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Action and Consequence - Sarah Cawkwell

Marshlight - C L Werner

Phalanx - Chapter Nine - Ben Counter

Salavation's Reach - Dan Abnett

Commander Shadow - Braden Campbell

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ACTION AND CONSEQUENCE

Sarah Cawkwell

The whisper of the Emperor’s voice was his constant companion. But Vashiro, Chief Prognosticator of the Silver Skulls Chapter of Space Marines, could only properly discern His glorious truth by channelling the psychic connection into something more tactile.

Whenever he cast the sacred runes, or turned over the fading cards of his centuries-old Imperial Tarot deck, he reached through the immaterium and sought the Emperor’s guidance as an infant reaches out to a parent. The use of the objects was a means to channel and focus that guidance. There was also an element of mystery attached which induced respect from all who witnessed a Prognostication.

When a metaphysical link was finally forged, when any of the psykers of the Chapter connected with their ultimate father, the shrouded futures of the Silver Skulls were unveiled and their paths paved with solid decision. The Emperor’s psychic children simply took His words and will and divined their purpose.

At times, the obscurity of the visions meant that their meanings were difficult to extrapolate. When this happened, a great burden fell on the shoulders of the divining Prognosticator who frequently had to make a call to arms that could see squads, or even entire companies, devastated on the field of battle.

No matter how contrary or controversial, the decision of a Prognosticator was never questioned – except by another, more senior member of the Prognosticatum. Their word was never disputed. Their orders were obeyed without hesitation. They were revered above all other battle-brothers. They were few in number yet their power, both on the field of battle and politically, was immense.

A former Lord Commander Argentius had once refused to deploy when his psychic adviser had expressed doubt. It had proved a shrewd move when the presumed-dormant volcano on the planet burst into terrible life. As the violent eruption incinerated all in its path, it became obvious that it would have swept the Space Marines away in its pyroclastic flow as well. Prognostication was a great gift that, despite the risk, had the potential to save many lives.

But amongst these gifts, all these glimpses of what the future held, the psykers of the Silver Skulls Chapter all fervently hoped they would avoid one thing.

The Deep Dark afflicted all the psychic battle-brothers at least once in their service. An anxious time when the Emperor turned His face away from a beloved child. To each Prognosticator, this was translated as something different – but most agreed that it signalled the Emperor’s great displeasure. It was a terrible, mentally devastating experience for a psyker; somewhere between crushing disappointment at being denied guidance and a selfish, desperate desire for approval from their master.

And from time to time there were visions like the one Vashiro had now. One that repeated itself over and over. Easy enough to understand, harder to truly translate into an appropriate course of action.

A shattered silver skull.

The Fortress Monastery of the Silver Skulls
Argent Mons, Varsavia

For countless centuries, the Silver Skulls had recruited from a number of worlds but all their warriors had been trained here on the far-flung world of Varsavia. A visiting dignitary from Terra many centuries ago had acknowledged that the Monastery’s design would have impressed the Primarch Rogal Dorn himself. It was highly defensible and nigh on impenetrable to the outside world.

The home of the Chapter was carved out of the rock of the Argent Mons, the highest peak of a vast mountain range in the far north of the planet. The veins of unmined silver that threaded through the rock had birthed not only the mountain’s name, but also the name of the Chapter who called it home.

Apart from the serf quarters, only the chapel and the docking bays were above ground level. The chapel was a vast, cavernous chamber, large enough to contain several companies at the same time with room to spare. The rays of the weak sun bled through the beautifully worked stained glass and at the right time of day dappled the stone floor in a myriad of glorious colours where it filtered through the stylised image of the first Lord Argentius. It was a place of considerable peace and reflection, a contrast to the ever-bustling embarkation decks and docking bays. Everything else within the Monastery was to be found deep in the bowels of the mountain range.

Argent Mons was difficult to reach and this was as much by design as coincidental geography. Novitiates were brought to the Monastery largely by incoming vessels that approached from the west side of the mountain range, directly into the spaceport. Some youths, more tenacious and stubborn than many others, had been known to scale the mountain range itself in adolescent determination to follow a dream. This was rare, of course, for such a journey was fraught with perils. But there were battle-brothers serving the chapter even now who had taken that very path.

Vashiro knew that they would have to discuss one such individual today and it made him uneasy for many reasons.

As was the case with Argentius, “Vashiro” was a hereditary name and in old Varsavian translated literally as “The One Who Sees”. It had passed down from the first Chief Prognosticator to each successor since the founding of the Chapter. The current incumbent had answered to the name for nigh on five hundred years.

He considered the Chapter Master, head bowed over the massive ledger before him. Vashiro’s early confidence in him had been well founded. It had been the Chief Prognosticator’s careful manipulation of the Chapter’s various personalities – like pieces in a great game – that had ensured the former First Captain had risen to the position without contest.

Argentius’s skill for strategy and planning had been second to none. As a leader, he was inspiring, intelligent, honest, even charming. As Chapter Master, he commanded unswerving loyalty and dedication from those who served him. He was an Emperor’s Angel to the core, as fierce as he was valiant.

But then, the Silver Skulls were a loyal breed. Brutal, valiant warriors with a propensity for intense close-quarters combat, the Chapter was relentless in battle. Since the time of the Second Founding, the Silver Skulls had been an active force in the galaxy. Yet in more recent years the light of their star had begun to fade.

Increasing losses at the hands of the enemies of the Imperium meant that their numbers were gradually dwindling. Recently, there had been an unexpected surge in the intake of new warriors and it seemed that things were finally regaining some sort of equilibrium. Vashiro had once again dared to believe that all hope was not lost.

And yet…

The recalled memory of the vision clung to his thoughts with grim determination. A shattered silver skull. There was very little that could be clearer to interpret.

‘Is the tithe set for despatch?’

Pulled from his reverie, Vashiro looked up at the Chapter Master’s words and nodded sombrely. Argentius sat opposite him, a golden goblet of fine Varsavian wine in his hand. Even like this, out of his battle plate and dressed in a simple white robe, he was like a young golden-haired god. Swooping coils of spiral-inspired honour tattoos followed the lines of his face and accentuated the fierce set of his jaw and glint of danger in his deeply set hazel eyes. A prime example of the Adeptus Astartes, Argentius could have walked from the legends of old straight into their Fortress-Monastery.

