to sink back to the metal floor.

Something hit the metal beside him. At first the inquisitor assumed it was more debris but, as he blinked the blood from his eyes, he saw that it was a snaggle-fanged fury that had thunderbolted down from the wretched heavens. Tossing the huge girder aside with ease, the daemon sank its brazen talons into the victim’s flesh. With a swoosh of ragged wings, the thing shot back up into the sky, taking the screaming survivor with it.

As the static of the crash faded and became replaced with screams, Czevak fancied he could hear, of all things, a bell; the clear ringing of a solitary bell coming from beneath the ground. Again the flock of furies scattered. Beside him, a rust-encrusted pressure wheel began to turn, and a maintenance hatch opened in the floor. From the opening surfaced a young woman dressed in scavenged rags. Her face was gaunt and sulphur-smeared, yet full of determination. As she climbed out beside him, Czevak could make out the bump of a swollen belly beneath her rags. A filthy sling held an infant to her breast and several sallow children followed in her wake, clinging to the ragged edges of her cloak. About them hatches, airlocks and bulkheads opened in the archipelago floor. Tattered figures poured out: scrawny men, women and children emerged and spread out across the crash site. All looked thin and unhealthy; some were hunched, while others bore the affliction of extra limbs and cancerous growths. The underdwellers were clearly not daemons but had suffered in the toxic environs of a daemon world. On Nereus they could not hope to escape the warping influence of the Eye of Terror. If it hadn’t been for the nullifying influence of the Atlas Infernal, Czevak would long since have suffered the same fate during his travels. The horde began checking for survivors, scavenging from bodies and stripping salvage from the wreckage.

Turning, Czevak found the woman over him, checking his leg. She pulled back her hood to reveal a tumble of copper curls. She directed the children to gather around and the inquisitor felt their bony little fingers dig into his flesh. The red-headed woman inspected a wound on his scalp and then came in close to his face. She attempted a weak smile but her features fell out of focus. Czevak’s head hurt and he felt the irresistible pull of unconsciousness.

‘Your vessel crashed. We’re going to take you somewhere safe…’ he heard her say, but his eyelids fluttered closed. As the darkness claimed him, Czevak was left with doubt that any such place existed on the daemon world.

The inquisitor awoke on the grubby mattress of a medicae cot. Reaching for the dull ache in his temple, Czevak found a bandage around his head and a filthy intravenous line drooping from his arm. He was alone in a small, roofless cubicle of stacked crates. Above he could see flickering lumen-strips in the ceiling of a much larger chamber. Tensing, he thrust a hand into the folds of his harlequin coat. He found the Atlas Infernal where he had hidden it, and fell back on the cot in relief. He allowed himself the luxury of a moment’s further respite before tearing the morphia line from his arm in disgust and swinging his legs over the side of the cot. His right thigh burned, again with a morphia-dulled delay, and upon inspection Czevak found that it too had been tightly bandaged.

‘Going somewhere?’

Czevak looked up to find the woman he’d seen out on the archipelago in the cubicle doorway. She took her hands from where they rested on the bump of her belly and set to rearranging the infant at her breast within the ragged sling.

‘Where am I?’ Czevak asked, with little indication that he was about to engage in pleasantries.

‘Perdition’s Landing,’ she said, watching the inquisitor struggle to get to his feet before his thigh’s refusal to support him put him back down on the cot. ‘Careful, you’ll tear your stitches.’ She presented him with a shattered length of pipe. ‘We took this out of your leg.’

‘How long was I out?’ Czevak said, an expression of gratitude once again failing to fall from his lips.

‘About ten hours.’

‘Ten hours!’

‘About,’ the woman confirmed. ‘I’m Myra.’

‘I’m getting out of this cot,’ Czevak assured her.

Myra hovered for a moment before taking a makeshift metal cane from where it leant near the cubicle door and tossing it to the inquisitor. Snatching it out of the air, Czevak got to his feet. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

‘The Curator minds the colony’s interests,’ Myra replied.

Stabbing his cane into the metal floor, Czevak hobbled towards the cubicle entrance. ‘Well, I need to see this Curator. I needed to see him ten hours ago.’

‘The Curator is extremely busy with colony matters. He doesn’t usually meet initiates.’

‘Initiates?’

‘Newcomers,’ Myra explained. ‘The colony is the only hope for those left at the mercy of this world – and there is precious little of that. All who arrive at Perdition’s Landing join the colony, enjoying its protection and the fruits of collaboration. We are as one against the evil of this place.’

‘You say that the colony is the only hope for survival.’

Myra nodded.

‘I am the colony’s only hope,’ Czevak told her. ‘You think that the darkness of this place is the only thing to fear? As we speak, there is an evil that makes its way here, as I have. It is no casual malevolence, no indiscriminate daemonic dread. It is driven by unfathomable desire and its mindless servants will stop at nothing to satisfy its insatiable craving.’

‘Why would it come here?’ Myra asked.

‘Simple,’ Czevak told her. ‘You have something it wants.’

Myra took Czevak through the crooked quads and thoroughfares of the castaway colony. Perdition’s Landing had been constructed in the cargo bay of some ancient vessel, long buried below the surface of the crash-site archipelago. The settlement was a labyrinth of crates and salvage recovered from the vessels that had come to their end on the rusted surface above. Myra took the inquisitor through habitation quarters and small markets of salvaged wares, as well as sparse devotional spaces housing silent multitudes at prayer.

The colonists themselves were a motley collection. There were refugees of a hundred Imperial creeds and cultures, with a sprinkling of xenos unfortunates adding some exotic colour, but all uniform in their wretchedness. Their dirty faces poked out of ragged hoods, while tattered cloaks and shawls seemed the order of the day, presumably so that the men, women and children of Perdition’s Landing might hide the shame of their deformities.

With the morphia wearing off and the demand of the walk searing through his injured thigh, Czevak found himself rubbing his wound. About him, the surroundings began to change. Instead of the haphazard structure of crates, objects seemed to have been placed deliberately, exhibited almost. Myra led the inquisitor through shattered murals and frescos, cracked busts and dusty urns. Singed tapestries sat alongside faded paintings and ancient treasures. Hooded colonists looked to the antiquities with the care of reliquary custodians. Thousands of precious artefacts, from huge sections of gargoyle-encrusted architecture to torn tracts and verdigris-covered coins were hung, arranged and displayed about them. Above Czevak’s head a mighty bell was suspended, dull with age.

‘What is this place?’ Czevak asked.

‘This is the Archive,’ Myra replied. ‘The colony forefathers thought it important to keep a little of the Imperium alive in this benighted place. The Archive reminds us of where we came from. A haven of normality in the most abnormal of places.’

‘I heard a bell,’ the inquisitor said, peering up at the large instrument.

Myra reached out for the improvised bell cord that hung down and snaked about them on the floor.

‘It sounds the arrival of fresh wreckages and mobilises the colony for the reclamation.’

‘The reclamation?’

‘The warp rift might have marooned us here but it is also the source of uncorrupted supplies. Each wreck brings us food and fresh water, much needed equipment and, most importantly, arrivals like yourself. New blood, with knowledge and skills essential to the colony’s growth and security. The bell sounds and we all climb topside to recover salvage and survivors.’

Czevak shook his head.

‘What?’

‘I’m just… astounded,’ the inquisitor admitted. ‘How you have survived in this place, amongst its corruptive influence, amongst its threats?’

‘There is little we can do about those,’ Myra said. ‘The colony survives because it stands together. A collective. We stand as one, against all threats.’

A hooded colonist attending to the decorative detail on an aquila carved from dark wood looked up and approached them.

‘Admiring our collection?’ the colonist enquired. Czevak nodded up at the bell above.

‘Neutran. Early M37,’ Czevak told him. ‘Before the Abyssal Crusade but definitely post-Drachmere and the Volk Abstentions. Looks like a Gorshac or Vanderghash. Some form of Adamantique alloy with angelic depictions of the Adeptus Astartes. The Fire Claws, I believe. Probably a Gorshac, then. Vanderghash favoured ferrum.’

‘I’m impressed,’ the colonist told him. His smile was a warm greeting but his eyes were cold and piercing. ‘Few come to the Archive so qualified to be here.’

‘You’re the Curator?’

‘I am,’ he replied. ‘I look to the preservation of the colony’s treasures, both those alive and long dead.’

‘Then, Curator, this will concern you,’ Czevak announced. ‘A danger approaches that far exceeds the peril of your present circumstances. A war host intent on your destruction.’

The Curator raised a bald brow. ‘A day does not go by without one of our number falling foul of the predations of this world, but what would a war host want with us? How would they even know of our existence?’

‘That’s not important right now and I don’t have the time to explain it to you. Know only this: I found you – and they won’t be far behind. They never are.’

‘Who is this war host?’ the Curator demanded. ‘What do they want with us?’

‘They are witchbreeds and faith-traitors. Servants to the Dark Gods. They come looking for an ancient artefact. A gift for their distant master. A relic of ruinous power.’

‘You believe this artefact to be here, in the Archive?’ Myra asked.

‘They search for the Bacillum Formidonis,’ Czevak told them. ‘The Dreadsceptre. An accursed crozius arcanum carried by the infamous Word Bearer Dark Apostle, Rhadamanthys – the dread Herald of Sicarus.’

‘I fear you talk of the Traitor Legions,’ the Curator spat. He shook his head. ‘You or any that follow will find none of their warped artefacts amongst our collection.’

‘Listen to me,’ Czevak implored. ‘Rhadamanthys is long dead, but the Fire Claws recovered the damned weapon from the ice world of Perboreas IX, where the Chaplain froze to death with dark prayers on his lips. It was said that no army marching with the Dreadsceptre before it could ever suffer defeat. With the Bacillum Formidonis, a fighting force would become unstoppable. This is what interests Ahzek Ahriman and the Thousand Sons–’

‘The Thousand Sons!’ Myra exclaimed.

‘You insult us with your accusations. We do not harbour artefacts of the damned here,’ the Curator seethed.

‘Curator,’ Czevak said. ‘Help me find the Dreadsceptre and destroy it. In return, I will take you and your people offworld, to safety. Perhaps not back to the Imperium, but certainly somewhere safer than this.’

The Curator turned angrily on Myra. ‘You bring me this false prophet?’

‘All of this,’ Czevak gestured with his cane, ‘is Neutran. Antiquities from the Fire Claws’ homeworld, no doubt loaded on the reliquary vessel that came to crash land here. The Adeptus Astartes masters of Neutra failed to tell your forefathers why such treasures were being evacuated. The Fire Claws were declared heretics by the Imperium and branded Excommunicate Traitoris for dealing in damned artefacts. The Dreadsceptre is here, hidden among Neutra’s holy relics, and your masters – now known as the Relictors – would have recovered the ruinous weapon, had your ship not fallen foul of the Craw. I’m here for that artefact.’

‘Spread not his lies,’ the Curator commanded, looking at Myra. ‘He is no saviour. There is no artefact and no threat. It is foretold. Our people will come for us. We shall be patient and await our deliverance. It will be our reward for preserving these great treasures so that they, like we, might join a greater collective. Only then will evil be wiped not only from this world but from the galaxy itself. It is foretold.’

With that, the Curator hurried off into the depths of the Archive.

Czevak looked to Myra.

‘Enough,’ she said softly. She lowered her eyes. ‘You’re bleeding,’ Myra observed, looking at the dressing on the inquisitor’s thigh.

Czevak said nothing, his mind elsewhere.

‘Stay here. I’ll get my kit,’ she said.

With Myra gone and blood running down his leg from his ruptured stitches, Czevak limped off after the Curator.

Turning the corner, the inquisitor was surprised to find himself at a dead end. A stone sarcophagus decorated the space, the carved detail of its lid slightly ajar.

Czevak hobbled across to the relic. Slipping his metal cane between the lid and the sarcophagus rim, the inquisitor prised the cover open and it slid across. Allowing the light of the chamber into the sarcophagus, Czevak found that the coffin lacked its stone bottom. Instead, a hole had been cut through the metal decking beneath and a flight of steps descended into the darkness. Czevak followed them down.

Several decks below the cargo bay, Czevak began to question the rashness of his pursuit. He could have been in the same vessel or another derelict entirely; there was little in the way of illumination. Several times he had halted, massaging the savage burn in his bleeding thigh, and squinting into the murk. He was sure he’d seen the faint glimmer of movement and his imagination began filling in the blanks, painting a picture of daemon world monsters stalking the darkness of the colony underworld.

On a small landing, Czevak found he had to rest. The wound on his leg was streaming with blood now and the inquisitor felt it prudent to take off his belt and tie it off above the dressing. Leading off from the landing was a bulkhead. The metal door had been lowered but still cleared the landing slightly, allowing a little of the sickly light of the chamber beyond to filter through. Bringing his face down to the stairwell mesh, Czevak peered beneath the bulkhead.

As his eyes adjusted further, the inquisitor could make out the cloak-tails and sandals of various colonists standing about the chamber. They were gathered around a grotesque throne, two fat cloven-claws scraping the deck at its base. A shiver of horror ran through the inquisitor at the prospect of the daemonic monstrosity to which they belonged. One of the colonists came to his knees and with hood retracted, kissed the hideous feet. The Curator. It shouldn’t have surprised Czevak. The colony of Perdition’s Landing could realistically stand little chance of survival on Nereus without daemonic sponsorship.

The mesh began to quake beneath Czevak’s cheek. The boom of a bell rang through the derelict superstructure. With his movements masked by the pealing, Czevak hurried back up the steps. A fresh vessel-victim was tumbling out of the dark heavens and the colony mobilising for reclamation meant the Curator would be returning. As he staggered up the stairwell, Czevak couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t the ascending Curator he had to worry about. In the back of his mind, the blackness below was giving birth to the obscene monsters of dark fancy. He heard a hiss right next to his ear. Unmistakable. Not the fleeting notion of an overactive imagination. With the shiver down his spine trumping the bloody blaze of his thigh, the inquisitor hurried, stumbling up the steps to safety.

Czevak found Myra below the bell, alongside a particularly unfortunate colonist. The ragged bell-ringer not only had a small mountain for a back but heaved on the cord with three muscular limbs.

‘Help me find this damned artefact!’ Czevak called as he approached. Time was running out for all of them. Myra couldn’t hear him above the boom of the bell and set to work immediately inspecting his thigh. ‘Leave it,’ Czevak snapped. ‘We have to find that sceptre.’

‘What?’ Myra said, angling her ear up at him.

‘Could you not do that?’ Czevak shouted at the bell-ringer, but the mutant’s brute features just creased with confusion.

‘Reuban,’ Myra called, putting her hand on his hulking shoulder. He released the rope and the bell slowed to silence above them.

‘What?’ Myra repeated but Czevak didn’t reply. He was staring up into the darkness of the bell. He gave a perverse chuckle before hobbling over to the wall and wrapping the cord around a section of recovered cathedral architecture. ‘What are you doing?’ Myra asked again. Czevak braced his cane between the gargoyle-encrusted stone and the Archive wall. Toppling the stone dead-weight of the relic, the irresistible tug on the cord tore the bell from the chamber ceiling. The great Neutran bell bounced, cracked and clanged to the metal floor.

‘What are you doing?’ Myra screamed.

Czevak limped over to the shattered dome of the bell. He stabbed at the darkness inside with the tip of his cane. The clapper within lay still. It appeared strangely at odds with the Neutran design of the bell itself. The clapper rod was adorned with raised glyphs and symbols of dark origin and the clapper head was a brazen, horned skull. The skull was encircled with metal bands, creating a globular cage shot through with spikes and giving the object the unmistakable appearance of a weapon.

‘The Bacillum Formidonis,’ Czevak said. ‘Dreadsceptre of the Dark Apostle Rhadamanthys.’

Myra went to say something.

‘Listen!’ Czevak hissed.

With the boom of the bell gone, the three of them could clearly hear the roar of engines.

‘What is it?’ Myra asked fearfully.

‘They’re here,’ Czevak replied. ‘Help me get this bloody thing topside. We have to destroy it.’

The archipelago rang with the sound of screams.

Czevak hobbled across the mangled landscape, assisted by Myra at his side. Behind them, the hunchbacked Reuban humped the further handicap of the Dreadsceptre across one shoulder. About them, a massacre unfolded. Haunting the sky like a sacrilegious ornament was a spacecraft, a warship. It had clearly reached Nereus by means other than doomed passage through the Craw and hung pristine and deadly in low orbit.

‘They have come, as the Curator predicted,’ Myra mumbled. Czevak recognised the vessel as a Traitor Astartes frigate and its markings as belonging to the Thousand Sons. He didn’t need to correct Myra, however, the teleporter flashes on the scrapscape below did that. Crowds of colonists emerged from the archipelago and fell to their knees at the sight of seeming salvation. As they did, Traitor Space Marines in ancient cerulean plate marched out of the light with the cold certainty of executioners. They opened fire with their bolters almost immediately, hammering the approaching colonists with precision fire in silent impunity.

‘You can’t help them,’ Czevak insisted as Myra came to an astonished stop.

‘We are as one…’

‘It’s over. Help me and help yourself,’ the inquisitor told her.

The Dreadsceptre clattered to the floor as Reuban dropped his burden and began an afflicted bound back towards the carnage.

‘Reuban!’ Myra called, tears rolling down her sulphur-smeared cheeks.

‘Think of your child!’ Czevak implored, his hand on her shoulder.

Reuban didn’t get far. The Thousand Sons were making short work of the colonists and, even at long range, their disciplined gunfire riddled Reuban’s unfortunate body with ragged holes. That was enough for Myra. She clutched the sling containing her infant closer to her chest with one hand and took up the unholy Dreadsceptre with the other. Together, the pair heaved the accursed crozius up the hull of a crashed alien vessel. They reached the precipice of an unnatural cliff face, where the crash-site peninsula met the bloody waves of the brimstone ocean below.

‘One.’

‘Two.’

‘Three!’

As Myra and the inquisitor released the ends of the ruinous object, the Dreadsceptre flew off the cliff-top and tumbled down into the surf. There the relic would be lost forever in the raging, daemonic depths.

Bolt-fire sang off the wraithbone nearby, announcing the approach of Rubric Marines. Abandoning his cane and snatching Myra by the hand the inquisitor ran for the warp gate. Czevak’s leg was sodden with blood and his thigh seared with pain but the thunder of armoured boots and bolter rounds drove the pair on.

