Iron Within

Rob Sanders

The iron within. The iron without. Iron everywhere. The galaxy laced with its cold promise. Did you know that Holy Terra is mostly iron? Our Olympian home world, also. Most habitable planets and moons are. The truth is we are an Imperium of iron. Dying stars burn hearts of iron; while the heavy metal cores of burgeoning worlds generate fields that shelter life – sometimes human life – from the razing glare of such stellar ancients.

Empires are measured in more than just conquered dirt. Every Iron Warrior knows this. They’re measured in hearts that beat in common purpose, thundering in unison across the void: measured in the blood that spills from our Legiones Astartes bodies, red with iron and defiance. This is the iron within and we can taste its metallic tang when an enemy blade or bullet finds us wanting. Then the iron within becomes the iron without, as it did on what we only now understand to be the first day of the Great Siege of Lesser Damantyne…

The Warsmith stepped out onto the observation platform, each of his power-armoured footfalls an assault on the heavy grille. The Iron Warrior’s ceramite shoulders were hunched with responsibility, as though the Space Marine carried much more than the deadweight of his Mark-III plate. He crossed the platform with the determination of a demigod, but the fashion in which his studded gauntlets seized the exterior rail betrayed a belief that he might not make the expanse at all. The juggernaut ground to an irresistible halt.

A rasping cough wracked the depths of his armoured chest, his form rising and falling with the exertion of each tortured, uncertain breath. Imperial Army sentries from the Ninth-Ward Angeloi Adamantiphracts watched the Warsmith suffer, uncertain how to act. One even broke ranks and approached, the flared muzzle of his heavy carbine lowered and scalemail glove outstretched.

‘My lord,’ the masked soldier began, ‘can I send for your Apothecary or perhaps the Iron Palatine…’

Lord Barabas Dantioch stopped the Adamantiphract with an outstretched gauntlet of his own. As the Warsmith fought the coughing fit and his convulsions, the armoured palm became a single finger.

Then, without even looking at the soldier, the huge Legiones Astartes managed: ‘As you were, wardsman.’

The soldier retreated and a light breeze rippled through the Iron Warrior’s tattered cloak, the material a shredded mosaic of black and yellow chevrons. It whipped about the statuesque magnificence of his power armour, the dull lustre of his Legion’s plate pitted with rust and premature age, lending the suit a sepia sheen. He wore no helmet. Face and skull were enclosed in an iron mask, crafted by the Warsmith himself. The faceplate was a work of brutal beauty, an interpretation of the Legion’s mark, the iron mask symbol that adorned his shoulder. Lord Dantioch’s mask was a hangdog leer of leaden fortitude with a cage for a mouth and eyes of grim darkness. It was whispered in the arcades and on the battlements that the Warsmith was wearing the mask – pulled glowing from the forge – as he hammered it to shape around his shaven skull. He then plunged head and iron into ice water, fixing the beaten metal in place forever around his equally grim features.

Gripping the platform rail, Dantioch drew his eye-slits skywards between his hunched, massive shoulders and drank in the insane genius of his creation. The Schadenhold: an impregnable fortress of unique and deadly design, named in honour of the misery that Dantioch and his Iron Warriors might observe if ever an enemy force was foolish enough to assault the stronghold. During the process of Compliance, as part of the Emperor’s strategy and holy decree, thousands of bastions and citadels had been built on thousands of worlds, so that the architects of the Great Crusade might watch over their conquered domain and the new subjects of an ever expanding Imperium. Many of these galactic redoubts, castles and forts had been designed and built by Dantioch’s Iron Warrior brothers: the IV Legion was peerless in the art of siege warfare, both as besiegers and the besieged. The galaxy had seen nothing like the Schadenhold, however – of that Dantioch was sure.

Under his mask the Iron Warrior commander’s pale lips mumbled the Unbreakable Litany. ‘Lord Emperor, make me an instrument of your adamance. Where darkness is legion, bless our walls with cold disdain; where foolish foes are frail, have our ranks advance; where there is mortal doubt, let resolution reign…’

The Warsmith had blessed the Schadenhold with every modern structural fortification: concentric hornworks; bunkers; murder zones; drum keeps; artillery emplacements and kill-towers. The fortress was a monstrous study in 30th Millennium siegecraft. For Dantioch, however, location was everything. Without the natural advantages of material, elevation and environment, all other architectural concerns were mere flourish. A stronghold built in a strategically weak location was certain to fall, as many of Dantioch’s kindred in the other Legions had discovered during the early trials of Compliance. Even the Imperial Fists had had their failures.

Dantioch had hated Lesser Damantyne from the moment he had set foot on the dread rock and had felt instantly that the planet hated him also. It was as though the world did not want him there and that appealed to the Warsmith’s tactical sensibilities: he could use Damantyne’s environmental hostilities to his advantage. The small planetoid was situated in a crowded debris field of spinning rock, metal and ice that made it seem unfinished and hazardous from the start. The cruisers of the 51st Expedition that had brought the Warsmith and his Iron Warriors there had negotiated the field with difficulty. Although the planet had tolerable gravity and low-lying oxygen that made an outpost possible, the surface was a swirling hellstorm of hurricane winds, lashing lightning and highly corrosive, acid cloud cover. Nothing lived there: nothing could live on the surface. The acidic atmosphere ate armour and ordnance like a hungry beast, rapidly stripping it away layer by layer in an effort to dissolve the flesh and soft tissue of the Legiones Astartes beneath. Even the most heavily armoured could only expect to survive mere minutes on the surface.

This made vertical, high-speed insertions by Stormbird the sole way down and that was only if the pilot was skilful enough to punch through the blinding cloud cover and down into one of the narrow, bottomless sinkholes that punctuated the rocky surface. Through some natural perversity of Damantyne’s early evolution, the planetary crust was riddled with air pockets, cavities and vast open spaces: a cavern system of staggering proportion and labyrinthine madness. Dantioch chose the very heart of this madness as the perfect location for his fortress, in a vaulted subterranean space so colossal it had its own primitive weather system.

‘From iron cometh strength. From strength cometh will. From will cometh faith. From faith cometh honour. From honour cometh iron. This is the Unbreakable Litany. May it forever be so. Dominum imperator ac ferrum aeturnum.’

The Iron Warriors were not the first to have made Lesser Damantyne their home. Below the surface, the lithic world was rich with life which had evolved in the deep and the dark. The only real threat to the Emperor’s chosen were the megacephalopods: monsters that stalked the caverns with their sinuous tentacles and could collapse their rubbery bulk through the most torturous of cave tunnels, creating new entrances with their titanium beaks. The Legiones Astartes, first few years on Lesser Damantyne comprised a war of extermination on the xenos brutes, who seemed intent on tearing down any structures the IV Legion attempted to erect.

With the alien threat hunted to extinction, Dantioch began construction on his greatest work: the Schadenhold. While Iron Warriors had been battling chthonic monstrosities for planetary supremacy, Dantioch had had his Apothecaries and Adeptus Mechanicum advisors hard at work creating the muscle that would build his mega-fortress. Iron Warrior laboratories perfected genestock slave soldiers, colloquially known as the Sons of Dantioch. Although the Warsmith’s face had been hidden for many years behind the iron of his impassive mask, it was plain to see on the gruesome hulks that had built the Schadenhold.

Taller and broader than a Space Marine, the genebreeds used the raw power of their monstrous bulk to mine, move and carve the stone from which the fortress was crafted. As well as physical prowess the slave soldiers had also inherited some of their gene-father’s cold, technical skill and the Schadenhold was more than a hastily constructed rock edifice: it was an enormous example of strategic art and siegecraft. With the fortress complete, the Sons of Dantioch found new roles in the maintenance and basic operation of the citadel and as close-quarters shock troops for the concentric kill zones that layered the stronghold. It pleased the ailing Warsmith to be surrounded by brute examples of his own diminished youth and physical supremacy and, in turn, the slave soldiers honoured their gene-father with a simple, unshakable faith and loyalty: a fealty to the Emperor as father of the primarch and the primarch as father of their own.

‘I never tire of looking at it,’ a voice cut through the darkness behind. It was Zygmund Tarrasch, the Schadenhold’s Iron Palatine. Dantioch grunted, bringing an end to his mumbled devotions. Perhaps the Adamantiphract had sent for him; or perhaps the Iron Palatine had news.

The Space Marine joined his Warsmith at the rail and peered up at the magnificence of the fortress above. Although Dantioch was Warsmith and ranking Legiones Astartes among the thirty-strong Iron Warrior garrison left behind by the 51st Expeditionary Fleet, his condition had forced him to devolve responsibility for the fortress and its day-to-day defence to another. He’d chosen Tarrasch as Iron Palatine because he was a Space Marine of character and imagination. The cold logic of the IV Legion had served the Iron Warriors well but, even among their number, there were those whose contribution to Compliance was more than just a conqueror’s thirst – those who appreciated the beauty of human endeavour and achievement, not just the tactical satisfaction of victory and the hot delight of battle.

‘Reminds me of the night sky,’ Tarrasch told his Warsmith. The Iron Palatine nodded to himself. ‘I miss the sky.’

Dantioch had never really thought of the Schadenhold in that way before. It was certainly a spectacle to behold and the final facet in the Warsmith’s ingenious design, for the two Iron Warriors were standing on a circular observation platform, situated around the steeple-point of the tallest of the Schadenhold’s citadel towers. Only, the tower did not point towards the sky or even at the cavern ceiling: it pointed down at the cavern floor.

The Schadenhold had been hewn out of a gigantic, conical rock formation protruding from the roof of the cave. Dantioch had immediately appreciated the rock feature’s potential and committed his troops to the difficult and perilous task of carving out an inverse citadel. This hung upside-down, but all chambers, stairwells and interior architecture were oriented skywards. The communications spires and steeple-scanners at the very bottom of the fortress were hanging several thousand metres above a vast naturally-occurring lake of crude promethium, which bubbled up from the planet depths. At the very top of the stronghold were the dungeons and oubliettes, situated high in the cavern roof.

As Dantioch cast his weary eyes up the architecture, he came to appreciate the comparison the Iron Palatine was making. In the bleak darkness of the gargantuan cavern, the bright glare of the fortress searchlamps and soft pinpricks of illumination escaping the embrasure murder holes appeared like a constellation in a deep night sky. This was accentuated further by the phosphorescent patches of bacteria that feasted on the feldspar in the cavern roof and the dull glints reflecting off the shiny, pitch surface of oozing promethium below: each giving the appearance of ever more distant stars and galaxies.

‘You have news?’ Dantioch put to Tarrasch.

‘Yes, Warsmith,’ the Iron Palatine reported. The Space Marine was also in full armour and Legion colours, bar gauntlets and helmet, which he clutched in one arm. The vigilance (or paranoia, as some of the other Legions believed) of the Iron Warriors was well known and the Schadenhold and its garrison maintained a constant state of battle readiness. Tarrasch ran a hand across the top of his bald head. His dark eyes and flesh were the primarch’s own, a blessing to his sons. As the Warsmith turned and the light of the observation platform penetrated the slits of his iron mask, Tarrasch caught a glimpse of sallow, bloodshot eyes and wrinkled skin, discoloured with age.

‘And?’

‘The flagship Benthos hails us, my lord.’

‘So, the 51st Expedition returns,’ Dantioch rasped. ‘We’ve had them on our relay scopes for days. Why the slow approach? Why no contact?’

‘They inform us that they’ve had difficulty traversing the debris field,’ the Iron Palatine reported.

‘And they hail us only now?’ Dantioch returned crabbily.

‘The Benthos accidentally struck one of our orbital mines,’ Tarrasch informed his master. Dantioch felt something like a smile curl behind the caged mouth of his faceplate.

‘An ominous beginning to their visit,’ the Warsmith said.

‘They’re holding station while they make repairs,’ the Iron Palatine added. ‘And they’re requesting coordinates for a high speed insertion.’

‘Who requests them?’

‘Warsmith Krendl, my lord.’

‘Warsmith Krendl?’

Tarrasch nodded: ‘So it would appear.’

‘So Idriss Krendl now commands the 14th Grand Company.’

‘Even under your command,’ Tarrasch said, ‘he was little more than raw ambition in polished ceramite.’

‘You might just get your night sky, my Iron Palatine.’

‘You think we might be rejoining the Legion, sir?’

For the longest time, Dantioch did not speak – the Warsmith lost in memory and musing. ‘I sincerely hope not,’ the Warsmith replied.

The answer seemed to vex the Iron Palatine. Dantioch laid a gauntleted hand on Tarrasch’s shoulder. ‘Send the Benthos coordinates for the Orphic Gate and have two of our Stormbirds waiting near the surface to escort our guests in.’

‘The Orphic Gate, sir? Surely the–’

‘Let’s treat the new Warsmith to some of the more dramatic depths and cave systems,’ Dantioch said. ‘A scenic route, if you will.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’

‘In the meantime have Chaplain Zhnev, Colonel Kruishank, Venerable Vastopol and the cleric visiting from Greater Damantyne meet us in the Grand Reclusiam: we shall receive our guests there and hear from Olympian lips what our brothers have been doing in our absence…’

The Grand Reclusiam rang with both the wretched coughing of the Warsmith and the hammer strokes of his Chaplain. The chamber could easily accommodate the thirty-Iron Warrior garrison of the Schadenhold and their cult ceremonies and rituals. In reality – with the fortress in a state of constant high alert – there were ordinarily never more than ten Legiones Astartes in attendance during any one watch.

Dantioch and his Chaplain had not allowed such a restriction to affect the design and impact of the chamber. The Iron Warriors on Lesser Damantyne were few in number but great of heart and they filled their chests with a soaring faith and loyalty to their Emperor. To this end the Grand Reclusiam was the largest chamber in the fortress, able in fact to serve the spiritual needs of ten times their number. From the vaulted stone ceiling hung a black forest of iron rods that dangled in the air above the centrum altar approach. These magnified the cult devotions, rogational and choral chanting of the small garrison to a booming majesty – all supported by the roar of the ceremonial forge at the elevated head of the chamber and the rhythmic strikes of hammer on iron against the anvil-altar.

The aisles on either side of the centrum consisted of a sculptured scene that ran the length of the Grand Reclusiam, rising with the flight of altar steps and terminating at the far wall. Towering above the chamber congregation, it depicted a crowded, uphill battle scene crafted from purest ferrum, with Iron Warrior heroes storming a barbaric enemy force that was holding the higher ground. The primitive giants were the titans and personifications of old: the bastions of myth and superstition, smashed upon the armour and IV Legion’s virtues of technology and reason. As well as serving as an inspiring diorama, the sculpture created the illusion that the congregation was at the heart of the battle – and there was nowhere else Dantioch’s men would rather be.

Beyond the sculpture on either side, the rocky walls of the chamber had been lined with polished iron sheeting, upon which engraved schematics and structural designs overlapped to create a fresco of the Emperor looking on proudly from the west and the Primarch Perturabo from the east.

‘My lord, they approach,’ Tarrasch announced and with difficulty the Warsmith came up off one devout knee. Shadows and the sound of self-important steps filled the Reclusiam’s grand arch entrance. The Iron Palatine turned and stood by his Warsmith’s side, while Colonel Kruishank of the Ninth-Ward Angeloi Adamantiphracts hovered nearby in full dress uniform. His reverential beatings complete, Chaplain Zhnev uncoupled the relic-hammer from a slender, bionic replacement for his right arm and shoulder. He handed the crozius arcanum attachment to a hulking genestock slave whose responsibility it was to keep the ceremonial forge roaring. Zhnev made his solemn way down the steps, nodding to the only member of the congregation who was not part of the Schadenhold garrison: a cleric dressed in outlandish, hooded robes of sapphire and gold.

‘They come,’ Zhnev murmured as the delegation marched into his Reclusiam and up the long approach to the altar steps.

Out front strode Idriss Krendl, the new Warsmith of the 14th Grand Company. The intensity of his Olympian glower was shattered by the scarring that cut up his face. Following, clad in the crimson robes of the Adeptus Mechanicum, was an adept, whose own face was lost to the darkness of his hood. A sickly yellow light emanated from three bionic oculars that rotated like the objective lenses of a microscope. Beside him was a Son of Horus. The eyes on his shoulderplate and chest were unmistakable and his fine armour was of the palest green, framed in a midnight trim. His unsmiling face was swarthy and heavy of brow, as though in constant deliberation. Flanking them, and marching in time, were Krendl’s honour guard: a four-point escort of Legiones Astartes veterans in gleaming, grey Mark-IV Maximus suits lined in gold and gaudiness.

‘Warsmith,’ Krendl greeted his former master coolly, at the foot of the altar steps.

A moment passed under the engraved eyes of the Emperor.

‘Krendl,’ Dantioch replied.

The Iron Warrior pursed his mangled lips but let the failure to acknowledge his new rank pass. ‘Greetings from the 51st Expedition. May I introduce Adept Grachuss and Captain Hasdrubal Serapis of the Sons of Horus.’

Dantioch failed to acknowledge them also. The Warsmith gave a short cough and waved a gauntlet nonchalantly behind him.

‘You know my people,’ Dantioch said. Then added, ‘and yours.’

‘Indeed,’ Krendl said, raising a ragged eyebrow. ‘We bring you new orders from your primarch and your Warmaster.’

‘And what of the Emperor’s orders? You bring nothing across the stars from him?’ Dantioch asked.

Krendl stiffened, then seemed to relax. He gave Serapis a glance over his armoured shoulder but the captain’s expression didn’t change.

‘It has long been the Emperor’s wish that his favoured sons – under the supreme leadership of his most favoured, Horus Lupercal – guide the Great Crusade to its inevitable conclusion. Out here, amongst a cosmos conquered, the Warmaster’s word is law. Dantioch, you know this.’

‘Out here, in the darkness of the East, we hear disturbing rumours of this cosmos conquered and the dangers of the direction it is taking,’ Dantioch hissed. ‘Rector, come forth. You may speak.’

The cleric in sapphire and gold stepped forwards with apologetic hesitation. ‘This man,’ Dantioch explained, ‘has come to us from Greater Damantyne with grave news.’

The priest, at once scrutinised by the supermen, retreated into the depths of his hood. He fumbled his first words, before gaining his confidence.

‘My lords, I am your humble servant,’ the rector began. ‘This system is the terminus of a little-known trade route. Merchants and pirates, both alien and human, run wares between our hinterspace and the galactic core. In the last few months they have brought terrible news of consequence to the Emperor’s Angels here on Lesser Damantyne. A civil war that burns across the Imperium, the loss of entire Legions of Space Marines and the unthinkable – a son of the Emperor slain! This tragic intelligence alone would have been enough to bring me here: the Space Marines of this rock have long been our friends and allies in the battle with the green invader. Then, a dread piece of cognisance came to my ears and made them bleed for my Iron Warrior overlords. Olympia – their home world – the victim of rebellion and retribution. A planet razed to its rocky foundations; mountains aflame and a people enthralled. Olympia, I am heartbroken to report, is now no more than an underworld of chain and darkness, buried in rotten bodies and shame.’

‘I have heard enough of this,’ Serapis warned.

Krendl turned on the Warsmith. ‘Your primarch–’

Dantioch cut him off. ‘My primarch – I suspect – had a hand in these reported tragedies.’

‘You waste our time, Dantioch,’ Krendl said, his torn lips snarling around the hard consonants of the Warsmith’s name. ‘You and your men have been reassigned. Your custodianship here is ended. Your primarch and the Iron Warriors Legion fight for Horus Lupercal now and all available troops and resources – including those formally under your superintendence – are required for the Warmaster’s march on ancient Terra.’

The Grand Reclusiam echoed with Krendl’s fierce honesty. For a moment nobody spoke, the shock of hearing such bold heresy in a holy place overwhelming the chamber.

‘End this madness!’ Chaplain Zhnev implored from the steps, the forge light flashing off his sable-silver plate.

‘Krendl, think about what you’re doing,’ Tarrasch added.

‘I am Warsmith now, Captain Tarrasch!’ Krendl exploded, ‘whatever rank you might hold in this benighted place, you will honour me with my rightful title.’

‘Honour what?’ Dantioch said. ‘The rewards of failure? You command simply because you lack the courage to be loyal.’

‘Don’t talk to me about failure and lack of courage, Dantioch. You excel in both,’ Krendl spat. He bobbed his head at Serapis, the splinters of frag still embedded in his face-flesh glinting in the chamber light. ‘That is how the great Barabas Dantioch came to be left guarding such a worthless deadrock. Lord Perturabo’s favourite here came to lose Krak Fiorina, Stratopolae and the fortress world of Gholghis to the Vulpa Straits hrud migration.’

As Krendl growled his narrative, Dantioch remembered the last, dark days on Gholghis. The hrud xenos filth. The infestation of the unseen. The waiting and the dying, as Dantioch’s garrison turned to dust and bones, their armour rusting, bolters jamming and fortress crumbling about them. Only then, after the intense entropic field created by the migratory hrud swarms had aged stone and flesh to ruin, did the rachidian beasts creep out of every nook and crevice to attack, stabbing and slicing with their venomous claws.

Most of all, Dantioch remembered waiting for the Stormbird to lift the survivors out of the remains of Gholghis: Sergeant Zolan, Vastopol the warrior-poet and Techmarine Tavarre. Zolan’s hearts stopped beating aboard the Stormbird, minutes after extraction. Tavarre died of old age in the cruiser infirmary, just before reaching Lesser Damantyne. Vastopol and the Warsmith had considered themselves comparatively fortunate but both had been left crippled with their aged, superhuman bodies.

‘He then thought it wise,’ Krendl continued with acidic disdain, ‘to question his primarch’s prosecution of the hrud extermination campaign. No doubt as a way to excuse his loss of half a Grand Company, rather than laying the blame where it really belonged: the Emperor’s bungled attempt at galactic conquest and his own failed part in that. The IV Legion spread out across the stars. A myriad of tiny garrisons holding a tattered Compliance together in the wake of a blind Crusade. Our once proud Iron Warriors, reduced to planetary turnkeys.’

‘The primarch was wrong,’ Dantioch said, shaking his iron mask. ‘The extermination campaign prompted the migration rather than ending it. Perturabo claims the hrud cleansed from the galaxy but, if that is the case, what is quietly wiping out Compliance worlds on the Koranado Drift?’

The new Warsmith ignored him.

‘You disappoint and disgust him,’ Krendl told Dantioch. ‘Your own primarch. Your weakness offends him. Your vulnerability is an affront to his genetic heritage. We all have scars but it is you he cannot bear to look upon. Is that why you adopted the mask?’ Krendl smiled his derision. ‘Pathetic. You’re an insult to nature and the laws that govern the galaxy: the strong survive; the feeble die away. Why did you not crawl off and die, Dantioch? Why hang on, haunting the rest of us like a bad memory?’

‘If I’m so objectionable, what is it that you and the primarch want with me?’

‘Nothing, cripple. I doubt you would live long enough to reach the rendezvous. Perturabo demands his Iron Warriors – all his true sons – for the Warmaster’s offensive. Horus will take us to the very walls of the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor’s fanciful fortifications will be put to the test of our mettle and history will be made.’

‘The Emperor has long grown distracted in his studies on ancient Terra,’ Hasdrubal Serapis insisted with venom. ‘The Imperium has no need of the councils, polity and bureaucracy he has created in his reclusion. We need leadership: a Great Crusade of meaning and purpose. The Emperor is no longer worthy to guide humanity in the next stage of its natural dominion over the galaxy. His son, Horus Lupercal, has proved himself worthy of the task.’

‘Warsmith Krendl,’ Zhnev said, blanking out the Son of Horus and taking several dangerous steps forwards. ‘If you stand by and do nothing, while the Warmaster plots patricide and pours poison in his brother primarch’s ears, then you too plot a patricide of your own. Perturabo is our primarch. We must make our noble lord see the error of his judgement – not reinforce it with our unquestioned compliance.’

‘Lord Perturabo is your primarch, indeed. Is it so difficult to obey your primarch’s order?’ Serapis marvelled at the Iron Warriors. ‘Or does mutinous Olympian blood still burn in your veins? Krendl, to have your home world rebel in your absence is embarrassment enough. I trust you will not allow the same to happen amongst members of your own Legion.’

‘Save it, pontificator,’ Krendl snapped at the Chaplain. ‘I have heard the arguments. Soon the Legion will have little use for you and your kind.’ The Warsmith turned on the silent, seething Dantioch. ‘You will surrender command of this fortress and troops to me immediately.’

A moment of cool fury passed between the two Iron Warriors.

‘And if I refuse?’

‘Then you and your men will be treated as traitors to the primarch and his Warmaster,’ Krendl promised.

‘Like you and your Cthonian friend are to his majesty, the Emperor?’

‘Your stronghold will be pounded to dust and traitors with it,’ Krendl told him.