‘Yes, my Lord. The gene-seed tithe has been tallied and is now readied for its journey to Terra. We are also sending four new promising Techmarines to Mars.’ This was news in itself; battle-brothers who displayed an affinity with the machine spirits were almost as rare as Prognosticators.

‘Was it as bad as we anticipated?’ There was a brief heartbeat before Vashiro responded.

‘The gene-seed tithe is, as we predicted, significantly reduced in number.’

The Chapter Master pursed his lips briefly and continued, consulting the vast ledger before him. ‘The powers that be on Terra will hopefully remain content that our chapter thrives. And the God-Emperor willing, it will be so.’ He swirled the wine around in the goblet, considering its crimson depths thoughtfully.

‘We are the Silver Skulls,’ said Vashiro, watching the Chapter Master’s obvious consternation. ‘We will prevail.’ The words were automatic, but heartfelt nonetheless.

‘Aye.’ Argentius lifted the goblet to his lips and downed the contents in a single pull, setting the vessel to one side. A silent serf stepped forward from the shadows and took the goblet away. He received no thanks. He did not expect them.

‘And what of…’ Vashiro moved to the next item, consulting his own dataslate. A ghost of a smile drifted across his face. ‘Eighth Company?’

‘Ah, yes. That matter.’ Argentius mirrored Vashiro’s smile with one of his own. ‘Captain Meyoran, may the ancestors protect his soul, certainly recommended him highly enough in the past. Gileas’s combat record speaks for itself. He is the most appropriate choice to take command. Young perhaps, but our best option.’

News of Keile Meyoran’s recent death at the hands of eldar raiders had made its way back via astropathic telecommunication to Varsavia. Another unfortunate loss, but the story of his sacrifice had joined the annals of legend and was already being recited in the training halls. Keile Meyoran’s legacy would live on.

‘Gileas Ur’ten. Andreas Kulle’s prodigy. Ah, now. Would that Kulle were still here to see how Gileas has risen above and beyond the foolish prejudices of his youth.’ The Chapter Master paused and reached up to stroke his jaw thoughtfully.

‘But?’ Vashiro had no difficulty sensing the hesitation and gently teased it from his commander. Even one of the younger Prognosticators, without the years of practice, without the personal familiarity with the mighty warrior, could have sensed the inner turmoil. Not so many could have extracted the heart of the Lord Commander’s worries so easily.

Another smile, this time slightly abashed and rueful. ‘You know me too well, Aerus.’

‘Of course.’ Entirely comfortable with Argentius’s use of his birth name, Vashiro inclined his head respectfully. ‘It is, without wishing to offend, my job.’ Argentius laughed warmly and slapped his hand on the vast desk in approval. Eventually the laughter died away. Watching the serious mien return was like seeing a cloud pass over the face of the sun.

‘Gileas is a fine warrior,’ he said, considering the dataslate carefully. ‘That is without question. He is a good, honest man and such a promotion would lead Eighth Company to great things.’ Argentius took a deep breath.

‘Unfortunately, it seems that there are those amongst us who do not think a man of his…’ The Chapter Master hesitated to use the word that had been bandied around, disliking its connotations immensely.

‘Heritage, my Lord?’ Vashiro offered the word softly.

Not much better, Argentius thought, but certainly something of an improvement on ‘breeding’. The word had smacked too much of animal husbandry, a very carefully contrived and almost certainly intentional insult to Gileas Ur’ten’s birth amongst the more savage and poorly educated tribes of Varsavia’s far southern continent.

‘Heritage. Background. Whatever it is, there has never been a south-born in the position of company Captain,’ said Argentius. ‘It would be an unprecedented move. Some say it would be dangerous to allow – how was it Brother Djul phrased the problem? “It would be dangerous to allow a borderline savage to wield that much control over a company of Adeptus Astartes.”’ Argentius’s lip curled slightly. ‘I do not truly understand these comments. Such old, petty distrusts. Are we not yet ready to move beyond, Vashiro?’

‘Old wounds run the deepest, my Lord. Brother Djul is set in his ways, perhaps more so than others.’ Djul was a Chapter champion, one of the Talriktug, First Company. Without psychic power, he was not one of the most elite, the Prognosticars.

Djul was well known for his piety, his zealous nature and his complete and utter dislike of change.

‘Objectively,’ Vashiro continued, ‘the reason that none born in the south have ascended the ranks is well-known.’

‘They burn brightly and they die fast.’ Argentius sighed and got to his feet, moving to the stone terrace that overlooked the training quadrant. He felt surest when he stood here, when the cages rang out with the sounds of sparring and training or when companies drilled there. The clash of sword on sword, the ordered shouts and noisy, easy banter that drifted up to his chamber were somehow soothing; a reassurance that despite their continued hardships and challenges, the Silver Skulls would prevail.

‘Gileas’s temper is almost as famous as his prowess in battle,’ the Lord Commander acknowledged reluctantly. ‘I have received assurances however that he has gained much mastery of it in recent years. The fact that he is still living is testament to that truth.’

‘I understand your dilemma, my Lord,’ said Vashiro, coming to stand behind him. ‘Promotion would surely inflame those who do not approve. And yet there are those who may resent the decision not to promote him.’ The Prognosticator spread his hands wide. ‘Your choice will upset one group or the other.’

‘The future of our Chapter hinges on many things, Vashiro. The decision to promote a stalwart, honest warrior should not be one of them. And yet even I, not blessed with the Emperor’s sight, can feel the importance of this choice. I fear that if I make the wrong decision, our chapter will feel the consequences.’

At Argentius’s words, Vashiro’s vision swam back into sharp focus and all too clearly, he understood the full scope of the Emperor’s subtlety.

A shattered silver skull.

Vashiro’s head reeled. Steadying himself against the wall of Argentius’s chamber, he employed his many years of training and calmed his churning psyche. Gradually, he got the flashing parade of images under his control and brought his considerable ability to bear.

Fumbling at the pouch he wore at his waist, he withdrew a handful of runes. Stumbling just ever so slightly, he moved back to the Chapter Master’s massive desk.

‘Aerus?’ The Chapter Master turned away from the training quadrant and fixed his companion with a concerned look. Vashiro held up a hand for silence and scattered the runes on the desk, closing his eyes and murmuring the litany of guidance.