‘Come on!’ Czevak roared, putting one arm around Myra’s shoulders and the other around her swollen belly. The two of them slid onto their backsides and skimmed down the sulphur-dusted wraithbone of the alien hull. Leaving a cloud of brimstone behind them, Czevak and Myra reached the bottom, a short distance from the warp gate. ‘This way,’ the inquisitor called, climbing up towards the portal.

On the summit of the wraithbone rise, the silhouettes of Traitor Marines punched through the cloud in indomitable pursuit. Czevak reached the gate first and began the rune sequence required to activate the ancient artefact. As the portal crackled to interdimensional life and began assembling an alternate reality behind him, the inquisitor reached down to help Myra.

‘Give me the child,’ he ordered. Myra was having difficulty climbing with the bulge of her pregnant belly, and the infant held to her breast in the sling presented a further burden. Slipping the babe out of the ragged material, she thrust the child up to him.

Czevak took the swaddling and parted the rags.

Within was no human child. Where there should have been innocent vulnerability, there was carapace and the horror of claws and jaws. A xenos abomination: a genestealer hybrid. Four arms. Bulbous head. An ovipositor slipping out from between needle-like teeth.

‘What’s wrong?’ Myra called from below. The revulsion on his face had frozen her to the spot.

Czevak looked at Myra. For the inquisitor it all began to fall into place: the colonists’ survival in such a hellish environment; their deformities; the collective. Perdition’s Landing did not benefit from daemonic sponsorship. The colony could protect itself. Czevak shuddered at the enthroned monster he’d discovered below the Archive. The Curator: the face of the cult. A genestealer cult, a brood, marooned here on a daemon world.

Czevak considered the Curator’s words to him, his insistence on their deliverance. On their joining a greater collective and how then the evil of the Eye would be wiped clean of the galaxy. Czevak nodded to himself. Should the xenos plague ever come for its lost brood, it might well assimilate the darkness of the Eye and leave this terrible place a barren empire of forgotten evil.

On the rise, still enveloped in the dust cloud, a shadow puppet show played out. Monstrous genestealers were climbing out of the floor, while silhouettes of the Thousand Sons marched on towards the new threat of alien abominations with impassive discipline.

With a heavy heart, Czevak handed back the infant to its confused mother. Looking down into her pretty eyes, he realised that Myra couldn’t see the monster in her arms, only the one before her, about to leave her and her child to their deaths on the surface of a damned world.

‘What are you doing?’ she said in disbelief as Czevak backed towards the portal. ‘Take us with you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her and, with grim determination, limped back through the interdimensional static of the webway portal. With a flash, she was gone – and the daemon world of Nereus with her.

Sealing the wraithgate, Czevak was left with possibilities. Perhaps the Thousand Sons would exterminate the genestealer brood in their futile search for the Dreadsceptre. Perhaps the xenos abominations would end Ahriman’s Rubric Marines and their armoured husks would join the Craw-spawned scrap of Perdition’s Landing. Turning his back on the portal, Czevak limped away – undecided which of the two hosts, the Chaos Marines or the xenos filth, were the more necessary of evils.

THE RITE OF HOLOS

Guy Haley

The air at the centre of the landing pad glowed golden. Rain hissed as it blew into the light. The teleport locus grew brighter, as intense as hot metal, whiting out the faces of Colonel Indrana’s few remaining officers. Most of them had never witnessed a teleport before. A couple of them gasped, holding their hands up to shield their faces. Colonel Indrana squeezed her eyes shut against the glare.

The light shrank, coalescing into nine giant forms. It burned brightly and solidified; where before there had been empty space, angels stood. Indrana blinked away retinal after-images.

The Space Marines were huge, taller than Indrana and the other women under her command by half a metre or more, and far bigger than this world’s men. They had come arrayed for battle in power armour, finely wrought and decorated. Each carried the mark of their Chapter upon their left shoulder, a drop of blood hanging above a stylised chalice. Of the nine, five bore armour entirely in the Chapter’s red. A guard. One of these carried a banner of fine workmanship, two others sported claws upon their gauntlets as long as Indrana’s arms while the remainder carried boltguns. They were alert, their armour’s motors whining softly as they swept the pad for threats.

The other four were officers or specialists. Indrana knew enough of the Adeptus Astartes to see that. Their battle plate was ornate beyond compare, and each different to the next as summer was to winter. One was garbed in deep blue, a psyker who carried a staff shot through with crystal, his head nestled in a web of arcane technology. Another wore white armour bearing the marks of the medicae, the third wore a helmet ghoulishly fashioned in the form of a skull, his armour black. And their leader…

The Chapter Master was taller than the rest, a man of noble countenance, clad in red and gold. The pelt of a great beast was pinned to his shoulders. Only he and the psyker had their faces revealed. Beneath the sheen of the rain, Indrana thought their skin and hair looked oddly dry, and yet both were preternaturally beautiful, as perfect as the statues on the Reliquary Sanctum; angels cast in plaster.

The Chapter Master looked around at Indrana’s tattered retinue. She felt acutely aware of her filthy uniform. She stood as straight as she could. Amusement played in the Chapter Master’s pale eyes. It never occurred to her that he might be laughing at her, it was clear to all that his eyes saw evidence of battle, and that he was pleased because of it.

‘Colonel Indrana?’ the Chapter Master said.

She blinked, momentarily forgetting her own name. He came closer, boots clanging on the landing pad. She was forced to crane her neck to look up at him. She knew she was unpresentable – dark rings surrounded her eyes, smudging her dark brown skin black. Her body odour was rank in her own nostrils. No one had access to the comforts of life here anymore. How different to her he was, tall and shining in his armour, a saint come down from the sky. She felt ashamed.

‘My lord.’ She bowed, her hands behind her back. Her warrior’s braid swung forward, water running from its intricate plaits and beads to drip on the rain-slick metal. Her staff knelt around her.

The giant held his red armoured palms upwards, bidding them to rise. ‘Please. We are all servants of the Emperor, brothers and sisters under arms.’

Indrana stood. The Chapter Master looked right into her eyes. His were almost colourless, like a vessel waiting to be filled, like the chalice upon his heraldry.

‘I am Chapter Master Caedis of the Blood Drinkers, Lord of San Guisiga. He smiled, revealing white teeth that were too long. ‘The Adeptus Astartes have answered your call.’

Colonel Indrana recovered her dignity. ‘We are most grateful. We have refreshments and…’

‘That will not be necessary. You have fought hard. We will not insult your sacrifice by feasting while the foe still lives. Save your food for your soldiers, give them sustenance.’

‘You would see the monster immediately, then?’ Indrana shuddered inwardly at the memory of the three-armed horror. As big as the angels of death, it had slain fifteen of the Praetors of Saint Catria before it had been brought down.

‘In good time,’ said the Master of the Blood Drinkers. ‘First I would view the overall situation. There are decisions of tactics and strategy to be made. We must make haste.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ Indrana drew in a deep breath. She was cold, soaked to the skin. She could not remember the last time she had been clean and dry. ‘This way.’

Indrana squatted behind the parapet of the command post, Caedis stood impassively beside her, his hand upon the wall.

‘My lord,’ Indrana hesitated. ‘I advise you to get down. Rebel sniper teams come far out into the fire zone…’

‘I have no fear of them,’ he said. He was still, unnaturally so.

‘Very well.’

The bulk of the Reliquary Sanctum filled the horizon, the parkland in front of it reduced to ragged mud. Trees stood limbless and splintered amid shell holes filled with stinking water. Tank hulls sat at the limits of the fire zone, hatches blown, streaked with rust and the black traces of fire.

The Sanctum had not been built as a fortress, but its steep walls made it an adequate substitute. Indrana watched as Lord Caedis examined it closely, staring at details an unenhanced human could never see through the rain. It was as large as a small town, a circular wall punctuated by seven spires that commemorated the heroic tasks of Saint Catria, enclosing a plaza and cathedral. Statues of the saint had been toppled from their niches by the rebels, heavy weapons taking their place. Everywhere, the muzzles of guns protruded. She was sure he could see them, even if today she could not.

‘Tell me a little of what happened,’ said Caedis.

‘I don’t…’ Indrana mumbled. She was terrified. Was she being tested?

Caedis looked at her, and his eyes were kind. ‘I wish only to hear the story from your own lips.’

‘Hesta, the so-called “living saint”,’ Indrana began. ‘She revealed herself to us eighteen months ago. Said she had been sent by Saint Catria to bless her followers. We didn’t know then what she really was.’

‘She was not tested?’

Indrana nodded hard, her beads of rank rattled. ‘Oh yes, by the Ecclesiarch and his priests. She was tested and tested again. There was something about her, a fervour… Those eyes… We wanted it, I think. This is a devout world, but far from the eyes of the High Lords. She performed miracles; miracles in the name of the Emperor.’

Indrana looked at the impassive, dry face of the warrior. She saw nothing there but curiosity. ‘We are not heretics, lord. We are good daughters of the Emperor. It was not until around six months later that we discovered the truth. The bodies, I mean. Only a few, but important. Our High Justicar was among them. We think he had uncovered the true nature of the cult, forcing them to seize control. By the time that happened, fully half of our people had joined Hesta. They… they would not believe what was shown to them, put right in front of their eyes. That she was no saint, but a murderer.’

Indrana shivered. Memories of riots on the streets, priories on fire. Good women burned as heretics by Hesta’s followers.

‘You fought.’

‘Yes lord, although it cost us dearly. I have few warriors left to me. We took back Orius and Regal well enough, but Hesta had been based in the Sanctum since the beginning, secretly fortifying it. We’ve trapped the rebel leadership within the Sanctum, but this is the closest we can get,’ she said, indicating the defence lines either side of the command centre, curving to encircle the rebel stronghold. ‘There is no way through their fire patterns.’ She swept her hand past the rebel bastions spaced out before the Sanctum, their outlines hazy in the drizzle. ‘Emperor knows we’ve tried. I’ve lost so many good women – I am down to less than one half regiment, fewer than a thousand troops. In the end, once you contacted us, I decided it would perhaps be best to stay put. We keep a constant watch. They cannot get out, but we cannot get in.’

‘You made a wise choice,’ Caedis favoured her with a wry smile. ‘Do not fear, we stand with you now. The Blood Drinkers will succeed.’

‘I… I do not doubt it,’ she stammered. ‘No offence, my lord, I did not mean to imply that this task was beyond you,’ she said. She tried to maintain her demeanour while dread contorted her stomach. This man could crush her without difficulty.

‘None was taken, colonel, nor would I wish you to fear that any had been,’ Caedis spoke gently. ‘Do not judge yourself against us. I will not have such a talented commander feel humbled.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘You have fought well, colonel. The Emperor has rewarded you, directing our attentions to this world and your salvation. Your struggle is over. The Emperor’s peace will return to Catria by our hand. This I swear.’

Indrana was ashamed that this angel stood unafraid in full view of the enemy while she skulked behind the plascrete. She rose hesitantly.

‘Do not fear,’ he said. He took one last long look at the Sanctum. ‘Your saint’s shrine is a work of great beauty. We will do our utmost to minimise the damage.’

Indrana gave a brief nod. She could not keep her gratefulness from her face. ‘I would see it returned to its rightful purpose more than anything else, my lord.’

‘Come,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Show me this beast you have slain.’

Indrana led Caedis down from the roof into the command suite. Women worked at cogitator banks and vox stations. Reports crackled in from all over the planet. She led the giant through the bustle of the place, Caedis forced to bow his head as they exited into the corridor. Behind him, women watched from out of the corners of their eyes.

‘This way, lord,’ said Indrana. She directed him through the small, prefabricated complex, then down another flight of steps. At the bottom, broad armoured doors barred the way to an ambulance bay, a lighter pair bearing the medicae helix facing them. ‘Our medical centre.’

The door opened with a pneumatic sigh. The ward had been emptied of beds; she had taken no chances with the monster. She took him on, into the operating room they had turned into a makeshift morgue. She hesitated before she keyed the door open.

Two of the other Space Marine officers were already within, conducting their own examinations.

The Chapter Master nodded when he saw the naked corpse on the table. The thing was an unholy blend of nightmare creature and human female. Parts of it were covered in a hard, blue carapace, the rest of it sickly purple flesh. An additional arm was jointed awkwardly to the left shoulder, ending in a three-fingered hand tipped with curved talons that could cleave through plasteel. This Indrana knew from bitter experience.

The thing would have not been able to stand straight while alive. Its spine was knobbled, tortured. Sagging breasts were pasted over its alien anatomy. Its face, awkward and small on the swollen cranium, was that of a human, but teeth as black and sharp as fear crowded its mouth.

The Space Marine medicae looked up from the corpse. He had removed his helmet; he had a black cross painted over his face, his brow glinted with metal studs, too many to count. ‘It is as we thought, Lord Caedis. Genestealers. The cycle is well underway,’ the medic said. The blades of the device on his arm were coated in dark blood. ‘This is a second generation, I think. The admixture of human material present in its essence is a match to the population of this world. They must have been here for some time – decades, perhaps. They are ready to move on and spread their contagion. It is good we are here.’

Indrana cleared her throat. The room was large, but with the three warriors it felt tiny, and she herself like a child around whom adults conducted their mysterious, serious business.

‘A genestealer? This is the… the type of the monster?’

‘You are not aware of them? They are endemic in this sector,’ the medicae said. His eyes were fierce. In the hard light of the room, features that should have appeared beautiful seemed feral somehow.

‘This world is well off the main shipping lanes, Brother Teale,’ said the black- armoured warrior.

‘Reclusiarch Mazrael speaks wisely,’ Caedis said. There was a warning there, she thought, but then he turned to Indrana. ‘They are an abomination, xenos who infiltrate a host society, infecting it with their genetic material so that those corrupted give birth to monsters, monsters that the parents will do anything to protect. Their will is lost to them. The genestealers are like a sickness, do you understand? A physical menace that corrupts both body and mind.’

‘That makes… The rebellion, the uprising. It makes sense,’ said Indrana. ‘At first we thought them rumours, and then…’ She trailed off.

‘Our proximity to Catria was not mere chance, colonel,’ said Caedis. ‘We have been following and cleansing infestations of these creatures for a quarter-century in an attempt to pinpoint their source. Seven worlds we have purged of their evil.’

‘How will you find them?’ she said.

‘They possess a psychic linkage to one another. Weak, but ever present. It leaves a spoor in the warp,’ said Mazrael. ‘Brother Epistolary Guinian chases it through the empyrean, although the trail is as smoke in the wind.’

‘Nevertheless, our crusade nears its conclusion,’ finished Caedis.

A look passed between the three Space Marines. Their eyes strayed constantly to the corpse, lingering on its wounds. Something was going on here that made Indrana uneasy.

Caedis in particular appeared transfixed. He shook his head as if clearing it, barely perceptibly, but Indrana saw. ‘We will assault the Sanctum tomorrow.’

‘Is there any way to free those in the thrall of the aliens?’ she asked. ‘There are many of my warriors in the Sanctum. They were good once, pure of heart.

Loyal Imperial soldiers.’

The Reclusiarch shook his head. ‘No.’ Through his helmet’s vox emitters, his voice was sepulchral. ‘They are blind to reason, and will fight like animals to protect their false family. They must be annihilated, lest the taint remain to overwhelm your world once more.’

The door hissed open. Indrana’s astropath, Aland – one of the few men on her staff – walked in, deep in consultation with the Blood Drinkers psyker. The warrior broke off his conversation and looked to his lord.

‘We must ask for privacy,’ said the Chapter Master abruptly. ‘We have much to discuss.’

Indrana hesitated. The four adepts stared at her. Caedis’s smile suddenly seemed wolfish. There was a wildness in him, in them all, that scared her.

Astropath Aland came to her side, his staff clicking across the floor. He took her elbow and pulled her gently away. They left the room together.

The door closed behind them, and they walked through the deserted ward.

‘There is something here that I do not like,’ said Indrana. ‘For all their beauty, there is something savage about them.’

‘I cannot see their beauty,’ said Aland. The lights of the ward reflected from the plastic orbs covering his empty eye sockets. ‘And my powers may be feeble compared to those of their psyker, but I can sense that they are conflicted. They have dual natures, these angels of death, although they are in balance for now.’

‘Marvellous,’ said Indrana. She rubbed at her forehead. She was dizzy with fatigue. ‘Let us pray to the Emperor that they keep themselves so.’

‘What of the Sanctum, Lord Caedis?’ said Mazrael.

Sanguinary Master Teale barked out a laugh. ‘We shall storm it easily and drain the tainted blood of those weak-minded enough to fall under the xenos spell.’ His eyes shone with atavistic joy as he dissected the genestealer hybrid.

The Reclusiarch and Sanguinary Master; Caedis’s chief advisors. The first always the voice of reason, the calm in the storm, the bastion against the rage that could take any of them at a moment’s notice. So different from Teale, who urged the embracing of the thirst, the celebration of savagery. The two of them were the twin sides of his conscience, the two aspects of his Chapter: one restraint, the other surrender to the monster coiled round all their hearts.

‘The initial assault will be straightforward,’ Caedis said, ‘though there are many weapons installed. It would be a challenge to take even without the ring of bastions about it. With them there, doubly so.’

‘I welcome that!’ Teale said. He pulled forth a green organ from the hybrid and placed it into a steel bowl. ‘Already the battle-joy stirs within me, I would feel the blood of living foes on my hands and teeth.’

‘Patience, Sanguinary Master, you will have your opportunity,’ said Caedis.

Guinian spoke, his voice sonorous and perpetually tinged with sorrow. ‘We cannot bombard the Sanctum. I require a moment in the heart of their lair. Only then have I chance of locating the ultimate source of this evil.’

Caedis gazed at the genestealer, his eyes fixed on the thing’s oozing fluids. Behind his lips his tongue touched upon lengthened canines. The blood was unclean, laced with the poisonous heritage of the genestealer, yet even so the thirst boiled up in him for a second, filling his mouth with saliva. He forced the thirst down, fettering it under the layers of civility he fought so hard to maintain.

‘The circumstances are favourable?’