Dantioch turned and presented the grim iron of his masked face to Colonel Kruishank, Chaplain Zhnev and his Iron Palatine, Zygmund Tarrasch. Their faces were equally grim. Allowing his eyes to linger for a second on the visiting rector, Barabas Dantioch returned his gaze to his maniacal opposite. Krendl was flushed with fear and fire. Serapis merely watched: a distant observer – the puppet master with strings of his own. Adept Grachuss gurgled rhythmically and rotated his tri-ocular, the lens zeroing in on Dantioch. The Warsmith’s honour guard stood as statues: their bolters ready; their barrels on the custodians of the Schadenhold.

‘Vastopol,’ Dantioch called. ‘What do you think?’

A vox-roar boomed around the chamber, causing the iron rods suspended above the Reclusiam to tremble and dance. Something large and ungainly moved amongst the giant, iron sculptures of the aisle diorama. The most primitive of preservation instincts caused Krendl and his honour guard to spin around in shock. One of the sculptures had come to life. Seeming small in the choreographed throng of titan attackers, the assailant’s bulk and breadth swiftly grew as it advanced and towered over the astounded Iron Warriors.

The Legiones Astartes were presented with one of their own. A Dreadnought. A brooding, metal monster, as broad as it was tall and squatset with chunky weaponry. The Venerable Vastopol: with his Warsmith, the last surviving Iron Warriors of the Gholghis fortress world. Wracked with horrendous injury and premature age, Dantioch had had the Space Marine entombed in Dreadnought armour, so that the warrior might continue to serve and keep the chronicles of the company alive. The war machine had been hastily sprayed black in order to blend in with the surrounding diorama and with movement the fresh paint left a black drizzle behind the beast.

As the wall of ceramite and adamantium came at them, Krendl’s armed escorts tried to bring their bolters to bear. The Venerable Vastopol’s gaping twin-autocannons were already loaded, primed and aimed right at them. The weapons crashed, chugging explosive fire at the two rearguard Space Marines and filling the chamber with the unbearable cacophony of battle. At such close range, the heavy weapon reduced the two Legiones Astartes to thrashing blurs of blood and shattered armour.

With more grace and coordination than would have been thought possible in the hulking machine, the charging Dreadnought turned and smashed a third Iron Warrior guard into the opposite aisle with a power claw-appendaged shoulder. The Space Marine’s glorious Maximus suit crumpled and the Legiones Astartes within could be heard screaming as bones snapped and organs ruptured. With Krendl and Serapis backing for cover, silent pistols drawn, and the Mechanicum adept knocked to the Reclusiam floor, the Warsmith’s remaining honour guard flung himself at the Dreadnought. Lifting his bolter above his head, the Iron Warrior blasted the Venerable Vastopol’s armoured womb-tomb with firepower.

Sparks showered from the Dreadnought’s adamantium shell. Vastopol gunned the chainfist bayonet that underslung his autocannons. Slashing at the Iron Warrior with the barbed nightmare, the war machine chewed up the Space Marine’s weapon before opening up his armour from the jaw to the navel. With chest cavity and abdomen spilling their contents out through the ragged gash, the honour guard dropped to his knees and died. Having come away from the wall of sculpture, the Dreadnought had allowed the crushed Legiones Astartes he’d pinned to the merciless iron to thunk to the ground. Lifting a huge metal foot, Vastopol stamped down on the Iron Warrior’s helmet, bespattering the polished stone with brain matter and putting the mauled Space marine out of his howling misery.

As Dantioch came forwards, flanked by Tarrasch and Zhnev on one side and the rector and colonel on the other, Krendl and the Son of Horus retreated: the rage and horror evident on their contorted faces. Both Legiones Astartes officers were backing step by step towards the Grand Reclusiam entrance, their pistols aimed at the unarmed Warsmith and his heavily-armed Dreadnought. Krendl and Serapis were politicians, however, and knew that their best chance of escaping the fortress alive lay in their threats rather than their pistols.

The Venerable Vastopol plucked Grachuss from the floor with the chisel-point digits of his power claw, holding the Mechanicum adept by the temples and hooded crown like an infant’s doll. The sickly yellow lens of the tech-priest’s tri-ocular revolved in panic while his respiratory pipes bubbled furiously.

‘I fear Warsmith Krendl brought you with instructions to catalogue our fortifications,’ Dantioch addressed the suspended Grachuss, ‘so that you might return with stories of our siege capability. A greater Warsmith than he would have done that himself, of course. Vastopol here was the chronicler for our company: he’s not much of a talker now. Vastopol,’ Dantioch called. ‘How does Adept Grachuss’s story end?’

The Dreadnought’s power claw attachment began to revolve at the wrist, wrenching the tech-priest’s hooded head clean from his spinning shoulders. His body struck the altar steps, a cocktail of blood and ichor pumping from the ragged neck stump.

‘Insanity!’ Krendl bawled at the advancing Dantioch. ‘You’re dead!’ The threats had begun.

‘Captain Krendl,’ Dantioch hissed. ‘This is an Iron Warrior stronghold. It does not, nor will it ever serve the renegade Warmaster. My garrison and I are loyal to the Emperor: we will not share in your damnation.’ The cold pride that afflicted the Legion, as well as their Iron father, glinted in Dantioch’s cloudy eyes. ‘It seems I have one last opportunity to prove my worthiness to the primarch. I will not fail him this time. The Schadenhold will never fall. Do you hear me, Idriss? This stronghold and the men that defend it will never be yours. The Iron Warriors on Lesser Damantyne fight for their Emperor and they fight for me. You will taste failure and it will be your turn to return to the primarch’s wrath. Now run, you cur. Back to your renegade fleet and take this heretic dog with you.’

Stepping back through the archway of the Grand Reclusiam with a wary Serapis, the wide-eyed Krendl thrust his pistol behind him and then back at the Iron Warriors and their Dreadnought.

‘All of this,’ Krendl waved the muzzle of the bolt pistol around, ‘dust in a day. You hear, Dantioch? Dust in a day!’

‘I dare you to try,’ Dantioch roared, but his challenge dissolved into raucous coughing. As the Warsmith fell to his armoured knees with wheezing exertion, Tarrasch grabbed Dantioch’s arm. Patting the Iron Palatine’s ceramite, the Warsmith caught his breath. Tarrasch let him go but the exhausted Iron Warrior commander remained kneeling and head bowed. Slowly he turned to the hooded rector.

‘So,’ the cleric said, ‘you hear it for yourself: straight from traitor lips. Our brothers’ hearts steeped in warped treason.’ The rector reached inside the rich material of his robes. The soft whine of the displacer field – all but imperceptible before – died down through the frequencies, unmasking the priest and revealing his true dimensions. As the cleric lowered his hood the reality about the huge figure fell out of focus for a moment before reassuming a searing clarity.

Their minds unclouded, the Schadenholders beheld a brother Space Marine: his ornate plate of the deepest blue. He held a plumed helmet under one arm and an ornate gladius sat in a sheath across his thigh. His surcoat robes hung from the resplendent flourishes of his artificer armour, with battle honours and commendations dripping from his glorious plate. The symbol on his right shoulder identified him as an Ultramarine; the bejewelled Crux Aureas crafted into his left as Legionary Champion, Tetrarch of Ultramar and Honour Guard to Roboute Guilliman himself.

‘You played your part well, Tetrarch Nicodemus. Are the Ultramarines usually given to such theatricality?’ Dantioch asked.

‘No, my lord. We are not,’ the champion answered, his cropped hair and fair patrician looks the mark of Ultramar’s warrior elite. ‘But these are uncommon times and they call for tactics uncommon.’

‘Let me be candid, Ultramarine. When you arrived on Lesser Damantyne with your slurs and distant intelligence, I almost had Vastopol blow you from the Schadenhold’s battlements.’ The Warsmith came up from his knees, once again with the help of Tarrasch. The Tetrarch shot him hard eyes: one of which was encircled by a neat tattoo of his chapter symbol.

‘It is not easy for an Iron Warrior to hear of his brothers’ weakness,’ Dantioch continued. ‘In that, even Idriss Krendl and I agree. You slandered my father primarch and besmirched the IV Legion with accusations of rebellion, heresy and murder. We’ve allowed your insults to go unpunished; you’ve allowed us the luxury of hearing kindred treason first hand. Our accord is sealed in truth. What now would Roboute Guilliman have of us?’

Tauro Nicodemus looked about the gathering. Tarrasch and Zhnev’s bleak pride matched their Warsmith’s own; the Venerable Vastopol existed only to fight and Colonel Kruishank’s default loyalty was plain to see on his face – allegiance to the Emperor offering him solace in the face of calamity.

‘Nothing you haven’t freely given already,’ Nicodemus insisted. ‘Deny the Warmaster resource and reinforcement. Hold your ground for as long as you can. The efforts of a faithful few could slow the traitor advance. Minutes. Days. Months. Anything, to give the Emperor time to fortify Terra for the coming storm and for my lord to cut through the confusion Horus has sown and prepare a loyalist response.’

‘If we are to give ourselves for this, level Iron Warrior against Iron Warrior, then it would be good to know that Guilliman has a strategy,’ said Dantioch.

‘Yes, my lord. As always, Lord Guilliman has a plan,’ the Ultramarine champion told him evenly.

As the congregation went to leave the blood-spattered Grand Reclusiam, Dantioch asked, ‘Nicodemus?’

‘Yes, Warsmith?’

‘Why me?’

‘Lord Guilliman knows of your art and expertise in the field of siegecraft. He suspects these skills will be sorely needed.’

‘He could count on my skill but what of my loyalty?’ Dantioch pressed. ‘After all, my Legion has been found wanting in its faith.’

‘You spoke candidly before, my lord. Might I be allowed to do the same?’

Dantioch nodded.

‘The Warmaster could exploit the weakness of your primarch’s pride,’ the Tetrarch explained cautiously. ‘Your history with Perturabo is no secret. Lord Guilliman feels he too can rely on this same weakness in you.’

Once again, the Warsmith nodded. To Nicodemus and to himself.

I was there. On that tiny world, in a forgotten system, in a distant corner of the galaxy: where a mighty blow was struck against the renegade Warmaster and his alliance of the lost and damned. There, on Lesser Damantyne. I was among the few, who stood against many. The brother who spilled his brothers’ blood. The son who betrayed his wayward father’s word. And that word was… heresy.

For a bloody day beyond an Ancient Terran year we fought. Olympians all. Iron Warriors answering the call of their primarch and Emperor. The cold eyes of both watching from afar. Judging. Expecting. Willing their Iron Warriors on like absentee gods drawn to mortal plight by the reek of battle: the unmistakable stench of blood and burning.

I was there when Warsmith Krendl visited upon us a swarm of Stormbirds. Disgorged from the fat cruiser Benthos and heavily-laden with troops and ordnance, the aircraft blotted out the stars and fell upon our world like a flock of winged thunderbolts. Blasting through the thick cloud of Damantyne’s hostile surface, the Stormbirds would have rocketed through the cave systems and disgorged their own brand of horror on our readying position. Warsmith Dantioch had ordered the Orphic Gate collapsed mere hours before, however, and all the flock found there was rock and destruction, as, one after another, they struck the planet surface.

I was there when the mighty god-machines of the Legio Argentum, denied entrance to the gate also, had to stride through the acid hellstorms of Lesser Damantyne. Like blind, tormented behemoths they tumbled and crashed through the squalls and cyclones, their armoured shells rust-riddled and giant automotive systems eaten away. The infamous Omnia Victrum, the sunderer of a hundred worlds, was one of three flash-flayed war machines that managed to stumble to a sinkhole colossal enough to admit their dimensions. And there the screaming hordes that crewed the god-machines were confronted with the unfathomable labyrinth of the planet’s gargantuan cave system and the reality that they might be lost for eternity in the deep and the dark.

I was there when Warsmith Dantioch ordered the giant ground-pumps to life and the lake of crude promethium burst its banks, flooding the floor of our huge cavern-home with a raging, black ichor. I watched as the Nadir-Maru 4th Juntarians and more bombardment cannon than a man could count were drowned in a deluge of oil and death. I roared my dismay as columns of my traitor brethren marched on the pumps through the settling shallows, to sabotage the great machinery. I roared my delight when my Warsmith ordered the slick surface of the crude promethium ignited about them. A blaze so bright that it not only roasted the Iron Warriors within their plate but brought light to the cavern that the depths had never known.

I was on the Schadenhold’s battlements as our own cannon and artillery placements reduced Warsmith Krendl’s reserve Stormbirds to fireballs of wreckage. I saw the small armies they landed on our keeps and towers fall to their deaths like rain from our inverse architecture. I fought with the Sons of Dantioch – genebred hulks of monstrous proportion – as they tore Nadir-Maru 4th Juntarians limb from limb in the kill zones and courtyards. I walked amongst Colonel Kruishank’s Ninth-Ward Angeloi Adamantiphracts as their disciplined las-fire lit up the ramparts and cut their traitor opposites to smouldering shreds. I looked down on a fortress swamped in carnage, where you could not walk for bodies and could not breathe for the blood that lay hanging in the air like a murderous fog.

Finally, I fought in the tight corridors and dread architecture of the Warsmith’s design. Took life on an obscene scale, face-to-face with my Iron Warrior brethren. Murdered in the Emperor’s name and matched the cold certainty of my brothers’ desire. Killed with the same chill logic and fire in my belly as my enemy had for me. Measured my might in the blood of traitors whose might should have measured my own. I was there. In the Schadenhold. On Lesser Damantyne. Where few stood against many and, amongst the fratricidal nightmare of battle, brothers bled and heresy found its form.

The Schadenhold shook.

Dust rained from the low ceiling and grit danced on the dungeon floor. The subterranean blockhouse seared with gunfire. Its hoarse boom split the ear and the flash of hot muzzles dazzled the eye. Barabas Dantioch had supreme confidence in his nightmare stronghold’s design. He’d told Idriss Krendl that the Schadenhold would never be his. Even at this stage – three hundred and sixty-six Ancient Terran days into the murderous siege – he could count on the fortress keeping his word. With traitor Titans and Mechanicum war machines haunting the caverns, swarms of Stormbirds strafing the citadel towers and enemy Legiones Astartes storming its helter-skelter battlements, he knew the brute logic of the Schadenhold’s design and the rock from which that inexorability had been crafted would not let him down. Dantioch’s tactical genius extended far beyond the unrelenting architecture of the stronghold exterior: any Warsmith worth their rocksalt, regardless of the boasts they might make, planned for the inevitability of failure. A life lived under siege had taught the Iron Warriors that enemies were not to be underestimated and that all fortresses fall – sooner or later. A Warsmith’s gift was to make this eventuality as late as possible. The blockhouse was a perfect example of the principle in action.

Throughout the citadel, on every level and in every quarter, there was a blockhouse chamber. A fallback position for the Iron Warrior garrison within: each bolthole was equipped with its own secreted supplies of food, water and ammunition, as well as rudimentary medical and communications equipment. The chambers themselves were dens of devious geography, every one with its own unique design and layout. No lethal opportunity had been left unexploited and every fire arc and angle had been measured to perfection. In each the Warsmith had created a crenellated deathtrap of chokepoints, hide sites and killspots that doubled as training facilities for the Legiones Astartes warriors during the simpler, silent times of peace.

The blockhouses had not only provided Dantioch’s hard-pressed garrison with respite and supplies but had also frustrated any hopes Warsmith Krendl might have had of a swift victory, once his invading force had breached the citadel’s considerable, exterior defences. Fighting inside the Schadenhold had been as bloody as the slaughter on the battlements beyond. The fortress stank of hot metal and swift death. Every wall was a bolt-hammered vista of splatter and gore, every chamber carpeted with armoured bodies.

Kneeling down on one rusted knee, Dantioch mused over a crumpled, blood-spotted pile of schematics. The Schadenhold diagrams covered the floor of the embrasure platform and were stained and scratched with ink, Dantioch’s strategic annotations almost obscuring the detail of the stronghold’s grand design. About the Warsmith, armoured feet shuffled and the air sang with the relentless crash of firing mechanisms. Nearby slumped an Angeloi Adamantiphact, breathing through a ragged hole in his chest, while another bled away his life as an Imperial Army chirurgeon fussed over his missing arm. The edges of the schemata vellum soaked up the growing pool, but the Warsmith – feathered quill to the mouth grate of his mask – was so involved in his three-dimensional visualisation of the two-dimensional prints, that he barely noticed.

‘Have Squad Secundus fall back to the hold point on the floor above, they’re about to be cut off,’ Dantioch ordered.

While Adamantiphracts lanced the long corridor approach to the blockhouse with broad-beam las-fire from the flared barrels of their carbines, the ranking Angeloi Adamantiphact officer in the blockhouse – Lieutenant Cristofori – carried a useless, mangled arm in a sling and doubled as Dantioch’s tactical and communications dispatch. Operating a small but robust vox-bank, set in the embrasure wall, Cristofori was the Warsmith’s eyes and ears about the Schadenhold. While the lieutenant conveyed the order through a bulky vox-receiver, he filtered the flood of reports coming in from the vox-links of individual Iron Warriors and the comms stations of different blockhouses. Replacing the receiver, he put a finger to his headset and nodded.

‘Sir, Nine-Thirteen reports enemy reinforcements on the hangar deck,’ the lieutenant relayed.

‘Legiones Astartes?’ Dantioch asked. It would be hard to believe. If the bodies were anything to go by, Krendl must have committed a full demi-Grand Company by now. The Schadenhold was swarming with Perturabo’s progeny.

‘Imperial Army, my lord. Looks like foot contingents of the Bi-Nyssal Equerries.’

Dantioch allowed himself a hidden smile. New blood. It seemed that Krendl had been reinforced. This both pleased and vexed the Warsmith. Krendl had been sent to acquire reinforcements for the primarch and Horus Lupercal, not expend the Warmaster’s valuable manpower. That would be embarrassing enough. The problem with reinforcement was that it meant that Krendl had been outfitted to see the siege through to the end. Horus could not allow word of Lesser Damantyne’s resistance and the loyalty of the Iron Warriors to reach other Legions. The end was near.

‘Nine-Thirteen have been forced back to the fuel depot. Awaiting orders,’ Cristofori added.

Dantioch grunted. ‘Tell the ranking wardsman that he has permission to use the Nine-Thirteen’s remaining detonators on the promethium tanks.’ The Warsmith slashed a cross through the Schadenhold’s Stormbird hangars on the floor schematic. ‘We won’t be needing them. Let’s deny our enemy also. Nine-Thirteen can fall back by squads to this maintenance opening,’ he continued, stabbing the quill point through the vellum. ‘Then on to Sergeant Asquetal in the North-IV blockhouse.’

‘Sir, also – blockhouses South-II and East-III report dwindling supplies of ammunition.’

‘Collapse all of our people on levels two and three back to Colonel Kruishank’s hold point in the Hub,’ Dantioch grizzled above the gunfire.

‘The colonel’s dead, sir.’

‘What?’

‘Colonel Kruishank is dead, sir.’

‘Then Captain Galliop, damn it! They still have some limited supplies.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Cristofori said unfazed and began relating the Warsmith’s orders.

This had been the order of things for as long as the Schadenholders could remember: battle coordinated a hair’s breadth under the fury of boltfire. Whereas the elevated embrasure was intended to provide space for such luxury, below on the chamber floor, Iron Warriors, Adamantiphracts and gene-stock ogres fought with adrenaline-fuelled frenzy. Each knew that his life depended upon the relentless taking of others and nowhere was this more evident than at the gauntlet-entrance to the blockhouse. The walls about the opening had lost their angularity and harsh edges. The perpetual assault of bolt-rounds and las-fire had chewed up the stone and returned the entrance to the rocky, cavernous irregularity of the cave system beyond. From the ceiling rained the gore of those who had failed to breach the chamber; the floor underneath was a mound of gunfire-shredded bodies and trampled armour.

At the centre of the blockhouse stood the Venerable Vastopol. The Dreadnought was too large to take advantage of much of the architectural cover and instead had stood its ground like a machine possessed, hammering anything advancing with the glowing barrels of its raging autocannons. The war machine had borne the brunt of the blockhouse defence; however, the reinforced plate of its sarcophagus body was a sizzling, bolt-punctured mess. The monstrous machine stood in a pool of its own hydraulic fluid and showered sparks from one of its clunky legs. The muzzle of its lower cannon barrel had been shorn off and the mangled chainfist bayonet below hung in a serrated tangle. About the Dreadnought, firing from loopholes and crescent alcoves in merlon walls, were its superhuman kindred. Experts in the art of encumbrance, the Legiones Astartes prided themselves on their beleaguered worth: every defending Iron Warrior had to slay so many of his traitor brothers in order to satisfy the Warsmith’s equations: algebraic notations calculated in time and blood.

‘Missile launcher!’ Tarrasch yelled from the chamber floor. As Legiones Astartes and Adamantiphracts retracted barrels and slammed their backs into protective scenery, the warhead rocketed up the passage and into the blockhouse. Striking a merlon wall the missile exploded, showering razor frag across the heads of hidden defenders.

Angeloi Adamantiphract marksmanship seared the length of the approach, hammering the plate of storming Iron Warriors and cutting up their Imperial Army opposites, las-fodder from the Expeditionary Fleet’s Nadir-Maru 4th Juntarians. Those that made the gauntlet-entrance faced a storm of their own: disciplined, ammunition-conserving blasts from the barrels of garrison battle-brothers. Armoured Legiones Astartes besiegers who breached the chamber dived out of the path of withering autocannon fire and las-streams and peeled off left and right, desperate for cover. Their desire to establish a foothold in the blockhouse took them straight into the reach of the Iron Palatine and his assault troops.

The Sons of Dantioch, scarred genebred hulks, pumped to obscenity with hormones and fervent loyalty, came at the interlopers with the mammoth tools of their trade – diamantine-tip hammers, serrated shovels and clawpicks. If that wasn’t enough of a nightmare for the blockhouse breachers, the Iron Palatine, Chaplain Zhnev and the Ultramarine Tauro Nicodemus were leading the charge.

An Iron Warrior invader broke from a cannon-mauled throng, a yellow and black-striped blur. With his Mark-IV plate alive with ricochets, the brute pushed himself away from one wall and then the other before tumbling into a messy roll. He was followed by two other traitors who blazed away with their bolters and a trail of opportunistic Nadir-Maru 4th Juntarians.

Genebred hulks descended upon the spearheading Space Marine, their picks and shovels sparking off his savaged ceramite. The second turned his wild bolter straight on Nicodemus, the azure glint of the Ultramarine’s armour instantly attracting the warrior’s attention. Zhnev wasted no time with the third, firing the pistons in his replacement shoulder. His hammer-fashioned crozius arcanum swung through the air in an unpredictable, pendula-jointed arc, crashing past the Iron Warrior’s helmet. Cleaving through armour plating and bone where the Space Marine’s neck met his shoulder, the Iron Warrior Chaplain fired his pistons again, swiftly retracting the sacred relic. Spinning with the pendula motion of the crozius, Zhnev howled his fury before striking the heretic’s helmet from his body.

Tarrasch plugged the resulting bloodhaze with alternate rounds from each of his bolt pistols, cutting down the Nadir-Maru troopers streaming in through the gauntlet-entrance. Dark, shiny faces beneath extravagant turbans bared bleach-white teeth at the Iron Palatine. The former Iron Warrior captain barked directions to the Angeloi Adamantiphract warriors at the embrasure walls and the Sons of Dantioch below to bring down the Juntarians in their own inimical ways.

With an enemy Legiones Astartes pounding across the killing ground at him, Brother Nicodemus of Ultramar took several practice sweeps with the gleaming blade of his gladius. On his other arm he supported the weight of a huge storm shield. The shield was as tall as the Ultramarine – a sub-rectangular plate, the curved, semi-cylindrical surface of which crackled with a protective energy field. The champion clutched it to his side like an airlock bulkhead.

Dantioch’s Iron Warriors were savage hand to hand fighters – equals of the unstoppable World Eaters or the Blood Angels’ loyal fervour. The Iron Warriors were deadlier still when they were cornered: cold machines of dread and determination. None had the martial grace or unadulterated skill with a blade that Nicodemus exhibited. Nicodemus batted the Iron Warrior’s bolter aside with the weight of the sizzling shield before shearing through the weapon with a murderous downwards cut of his gladius. Before the dazed Iron Warrior could snatch a hammer from his belt the Ultramarine had flashed the gladius back and forth across his opponent’s armour. The blade sang through the Iron Warrior’s chestplate and helmet, spraying the chamber with Olympian blood.