‘The people of the south are barbaric, my Lord,’ he mumbled. ‘Gileas Ur’ten epitomises that barbarism every time he enters battle. He is a tame savage, yes. But he is a savage nonetheless. There are those who cannot see past that to the warrior beneath.’ He drew in his psychic strength and prepared to receive the Emperor’s will.

The runes tumbled from his hand with a clatter, their lovingly polished silver surfaces falling where they would. Each silver-coated rune was hand-carved from a splinter of skull bone, which had once nestled within the cranium of the first Lord Commander Argentius. The first Chapter Master’s skull had been bequeathed to the Prognosticatum thousands of years ago. The runes were one of the Chapter’s most valued treasures and only Vashiro, or his elected lieutenant, had the right to cast with them.

Unleashing his psychic potential, he opened his mind to the Emperor’s will and opened his eyes to the future.

Genara
Orbiting Virilian Tertius

It had been a long, hard campaign and it wasn’t over yet.

Since the death of Captain Meyoran, Eighth Company had been engaged in hunting down and battling eldar forces. Following the loss of their leader, the Assault Company had followed the trail the insane raiders had left, systematically cleansing neighbouring systems of their presence.

Eighth Company had paid a heavy price to reach this point, but they had finally found the main base of operations. This battle would see an end to xenos activity in this sector for the foreseeable future.

Barely large enough to even be considered a moon, let alone a planet, the misshapen lump of rock that passed for a satellite orbited the larger, densely populated hive world of Virilian Tertius. The eldar had been planning from this vantage point, plotting attacks against the human populace on the various inhabited worlds in the Virilian system. They planned to strike, to abduct humans for slaves and torture – and to take the mineral spoils of the worlds for themselves.

During the course of the campaign, the eldar had snuffed out a good number of Silver Skulls lives, not least of which had been their own Captain. But sheer, bloody determination and well-coordinated strikes had seen the balance start to tip. The enemy forces they faced had been increasingly unprepared for such an intense counter-strike from the Adeptus Astartes. Unlike the Emperor’s finest, the xenos had not been equipped for a lengthy campaign. Their weapons and ammunition supplies were running short – and the systematic destruction of their webway portals had limited their access to extra supplies. Their time now was counted in hours.

The Space Marines had only needed to wait for the right moment to take the enemy by their exposed jugular and tear out their throat. And now that the eldar had been weakened exponentially, that moment had arrived.

‘Deployment in ten minutes, sergeant.’

There was a barely responsive grunt from Gileas Ur’ten, who was presently absorbed in battle preparations, his eyes intent on the physical rituals necessary to arrange his equipment. His dark face wore an almost pained expression that barely concealed the battle lust pounding through his veins.

This was it. This was the moment he would carry out his promise to avenge Keile Meyoran’s death.

He slammed a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol, then attached it to the magnetic holster on his thigh. He straightened up and looked around the interior of the Thunderhawk. Filled with almost all the remaining Space Marines of Eighth Company, every single one of them was looking to him for instruction. Just as they had done since Meyoran’s death.

Gileas had meditated for long periods on his personal concerns regarding the fact that he had ended up in unofficial command of the Eighth. They were concerns that he did not share with anybody else and if it fazed him right now, he certainly did not let it show. He let his eyes roam over each of the assembled warriors – his warriors – in turn, assessing, judging, unconsciously encouraging.

‘As planned, the Reckoners – led by myself – will form the core of the initial strike unit.’ His voice was thickly accented in comparison to the majority of the fighting force, but his tone was calm and measured. ‘We will occupy their remaining ground forces in close combat. That way, we can draw them out into the open. At that point, we strike.’

He grinned wickedly, his sharpened canines glinting dangerously. ‘I cannot stress this point enough, my brothers. This is our last chance. This will be a vital strike. The xenos have gotten used to us advancing as a unit. Skirmish attacks such as we are throwing at them today will catch them unawares. Techmarine Kuruk will coordinate from above and feed reconnaissance data to us on the ground.’

He cast dark eyes around the interior of the gunship once again. Its occupants were all locked into their restraint thrones – bar himself and the other four warriors who were preparing to drop. ‘We will end this today. We will quell the xenos threat and we will ensure the continued safety and compliance of the Virilian system. The Imperial citizens on that world down there will continue their contented, safe existence without ever once knowing what their fate may have been. We are the Emperor’s own. We will execute His will. We will prevail!’

A roar of approval sounded from the Silver Skulls at this pronouncement, the acoustics of the ship’s interior boosting and distorting their deep voices unnaturally as they echoed the sergeant’s sentiment. The sound was a vocal call to arms and sent a thrill of impending battle fury coursing through them. The eagerness to fight was fierce and infectious.

Now fully prepared for the battle ahead, Gileas pulled on his helmet. The armour locked into the helmet’s catches with the familiar, calming hiss of servos. The locks snapped closed, and he twisted his head this way and that to ensure the seals were secure. The systems check flickered in front of his eyes. His internal life support systems interfaced with the helmet and made a number of subtle, but vital adjustments. The familiar scent of recycled air and his own blood fired him still further. Runes flickered into being one after the other.

Data scrolled in front of his eyes and he bypassed his own readings until he located the runes that represented the status of his four squad members. All were presently displaying full health and their armour was at optimal functionality. The jump packs, while less satisfying, were as good as they could expect them to be after months of battle. Since Theoderyk’s death during the last battle, they had only one remaining Techmarine. Kuruk had done what he could to appease the increasingly erratic temper of the machine spirits. It would have to be enough.

They were ready. They were Space Marines. They were always ready.

Space Marines in assault squads had always led with the simple promise of ‘death from the skies’. To drop five of them into the depths of the enemy from a passing Thunderhawk was merely adding literal weight to that concept. The idea amused Gileas and inside his helmet, he grinned slightly manically.

His chainsword, lovingly maintained, was already held tightly in his gauntleted fist. Too many of his battle-brothers had fallen to the weapons of the eldar. Today, Eclipse would help him even that score. He brought the hilt of the blade up to his helmet and rested his head against it, murmuring a battle litany under his breath.

Eclipse had served the Silver Skulls even before it had become Gileas’s. It had belonged to his former commanding officer, Andreas Kulle, who had bequeathed it to his protégé with his dying breath. Before Kulle, it had belonged, so it was said, to a former Lord Argentius. It was a jealously coveted weapon and Gileas knew well the honour of being its bearer.