‘From what they say of their false saint,’ said Teale, ‘the cycle must be close to completion. She is one of their magi, of that I am sure, and mother perhaps to a new brood.’

‘Young,’ said Guinan. ‘I need to find their young, to follow their calls into the warp for their kin. Then I will find the source,’ said Guinian. ‘We cannot destroy them, or we shall be forced to move on to another infested world and try again.’

‘I would not countenance the destruction of such a building in any case,’ said Caedis. ‘Far better to preserve what beauty we can and engage our foe blade to claw.’

‘Such is the way of Sanguinius,’ intoned Mazrael. ‘The damage will be severe.’

‘But not irreparable,’ said Caedis.

‘And so we will triumph where these lesser humans could not,’ said Teale.

‘Do not dismiss them, Sanguinary Master. That the Praetors of Saint Catria contained the revolt at all is close to a miracle.’

‘And yet, lord, they would ultimately have failed.’

Caedis nodded distractedly. His pulse sounded loudly in his ears, his attention was fixed on the blood of the hybrid. What would it taste like, human blood spiced with alien genes…?

‘One concerted breakout attempt and the Praetors’ work will be undone. This hybrid was surely a test, a probing of the line. The Catrians’ victory has cost them dear – there are too few Praetors left to finish the enemy. They stand in triumph upon the brink of disaster. More hybrids will come and find their weaknesses, and then finally the purestrains. They will be overwhelmed.’

‘There is barely a soul upon this planet,’ said Teale. His blades ran along the underside of the hybrid, slipping easily between the thing’s twisted ribs. Its stomach slid out. Teale pushed it to one side and reached inside the chest cavity. ‘Two or three hundred thousand. This world is not worth the effort of saving.’

‘There are fewer now. And where are the men?’ asked the Reclusiarch.

‘There is some minor aberration in the populace. Women are by far in the majority. Men rarely survive to adulthood and those few examples which do are feeble-bodied,’ said Teale.

‘Mutation?’ said Mazrael distastefully.

Teale pushed his arms deeper into the hybrid. ‘Inquisition records place them well within pure-blood norms. The disparity in sex distribution stems from environmental effects. They are not mutants.’

‘Then they deserve our aid, as all true humans do,’ said Mazrael. ‘And aiding them will bring us closer to the conclusion of our crusade. What are your orders, Lord Chapter Master? Shall I awaken Brother Endarmiel?’

Caedis did not reply. He stood with his hand upon his chin, gazing at the slow rivers of black fluid leaking from the corpse.

‘Lord Caedis?’ said Mazrael. ‘Brother?’

Caedis head snapped up abruptly. ‘Yes?’ he said, his voice thick.

‘Shall I awaken Brother Endarmiel? I feel we will have need of his talents in the battle ahead.’

‘Very well.’

Mazrael dipped his head. ‘Yes, Lord. What are the rest of your orders?’

‘We shall destroy the other infected sites from orbit. Guinian, please inform Colonel Indrana. She must withdraw her troops from the cities. Have them form a cordon. Send half of our number to aid them. Tell her that she is to hold the perimeter at all costs. Any who flee the cities are to be killed on sight. If even one of these xenos escapes our wrath, it will all have been for nothing.’

Teale pulled another organ out from the creature and put it carefully to one side. He took up a cloth and wiped down his narthecium blades. ‘I have the beast’s heart,’ said Teale. ‘I am ready to prepare for the Rite of Holos. We will sharpen the Thirst and bring our brothers to full battle readiness.’

‘Is there sufficient of its blood for the ritual?’ asked Caedis.

‘The fluids of these creatures are impure, lord – not fit for our needs. The heart can be burned, the ashes used…’

Caedis looked to his brothers. Their eyes gleamed as if silvered, all of them eager to slake the thirst that tortured them.

‘Our serfs dwindle by the day, lord,’ Mazrael said carefully.

‘Then do what must be done.’ Caedis paused, his heart heavy. ‘The lives of a few are small sacrifice for the preservation of the lives of the many.’

The air around the Sanctum was alive with weapon fire. Five Land Speeders wove between solid rounds and las-beams, drawing them away from the following Thunderhawk and its cargo. The speeders wove an intricate pattern, splitting from close formation as they drew close to the outer defences. Missiles streaked through the air from the Thunderhawk’s wings, obliterating a bastion and the guns within. An answering missile burst harmlessly on the craft’s fuselage.

The Land Speeders roared on, burning gun emplacements to slag. One caught an airburst from the rebels, spinning out of control before its pilot brought it down hard on the ground. The crew pulled themselves from the wreckage and ran headlong at the enemy guns. In seconds, they were within the great Sanctum, killing all they came across.

The way cleared, the Thunderhawk swooped low. Jets roared as it tilted its nose upward, coming to a near-hover. Lifting clamps disengaged, dropping a scarlet Land Raider onto the battlefield. The tank skidded across the mud, tracks spinning. Cannon barrels blurred as they reached their maximum fire rate, felling cult members and dragging tracks of pockmarks across the Sanctum’s stone walls. The tank drove hard at the main portal, a road tunnel that led within. It bucked as it thundered up the embankment onto the ruined road, slewing left to follow it.

A barricade of broken statuary barred the way. Puffs of rock dust erupted in long lines across its surface as the Land Raider’s crew blasted at the traitorous Praetors behind. Their return fire was ineffectual against the machine’s armour.

The tank drew close to the shattered barricade, and short-ranged flame cannons washed death over them, incinerating those who had not already fallen. The tank angled itself past the barricade, crashing into ancient stonework. Tracks squealed as the Land Raider pushed. Blocks toppled, bouncing from its roof, and then it was through into the tunnel.

One by one, the enemy’s guns fell silent as the Land Speeders finished their work. Other sounds took the place of cannon fire – the roar of jets. Battle-brothers plunged from above, jump packs screaming. Mazrael was at their head, obvious in his Chaplain’s black. In their wake another aircraft streaked from the grey skies like a thunderbolt. The assault ship headed directly for the hollow centre of the shrine, braking thrusters roaring.

Caedis’s Land Raider pushed on through the ornately carved tunnel. Statues of Saint Catria in a hundred different guises went past. Foes – traitor Catrian soldiers and poorly-armed civilians alike – shot without effect at the plasteel behemoth. They were cut down without mercy by the vehicle’s guns, crushed against its sides and under its treads. The Land Raider rumbled into the square at the heart of the Sanctum, a grand plaza two thousand metres across, the cathedral soaring from its centre. A giant mosaic of the saint’s deeds covered the floor.

The Sanctum shuddered. Filigreed galleries crumbled as Blood Drinkers landed among the cultists from on high. Grenades shattered friezes, bolts brought saints down from their lofty perches.

All this Caedis observed. Strapped tight into his Land Raider, scenes of violence were projected upon screens in the vehicle’s command suite. He yearned to join his men outside the tank, to sing the hymns of battle and smite the foe. All inside the Land Raider with him felt the same – Teale, Guinian, and the four veteran brothers who accompanied them – but he could not allow them the pleasure of combat yet.

‘The real foe lairs deeper within the Sanctum. We will proceed. Let Brother Endarmiel and the others deal with this first line of defence. Our battle is not here.’

The assault craft spun slowly in the air above the mosaic, its thrusters burning the face of the saint. Cargo grapples retracted, and Brother Endarmiel dropped to the floor, landing upright, his heavy feet shattering tesserae that had endured for three thousand years.

Endarmiel was ancient, even by the standards of the Blood Drinkers, crippled in a long ago war and entombed inside a towering Dreadnought walker. Within his giant body of metal, Endarmiel had fought on with distinction for more than a thousand years, his wisdom helping guide generations of Blood Drinkers to victory after victory.

That Endarmiel was no more.

The Blood Drinkers controlled the curse of their founder with some success, and so Endarmiel had remained sane for a long time, but no one, not even a Blood Drinker, could resist the Black Rage forever. As the decades turned to centuries, Endarmiel’s fall became an inevitability. He was a living reminder of the darkness inside them all.

Endarmiel strode toward the cathedral. Inside were many of the false saint’s followers. Las-bolts and autocannon rounds sparked from his walking tomb.. He strode on heedless. He roared mechanical warcries that urged the Blood Drinkers to greater fury, ancient words that evoked heroes of distant centuries, and drove a powered blood fist through the cathedral’s great door. Carved wood splintered. Rocks thrown from the building’s towers clanged from his armoured shell. Then the door was torn asunder, and he was inside.

Caedis watched as a stick-thin man holding up a blasphemous icon was crushed under Endarmiel’s foot, and then the ancient was deep into the church’s interior and the multitude within, and lost to sight.

‘To the left, past the cathedral’s north tower, that is where our quarry lurks,’ said Guinian. ‘The taint of the xenos lies heaviest there.’

‘Then let us engage them, and rip out their throats!’ called Teale.

Caedis directed his driver across the plaza. The tank’s weight turned tiles to powder and its guns shattered exquisitely carven stone, saddening the Chapter Master.

Fire rained down from above. Those Praetors turned traitor had kept some semblance of discipline. They fired by rank, fell back, fired again, although their guns were little use against the battle plate of the Blood Drinkers. Here and there, a brother fell, but when the Space Marines closed into melee, the humans did not last long.

The Land Raider smashed into an archway picked out by Guinian.

‘Lord, we can go no further. The corridor beyond is too narrow.’ The driver’s voice came into the passenger cabin.

‘Open the assault ramp!’ ordered Caedis. ‘Withdraw and support the assault.’

Metal creaked on stone, the mechanism’s powerful hydraulics crushing it to rubble as it forced the ramp down.

‘Deploy!’ Caedis shouted to his honour guard. ‘Advance cautiously!’ Too often had the Blood Drinkers lost their heads on this crusade, charging in to engage and suffering at the claws of the genestealers because of it. These were his finest warriors, to be sure; if any of the battle-brothers could resist the Thirst it would be these veterans, but none who called Sanguinius father could claim to be wholly proof against its lure.

‘Steady my brothers!’ called Sanguinary Master Teale. ‘Hold tight to your thirst, embrace your fury, but do not succumb. Savour your anger and save it – now is not the time to strike with blade, but with bolter!’

Caedis could feel it himself: the desire to throw off circumspection and charge forward, sword raised. More than anything else he wished to confront the enemy face to face, to rip at them with his hands, and then…

He reined in his passion. He swallowed. His mouth was dry – he yearned for the warm slickness of blood to soothe his throat.

‘Brothers, ware the shadows!’ Caedis watched his honour guard deploy, taking up station behind the wide corridor’s pillars. Brother Metrion had left the Chapter banner aboard Caedis’s flagship, a flamer in his hands now instead. He took the point position, weapon ready. He was covered behind by Brother Atameo’s bolter. Brothers Hermis and Erdagon held back, blue energy playing across their lightning claws. The corridor was wide enough for groundcars, its ornate columns and carved stone screens providing ample opportunity for ambush. This was where the real test would begin.

‘Prime genestealer ground,’ said Caedis. ‘They will assault us first here.’

‘Let them come,’ snarled Teale.

Caedis drew his sword, Gladius Rubeum. The unsheathing of it activated the weapon’s power field and the holo-generator in its hilt. Scenes of victories from the Chapter’s history played up and down the blade.

Metrion went forward slowly, Hermis behind him, pausing to illuminate pools of darkness with gouts of burning promethium. He reached the end of the corridor, where daylight ended and only darkness remained. The others followed. They scanned every surface; walls, floor and ceiling. Attack could come from any angle.

Caedis looked into the next corridor, but there was no light source there. The systems of his armour banished the dark, image intensifiers in the helmet rendering it in grainy green and grey. ‘I see nothing.’

‘Their leader is here, my lord,’ said Guinian.

‘The false saint?’

Guinian nodded. ‘She watches us.’

‘We go on.’

Again Metrion advanced, washing the shadows bright with cleansing flame. He stopped halfway, swiftly unscrewing his depleted promethium canister and replacing it with another.

In that moment, the genestealers attacked.

Autogun and lasgun fire erupted from the far end of the corridor, poorly aimed but in such volume that the Blood Drinkers ducked back to the shelter of the pillars. Guinian, Caedis and Atameo returned fire. The corridor resounded to the distinctive double-crack of bolts, lit by flashes as the rounds embedded themselves in stone and flesh, blowing both apart with equal ease.

Caedis saw hunchbacked figures with scuttling walks. Their features were alternately lost to the grain of the lens images then blurred by the intense glare of bolt detonations, wisps of image distortion trailing brightly from crooked limbs. Only when Metrion braved the storm of fire and bathed the crowd in purifying flame did the Blood Drinkers truly see their enemy.

Hybrids filled the corridor. Like the specimen killed by Indrana’s soldiers, they were neither human nor alien but a mixture of both, the result of the genestealers’ terrible manner of reproduction. Some appeared entirely alien. Others could perhaps have passed for human in poor light. In keeping with the populace of Catria, they were mostly female, with lank hair and bizarrely delicate features. They shrank back from their burning sisters and hissed.

‘This is the first wave! Hold back! Hold back!’ ordered Caedis.

Metrion lost control and hurled himself into the mob of creatures, letting forth another cloud of fire before he cast his flamer aside and drew his knife and pistol. Caedis cursed and gunned down three of the beasts that threatened his standard bearer, but soon Metrion was lost amidst a sea of flailing limbs.

Hermis and Erdagon went to his aid. Lightning claws flashing, they carved their way through the crowd of malformed beasts. Caedis tasted metal as Guinian unleashed a spear of psychic energy at the mob, skewering several of the half-women. Caedis advanced, Teale at his side, both firing as they went.

Then Caedis was in the fray, Gladius Rubeum rising and falling, its energy field crackling as it ripped chitin apart like paper. Hybrids came at him from the left and the right, but all fell to his blade. One penetrated his defences, its claws gouging a line in his greave. Sparks flew from his plate as the monster severed some vital connection. The damaged leg locked for a moment and Caedis felt the support of the armour waver.

All the while he struggled with his own rage. The Thirst battered at his reason, threatening to topple his soul into an orgy of bloodletting that would never cease. He cried out. Combat became a blur of leering faces and flashing claws.

And then, the foe was gone. A handful of hybrids fled, Hermis hard on their heels. Guinian called for him to halt, but he paid no attention. Caedis panted lightly. Gladius Rubeum had been well-blooded.

‘Master?’ said Guinan. ‘What ails you? I sense turmoil about you.’

‘Nothing, Brother-Epistolary,’ said Caedis. His voice croaked. He licked lips that should not yet be so dry, not so soon after the Rite of Holos. He was thirsty, so thirsty…

Teale knelt by the fallen Metrion, and slid a needle from his narthecium into the downed Space Marine’s flesh. The device hissed and a cylinder of red fluid emptied into his veins. ‘He’ll live,’ Teale said flatly. Metrion’s armour had been split in two places. Blood oozed through the gashes, colouring the scratched metal red again.

Caedis had to tear his gaze away. As Teale called in his acolytes to bear the wounded brother away, his own voice trembled. He had his own internal battle to fight.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must aid Hermis.’

Guinian paused, Caedis felt something tighten at the back of his skull as the Epistolary sent his senses outwards. ‘Alas, I fear he may already be beyond our help. He has drawn the enemy out in number. If we hurry, we might still save him.’

They ran down the corridor, caution running from them as blood runs from a cup. Caedis could feel it. Once one succumbed to the battle-joy of the Thirst, others were sure to follow. Only the great will of the Blood Drinkers’ elite kept them from rushing headlong into whatever danger threatened Hermis. The sounds of fighting grew, Hermis’s snarls and battle-oaths loud over the helmet vox.

They rounded a corner and burst into a broad courtyard. The sun slashed the space in two, one side bathed in dazzling daylight, the other in deep shadow. Two civilian groundcars, luxury models, were parked by grand arch on the far side. Armour plating and concealed weaponry were readily apparent to Caedis’s eye.

Brother Hermis fought in the middle of the square against a horde of monsters – hybrids close in form to their monstrous father. Hermis stood precisely where the line of light bisected the courtyard. One of his lightning claws pointed upward. Sunlight fought with the crackling lightning playing on its blades.

The other claw was in darkness, arcing upward toward the belly of a hybrid that loomed over him, a devil assailing an angel.

Several more alien abominations darted toward him, arms outstretched. One lay dead on the floor at the veteran Space Marine’s feet, and another was missing one of its upper arms, but fought on regardless. Hermis’s helmet had been torn from his head. Blood ran from a wound in his arm. His face was twisted with battle-joy.

To Caedis’s blood-crazed mind, the veteran’s battle appeared frozen in time, a study in light and dark as dramatic as any of the statue groups that crowded the Sanctum.

Swift motion wiped the impression away. Hermis went down, claws rending his armour apart. Teale bellowed. Boltguns fired. Alien flesh burst, splattering the pale stone with their gore. Erdagon ran toward the square’s centre in a shallow arc, out of his brothers’ lines of fire. Three genestealers turned to intercept him.

Caedis’s head felt light – his throat was closing up, as dry as desert sand. He shook within his armour as he fought the desire to charge headlong at the genestealers, knowing that his bolter was a better tool here. With every kick it gave, he imagined the sensation of Gladius Rubeum biting into his enemies, and he felt his will ebbing away.

Guinian raised his arm, palm outstretched. Eldritch energy blazed around him, and abruptly died.

From behind the limousines, something that could almost have been a woman stepped out.

Almost.

Her body was as human as any of the other inhabitants of Catria, but her face betrayed her alien origins. Her features were a little too heavy, her nose was slightly ridged, making it appear wrinkled in disgust. Her mouth was unnaturally downturned. And her eyes – they blazed with a contempt for humanity born in the cold places between the stars.

She carried a staff glowing with wyrding might; an alien psyker, a cult witch. The Blood Drinkers had encountered several on the way to Catria.

Caedis’s resolve crumbled, and he dropped his bolter – he could restrain himself no longer. Chanting the war cries of the Blood Drinkers, he raised Gladius Rubeum high above his head and ran at the hybrid magos.

The taste of metal. A blast of psychic energy.

Caedis was flung across the square, his armour dragging sparks from the stone as he skidded across it. The tactical overlays in his helmet lenses flickered. He clambered up, clumsily batting away a darting claw as he did so. Grasping hands sought to pin his arms, a genestealer’s upper claws formed into a pair of single points to drive down at his armour, but Caedis shucked off the creature’s embrace and brought Gladius Rubeum up in a wide arc as he stood, divesting the genestealer of three of its arms. He finished it with a return downwards blow.