Nearby the Space Marine that had spearheaded the daring assault broke free of the geneslave mob. A chainaxe screamed from the scrum of hulking bodies. The Iron Warrior burst from the prison of muscular flesh, sweeping heads and elephantine limbs from the Sons of Dantioch in his path. Chaplain Zhnev’s crozius sang through the air on its pendula attachment, smashing the motorised axehead into pieces. The Iron Warrior responded immediately by plunging his gauntlet into a holster and drawing a bolt pistol. Before he could end the Chaplain, Tarrasch hammered the heretic with a feverish hail of bolts from his own pistols. The angle was hastily improvised and no one round found its way through the Maximus suit plating. The onslaught had cut the Space Marine’s escape dead, however, and the genestock hulks – hungry for a rematch – seized the Iron Warrior. One monster got a bulging arm around the Legiones Astartes’s armoured neck while two others snatched an arm each. The ogres gave a brutal heave on the traitor’s limbs and with a sickening crack and sudden release, the suit seals and the body within tore apart.

On the opposite side of the gauntlet-entrance the ogres’ genestock brothers were murdering Nadir-Maru Juntarians with equal delight. As las-fusillades and dark faces parted, two more armoured figures were revealed. Their armour was busy with chevron designs and yellow striping, and on their backs – either side of their suit packs – were a pair of brass promethium canisters. Stomping up through the Juntarians, the Iron Warriors presented their chunky nozzles, the scorched, dribbling muzzle of each weapon situated at the end of a long firepole.

Tarrasch turned to the blockhouse with just two words on his thin lips: ‘Take cover!’

The blast wave from the erupting inferno knocked the Iron Palatine from his armoured feet. In the confines of the chamber, the heavy flamers did their worst. Everything became roasting heat and smoke, the ink-blot obscurity punctuated by blinding streams of pressurised promethium. As gouts of destruction felt their fiery way through the defensive architecture, sound and smell dominated. Above the boom of the Iron Warrior firepoles, the chatter of bolters could still be heard. Above this was the strangled shrieking of men aflame: Angeloi, genebreeds and Nadir-Maruvians all. Scorched within their suits, Iron Warriors stumbled through the firestorm, searching for respite.

It could have been a bolt-round, fired blindly into the darkness and fury, or perhaps a stream from the flared muzzle of a lascarbine or laspistol. Most likely it was a blast from the Venerable Vastopol’s raging autocannons, but something hit one of the brass fuel canisters. A succession of explosions rippled through the thick smoke, knocking all that still lived in the chamber onto their backs. Flame rolled across ceiling and floor; through the tactical arrangement of the blockhouse; through the gauntlet entrance and down the crowded passage beyond.

Dantioch’s gauntlet grabbed the top of the platform wall like a grapnel. The Warsmith heaved himself to unsteady feet in the swirling smoke, stamping out the small fire that was his burning schematics. Cristofori was dead, as well as the injured Adamantiphract and his chirurgeon. As the smoke began to clear, Dantioch took in the blockhouse floor. There were bodies everywhere, both loyal and traitor: a carpet of scorched armour and charred flesh. Similar destruction extended up the passage to the gauntlet entrance. There was movement, however, and it wouldn’t take their attackers long to organise an assault to capitalise on the inferno.

Leaning against the wall for support, the Warsmith came down the embrasure steps.

‘Tarrasch!’ Dantioch called. From the soot and smaze came sudden movement.

‘Sir,’ came the Iron Palatine’s reply. The explosion had knocked the Iron Warrior senseless into a wall. His words were shaky but the Space Marine was alive.

‘It’s over. We are compromised. Enemy forces imminent. Get the living to their feet.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

As Tarrasch stumbled through the carnage, searching for survivors, Dantioch ran his gauntlets along the wall. The Warsmith began to knock experimentally against the stone as he slouched along its expanse. Satisfied, the Warsmith stopped and turned on the hulking Dreadnought that still stood sentinel in the middle of the blockhouse, autocannons at the ready.

‘Vastopol, are you still with us, my friend?’ the Warsmith asked.

In answer the Dreadnought just burned. The explosions had done little to the machine but scorch its adamantium and set fire to the scrolls, banners and decorative flourishes that adorned the bulky form.

‘Don’t be like that,’ Dantioch said. ‘It’s over. We could fight to the last man but what would that achieve?’

Still the Dreadnought stood immobile.

‘This isn’t Gholghis,’ Dantioch told his battle-brother. ‘It is the prerogative of the Warsmith when to war and when not to. We are beaten here. It is time to take the war elsewhere. Now get over here and help me; you may still have a story to tell.’

As the Venerable Vastopol dragged its mangled and sparking leg across the bodies of the blockhouse floor, Tarrasch worked his way through the dead and dying. The Angeloi were all dead, as were the remaining Sons of Dantioch. The raging inferno had done for both and only a handful of Legiones Astartes, protected from the worst of the explosion by their battle-plate, had survived the catastrophic accident.

‘Enemy advancing!’ Tarrasch called from the gauntlet entrance.

‘Come on, come on!’ Dantioch urged Space Marines emerging from the smoke and destruction.

Tauro Nicodemus was suddenly beside him: his immaculate armour soot-stained and blood-spattered.

‘I thought this was the fallback position,’ the Tetrarch said. The Ultramarine had accepted that he was to die there, taking as many traitor lives with him as he was able.

‘Game’s not over,’ Dantioch said. ‘Gather your weapons.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Through this wall.’

Dantioch knocked on a section of the blockhouse wall. A deliberate, architectural weak point. ‘Vastopol.’

The Dreadnought limped at the wall, crashing through the masonry with one of its chunky shoulders. Rock and dust fell about the war machine. Extracting itself from the ragged aperture, Vastopol stood back to admit the surviving Legiones Astartes: the Warsmith, the Iron Palatine, Brother-Sergeant Ingoldt, Brothers Toledo and Baubistra, the Ultramarine Nicodemus and Chaplain Zhnev. Beyond a broad set of steep, rocky stairs extended, running parallel with the wall and reaching up into the Schadenhold’s cavernous ceiling foundations. With the Legiones Astartes striding up ahead, the Venerable Vastopol negotiated the steps with difficulty, its mangled leg a handicap on the shambling ascent.

The stairwell rumbled and shook.

‘What was that?’ Tarrasch called. For a moment nobody answered in the darkness. Then a quake rolled through the stone about them. The steps shook under their feet and fractures split the stairwell’s rough roof and walls.

‘It’s the Omnia Victrum,’ Dantioch said. ‘Krendl finally has his Titans in position.’ The Warsmith tried to picture the acid-scarred colossi outside, the remaining war machines of the Legio Argentum. The Omnia Victrum was an Imperator-class Titan. A mountain of rust-eaten armour, striding across the cavern like a vengeful god. At its sides it mounted weaponry of titanic proportion: monstrous instruments of destruction, capable of razing cities and felling enemy god-machines. Upon its hunched back sat a small city of its own: a Titanscape of corroded steeples, towers and platforms. A base of operations and a mobile barracks of waiting reinforcements.

‘She’s softening up the south face of the Schadenhold with her cannons and turbolasers before landing troops.’ The Imperator was huge and certainly tall enough to stand beside and beneath the Iron Warrior citadel. It could disgorge a siege-ending horde of traitor Iron Warriors and reinforcement foot contingents of the Bi-Nyssal Equerries. As fresh blood rampaged through the south section of the Schadenhold, joining Krendl and his depleted forces in the north, loyalist Iron Warrior resistance would be overrun and crushed. Even Dantioch’s ingenious blockhouse fallbacks would not be able to save the Schadenholders from the wall-to-wall carnage that was to come.

Tremors swept through the stairwell once more, knocking several Space Marines from their footing. Dantioch fell into Tarrasch, who steadied his Warsmith, but most were staring at the ceiling. Rock and dust rained down on the Iron Warriors and the walls trembled.

‘The passage is collapsing,’ Nicodemus called, holding his storm shield above him.

‘The structure will hold,’ Dantioch assured them. They were in the cavern ceiling foundations of the Schadenhold. The Omnia Victrum’s artillery assault was pummelling the citadel into submission, shaking the fortress to its rocky core. From the bottom of the stairwell came the fresh chatter of weaponry. Bolters and lascarbines, clutched by the traitor Legiones Astartes and Nadir-Maru 4th Juntarians. The enemy that had flooded the empty blockhouse had followed them through the hole in the wall. Firepower came up the stairs at the loyalists with Krendl’s besiegers climbing behind. ‘Come on!’ Dantioch shouted and continued his ascent.

‘Warsmith,’ he heard Tarrasch call and upon turning found his Iron Palatine skidding back down the steps towards the Venerable Vastopol. Although the south wall had held, it had partially collapsed, creating a bottleneck through which the Dreadnought’s broad bulk could not pass. With his armoured shoulders askew but braced between the walls of the stairwell, the war machine was trapped: held fast by the rock and unable to find footing with his mangled leg.

Enemy fire hammered into the Dreadnought’s armoured back. Brother-Sergeant Ingoldt and the Iron Palatine grabbed the war machine’s limbs and heaved at the metal monster. With the intensity of firepower beyond growing and casting the Venerable Vastopol in silhouette, the Iron Warriors fought to free their comrade. The Dreadnought’s vox-speakers trembled with the groans of the warrior inside, as the relentless streams of las-fire and bolt-rounds shredded Vastopol’s rear plating.

Baubistra and Chaplain Zhnev ran down the steps at the war machine. Brother Baubistra leapt onto the front of the sarcophagus body section and clambered up the chunky weaponry. Between the top of the Dreadnought’s mighty shoulders and the stairwell roof, Baubistra found a gap for his bolter and began answering back with ammo-conserving blasts. Zhnev came straight at Vastopol’s midriff, slamming his battle-plate into the Dreadnought in the hope that his assault might dislodge the war machine. The Chaplain failed. The Venerable Vastopol had become the immovable object. Only the unstoppable force of Krendl’s traitor troops would remove him and until then, the Iron Warrior Dreadnought became a wall of adamantium and ceramite dividing the two.

Tarrasch heard a familiar whine.

‘Missile launcher!’ he called.

A rocket slammed into the back of the Dreadnought, knocking Baubistra from his perch and drawing from the Venerable Vastopol a vox-roar of agony and anguish. Two more followed, ravaging the armoured shell of the beast. Vastopol’s groans were constant now and the Iron Warrior’s hulking, metal body was failing about him. Dantioch stomped down the steps towards the Dreadnought.

‘Get him out,’ the Warsmith ordered.

‘He’ll die,’ Zhnev replied over the boom of battle beyond.

‘Do it.’

Tarrasch looked to Dantioch and his Chaplain. Then up to Tauro Nicodemus, who was waiting further up the stairwell.

‘My lord,’ Tarrasch said, ‘we need specialist tools and Magos Genetor Urqhart for such a procedure.’

Dantioch laid his gauntlets on the cold metal of the Venerable Vastopol’s sarcophagus section. The Iron Warrior within continued to moan his agonies through the vox-speakers.

‘Vastopol, listen to me,’ the Warsmith said. ‘We won’t leave you, my friend. We need to get you out. Can you help us?’

The Dreadnought’s power claw came up slowly between them. Askew as he was, the war machine still had use of the appendage, but little else. Bringing the clawtips together like a spike, the Dreadnought thrust the weapon through the armour plating of his sarcophagus. Magna-pistons and hydraulics shifted and locked in the appendage, opening the claw within. With a mighty heave the arm retracted. The Dreadnought’s armoured body fought back, resisting the act of self-mutilation, but finally the plate tore away from the machine’s pock-marked shell.

Amnio-sarcophagal fluid cascaded from the pod within, splashing the steps and nearby Space Marines. Power arced across the ruined section and the cavity steamed. The stench was overpowering. Small fires had broken out within, while lines and wires smoked and sparked. Interred, like an ancient foetus, lay what remained of the former Brother Vastopol. The warrior-poet was barely alive. His parchment skin was both wrinkled and pruned and his arms skeletal and wasted. He’d long lost his legs and his torso was a scrawny cage of bones, infested with life-support tubes and impulse plugs that ran lines between the aged Legiones Astartes and his metal womb-tomb.

‘Get him out,’ Dantioch ordered.

Chaplain Zhnev and Brother Toledo pulled the emaciated Iron Warrior from the sarcophagus, extracting tubes from between his withered lips and yellow teeth and unplugging the pilot from his mind-impulse interface with his shattered Dreadnought body. With his arms draped over ceramite shoulders, the two Iron Warriors carried Vastopol between them, his skullface and wet, threadbare scalp resting against the Chaplain’s plate.

More missiles struck the barricade of the Dreadnought’s evacuated shell and the Iron Warriors fled up the rocky stairwell. Despite being exhausted from the siege the Space Marines made swift progress, slowed only by the fragility of Vastopol’s failing condition and the hacking cough that paralysed the Warsmith with infuriating regularity. At the top of the stairwell they encountered an iron hatch set in the passage roof. Making his feeble way up the final few steps, Dantioch ordered the hatch unlocked and the Iron Warriors through.

The chamber beyond was large and dark. The Warsmith pulled down on a robust handle set in the stone of the wall and lamps began to flicker on. The still air about the Legiones Astartes came to life with the rumble of powerful generators.

‘Seal it,’ Dantioch told Brother Baubistra, indicating the hatch. Striding across the chamber, Dantioch was followed by questions. The chamber was no blockhouse, although it did seem to house a small armoury of its own: bolters on racks, ammunition crates, grenades and several suits of Mark-III plate. The Warsmith ignored his brothers’ enquiries and fell to work at a nearby runebank. ‘Sergeant Ingoldt, Brother Toledo, please be so good as to clad the Venerable Vastopol in one of those suits of spare plate.’

‘That won’t save him,’ Zhnev informed his Warsmith.

‘Chaplain, please. While there’s still time.’

‘Warsmith, I must press you for an explanation,’ Tauro Nicodemus said, after casting his eyes about the chamber. ‘I thought we were falling back to a further hold point.’

‘To what end, Ultramarine?’ Dantioch put to him as his gauntlets glided over the glyphs and runes of the console. ‘The Schadenhold is lost. Those loyalists remaining in the citadel will be overrun by Krendl’s reinforcements and the Omnia Victrum will reduce the rest to rubble. This stronghold has bought the Emperor and Roboute Guilliman three hundred and sixty-six Ancient Terran days. Three hundred and sixty-six days bought with Olympian blood, so that they might formulate a response to the Heresy and better fortify the Imperial Palace – to buy a more favourable outcome than our own.’

‘What is the plan, my lord?’ Tarrasch said, his words giving shape to the thoughts of all in the chamber.

Dantioch looked about their cavernous surroundings.

‘This is the last of the Schadenhold’s secret strategies,’ the Warsmith said. ‘A final solution to any siege and an answer to any enemy that might push us this far.’

‘You said the fortress was lost,’ Nicodemus said.

‘There are many moments in a battle, when we can exploit our enemy’s weakness. We have, over the course of this siege, exploited nearly all of them. It is nothing less than irony that an enemy is at its very weakest mere moments before victory: when they are at their most stretched and committed in seeking such success. We are going to capitalise on that now.’

‘How?’ the champion pressed him.

‘In a siege, finalities must come first. We must accept our eventual doom and prepare for its coming. This chamber was one of the first I had constructed when crafting the Schadenhold. It is situated in the cavern ceiling, right in the rocky foundations of the fortress. It houses two important pieces of equipment, linked by a common console: a trigger for both if you will. The first is a small teleportarium with the associated generators required to power such a piece of equipment. The second is a detonator: wired to explosives situated at key weak points in the citadel foundations. Gravity will do the rest.’ Dantioch let the enormity of his plan sink in. ‘Chaplain Zhnev, please begin the rites for teleportation. Our journey will be swift but our destination important.’

As the Chaplain approached the transference tablets of the teleporter beyond, Tarrasch helped Ingoldt and Toledo get the barely breathing Vastopol sealed in plate.

‘Where is that destination?’ Nicodemus asked the Warmith. The Ultramarine was unused to being kept in tactical darkness.

‘The enemy has committed everything they have to taking this stronghold, undoubtedly leaving their own weak. We are going to teleport to the Benthos and take the bridge by surprise and by force. Brothers, time is upon us. Take your positions, please.’

As Tarrasch and the two Iron Warriors dragged the power armoured form of the Venerable Vastopol over to the transference tablets, Nicodemus hefted his storm shield up onto a shoulder mounting. The Ultramarine followed uncertainly.

With his helmet to the hatch, Baubistra said: ‘I think they’ve broken through, Warsmith. The enemy are approaching.’

‘Very good, Brother Baubistra: now join your brethren.’

As Baubistra strode by, Dantioch went through the motions of arming the explosives sunk deep in the ceiling rock of the Schadenhold’s foundations. Then he opened channels on all floors and vox-hailers across the citadel.

‘Idriss Krendl,’ Dantioch hissed. ‘Captain, this is your Warsmith. I know that you are there, somewhere in my fortress. I know you keep company with traitors and stand in the shadow of the Collegia Titanica’s god-machines. Faced with such odds, I am speaking to you for the last time. And I say to you again that this fortress will not serve the interests of our unloving father or his renegade Warmaster. But, Captain, I was wrong when I told you that the Schadenhold would never fall. Idriss, it will fall…’

With that the Warsmith locked off the channels and initiated the trigger for both teleporter and detonators. Taking his position amongst Nicodemus and the Iron Warriors on the transference tablets, Dantioch straightened his cloak. Sealing his mask, the Warsmith blinked about the darkness within and felt the unnatural pull of the warp on his armour. Somewhere in the distance he fancied he heard the first of the detonations: massive explosions, ripping through the strategic weaknesses of the fortress foundations. With his eyes closed and the horrors of teleportation about him, Dantioch imagined what he had always known he could never see.

The fall of the Schadenhold. Its literal fall from the ceiling of the cavern. Trillions of tonnes of rock and devious architecture falling to the rocky floor, taking with it the thousands of traitor Iron Warriors and Imperial soldiers that had secured the Schadenhold’s defeat. The fortress’s final defiance, issued in gravity, fire and stone: falling and crushing beneath it, in a behemothic mountain of blood and rubble, the mighty Omnia Victrum and the colossal god-machines of its undoing.

Unsealing his mask, Dantioch cast his eyes across the flight deck of the flagship Benthos. The deck was largely empty; most of the cruiser’s Warhawks and Stormbirds had been involved in deployment and aerial attacks on the Schadenhold. The Stormbird around which the Iron Warriors had materialised was pale green and bore symbols and flourishes marking it out as belonging to the Sons of Horus – Hasdrubal Serapis’s personal transport.

Tarrasch marched down the Stormbird’s ramp carrying a teleport homer. Dantioch had ordered the device secretly planted on the vessel during their meeting with Krendl and the Sons of Horus captain in the Grand Reclusiam.

‘How are we going to get to the bridge?’ asked Chaplain Zhnev.

‘With as little bloodshed as possible,’ the Warsmith told him. ‘This is the 51st Expedition’s flagship. Iron Warriors are a common sight among its decks. Let us be that common sight.’

‘What about him?’ Tarrasch asked of Tauro Nicodemus. Despite the soot and gore, the brilliance of the Ultramarine’s armour still shone through.

‘The crew will not question a Legiones Astartes.’

Marching out purposefully across the flight deck, Dantioch was followed by his loyalist compatriots. The Space Marines fought their desire to hold their bolters at the ready, opting for more casual or ceremonial poses. Brother Toledo and Sergeant Ingoldt carried the limp plate of the Venerable Vastopol between them, lending the infiltrators even less the appearance of an attacking force.

There were virtually no Legiones Astartes left aboard the vessel, almost every Iron Warrior being committed to the depths of the planet below. Largely the Space Marines encountered regimental staff and the cruiser’s multitudinous crew. Few among these mortals allowed their eyes to linger on the demigods – especially under Krendl’s brutal regime – and their passage to the command deck was uneventful. Dantioch’s strategy had been so bold and audaciously executed that none aboard the Benthos, even for a second, entertained thoughts that they were under attack.

Their silent, uneasy approach to the bridge was shattered by an unexpected klaxon. Bolters came up and the Iron Warriors fell immediately into defensive positions.

‘As you were,’ Dantioch instructed.

The loyalists could hear the thunder of power armoured boots on the deck ahead. ‘We are not discovered. We are not under attack,’ Dantioch said. Fighting natural inclination and the brute vulnerability of their situation, the Iron Warriors let their barrels drift back down to the deck. A small contingent of Krendl’s 14th Grand Company veterans marched across an intersection in the corridor ahead. As their footfalls faded, Dantioch turned to his own veterans. ‘By now,’ he told them, ‘survivors on Lesser Damantyne will have reported the devastation below, the loss of Krendl, the Warmaster’s forces and the Omnia Victrum. Whoever is in command will want visual confirmation of such an impossible report. Five fewer brother Legiones Astartes for us to deal with.’

Dantioch turned and marched with confidence up the steps to the bridge, flanked by Brother Baubistra and the Iron Palatine. As the Warsmith reached the top and looked down across the expansive bridge of the Benthos he fell into a coughing fit once more: a spasm of hacking convulsions that turned heads and drew attentions.

The bridge of the Benthos was a hive of activity, with petty officers and sickly servitors busy at work amongst the labyrinth of runebanks, cogitators and consoles that dominated the command deck. Two Maximus-plated Iron Warriors stood sentry on the bridge arch-egress and Lord Commander Warsang Gabroon of the Nadir-Maru 4th Juntarians stood at conference with turbaned officers of his tactical staff. The Lord Commander stood as Dantioch remembered him, unconsciously twirling the braids of his beard and launching stabbing glares of jaundiced incredulity and disappointment at his inferiors.

At the epicentre of the activity and the destination of all reports, data and information were three Sons of Horus: swarthy Cthonians with superior sneers and knitted brows of insidious cunning. Among their number was one who immediately recognised what all others aboard the Benthos had failed to: the threat before them. The enemy Warsmith, Barabas Dantioch.

Baubistra and Tarrasch barged onto the bridge, past their master. Putting the muzzles of their weapons to the temples of the traitor sentries they roared at their Olympian brothers to drop their weapons and fall to their knees. Abandoning their burden, Sergeant Ingoldt and Toledo came forwards with bolters raised and pointed at the Sons of Horus. The two traitors flanking Hasdrubal drew their bolt pistols and activity on the bridge slowed to a raucous stand-off. The traitor captain screamed his disbelief and insistence as Iron Warriors and Sons of Horus held each other in their sights. With the Chaplain kneeling beside the dying Vastopol and Dantioch clutching the archway in his coughing fit, it fell to Tauro Nicodemus to break the deadlock.

The Ultramarine champion strode forwards, the only thing moving on the stricken command deck. Undaunted, Nicodemus marched past an apoplectic Lord Commander Gabroon, who was screaming, ‘No shooting on the bridge,’ at the warring demigods. Hasdrubal Serapis’s face screwed up with rage and confusion. The destruction on Lesser Damantyne and the appearance of Dantioch and his Iron Warriors on the bridge had been disturbing enough. Now one of Guilliman’s sons stood before him: a mysterious Ultramarine who had involved himself in the Warmaster’s business and no doubt had something to do with the Iron Warrior resistance on the planet below.

Hasdrubal backed towards one of the great lancet screens that towered above the bridge: the thick glass was the only thing separating the Space Marine captain from the hostile emptiness outside. His two sentinels held their ground, tracking the advancing Nicodemus with their bolt pistols. Hasdrubal looked at the Iron Warriors, with their weapons aimed up the bridge and at him in front of the huge window. Gabroon continued to screech his alarm. Hasdrubal nodded, confident that the Iron Warriors were not foolish enough to fire and blast out the viewport, dooming all on the bridge to a voidgrave.

‘Kill that damned Ultramarine,’ Hasdrubal seethed.

The Sons of Horus fired. Iron Warriors thrust their bolters forwards with an intention to respond in kind.

‘Hold your fire!’ Dantioch managed between torso-wracking convulsions. With his Iron Warriors facing the bridge lancet screens, he could not afford a stray shot to pierce the hull of the ship.

Nicodemus hefted the mighty storm shield from its shoulder mounting and brought it around just in time to soak up the first of the traitor Space Marine’s bolt-rounds. As the shots hammered into the cerulean sheen of the plate, the Tetrarch thumbed the shield’s protective field to life. The marksmanship of the Sons of Horus was a beauty to behold. Every bolt-round found its mark, and had Nicodemus not been advancing behind the storm shield he would have been run through by a relentless onslaught of armour-piercing shot.

Closing on the traitors, the pistols’ effective range shortened and the storm shield’s energy field was breached. One of the adamatium-core Space Marine killers passed through the armour plating and clipped the Ultramarine’s shoulder. As Guilliman’s champion continued to advance, Hasdrubal’s features contorted further in fury and disbelief. The Sons of Horus ejected spent magazines from their sidearms before slamming home another and repeating the treatment. Nothing would stop Nicodemus, however.

As Hasdrubal’s Space Marines emptied their weapons for the second time, Nicodemus took a round through the thigh, one in the chest and another in the shoulder. This time the adamantium slugs found their target and punctured holes through the shield and the Ultramarine’s artificer armour. The energy field sizzled and spat to overload and all Nicodemus had was the bolt-punched plate between him and his enemies. Running the final stretch of command deck, the Ultramarines champion closed with the Sons of Horus.