No other blade in the company’s armoury was as carefully cleaned and treated as Eclipse. Its owner was fiercely protective and proud of it and when he was not exercising it in war or in the training cages, he would maintain it; oiling, greasing and polishing it until it gleamed as brightly as the skull runes cast by Vashiro. In Gileas’s hands it ceased to be a deadly inanimate object, still and silent, something as feral as its wielder, threatening teeth and death. Once it was in the Space Marine’s hand, it became a living extension of Gileas; a shining silver serpent of whining doom. He connected, so he claimed, with the weapon’s machine spirit the moment he thumbed it into life. The machine spirit responded to his litanies every time and the two certainly seemed to share a harmonious co-existence.

It was thirsty. Eclipse was desperate to drink the blood of the eldar – and he would grant it that need imminently.

Absently, he allowed his hand to rest against the flat of the blade as though he were appeasing the spirit within. Inactive, the chainsword did not move beneath his touch, but he fancied that he felt the thrill of its quiescent power nonetheless.

‘Soon,’ he promised. ‘Soon.’ He resumed his quiet battle prayers.

The Thunderhawk banked slightly with a grating whine of its port engines and Gileas steadied himself, distantly irked at the interruption. The gunship steadied itself once again and levelled out for its approach to target.

‘One minute to deployment.’ Kuruk’s voice sounded in his ear and the sergeant nodded his understanding. He concluded his prayer and put a hand to the newest purity seal affixed to the pauldron of his battle plate.

The oath, written in flowing script, had been witnessed earlier that day and the ink was hardly dry on the parchment. He had spoken the words with dedicated conviction. On the witness of Eclipse, in the eyes of my brothers, this ends today. Death to the eldar. Vengeance for Keile Meyoran.

‘Four… three… two… one… Reckoners, deploy.’

Gileas’s squad launched themselves without a second’s further hesitation from the rear ramp of the Thunderhawk, plummeting like deadly silver meteorites to the ground below. The gunship continued on its way, presenting a useful temporary distraction to the assembled pocket of eldar raiders who stared up at it, firing heavy weapons in an effort to bring it down.

Unfortunately for them, all that came down were five argent-clad angels of retribution.

There was no wind on this virtually airless rock, but the gentlest of breezes nonetheless seemed to pre-empt the murderous descent of the Silver Skulls. They streaked into view, the roar of the jump packs heralding their enemy’s doom.

As one, the closely packed knot of xenos turned, the movements synchronising perfectly with the five bodies thudding to the rock’s surface. A vast cloud of amethyst-coloured dust billowed up, obscuring them from sight. The dust blossomed quickly from the point of impact, swirling wildly like a harbinger of doom. Eventually, however, the purple curtain began to dissipate and the scene resolved.

Having landed slightly to the fore of his squad, in a shallow crater formed by the solid blow of his own ceramite and plasteel body striking down, Gileas raised his head slowly and stared with unemotional detachment at the hated enemy. His huge Adeptus Astartes body was stooped in a deadly crouch and his fist was planted down before him on the ground. He was like some kind of primal animal, coiled and ready to spring at his prey. The eldar weapons temporarily ceased firing as they rapidly assessed this new, unexpected threat. Swift orders were barked. But not swift enough.

This time there was no humour in the smile that quirked Gileas’s lips beneath the mask of his helmet. The glowing red lenses met the direct gaze of one of the eldar and the accumulated centuries of hatred for that race of xenos and all their foul kind fuelled him. The lenses stained his vision as red as the blood he planned to exact from the enemy. The desperate hunger that had burgeoned on board the Thunderhawk, the desire to purge the enemy, bloomed fully in his body. Responding almost instantly, his power armour channelled a fresh infusion of combat stimms into his system.

I am the arm of retribution, he thought. In my hand, the weapon of the Emperor’s divine justice. In my heart, the Emperor’s light. Through me, may the Emperor’s wrath know no bounds until the enemy are annihilated. Through me, may these filthy creatures know what it means to cross the Silver Skulls.

Almost lazily, he thumbed the activation stud on Eclipse. It growled menacingly into life, responding to his touch on the throttle as efficiently as it had done the day it had first left the armoury.

I am Gileas Ur’ten of the Silver Skulls.

The chainsword’s throaty roar ebbed down to a belligerent purr.

I am your doom.

‘Reckoners,’ he broadcast on the squad vox, as calmly as though he were taking a head count. ‘Attack.’

Gunning their jump packs back into life, the squad leapt with deadly accuracy into the midst of the enemy, the orchestrated sound signalling that the end was more than nigh for the eldar.

Eclipse sang its song of visceral fury as it tore into the alien warriors and Gileas felt his heart soar alongside its melody. The foul xenos helmets wavered and blurred in his sight and become nothing more than targets. He roared his defiance and anger at their pathetic resistance and drew on the strength of his unshakable beliefs to deliver them to their end.

The Fortress Monastery of the Silver Skulls
Argent Mons
Varsavia

‘There has to be a decision, Vashiro!’

Argentius slammed his bunched fist into the formerly flawless marble surface of his desk. It cracked beneath the power of his rage with a loud noise that sent the many chapter serfs scattering in terrified alarm at their master’s rage.

‘I understand your anger at this, my lord, but the Emperor’s will remains unclear.’ Vashiro kept his tone calm and his expression neutral. In a deep state of meditation, he had cast the runes over and over and every time they had given him the same response.

Uncertainty. Doubt.

And more. Something far, far worse. Something that many of the Silver Skulls were ill-equipped to deal with. It was a harshly honest realisation, but Vashiro knew it was truth.

Change.

‘Cast the runes again.’

‘I have already communed with the Emperor no less than a dozen times, my lord. There is no easy answer to this conundrum.’

‘Why must it be a conundrum?’

Abrupt, almost shocked silence followed Argentius’s moment of fury and the bellowed words. For a heartbeat, even the noise in the training quadrant stilled. Argentius sat down heavily on his seat which creaked alarmingly under the Chapter Master’s considerable weight.

‘My apologies, my friend.’

‘Not needed, my lord.’ Vashiro remained standing. ‘You must understand my position on this. I have been granted a vision. Should I interpret the Emperor’s will incorrectly, then any damage done to the Chapter may be irreversible. I need to take my time. I beg leave to arrange a meeting of the Prognosticatum.’