Guinian stepped forward to confront the witch, sending aside a blast of energy meant for Caedis.

The air was taut, quivering with unnatural colours. Guinian shouted his praise to the emperor and Sanguinius. His hand upraised, red energy arced from his hand. The witch stood her ground, a dome of flaring light covered her, turning aside the attacks of the Epistolary.

Caedis advanced to the square’s centre where Erdagon stood over his fallen brother, lightning claws weaving an impenetrable cage, keeping the talons of the hybrids at bay. He was on the defensive; power armour was not proof against the genestealers’ diamond-hard claws. Caedis sought to even the odds.

He felled a hybrid from behind, cutting it near in two, the litanies of battle upon his lips. Gladius Rubeum crackled as its energy fields ripped apart another, and then Erdagon was free to attack. Another foul creature died, and another. Back to back, Erdagon and the Chapter Master fought, singing the great songs of battle, surrendering themselves fully to bloody rage.

More genestealers were coming into the courtyard, forcing Teale and Atameo back. Teale discarded his empty gun, and laid about him with his chainsword, the blade’s metal teeth juddering as they bit into chitin. Atameo snapped off bursts of fire as he walked backwards, dropping three, four, five of the gangling beasts. Then he fell. The hybrids were fast, their reflexes outmatching those of the Adeptus Astartes. One had been able to pass through Atameo’s bolter fire and punch a clawed hand through his armoured torso, eviscerating him.

A rush of alien anger burst over the square. Guinian cried out. The crystalline matrix about his helmet sparked and he stumbled, overwhelmed by the cult witch’s warp-born powers. Teale grabbed him by the arm, and pulled the Librarian to the centre of the square, where the others surrounded him.

‘She is strong!’ gasped Guinian.

The four Blood Drinkers stood with the alien dead piled about them. The genestealers came on from every arch and doorway; creeping down stone columns, slinking out of dark corridor mouths.

The Space Marines, heroes among heroes all, were outnumbered. Reports from the rest of the Sanctum came in through Caedis’s helmet vox. Relief was deadly seconds away.

The false saint smiled. Her teeth were small and pointed, her gums dark. ‘You test the might of Mother Hesta, you test and you die. This is our world now, it belongs to the Children of the Stars.’

She raised her staff, glowing with wyrding energy.

‘The blood of life flows quickly!’ Teale said, intoning the first line of the Sanguis Moritura.

‘Only in death can it be stilled!’ replied the others.

‘Let not ours be stilled easily, let it flow on and outward – let it flow from us as we slay those who free it!’

‘Blood is strength, in death it quickens!’

They sang then the hymn of fury, dry lips bitten red by sharp teeth. They prepared to sell themselves dearly.

Hesta pointed her staff at them and laughed.

Stone burst inwards. Lumps of saints flew across the square, battering down several genestealers. A cloud of dust billowed outwards.

Brother Endarmiel strode through the breach, roaring metallically. White dust coated black armour. Twin blood fists whirred. He pivoted and drove a mechanical arm forward, smashing hybrids to a pulp. Hesta’s eyes widened and she cast her bolt of gathered power at the war machine. Purple light flared around Endarmiel’s black armour. He leaned into the blast, weathered it, then strode on and smashed a fist toward the false saint. Hesta stumbled, energy flaring around her as her psychic shield took the brunt of the blow. She snarled, swinging her staff at the war machine’s leg. It connected with a resounding boom. Brother Endarmiel staggered, and Hesta howled victoriously, but the Dreadnought extended one mighty fist. The storm bolter slung underneath fired, and Hesta was cut to pieces.

Brother Endarmiel turned from the shattered remains of the magos and turned upon the brood. Caedis and the others charged forward.

Caught between the rampaging Dreadnought and the lord of the Blood Drinkers, the genestealers were doomed. Their claws could do little against the plating that protected Endarmiel’s sarcophagus. They scored the metal, paring red blood marks and sacred scrolls away, leaving raw tracks in the adamantium, but they could not find their way through it. They died, crushed by Endarmiel’s fists, impaled by Gladius Rubeum, cleaved in two by Guinian’s force staff, torn apart by chainsword and lightning claw.

Erdagon fell, but the slaughter continued unabated.

Caedis slew another of the half-xenos, driving his sword point through its alien skull.

‘Come,’ said Guinian hoarsely. ‘Our target lies within. I can sense them, and they can sense me. Their mother is dead and still they do not fear.’

There were only three of them now: Teale, Caedis and Guinian. Teale turned away from them. The roars of the Dreadnought were deafening as it finished the last of the hybrids, and he had to shout to make himself heard.

‘I must remain here and put aside the blood rage. Erdagon can be saved, and I must retrieve the gene-seed of brother Hermis. Go with fortune and fury, sing well the hymns of battle-joy.’

Caedis gave his assent to the Sanguinary Master. Teale set about his solemn work. Battle-brothers were arriving in the courtyard in Endarmiel’s wake, the fight was nearly done. Caedis motioned for a squad to follow, and together they exited the square and descended into the catacombs beneath Saint Catria’s Reliquary Sanctum.

How many holy women lay interred there? At the base of the stairs, in a wide corridor paved with marble, the burials began, hollows in the wall like shelves five high, each housing a set of mummified remains. Corridors led off at regular intervals, all crammed with desiccated corpses.

The Blood Drinkers advanced, the Thirst boiling within them.

In a tomb remade in a crude parody of a nursery, they found the purestrains. Hollow-eyed women and feeble men snatched the mewling creatures from cribs arranged around a throne of bone and iron as the angels of death entered. Four arms stole around the neck of each surrogate parent, and purple snouts nuzzled human necks. The bewitched humans turned to shield their hellish young with their own bodies. Some raised weapons; bolters barked, and these few fell.

A wave of psychic malice came from this twisted family. Cold, alien eyes stared with hatred from the changeling babies.

‘Do not kill them, not yet,’ ordered Epistolary Guinian in his stern and sorrowful voice. ‘I must take the knowledge I seek from their minds.’

The children of Mother Hesta hissed, tubular tongues sliding over wicked teeth. Reptilian eyes possessed of deep and terrible wisdom regarded them. Their false mothers crooned over them frantically as though they were human infants, blind to their heinous form.

Guinian undid his helmet clasps, air hissing as the neck seal came undone. He set his helm on the floor, and stared at the xenos brood. ‘Know me now, oh foul and repellent beasts, for I will have what I seek.’ Guinian’s eyes glowed, and he reached out to the creatures.

The purestrain young let out a haunting cry as one, heard as much in the mind as in the air. Fingers shifted on weapons in armoured hands.

‘Wait!’ commanded Caedis. The Thirst threatened to undo their task nigh to its completion. ‘Do not fire!’

Guinian eyes slid open. Triumph pulled his dour face into a smile. ‘My lord, I have it.’

‘You can augur the path of the hulk, brother? You can find the initial source of the xenos contagion?’

‘Yes, my lord. I have the psychic scent of these things,’ Guinian spat the word. ‘There are patterns and trails, lord, even in the chaos of empyrean. I can lead us to their foul progenitor.’

Caedis nodded. His eyes swam. The Thirst tortured him. Never had it assailed him so strongly, and a shadow of apprehension stole over his heart.

‘Excellent news’ he said, forcing himself to master his will. ‘I will recall the Second and Fifth Companies to our fleet. This will be a gathering of heroes! We shall crush this abomination at its source once and for all.’

‘Please!’ called one of the women. She was tall and famished, her vitality bled away by her monstrous family. ‘The children! Please, do not harm the little ones!’

Caedis shook his head slowly. ‘Your actions are no sin of your own, but you are forever lost to us. We will commend your souls to your Saint Catria – perhaps she will judge you kindly.’

Caedis raised his hand. The Catrians wailed and screamed.

He let it drop.

Promethium and bolter fire cleansed the chamber.

‘Where were they found?’ demanded Colonel Indrana. She fought and failed to keep the horror out of her voice. From outside the command centre she could hear the thunder of the Space Marines’ departing craft, taking the angelic warriors back to their fleet.

‘Bunker 85. No one saw or heard anything,’ said the medicae adept. ‘I have never seen anything like this. These cuts…’

‘Yes. I can see them,’ snapped Indrana. She stared. The medicae facility smelled like an abattoir, not a place of healing.

‘Colonel, what should we do?’

‘Burn them,’ she said curtly. ‘Burn them all. Contact the families. Tell them they died in defence of our home and the Emperor’s domain.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Immediately!’

The room burst into activity, her order breaking the air of terror in the room, each of the women present thankful of a task to perform.

There was no relief in action for her, not for Indrana. There was no one to order her, nothing to distract her from the terrible sight of her slaughtered soldiers. Slaughtered was the right word, she thought – they had been killed like animals. She looked upon the seven pallid corpses of her guardswomen, their skin bled to a sickly ashen grey, and she shuddered as she considered the nature of Catria’s deliverance.

GILEAD’S CURSE

Chapter Ten

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

They say the best storytellers fear nothing. I think they should fear everything. If we feel no fear then we must feel no compassion or empathy, either. Fear is our enemy unless we make bravery our friend.

I never learnt to conquer my fear, only the art of telling a tale, and of inspiring fear and compassion in others.

The skaven are a godless breed, but if we feel no sympathy for their plight our hearts are more surely to be made of stone than of flesh.

The Vampire Count is a being of great strength and sadness, and if we feel no fear for him our hearts are surely more foolish than sanguine.

But men are fools, and storytellers too, so make of this next chapter what you will, for I know where terror treads, and with all my heart I wish that these tales were not my calling, for I know that I must lead you in her footsteps.

The sky over Nuln glowed with a strange yellow light that no one seemed to notice. The air was dry and cold and heady, and it seemed not to move at all. A door slammed closed in one quarter of the city and a window swung open in another. A whispered breath and a faint, atonal note hovered in the air, but seemed not to move or dissipate. One moment it hung over the university, and the next a stray student, alone in the quad, looked over his shoulder, sure that he’d heard a step behind him. The brilliant, green grass of the low cut lawn, smooth as a billiard table, suddenly looked grey, and the student bent down to look at it, mesmerised for a moment by the apparent fissures in the baked earth that crumbed away to sand, and then rippled, the blades of grass perishing as if they had never existed. The student blinked, and suddenly the lawn was as verdant as ever, and someone was leaning out of an upper window shouting at him to leave the bloody grass alone or suffer the penalty of a minus for behaviour.

The student stood and looked up at the window. The tutor had turned away, otherwise he might have seen how dry the boy’s skin was, how old and tired he looked, how desiccated.

The old and the young, and the sick died that night, and no one noticed. Cut flowers wilted and then dried to papery husks as vases and jugs were suddenly without water. When they awoke, their owners were disappointed that their blooms had not lasted longer, but times were hard and plants fragile, so the fact that they had them to enjoy at all, even for the briefest time, was a blessing. Fruit and vegetables turned to dried husks in kitchen racks and on the little vines that many of the city-folk grew to supplement their meagre diets, and no one thought to question or complain. Such was the way of the plague. Nothing could be done.

The two moons of Mannslieb and Morrslieb hung in the firmament, flat, grey and featureless, shedding almost no light through the yellowish haze of the sky. It was as if they had turned their faces from the city, as if Nuln had somehow been abandoned.

They came by the South Gate into the city. The City Guard of Nuln gathered in the yellow haze that signalled the twilight of the rising sun, and began preparations for opening the gate. They trimmed the wicks and filled the reservoirs of their lamps, emptied the still-warm ash from the brazier, allowed to burn out at dusk the evening before, and primed and relit it. Their breath clouded the air in front of their faces, and they stamped their feet in the chill of the morning while they waited impatiently for the boy to bring their breakfasts.

The South Gate into the commercial quarter of the city had been quiet for months, and the guard expected no visitors so early in the day, except perhaps for a little foot traffic. It was not a market day and commerce was depressed.

The three guards, their weapons slung on their backs, gathered around the brazier as it began to give off a little heat. Within a few minutes the boy, unarmoured and unarmed, but for a long knife, which had no scabbard, but which slotted into a leather loop at his belt, arrived with a greasy, brown paper parcel that was leaking steam and an earthy smell.

Surn Strallan was particularly attached to his sheathless knife. It was guard issue and had been used by any number of men before him, but the boy was inordinately proud of it, so much so that he had honed the blade to remove every nick and dink that it had suffered over scores of years, and he had sharpened it so thoroughly that it cut cleanly through human hair. As a result, the blade was as narrow as a stiletto, and looked not unlike his uncle’s, the butcher’s, boning knife.

‘Mutton... again?’ asked the largest of the guardsmen, ‘and old, too, if the smell’s anything to go by.’

‘Be grateful we’re not eating discarded shoe-leather,’ said his younger, taller companion, the man in charge of the little band.

‘I’m not sure we ain’t,’ said Surn, until the other men turned on him, scowling, and he handed the parcel to the old man, raising his hands, as if in surrender. ‘I’m joking.’

‘Not funny,’ said the old man, freeing the corner of the largest and greasiest of the pies from its paper wrapping and carefully examining the pastry where some of the gravy had leaked out, sniffing it before taking a large, hot bite.

‘Not remotely funny,’ said another guard, a middle-aged man with scrawny arms and legs, which didn’t nearly fill his breeches and sleeves, and a round belly, almost like that of a pregnant woman.

When the air moved a little around the men, making them even colder in its draught, they huddled together around the brazier, eating their pies and ruminating on the state of the city. They did not see the cart and its entourage cresting the rise that led to the last few hundred yards to the gate, and if they had seen it, they would have considered it unremarkable.

The figure that led the cart was stooped and cloaked. The man would have been taller than average, if he had stood up straight, but he leaned heavily on a staff and did not make the extra effort to draw himself up to his full height.

There was little noise in the air, just the wet chewing and snuffling of the guardsmen as they ate the too-hot pies that made their nostrils drip, and the crackle of the little fire in the brazier. They should have heard the cart in the stillness of the early morning, but it seemed to make almost no noise. The compacted earth of the road seemed to fall away, to desiccate, as the figure walked ahead of the cart, leaving a two or three inch thick layer of fine, sandy dust for the cartwheels to roll through. The sound it made was not the usual clatter of steel tyres on hard earth, but the light, gritty, shushing sound of sand being displaced.

The road behind the cart seemed to mend, firming to packed earth again, but with two deep grooves where the cartwheels had passed through it, filled with more of the sand. The cart had only two large wheels, and might have been pulled by a pair of horses, if the double yoke was any indication, but the little band was clearly impoverished, and the vehicle was being manhandled by two more slender, cloaked figures; who pushed from behind the yokes rather than pulling as a horse would.

Their feet and hands were bound in dusty linen in the absence of cobbled shoes and stitched gloves, to protect them from the hazards along the road, and from the blisters and callouses that would result from driving the cart. The bowed heads were shrouded in the hoods of their cloaks, and their faces were not visible.

Most of the cart’s contents were roughly covered with a tarpaulin that looked almost as if it had been made from a great canvas banner or sail, but which was filthy and threadbare, held together by the gritty dust that penetrated its weave. Stacked further back on the rocking cart, roped in place, were several earthenware jars made of a clay that was too pale and yellow to have come from the Empire. The jars were of similar sizes, no bigger than eighteen inches tall. They were round of belly with narrowing shoulders and carved wooden lids sealed in place, and they were heavily inscribed in a language that appeared to consist entirely of pictograms or hieroglyphs, which were so entirely alien that only two people living in Nuln at that time could decipher them, and one of them was now too old and too blind to attempt the task.

The shape under the tarpaulin was roughly human, although rather larger than a man; the arms appeared to be crossed, resting on the torso and the feet stuck up slightly, as if the figure were resting peacefully on its back.

The little group was only a matter of a few yards from the gate when Surn happened to look up from his hot breakfast. His mouth was open to allow the steam from his pie to escape, and to allow enough air into the mix to cool the morsel between his teeth so that it didn’t burn the inside of his mouth.

The sight of the cart came as a shock to Surn as he had not heard it coming up the road, and he instinctively inhaled, when he should have swallowed, forcing a piece of gristle into his throat, so that he choked and gasped. The man standing next to him thumped Surn on the back with one bony fist, but his arms were so scrawny that there was little strength in them, and the lump of gristle remained lodged.

Surn’s face reddened, and soon the fat man on the other side of him joined in the thumping, trying to revive the poor boy, whose mouth was still open, and who was trying to cough the scrap of food up with so little success that his lips were rapidly turning blue.

The boss continued to eat his breakfast, his back to the road.

Surn flapped and gestured, at the same time, distending his throat and neck, trying to dislodge the unfortunate blockage that was preventing him from warning his fellow guards of the arrival of the cart, not to mention cutting off his air supply.

The pantomime continued for twenty or thirty more seconds, Surn becoming increasingly frantic for his life.

At last, the guard boss wiped his oily fingers on the greasy paper his pasty had arrived in, and balled it up before tossing it onto the little fire in the brazier where it spat and gave off the stink of burning rancid fat. Then he came behind Surn.

As he did so, the cart, pushed by its pair of human labourers, rolled past the guards as they shuffled back the few inches required to avoid having their feet crushed under its wheels. Not one of them noticed that a spray of sand, almost like the wake behind a fast moving, small boat came up over their boots, leaving a film of pale dust behind, unlike the dark, hard earth the track on that side of the city was actually made of.

The guard boss raised a hand to the cart as it trundled past, noticing that the lead man lifted his staff a few extra inches off the ground, as if in acknowledgement as they passed beneath the arched portal that marked entry through the gate. Then he clasped Surn manfully around the torso from behind, and thrust his clenched fists into the boy’s sternum, twice. The second thrust caused the piece of mutton gristle to burst, dramatically from Surn’s throat and hit the stone of the arch where it stuck, wetly, for a moment.

Surn placed a hand flat on his chest, bent double and heaved in a huge, gasping breath.

He blinked and looked down at his boots. He lifted one of them and the feint layer of sand that coated them shifted, collecting in the creases of the worn out leather. Surn replaced his foot on the earth and looked after the cart, but he could neither see nor hear it.