Desperate now, the traitors went for their Cthonian blades. Nicodemus already had a gauntlet on his own gladius. His armoured palm was slippery with the blood that had run down his arm from the grievous wound in his shoulder. Spinning between the two Legiones Astartes, Nicodemus slammed the storm shield into the first. He felt the slash of the enemy blade on the battered plate and hammered the Son of Horus again. Extending his arm and moving the shield aside like an open door, the Ultramarine allowed the traitor a single, wild thrust. The sword stabbed through the open space between the champion’s elbow and hip. Nicodemus swept down with the blade of the gladius, cutting through the Space Marine’s armoured forearm. Gauntlet and blade clattered to the deck.

The Ultramarine pressed his advantage: one honour guard to another. He smacked the traitor senseless with the storm shield, the plate edge dashing his helmet this way and that. Dazed, the Son of Horus slipped in his own gore and hit the deck. Nicodemus buried the toe of one power armoured boot in the traitor’s faceplate, rolling him over. Standing over his prone enemy, Nicodemus hovered the bottom edge of the rectangular shield over the Space Marine’s throat. He looked to Hasdrubal and his one remaining sentinel, who stood defiantly between the Ultramarine and his master. Nicodemus brought down the weight of the storm shield with a sickening crack. The seal between helmet and suit cracked and the shield edge cut through the traitor’s neck.

The Ultramarine’s armoured chest heaved up and down with exertion as he took a moment to recover, before hoisting the mighty shield around and running straight at the Son of Horus sentinel. Again, Nicodemus felt the pointless slash of the lighter, Cthonian blade on the bolt-shot plate. This time the Ultramarine didn’t stop. He rammed the Son of Horus straight into the thick glass lancet window. Crushed between the observation port and the Ultramarine, the traitor abandoned his weapon and tried to grab the edge of the shield with his ceramite fingertips. Nicodemus smashed him into the glass a second and third time. Finally, the Son of Horus managed to get a grip on the shield – his intention to push the plate aside and get his gauntlets around the Ultramarine’s neck.

He never got the chance. Pulling back his gladius, Nicodemus rammed the point of the blade through the back of the storm shield and skewered the Space Marine beyond. There was a gasp. Light. Almost inaudible. Retracting the blade, Nicodemus stepped aside and allowed the shield and Son of Horus to smash to the bridge floor.

Hasdrubal had turned away. Like everyone else on the bridge, the captain had thought that the Ultramarine was going to put the Space Marine straight through the window, crashing thick glass about them and inviting the void inside. The captain looked fearfully at Guilliman’s champion. Nicodemus paced up and down in front of him with the gore-smeared gladius held in one gauntlet. He unclipped his helmet and slipped the plumed helm off the back of his head. Gone was the martial grace and patrician calm. Nicodemus spat blood at the deck. A bolt pistol shook in Hasdrubal’s gauntlet. Iron Warriors surrounded them both, bolters gaping at the traitor.

‘It’s over,’ Dantioch called, his grim insistence cutting through the cacophony of a bridge in uproar. Hasdrubal turned from the Ultramarine’s fury to the cold, foreboding of Dantioch’s iron mask. ‘You lost,’ the Warsmith informed his enemy.

Hasdrubal’s bolt pistol tumbled from his ceramite fingers. As Toledo and Sergeant Ingoldt secured the prisoner, Nicodemus sheathed his gladius and limped back up the length of the bridge. Lord Commander Gabroon was still shrieking his protestations. The demigod silenced the officer with a slow finger to his lips.

Nicodemus joined Dantioch on the deck, next to the Venerable Vastopol. The Warsmith had ordered Tarrasch to take command of the bridge. Ingoldt and Toledo had been tasked with securing the traitor Hasdrubal Serapis and preparing him for interrogation. Chaplain Zhnev and Brother Baubistra were assigned to Warsang Gabroon, to ensure that the Lord Commander’s remaining troops and the crew of the Benthos accepted the swift and relatively bloodless change of regime and the new orders that accompanied it.

Standing over the two survivors of the Gholghis fortress world, the Ultramarine asked: ‘Is there anything I can do, Warsmith?’

Dantioch didn’t look at the Tetrarch. The Warsmith’s eyes were on the helmetless Vastopol. The ancient lay motionless in battle-plate on the deck, propped up against the wall. The Iron Warrior’s grizzled and aged skull was criss-crossed with wisps of white hair and his face lined with premature centuries. Two milky orbs twitched and wandered between Dantioch, Nicodemus and the bridge.

‘Our honoured brother is taking his leave,’ Dantioch said. His words were hollow and shot through with loneliness and the simple sadness of loss. The Venerable Vastopol had not only survived the dreaded hrud on Gholghis. He’d resisted death’s cold invitation and forged on through the agonies of age to be of use to his brothers once more. Untimely ripped from his metal womb, Vastopol had still clung to life. Until now.

‘He was our chronicler,’ Dantioch said, ‘and carried with him our remembered triumphs. Once, on Gholghis, he told me that such stories of the past ground us in the challenge of the present, like a fortification or citadel built upon foundations of ancient rock. I have none of his skill – crafting in iron and stone what he would in words. I live to tell the tale, however, of the Iron Warriors’ final victory: the last loyal triumph of the IVth Legion. He would want the story to go on. Alas, his story,’ Dantioch said grimly, ‘like that of our Legion, is at an end.’

‘Warsmith,’ Nicodemus began slowly, ‘that need not be the case. I assured you once that my Lord Guilliman had a plan. You have executed your part of that plan flawlessly, Iron Warrior. Lord Guilliman still has need of such ingenuity and skill. The Imperium is frail, Dantioch. An Iron Warrior’s eye could spot such weakness and the good grace of his hand might make it strong once again.’

‘What more would you ask of me?’ the Warsmith said.

‘To stand shoulder to ceramite shoulder with my Lord Guilliman and help him fortify the Imperial Palace.’

‘Fortify the Palace…’ Dantioch repeated.

‘Yes, Iron Warrior.’

‘Perturabo will make us pay for such fantasies.’

‘Perhaps,’ Nicodemus said solemnly. ‘But I believe the genius of your victory today lay in your acceptance that the Schadenhold – for all its indomitable art – would fall. Lord Guilliman shares your vision. Humanity’s future lies in such contingency.’ The Ultramarine let the enormity of the idea linger.

Dantioch didn’t answer. Instead he watched the remaining vestiges of life leave the body of his friend and battle-brother. Vastopol’s crusted eyes fluttered before rolling and gently closing, the dry whisper of a dying breath escaping the warrior-poet’s lips.

As the Venerable Vastopol faded and left them, he heard Dantioch tell the Ultramarine: ‘You talk of the arts of destruction. Perturabo’s progeny are unrivalled in these arts: indomitable in battle and peerless in the science of siegecraft. Show me a palace and I’ll show you how an Iron Warrior would take it. Then I’ll show you how you would stop me. I don’t know how long I am for this Imperium, but I promise you this: whatever iron is left within this aged plate, is yours…’

The iron within. The iron without. Iron everywhere. Empires rise and they fall. I have fought the ancient species of the galaxy and my Legiones Astartes brothers will fight on, meeting new threats in dangers as yet unrealised. We are an Imperium of iron and iron is forever. When our flesh is long forgotten, whether victim to the enemy within or the enemy without, iron will live on. Our hives will tumble and our mighty fleets decay. Long after our polished bones have faded to dust on a gentle breeze, our weapons and armour will remain. Remnants of a warlike race: the iron of loyalist and traitor both. In them our story will be told – a cautionary tale to those that follow. Iron cares not for faith or heresy. Iron is forever.

And as our battle-plate, our blades and bolters rot in the sand of some distant world, they will pit and tarnish. Their dull sheen will corrode and crumble. Grey will turn to brown and brown to red. In the quietly rusting scrap of our fallen empire, iron will return to its primordial state, perhaps to be used again by some other foolish race. And though the weakness of my flesh fails me, as the weakness of my brothers’ flesh will ultimately fail them, our iron shall live on. For iron is eternal.

From iron cometh strength. From strength cometh will. From will cometh faith. From faith cometh honour. From honour cometh iron. This is the Unbreakable Litany. And may it forever be so.

Feast of Horrors

Chris Wraight

Helmut Detlef drew his steed to a halt. The sun was low behind him. The shadows in the forest were long, and the tortured branches beckoned the onset of a bitter night. If he’d been alone, Detlef might have felt anxiety. The deep woods were no place for a young, inexperienced squire to be after dark.

But he wasn’t alone. The figure next to him sat astride a massive war-horse. He was decked in full plate armour and carried a long, rune-carved sword. A thick beard spilled over his chest, falling over the Imperial crest embossed on the metal. His cloak hung down from gold-rimmed pauldrons and the open-faced helm was crowned with a laurel wreath. Only one man was permitted to don such ancient armour – the Emperor’s Champion, Ludwig Schwarzhelm, dispenser of Imperial Law and wielder of the dread Sword of Justice.

By comparison, Detlef’s titles – squire, errand runner, occasional herald – were pretty unimpressive. Still, just to serve under such a man was an honour almost beyond reckoning. Detlef was barely out of the village and less than two years’ service into the Reikland halberdiers. In the months since joining Schwarzhelm he’d already seen things men twice his age would hardly dream of.

‘That’s it?’ he said, pointing ahead.

‘That’s it,’ replied Schwarzhelm. His voice was iron-hard, tinged with a faint Averland accent. Schwarzhelm spoke rarely. When he did, it was wise to take note.

The trees clustered near the road on either side of them, overhanging as close as they dared as if eager to snatch the unwary traveller and pull him into the dark heart of the forest. So it had been for the many days since they’d ridden from the battlefront in Ostland. The Forest of Shadows had been true to its name every step of the way.

A few yards ahead, the wood gave way to a clearing. In the failing light it looked drab and sodden, though the bastion rising from it was anything but. Here, miles from the nearest town and isolated within the cloying bosom of the forest, a sprawling manor house stood sentinel. The walls were built from stone framed with age-blackened oak. Elaborate gables decorated the steep-sided roofs rising sharply against the sky. The seal of Ostland, a bull’s head, had been engraved ostentatiously over the vast main doorway, and statues in the shape of griffons, wyverns and other beasts stared out across the bleak vista. Warm firelight shone from the narrow mullioned windows and columns of thick smoke rose from the many chimneys.

‘How should I address him?’ asked Detlef, feeling his ignorance. The task of learning his duties had been steep, and Schwarzhelm was intolerant of mistakes.

‘He’s a baron. Use “My lord”.’

Or, more completely, Baron Helvon Drakenmeister Egbert von Rauken, liege lord of an estate that covered hundreds of square miles. Detlef might once have found that intimidating, but after serving with Schwarzhelm, very little compared.

‘I’ll ride ahead to announce you.’

Schwarzhelm nodded. His grey eyes glittered, in his craggy, unsmiling face.

‘You do that.’

Their arrival had been unexpected. Despite that, the Baron’s household managed to put on a good show. Servants preparing to turn in for the night were dragged from their chambers and put to work in the kitchens. The household was roused and told to put on its finery. By the time the sun had finally dipped below the western horizon, a banquet fit for their visitor had been thrown together. Detlef found the process intensely amusing. The combination of irritation and fear on the faces of the mansion staff was worth the long trek on its own.

Rauken’s banqueting hall, like all the rooms in the house, was a study in baroque excess. The high-beamed roof was decorated with tasteless frescos of Imperial myths, all lit by an oversized fire roaring in the marble-framed hearth. The floor was also marble, black and white chequers like the nave of an Imperial chapel. The table looked as if it had been carved from a single slab of wood, even though it was over thirty feet long. Its surface had been polished to a glassy sheen, reflecting the light of the dozens of candelabras and sending it winking and flashing from the crystal goblets and silver plates.

The guests, a dozen of them, were no less opulent. All looked well-fed and comfortably padded. The ladies were decked in frocks of wildly varied shades, draped with tassels, bows and lines of pearls. Even at such short notice they’d managed to arrange their greying hair in heaps of tottering grandeur, laced with lines of gold wire and emerald studs. Their sagging faces were plastered with lead whitener, their lips and cheeks heavily rouged. Their male companions were also finely turned out, replete with sashes, medals, powdered wigs and jewel-encrusted codpieces. They strutted to their places, jowls wobbling with anticipation as the food arrived.

From his seat on the edge of the chamber, Detlef watched them intently, trying to pick out the ones Schwarzhelm had told him about. Most of the party were Rauken’s blood-kin, but some of his more senior aides had been invited. Among them was Osbert Hulptraum, Rauken’s personal physician, a fat waddling grey-faced man with a balding pate and bags under his eyes. Next to him sat Julius Adenauer, the chancellor, all thin lips, clawed fingers and sidelong glances. His scraggy beard looked wispy even in the low light, and he minced around like a parody of a woman.

At the head of the table sat Rauken himself. He was massively corpulent, red-cheeked, with a bulbous nose laced with broken veins. He’d chosen to cover himself in robes of velvet, not that they did much to hide his generous belly. As he beckoned the guests to take their seats, his many chins shivered like jelly.

‘We are honoured,’ he said, his voice surprisingly high. ‘Truly honoured. It’s not every day this house hosts one of the finest heroes of the Empire.’

A murmur of appreciation ran across the throng. Schwarzhelm, sitting at Rauken’s right hand – the place of honour – remained impassive. He’d heard it all before. He’d exchanged his armour for simple robes in the red and white of the Imperial palace, but still looked by far the most regal presence in the room.

‘So let us eat,’ Rauken said, ‘and celebrate this happy occasion.’

The guests needed no encouragement. Soon they were shovelling heaps of food on to their plates – lambs’ livers, roast pigeon, jugged hare, moist sweetbreads, slabs of pheasant pie, slops of something dark brown with quail’s eggs floating in it, pig’s cheeks in jelly, all washed down with generous slugs of a dark red wine brought all the way, Detlef had learned, from the vines of the Duc d’Alembourg-Rauken in Guillet Marchand on the banks of the Brienne.

Like all the servants present, Detlef had been seated behind his master in case he was needed during the meal. His stomach growled as he watched the guests begin to cram the fine food into their mouths. At least his position let him hear the conversation.

‘So to what do we owe this honour, my lord?’ asked Rauken, munching delicately on a fig stuffed with mincemeat.

‘The Emperor likes me to meet all his subjects,’ said Schwarzhelm. He’d not touched the food, and had taken strips of dried meat from a pouch at his belt.

‘Well then, I hope we’ve not been amiss with the tithes. Adenauer, are we up to date?’

‘We are, my lord,’ replied the chancellor, dabbing grease from his chin. ‘The records are available for scrutiny.’

‘Very good,’ said Rauken, looking at Schwarzhelm nervously. ‘You’re not eating, my lord?’

‘Not muck like this. I prefer my own.’

Schwarzhelm’s flat refusal cut through the conversation like a blunt axe-blade. There was a nervous laugh from one of the women, soon cut off when she realised he wasn’t joking.

Detlef smiled to himself. The dinner promised to be an amusing one. It was only then that he caught the eye of the serving girl sitting beside him. She was as fleshy and rosy-cheeked as the rest of them, but much younger. He found his eyes drawn to her chest, appealingly exposed by a low-cut, tight-laced bodice.

She smiled at him, and her eyes shone in the candlelight.

‘Have you eaten?’ she whispered.

‘No,’ he hissed back. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Come and find me when this is over. We’ll see what we can do about that.’

Detlef grinned. This evening was getting better all the time.

By midnight, the chairs had been kicked back and the guests had tottered back to their rooms, belching and wiping their mouths. Baron von Rauken had taken his leave last of all, having heroically demolished a four-tier suet pudding arranged in a pretty good approximation of the Grand Belltower in Talabheim.

Soon the room was empty apart from Schwarzhelm and Detlef. The candles had burned low and the polished tabletop was slick with grease. Detlef found himself gazing at the extensive remains on the salvers, his stomach rumbling.

‘Avoid it,’ said Schwarzhelm. ‘This is no food for a soldier.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Detlef, privately hoping he’d go away so he could attack the pickled pig-shins.

‘Get some sleep.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘After you’ve cleaned my armour.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Schwarzhelm looked at him carefully. As ever, his expression was inscrutable. It was like trying to read the granite cliffs of the Worlds Edge Mountains.

‘Where are your quarters?’

‘Above the kitchen.’

‘Stay in them tonight. And keep your sword by your bed.’

Detlef felt a sudden qualm. ‘Do you expect trouble?’

‘I don’t call on these fat wastrels for enjoyment,’ Schwarzhelm said, not hiding the contempt in his voice. ‘The Emperor’s worried about this one.’

‘Is he behind on his taxes?’ asked Detlef.

‘On the contrary. He’s paid them all.’

Detlef shook his head. The ways of the aristocracy were a mystery to him.

‘I’ll keep an eye out, then.’

Schwarzhelm grunted in what might have been approval.

‘Maybe I’ll take one of these for later,’ said the knight, pulling a juicy chunk of bull’s stomach from the table. Without a further look at his squire, he stalked off to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Detlef waited for the heavy footfalls to recede, then started to help himself. Knowing what was to come, his stomach gurgled with anticipation.

‘Take it easy,’ Detlef said to himself. ‘Just a few of the good bits to keep my strength up. Then I have an appointment to keep.’

An hour later, and the house was still and silent. High up in the west tower, the physician Hulptraum paced up and down inside his bedchamber. He was still dressed in the black robes of his office. His bed was untouched, and a large goblet of wine stood drained on his desk. He looked agitated, and his fingers twitched. Next to the goblet was a long, curved dagger. It was hard to see the hilt in the meagre candlelight, but the blade had some script engraved on it. The language wasn’t Reikspiel.

‘Tonight,’ he hissed. ‘Of all nights...’

There was a knock at the door. Hulptraum started, his eyes bulging. ‘Who is it?’

‘Adenauer. Can I come in?’

Hulptraum put the knife into the top drawer of the desk and slid it shut. ‘Of course.’

Adenauer entered, looking terrible. His skin, pale before, was now deathly white. His wispy beard seemed to have become little more than a curling fuzz and his eyes were rheumy and staring.

‘Osbert, you’ve got to help me,’ he said, through gritted teeth. One hand was clutching his distended stomach, the other was clasped against his temple.

‘You’re still here?’ asked the physician, not obviously evincing sympathy.

‘What do you mean? I’m ill, man. Surely you can see that?’

Hulptraum smiled coldly. ‘I’m a doctor. And yes, you’re ill. You should be down in the kitchen with the others.’

Adenauer looked bewildered. ‘Can’t you give me something? I... oh, gods below...’

He started to belch loudly. A thin line of sputum ran down his chin and his body bent double.

Hulptraum remained supremely indifferent. ‘I don’t have time for this, Julius. Nothing I could give you now would help. The fact is, this has been prepared for months. All for this night. This one night. The night he turned up.’

Adenauer was now on his knees. The sputum became a watery trail of blood. His stomach was writhing under his robes, as if an animal were trying to get out of it.

‘Sigmar!’ he cried, spasming in agony. ‘Help me!’

Hulptraum crouched down beside him, ignoring the increasingly putrid stench coming from the chancellor. ‘He can’t help you now, old friend. You’d better get down to the kitchen. You’ll find the others there too.’

Adenauer’s eyes didn’t look as if they were seeing very much. Sores had begun to pulse on his face, spreading with terrifying speed. His tongue flickered out, black as ink, leaving loops of saliva trailing down to his chest. He collapsed on the floor, clenched with pain.

Hulptraum got up and returned to the desk. He retrieved the dagger, ignoring the thrashing of the transforming chancellor.

‘You will not prevent this,’ he hissed, no longer talking to Adenauer. ‘I don’t care who you are. You will not prevent this.’

With that, he left the room, padding out into the corridor beyond. Behind him, Adenauer retched piteously. Caked lumps of bile slapped to the floor, steaming gently. He remained stricken for a few moments longer, heaving and weeping, streaming from every orifice.

Then something seemed to change. He lifted his thin face. It ran with mucus like tears. The eyes, or what was left of them, shone a pale marsh-gas green.

‘The kitchen!’ Adenauer gurgled, though the voice was more like that of an animal. It looked as if he’d finally understood something. ‘The kitchen!’

Then he too was gone, dragging himself across the floor leaving a trail of slime behind him. The door closed, and the candle shuddered out.

No candles burned in Schwarzhelm’s chamber. The shutters were locked tight and the darkness was absolute. Nothing moved. Deep down in the house, there was a distant creak, then silence again.

Heartbeats passed in the dark.

Slowly, silently, the door-handle began to turn. The door swung open on oiled hinges. It was just as dark outside as within. Something entered. Quietly, slowly, it made its way to the bed. A blade was raised over the mattress.

It hung there, invisible, unmoving, for a terrible moment.

Then it plunged down, once, twice, three times, stabbing into the soft flesh beneath. Still no noise. The knife was an artful weapon. It had killed many times before over many thousands of years and knew how to find the right spot.

Hulptraum stood, shaking, lost in the dark. He could feel the warm blood on the knife trickle over his fingers. It was done. Thank the Father, the feast was safe.

Moving carefully, he went over to a table on the far wall. He had to make sure.

He struck the flint and a flame sparked into life. He lit the candle’s wick and light spread across his hand. The shaking was subsiding. He’d done it. He’d saved it all. He turned around.

Schwarzhelm smashed him hard in the face, snapping his neck and sending him spinning across the table and slamming against the wall. Hulptraum slid to the floor. Blood foamed from his open mouth, locked in a final expression of shock. The dagger clanged to the stone floor.

‘Pathetic,’ Schwarzhelm muttered.

He walked over to where he’d hung his sword. The bull’s stomach was still leaking fluid across the bed. He took the holy blade and unsheathed it. Still dressed in his robes, he made for the door.

Rauken did have something to hide then. Time to uncover it.

Detlef belched loudly. Perhaps he’d overindulged. Still, at least he’d taken the edge off his hunger. Now he had an appointment to attend to. A final look around his bedchamber revealed Schwarzhelm’s armour lying in pieces in the corner, still mottled with grime from the journey. He could polish it all before dawn – the old curmudgeon wouldn’t need the suit before then.

Then he caught sight of his short sword lying by the bed, just where Schwarzhelm had warned him to keep it. Perhaps he ought to take that with him. He still wasn’t convinced there was anything much to worry about, but it might impress... what was her name? He’d have to remember before he found her. In his experience, women – even as willing and fruity as this one – liked to have the little things observed.

Gretta? Hildegard? Brunnhilde?

He grabbed the sword and crept out of the chamber. It would come back to him.

The corridor was drenched in shadow. It seemed almost preternaturally dark, as if the natural light had been sucked from the air and somehow disposed of. He held his candle ahead of him with one hand and kept a tight grip on the sword hilt with the other. There were no sounds, no signs of anyone else about. Now all he had to do was remember the way to her room.

Past the scullery and the game-hanging room, then down towards the kitchen. Should be easy enough.

Detlef shuffled along, feeling the old wooden floor flex under him. He passed a series of doors in the gloom, all closed. The house gently creaked and snapped around him. Dimly, he could hear the scratching of trees outside as the night winds ran through their emaciated branches.

At the end of the corridor, a staircase led directly downwards. From where he stood, it seemed like there was a little more light coming from the bottom of it. Detlef picked up the pace. Perhaps Gertrude had left a candle lit for him.

He reached the base of the stairs. Another corridor yawned away with fresh doors leading from it on either side. One of them was open. He thrust the candle through the doorframe. The light reflected from the corpses hanging there, eyes glinting like mirrors.

Pheasants, rabbits, hares, all strung out in bunches on iron hooks. The game-hanging room. He was close. Detlef pressed on, heading further down the corridor. There was a light at the end of it, leaking around the edges of a closed wooden door. Excitement began to build within him. Brigitta had been as good as her word.

He reached the door, making sure his sword was properly visible. All the nice girls liked a soldier. Then, with as much of a flourish as he could muster with both hands full, he pushed against the wood.

The door swung open easily. Marsh-green light flooded out from the space beyond, throwing Detlef’s shadow back down the corridor. What lay beyond wasn’t Gertrude, Brigitta or Brunnhilde.

Detlef found that, despite all his anticipation, he wasn’t really disappointed. He was too busy screaming.

Schwarzhelm hurried down the corridors, lantern in hand. There was no one about on the upper levels. The whole place was deserted. That in itself was cause for worry. He’d slammed open a dozen doors, uncaring whom he disturbed, and the chambers had all been empty.

He barged into Detlef’s room, keeping the light high. He saw his own armour, untouched, heaped in the corner. There was a tin plate on the bed with a few crumbs on it and nothing else. There was no sword, and no squire.