Argentius considered Vashiro’s weathered, nut-brown face for a long while. How the man could remain so calm in the face of what – to him at least – was the most tiresome of situations defied all logic.

‘We are outdated,’ he observed, bitterness in his voice as he looked at his adviser. ‘I have felt it for a long time, but this is… beyond all I have ever known. I ask merely for the Emperor’s blessing in rewarding a good, loyal warrior. In return, all I get is procrastination and endless requests for old men to sit around in a darkened, incense-filled room and talk about “the conundrum”.’

Argentius hesitated. He knew he was bordering on insulting the psyker with his words, but Vashiro’s face remained impassively neutral.

‘You are angry, my lord, so I will let the insult go this time.’ Vashiro gave Argentius a look that he recognised all too well. The Chapter Master shifted uncomfortably, feeling like a chastised child. ‘The Prognosticatum will discuss the matter and we will find your solution. Trust to us.’

Argentius did not reply. As a former First Captain, he had once sat as a member of the Prognosticatum. He knew exactly what it entailed. Vashiro continued.

‘Were it any warrior but Gileas Ur’ten, I believe the decision would be much easier. But he is volatile. He is unpredictable.’

‘Does that not describe our Chapter’s very core ethic?’ There was unmistakable pride in Argentius’s tone.

‘The Silver Skulls pride themselves on their ferocity, of course. And Gileas is a sword of the Chapter, most certainly. But a sword that is not tempered, is not controlled… that, my Lord, is a sword that can cut both ways.’

‘He is a superlative warrior. His eye for detail is outstanding. He is brave, noble, honourable and fearless. Damn it, Aerus, he has the potential to be a Chapter hero.’

‘If notoriety equates to heroism, then he has that honour already.’

Argentius fell silent once again.

‘Then by your leave…?’ Vashiro had already turned to walk out of the Chapter Master’s chambers and Argentius let him go, too angry to continue the argument. He would have to apologise for his words later.

Formed at the time of the Second Founding, the Silver Skulls earliest history was shrouded in mystery. The Chapter’s records were amongst those lost long ago. The identity of their founding Chapter was unknown, but they had never let their lost parentage deter them in their steadfast loyalty.

Electing to settle on Varsavia, the Silver Skulls had initially adhered carefully to the Codex Astartes. Over time, however, they had begun to adopt aspects of native traditions. Their numbers were largely made up of the planet’s tribal warriors, all of whom had brought something different with them. The one thing, however, that each tribe had had in common had been the shamanistic ‘wise men’ who led them. Apart from a few charlatans, most of these men had been psykers who latterly formed the core of the Prognosticatum. Few in number, but remarkably powerful, they were highly revered both by the humans of Varsavia and by the Adeptus Astartes of the Silver Skulls.

Inspired and guided by such spiritual leaders, the Chapter rarely – if ever – questioned what they were told. Only those with the strongest personalities dared to insult a Prognosticator. They had more power than the Chapter Master himself.

Far more power, Argentius thought as he rose from his seat. Too much power.

The time was ripe for a review of their practises. He knew that it had to be so and yet the genes and indoctrination of thousands of years dammed the flow of desire for that change.

Argentius knew that there would be questions soon, when the Administratum received a gene-seed tithe that was markedly smaller than it had been. Questions regarding their practises would be raised, practises which Argentius well knew that others in the Imperium of Man would consider barbaric. Questions that raised issues previous Chapter Masters had never had to address. It had been many years since the last tithe request, a generation at least. Much had changed.

If he could not answer these questions satisfactorily, he knew what the outcome would be. The great fighting force of the Silver Skulls would be disbanded, broken apart and the warriors incorporated into other Chapters to make up their numbers.

Perhaps this was the root of the vision the Vashiro had seen. Perhaps it was this that represented the shattering of the Chapter.

Argentius could not bring himself to believe it would come to a sundering. They were the Silver Skulls. For many thousands of years they had shone as a bright star in the blackness of space.

They would prevail.

They must prevail.

Genara
Orbiting Virilian Tertius

The initial strike was swift and brutal. The five warriors of Gileas’s Reckoners squad barrelled into their enemy with furious passion. Chainswords and bolt pistols met with little resistance from the beleaguered enemy and they were mown down in the onslaught. The Reckoners destroyed the eldar warriors in a matter of minutes.

‘Talk to me, Kuruk,’ Gileas voxed to the Techmarine who was coordinating the data their scout passes had received. Three Thunderhawks, including the one they had recently dropped from, were in low orbit ready for the final attack run. ‘Tell me where we need to be.’

‘Due east, sir.’

Gileas still couldn’t get used to the respect that had come with his unofficial command. He had known Kuruk for many years and considered him one of his closest friends. Hearing the word ‘sir’ from him felt strange.

He signalled to his squad to move to the east and they obeyed immediately, stepping on the bodies of the dead and dying eldar as they left. One reached up with a long-fingered hand as though it was trying to reach out to those who had just felled it, but the Silver Skulls ignored the grasping, dying xenos.

‘For too long these bastards have raided our recruiting worlds,’ Gileas said across the company vox channel. ‘For too long they have stolen our most precious of commodities. They have stolen our future, brothers. Young men of this system who might otherwise one day have received the honour of ascension. They are the cause of much of our Chapter’s hardship – and today we draw the line.’

They marched relentlessly on towards the final conflict.

‘You all know the problems we face. Our numbers are low. Our resources begin to deplete. And yet, we are the Silver Skulls. We continue, against all the odds, to prevail. And the Emperor is with us today. He watches over us as we make this stand against our ancient enemy. Their effect on us will lessen eventually. I say the time has come to tip those odds in our favour. What say you, Eighth Company? Are you with me, brothers?’

Scattered cheers and roars of solidarity came across the vox, filling Gileas’s heart with the pride of his brotherhood and great strength of purpose. There was also a certain element of relief that his motivational words had been so well received.

Reuben, by his side as he had been for so many years now, caught his elbow and nodded to a rising hill. Gileas switched back to his squad vox channel.