‘What was that?’ he asked.

‘A waste of good gristle,’ said the hungry, fat guard.

‘The cart,’ said Surn, finally standing upright. He pointed through the archway and then down at his boots. ‘What was the cart?’

‘Just a cart,’ said the skinny legged man.

Surn looked his boss hard in the face.

‘What?’ asked his boss.

‘I don’t know,’ said Surn. ‘Only this.’

And with that, Surn pointed at his worn boot and then kicked the arched wall with the toe of it, sending a puffing cloud of gritty, yellow dust billowing up from it. He did the same with his other boot.

The boss took his chin in his hand and looked from Surn’s face to his boots.

‘So,’ he said, ‘your boots are dusty.’

‘Yes,’ said Surn, ‘but so are yours, boss. And when are your boots ever dusty?’

The boss looked down at his boots. He took his pristine, white neckerchief from around his throat, and rested the toe of his left boot on the wall so that he could wipe it without bending double. Sandy yellow dust came away on the neckerchief, leaving a smudge of staining ochre on the clean linen.

The boss held the neckerchief up to his face and flinched slightly.

‘It’s hot,’ he said, ‘and it smells of... I know not what.’

‘It’s just dust,’ said the fat guard. ‘Are you going to finish this pie, or shall I eat it before it goes cold?’

‘Dust comes from somewhere,’ said the boss. ‘This dust didn’t come from these parts. ‘The earth here is brown, or grey since the plague, and sometimes it’s black. There’s the clay brought in from the west that comes in red, and a spot of chalk if you go far enough north, but this is yellow. Where’s the nearest yellow earth?’

‘So, they’ve come a long way,’ said the fat guard.

‘If they’ve come so far, why haven’t they left the yellow earth far behind, why are they still scattering it?’

The boss looked at the cloth again, and smelled it.

‘What is it?’ asked Surn. ‘What does it smell of?’

‘It smells of the hottest, driest day of the hottest, driest summer of your life, boy,’ said the boss, ‘and then some.’

The boss lifted his nose from his neckerchief and wheezed to catch his breath. As he coughed, his lips shrivelled and cracked, and he reached for his canteen, suddenly parched. Then, he blinked hard, his eyes suddenly tearless and gritty.

‘Is the professor still talking about sand?’ asked the little bit of a girl, whose name was Gianna, and who had raided her father’s supply of decent ale for her visitors.

‘He is,’ said Fithvael, ‘but I feel sure he’s getting to the point.’

‘How long has it been?’ asked Laban.

‘Who asked you?’ asked Gilead. ‘What are you still doing here? It will soon be dawn, and the horses need tending.’

‘Shall I never live it down?’ asked Laban, slumping onto his elbows so that he was almost lying on his back on the hard flags of the tavern floor.

Gianna leaned over and touched Laban on the top of his head with her free hand, as if he were some child to be indulged.

‘I’ve forgiven you already,’ she said, smiling.

Gilead looked from Gianna to Laban.

‘The horses,’ he said.

Laban got elegantly and swiftly to his feet, making sure that he didn’t lock out his knees, avoiding banging his head on the low ceiling beams of the small room.

‘Try not to be seen,’ said Gilead, ‘and close the door and the gate behind you.’

‘It’s the composition,’ said Professor Mondelblatt. ‘Every region has its very own combination of silica and quartz, and earth and stone compounds; every area has its own specific balance of biological matter and geological, so that with careful study it’s possible to determine within a matter of miles where any sand sample originated from. Then there’s the range of sizes and colours of the individual grains, the weight and density of a sample, how powdery it is, for example, how silty. There’s a fine line to be drawn between silt and sand, I could debate it for hours.’

‘You have debated it for hours,’ said Fithvael, ‘and still I do not understand what it is you are trying to tell us, old man.’

‘I can tell you nothing,’ said Mondelblatt, surprised. ‘By what means did you presume I could impart any knowledge to you about what is to come, what must befall?’

‘Why are we here?’ Fithvael asked Gilead.

‘He knows,’ said Gilead. ‘You know old man.’

‘What I know,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘has taken a lifetime to learn. If only you trusted me, I might impart a small portion of it, but you will never trust me as you should.’

‘You can keep us all locked up in here for as long as you like,’ said Gianna, pouring more ale into Mondelblatt’s glass. ‘I can’t say I mind, especially not with my old dad incapacitated for once, and serve him right. You brung the old professor here for a reason, though, and that big boy out there, he’s worse than useless. So, if you get my drift, I’m thinking that you’ve run out of choices. Show the professor a bit of respect and find out what you need to know.’

Gilead did not look at Gianna nor answer her. She finished pouring, and harrumphed slightly before wandering away from the little table where the two elves and the old man continued to sit.

‘She’s right,’ said Fithvael. ‘What harm can it do?’

‘To trust him?’ asked Gilead.

‘It’s what you came for,’ said Mondelblatt.

There was an almighty crash from somewhere above, followed by a thud and the tinkle of falling glass. Fithvael was out of his chair in an instant, but Gianna, already on her feet, was quicker, and she flew up the wooden steps at the side of the room.

‘He had to wake some time, and he’ll be as mad as a bear,’ she said, over her shoulder.

Mondelblatt’s gaze followed the girl as she disappeared at the top of the steep staircase.

‘See,’ he said, pointing, ‘look there. They’re all over the city. All over my beautiful Nuln. It was only a matter of time.’

‘We should go,’ said Fithvael. ‘It isn’t fair to the girl to keep her father subdued.’

‘I think she rather likes him like that,’ said Gilead. ‘Better to keep him unconscious and remain here than to render every man that sees us in the city unconscious. With Laban for company, we’ll leave a trail of bodies.’

With that, Laban entered the tavern again.

‘I heard a noise,’ he said. ‘A window broke. There was shouting.’

‘See to it,’ said Gilead, pointing up the stairs.

When Laban entered the room at the back of the tavern that looked out over the yard, he saw Gianna and her father in a stand-off, one on either side of the narrow bed. The tavern keeper was trying to grab at his daughter, growling at her like the bear with a sore head he surely was. Gianna was trying, not very hard, to placate him. The elves made her brave, and she had taken too much grief from her bullying parent for too long. She goaded him.

‘I’ll set them on you. I’ll make you pay. You’ve paid already, you old goat. They’ve been drinking your ale all night long, and serve you right. I doubt they’ll pay, either, since they can tie you up and do what they will with you.’

The tavern keeper growled again and lashed out, swinging his left arm across the bed, still trailing the length of rope that had restrained him, but which he had broken free of.

Laban reached out a hand, almost nonchalantly, and took a firm hold of the rope. With a twist and a tug, he turned the fat man onto his side and pulled him onto the bed, where he hogtied him.

‘I’ll see Sigmar’s great wrath come down on you... you beast!’ said the tavern keeper, but without any force in his words, since his face had paled and his heart was beating too fast. He did not like the elves. He did not understand them, and he was very much afraid of their presence in his establishment. He knew that if he should live long enough to see them leave, he would become the hero of his own modified tale about that night, but, until then, he was a coward and he knew it.

Laban sighed.

‘Go on then,’ said Gianna, gesturing towards her father with a look approximating glee on her small, pretty face.

Laban sighed again, and then he cuffed the tavern keeper high on his shoulder, against his neck, so that he rendered the fat man unconscious once more while trying to inflict the least possible damage on him. As it was, he’d wake up with a fearful ache.

‘I never could stand listening to the old goat whining,’ said Gianna, ‘and, Sigmar help me, I’ve been doing it for long enough. Now, what’s next?’

Laban and Gianna emerged from the top of the staircase, the elf bending at the shoulder as he descended the stairs.

‘He won’t wake again any time soon,’ said Gianna, wiping her hands on her apron as she stepped off the bottom stair. ‘Feels like breakfast time, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Then we stay,’ said Gilead.

‘What are all over Nuln?’ he asked Mondelblatt. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The signs,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘they are all over the city.’

‘What signs?’ asked Gilead.

‘Signs of things to come,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘Signs carved into the fabric of my beautiful city. I see them everywhere. I see them in the gargoyles and waterspouts and drain covers of the temples and shrines. I see them in the gable-ends and muntins and keystones of the colleges of the university, and I see them in the fence posts and banisters, and handrails and beams of the taverns and houses.’

‘And you see them here?’ asked Gilead.

‘Don’t you?’ asked Mondelblatt.

‘I will when you show them to me,’ said Gilead.

‘Then we must begin,’ said Mondelblatt.

‘It’s three blokes and a cart,’ said the fat guard. ‘How much trouble could they possibly be? Besides, they’re in, now, and what could we have stopped them for?’

‘Don’t we have a responsibility?’ asked Surn. ‘Aren’t we here to keep the city safe?’

The fat guard and the one with the skinny limbs looked at Surn and then at each other, and then they laughed. The fat guard laughed so hard that he had to put his hands flat on his knees so as not to over-balance, and he stood like that for several long moments, laughing deep and soundlessly in his throat.

The boss, though not inclined to work harder than was absolutely necessary, did not join in with the merriment.

‘What do you think we should do?’ he asked Surn.

‘We didn’t stop them,’ said Surn, ‘so we didn’t do our job. Did we?’

‘Supposing we had stopped them?’ asked the boss. ‘What then?’

‘We might have found a reason to turn them away,’ said Surn.

‘We might,’ said the boss, ‘and we might not. If we’d found a reason to turn them away, and they’d decided not to leave, what then?’

‘Then we’d have driven them off,’ said Surn. ‘After all, it was just three blokes and a cart, and we’re armed and trained.’

The fat guard bent low over his knees, his face crimson with mirth.

‘They might have passed muster,’ said the boss.

‘Then at least we would have done our duty,’ said Surn.

‘You think we neglected our duty?’ asked the boss. ‘That’s a serious allegation.’

‘I do,’ said Surn, ‘but can’t we put it right?’

‘How can we put it right and fully man the gate?’ asked the boss. ‘Traffic has been light, but the sun is rising steadily, and there are bound to be more pedestrians and more wagons and carts to check and clear. It could be a long day. Is it wise to begin at a disadvantage?’

‘Three men can easily man the gate,’ said Surn. ‘There’re only ever three guards on this gate, except when there’s a trainee.’

‘But you’re the trainee,’ said the skinny limbed guard. ‘You’re the guard we can manage without.’

‘Then I shall volunteer,’ said Surn, standing tall, puffing out his chest, and resting his hand on the hilt of his stiletto blade.

‘Volunteer for what?’ asked the boss. ‘No one asked for a volunteer for anything.’

‘I volunteer to shadow the three blokes and their cart. I volunteer to watch them, to see where they are going and what they are doing. I volunteer to keep a close eye on them at all times and to report to the city guard if they transgress or circumvent any civil or criminal laws.’

The fat guard, his hands on his knees, and his head so low that all anyone could see of him was the puce bald spot on the crown of his head, rocked gently with his silent laughter.

‘Since you put it like that,’ said the boss, with a wry smile, ‘you have my permission, for one shift only, to monitor said vehicle, and you may report back to me at the end of the allotted time.’

Beaming, Surn bowed slightly to the bemused boss, and ducked quickly through the city gate, hugging the wall, making himself as inconspicuous as he possibly could while drawing far too much attention to himself simply by moving as no one else was likely to in a month of Sundays. He could have sauntered or wandered through the gate and gone unnoticed, but he skulked; he bobbed and wove, and he sneaked and insinuated. If anyone had been within a hundred yards of him, he would surely have drawn their gazes, but nobody was within a hundred yards of him on the outside of the city wall, except for his fellow guardsmen, and anyone within a hundred yards of him on the inside of the city wall was not within sight of him as he wedged himself into the corners and crevices between buildings, and skulked in the alleys and byways that had no windows looking onto them.

‘Well that saves us finding errands for the boy to run, today,’ said the skinny limbed guard.

‘Don’t think it saves you from doing your job, mind,’ said the boss, ‘just because the best of our conscience is absent.’

‘He’s not absent,’ said the fat guard, looking up for the first time in several minutes, ‘he’s on a mission.’

The horses were tended to and everyone else was fed by Gianna, who was beginning to think of the elves and the old man as a sort of surrogate family. No group of men had ever kept her company for so long, nor been so polite as this one was, and, besides, they’d kept her father occupied and out of her hair for several hours in a row. It didn’t seem to matter to her that she hadn’t slept and she’d barely rested. She’d been treated with nothing but respect, and it was all she’d ever longed for.

As they finished their breakfast, Fithvael pointed up the staircase.

‘Who carved the newel posts for the stairs?’ he asked Gianna, as if it were an idle enough question.

‘What’s a newel post?’ asked Gianna.

‘It’s a hundred years old,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘this little room, or two hundred, perhaps. You forget how short our human lives are, elf.’

‘So you don’t know who carved the wood for the tavern?’ asked Fithvael.

‘Know them?’ asked Gianna. ‘Only that they were ancestors. ‘Six generations... No... Seven. How does it work? Six greats. My six greats-grandad was the first tavern keeper here. Well, not here. His first tavern was a hole in the wall, a shack, a shanty, but it was right on this spot. It was on the outskirts of the city, then, a backwater. He had this place built when my five greats-grandad joined the family business. They needed a cellar for brewing by then. That’s when they did the upstairs.

‘Not much more than a hundred years, then’ said Mondelblatt.

‘Nine generations,’ said Fithvael, ‘in a hundred years. Isn’t that a lot, even for humans?’

‘Something over a hundred years, or so,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘How old are you girl?’ he asked, catching Gianna lightly by the hand.

‘Old enough,’ said Gianna.

‘It’s not a trick,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘just an innocent question.’

‘Fourteen,’ said Gianna, flushing slightly.

‘How old’s your father?’ asked Mondelblatt.

‘Don’t know,’ said Gianna. ‘Don’t care. Old.’

‘Your mother?’ asked Mondelblatt.

‘Died when she was twenty,’ said Gianna.

‘Poor child,’ said Fithvael, ‘not to remember your mother.’

‘I remember her very well,’ said Gianna. ‘Why wouldn’t I? I was nearly seven when she died of the scarlet fever, and my brothers and sisters with her.’

‘You don’t have children?’ asked Mondelblatt.

‘Not all the time I can shift my arse fast enough not to get caught, I don’t,’ said Gianna, matter-of-fact and not ill-humoured.

‘Academically speaking,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘we measure a city generation in the Empire in fifteen year increments. Nine generations makes one hundred and thirty-five years; closer to a hundred years than two.’

‘Where were you one hundred and thirty-five years ago, te Tuin?’ asked Fithvael.

The elves eyes met, neither one needing a reminder of where they had been together, and what they had endured during their decades of questing and adventuring. Time was nothing to them. They felt things as deeply now as they had five decades ago, or eight or twelve. Time changed nothing.

Gianna laughed a nervous laugh, but stopped when she saw the expressions on the elves’ faces.

‘Strange ain’t they?’ she said, changing the subject and breaking the spell. ‘I can’t say I ever noticed them before.’ She stepped over to the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and ran her hand over the carvings in the wood with their hundred or so years of wear and patina.

‘That’s local,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘religious, Sigmarite. It’s a ward of sorts, not common now, but brought in from the countryside, from the superstitions of the innocent folk coming to the city and changing their fortunes for better or worse, but forever. That’s the one, though, higher up,’ he said, craning his neck and pointing towards the top up the staircase.

Gianna skipped up the steps to examine what was carved there. She ran her hand over it and peered at it. Then she traced the edges of it with a finger.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it’s been here my whole life and I’ve never looked at it before.’

‘Humans aren’t subtle creatures,’ said Gilead, ‘but not to know your surroundings is crass even by the standards of your own species.’

‘Don’t berate the child,’ said Fithvael, rising from his seat at the table and following Gianna up the stairs.

‘Let me see, child, what is it?’ he asked.

‘I’ve never seen its like,’ said Gianna, tracing its edges with her fingertips.

‘I know what it is,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘and I can show you where there’s another like it, and then another, and a hundred more in Nuln, and then I can show you other things just as odd, and just as portentous.’

‘It’s a portent?’ asked Gianna, her eyes widening in her startled face and her hand snatching away from the carving as if it could somehow do her harm.

‘Everything is a portent,’ said Fithvael, trying to placate the scared child. ‘A portent is a useful thing. Without them we wouldn’t know what to fear or guard against.’

The elf looked at the carving and turned to Gilead.

‘It is what you described,’ he said. ‘It is what you saw below the ground, in the Rat King’s lair. It was in your vision.’

‘The beetle,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘One of the myriad. You saw an oil slick of throbbing wing cases, and you heard the clacking of carapaces and the clicking of exoskeletons. The air thrummed with them, if I am not mistaken.’

‘It’s a bug?’ asked Gianna. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in these parts, not in Nuln, not ever.’

‘They’re not from around here,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘You’d have to travel south for many a day to find such a creature, or any of his cousins. You’d have to travel into the very heart of the dead lands of the deserts.’

‘What’s deserts?’

‘Empty places where nothing green grows, where there is no rain, only the heat of the day and the cold of the night, only the sun or the moons. Empty skies where there are no clouds, and where, if the air moves, it takes the sand with it. Empty places where there is nothing but sand in all its incarnations, where there is nothing but dry dust and death and heat and sand.’

‘And bugs,’ said Gianna.

‘And bugs,’ said Mondelblatt, snapping out of his odd reverie.

‘Why is it here, then?’ asked Gianna, ‘if it doesn’t belong?’

‘They were here before,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I knew that they would return. I knew, when the plagues came, and I expanded my studies; I knew when I transcribed the language of their symbols; I knew when you told me of the artifacts you had seen; I knew that they would come back; I knew that they would seek to change the Empire forever. All this, I knew.’

‘What don’t you know, old man?’ asked Gilead. ‘Why do you hesitate?’

‘I am sure, only now,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘why you were sent to me.’

‘I was not sent,’ said Gilead. ‘I came to you for answers. I came because you are the only man I know who might be able to explain what I experienced, what it means, and how it relates to the plague. I do not trust you. I do not truly believe that you have the answers, but I had to try. My people too, are dying.’

‘I do not have the answers,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I do not have the answers, and yet, I do have the answers.’

‘Riddle us no riddles, old man,’ said Fithvael. ‘You’re frightening the girl.’