‘Damned idiot,’ he muttered, heading back out. At the end of the corridor, a staircase led down. Very faintly, he could see a greenish glow. His heart went cold. He drew his sword, and the steel hummed gently as it left the scabbard. The Sword of Justice was ancient, and the spirit of the weapon knew when it would taste battle. Schwarzhelm could feel it thirsting already. There were unholy things close by.

He broke into a run, thudding down the stairs and past the empty, gaping doorways. He saw the open portal at the end of the corridor, glowing a pale green like phosphor. Shapes loomed beyond, hazy in a mist of swirling, stinking vapour.

‘Grace of Sigmar,’ Schwarzhelm whispered, maintaining his stride and letting the lantern smash to the floor – it would be no further use.

He charged through the doorway. Green light was everywhere, a sickly, cloying illumination that seemed to writhe in the air of its own accord. The walls dripped with slops of bile-yellow sludge that ran into the mortar and slithered over the stones. The stench was astonishing – a mix of rotting flesh, vomit, dung, sewage and bilge-water. He felt spores latch on him as he plunged in, popping and splattering as his powerful limbs worked.

Once this must have been the bakery. There was something that might have been an oven, now lost under polyps of mouldy dough-like growths. There were flies everywhere, buzzing and swarming over the slime-soaked surfaces. They were vast, shiny horrors, less like insects and more like pustules with wings.

‘Detlef!’ roared Schwarzhelm trying to spot the exit through the swirling miasma.

His call was answered, but not by his squire. The guests from the meal dragged themselves towards him, hauling their burst stomachs behind them. What was left of their skin hung like rags from glistening sinew, flapping against the tendons and their crumbling, yellow teeth.

‘Hail, Lord Schwarzhelm!’ they mocked, reaching for him with pudgy, blotched fingers. ‘Welcome to the Feast!’

Schwarzhelm ploughed straight into them, hacking and heaving with his blade. The steel sliced through the carrion-flesh, sending gobbets of viscera sailing through the foetid air. There were a dozen of them, just as before, and they dragged at his robes, hands clawing. He battered them aside, hammering with the edge of his sword before plunging the tip deep into their ragged innards. They were carved apart like mutton, feeling no pain, only clutching at him, scrabbling at his flesh, trying to latch their slack, dangling jaws on to his arm.

Schwarzhelm didn’t have time for this. He kicked out at them, shaking one from his boot before crunching his foot through a sore-riddled scalp, crushing the skull like an egg. They kept coming even when their limbs had been severed and their spines cracked. Only decapitation seemed to finish them. Twelve times the Sword of Justice flashed in the gloom, and twelve times a severed head thumped against the stone and rolled through the glowing slurry of body parts.

He pushed the remaining skittering, twitching torsos aside and pressed on, racing through the bakery and into the corridor beyond. So this was the horror Rauken had been cradling.

The further he went, the worse it got. The walls of the corridor were covered in a flesh-coloured sheen, run through with pulsing arteries of black fluid. There were faces trapped within, raving with horror. Some had managed to claw a hand out, scrabbling against the suffocating film. Others hung still, the black fluid pumping into them, turning them into some fresh new recipe.

Schwarzhelm killed as many as he could, delivering mercy to those who still breathed and death to those who’d passed beyond human. The steel sliced through the tight-stretched hide, tearing the veils of flesh and spilling the noxious liquid across the floor. As he splashed through it, a thin screaming broke out from further ahead. He was coming to the heart of it.

The next room was vast and boiling hot, full of massive copper kettles and iron cauldrons, all simmering with foul soups and monstrous stews. Lumps of human gristle flopped from their sides, sliding to the gore-soaked floor and sizzling of their own accord. Thick-bodied, spiked-legged spiders scuttled through the mire, scampering between the bursting egg-sacs of flies and long, white-fleshed worms. Vials of translucent plasma bubbled furiously, spilling their contents over piled slabs of rancid, crawling meat. Everything was in motion, a grotesque parody of a wholesome kitchen.

At the centre was Rauken. His body had grown to obscene proportions, bursting from the clothes that once covered it. His flesh, glistening with sweat and patterned with veins, spilled out like a vast unlocked tumour. Dark shapes scurried about under the skin, and a long purple tongue lolled down to his flab-folded chest, draping ropes of lumpy saliva behind it. When he saw Schwarzhelm, he grinned, exposing rows of black, blunt teeth.

‘Welcome, honoured guest!’ he cried, voice thick with phlegm. ‘A good night to visit us!’

Schwarzhelm said nothing. He tore into the monster, hacking at the yielding flesh. It carved away easily, exposing rotten innards infested with burrowing grubs. Rauken scarcely seemed to feel it. He opened his swollen jaws and launched a column of vomit straight at the knight. Schwarzhelm ducked under the worst of it, the stomach acid eating through his robes and burning his flesh. He ploughed on, cleaving away the rolls of stinking flab, getting closer to the head with every stroke.

‘You can’t spoil this party!’ raved the baron, gathering itself for another monstrous chunder. ‘We’ve only just got started!’

More vomit exploded out. Schwarzhelm felt a sharp pain as the bile slammed into his chest, sheering the cloth away and burrowing into his skin. Flies blundered into his eyes, spiders ran across his arms, leeches crawled around his ankles. He was being dragged down into the filth.

With a massive effort, Schwarzhelm wrenched free of the clutching horrors and whirled his blade round in a back-handed arc. The steel severed Rauken’s bloated head clean free, lopping it from the shoulders and sending it squelching and bouncing into a vat of steaming effluvium. The vast bag of flesh shuddered and subsided, leaking an acrid soup of blood and sputum. Ripples of fatty essence sagged, shrank and then lay still.

Schwarzhelm struggled free of it, slapping the creeping horrors from his limbs and tearing the vomit-drenched rags from his chest. There was a movement behind him and he span around, blade at the ready.

He turned it aside. It was Detlef.

The boy looked ready to die from fear. His face was as pale as milk and tears of horror ran down his cheeks.

‘What is this?’ he shrieked, eyes staring.

Schwarzhelm clamped a hand on his shoulder, holding him firmly in place.

‘Be strong,’ he commanded. ‘Get out – the way up is clear. Summon help, then wait for me at the gates.’

‘You’re not coming with me?’

Schwarzhelm shook his head. ‘I’ve only killed the diners,’ he growled. ‘I haven’t yet found the cook.’

The haze grew thicker. It was like wading through a fog of green motes. Schwarzhelm went carefully, feeling the viscous floor suck at his boots. Beyond the kitchen there was a little door, half-hidden behind the collection of bubbling vats. The flies buzzed furiously, clustering at his eyes and mouth. He breathed through his nose and ploughed on.

The room opened out before him. It was small, maybe twenty feet square and low-ceilinged. Perhaps some storechamber in the past. Now the jars and earthenware pots overflowed with mould, the contents long given over to decay. The air was barely breathable, heavy with spores and damp. Strings of fungus ran like spiders’ webs from floor to roof, some glowing with a faint phosphorescence, obscuring what was in the centre.

‘You’re not the one I was expecting,’ came a woman’s voice. Schwarzhelm sliced his way through the ropes of corruption, feeling the burn as they slithered down his exposed flesh. ‘Where’s the boy? His flesh was ripe for feeding up.’

The last of the strings fell away. In the centre of the floor squatted a horribly overweight woman. She was surrounded by rolls of flaking parchment, all covered in endless lists of ingredients. Sores clustered at her thick lips, weeping a constant stream of dirt-brown fluid. She was dressed in what had once been a tight-laced corset, but the fabric had burst and her distended body flopped across it. The skin was addled with plague. Some parts of her had been eaten away entirely, exposing slick white fat or wasted muscle. Others glowed an angry red, with shiny skin pulled tight over some raging infestation. Boils jostled for prominence with warts, virulent rashes encircled pulsing nodules ready to burst. Her exposed thighs were like long-rotten sides of pork, and her eyes were filmy and rimed with blood.

‘He’s gone,’ said Schwarzhelm. ‘I’m not so easily wooed.’

The woman laughed, and a thin gruel-like liquid cascaded down her multiple chins. ‘A shame,’ she gurgled. ‘I don’t think you’ve had many women in your life. Karl Franz’s loyal monk, eh? That’s not what they say about Helborg. Now there’s a man I could cook for.’

Schwarzhelm remained unmoved. ‘What are you?’

‘Oh, just the kitchen maid. I get around. When I came here, the food was terrible. Now, as you can see, it’s much improved.’ She frowned. ‘This was to have been our party-night. I think you’ve rather spoiled it. How did you know?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Schwarzhelm, preparing to strike. ‘The Emperor’s instincts are normally good.’

He charged towards her, swinging the sword in a glittering arc. The monstrous woman opened her jaws. They stretched open far beyond the tolerance of mortal tendons. Rows of needle-teeth glimmered, licked by a blood-red tongue covered in suckers. Her fingers reached up to block the swipe, nails long and curled.

Schwarzhelm worked quickly, drawing on his peerless skill with the blade. The fingernails flashed past him as he weaved past her defences, chunks of blubber carved off with precise, perfectly aimed stabs.

Her neck shot out, extending like a snake’s. Her teeth snapped as she went for his jugular. He pulled back and she chomped off a mouthful of beard, spitting the hairs out in disgust. Then he was back in close, jabbing at her pendulous torso, trying to get the opening he needed.

They swung and parried, teeth and nails against the flickering steel of the Sword of Justice. The blade bit deep, throwing up fountains of pus and cloying, sticky essence. The woman struck back, raking her fingernails across Schwarzhelm’s chest, digging the points into his flesh.

He roared with pain, spittle flying from his mouth. He tore away from her, blood pouring down his robes. The neck snapped out again, aiming for his eyes. He pulled away at the last moment, slipping in a puddle of slop at his feet and dropping one hand down.

‘Ha!’ she spat, and launched herself at him.

Schwarzhelm’s instinct was to pull back, to scrabble away, anything to avoid being enveloped in that horrific tide of disease and putrescence.

But instinct could be trumped by experience. He had his opening. As fast as thought, he lunged forward under the shadow of the looming horror, pointing the Sword of Justice upwards and grasping the hilt with both hands. There was a sudden flash of realisation in her eyes, but the momentum was irresistible. The steel passed through her neck, driven deep through the morass of twisted tubes and nodules.

She screamed, teeth still snapping at Schwarzhelm’s face, flailing as the rune-bound metal seared at her rancid innards.

This time Schwarzhelm didn’t retreat. He kept his face near hers. He didn’t smile even then, but a dark look of triumph lit in his eyes. He twisted the blade in deeper, feeling it do its work.

‘Dinner’s over,’ he said.

Dawn broke, grey and cold. His legs aching, his chest tight, Schwarzhelm pushed open the great doors to the castle, letting the dank air of the forest stream in. It was thick with the mulch of the woods, but compared to the filth of the kitchens below it was like a blast of fresh mountain breeze. He limped out, cradling his bleeding chest with his free hand. The cult had been purged. All were dead. All that remained was to burn the castle, and others would see to that. Once again he had done his duty. The law had been dispensed and the task was complete. Almost.

Just beyond the gates, a lone figure shivered, hunched on the ground and clutching his ankles. Schwarzhelm went over to him. Detlef didn’t seem to hear him approach. His eyes were glassy and his lower lip trembled.

‘Did you find anyone up here?’ Schwarzhelm asked. Though it didn’t come naturally, he tried to keep his voice gentle.

Detlef nodded. ‘A boy from the village. He’s gone to get the priest. There are men coming.’

The squire’s voice shook as he spoke. He looked terrible. He had every right to. No mortal man should have had to witness such things.

‘Good work, lad.’

Schwarzhelm looked down at his blade, still naked in his hands. Diseased viscera had lodged in the runes. It would take an age to purify.

He turned his gaze to Detlef. It was a pity. The boy was young. His appetites were hot, and he must have been hungry. There were so many excuses, even though he’d warned him not to eat the food. This final blow was the worst of them all. He’d shown promise. Schwarzhelm had liked him.

Detlef looked up, eyes imploring. Even now, the sores had started to emerge around his mouth.

‘Is it over?’ he asked piteously, the tears of horror still glistening on his cheek.

Schwarzhelm raised his blade, aiming carefully. It would at least be quick.

‘Yes,’ he said, grief heavy within him. ‘Yes, it is.’

The Inquisition

++Open vox-net++

My most esteemed Lord Inquisitor,

The arch-heretic Werner is ours! Though several of my men perished, and some suffered even worse fates, in the process he is currently under lock and key where our torture-servitors have already loosened his tongue.

Interrogator Kerstromm, Ordo Malleus

What are you working on at the moment?

On my plate at the moment is Thanquol’s Doom, the third book in the saga of the Under-Empire’s most infamous grey seer. After returning from Lustria, Thanquol finds himself embroiled in a plot by Clan Skryre to steal a new dwarf invention – one that will enable Chief Warlock Ikit Claw to build the ultimate weapon. Thanquol must exploit all of his treacherous cunning if he is to survive the rivalry of feuding warlock-engineers, the vicious warriors of Clan Mors, and the mysterious agenda of another grey seer. Then there’s the small problem of keeping his fur safe from the vengeful axes of the dwarfs themselves to add to his problems. Fortunately, he’s got a brand new Boneripper to get between himself and the hordes of enemies after his pelt..

What are you working on next?

My next project is a bit of a top secret matter, the disclosure of which would undoubtedly lead to my untimely demise in some rather sordid and uncomfortable fashion. Having seen a lot of Robin Hood movies, I am quite familiar with just how dank and awful the dungeons of Nottingham are. So, no, I must quite firmly remain silent on the subject of my next book. Unless it’s okay to say it may involve daemons. Or the undead. I can safely say it won’t have any vampires that sparkle in sunlight and refuse to drink human blood. It most likely won’t have any llamas either.

Are there any areas of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 that you haven’t yet explored that you’d like to in the future?

Well, I guess the obvious answer here is to say Orcs and Orks. I’d really like to sink my teeth into an orc novel. I’ve done some peripheral stuff with them, featuring orcs as villains in Runefang and Forged by Chaos, and my first 40k story was centred on a Blood Axe Kommando, but I still have this yearning to do a big splashy orc novel. The promise of low comedy and mindless violence is simply immense for such a project. And, of course, there’s the thing about writing monsters as monsters without slapping some ‘noble savage’ claptrap on them that I think readers would appreciate. 

What are you reading at the moment? Who are your favourite authors?

I just finished The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett, fixing a woeful negligence on my part as I’d never read any of her books before. Just now, I’m dividing my time between a re-read of the various incarnations of Warhammer Armies: Skaven and Shadows in the Jungle, a non-fiction WWII account of the Alamo Scouts, an American special forces unit employed by General MacArthur in the Philippines. Absolute hardcases, these fellows, never losing a single man in 108 missions and accounting for over 500 Japanese soldiers, not to mention freeing thousands of POWs.

Which book (either BL or non-BL) do you wish you’d written and why? 

Aside from the pure mercenary answer of Harry Potter followed by the rationale of having enough money to retire and become a James Bond supervillain, I’d probably have to say the sequels to Jeff Rovin’s wonderful Return of the Wolfman, which itself was a sequel to the classic Universal monster movies. The two sequels (not written by Mr. Rovin, I should add) were absolute dreck that had none of the nostalgic feel to them. I always thought the series deserved better.

Now, if we talk about BL books, I’d have to say the Nagash series. Nagash has always been one of my favourite characters in the setting and I was tremendously jealous when Mike Lee got his claws on the Supreme Necromancer. They’re great reads, but I still can’t keep a tinge of envy out of my eyes every time I see them on my bookshelf!

Phalanx

Ben Counter

Chapter 6

Molikor’s endless expanses of broken delta, islands of swampy grasses and gorse separated by the sludgy children of the planet’s great rivers, were a good place to hide. An entire nation hid there among the rotten trees and root cages, the odd chunk of rock eroded clean by the passage of the shifting waters. They had their strongholds among the mangrove swamps closer to the shore, where the biting insects swarmed so thick they could pick a man up off the ground, and the waters were infested with a thousand different forms of sharp-toothed creature. That nation, which called itself the Eshkeen, was as much a part of the landscape as the dour grey-streaked clouds overhead and the way the soft ground threatened to swallow up a power armoured foot. That nation had risen up in defiance. That nation had to die.

Commander N’Kalo took the magnoculars from the eyeslit of his armour. His augmented vision was enough to tell him that the foe had no intention of making itself seen, and a closer look had confirmed it. Behind him the strikeforce of nearly forty Iron Knights Space Marines was forming a perimeter lest the enemy close in from an unexpected angle, the bolters of Squads Salik, K’Jinn and Tchwayo scanning the indistinct horizon for targets. Sergeant Borasi’s Devastator squad had left its anti-tank weapons behind and sported a complement of heavy bolters, perfect for chewing through forested cover and ill-armoured enemies. Though the delta could have been deserted for all the Iron Knights could see, the Devastators were still ready to deploy, weapons loaded and shouldered.

‘They give us good sport,’ said Sergeant Borasi, standing just behind N’Kalo. ‘It disappoints me so when the enemy show themselves too early.’

‘Would that this was mere sport,’ replied N’Kalo. ‘The Eshkeen revolt against the rule of the Imperium. Books of atrocities have already been written about their campaigns of violence against the Imperial cities of this world, and if Molikor falls the whole of this frontier could follow.’

‘Nevertheless, captain, I am reminded of the best hunting grounds of Seheris. Below the equator, where the great rivers of the Zambenar meet the oceans. I lose count of how many reapermaw tusks my bolter has won for me down there.’

‘Then the hunting will be good,’ brother,’ said N’Kalo, stowing the magnoculars in a belt pouch, ‘if it is a hunt you see unfolding here.’

On Seheris, the home world of the Iron Knights Chapter, the unforgiving deserts and plains bred a thousand hardy peoples divided into tribes that treated the land as an adversary to be conquered. The Iron Knights were drawn from such people, and their wish to test themselves against an environment, as much as against a foe, never left them. They took pride in the fact that they fought in warzones which would have been deadly whether any enemy waited there or not – radioactive rock deserts, carnivorous jungles, archipelagos scattered across an ocean that seethed with sea monsters, and every other Emperor-forsaken place that a man could imagine. When the Parliaments of Molikor had requested help against a foe bent on exterminating the Emperor’s presence on their world, the Iron Knights had seen not only a task to be achieved to keep the Ghoul Stars Frontier intact, but the chance to test themselves against Molikor’s own dangers.

Too often, thought N’Kalo, his brother Space Marines treated war as a sport. The fact that he could see beyond that had marked him out as commander material. That was why he had been sent here to Molikor, to oversee his eager battle-brothers as they killed every Eshkeen on the planet.

Mile after mile, the Eshkeen drew the Iron Knights in.

It was clearly their tactic. Even as he walked the paths laid out for him through the winding delta paths, N’Kalo knew that the enemy had laid on Molikor a trap to cut off, surround and butcher anyone the Imperium sent to fight them. He read the landscape like a book, like any Iron Knight would, and he saw the thinking behind every dammed stream and felled copse.

The easiest path into the delta forests and swamps, where the Eshkeen surely waited, passed through two towering forests separated by a stretch of swamp where the shallow waters rushed over the sodden grassland. The soft-edged shadows, cast by a sun hidden behind the overcast sky, rendered this gap dark and its footing uncertain. The ways on either side were deep and difficult to traverse, and N’Kalo’s magnoculars had picked out the log dams on the distant highlands that had helped flood those regions to force any attackers to take the path between the forests.

N’Kalo’s strikeforce reached the first shadows cast by the tallest trees. The forest was dense and tangled, an unmanaged mass of broken branches and diseased trunks, clustered around rocky hills that broke the surface of the marshes and trapped enough soil for the trees to grow. N’Kalo could see no sign of the Eshkeen, but he knew they were there as surely as if they were standing there in front of him.

‘You cannot trap a Space Marine,’ said Sergeant Borasi over the strikeforce’s vox-net. ‘You can shut yourself in a room with him, but it is not he who is trapped.’

N’Kalo halted the strikeforce at the head of the forest gap. On the other side was a stretch of open marsh, tempting for any force making for the coastal strongholds with nowhere for the enemy to use as an ambush. N’Kalo imagined the Parliamentarian commanders who had fallen for such a trick, before Molikor had requested the assistance of Imperial forces, and how they must have decided that it was acceptable to risk this one ambush spot to ensure they had a clear run at the enemy. How many of them had the Eshkeen killed, moulding the landscape into their ally? How many cavalry forces had wheeled in panic on just such a path, stuck with thousands of arrows and, later, riddled with bullets from captured guns, fired from an enemy so well hidden it seemed the forest itself wanted them dead?

‘Salik, Tchwayo, take the fore,’ voxed N’Kalo. ‘K’Jinn, cover the rear. Borasi, up front with me.’

The strikeforce took up position in the mouth of the trap. Borasi’s Devastators knelt, heavy bolters covering their front arc.

To an observer unfamiliar with the Space Marines, it would seem the Iron Knights were pausing in trepidation, making up their minds whether to continue down the narrow path laid out for them.

‘Open fire!’ ordered N’Kalo.

The heavy bolters hammered out a dreadful cacophony as their fire shredded the edge of the right-hand forest, splintering tree trunks and sending clouds of spinning shards through the air.

‘Advance!’ shouted N’Kalo, his voice just audible over the din. ‘Advance and engage!’

As the Devastators reloaded, the three Tactical squads ran for the forest, bolters spitting fire as they headed onwards. N’Kalo had his power sword in one hand and his plasma pistol in the other, and as the last splinters of tree trunk fell he caught the first sight of the enemy.

The Eshkeen were heavily scarified, and wore strips of coloured cloth and leather wrapped tight around them to ward off the spines and stingers of the forests. The ridges of scar tissue that ran across their faces and bodies were high enough to be pierced with bones and thorns, and spikes were implanted under the shorn skin of their scalps. They resembled the figures from some primitive world’s visions of hell. Perhaps they modelled themselves after Molikor’s own myths, delving into their images of damnation to put fear into Parliamentarian hearts.

The Eshkeen returned fire as best they could as they dragged the wounded and dead from what remained of the treeline. Autogun and lasgun fire spattered down at the Iron Knights, hissing in the damp ground or ringing off ceramite. The Space Marines did not slow and headed straight for the enemy.

The ambush plan relied on the Space Marines staying in the open, thinking themselves unable to make any headway through the forest. Unfortunately for the Eshkeen, that plan, which would work horrendously well against the armies of the Parliamentarians, fell apart when confronted with an armoured Space Marine whose weight and strength could force him through the forest as fast as he moved in the open. Squad Salik reached the trees first and they did not slow down, shouldering their way between the tree trunks, rotten wood crumbling under their weight. The Eshkeen screamed war-cries as the Iron Knights were among them, streams of bolter fire criss-crossing through the forest and slicing Eshkeen in half.

N’Kalo felt, in spite of himself, a faint disappointment. None of the Eshkeen would get close enough for him to use his power sword. Already Squad Tchwayo were into the rapidly thinning forest. Men were dying among the twisted roots and falling tree trunks. N’Kalo would not take any heads today.

N’Kalo himself had reached the trees. Bodies lay twisted and broken among the fallen branches. One was still alive, moaning as he tried to force himself to his feet, apparently ignorant of the fact he had lost one of his arms at the elbow. Others had huge ragged holes in their torsos, cut down by bolter fire aimed at the central mass. Another had the side of his head crushed by a bolter stock. N’Kalo stepped over them, glancing around for targets as Borasi and K’Jinn advanced behind him.

Suddenly, N’Kalo could not hear the heavy footsteps and bolter fire of the battle-brothers behind him. He looked back, not wanting to slow his own advance, but he could not see them.

‘Squads report!’ said N’Kalo into the vox. Blank static was the only reply. ‘Report!’ he repeated, but got nothing.

The forest was seething. It was alive. The Eshkeen were barely recognisable as humans now, slipping in and out of tree trunks, their flesh merging with the mossy wood. They slithered along the ground like snakes, limbs as flexible as liquid, and slid into the ground before N’Kalo could take aim. They flitted overhead, birds on the wing.

‘What witchcraft is this?’ demanded N’Kalo. His power sword hummed into life and he slashed about him, felling the trees on either side as he pushed on. ‘A Space Marine fears not such devilry! He knows no fear!’

The forest warped around him. Trees bowed in and hands reached out of the earth to snare his ankles. N’Kalo fired at movement, his plasma pistol boring a glowing orange channel through the foliage, but he could not tell if he had hit anything. Everywhere he cut left and right, forging on through the path he hacked. He called for his battle-brothers, but there was no reply. Faces were leering from the trees now, blood welling up from the ground. The sky, where he glimpsed it through the writhing branches overhead, seemed blistered and burned, as if some malignant energy was forcing its way down towards him.