‘Our quarry lies beyond that ridge,’ he said to his squad, looking from face to face. They all wore the same helmets, but even if they hadn’t been identifiable by the markings on their armour, he could tell each one apart with the practise of years. The way Jalonis stood with his head cocked slightly to one side. The way Tikaye held his chainsword over his shoulder. Each one had unique mannerisms that made them who they were, that marked them as individuals in a world where conformity was the norm.

‘We will lead the final assault. We strike – the rest of the company deploys and the Thunderhawks support us from above.’

He put his hand out. Reuben was first to lay his own gauntlet over his sergeant’s.

‘Brothers all,’ he said.

‘Brothers all,’ the others chorused.

‘Incoming recon data, Sergeant Ur’ten.’ Kuruk’s voice cut across the moment and Gileas nodded, blink-clicking his acceptance of the incoming intelligence. New runes streamed across his vision and his enhanced senses took everything in with barely a glance. The battle ahead would be prolonged, but the eldar they had fought during this campaign so far had demonstrated little martial prowess and even less intelligence. They had once had superior numbers, but Eighth Company’s diligence in picking them off gradually had levelled the playing field exponentially. Had they the wits, they would already have fled back to the darkness from whence they had spawned.

‘Then we end this.’

With a roar of fury, the Reckoners fired their jump packs into life and bounded skywards. They were over the ridge in seconds, beginning their descent into the midst of the remaining enemy.

There was no webway portal here. There had been, about two days ago, but a successful bombing raid had put paid to any thoughts the eldar may have had about leaving the planet that way. They were isolated from their people and the webway and were at the Silver Skulls mercy.

Not that the Silver Skulls planned to show any.

‘For Argentius and the Emperor!’

The battle cry was sounded and the Reckoners dived towards the foe, ready to obliterate them from the face of this rock.

‘Kuruk, deploy the company!’

‘On the way, sir.’

Gileas gave no further orders. He was engaged almost instantly by two splinter-rifle wielding eldar who opened fire on him. The weapon discharges barely had strength enough for him to even feel any sort of kinetic force against his armour and he turned to the two warriors, Eclipse screaming its hunger once again.

He tore through them with ease, blood splattering the weapon and his battle plate, dismembered body parts flying. For good measure, he removed their heads. There would be many skulls to collect later; trophies that would mark Eighth Company’s prowess. Eclipse sang its approval as it ground through their spinal cords.

The five-man squad was soon surrounded by a veritable sea of xenos, but they did not concern themselves with the fact they were presently outnumbered. Indeed, within minutes, the thunderous roar of the deploying Thunderhawk’s engines was heard. All around the small, natural crater where the eldar had begun their operations, Silver Skulls dropped from the skies to deliver the Emperor’s judgement.

Gileas watched the sight, a swell of pride causing a brief halt in his ceaseless attack. These were his brothers. This was what he had been reborn to. This, he thought with a soaring sense of righteousness, was who he was.

Bhehan, a young Prognosticator who had only recently formally been recognised by the Prognosticatum, was fighting alongside a different squad. He had fought with the Reckoners out on Ancerios III, when they had encountered the horror of psychic kroot. He had fought many more battles since then and as his blue-clad form strode through the enemy, scything them down with powerful swings of his crackling force axe, his confidence was almost palpable. His hand came up and swept outwards, unleashing his psychic attacks with disconcerting ease. Even in the short time since he had fought alongside the Reckoners, Bhehan’s power had grown.

Everywhere Gileas looked, he could see signs of their impending victory. Brother Diomedes was on standby, the venerable Dreadnought brought to wakeful readiness and ready to deploy at a single word – but for now at least, the assault squads were holding their ground. The ancient could rest a while longer.

The brief interlude over, the sergeant subtly adjusted the grip on his chainsword and ploughed back into the fray. He swung the weapon with casual ease, its teeth chewing into any obstacles it met.

To his right, he became aware of Tikaye facing down an onslaught of no less than six eldar. He had no doubts at all that his squad brother would have any difficulty in dealing with the threat but fired his jump pack into life. He bounded skyward and made the leap that closed the distance between himself and Tikaye.

‘I am more than capable of handling this situation, Gileas.’ Tikaye’s voice over the vox sounded faintly irked. ‘There are more than enough of the enemy to keep you busy.’

‘Surely the Emperor smiles upon he who shares, brother?’

Although he could not see Tikaye’s face behind the steel-grey helm, he knew the other man shared the same grin he was wearing right now. Fighting side by side, the two warriors ripped the eldar apart in moments.

The last one standing flung himself wildly onto the point of his chainsword, inching his way towards Gileas, its pointed helm leering. Drawing back his fist, the Space Marine punched the xenos in the face. The thing’s helmet shattered under the impact and it was knocked to the ground. Within moments, the alien asphyxiated; its physiology unable to survive in the thin air.

With a roar, the two Space Marines took to the skies once again, ready to complete their mission.

Chamber of Elucidation
Argent Mons
Varsavia

‘You are sure?’

The question was directed to Vashiro by First Captain Kerelan. A veteran of many battles, Kerelan’s face was marked by only a single tattoo. Worked in molten silver that had been mixed with the tattooist’s ink, the insignia of the chapter – the stylised skull – was etched onto his face in a full skeletal mask. It had been an unusual choice of design. Its effect was nonetheless quite considerable and achieved its goal of marking him as a Silver Skull and, perhaps more importantly, it instilled fear in his enemies. Many a foe had seen that grinning, shimmering death mask encroach on their vision right before he despatched them.

‘I am sure, captain. The Emperor’s will in this matter is unclear.’ Vashiro looked around the assemblage. Formed of nine senior Prognosticators and the First Captain, the Prognosticatum’s Council of Elucidation was one of many such councils formed within the Silver Skulls to deal with issues of varying triviality. It was a place of wisdom and knowledge.

Right now, it was also a place of great anger and tension.

‘The Chapter Master cannot possibly see this as anything other than an omen against recruiting Ur’ten to the position.’ Kerelan stood forward from his designated spot and took a place at the table. Formed from black granite, the world map of Varsavia was reproduced below him, picked out in glittering crystalline shards. Kerelan’s hands rested over the Sea of Sorrows, the land-locked ocean that separated the north continent from the south.

He leaned forward and spoke earnestly, the archaic words coming with difficulty to lips that were far more used to dealing with battle orders than they were with politics. He detested this part of his role. It was only because tradition dictated that the Chapter Master must not be allowed to sit on an advisory council that he had to attend these things at all. The burning incense filled the air with its sickly, cloying scent and made him feel more uncomfortable than he was already.