‘It is simple,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘The answer stands before you. Or rather, he sits. Gilead te Tuin Tor Anrok is the answer.’

‘Then you had better tell us what the question is,’ said Fithvael.

The cart rolled soundlessly over the cobbles in the backstreets of Nuln, save for the low shushing of sand displacing beneath its wheels. The figures propelling the vehicle along its course bowed their heads and shuffled their linen-covered feet, driven by their master. His hood shrouded his face, but he adjusted it, once or twice, with bandaged hands so that he could tip his head back or tilt it to one side and peer up at an eave or mullion, or down at a foundation stone or a curb. He saw what he was looking for everywhere, and he followed where the carved symbols and hieroglyphs led.

For the first half a mile, as they wove a way into the southern quarters of the walled city, the trio encountered no one. They skirted the slums of the Faulestadt region, and the small-scale industrial areas that were little occupied in these times of strife. The tanneries were all but abandoned, since few cattle had survived the plague, and those that remained were too valuable for their milk to be stripped of their leather. The same applied to the hardy goats, which had faired a little better than their bovine cousins. One or two leather workers managed to eke out their trade by repurposing old leather goods, turning worn wineskins into satchels and old saddle leather into sheaths and scabbards, but much of the district was deserted.

On the corner of Aver Street, as the cart turned towards the docklands and the Great Bridge, a child, sitting on a curbstone, chewing at a stub of meat that his grandmother had dried three winters since, (being a wise woman of old, country habits), heard an odd shushing sound, and turned his head. The wheels of the wagon passed inches from his feet, spraying a wake of fine sand over them, the grit reaching his face and the tough, sinewy morsel in his hand.

The child breathed in as the cart drew away, only to find that he could not breathe out. His hand spasmed as he panicked, and he dropped the precious scrap of meat, which landed in a pool of sand at his feet. He reached for his throat and tried to cough. Then he tried to wretch. His fingers felt hard and bony against the flesh of his throat, and then the skin of his neck felt dry and papery under his petrified hands. His eyes widened, and were too dry for him to be able to blink closed again. His gums receded in an instant, his teeth looking like pegs in the face of a dried-up old corpse. He did not slump or sag. He simply fell, sideways. There was no softness left in his body, all the suppleness had been sucked out of him, dried up, desiccated. His clothes hung off his dead body, a body that looked as if it had perished a thousand years before and had been locked in a dry, airless vault for all eternity.

No one knew the child. No one claimed the corpse. It was an abomination. Its mother didn’t recognise it, though she hunted for days for her lost son.

A rumour soon spread about the tiny, papery corpse. The local people whispered speculation about the course the plague must now be taking, but they did so in hushed tones, not wanting to believe that such a terrible fate might befall them. Better to live with the everyday inconveniences heaped one upon another over the years since the plague had begun to spread across the Empire, and better to ignore the atrocities that no one understood or could adequately explain.

The religious prayed, and the superstitious touched their talismans of good fortune, and all turned their backs on others’ misfortunes, grateful that the worst had befallen someone else.

That was how the cart passed unnoticed through the poorer districts of Nuln. It passed unnoticed because it was safer not to heed its existence. The city-folk of Nuln kept themselves to themselves, turning away, even from their neighbours and cousins, when there was nothing left to believe in and no one left to trust.

No one but Surn Strallan took any note of the cart with its figures of burden pushing it through the narrow streets, or its guide looking for a path to follow. The vehicle was distinctive and easy to spot at a junction of streets from more than a hundred yards away. Strallan did not want to get close. The sand bothered him. Where was the sand coming from? There was no sand in Nuln. There was dirt and filth and cobbles and hard-packed earth, and, when the river was low there was the clay and silt of the exposed mudflats, but there was no sand.

Strallan ducked and wove, running ahead to a cross street, so that he could sit on a curbstone and watch the cart coming towards him. He sat facing the cart, looking between its wheels at the street beneath. There was no sight of any sand trickling from one of the vessels on the back of the wagon. There was no sign of a sack of sand that might have been punctured. There was no sign of a barrel, or even a wineskin that might have been filled with the stuff. And yet, as the wheels turned they ground into sand, cutting through it and spreading a wake of it behind them. Sand collected in the gutters of the streets of Nuln, and against the curbstones.

Surn Strallan wondered, if he had brushed it all up and collected it in a sack, just how much sand he would have, and reckoned, after following the cart for an hour, that it would be too much sand for one man to carry on his back.

As the cart approached him, Strallan hopped back to his feet and ducked down another alley, winding a path north, parallel to Aver Street. He was sure that the vehicle was heading towards the bridge, and planned to reach it first. Sometimes, it’s better to follow from in front.

He turned his head to the right as he heard a strange intake of breath, and he almost fell over an old man, tapping his way along the narrow, uneven pavement, with a stick that was so tall he had to hold it a third of the way down its length.

‘I’ve never seen such a terrible thing,’ said the old man, to no one in particular, ‘and I hope I never shall again. Such a strange creature, such a peculiar sight.’

‘What was it, old man?’ asked Surn. ‘What did you see?’

He looked out past the old man’s shoulder and saw the cart rumbling towards him, towards the bridge.

‘The body of I don’t know what, an ancient child corpse, or a shrunken thing, wrinkled and weathered, and older than time, lying on its side in the gutter. How did such a thing come to be there? What will the plague bring to our doors next?’

Strallan shuddered, but did not answer the old man, who wasn’t looking at him, and hadn’t really been talking to him in any case; he’d simply needed to say what was on his mind, and the boy happened to offer a convenient ear.

‘What will the plague bring, indeed?’ asked Strallan, ducking out of the old man’s path and onto the southern docks as the cart approached within ten or a dozen yards of his position.

‘When will it come?’ asked Fithvael. ‘What form will it take? How will we know the evil when it arrives in Nuln?’

‘I do not know,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘I do not know, and I do not know. Gilead is here, and that is enough. If the elf is here, the other will come, and when it comes, Gilead will find it and destroy it.’

‘You know where to look,’ said Gilead. ‘I am not the answer. The answers are to be found in your texts and scholarly works. If you have become the professor that you claim to be, if you stopped lying and began to earn the career and the reputation that you stole and cheated for, then you must know where to find the answers. You must know what references will lead you to the key to this plague, and to unravelling the mysteries that surround it.’

Gilead rose from his chair and gestured to Fithvael.

‘We leave for the university,’ he said.

‘All of us?’ asked Gianna.

‘Stay here,’ said Fithvael, kindly. ‘Keep this place locked and safe for us to return to, feed your father and rest awhile, and we will return.’

‘Promise nothing,’ Gilead told his old companion, sternly.

‘We will return,’ said Fithvael, looking directly at Gianna.

She tugged free the cloth that hung from her apron string and wrapped it tightly around the remains of the black bread and cheese rind on the table, and she stoppered a half-full jug of ale.

‘There’s nothing to eat at the university. The students are all so thin. Take this,’ she said, ‘and you’ll have to come back to return the cloth and the jug.

Fithvael took them from her, and smiled. Mondelblatt stood awkwardly, and then sat down again, heavily. He had been sitting for several hours, and, while he did not need a very great deal of sleep, staying in one position for any length of time rather seized up his joints.

Fithvael stepped in and took the old man’s arm, as Mondelblatt planted his stick more firmly between the flags and made a second, more successful attempt to rise.

‘Perhaps we should take the palfrey, after all,’ said Fithvael.

‘No,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘if anyone should see me riding into the university the staff will begin to whisper, and once the gossip starts, the city will be agog. Besides, someone must cover a great deal of ground in the city, mapping the signs.’

‘The bugs,’ said Gianna.

‘We cannot send Laban,’ said Gilead. ‘The boy is far too conspicuous.’

‘I think he has learnt his lesson,’ said Fithvael. ‘He seeks only to do his master’s bidding, and his master is nothing if not demanding.’

Gilead said nothing.

‘Or, I could do it, if you prefer,’ said Fithvael.

‘I do,’ said Gilead.

‘What am I to look for, old man?’ asked Fithvael.

Mondelblatt sniggered slightly, and Fithvael frowned at him.

‘You called me old,’ said the professor, ‘and yet you must be three times my age.’

‘Older than that,’ said Fithvael, ‘but only by comparison to your race.’

‘Older than that, and wiser too,’ said Mondelblatt. He was rummaging around in the deep pockets of the academic gown that he wore, and soon pulled out the stub of a pencil and a notebook made of ancient, woven paper, stitched together at the spine.

‘Sit for a moment,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘My skills as a draughtsman are rudimentary, at best, but I shall do my best to convey the shapes of the sigils that you are looking for. Mark them as accurately as you can on a map that you must buy from the man, I don’t recall his name, halfway down Eyk’s End, the green, windowless doorway. No one makes a better map, and precision will make all the difference.’

Gilead nodded at Fithvael, who pulled his hood up over his head, lowered his knees and dropped his shoulders so that he was suddenly a foot shorter and more rounded of form than he naturally was. He would have little trouble passing for a man, especially in a city where everyone was afraid of what they might see if they chose to take notice of anything. He ducked out of the tavern, tucking Mondelblatt’s notebook between the fastenings of his jerkin.

Within a very few minutes, he was steering the palfrey through the byways of the waking city, east towards Eyk’s End and the North Gate, to begin his task.

Gianna brought Laban back into the tavern as Gilead lifted his hood and dropped his knees and shoulders. The elf boy was already standing low, almost stooping. He fit easily under the height of the beams now, and had clearly taken his mistakes to heart. Gilead looked at him, and Laban dropped his eyes to the floor.

‘You will escort the professor,’ said Gilead. ‘Allow the old man to lead you back to the university. Do his bidding, but remain at his side.’

‘Where will you be, cousin?’ asked Laban.

‘Everywhere,’ said Gilead. ‘Sometimes before you, and sometimes beside you, sometimes to your right and sometimes your left. I will always have you in my sights. I will always be able to see and hear you, even if you cannot detect my presence. Go undetected, Laban te Tuin.’

‘You talk as if it is not safe,’ said Laban.

‘Do you know that it is?’ asked Gilead.

‘You know better than I do,’ said Laban, bowing his head a little further, aware of his earlier transgressions.

‘If I raise the alarm, shield Professor Mondelblatt and, if you are able and it is safe, return here,’ said Gilead.

‘If I am not able?’ asked Laban.

‘The professor will know what to do,’ said Gilead as he and the old man exchanged a long look. ‘At all and any cost, keep Mondelblatt safe. Our task is great, so great that we cannot fully understand it. Much as it pains me, I fear we need the professor and his knowledge if we are to prevent the demise of our race.’

‘You’ll do more than save your family, Gilead,’ said Mondelblatt. ‘You’ll save the Empire.’

‘Raise not your hopes, old man,’ said Gilead. ‘You must know that when it came time to save my family, I was found wanting. When it came time to save my brother, I failed. With everything to lose, I lost it all.

‘Your only hope, old man, is that loss means nothing to me.’

LET THE GREAT AXE FALL

Part Two

Graham McNeill

When Cuthwin awoke, it was as though he’d spent the night in a warm bed with one of Aelfwin’s Night Maidens. His limbs felt refreshed and his head was as clear as a winter’s morning. He rolled from his blanket and stretched, sitting upright with a bemused grin on his face as he saw the rest of their company felt a similar sense of wellbeing. Teon and Gorseth set off to gather fresh kindling for the fires, but the smile fell from Cuthwin’s face as he saw the churned ground all around them, hundreds of footsteps in the earth and scraped claw marks on the rock. Cuthwin leapt to his feet and snatched his sword from its scabbard as he saw more and more signs of a sizeable warhost’s passing. Even the men with little in the way of woodsman’s skills could hardly fail to notice the imprint of so many feet, and voices were raised in confusion at the sight of the tracks.

‘What happened here?’ asked Wenyld, kneeling beside a clawed footprint.

‘We slept through the night,’ said Leodan, scanning the path that led up the mountain.

‘What in the name of Ulric’s balls was in that drink?’ demanded Cuthwin. ‘We could have been killed!’

Leodan shook his head. ‘Nothing that shouldn’t have been. It’s just burned water rakia.’

‘Damn it, Leodan, you could have killed us,’ snarled Wenyld. ‘You might have a death wish, but don’t drag us down with you.’

The Taleuten horseman gripped the hilt of his knife, and for a moment Cuthwin thought he might actually draw it.

‘Talk sense, man,’ said Leodan. ‘If I’d put us out with strong drink then we’d all be dead.’

Despite his anger, Wenyld saw the logic of what Leodan was saying, and nodded curtly, turning to Cuthwin with a mute appeal for an explanation. Cuthwin had none to give him; he couldn’t tell how many had passed in the night, nor, for that matter, could he imagine how they hadn’t all been woken or killed. He tried to move carefully around the tracks, but it was impossible to step on any patch of ground that hadn’t been tramped flat by the passage of uncounted feet.

‘This makes no sense,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t we dead?’

Cuthwin gave up trying to decipher the tracks and looked up as he heard voices raised in anger from farther along the path. He saw Sigmar making calming gestures towards the dwarfs who all looked as though they were ready to start a brawl in a crowded tavern. A hunched figure in a cloak of iridescent feathers stood behind Sigmar, and Cuthwin took an instant dislike to the man, though he could not say why.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Looks like trouble.’

Wenyld and Leodan followed Cuthwin as he made his way to the ugly scene brewing between Sigmar and the dwarfs. Even before he reached Sigmar’s side, he heard words like necromancer and daemonspawn. It didn’t take any great leap of imagination to know that these words were being directed at the man in the cloak of raven feathers. As Cuthwin approached, the man turned to look at him, and the huntsman felt acutely uncomfortable, as though all his secrets were laid bare. He looked away, standing just behind Sigmar as Master Alaric glowered in fury.

‘We will not march with this warlock at our side,’ said the dwarf, his hand of flesh and blood curled tightly around his axe, his bronze one clenched in a fist.

‘But for Bransùil we would all be dead,’ said Sigmar.

‘Or enslaved in one of the rat things’ hell-pits,’ said the raven-cloaked man, clearly the Bransùil of whom Sigmar spoke. ‘Which, trust me, would be far worse.’

‘Shut your mouth, daemonkin!’ roared Alaric, hefting his axe meaningfully.

Sigmar raised his hands. ‘Alaric, this man saved your life. Now calm down and put up your weapon before you dishonour yourself.’

Alaric glared at Sigmar, and only the oaths they had sworn kept him from violence. Cuthwin knew how seriously dwarfs took their oaths, and by voicing how close Alaric was to breaking his, Sigmar had shamed him into backing down. But it had cost Sigmar greatly to invoke the power of his oath, and even Cuthwin could see that Alaric was cut deeply.

Alaric lowered his axe and calmed his raging temper with shuddering breaths.

‘Aye, so be it, Sigmar,’ said Alaric with a disappointed sigh. ‘While we march together in these mountains I’ll not harm this one, but if he ever works his sorceries on me or my warriors again, my axe will have his head off his shoulders so fast, he’ll walk ten paces before he knows he’s dead.’

‘You have my word he will not,’ said Sigmar, turning to face the cloaked man. ‘Swear it.’

Bransùil sneered, as though unused to being given such commands, but he nodded and gave an awkward bow to the Emperor. ‘So be it, I shall not work my magics upon the sons of Grungni again. You have my word on it.’

Alaric did not acknowledge Bransùil’s words, but simply turned and set off towards the path leading farther into the mountains.

‘Be ready to march by the time the shadows reach that rock,’ said the dwarf, pointing to a white boulder at the end of the plateau. Looking at the sun’s position, Cuthwin saw that didn’t give them much time. Sigmar saw it too, and let out a deep breath.

‘Cuthwin, Wenyld, get everyone ready to move out,’ said Sigmar.

‘Sire, what just happened here?’ asked Cuthwin. ‘Who is this?’

‘The tracks you see all around us?’ said Sigmar. ‘A host of armoured monsters passed in the night, and this man saved us from them. How, I do not yet know, but that we are alive at all is thanks to him.’

‘I am Bransùil the Aeslandeir,’ said the man, and Cuthwin stiffened at the alien sound of the man’s homeland.

‘You are Norsii?’

‘I was born in the north, yes,’ agreed Bransùil. ‘A student of Kar Odacen, but don’t hold that against me.’

‘We can’t trust his kind,’ said Leodan. ‘You drove the Norsii out for a reason. They hold to the old ways of dark gods and blood sacrifice.’

Wenyld put his hand on the hilt of his knife, and Leodan’s sword slipped an inch from its leather scabbard. Cuthwin saw Bransùil’s eyes glitter with dark amusement, and stepped in front of his bellicose companions.

‘Why are you here?’ asked Cuthwin. ‘And how did you come upon us? I saw no tracks that could belong to you.’

Bransùil smiled. ‘There are paths through this world that not even you can track, Cuthwin, son of Gethwer. Paths that only those with the shealladh can see.’

A chill travelled the length of Cuthwin’s spine and he backed away from the man, making the sign of the protective horns over his heart.

‘He is a warlock!’

‘Warlock, wyrd, galder-smith, sorcerer, seider… I have been called all such things and worse,’ said the man, ruffling the feathers of his black cloak. He grinned, and Cuthwin saw his teeth were a perfect white, like the first snow of winter. No man’s teeth should be as white.

‘We owe him our lives,’ stated Sigmar. ‘And that is a debt we will honour.’

‘He probably saved us for something worse!’ said Wenyld. ‘A sacrifice to his heathen gods!’

Bransùil laughed – a cawing, echoing sound – and said, ‘Wenyld son of Wythhelm, if I desired you dead, you would already be a feast for the scavengers of these mountains.’

Wenyld blanched as the man laughed.

‘Enough,’ said Sigmar. ‘This man is under our protection and you will fight at his side as you would any of your sword-brothers. You understand? Now put up your blades and get ready to move.’

Cuthwin nodded. He didn’t like it, but he understood the debt they owed this man. So many tracks had passed in the night that there was no way they could have lived against such numbers. Sigmar walked past him to where Taalhorsa was hobbled by the edge of the cliff. Cuthwin felt the cloaked man’s gaze upon him and reluctantly turned to face him.