N’Kalo slammed into an obstacle that did not give way to his weight. He stumbled back a pace and saw another horror. A Space Marine from the waist up, a mutated monstrosity below, insectoid legs tipped with vicious talons, reared up to spear N’Kalo’s torso. The Space Marine was no iron Knight – his armour was painted purple, with a gilded chalice on one shoulder pad, and the high aegis collar of a Librarian.

N’Kalo slashed at the apparition with his sword. The mutant brought up the haft of an ornate axe to turn the blow aside. Without seeming to move the mutant was upon N’Kalo, its weight bearing down on him, legs forcing him back onto one knee. One insect leg snared his sword arm and the other batted his plasma pistol aside.

The forest was shifting again, this time back to normal. N’Kalo could hear his battle-brothers’ voices filling the vox-net.

‘Fall back!’ came K’Jinn’s voice. ‘Regroup at the far side!’

‘I have brothers down!’ shouted Salik. ‘Forming defensive!’ Bolter fire hammered away over the vox-net, volley and counter-volley shearing through the trees.

The mutant kicked N’Kalo’s sword aside.

‘What are you?’ gasped N’Kalo. He struggled to get free, but the mutant was stronger even than a Space Marine.

‘I am the truth,’ replied Sarpedon.

The fortresses of the Eshkeen were cunningly wrought so as to be invisible from the air. The finest siege-wrights of the Imperium could not have strung out fortifications of wooden stakes and pit traps with such subtlety, seeding the approaches to the dense coastal forests so that attackers on foot would find their numbers thinned out well before they came within bowshot of the fortress walls. The fortresses themselves were built on two levels, the first hidden trenches and murder-holes on the ground, the second walkways and battlements in the trees overhead. The canopy was thick enough to hide them, and the short distances between them were made deadly with tangles of cured razorvine, layers of dried earth concealing stretches of sucking mud, and even nests of forest predators herded into position by the Eshkeen. Two Parliamentarian forces had driven this far into Eshkeen territory and none of them had been seen again, save for a couple of messengers permitted to live so they could explain that the Eshkeen were not impressed by the glittering cavalry regiments and sumptuous banners of the Parliamentarian armies.

The fortresses backed against the sea, although it was difficult to tell where the sea began. Mangroves formed layers of root canopy over the murky waters, infested with Eshkeen fishermen who found their harpoons were as adept at picking off soldiers wading out of landing boats as they were at spearing fish. The shallow waters and hidden reefs were enough to dissuade all but the most glory-hungry admiral from attempting a landing there. Unfortunately for the Parliamentarians they had once possessed such an admiral, whose ships now lay a few hundred metres from the shore where they had foundered, their men trapped there for months before starvation and Eshkeen snipers had seen to the last of them.

These defences, as formidable as they were, would not have stopped a force of Space Marines determined to enact justice on the Eshkeen. The Iron Knights, however, had not been given that chance.

The first N’Kalo saw of the Eshkeen stronghold was a ceiling of wooden planks and plaited vines. He struggled to move and found that he was not bound. He was high up in the air, the structure around him built into the thick, gnarled trunks of the mangroves. The humid air had a faint tang of decay, the smell of fallen plant matter turning to watery sludge, mixed in with the salt breeze off the sea. Eshkeen were everywhere at watch, eerily still as they scanned the approaches with their bows or guns to hand. N’Kalo saw, for the first time, their women and children. Some of the sentries were women, and a gaggle of children crouched in a doorway watching N’Kalo with a mix of fascination and fear. They were scrawny in a way that only growing up outside civilisation could explain, tough and sinewy, with painted skin echoing the scarring of their elders.

N’Kalo sat up. The children squealed and scattered. He was in a barracks or communal living space, full of empty beds. He could not see his weapons, but his armour had been left on.

He touched a gauntlet to his face as he realised his helmet had been removed. No wonder the children had fled. The burns he had suffered long ago, which he had chosen to hide under the knightly helm of his Chapter’s commanders, must have made him look even more of a monster than any other Space Marine.

‘Commander N’Kalo,’ said a too-familiar voice. N’Kalo jumped to his feet as the mutant from the forest entered.

‘Where am I? What of my brothers?’ demanded N’Kalo.

‘They are safe. I cannot permit them their liberty yet. They will go free soon, as will you.’

The mutant Space Marine was armed with his power axe and a bolt pistol, and N’Kalo had not been a match for him when he had his power sword. Unarmed, he did not fancy his chances against the mutant. Better to talk and wait for the right time than to throw his life away trying to fight here, when he was bound to fail. ‘And you did not answer my question. What are you?’

The mutant shrugged. It was seemingly too human a gesture for such a grotesque creature. ‘I am a Space Marine, like you. Well, not exactly like you.’

‘You are a witch.’

‘I am, if you prefer that term. I am Librarian and Chapter Master Sarpedon of the Soul Drinkers. And we are similar in more than just bearing the arms of the Adeptus Astartes. We are both, Commander N’Kalo, students of justice as much as of war.’

‘Justice? My brothers have fallen at your hand!’

‘Fallen, but not dead. My Apothecary is seeing to them. Two have bolter wounds and another was felled by a chainsword. Though they will not fight for a while, the three will survive. They are being held at ground level, below us, watched over by my battle-brothers. Sergeant Borasi gave us a great deal of trouble. He should be commended for his spirit, misplaced though it is. He owes us several broken bones.’

N’Kalo had heard of the Soul Drinkers. Like the Iron Knights, they were successors to the Imperial Fists, with Rogal Dorn as their Primarch. N’Kalo had never met any of the Soul Drinkers but he recalled they were famed for their prowess in boarding actions and that they had won laurels during the battle for the Ecclesiarchal Palace during the Wars of Apostasy. N’Kalo and Sarpedon should have been brothers, not just as Space Marines but as sons of Dorn.

‘Why do you oppose us?’ said N’Kalo. ‘We are here doing the Emperor’s will!’

‘The Imperium’s will,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘Not the Emperor’s.’

‘And I suppose you, a mutant, one who has raised arms against my brethren, is the one doing the Emperor’s will?’

‘Looking at it that way,’ said Sarpedon, ‘I can understand your doubts. I do not believe, however, that you know the full story of what is happening on Molikor.’

‘And you are going to tell me?’ spat N’Kalo.

‘No. I am going to show you.’

N’Kalo saw his brothers guarded by a ring of Soul Drinkers. The Iron Knights had been disarmed but, as Sarpedon had said, few of them were hurt. A Soul Drinkers Apothecary was operating on the wounded leg of one sedated Iron Knight – all the rest were conscious and, led by Borasi, started up a chorus of plaudits for their commander and insults hurled at Sarpedon as soon as they saw N’Kalo. A couple of the other Soul Drinkers were mutants, although not as dramatically malformed as Sarpedon. One had an enormous mutated hand, and N’Kalo wondered what other mutations were hidden beneath their armour.

It was a strange feeling to be led, not quite a captive and not quite an equal, through the Eshkeen forest by Sarpedon. N’Kalo’s soldierly mind sized up every chance to attack Sarpedon, drag him down to the ground or stab him in the back with a fortuitous weapon snatched from a nearby Eshkeen, but Sarpedon had his own warrior instinct and every opportunity was gone before it began. If he had a weapon, N’Kalo thought, he could kill Sarpedon and, if not complete his mission, at least rid the Imperium of this enemy – but even with a bolter or a power sword in his hands, could he beat Sarpedon when he had been defeated before?

The Eshkeen watched curiously as N’Kalo moved through their domain. They walked paths almost hidden in the forest, avoiding traps and dead ends sown liberally throughout the forest. In places N’Kalo could see the waters of the ocean between the roots underfoot, and glimpse Eshkeen walking there, too, wading through the waters to fish or keep watch over the coastal approaches. In other places the ground underfoot was solid, with tunnels and bunkers dug into it. The Eshkeen themselves wore patchworks of body armour and scraps of captured uniform, the most colourful belonging to those who looked the most experienced and deadly. The right to sport the captured garb of the enemy was evidently a privilege that had to be earned.

In the heart of the stronghold was a fortification of stone instead of wood, concentric circles of jagged battlements forming a huge granite maw around a pit in the centre. Sarpedon followed a complex path through the fortifications, leading N’Kalo through them even though he could probably have scrambled over them with ease thanks to his arachnid limbs. The trees did not grow here so an artificial canopy had been stretched out overhead, a lattice of vines and ropes woven with leaves, to keep it hidden. There were no Eshkeen keeping watch among the fortifications, but many of them had gathered in the trees around the clearing to watch the two Space Marines descending to the pit.

‘Like you,’ said Sarpedon, ‘we heeded the distress call from the Parliaments of Molikor. But we have learned to be circumspect. A little more suspicious, perhaps, of our own Emperor-fearing citizens. We arrived here without informing the Parliaments of our presence, and spoke instead to the Eshkeen. When we hear only one side of the story, I find we inevitably miss out on the more interesting half.’

The pit was a shaft lined with carved stones, forming a spiral frieze winding down into the darkness. The frieze depicted an endless tangle of human bodies, contorted and wounded, missing limbs or eyes, faces drawn in pain. The Eshkeen who had sculpted it, countless generations ago, had used a stylised technique that removed the subtleties of the human form and left only the pain. Winding wooden stairs provided a way down into the shaft.

‘When Imperial settlers were brought to Molikor,’ explained Sarpedon as he and N’Kalo descended the shaft, ‘they sent out explorers to tame the marshland and forge a path to the ocean. They hoped to build a port on this coast and spread to the planet’s other continents. They never managed it, mainly because the land was too marshy and the Eshkeen rather unfriendly. But one of them did find this.’

N’Kalo made note of Sarpedon’s words with one half of his mind. The other half was trying to work out how he could turn on Sarpedon. They were alone now, and Sarpedon’s fellow Soul Drinkers could not come to his aid. If N’Kalo got behind Sarpedon, and if he was quick enough, he could throw Sarpedon off the staircase down the shaft. But the fall would not be guaranteed to kill him – indeed, N’Kalo could now see the bottom of the shaft strewn with leaves and broken branches, and a Space Marine would barely be inconvenienced by the distance. He could grab Sarpedon’s neck in a choke, but his aegis collar would make that difficult and besides, a Space Marine could go a long time before his three lungs gave out. By then Sarpedon could have climbed up the shaft and brought N’Kalo to the Soul Drinkers to face retribution.

And perhaps most importantly, N’Kalo felt a truth in Sarpedon’s words. N’Kalo wanted to know what was hidden down here, what could cause a Space Marine, even a renegade one, to fight his brothers. So he held back and followed as Sarpedon reached the bottom of the shaft and headed down a tunnel that led away to one side.

This tunnel was also carved with images. Eyes and hands covered the walls, symbols of watching and warding. N’Kalo could hear, on the hot, damp breeze washing over him from the far end of the tunnel, the reedy strains of voices. They were screaming, hundreds of them, the sounds overlapping like the threads of a tapestry.

A cavern opened up ahead, wet stone lit from beneath by a blood-red glow. The screaming got louder. N’Kalo tensed, unsure of what was ahead, one part of his brain still watching for a drop in Sarpedon’s guard.

‘Molikor,’ said Sarpedon, ‘has a curious relationship with its dead.’

The tunnel reached the threshold of a sudden drop. Beyond it was a cavern, as vast as an ocean, filled almost to the level of the tunnel entrance by a sea of writhing bodies.

N’Kalo was all but stunned by his first sight of it. The awfulness of it, the impossibility, seemed intent on prying his mind from his senses. The bodies were naked, men and women, all ages, the whole spectrum of shapes, sizes and skin tones. The glow was coming from their eyes, and from the wounds that wept bloody and fresh in their bodies. Many bore the scarring of the Eshkeen but there were countless others, from dozens of cultures.

‘Who are they?’ said N’Kalo.

‘Everyone who has ever died on Molikor,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘No one knows how far down it goes. When you die on Molikor, your body decays and is absorbed by the earth. Then it reforms here, vomited back up by the planet. Here they are, everyone this world has claimed since the Age of Strife.’

‘Why… why are you showing me this?’ said N’Kalo.

Sarpedon unholstered his bolt pistol. For a moment N’Kalo thought the Soul Drinker would turn on him, but instead Sarpedon held it handle-first towards N’Kalo. ‘Because I could not expect you to just take my word for it,’ said Sarpedon. ‘And besides, I haven’t shown you anything yet.’

The bodies heaved up, like a breaking wave. N’Kalo barely had time to close his hand around the bolt pistol before they were surging around him, a terrible flood of gasping limbs. N’Kalo saw they were not corpses, nor alive, but something else, reborn as they had been at the moment of death and filled with the same emotions – fear, anger, abandonment. Their screams were wordless torrents of pain. One wrapped its arms around N’Kalo, trying to force his head down – N’Kalo blasted it apart with a shot to the upper chest and it flowed past him, reforming in a burst of blood-coloured light.

Sarpedon grabbed N’Kalo’s free wrist. ‘Follow,’ he shouted above the screaming, and hauled N’Kalo off the edge of the drop and into the cavern.

It took a long time for the two Space Marines to forge their way through the dead of Molikor. Sarpedon’s arachnid limbs proved adept at opening up a tunnel through the writhing bodies, and their path was lit by the red glow of whatever energy animated these echoes of the dead. The screaming was muffled now, like the crashing of a distant ocean, with the occasional shriek reaching through. N’Kalo followed as Sarpedon burrowed on, winding a path downwards. N’Kalo contemplated shooting him with his own bolt pistol, but then he would be trapped in this ocean of bodies and he did not know if he would be able to climb out of it. And besides, he wanted to know what Sarpedon had to show him. That curiosity was a human emotion, not that of a Space Marine, but nevertheless it gripped N’Kalo now.

Sarpedon pulled back a final veil of bodies and revealed an opening, like an abscess, in the mass. It had formed around a spike of stone, a stalagmite, to which was chained another body.

This body was that of a male Imperial citizen, N’Kalo could tell that at first glance. He had a glowing, raw hole over one eye where a bionic had once been implanted, and the Imperial aquila had been tattooed on one shoulder. He was the only one of Molikor’s dead that N’Kalo had seen who was restrained in this way.

‘This,’ said Sarpedon, ‘is Manter Thyll. He was sent by the Parliaments of Molikor to explore the delta marshlands. He found the Eshkeen and bargained his way into the pit, to see what they were so intent on protecting. They thought when he saw this place, he would treat its protection as a sacred undertaking just like they did. But they were wrong.’

Sarpedon took a data-slate from the belt of his armour. N’Kalo hadn’t noticed it before, since his attention had been focussed on Sarpedon’s abhorrent mutations to the exclusion of such a detail.

‘This is the report he sent back to the Parliaments,’ said Sarpedon.

The image was of poor quality, only just recognisable as the face of the man chained to the rock. In life, Manter Thyll had combined an explorer’s ruggedness with a gentlemanly façade, his well-weathered face surmounted by a powdered periwig.

‘–the Eshkeen had guarded it for generations, my lords. And though at first appearance it was a horrible sight, yet upon closer examination and the questioning of my Eshkeen hosts I came to understand it is the greatest treasure this world possesses. They are not living beings, you see, but they are not dead. They do not age, they do not tire. They simply exist. Think, my lords! Think what a resource they could be! An endless source of brute labour! If they can be trained then all is well, if not then a simple system of electronics and interfaces would suffice to make them useful. I believe that the dead of Molikor are the most potent natural resource on this entire–’

Sarpedon paused the recording. N’Kalo stared dumbly for a few seconds at Thyll’s image, then at the man’s face.

‘He came back to bargain with the Eshkeen for access to the pit,’ said Sarpedon. ‘They knew what he wanted by then. They killed him.’

‘Did they chain his body here?’ said N’Kalo.

‘No. I did, so that I could show it to someone like you. What Thyll and the Parliamentarians did not realise, but what the Eshkeen have known for thousands of years, is that power like this cannot be tapped without consequences. The veil between realspace and the warp is thin here. The emotions of the dying find form in the warp and are cast back out into this pit. The ancestors of Molikor’s tribes knew it, and they sent their best warriors to guard the pit. They grew to be the Eshkeen. When the Imperium settled Molikor, the Parliamentarians learned of the pit and they decided they wanted it for themselves, without having any idea what it truly was.’

Sarpedon began to tear at the mass again, opening a path back up towards the surface. N’Kalo could only follow, conflicting emotions coursing through him. The immensity of what Sarpedon was saying, the concept of a world that regurgitated its dead as these mindless things, the claim that the Parliamentarians were the aggressors and that the Eshkeen were the only thing standing between Molikor and damnation – it weighed on him, and would not sit straight in his mind. Everything N’Kalo had believed about Molikor, everything he had assumed, was wrong.

The First Parliament of Molikor, the Father of Power, the Imperial Seat, the Font of Majesty, towered over the assembled councillors like a second set of heavens. The dome of the First Parliament was painted to resemble a sky, dramatic clouds backlit by golden sunlight echoing fanciful images of Terra’s own glories. The members of the First Parliament, drawn from the lesser parliaments of Molikor’s cities, were resplendent in the uniforms of the planet’s many militaries or the finery of their mercantile houses, wearing the symbol of the aquila to proclaim their loyalty to the Imperium.

Three thousand men and women were gathered beneath the First Parliament’s dome, the centremost place taken by Lord Speaker Vannarian Wrann. Wrann, as the mouthpiece of the First Parliament, was recognised as Molikor’s Imperial Governor. He was a sturdy and squat man, ermine-trimmed robes hanging off wide shoulders. He wore the massive gilded chain of his office around where his neck would have been had one existed between his barrel chest and shaven, glowering lump of a head. On the chain hung a silver aquila studded with diamonds and rubies, to match the fat gemstones on the rings he wore on his stubby fingers.

‘Men and women of the First Parliament!’ shouted Wrann. ‘You sons and daughters of the Imperial Will! We hereby recognise Commander N’Kalo of the Iron Knights!’

N’Kalo made his way down the aisle towards the centre of the dome. Every eye followed him. Jaded as they were by every honour and beautification Molikor could place before them, the sight of a Space Marine was something new to them. Those closest shuddered in fear as N’Kalo walked past, for even in his knightly armour with its crests and laurels there was no mistaking that he was fundamentally a killing machine.

‘Honoured councillors of Molikor,’ began N’Kalo as he approached Wrann. ‘Many thanks for receiving me to the heart of your government. The Iron Knights, as you do, claim the will of the Emperor as their warrant to arms, and in this we are brethren beneath His sight.’

‘You are welcomed, Commander N’Kalo, and your brother Space Marines are granted all honours it is the First Parliament’s right to bestow. Truly you stand before us as saviours of our people, as deliverers of our citizens from the threats that have so gravely beset us.’ Wrann’s words were met with polite applause from the First Parliament’s members. ‘Do you come here to tell us that the rebellion has been quashed?’ he continued. ‘That the hateful Eshkeen will no longer plague our lands with their savagery, and that the Emperor’s rule shall continue on Molikor?’

N’Kalo removed his helm. In spite of the need to keep up appearances, many councillors could not help grimacing or even turning away at the sight of N’Kalo’s burned face, its skin here blackened, there deformed like wax that had melted and recooled, and elsewhere missing entirely.

‘No, Lord Speaker,’ he said. ‘I have not.’

His words were met with silence. Those councillors who did not stare in grim fascination at N’Kalo’s face glanced uneasily between their neighbours.

‘Commander?’ said Wrann. ‘Pray, explain yourself.’

‘I have seen the pit,’ said N’Kalo. ‘I have heard the words of Manter Thyll. When my Iron Knights answered the call for intervention from this Parliament, they did so without critical thought, without exploring first the history of this world and the true nature of its conflicts. Ours is the way of action, not contemplation. But we were forced into examining Molikor by allies of the Eshkeen, who also responded to your pleas for assistance, but to find out the truth, not merely destroy the Eshkeen as you desired.’

‘Of what pit do you speak?’ demanded Wrann. ‘And this Manter Thyll? We know nothing of–’

‘Do not lie to me!’ shouted N’Kalo. The councillors sitting closest to him tried to scramble away, ending up on one another’s laps to put some distance between them and the angry Space Marine. ‘I sought to understand for myself. I went to the historical archives in Molik Tertiam. Yes, to that place you thought hidden from the eyes of outsiders! My battle-brothers stormed the estate of Horse Marshal Konigen, that hero of your history, and demanded of him the truth of why he first led his armies into the delta lands! We know the truth, my brothers and I. The war on Molikor is not about an uprising by the Eshkeen. It is about your desire to exploit Molikor’s dead as labour for your mines and shipyards! It is about the wealth they can bring you! It is about your willingness to exploit the powers bleeding from the warp, and the Eshkeen’s determination to prevent you from committing such a sin!’

‘Then what would you have us do?’ shouted Wrann. ‘This frontier hangs by a thread! Without the war materiel that such labour could produce, we will never hold the Ghoul Stars! Humanity can barely survive out here as it is! Would you have us enslave our own? Would you have us grind our own hands to bone?’

‘No,’ replied N’Kalo calmly. ‘I would have you leave.’

The Judgement Upon Garadan made little concession to the embellishment and glorification that endowed many other Adeptus Astartes strike cruisers. It was every inch a warship, all riveted iron and hard, brutal lines, and as it hung in orbit over Molikor it seemed to glower down at the clouded planet. The lion-head crest, mounted above the prow like heraldry on a feudal knight’s helm, was the sole concession to appearances.

Inside, the Judgement was much the same, with little to suggest the glorious history the Iron Knights brought with them. N’Kalo conducted most of his ship’s business from the monastic cell in which he trained and meditated when his flag-captain did not require him on the bridge. The pict screen mounted on one wall showed a close-up of the space above Molikor’s main spaceport. N’Kalo watched as a flock of merchant and cargo ships drifted up from the cloud cover, a shower of silvery sparks. On those ships was the Imperial population of Molikor, among them the Parliamentarian leaders. Those leaders had, less than three days ago, received an ivory scroll case containing orders to evacuate their planet on pain of destruction. Those orders were signed with a single ‘I’, which gave them an authority within the Imperium second only to the word of the God-Emperor Himself.

Inside the scroll case had also been a string of rosarius beads. It was a traditional message. If you defy these orders, they implied, then use these beads to pray, for prayer is your only hope of deliverance.

Events moved slowly in space, given the vast distances involved. The pict screen flicked between the views of the fleeing Parliamentarian ships, and the single vessel, its livery gold and black, that drifted in from its concealed observation position behind one of Molikor’s moons. This ship, of which N’Kalo did not know the name, had arrived at Molikor so quickly it must have possessed archeotech or even xenos drives to have made so rapid a journey through the warp.

It was a vessel of the Inquisition. N’Kalo needed no communications with the craft to know that. His flag-captain had hailed it anyway and, as expected, there had been no reply. The Adeptus Astartes had done their job on Molikor. Now the Inquisition took over, and they answered to no one.

N’Kalo had seen quarantine orders enforced before. He hoped that everyone had got off Molikor safely. Though he had little love for the Parliamentarians, once the lead conspirators had been weeded out those who remained would be largely blameless Imperial citizens. The Inquisition would quarantine the world, destroy the spaceport and let it be known that it was forbidden thanks to the bizarre warp disturbance beneath its crust that caused it to spew its dead out as mindless facsimiles. The Parliamentarians who had sought to exploit the pit would be tried, questioned and probably executed for dabbling so willingly in matters of the warp. N’Kalo did not think much about their fates. Worse things happened to better people with every moment in the Imperium. He would not waste his thoughts on them. This was a grim business, but he had faith that this was the way it had to be.

The Soul Drinkers did not have faith, not in the Imperium. Perhaps that was understandable, thought N’Kalo. He had seen the same things they had, the same brutality and the spiteful randomness of how the fortunes of the Imperium were parcelled out. He had not strayed beyond the Imperial line – he had informed the Inquisition of the threat on Molikor, after all – but he was forced to wonder, considering the recent events there in his cell, whether he would have to have seen many more injustices to end up renegades like the Soul Drinkers.

‘Commander N’Kalo,’ came a vox from the flag-captain. ‘We are receiving a communication, tagged for you by name.’

‘Send it,’ said N’Kalo.

‘Greetings, commander,’ said a voice that, until a short time ago, had been an unfamiliar one reaching N’Kalo’s ears through the gunfire and crunching branches of the forest gap.

‘Sarpedon,’ said N’Kalo. ‘I had not expected you to still be around. You should be warned that the Inquisition would dearly love to listen in.’

‘My ship has communications even the Inquisition cannot intercept in a hurry,’ replied Sarpedon. His voice was transmitted in real time, meaning the Soul Drinkers and their ship had to be close by. ‘I wanted to thank you for doing the right thing by Molikor and the Eshkeen. You could have followed the Imperial line, but you did not. That takes something beyond mere bravery.’

‘I did not turn in the Parliaments of Molikor to garner thanks,’ replied N’Kalo. ‘I did it because it had to be done. The moral threat on that world could not have been left unchecked. But I am glad that I was not the instrument of injustice and so I should pay thanks to you, for showing me all the paths I might take.’