‘The First Captain decrees that due to the lack of an apparent outcome, the Prognosticatum should refrain from taking this matter any further. The First Captain therefore moves that the matter should go to a vote.’

‘The First Captain’s comment is noted,’ returned Vashiro gravely. Then he sighed a little and relaxed the formality. ‘You know our creed, Kerelan. In matters of promotion, the Emperor’s will is the deciding factor.’

‘And yet you tell me that the Emperor’s will is unclear.’ Kerelan’s tone was challenging, but not hostile.

Vashiro inclined his head. ‘This is true. It is impossible for me to fully explain the methods we employ in these divinations, but there is a certain… obfuscation surrounding our young sergeant. It is as though the empyrean itself holds its breath waiting for him to make a decision, or a choice that will affect the outcome of this communication with the Emperor.’

‘Gileas Ur’ten is not that important.’ Kerelan sneered slightly, the skull mask taking on a ferocious aspect.

‘With all due respect, First Captain, you are wrong. All denizens of the Imperium are important. Their decisions, no matter how small, cause ripples in the patterns of fate.’

Chastised, but not allowing it to show, Kerelan stepped back.

Vashiro shifted his gaze to one of the other psykers, who stepped forward to the table. Kerelan recognised Brother Andus.

His voice, when he spoke, was filled with reverential respect. ‘Vashiro, of all of us, you are the most gifted with the ability to feel the shape of times yet to come. If your sight is unclear, the First Captain is right.’ Andus bowed to Kerelan and continued. ‘Yet I cannot, in good faith, agree to let this go to a vote. Not yet.’

Kerelan opened his mouth to comment, but Andus continued. ‘I put to the First Captain that the decision is still in the hands of Vashiro. He must divine the Emperor’s word here, in the presence of his peers and equals. I do this not out of disrespect, you understand, Vashiro?’

Vashiro nodded again. ‘I see nothing but sense in your words, Andus. I know what you are thinking. If indeed the matter will not be settled by Gileas’s actions, then it is likely that the Deep Dark is upon me. Perhaps I have displeased the Emperor in some way and he will not show me the answer until I have atoned.’ Vashiro sighed, suddenly looking to Kerelan every bit as old as he was rumoured to be.

‘My strength is yours, brother.’ Andus laid his hand on the table, palm down. ‘My strength is yours. Draw on my abilities to strengthen your own.’

One by one, the other Prognosticators stepped forward and rested their hands alongside his. Kerelan stepped back, sensing that his presence at this point was some kind of intrusion.

Vashiro, who seemed to have forgotten the First Captain’s presence entirely, allowed his eyes to roam over his brother Prognosticators.

‘So be it,’ he said and brought forth the soft, black velvet pouch that contained his divining runes. ‘I am the instrument of the Emperor’s will. Through me, may He show us the way forward in this matter.’

Kerelan watched impassively as Vashiro cast the runes across the map of Varsavia. As one, the Prognosticators leaned forward. The ghost of a smile flickered across Vashiro’s face.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Something has changed. A decision has been reached.’

Genara.
Orbiting Virilian Tertius

‘We are victorious.’

The scene was a charnel house. Dead and dying eldar lay where they had fallen in the wake of Eighth Company’s passage. Sightless eyes stared up at the amethyst skies.

‘We are victorious.’ Gileas repeated the words. Yes, they were victorious, but there had been a cost. The death of more of his men was an inevitability that they had all faced when they had deployed. But the losses weighed heavily on his broad shoulders.

Amethyst dust, thrown up from the violent skirmish was still settling and the glittering motes shone as they settled on the sergeant’s armour, subtly altering the hue from silver to mauve. Absently, he brushed the dust away. Around him, his brother Space Marines were collecting the bodies of the fallen, taking heads for skull trophies and piling them up in one place. They would be incinerated on the sergeant’s say-so.

Despite the thin atmosphere, Gileas reached up and removed his helmet, shaking out his hair and inhaling the coppery tang of death. He had fulfilled the oath he had taken that morning. Keile Meyoran’s death was avenged and the eldar were scrubbed from this system. The future recruitment of Silver Skulls from this system was, for now at least, secured.

As Eighth Company worked, so did Gileas. Without the company Apothecary present, the job of recovering the gene-seed from the five fallen battle-brothers fell to the commanding officer. It was an unpleasant job, not from a clinically detached viewpoint, but more from the fact he had to transcend the grief he felt for each of his dead brothers in order to carry out the procedure.

He recovered four of the five pairs of progenoids. Silas was appallingly injured, his body burned and destroyed in the wake of the explosion that had destroyed his jump pack, him, and four of the enemy simultaneously. His death touched Gileas the most. Silas, like him, was an Adeptus Astartes whose life had begun in the far south. He had shown great promise. Now his star was no longer in the ascendant, but was forever snuffed out.

‘You fought well, my brother,’ Gileas said softly, getting slowly to his feet. ‘The Emperor protects your soul now.’ He felt a particular sting at the loss of Silas. Whilst there was solidarity and deep friendship amongst the Eighth Company as a whole, Gileas found natural affinity with those who had grown up, like him, in the lethal surrounds of the Ka’hun Mao, what he now knew as the Southern Wastes; those who had fought from childhood just for the right to survive in the face of threats from neighbouring cannibalistic tribes or the countless predators and who prowled across the great plains.

A flash of recollection flickered and died. His childhood memories were mostly lost to the indoctrination and reprogramming he had received on his initiation into the Silver Skulls, but they were there, somewhere.

Shaking himself back to awareness, he gave the precious containers holding the progenoids to one of the other Space Marines and stretched out an ache in his shoulders. His gauntlets were smeared with the blood of the fallen Silver Skulls. But through the pervading mist of grief that he would save for later, something else crept from the shadows. A sense of certainty. The knowledge that he had made the right decisions here today. A sense that he was more than capable of assuming the mantle of leadership.

A change in attitude that would radiate unconsciously across the starry blackness that separated Gileas Ur’ten from Varsavia.

He moved to stand with his brothers and stared impassively at the pile of xenos. He spat on the ground, then turned.

‘Burn them,’ he said.