‘You do not need to fear me, Cuthwin, son of Gethwer,’ said the man. ‘Today the sun is bright, the wind is clear and the champion of Kharneth is many leagues ahead of us. Let us bask in what the gods have given us while it is ours to enjoy, eh? I have no doom for you this day, but who knows what tomorrow may bring?’

Wenyld took Cuthwin’s arm and led him away from the grinning warlock.

‘Pay him no mind,’ said Wenyld. ‘His kind are never to be trusted. Even their truth is cloaked in lies.’

Cuthwin nodded, but said nothing as he reached his horse. He would keep an eye on this Bransùil. No good could come of association with those who practised the dark arts. Cuthwin possessed a single arrowhead fashioned from a silver icon of Morr that he’d had blessed by the high priestess of Shallya.

He had been saving the arrow for Krell.

Now he wondered if he would need it to slay a mortal enemy.

Another six days’ travel took them higher and higher into the mountains. Alaric spoke little during that time, aside from advising on the best path for the horses, but Sigmar couldn’t blame him. The dwarfs did not approve of men dabbling in the sorcerous arts, though he would not be drawn on why, save a thinly-veiled barb at the easily corrupted hearts of humankind.

Midmorning on the fourth day of travel saw the hunters pass the snowline, and the weather deteriorated still further. Swirling blizzards halted Sigmar’s warriors on the fifth day, forcing them to find shelter in a winding cave system that had clearly been home to a large beast at some point. The tracks at the cave mouth were a mix of ursine paw and something vaguely birdlike, but paintings on the stone walls spoke of a crude kind of intelligence.

Piles of gnawed bones, some as long as a man’s leg, lay in a rotting pile of discarded trinkets and skulls, some recognisably greenskin, others of a form and shape that none of the hunters could recognise.

‘We shouldn’t stay here,’ said Cuthwin, looking around the stinking interior of the cave. ‘It smells of fresh blood. Whatever lives here brings its kills back to devour. It’s probably out hunting just now, and we don’t want to be here when it comes back.’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ said Sigmar. ‘The storm is too severe. We need shelter.’

‘If the beast returns to its lair, we’ll be trapped.’

‘That’s a chance I’ll take,’ said Leodan, leading his shivering horse into the cave, though it fought him as soon as it caught a whiff of the blood and bones. None of the horses were willing to enter the cave without a struggle, and hauled at their riders as they were dragged inside. Even the prospect of a blizzard seemed preferable to their mounts, and Sigmar wondered if he should take that as a sign.

‘Get some fires going,’ ordered Sigmar. ‘And do it quickly if we’re not to freeze.’

Cuthwin nodded, but before the huntsman could begin to gather up their meagre supply of firewood, Bransùil opened his hands and spoke a muttered word that sounded part exhalation, part violent expulsion. The cave was suddenly filled with light as twin balls of seething orange fire sprang to life in the palms of his hands.

Sigmar was astonished. He had heard that the shamans of the Norsii could command the elements, but had never seen a man perform such a feat before his very eyes. Bransùil flicked his wrists and the two balls of flame fell to the ground, continuing to burn as though sustained by invisible kindling and fuelled by unseen timber. In moments the cavern was comfortably warm, and the ice and snow coating the warriors’ armour and cloaks began to melt.

‘You can summon fire with your power?’ asked Sigmar.

‘I can summon many things,’ replied Bransùil. ‘Fire is but the least of them.’

‘You should not wield great power with such casual ease,’ warned Sigmar. ‘Men will fear you for it.

‘Men already fear me,’ said Bransùil. ‘Most days they are right to, but not today. The fire will warm us and cook our food and keep nearby predators at bay.’

Sigmar nodded and knelt by the nearest of the fires. Its heat was powerful, and soon warmed his frozen limbs. Though initially reluctant to approach these unnatural fires, cold, hunger and Sigmar’s example eventually drove the men to gather around the crackling blazes and prepare the cook pots.

Alaric’s dwarfs took neither heat nor sustenance from the fires, and simply sat at the back of the cave, speaking in their native tongue with low voices and chewing their tough stonebread. It saddened Sigmar that Alaric had reacted with such anger at the presence of the Norsii warlock, but he understood the dwarf’s hostility. His people had lost warriors in the fight against the northern tribes at Middenheim too, and he had no reason to trust Bransùil.

Neither did Sigmar, but necessity made for strange bedfellows.

Steaming bowls were passed around, and the mood thawed along with the ice as the men began to feel more human with hot food in their bellies. Sigmar sat with his warriors around the blaze nearest the cave mouth, and the shimmering flames made the pictograms on the walls dance like drunken revellers on a feast day.

Bransùil accepted a drink from Leodan’s bottle, and Sigmar was surprised at the gesture, for the Taleuten had been the first to draw his blade at the mention of the warlock’s homeland.

Leodan saw his look and said, ‘The man’s not killed us, and now he’s keeping us warm. That’s worth a mouthful of rakia.’

Sigmar accepted that simple logic and nodded.

The talk was slow and forced, each man wary of speaking too freely in the presence of the Norsii. If Bransùil took offence, he hid it well, and simply sat in silence with his hands stretched toward the fire.

‘How far behind Krell do you think we are, Cuthwin?’ asked Sigmar.

Cuthwin rubbed a hand over his face, and Sigmar saw the weariness etched into the man’s features. He remembered Cuthwin as a young boy, catching him sneaking through Reikdorf to spy on his Blood Night, and still found it hard to reconcile the bearded huntsman before him with that cocksure youngster of his memory.

‘Hard to say,’ said Cuthwin. ‘The storm is blowing away the tracks almost as soon as they’re made, but I reckon we’re close.’

‘How can we ever catch such a monster?’ asked Teon. ‘It doesn’t get tired, doesn’t need to sleep and it doesn’t need to stop to eat.’

‘You are wrong, Teon, son of Orvin,’ said Bransùil. ‘It does get tired.’

‘How can that be possible?’ said Gorseth. ‘It’s dead.’

‘How little you know…’ smiled Bransùil. ‘Aye, Kharneth’s champion is dead, and the fiend who brought his damned soul back to life is no more. You saw what happened to the rest of the legion of the dead when your Emperor slew the necromancer, it collapsed to dust and ruin. But Nagash was not the only one with a claim on Krell’s soul. The Blood God, Kharneth, claimed him an age ago and his hold is unbreakable. Krell’s hate and rage give him strength. They sustained him when all others of his kind fell, but even hate has its limits. Even rage cools.’

The Norsii’s eyes glimmered darkly, and Sigmar couldn’t shake the idea that he spoke with admiration for such power.

‘So he’s getting weaker?’ asked Wenyld.

‘Weaker, yes, but still monstrously dangerous,’ agreed Bransùil. ‘To walk in the mortal world for a creature such as Krell requires powerful magic. Dark magic. The invisible energy of tombs and graves, of dark deeds and violent murder. That is why he has come to the Vaults, for the tombs of dead kings throng its weed-choked pathways and gloomy valleys. The darkest of magic can be found here, but without a necromancer to channel it, Krell can only sup crudely from broken barrows. Such magic is finite and old; it fades quickly and his strength is a fraction of what it once was. You will never have a better chance of ending him than you do now.’

‘So he can be destroyed?’ said Sigmar.

‘Of course, nothing in this world is eternal,’ said Bransùil. ‘Not love, not duty, nor – in the end – honour. You know this. When the storm breaks on the morrow, we must travel high to the edge of a vast crater, the site of an ancient starfall that not even the sons of Grungni know, wherein lie the ruins a lost city. An outpost built in the name of a forgotten conqueror from the Land of the Dead. Built to serve an eternal empire, it was destroyed within a hundred years, and passed from living memory. At the heart of the city lies the tomb of its mightiest general, a warrior whose deathly energies Krell will drain to restore his power, perhaps even enhance it. The wards around the tomb are strong, and not even a being as powerful as Krell can break them easily. But he will break them given time.’

‘Then we must stop him before he reaches this city,’ said Sigmar.

‘You cannot stop him, he is already there,’ answered Bransùil.

Despite the threat of the beast whose lair they were currently inhabiting returning, Sigmar’s warriors passed a restful night, and awoke warmed by Bransùil’s fires that surged back to life with the dawn. The storm had passed in the night, and the day was bright, with a thin powder of snow draping the path into the toothed summits. Sigmar stood at the mouth of the cave, staring out over the mountainscape around him. Such titanic peaks dwarfed the achievements of men, and they would outlast any great deed he might hope to perform.

The city they were to travel to this morning was proof enough of that.

Bransùil had spoken of an immortal god-emperor known as Settra, a being whose armies and war-fleets had once nearly conquered the world. His reign was to have lasted until the end of time, but, like all mortal men, Settra had died and his empire had faded into forgotten myth. What did it matter how many lands a ruler conquered or how many people offered him fealty if he would eventually die? Lesser men would come after him, and all that he had built would decay until nothing remained.

Sigmar knew he was being vain and morbid, but the thought that all he had built and shed blood to create would be lost after his death troubled him deeply. He did not desire immortality as Settra was said to have done, but nor did he want his achievements to pass into legend, a tale of pride and hubris told at the fireside by old men and saga-poets.

Alaric emerged from the cave and gave Sigmar a respectful nod.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you were saying, old friend,’ said Sigmar. ‘About the mountains.’

‘What about them?’

‘Looking at them from up here makes a man feel small,’ said Sigmar. ‘I realise now that we’re all very small in a very big world.’

‘Some men are bigger than others.’

‘Some dwarfs are bigger than others.’

Alaric grunted in amusement. ‘You and I are oath-sworn, Sigmar, and nothing will ever change that, but you would do well to hurl that warlock from the cliffs and be done with him.’

‘He’d probably spread that feathered cloak of his and fly off.’

‘I’m serious,’ said Alaric. ‘Nothing good will come of keeping him close, mark my words.’

‘I’m not a fool, Alaric,’ replied Sigmar. ‘I know his arts are not to be trusted, but for now his purpose and our purpose are united.’

‘You do not know his purpose, it would be unwise to think you do.’

‘Very well, then I will say that our purposes appear to be united,’ said Sigmar. ‘And that will have to be enough. Bransùil has power, and to fight something that bears the mark of the Blood God, we will need that power.’

‘Aye, like as not,’ agreed Alaric. ‘But I still don’t like it.’

It took the morning and the better part of the afternoon to climb to the edge of the crater Bransùil had spoken of. Though the landscape all around was shawled in snow, the steep-sided rock of the crater’s rim was bare and black. The pale glitter-threaded rock they had become familiar with over the last week gave way to the glossy stone more commonly found where mountains erupted with fire and smoke. Even the thin scrub with which they had rubbed the horses and bulked out their grain began to thin. The air took on a grainy quality, as though invisible dust hazed the atmosphere, and when Sigmar dismounted to touch the snowless rock he found it was warm.

The lip of the crater was hundreds of feet above them, almost as tall as the Fauschlag Rock, and Sigmar could see no obvious paths. Alaric led the way, unerringly finding hidden defiles and stepped grabens that afforded access to the upper slopes. The climb was exhausting, and by the time their hunting party had led their mounts to the top, both men and horses were breathing hard and lathered in sweat.

Sigmar saw Alaric and his dwarfs standing silhouetted at the lip of the crater, looking vaguely frustrated at the laboured progress of the men behind them. His breathing came in shallow gasps, and he found it hard to take a breath, far harder than it should have been.

‘Breathe slowly,’ said Alaric. ‘The air is thin up here, and you manlings don’t do well at such heights.’

‘I thought dwarfs were all about depths, not heights,’ said Sigmar.

‘Dwarfs cope well with any extremes,’ said Alaric, without any hint of irony.

Sigmar nodded as he climbed the last ridge of the crater and stared down into the ruins of what had once been an outpost of a dead empire. What little was left of his breath was snatched away in wonder.

A vast hollow had been gouged from the mountain by the ancient starfall, a wide, steep-sided depression thousands of feet in diameter and hundreds deep. A dozen towering waterfalls spilled into the crater on its far side through a naturally formed dam of compressed rock, and glittering rainbows arced over the ruins of a great city of black stone. Tall towers and giant temples with golden domes and great needles of tapered silver vied for space with grand palaces and ornate castles, with each building Sigmar’s eyes fell upon grander than the last. Great lakes formed in what had once been pleasure gardens and rivers flowed along proud avenues before vanishing into abyssal cracks torn through the base of the crater.

Sigmar saw the city was built to an ingenious design: its streets were arranged in concentric rings, with every thoroughfare cutting through its circular geometry angled towards the building at the city’s heart. A vast temple, stepped and constructed of angular blocks of a pale stone that even Sigmar could tell had not been hewn from these mountains. Ornamented beyond all reason, its pillars were topped with great carven lions, its portals flanked by wide processionals of beasts that merged human and animal anatomies.

A great road, easily wide enough to accommodate a column of marching men wound down to the city along the inner face of the crater, and Sigmar wondered what had happened to the road on its outer face.

Bransùil strode to the crater’s lip, his eyes dark and peering into forbidden places where no man’s gaze ought to penetrate.

‘You must hurry,’ he said. ‘The last ward is collapsing.’

Sigmar rode at the head of his warriors, each man galvanised by the thought of finally cornering the monster they had sought for so long. The road into the crater was smooth and led onto one of the main avenues that encircled the palace at its heart. It was a simple matter to navigate the city, for its sacred geometries were necessarily simple.

The city’s architecture had been impressive from above, but seen up close it was doubly so. The buildings were of a heroic scale unknown among the lands of the Empire, and Sigmar vowed that his realm would soon boast such monumental structures. Though thousands of years or more had passed since their builders had raised them, Sigmar saw each building was still as sound as they day it had been completed. Only those structures that had suffered at the hands of earthquakes or the eroding effects of the water had suffered the ignominy of collapse.

Leodan rode at his left, Wenyld to his right with Sigmar’s banner held high.

Cuthwin, Teon and Gorseth rode behind him, with the dwarfs split into two groups that jogged with an unflagging pace to either side of the riders. Bransùil rode with Gorseth, who, as the youngest warrior in their group, had been appointed the unwelcome task of bearing the warlock on his mount. Sigmar kept the horses at a brisk walk, knowing he might have need of their fleetness later. The mood of Sigmar’s warriors was grim but eager, as much at the thought that they would soon be able to return home as defeating Krell.

Twice they were forced to take detours as they came upon blocked streets that had not been obvious from above or found swollen rivers of ice-cold water that were too deep to ford. Yet the precision of the street plan allowed them to navigate their way to the centre of the city without difficulty. A fallen stone needle afforded a crossing of one fast-flowing river and the swift application of dwarf hammers broke open a way that was previously blocked.

Before long, Sigmar found himself riding along the grand, statue-lined processional that led to the great mausoleum temple. The statues were part man, part animal, but not in the monstrously melded way of the beasts that dwelled in the Empire’s forests. These creatures looked constructed, as though they had been bred or shaped with deliberate intent. The idea that anyone would breed such monsters was anathema to Sigmar, and he found himself glad that this Settra’s empire had passed from history.

‘This is the place,’ he said. He could feel the strange wash of dark breath that gusted from inside. The part of him that had passed through the Flame of Ulric felt the emanations of dark magic from the temple, and Sigmar recoiled as he sensed a connection between that power and this. To think that Ulric’s power shared even a passing kinship with such evil unsettled him greatly.

The portal that led within was easily wide enough to allow his warriors access without breaking formation, but Sigmar ordered a halt as they reached the edge of the darkness that lay within. Sigmar twisted in his saddle to look up at the edge of the cliffs encircling the city as he felt a sudden chill on the back of his neck, as though a cold northern wind had brushed past him. He felt as though someone were watching him, but it was not an uncomfortable sensation or a threatening one.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Leodan.

‘No,’ said Sigmar.

‘We must hurry,’ said Bransùil. ‘Krell’s strength is growing even as we wait.’

Torches and lanterns were broken out of packs, and tinderboxes sparked to ignite the oil-soaked brushes and wicks. With light to guide them, Sigmar’s warriors rode into the temple with greater urgency, the stone carvings of its walls glittering with embedded jewels and gold relief. Sigmar saw the dwarfs’ entire demeanour change at the sight of so much ancient gold.

The passage was wide and high, and Sigmar could imagine the great cortege that had accompanied the dead general as he made his way to his final resting place. To this vanished culture, death was something to be venerated.

Cuthwin rode alongside Sigmar and said, ‘I’ve heard that the tombs of the old kings were full of traps. Shouldn’t we ride with more care?’

Sigmar shook his head. ‘Any traps will have been triggered by Krell.’

He didn’t need to add, I hope.

The air of the temple was charged with a subtle vibration, and Sigmar could feel the wards sealing the tomb at the heart of this structure were close to breaking. From somewhere far ahead, he could hear the thunderous booming of enormous impacts. A terrible roar of howling anger echoed from the walls, and Sigmar felt the same fear he had known when facing the dread necromancer himself. He had fought great beasts, creatures of nightmare, daemons and devotees of the Dark Gods, but this fear touched the very mortality of every man, and exposed his worst terrors. Sigmar loosened the haft of Ghal-maraz and swung his glittering warhammer in looping arcs at his side.

The passage opened into a vast, vaulted chamber of dark stone and soaring statuary depicting ancient gods whose names had been lost and great kings whose deeds had been forgotten. Its roof enclosed an immense space of dusty gloom, pierced in numerous places to allow beams of dim, moon-shot twilight to illuminate its grand void.

At the centre of the space stood a great sarcophagus on a golden bier, surrounded by piles of skeletal warriors in armour of gold, silver and jade. They had been smashed to pieces by the fury of the red-armoured giant that stood before the sarcophagus with its great axe rising and falling like a butcher cleaving a carcass in two. Wisps of dark magic flowed like poisonous fog from the cracks in the imperishable substance of the sarcophagus, and Sigmar knew the last ward was on the verge of being broken. Even without further blows from Krell’s axe, it had suffered too much damage and was beginning to unravel by itself.

Krell’s bulk was enormous, taller by a yard than the Berserker King of the Thuringians and broader than even the troll Sigmar had fought at Black Fire.

Plates of armour beaten into shape from a metal known only to a far distant world encased Krell’s body, embossed with skull sigils that writhed in anger and howled in unending rage. Blood dripped from every skull-faced rivet and stained every link of mail that hung in tattered strips from exposed joints. Splayed bone horns jutted from his helm, and Sigmar saw that great portions of the champion of death’s armour had been blasted clear or hung from his frame in broken fragments.