‘And yet I suspect that your gratitude will not prevent you from turning in a renegade and a mutant like myself,’ said Sarpedon, ‘and so I must leave here.’

‘I concur, Sarpedon. That would be wise. I have one question before you go.’

‘Speak it.’

‘What happened to the Eshkeen?’

N’Kalo thought he heard a small chuckle. ‘Do not fear for them,’ said Sarpedon. ‘My Chapter possesses the means to transport them somewhere they can start anew, and where the Imperium will not rediscover them for a very long time.’

‘I see. For my sake it is best I leave it at that. Fare well, Sarpedon, and I shall pray that our paths do not cross, for I feel if they do I must fight to bring you in.’

‘I shall pray for that too, Commander N’Kalo. Emperor’s speed to you.’

The comm-channel went dead.

In the hours to follow, the scanners of the Judgement Upon Garadan detected the possible signature of a ship making a warp jump near the outlying worlds of the Molikor System. The signature suggested a ship far bigger than any Imperial craft, however, and one that seemed dark and shadowy as if cloaked by some stealth system beyond Imperial technology. N’Kalo did not challenge his flag-captain when the event was logged and dismissed as a sensor error, and the Soul Drinkers vanished from the Chapter history of the Iron Knights.

Action & Consequence

Sarah Cawkwell

Vincit Qui Patitur.

The words of the company motto were bold and confident, standing out in silver lettering on the midnight black of the Eighth Company’s war banner. He conquers who endures.

On board the strike cruiser Silver Arrow, the chapel was the same as many thousands of other such chapels scattered throughout the Space Marine ships of the Imperium. A quiet place of reflection, prayer and preparation, the battle-brothers of the Eighth Company all found their way here eventually prior to deployment. Some came, gave due deference to the statue of the God-Emperor and retreated.

Others lingered.

Within this cradle of ultimate faith, a warrior could assert his place in the universe. Within this sacred place, a warrior of the Imperium could come as close to knowing peace as he was ever likely to.

Gileas Ur’ten, a man rarely at peace, knelt at the front of the chapel. His dark hair fell forwards, framing his face as his head bowed in reverence. Softly, he recanted his own personal litanies of battle, paying particular care to those that honoured his forebears. Above his head, the company’s war banner was displayed proudly, pinned wide to display all the names written on it in tiny, delicate filigree script. Battle-brothers would gladly sit for hours to add a name to the banner. It was always considered to be an honour, never a duty.

Hundreds, even thousands of names were represented on the banner: brothers-in-arms he had fought alongside in his one hundred and twenty years of service, and still more names there of those he had never met, but whose deeds were legendary. His eyes lifted briefly and rested on the name of Captain Andreas Kulle, his own mentor and the only man who had initially believed the savage little boy from the south had possessed the potential to succeed. Kulle had long passed to the arms of the Emperor. But his name lived on, and as long as the banner remained, that would never change.

Whoever was chosen to bear the standard into battle was greatly honoured. Gileas had carried the relic many times over the campaigns of the last five years. He had held on to it with grim tenacity against seemingly overwhelming odds, and had always returned it. He was a valiant, fearless warrior whose own deeds on the battlefield were earning him a reputation that many envied and others watched with cautious uncertainty.

Gileas Ur’ten’s career had gone from strength to strength. The first recruit from the tribal people of Varsavia’s southern continent to achieve a sergeant’s rank, Gileas was stalwart and confident. He had led his squad for several years, and it was grudgingly acknowledged that they were amongst the best in the entire company. He was a charismatic man whose brothers followed him willingly and without question. Even the majority of his greatest antagonists had reluctantly accepted that his promotion to the rank of sergeant had been well earned.

And yet this was not a universal opinion. To others, Gileas was still considered a loose cannon, a Space Marine whose tempestuous nature and fiery spirit could not truly be trusted. A savage southerner whose instincts overruled his head on far too many occasions.

If Gileas was aware of the opinions of his brother Space Marines, he rarely – if ever – commented on them. He was, he had reasoned many years ago, who he was. He lived only to serve the Imperium and he would die in the line of duty. It was a reward he anticipated with the inherent pragmatism of all the Adeptus Astartes. He was loyal, honest and, as far as his superior officer was concerned, completely trustworthy. It was these qualities that had marked him out for the honour that had become his.

The death of Brother-Sergeant Oniker during the last campaign had left a void in the Eighth Company that many of the other company sergeants were eager to fill. The captain would need to nominate his chosen second-in-command, a role that Oniker had filled until his untimely death at the hands of the ork warboss Skullrencha. Each one of the sergeants had brought unique qualities to the table. The final decision, however, had gone to the company Prognosticator.

Shae Bast, Captain Meyoran’s advisor, had cast the runes. For long hours he had communed with and channelled the Emperor’s will. He had finally brought forth the Emperor’s decision, knowing that there would be unrest in the wake of the announcement. The captain had been completely satisfied with the choice of Gileas Ur’ten, but there were plenty amongst the Eighth Company with whom the decision did not sit comfortably. Indeed, there were rumblings about what was considered an ill-omened choice from other companies throughout the Chapter.

Gileas knew it well. Despite his own misgivings and barely understood concerns, he bore it all without comment, other than to take up the mantle of his new role with the same enthusiasm with which he approached everything. He looked now at the statue of the Emperor which stared impassively ahead, its gaze as cool as the stone from which it was carved. The solidity and permanence of the Emperor’s presence was a soothing balm to Gileas’s troubled heart, and he took quiet strength from it.

‘I am not disturbing you, I hope, brother-sergeant?’ The voice came from behind him, low and rumbling. Gileas raised his head and turned to take in the sight of his captain filling the chapel’s doorway.

‘Not at all, brother-captain.’ Gileas rocked back onto his bare heels. Whilst aboard the Silver Arrow and not in the training cages, most of the battle-brothers of the Eighth Company wore simple surplices and either soft leather sandals or chose to go barefoot. Gileas settled into a cross-legged sitting position and looked up expectantly.

With the quiet confidence that marked his every action, the captain strode into the chapel, crossing the short distance between the doors and the altar swiftly. Like most of the men under his command, Keile Meyoran was exceptionally huge – even for a genetically altered Space Marine. He kept his head and face shaved completely smooth, barring a long, thin-plaited black beard that served only to make him look even more aggressive. The years of honour tattoos that were painstakingly designed and worked into his face made him look at one and the same time both barbaric and mystical to those who did not understand the Silver Skulls’ tradition of marking themselves in such a way. They recruited from worlds other than Varsavia, but all were introduced to the planet’s tradition of tattooing on their induction into the Chapter.

Meyoran joined Gileas at the altar and looked up wordlessly at the statue of the Emperor. His lips moved in a silent prayer and he placed his right hand on the figure. Gileas watched his captain without comment until the older warrior turned to study him thoughtfully.

‘Are your preparations complete, brother?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Gileas made a move to get to his feet, but Meyoran held up a hand, forestalling him.

‘There is no need for me to interrupt you for long, Gileas. I merely wanted to bring you a message. Your presence is greatly desired in the strategium. We will translate in-system in less than four hours – and your experience in urban warfare will prove invaluable to us.’ His lips curled upwards into a smile at the look on Gileas’s face. ‘Is this invitation such a surprise to you, brother?’

‘Surprised? No, sir.’ As the youngest sergeant in the company, he had rarely been invited to attend a war meeting in the strategium – and never a direct invitation from the company captain. ‘Not surprised, merely… honoured.’

Gileas had never been a good liar, and given the way the tips of his ears turned slightly pink where they were visible beneath his unruly dark curls, it seemed that he was unlikely to start grasping the concept now. Meyoran’s smile broadened and he reached down and clasped the younger warrior’s shoulder.

‘You will be fine, Gileas,’ he said, quietly. ‘I have every faith in your ability to put your personal stamp on this position. I know that you have misgivings. I know also that some have questioned your own suitability for this role. You have commanded – what is it? Twenty missions as sergeant?’

‘Twenty-five, sir.’ Such pride in his voice. Only twenty-five missions. Practically a novice.

Meyoran nodded. ‘Twenty-five missions. Successful missions.’ The flicker of a smile tweaked the captain’s lips, then he resumed his serious expression. ‘But Gileas, whatever your misgivings may be… when we deploy, there will be no opportunity to dwell on them. I need to know that your head is in the right place. I need to know that your heart and mind are focussed on the mission.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Gileas, a faint tone of indignation coming into his voice. ‘I am fully prepared and I will not let you down.’ This time, he was not lying.

‘No,’ mused Meyoran, touching his hand to the statue of the Emperor once again. ‘No, I don’t believe you will, lad.’

It will be the actions of the rest of my company that worry me, he added silently.

Less than four hours later, Gileas found himself in an environment as far removed from the peace of the chapel as could possibly be imagined. The familiar, almost comforting roar of the retro-jets filled his aural senses as the drop-pod punched through the haze of cloud lying in a perpetual gloom over the planet. Pressed down hard in his seat by the harness, the sergeant put a hand to the hilt of his chainsword and cast a glance around the pod’s interior.

His companions were all murmuring pre-battle litanies, apart from Theoderyk the Techmarine, whose voice soared loudly above the others. His litanies were fervently directed at the machine-spirits that guided them to their destination. Gileas allowed his own thoughts to stray to that particular outcome. There was a great battle to be had at the end of this drop and the thought of it filled his veins with fire.

He blink-clicked through final system checks, absorbing the vast quantities of scrolling information and runes that flashed before his eyes. His jump pack was functioning well and he had lovingly stripped and cleaned his weapons in the hours before they had deployed. He was as ready as he was likely to be.

The potential pressures of additional responsibility had not really bothered him. Like all the Silver Skulls, he was an enormously pragmatic man. He knew that he had the competence and the training to handle whatever these enemies could throw at him and he also knew that on the field of battle, the men under his command would obey his orders unquestioningly. Whatever his battle-brothers might have thought of him off the field of war was inconsequential.

Such confidence came easily. Certainty in those thoughts did not.

‘Prepare for impact.’ Theoderyk’s voice crackled across the vox and Gileas, along with the others on board, murmured their acquiescence. The sergeant’s hand closed still more tightly around the hilt of the chainsword and he offered up an impassioned prayer to the God-Emperor that this matter would be dealt with swiftly and without heavy losses. The Eighth Company was already low in numbers. It could not afford further deaths.

With enough force to completely flatten the remaining structures in this part of the already-devastated city, three drop-pods smashed into the landscape with deadly accuracy. Scant seconds later, the echo of release charges detonating resounded across the crater-pocked landscape, heralding the deployment of two dozen Silver Skulls. Each warrior was filled with righteous fury, ready to be unleashed against the xenos invaders who had made the fatal mistake of daring to set foot on Imperial soil, daring to commit the most heinous of transgressions.

Thumping the release button on his grav harness, Gileas was on his feet in seconds, sword in hand, ready for action. He gathered the others together and scanned the landing zone.

Gileas turned to the horizon, his auto-senses feeding critical information that might affect the performance of an Assault Marine’s jump pack. Wind speed. Humidity. All of these details and more were fed directly into his neural sensors. The auspex in Theoderyk’s hand picked up no life signs other than those of his fellow Space Marines – which was not what their intelligence had led them to believe.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten, report.’

Captain Meyoran’s voice came across the vox, announcing itself in Gileas’s ear as he led his men clear of the landing site. Three Thunderhawk gunships screamed overhead, heading towards the smouldering hive ruins to the east. A fledgling world under the protection of the Silver Skulls, Cartan was still in the earliest stages of colonisation. And the planet was already under threat.

‘Three pods down here, sir.’ Gileas scanned them swiftly. All had opened, releasing their passengers, including Brother Diomedes, one of the Chapter’s deeply venerated Dreadnoughts. The sight of the ancient lumbering towards him filled Gileas with even more fire than before. It would be a deep honour to serve alongside him.

‘Diomedes?’ Meyoran addressed the ancient directly.

‘Deployed and at your command,’ the Dreadnought responded, his voice mechanically altered by the body that housed one of the brightest and greatest warriors the Chapter had ever known.

‘No enemy contact,’ Gileas reported. ‘Intelligence suggested that the xenos had a temporary base here. If they did…’ He looked around him at the destruction caused by the arrival of three drop-pods. ‘…it was destroyed on our arrival.’

‘They move swiftly, sergeant. Be on your guard. Rendezvous as soon as possible at the coordinates I’m transmitting.’

Gileas turned to Theoderyk, designated the squad’s coordinator for the mission. The taciturn Techmarine, a silent yet dependable member of the company, gave an abrupt nod as he assimilated the stream of information. He pointed to the east. The servo-harness on his back hissed into life and the servo-arm ending in a plasma cutter came to the fore. With the harness, Theoderyk was easily half as big again as the giant Gileas. A huge, shaggy bear of a man, even without his Adeptus Astartes implants, Gileas would have been enormous.

Gileas surveyed the demolished remains of the outlying habs. Those who had worked here were undoubtedly long dead, or captured by the enemy. The burned-out husks of silos stood to one side of what had been a storage facility. The air, even filtered by their helmets, was rank with the scent of burning promethium and the chemical reek of weapons discharge. There had been fighting here recently.

Thoughtfully tapping the fingers of his free hand against the thigh of his power armour, Gileas turned to the Dreadnought standing motionless beside him.

‘Ancient one,’ he said, his voice filled with reverence.

‘Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten,’ the Dreadnought responded, the low rumble of his voice resonating deep in Gileas’s chest. ‘Your command?’

‘The last communication from Sergeant Kyaerus was less than fifteen hours ago and this was his given location,’ Gileas mused aloud. ‘I find it hard to believe that he has strayed too far from this position. I know him too well.’ The sergeant grinned. ‘I suspect he will already have met up with the captain. Nonetheless, we will scout this immediate area for any signs of activity. You take the east side. Report back with anything that you find.’

‘As you command,’ the Dreadnought acknowledged. ‘Thoroughness is essential. Wise words, Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten.’ With his seal of approval thus stamped, Diomedes left with a growl of machinery, the ground shaking under his tread.

Gileas watched the Dreadnought leave, its armoured form testament to the highest honour any of them could hope for. To serve, even in death… that was the ideal.

‘We missed whatever happened here, Gileas.’ One of the Reckoners, Gileas’s assault squad, marked by the red skull on his right pauldron, moved to stand beside him.

‘Maybe. But there are xenos involved. They are therefore not to be trusted.’ Gileas frowned beneath his helmet. ‘Keep your wits about you and your thumb on that activation stud, Reuben.’

Gileas signalled to the group to move out, scanning the horizon as he did so. As of yet, Theoderyk had reported no activity on the auspex. But the speed and cunning of the enemy was about to be proven. Bare moments later, the whine of engines filled the air.

Half a dozen vehicles came tearing into view and recognition was instant. Eldar reaver jetbikes. Fast-moving and deadly, they were swift and sure in their attack. Wickedly edged blades caught the light of the weak sun and glinted the briefest warning, but not soon enough to prevent Brother Lemuel losing an arm. A razor-sharp blade tore through his armour with ease.

For the next few seconds, all that mattered to the Silver Skulls were sounds. The bizarre, alien whine of the jetbikes, the rotating scream of Diomedes’s assault cannon as the Dreadnought pounded back to the scene and levelled the weapon at the enemy. There was the unified roar of chainswords thumbed into deadly life and the battle cries of the Silver Skulls as they launched themselves at their assailants.

‘It’s good to see you, Captain Meyoran.’

The voice belonged to Sergeant Kyaerus of the Tenth Company. Slender for a Space Marine, seeming more so against the oversized warriors of the Eighth Company, the Scout sergeant’s face, prematurely aged by the mass of burn scars that covered the whole left side, showed signs of early fatigue as he emerged from the cover of a half-destroyed building.

The captain considered the other warrior. ‘It’s good to be seen, sergeant.’ A mirthless smile flickered across his face. ‘Make your report.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Meyoran quietly approved of the sergeant’s stoicism, even in the face of his current situation. He gestured to his men to maintain a perimeter and to keep a watchful eye out for anything that moved.

Kyaerus reattached his bolt pistol to the mag-clamp on his thigh, taking advantage of the arrival of backup in order to afford himself a little less vigilance. His augmetic left eye whirred softly as he spoke, constantly adjusting to every nuance on the face of the captain.

‘In accordance with the Chapter Master’s instructions, I travelled to the Cartan Hive to gather the first batch of aspirants and to receive reports from the Governor regarding the state of the mining operations.’

Cartan V was rich in mineral deposits, and it had been this more than anything else that had made it a desirable place for settlement. The Silver Skulls themselves had overseen the relocation of the beleaguered citizens of a largely destroyed hive world – on the agreement that they could return at any point in the future to acquire new recruits.

Kyaerus continued. ‘During my conversations with the Governor, we received a report. A group of engineers were planning a detonation in order to construct a new minehead. They uncovered something else.’ Kyaerus’s mutilated face contorted in barely concealed rage. It was a look that Meyoran had come to know all too well in recent years. ‘And less than an hour after it was uncovered, the first attack was upon them.’

Meyoran scowled. ‘Eldar.’ A blunt statement of fact, not a question. The sheer depth of hatred in Kyaerus’s face engendered by the captain’s words spoke more than his reply did.

‘Aye, sir. Obviously my squad and I took a stand with the local military force out at the blast site. We found out very quickly what it was that they had uncovered.’ His hand clenched into a fist. ‘Only uncovering it wasn’t where they stopped. In their curiosity, they had raised it. The local militia were quickly depleted. They just weren’t prepared to deal with an incursion of this scale. And the eldar sent through a massed force. They have made several raids on the garrison, as you see.’ Kyaerus gestured around the ruined barracks before continuing.

‘They hit hard and fast. They’ve practically destroyed the hive. A large percentage of the population have made their way to the sub-levels and are seeking sanctuary there. Those people the raiders have found…’ He hesitated, made both angry and deeply regretful by the next bit of information.

‘Prisoners.’ The Adeptus Astartes standing just beside Meyoran, dressed in armour of cobalt-blue that marked him apart from most of the others, stepped forwards and spoke, filling in the pause. Prognosticator Bast’s voice was whisper-soft, and whenever his eyes passed over anybody, they got the feeling that they were being scrutinised very closely. ‘The xenos have rounded up living souls and have imprisoned them. Including our aspirants, yes sergeant?’

Kyaerus nodded, his face darkening with anger. Meyoran felt a hollow form in the base of his stomach. For the Silver Skulls, recruits were a precious commodity. To lose a batch to the hands of the eldar…

‘Your thoughts, Prognosticator?’ Meyoran finally shifted his gaze from the sergeant to the psyker. The two men had served side by side for decades and he deferred without question to the other’s judgement.

‘The artefact was presumably a webway portal?’ Bast directed the question at Kyaerus, who nodded. ‘It would be a reasonable hypothesis to presume that raiders probably attacked this planet at some point in its past. Uncovering the portal may have alerted them to an opportunity to do so again.’ The psyker shrugged his giant shoulders. ‘None of us truly understand the heathen technology of the webway.’

The Prognosticator reached up to remove his own helmet. The face that emerged was so lost in tattoos and tribal markings that it was hard to make out any specific features. Dark hair worn in tight braids was shot through with silver, but beyond that, it was impossible to approximate the Prognosticator’s age.

Cold eyes, so pale a shade of blue that they were almost entirely colourless, fixed on the sergeant, who held the gaze with cool confidence for a few moments before he wavered and looked away. A flicker of a smile played around the Prognosticator’s face and he enjoyed the moment of startled uncertainty that he lifted from the sergeant’s mind.

‘Whereabouts is the portal?’ Meyoran asked, snapping his helmet back on. ‘If that is the heart of the enemy, then that is where we will strike.’

‘To the south-west.’

The words came from the Prognosticator rather than the sergeant as Bast almost lazily took the answer from his mind. He was not a particularly cruel man, but he had always taken a cynical delight in reminding others of his psychic capabilities. He treated the sergeant to a slow smile before he hid his face once again behind the helmet. In the legends of Old Terra, Bast was the name the great people of Gypta had associated with cats – and Meyoran had always felt there was something faintly feline in Bast’s methods. He liked to play with his enemies before killing them, too.

‘The south-west,’ Kyaerus acknowledged. He tapped a data-slate. ‘All the coordinates and information I’ve gathered are there.’

‘Good work. Then we move out.’ Meyoran waved a hand and the Silver Skulls fell into practiced formation. Kyaerus also gestured, making signs with his fingers, and four hitherto unnoticed Scouts, young neophytes in carapace armour and armed with sniper rifles, appeared from various locations around the compound. Meyoran grinned his approval.

‘You’re training them well, sergeant. You will make a superb captain some day soon.’ Next to him, Bast turned slightly, considering Meyoran’s words.

Kyaerus inclined his head, accepting the compliment with a slight twist of his lips.

‘Let’s go and get our boys back.’

The thunderous report of the Dreadnought’s assault cannon filled the air as Brother Diomedes fired on the attacking reavers. The long, lean armoured bikes moved utilising the anti-grav technology that belonged to their race. Each one was piloted by a single rider armed with pistols that they fired with unerring accuracy at the Silver Skulls. Viciously sharp blades lined the vehicles and it was one of these that had taken Brother Lemuel’s arm from his body.

It took far more than losing a limb to stop a Space Marine though. His body was already working to close over the neat amputation. Lemuel had borne the worst of the pain with little more than a brief yell. He had lost his chainsword when the limb had been severed, but he merely levelled his bolt pistol and fired at the enemy instead.

Gileas blink-clicked through the runes scrolling in front of his eyes until it brought up Lemuel’s data. His systems were coping with the injury well, but he was far from optimal. There were so many combat narcotics and analgesics now coursing round his veins that his reaction time was gravely compromised.

‘Lemuel,’ he voxed. ‘Take a step back, brother. Leave this to us.’

‘I can still fight, brother-sergeant.’ Lemuel continued to fire on the bikes. which were presently turning for another attack. Diomedes paused briefly, scanning the half-dozen or so vehicles and determining vulnerable points. The massive assault cannon tracked the leading bike. Then the Dreadnought acted, concentrating his fire.

In a burst of blue flame, the bike detonated, throwing its eldar rider free and sending pieces of armour plate and blades in all directions. The burning xenos was thrown to the ground with an audible crump, the body twisted at an unnatural angle. The other bikes veered erratically, thrown off from their planned attack run by the sudden loss of the leader.

‘Squad Ur’ten, on me.’ Lemuel and his obstinate behaviour was not an issue. Lemuel was an Adeptus Astartes. He was bred and trained to purge the galaxy of all that was wrong, and to the Silver Skulls there was little that met the criteria so much as the eldar – particularly these pirates. Lemuel would either survive to fight another day with an augmetic limb, or he would die fighting in the Emperor’s service. Either outcome was ultimately satisfactory.

With a single burst of his assault cannon, Diomedes had already countered the surprise attack and Gileas would lead his squad as he led every mission he had commanded so far in his career. From the front.

The venerable ancient pounded forwards, his massive Dreadnought body shaking the ground under the Space Marines’ feet and cracking the ferro-crete. At one time, this blistered area would have seen the comings and goings of Imperial vessels, bringing supplies to the planet for the building of the hive, delivering people and resources and shipping out whatever had been mined. Now it was a ruin, a place that seemed far older and scarred than something so new had any right to be.

‘For the Emperor and Argentius!’ the war machine bellowed in his thunderous voice. ‘Do not suffer these abominations to live, brothers. We are Silver Skulls. We will prevail!’

‘We will prevail,’ the squad chorused, eager to engage the enemy.

For the tiniest fraction of time, a pause so brief that even Theoderyk could not have captured it on his exquisitely forged chronometer, there was silence. Anticipation. The calm before the storm.

And then the storm broke.

Complete pandemonium descended for several minutes. To the unfortunate xenos attackers, the rapid discipline and fearsome strength that their prey demonstrated meant that those few minutes seemed to stretch out beyond reason. Any advantage they may have had in altitude was reduced by the fact that they had underestimated the fighting prowess of nearly half an Assault company. Even as Gileas fired his jump pack into life, all around him other Silver Skulls were rising to meet their enemies in mid-air.

With Diomedes present, the cleansing of this filth was a matter of course for the Silver Skulls. They entered the fray with customary enthusiasm. Their reputation as a barbaric fighting force was not without reason. They were brutal, efficient warriors who were not adverse to using whatever tactics were necessary to win a fight. This was said of the entire Chapter, but bore particular relevance to the Eighth Company.

Three more eldar riders were unseated by the sudden momentum of fully armoured Silver Skulls launching past them and grabbing them from the bikes. Without riders, the machines careened haphazardly. One struck the ground and exploded in a burst of whickering shrapnel. The others collided in mid-air and similarly detonated. More heat and smoke billowed out in plumes. The remaining two riders turned their bikes into the smog, leaving nothing but contrails in their wake. The warriors who had felled the eldar plummeted downwards with their victims, driving them to the floor with a satisfying crack of vertebrae.

Gileas cast a brief glance at the rune on the bottom left of his display, blinking rapidly to cycle the lenses in his helmet, enabling him to see more effectively through the smoke. The fires from the destroyed jetbikes raged on, continuing to spew ash and cinders into the air.

The cacophony of the past few minutes ebbed back to the soft thrum of chainswords on low power. There were still two reavers out there and the destruction of their compatriots meant that they were temporarily masked in the resultant smoke.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten, report,’ Meyoran voxed. Gileas glanced around. Of the twenty-four warriors who had exited the drop-pods, there were still twenty-two standing. One was dead, the other injured.

‘Eldar raiders, sir,’ he responded. ‘On jetbikes. They struck without warning.’

‘Dead?’

‘Job almost complete, sir. Two left out there. I’m almost certain that–’

With a sudden, screaming whine, one of the remaining jetbikes burst out of the smoke, heading straight for Gileas’s broad-shouldered back. Without so much as turning around, the Assault Marine thumbed his chainsword back into life, side-stepped lazily and brought his weapon around in a murderous arc. The serrated, whirring blade chewed through the pilot from just below its right ear, down through the thorax and severed the body diagonally. The head and left arm fell away in a shower of gore, leaving an out-of-control jetbike, a still-twitching eldar gripping the controls with a lifeless hand.

With a single burst from his cannon, Brother Diomedes finished it.

‘Correction. One left, sir.’

Gileas’s tone had not changed at all.

‘Good work, sergeant. Transmitting coordinates. Sergeant Kyaerus has found us.’ Gileas smiled. Not, he noted, the other way around. ‘Meet us as soon as you can. Stay alert for that rogue rider. Try to get here in one piece.’

‘Aye, captain.’ Gileas grinned beneath his helmet. ‘On our way.’

They encountered nothing as they traversed the largely obliterated compound. All the Silver Skulls remained alert, aware that there was a reaver close by. The intelligence that had been broadcast with the emergency transmission had suggested a reasonably sized force in-situ on this planet. It was the reason the decision had been taken to deploy a large proportion of the company.

During the meeting in the strategium, Gileas had queried the necessity for Captain Meyoran to come down to the surface at all. The captain had laughed dismissively, clasping Gileas’s shoulder.

‘Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten, I hope that you don’t plan to let this promotion turn you into my keeper,’ he had said. ‘Prognosticator Bast has communed with the Emperor. It is His will that I lead this expedition. Besides, why should I let you have all the glory? You will take command in my place soon enough.’ The words had sounded ominous; prophetic, even.

Gileas had begun to protest, which had earned an indulgent grin from the captain. ‘I jest, brother,’ he had said with a gruff laugh. ‘By the Throne, Gileas, learn to be less literal.’

Bast, assigned directly from the psyker-led prognosticatum, had nodded solemnly. ‘The omens are most auspicious for the battle to come, Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten,’ he had pronounced in his soft whisper. ‘It is vital that the captain is present.’

Unsettled by the Prognosticator’s words without quite knowing why, Gileas had put his worries to the back of his mind and they had instead concentrated on the importance of eliminating the eldar forces.

Over the centuries the Silver Skulls had repeatedly encountered the eldar in their many and varied forms. Whilst the justifiable detestation of all alien races was the right of the Adeptus Astartes, the Silver Skulls reserved an especial hatred for the eldar. Many good battle-brothers had been lost at the Battle of Oram Pass. Many good battle-brothers who had yet to be replaced. The Chapter was dipping well below its normal numbers and the recruitment process was slow for many reasons.

As a result, the prospect of visiting righteous retribution on the eldar was one that Eighth Company relished with grim enthusiasm. Fifty warriors had been deployed, more than half the company’s current complement.

By the time they reached the rendezvous point, Meyoran and his warriors were already gathered. Prognosticator Bast and the only other psychic battle-brother present stood to one side, conspicuous by the colour of their armour. The prognosticatum had suffered more losses at the hands of the eldar at Oram Pass than any other. For a Chapter whose home world was sparsely populated with psykers, it had been a harsh toll. The prognosticatum had more reason than most to hate the foul eldar pirates.

‘You took your time,’ greeted Meyoran, his tone light, but his voice slightly strained with the tension of what he had established of the situation thus far.

‘Apologies, sir.’ Gileas joined his captain and removed his helmet. ‘Undisciplined xenos taking an attack of opportunity. We made short work of them thanks to Brother Diomedes.’ The sergeant nodded reverently in the Dreadnought’s direction.

‘You know what it is that we face here, then?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Gileas’s hand closed into a fist. ‘Eldar raiders.’

‘Mostly correct. Eldar raiders, yes. Eldar raiders with access to a webway portal.’

Gileas faltered only slightly. That changed things. With access to a portal, he knew well from experience that it would be impossible to plan any sort of attack based on numbers. More could arrive at any given moment. Their priority was clear. He nodded his understanding and Meyoran continued.

‘I will lead the attack on the portal with the majority of our fighting force – and Diomedes,’ he said. ‘You will take the Reckoners and command the rescue mission.’ He indicated a young Scout Gileas recognised. One of Kyaerus’s squad, the callow youth was looking eager to get the battle under way. ‘Tyr took the liberty of going ahead to assess the situation as best he could under the circumstances. The eldar have a considerable number of human captives, including our aspirants. As of a few minutes ago, they were in holding pens, presumably awaiting loading into one of their ships. Time is of the essence.’

Meyoran tweaked his long plaited beard. ‘Priorities are to destroy the portal, eliminate the xenos threat and ensure as many citizens as possible survive the ordeal. This may present difficulties given that the raiders have arranged the cages around their central position. Those are our objectives. In that order.’

‘Slaves?’ Gileas was aware on an unconscious level that Meyoran was assessing his reaction to being denied the honour of leading the attack, and kept his face as neutral as he could. Despite his best efforts, disappointment stirred in the pit of his belly.

‘Possibly.’ Meyoran’s tattooed face twisted into a scowl, the black ink contorting grotesquely. ‘Or worse. Either way, expediency is critical.’

Gileas set his jaw angrily. ‘So they are utilising human shields?’

‘Aye. There may well be Imperial casualties during this operation, Gileas, but do what you can to minimise risk.’ Meyoran waited a moment as though expecting an argument. Gileas was far more suited to the task of taking the portal than he was of search and rescue, and they both knew it.

The serpent of rebellion that had woken at Meyoran’s orders writhed in Gileas’s stomach again, threatening to rise its hooded head and strike. But Gileas quelled it. He would question the captain’s orders when they were back on the Silver Arrow, not whilst they were in the field. He knew he was being tested and he would be damned before he failed.

‘As my captain orders,’ he replied, snapping his helmet back on again. ‘Reckoners, on me.’

Meyoran glanced at Bast as Gileas turned to walk away. The Prognosticator inclined his head almost graciously.

‘Sergeant.’ Meyoran called after Gileas’s retreating back.

‘Brother-captain?’ Gileas turned slightly.

‘Endure, brother.’ There was a passion in Meyoran’s voice that poked the seed of uncertainty that had been planted in Gileas’s mind during the meeting in the strategium. His doubts and misgivings burst into bloom, and he almost turned to consider the captain fully. But there was no time to dwell on thoughts and feelings. He had promised Meyoran back in the chapel that he would maintain his focus. He had his orders and he would carry them out to the best of his ability.

The alien portal rose up from the ground, a slim, tapering arc casting a faint rippling visual distortion in its curve. It looked frail, a thing that could be easily broken under the onslaught of the Silver Skulls, and yet they had fought enough eldar raiders to know that they were disasters just waiting to happen. At any given moment, more troops and vehicles could arrive without warning. Then their troubles would be multiplied exponentially.

A Raider, one of the transport ships that the pirates so favoured, hovered silently next to the portal. It was a massive thing, painted with incomprehensible symbols. An eldar pilot was seated at the rear of the vehicle, his long, thin alien face with delicately pointed ears clearly visible. He was looking out at the makeshift arena in the compound.

From the vantage point below the rising ridge that led to the blast site, Meyoran had already assessed the battleground. He had noted potential risk points and possible cover. The cages were pulled into a rough circle, a curtain of human flesh drawn between them and their prey.

Meyoran and his force would lead the battle inwards, away from the civilians. Diomedes had been charged with the destruction of the webway portal. By creating such a chaotic distraction, they might buy Gileas and his squad enough time to liberate the prisoners. Perhaps.

Turning his attention to the Raider, Meyoran reviewed the data the Chapter had assimilated over the years on eldar tech. He knew where the weak points were and exactly how he could destroy the vessel. It looked customised; an ornate throne had been pushed forwards to the front of the main deck, where what was presumably the leader of the mission sat, watching with undisguised delight over the chaos he had wrought.

The humans in the cages were sobbing pitifully, calling out for the Emperor’s aid, or in the case of several burly young men, screaming promises of revenge. The recruits.

Occasionally, one of the warriors mingling around the makeshift arena would jab into the cages with cruel blades, or fire a shot from the weapons they carried. Elsewhere, the xenos were fighting one another. High-pitched cackles of delight filled the air.

The overseer shouted something in his harsh tongue and several of the raiders raced to a cage, pulling one of their captives into the middle of the circle. Even as Meyoran watched, the aliens began to torture their victim, slicing strips of skin from his face with wickedly curved knives. The man screamed in pain, but for every scream that bubbled from his lips, the more his captors screamed back – only their screams were of joy.

Closing his ears to the sound, Meyoran completed his scan of the area. A rough ring of scrap metal framed the entire scene, bedecked with spikes and broken plexglass. Some of the spikes were further decorated by the grisly addition of human heads. Some still wore their Cartan Militia helmets.

‘Prognosticator?’ The captain turned to the blue-clad Marine at his side. He and Shae Bast had worked together for so long that they knew one another’s methods inside out. Alone, Bast was a dangerous opponent. Teamed with the brute force of a Space Marine Assault company, he was nigh-on unstoppable.

The Prognosticator’s head snapped up and the sparks of psychic energy flowing steadily through the crystal mesh rising from his gorget began to pulse. He was gathering his powers. As soon as he gave the word, they would attack.

Meyoran’s eyes flickered once again to the Raider. He had already established his own personal objective. The power fist at the end of his arm hummed softly. Beside him, Bast was motionless.

The hunger for action was like a living, breathing thing.

Finally, Bast’s whispering voice transmitted across the vox to all the Silver Skulls who were coiled like springs ready for the attack.

‘Commence,’ was all he said and the steel-grey force washed over the ridge like a tide of doom, weapons at the ready, raging litanies of war and hatred.

Within seconds, the Silver Skulls were met by a forest of dancing xenos whose voices raised in harsh, ear-searing counterpoint to the Space Marines’ battle roar. The eldar were all flashing blades, cruel edges and needle points. The howls and whoops of half-crazed joy accompanied their attack as their narcotic-soaked minds engaged instantly with the fight.

Even as he raised his crackling fist to smite them where they stood, Meyoran could not help but assess them. They were the complete antithesis of their Space Marine counterparts: a chaotic rabble with no style or structure to their methods. They would fall under the onslaught of the Adeptus Astartes, of that there was little doubt. It remained to be seen what the toll would be on the company.

Perched like grotesque gargoyles on broken spars, a number of bat-winged warriors unleashed bizarre alien weaponry. With brays of uncontrollable delight, they fired their weapons. Toxic crystalline shards scattered over the Space Marines, a glittering rain that broke over battle plate with the discordant sound of crashing chimes. The sound of sniper rifles joined in the jarring noises that echoed around the natural basin as Kyaerus’s young Scouts took aim and fired on them.

Aboard the Raider, the overseer had got to his feet. Long, lean and with cruelty etched into his features, he pointed at the Prognosticator and shouted something to his warriors. Some of them broke away and concentrated their efforts on the encroaching psyker, the sound of laughter intensified to near-hysteria. Through it all, Bast continued to walk towards the centre of the compound, determination implicit in every step. His psychic hood crackled with barely contained power.

Meyoran fought with grim determination, pouring silent scorn on an enemy who were so keen to die. They practically threw themselves into the path of his fist, dying with gurgling ecstasy. Everything about these xenos offended and sickened him to the core. That fury channelled itself into every swing, and he broke bones and shattered skulls wherever he walked.

A group of eldar had turned their weapons on the prisoners in the pens and were preparing to open fire. The unfortunates within huddled into a corner of the cage, sobbing pitifully and waiting for the death that was sure to come. The lead eldar gestured with his rifle and barked an order.

Bare seconds later he was pulverised into the ground when Gileas Ur’ten dropped onto him from the sky. Meyoran felt a surge of something that may have been exhilaration, but could just as easily have been relief.

‘Excellent timing, sergeant.’

Meyoran received little more than a grunt in response. Around the compound, the Reckoners were descending from the heavens, having used their jump packs to lend momentum to their attack.

In the heart of the battle, Bast stopped walking and stood, raising his helmeted head to meet the gaze of the overseer on the Raider. The eldar lifted his right hand and bellowed a command. Meyoran could hear the urgency in the tone, but it was too late. Far too late.

Dropping to a stoop, Bast laid his gauntleted hand on the ground and brought forth his power. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then there was the very faintest rumble. Bast’s powers had always been elemental in nature and the seismic shock he brought forth from the willing earth was enough to knock many of his would-be attackers off their feet.

‘Get those prisoners clear, sergeant,’ Meyoran voxed urgently, his voice strangely distorted by the earth tremor. ‘Use whatever means necessary.’

‘Acknowledged, sir.’

The Reckoners had secured the area around the cages easily enough. The problem now would be holding them long enough for an evacuation. It didn’t remain a problem for long, however, as Diomedes ploughed through the rocky ridge, effectively creating the perfect escape corridor. The Dreadnought continued towards the portal, scattering the foe before him.

‘They’re activating the portal, Gileas,’ Meyoran advised. ‘Get these people to safety. Diomedes, level that device now before they can retreat, or worse, reinforce their position.’

The massive war machine fired at the alien device without hesitation. The first stream of shells seemed to do little more than inflict surface damage. Delicate and fragile it may have looked – but it was a sturdy structure.

Everywhere was noise and carnage as the Reckoners fought for the liberation of the human prisoners. The eldar did everything they could to prevent their delicious prize being stolen from them, lashing themselves into a frenzy with archaic – but, as several battle-brothers discovered, deadly – gladiatorial weapons. Toxic shards rained on the humans as they fled. Many died, but the Reckoners did what they could to prevent too many losses. Even in the midst of battle, Meyoran quietly approved of the calm efficiency with which Gileas carried out his orders. Not for the first time, he felt pride in the younger warrior.

As the shimmering haze within the portal rippled unnaturally, a handful of eldar troops ran into it and vanished. The overseer called out something to his pilot in an urgent tone.

‘They’re retreating, Diomedes!’ Meyoran bellowed in fury. He wasn’t going to let the architect of this destruction get away if he could help it. The Dreadnought rumbled a reply and began another assault on the portal.

With a sudden scream of engines, the jetbike that had escaped from the earlier attack ripped into view, its mounted splinter rifle firing on prisoners and Silver Skulls alike. Distracted by the unexpected arrival, Meyoran turned his attention away from the overseer, just for a moment.

It was to prove to be the most costly moment of his life.

‘Captain Meyoran!’

Several voices came across the vox almost simultaneously, cutting into and over each other urgently. Behind him, the leader had raised a weapon that looked for all the world like a barbed whip. With expert ease, the eldar flicked back his wrist almost lazily. A thin, snakelike tendril writhed towards Meyoran with preternatural speed, wrapping itself around his gorget. The eldar jerked the whip tightly, pulling the captain to the ground.

Searing pain came and went as Meyoran realised that the whip had sliced through his power armour at the neck seal. Felled by the blow, the warrior struggled to stand as the jetbike turned towards him, firing unceasingly, weapon mounts chattering. His power armour sparked, buckled and finally gave way under the onslaught. He fell back to the ground and almost immediately a ravening pack of eldar swarmed over him. Meyoran fought for all he was worth, but he was losing.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten, get the prisoners clear. You have two minutes by my estimate.’

His voice felt strained and unnatural. Perhaps there had been some sort of xenos toxin contained in the weapons strike. Perhaps it was simply the fact that there were presently eldar warriors clinging to him like limpets. Death was imminent and he felt no regret. The omens had spoken of this. He would not defy fate.

That was not his destiny.

‘Captain Meyoran, I’m heading your way. I will–’

‘No, Gileas. There isn’t time. We need to finish this. You need to finish this. You have to get the aspirants back.’

‘I can stop them–’

‘Follow your orders, Gileas Ur’ten.’ Shae Bast’s cold, impassive voice cut across the conversation.

‘But–’

‘Look to your duty, brother-sergeant!’ It was Meyoran this time who snapped the order. ‘I’m not finished yet. You must endure, brother.’

There was no reply.

Engines fired into life and the Raider began to move, heading towards the damaged portal into which the remaining eldar were racing headlong.

You must endure, Gileas Ur’ten, Meyoran willed silently.

With a roar that started deep down in his stomach, the mortally wounded captain rose to his feet, the eldar still clinging to him, hacking, slashing, firing. Several fell from his body as he stood, and they scuttled frantically into the portal.

He powered his jump pack into life and soared skywards, landing unsteadily on the Raider beside the overseer. The last of his strength was bolstered by the ceaseless flow of combat stimms around his system. Were he to remove his helmet, he suspected his eyes would be as wild and staring as those of the creature he now faced.

Having not anticipated this move, the alien screamed its defiance. The noise was curtailed as Meyoran reached out and crushed the fragile skull in one hand. He tossed the corpse over the side with casual contempt.

He raised his power fist and cast a glance around the compound. Gileas and the Reckoners were ensuring that the humans were clear. The other Silver Skulls were finishing off the remaining eldar and Diomedes was pouring fire onto the portal.

All was as it should be. The Silver Skulls were doing more than prevailing. They were winning. If this was to be the last thing he ever saw, then he would die with pride and honour.

Meyoran’s helmeted gaze met that of the Prognosticator, who raised a hand in silent salute.

With every last ounce of strength left in his body, the captain thrust his armoured fist into the heart of the vehicle. The fragile engine housing splintered under the force of the impact, crushing power circuits and couplings just beneath the surface. The pilot lost all control as the fist’s energy field flared, igniting the vessel from within. Simultaneously, Diomedes’s persistence was rewarded as the ship reached the webway’s active field.

Both the portal and the half of the Raider that had failed to translate to the webway detonated in a expanding ball of fire and debris. Gileas and the Reckoners had done their job; the civilian survivors, whilst thrown to the ground by the shockwave of the blast, were far enough away that the explosion itself did little more than singe an eyebrow or two.

The remaining threat was dealt with swiftly. The jetbike was ripped apart by Diomedes. The other aliens, who had descended into even more chaos at the loss of their leader, were dead in moments.

Dead.

Gileas reached up and snatched off his helmet, flinging it to one side. He would not accept the blinking rune that told him of Meyoran’s demise. He could not.

‘Prognosticator!’ His voice bellowed across the smouldering battlefield. ‘Prognosticator, I need to speak to you right now!’

‘Gileas…’ Reuben, Gileas’s oldest friend and his brother-in-arms since the days they had been novitiates, laid a gauntlet on his sergeant’s arm. He could feel Gileas’s fury and grief. ‘Now is not the time.’

The sergeant shook his arm free from Reuben’s grip and turned furious hazel eyes on him. ‘You are wrong, Reuben. Now is the time. There are rituals to observe. And, damn it, I will observe them. Prognosticator!’

‘Sergeant Ur’ten.’

The Prognosticator’s whispering voice came from behind him, channelled through the vox-bead in his ear.

‘Confirm Meyoran’s death.’

‘You saw the explosion yourself, sergeant. Surely–’

‘I said confirm his death.’ Gileas took a step towards the psyker, who held his ground serenely.

‘As you command, brother-sergeant.’ The Prognosticator drew his concentration in once again. Gileas felt the brief touch of the psyker’s mind on his own as Bast allowed his attention to drift around the battlefield.

‘Nothing, brother-sergeant.’ Bast’s helmeted head lowered in respect and Gileas was temporarily thrown off his raging stride by the genuine sorrow he heard in the other’s voice. ‘The captain is gone.’

Gileas ran a hand across his stubble-shadowed jawline and stared at the Prognosticator. The words were there, but the meaning would not connect with his synapses. Bast took a step closer, leaning in to whisper so that only the stunned sergeant could hear him.

‘Meyoran is gone, Gileas,’ he said, quietly. ‘Control your inner beast for once in your life and do your duty.’

Duty. There it was again. That word.

Born into a nomadic tribe which had struggled just to survive, reborn into a tribe of warriors upon whom the very fate of the Imperium depended, the word had always had a profound effect on Gileas. He was a Space Marine. He was a Silver Skull.

‘Yes,’ he said, his shoulders automatically straightening. ‘Yes, of course.’ Bast inclined his head and stepped back.

The battle was over. There was nothing more they could do here other than to recover the legacies of their fallen brothers and take back however many of the aspirants remained. The recovery of the hive would fall to the local troops and emergency aid would be sent in due course.

Gileas cast a glance at the smouldering portal. The eldar might return, but it would undoubtedly take time for them to assimilate any galactic coordinates they might have been able to glean from their brief time on Cartan.

‘Silver Skulls,’ Gileas said, over the vox, bending to retrieve his helmet. ‘Withdraw.’

The chapel aboard the Silver Arrow once more wrapped Gileas in its cocoon of calm. This time, however, he was not hardening his core, grounding himself in battle doctrine and preparing for a fight. This time he was there for a different reason.

Keile Meyoran.

The captain’s name had been painstakingly written letter by agonising letter onto the company’s war banner, along with the names of other brothers who had fallen. As his position dictated, the job of adding Meyoran’s name had been his right.

It was an honour, but one that he had not wanted ever to fulfil.

‘He should not have died,’ Gileas said softly to the Prognosticator who stood by his side, staring up at the banner. Out of his battle plate, the Prognosticator’s years were more evident in the slight stoop of his shoulders, as though he held the weight of his centuries on them.

‘It was his destiny. It was predetermined before we even left the ship. For every action, Gileas Ur’ten, there has to be a consequence. By leaving the ship to come down to the surface with the company, Meyoran set an irreversible chain of events in motion.’ The psyker’s colourless eyes skimmed over the banner with cool detachment. ‘It was the Emperor’s will that he was lost today. He knew that and he accepted the omen gladly.’

Gileas angled his head abruptly in Bast’s direction. The Prognosticator held a silver rune in the palm of his leathery-skinned hand. He turned it over and over almost idly, such a complacent gesture that Gileas felt his blood start to boil.

‘He should not have died.’ The sergeant spun on his heel and turned to face Bast fully. ‘He could have been spared to fight another day. He should not have listened to you.’

Taller than the psyker by a considerable amount, the Space Marine towered threateningly. In any other circumstances, it would have been no question as to who would have the upper hand should things come to blows. But the power of the prognosticatum over the whole Chapter meant that nothing was ever so certain.

Gileas was well aware of the extent of Bast’s powers. He had seen the Prognosticator crush dozens of warriors with a word. He had been indoctrinated over the decades to revere the Prognosticators of the Silver Skulls and to defer to their ultimate judgement. And yet right now, all he felt was anger. Anger at the power the Prognosticator wielded. Anger at the fact that Meyoran, a good warrior and a good soul, had been taken from them. Anger at something he could not put a name to.

An amused, almost indulgent smile twisted Bast’s features. Involuntarily, Gileas’s hands clenched into fists as he allowed his anger to be quenched in the physical face of his duty. He could not, in all good conscience however, allow the words to pass unsaid.

‘Auspicious, you said. You said that the omens were auspicious for the battle down there. You knew, didn’t you? You knew he would die if he went down there, and still you let him go?’

Bast nodded. ‘Our lives are about adapting to circumstances. Change is a fundamental part of the life of a Space Marine, Gileas. This had to happen in order for future events to occur to the fullest benefit of the Chapter.’

‘What events?’

Bast paused, and for a heartbeat Gileas sensed the psyker’s touch on his mind. Then Bast’s eyes left him and the older Space Marine pocketed the rune. ‘It remains to be seen. For now, though, do not mourn Keile Meyoran too much. Remember him as we all will, but give thanks to the Emperor that his death was a glorious one. Put your energies into your own life instead. You endure, Gileas Ur’ten. Remember that.’

The Prognosticator bowed deeply and took his leave, his bare feet padding almost silently on the cold metal floor of the chapel. Gileas watched him go, pondering his words. His eyes lifted once again to the banner and were caught by the motto.

Vincit Qui Patitur.

He conquers who endures. 

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan

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* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.