The sight would have been pitiful were it not for the vast shanks of dried meat and yellowed bone that jutted from the wounds torn through Krell’s armour. The blood that coated his armour and dripped from his gauntlets was not his own, but an unending stream from the skulls taken in the name of his hellish master.

‘Krell!’ bellowed Alaric. ‘I name thee Grudged.’

The giant champion of the dead and slaughter turned at the sound of the name he had borne in life and let loose a fearsome roar. Beneath its shattered visor, the monster’s face was a fleshless nightmare of yellowed bone and grey flesh. A hideous emerald glow burned in one eye socket, and its lambent light promised only death.

The grinning skull leered at them, as though remembering those who had escaped its axe once, but who would not do so again. Sigmar felt the cold dread of this monster, the terror that leeched from its dead bones and sapped the courage of all who stood before him.

But these were men of Reikdorf who had faced an army of the dead, men who were commanded by the very warrior who had smashed the great necromancer to dust. They fought beside dwarfs who had stood against Krell and lived, who were led by the greatest runesmith of Karaz-a-Karak.

But most powerful of all, they were dwarfs who bore a mighty grudge.

Krell swung his mighty axe around, a weapon stained black as midnight by the blood of a million victims, and the powerful reek of its murders filled the dusty tomb. Krell had no voice, but a throbbing bass rumble, like a dreadful mockery of a heartbeat boomed with every step he took.

‘Any thoughts as to how we’re going to do this?’ asked Alaric.

‘With horse and speed and strength!’ shouted Sigmar, raking back his spurs and urging Taalhorsa to a gallop. His riders followed him with a wild yell, Leodan with his lance lowered and Wenyld with Sigmar’s banner aloft. It was a wild charge, with none of the grace or elegance of the Taleuten Red Scythes or the wild passion of the Ostagoth Eagle Wings, but it had power and it had Sigmar.

And it had Ghal-maraz.

Driven by anger, driven by shame, or driven by guilt, Leodan was the first to reach Krell.

He thrust his lance into the very heart of the undead champion’s chest as though driven by the hand of Ulric himself. The cold iron tip punched through the red-stained metal as the wooden haft of the lance splintered into fragments with the force of the impact. Krell didn’t so much as stagger, and the Taleuten kicked his boots free of his stirrups as Krell’s axe slashed down with awesome force.

The enormous blade clove Leodan’s horse in two through the saddle, and an ocean of blood flooded from the shrieking creature’s body as it fell. Leodan rolled to his feet, his sword already in his hand, as the rest of Sigmar’s riders hit home. Heavy broadswords, double-edged slashing blades and short stabbing swords clanged against Krell’s armour, some piercing the gristly flesh beneath, others rebounding in showers of red sparks.

Krell’s axe struck out, faster than any weapon of such size should be able to move, and five riders were hacked from their mounts, decapitated with executioner’s precision. Their headless corpses rode on for a few yards before the weight of their armoured bodies dragged them to the ground.

Sigmar swayed aside from a return stroke of the axe and slammed Ghal-maraz against Krell’s shoulder. Unnatural plates buckled and broke against the fury of his blow, and Krell at last staggered. The champion spun around, his axe reaching for Sigmar, but finding only empty air. Sigmar wheeled Taalhorsa around and drove his ancient warhammer into Krell’s back, splitting apart the cuirass of his monstrous armour and drawing a howl that echoed in this world and the realm of the dead.

The cracks in the sundered sarcophagus split wider, and the deathly tang of evil magic grew stronger. Sigmar cried out as he saw another six of his men cut down by Krell’s deadly axe, their souls dragged from their bodies to feed the monstrous appetite of the blood-hungry champion.

‘Hurry!’ cried Bransùil. ‘The last ward is almost spent!’

Alaric and his dwarfs hurled themselves into the fray, hammers beating on Krell’s body like demented smiths in a forge. Each warrior bore a weapon inscribed with runes that worked the magic of the dwarfs into a useable form, and each blow wreaked fearful damage on the strange plates of his armour. Alaric’s frost-bladed axe bore runic magic the equal of that worked onto the killing face of Ghal-maraz, and every blow sheared slices of metal and bone from the beleaguered champion.

Krell leapt into the air, slamming down with bone-crushing force on two of the dwarfs, their armoured bodies crushed to paste beneath the creature’s bulk. A looping axe blow sheared another two in half and only Alaric’s master-forged axe saved him from a similar fate.

Mortal warriors faced an immortal champion, and though two of the greatest heroes of the age fought alongside them, this was no equal contest. Each time Krell’s axe swept out, men and dwarfs died, and Sigmar knew they could not long suffer such rates of attrition. The sarcophagus at the centre of the temple cracked wider still, and the taint of dark magic gave a bitter, poisonous taint to every breath. Portions of the stone began to dissolve into the air as the magic sealing the long-dead general in his tomb crumbled under the assault of so much malignant power.

‘Alaric, go left!’ shouted Sigmar, wheeling his horse around the champion’s right flank.

The runesmith obeyed without question, attacking the giant from the opposite side. Teon and Gorseth fought beside the dwarfs, darting forward between swipes of Krell’s mighty axe to hammer their swords against his armour. Leodan fought alone, standing before the might of Krell with his notched sword held high. His armour was split wide, and Sigmar saw the Taleuten was lucky to be alive. Blood masked his face, and a long gash ran from his collarbone to his hip. A finger breadth deeper and he would already be dead.

Sigmar vaulted from Taalhorsa’s saddle and wrapped one brawny arm around Krell’s neck. His hammer slammed down on Krell’s helm, buckling the metal and drawing a bellow of inchoate rage from the beast. The haft of Krell’s axe shot up as Sigmar drew his arm back for another strike and slammed into his temple. The force of the blow was incredible and bright lights burst before Sigmar’s eyes as he was thrown from Krell’s back. Ghal-maraz spun from his grip, and he landed badly on the steps of the bier.

Little remained of the sarcophagus, only a fading outline of stone that diminished like morning mist. Within lay a skeletal corpse with the flesh pulled taut over a regal bone structure and clad in armour of gold, jade, amethyst and bronze. A strange weapon with a recurved blade lay on the corpse’s chest, and a glimmering light was reflected in the emeralds set in its eye sockets. A dusty breath sighed between its sharpened teeth, and Sigmar fought to recover from the dizzying force of Krell’s blow.

Bransùil knelt beside him, and placed a hand on his chest. He spoke a soft word that sounded like the chorus of a child’s lullaby, and fresh strength flowed through Sigmar’s body.

‘The ward is gone,’ he said. ‘This your chance, son of Björn. Drive him into the tomb!’

Sigmar nodded and looked for his hammer, knowing it was the only weapon capable of causing lasting harm to the undead champion. Ghal-maraz lay in the midst of the fighting, where Leodan, Wenyld and Teon battled to keep the great axe of Krell at bay. More men were dead, and only three dwarfs still stood with Master Alaric as Krell shrugged off their attacks with a sound of grating metal that Sigmar realised was diabolical laughter.

Gorseth saw Sigmar rise to his feet and dived under Krell’s axe to retrieve Ghal-maraz. The youngster’s eyes blazed with winter fire as his slender fingers closed on the haft. Sigmar knew the temptation of such power on a young heart, but Gorseth shook it off and hurled the great warhammer to Sigmar as the black axe descended and cut into his shoulder.

Blood sprayed from the wound, and Teon cried out as his friend fell. Sigmar caught the spinning hammer as Teon threw aside his sword and dragged Gorseth away from the fighting. The effort was noble, though Sigmar knew a wound from so dreadful a weapon would almost certainly prove fatal.

Wenyld screamed and drove his sword up into Krell’s belly as Leodan vaulted from a fallen portion of masonry and swung his sword at the mighty champion’s head. Such was the power and emotion driving Leodan that his blade struck a blow like no other. Krell’s helmet shattered into spinning fragments, revealing his ruined and blackened skull and madly gleaming eye. Fully half of Krell’s skull was gone, the rest torn away by the blast of the dwarf war machine at the Battle of Reikdorf. Yet even as Sigmar watched, the bone was reknitting, weaving fresh substance as the dark magic released from the sundered tomb saturated the air.

‘Cuthwin, son of Gethwer!’ yelled Bransùil. ‘Now is your moment! Loose!’

Sigmar looked over to where Cuthwin knelt beside Gorseth and the weeping Teon. The huntsman’s bow was bent and a shaft with a shimmering silver arrowhead was nocked to the string. Cuthwin let fly between breaths and the arrow soared as true as any loosed by the king of the fey folk himself. The silver arrowhead punched through Krell’s remaining eye, and the towering champion bellowed with rage as the magic imbued in the metal seared his damned soul with holy fire.

Sigmar knew they would never get a better chance to end Krell’s terror, and hurled himself at the reeling monster. Master Alaric also recognised the moment and attacked with his rune axe cutting into Krell’s thighs and belly. Leodan and Wenyld fought at his side as Krell took backward step after backward step. Dark light spewed from the awful wound in his skull, twisting coils of black smoke that shrieked as it fled the dissolution of Krell’s body. The monstrous champion’s axe clattered to the ground as his clawed hands sought to contain the abominable energies that sustained his existence.

The tomb of the great general flared with unnatural light as Krell drew on the reservoir of dark magic contained within, and Sigmar saw how they could end this. He spun around the flailing champion and took hold of Master Alaric’s shoulder.

‘Together,’ he said.

Alaric nodded, understanding Sigmar’s meaning in the way that only warriors who have fought and bled together for decades can know. Together they surged forward and their blows were struck with such symmetry and unity, that no force in the land could hope to resist. Krell stumbled back towards the tomb as the long dead general stirred from his aeon’s long slumber.

Sigmar leapt and swung Ghal-maraz in a vast, sweeping blow that slammed into Krell’s chest with all the strength he had earned in his years of battle. The mighty warhammer shattered the last of Krell’s armour and a vast explosion of runic magic hurled the champion back into the tomb. Coils of dark magic enveloped the fallen champion; spiralling coils of vicious, jealous blackness. An immortal general from a bygone age fought the theft of the power intended to raise him from the grave, and the two creatures of undeath roared against one another in their desperate fury.

Bransùil stepped in front of Sigmar and Alaric, plunging his hands into the vortex of dark magic with a guttural chant of power words that sounded like a thousand windows shattering at once. The power contained in the tomb was old and strong, and was not about to be contained without a fight. Bransùil shuddered as his own strength went to war with magic conjured into being by a master of undeath. Crackling arcs of deadly energies whipped around him as he drew his arms in as though moulding clay upon a wheel. Sigmar and Alaric stepped back from the tempest engulfing Bransùil, shielding their eyes as a dazzling blaze of light exploded from the tomb and the earth shuddered as though struck once again by the hammer blow of a starfall.

Portions of the temple’s roof fell inward, crashing down in enormous, building-sized chunks of masonry. Vast cracks split the walls and moonlight speared into the quaking temple. The crash of falling coffers and cracking rock was deafening, and the surviving warriors fought to hold their footing as the mountains shook with the fury of such powerful magics being unleashed.

‘Get out!’ shouted Sigmar. ‘Get out of the temple!’

Alaric and his fellow dwarfs ran for the nearest crack in the temple walls, knowing with the skill of their race the escape route least likely to bury them beneath thousands of tons of stone. Sigmar ran for Taalhorsa and threw himself into the saddle as Leodan grabbed the reins of a fallen warrior’s mount. Cuthwin and Wenyld rode for the passageway by which they had entered the tomb, and Sigmar was pleased to see his banner still flew proudly. Teon hauled Gorseth over his saddle and rode after the remaining riders as yet more pounding slabs of stone crashed to the ground.

It galled Sigmar to see how few would be making the journey back to Reikdorf, but he knew that they had been lucky to finish Krell with any of them left alive. He turned and held his hand out to Bransùil, who gratefully scrambled up behind him. The warlock’s face was ashen, lined with exhaustion and sheened with sweat. Behind him, Sigmar saw the tomb of the general was gone, and its place was a shimmering sphere of crystal, like a vast diamond in which two forms could be made out as ghostly shadows.

Krell and the former occupant of the tomb were frozen together, locked in an eternal struggle for survival that would never end. Great chunks of stone slammed down on the magical prison but shattered and spun away, leaving the crystal tomb unmarked by so much as a scratch.

Sigmar raked back his spurs and Taalhorsa surged to the gallop as though all the Ölfhednar of the marshes were at their heels. The temple was collapsing with ever-greater speed and violence, and clouds of dust billowed around them, making it impossible to see more than a few yards. Sigmar had to trust to Taalhorsa’s sense for danger as they swerved away from falling rubble and leapt over high barriers of toppled columns. Bransùil wrapped scrawny, buckle-boned arms around his waist as Taalhorsa leapt a yawning crack in the ground and lost his footing for a moment.

‘On!’ cried Sigmar. ‘Taal guides you!’

The horse righted itself and set off with a whinny of terror as the ground heaved with elemental fury. Booming cracks of grinding stone echoed from all around them, and Sigmar heard a groaning crash of falling rocks and a roar of falling water. They rode into the grand tunnel that had brought them to the interior of the mausoleum, and Sigmar leaned over his horse’s neck, speaking words of courage in its ear.

At last there was only sky above them, and Sigmar let out a wild yell of exultation as they left the tomb behind. Sigmar’s warriors and Alaric’s dwarfs saw him, but he saw they were not out of danger yet. The mountains shook and rocks tumbled from the high slopes as the titanic forces of the earth convulsed. The natural dam at the lip of the crater was breaking apart, and vast geysers of icy water were spilling into the city. The rivers were overflowing and soon every building would be underwater.

‘Ride!’ ordered Sigmar. ‘Before we all drown!’

‘We’ll run,’ said Alaric with stubborn pride. ‘I’d rather wade than ride.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Sigmar, ‘but wade fast.’

The riders set off at the gallop, retracing the route they had taken to reach the mausoleum as vast spumes of waters flooded the city. Surging meltwater crashed against the walls of palaces that had stood for thousands of years and toppled them in a heartbeat. Tidal surges dragged entire streets to ruin, and soon the horses were galloping through knee-high water of unbearable cold.

Splashing and frantic, the horses reached the road leading back to the lip of the crater, and Sigmar’s racing heartbeat eased a fraction as they gained height above from the drowning city. Higher and higher they climbed, and Sigmar eased the pace as he saw Alaric and his dwarfs wade to the road with little more then their beards above the surface. He laughed as they shook off the water like wet dogs and marched towards the waiting men as though they had just taken a brisk stroll in the rain.

The crashing thunder of falling water continued as they climbed to the top of the slope, and the city was swallowed by the freezing run-off of an ancient glacier. Teon and Wenyld lowered Gorseth to the ground, and Sigmar was amazed to see the lad still clung to life. He was young, but he was tough, as were all good Reiklanders.

Sigmar dismounted and knelt beside the boy.

‘You have my thanks,’ he said. ‘That was brave of you to get me my hammer. Foolhardy, but brave. But for your courage, I doubt we would have prevailed.’

Gorseth smiled and his eyes fluttered.

‘Don’t you bloody well die,’ snapped Wenyld. ‘You hear me, boy. Don’t you dare. Not when old men like me walk away without a scratch.’

Gorseth coughed, and his spittle was bloody. ‘No more jokes about my age…?’

‘I make no promises,’ said Wenyld, and Sigmar saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘Stay alive long enough to reach Reikdorf and we’ll see.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Gorseth as Leodan and Cuthwin began binding the terrible wound in his shoulder.

Though the temperature was falling rapidly as night drew in, none could tear their eyes from the sight of the newly formed mountain tarn. The surface rippled like the ocean, and the moonlight sparkled on the water as it lapped at the edge of the crater, not ten feet below them. The violence of the earthquake had subsided, though the mountains still grumbled with smouldering anger.

Sigmar let out a pent-up breath and helped Bransùil down from Taalhorsa’s saddle. Even through his armour, Sigmar could feel the misshapen, birdlike frailty of the warlock’s body. The man nodded gratefully as a freezing wind blew over the surface of the lake and an icy prickling sensation crawled over Sigmar’s skin.

A bitterly cold mist rose from the water, like the breath of the great frost giants said to haunt the featureless ice tundra of the Northern Wastes. The horses whinnied, their eyes wide and their ears pressed tight to their skulls in fear. The wind passed over them, but it was not the deathly cold of the dead, but the cleansing chill of a good northern winter. Sigmar had felt that cold before, when he had passed through the flame at the heart of Middenheim, and he clung to the memory.

No sooner had it arisen than the mist dissipated, and cries of astonishment arose from the men and dwarfs as they saw what had become of the lake. The water had frozen solid, leaving a vast, shimmering plane of ice before them. From the surface to the deepest reaches of the crater, the lake had been transformed in an instant to solid ice.

‘Ulric’s blood!’ swore Cuthwin, turning to Bransùil. ‘Did you do that?’

The warlock shook his shaven, tattooed head, staring over the glacier lake with a curious expression. ‘No, young Cuthwin. I have a degree of mastery, aye, but such powerful elemental magics are beyond my ability to wield.’

Sigmar followed Bransùil’s gaze, and his eyes narrowed as he caught sight of a distant shape on the far side of the crater. Someone was standing directly opposite them by the shattered gap where the rock dam had once held back the mountain waters. Though it was dark and the shimmering moonlight was filtered through a haze of ice particles, Sigmar swore he could see a figure swathed in fur.

A wolf-clad man with but a single arm.

Even as Sigmar caught sight of the man, he vanished into the moonlight shadows. He watched the spot for a while longer, hoping he would show himself again.

But the man did not return, if he had been there at all…

Sigmar turned away from the lake. Krell lay entombed beneath millions of tons of ice, sealed in a magical tomb in the heart of an ice-locked city, and Sigmar allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

‘Will it hold?’ he asked Bransùil. ‘The crystal prison you created, will it hold?’

‘It will hold,’ replied the Norsii. ‘For a very long time, but it will not endure forever.’

Sigmar nodded, as though this was a fundamental truth of the world he had only now come to fully appreciate.

‘Nothing lasts forever,’ he said. ‘Nor should it.’

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

© Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-85787-835-9

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