Promethium snaked out from the flamers in the hands of his battle-brothers onto the pile of dead aliens. From the weak cries that could be heard, it was evident that not all of them were quite dead. No matter, Gileas thought. Their existence would be ended swiftly enough.

The fire burned brightly and swiftly, eating up the meagre oxygen that fed it. The stench of charred flesh was stronger even than that of the spilled blood, but Gileas did not replace his helmet. He could survive in this weak atmosphere for a considerable length of time. He would watch this near-ritualistic burning of their fallen enemy with his own eyes.

The moment was only slightly marred by Kuruk’s voice intruding across the vox.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten?’

‘What is it, Kuruk?’

‘I have been contacted by the Astropath Primaris on board the Silver Arrow. There has been a communication from Varsavia. From the Lord Commander himself.’ Kuruk’s voice was filled with the reverence due the Chapter Master. Gileas nodded. He had been expecting this, but now that the moment had arrived, words failed him.

Sensing his brother’s moment of discomfort, Reuben spoke up for him in order to fill the silence.

‘What is the message, Kuruk?’

‘Come home.’

There was a pause as Gileas assimilated this. He waited patiently for the rest of the message. When Kuruk said nothing else, he finally found his voice.

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s the essence of it, sir. Brother-Sergeant Gileas Ur’ten; Greetings from Lord Commander Argentius. My apologies, brother, but I must ask you to end your campaign and bring Eighth Company back to Varsavia. Come home, Gileas.’

Gileas and Reuben exchanged glances. The Chapter Master was recalling Eighth Company to their homeworld, a place that Gileas had not seen for countless decades. A thrill of anticipation ran through him; an eagerness to see the Fortress-Monastery once more, the chance to look out over the peaks of the highest mountain ranges at the snowy landscape of his birth.

Gileas took several deep breaths and stooped to retrieve the head of the eldar leader he had taken as his trophy. He cast a final glance at the funeral pyre and began to walk way.

‘Then let us not keep the Lord Commander waiting,’ he said to his men. ‘We are going home.’

MARSHLIGHT

C L Werner

‘Thick as a patroon’s purse strings!’

Gustav Mertens wasn’t sure which member of the Aemilia’s crew uttered the oath, but it was certainly an appropriate one. The sailor had never seen a fog so heavy as the one which now surrounded the three-masted barque, and he had travelled the River Reik long enough to have seen more than his share of ugly weather. He’d been in Altdorf on nights when the mist rising from the river looked solid enough to cut with a knife and had almost drowned downriver of Carroburg when the fog had been so impenetrable that his ship snuck up on a flat-bottomed barge and sent both it and herself to the bottom.

This fog, however, was different. For all the levity of the unknown crewman’s outburst, the sailors were far from at their ease. There was an eerie, menacing quality in the air, a sense of wrongness that made the hair on Gustav’s neck prickle. He could hear the anxiety in the voices of Captain Piedersen and his officers as they snapped orders at the crew.

Most of the sailors were old hands who had made the voyage between Altdorf and Marienburg many times before. They didn’t need their officers to remind them of the danger the fog presented. The grey veil couldn’t have set upon them at a worse time, when the broad Reik slithered its way into the morass cartographers had condemned and cursed, branding it simply ‘the Wasteland’. The swampy maze of moors and fens stretched clear to the coast, surrounding the great port city of Marienburg on three sides. The muddy, treacherous ground would seep and slop its way into the Reik, choking the great river with mud and forcing the tight-fisted burghers of Marienburg to send barges out to dredge the river every fortnight to keep the Reik navigable.

The periodic dredging wasn’t always enough, and ships always had to be wary of new mud flats and sand bars when they sailed into the Wasteland. Normally, a sharp-eyed lookout could spot such obstructions well in advance, but in the fog, a ship went blind. It was for this reason that Captain Piedersen had all hands at the rail, probing the river with iron-capped poles, seeking any warning that the Aemilia was entering shallow water.

Perhaps if there had been a lookout in the crow’s nest, there would have been more warning. As it stood, Gustav only became aware of the ship’s peril was when the sailor beside him suddenly stopped probing the river bottom. The man stood slack-jawed, staring out into the fog. Gustav’s first instinct was to growl at his comrade, to get the man back to work before one of the officers came by with the lash.

However, there was a look of such fright on the sailor’s face that Gustav couldn’t help but follow the direction of the man’s staring eyes. Gustav saw at once what had caused the other man’s alarm. It was impossible to miss the flickering green glow shining behind the fog. Swamp gas and will-o-the-wisps were a common enough sight for any Wastelander, yet these lights were different. Gustav had never seen their like before. There were over a dozen of them, lurching and weaving through the fog, and each of the green orbs seemed to possess a certain uniformity of shape and size.

The sailor beside Gustav suddenly dropped his pole and dropped to his knees. His leathery hands curled awkwardly together, making the sign of Manann. The whispers of a prayer, half sea shanty and half orison, scraped past the sailor’s wizened lips.

Gustav felt his body grow cold as he heard his comrade’s prayer. Other voices were raised now, shouting warning to the rest of the crew. The green lights had been spotted by others. Men dropped their poles, replacing them with axes and belaying pins. The mates vanished into the forecastle, reappearing with a half dozen crossbows cradled in their arms. Captain Piedersen brandished his sword, bellowing commands to his crew, enjoining them to repel boarders.

River pirates. That was the first thought that raced through Gustav’s mind as he drew the long knife from his boot and glared down at the approaching lights. Pirates and wreckers were a common hazard on this stretch of the Reik, though it would be a bold or desperate brigand who would ply his trade in such hideous conditions. They had chosen poor prey. Captain Piedersen’s first ship had sailed the Sea of Claws, transporting goods between Marienburg and Erengrad. He was a man used to fending off the attentions of Norscan longships and had never gotten out of the habit of ensuring his crews were armed to the teeth. Any pirates who marked one of Piedersen’s ships for plunder soon regretted it.

Even as such thoughts occurred to Gustav, he felt his stomach tighten and a cold chill run down his back. The more he watched the green lights, the less he felt they were anything made by man. Old stories, half-remembered myths from his childhood, rose up unbidden. The frantic prayers of the man kneeling on the deck beside him only added to Gustav’s mounting fear. In his mind, he hoped it was only wreckers or pirates who menaced the ship.

The mates were still distributing the crossbows when the attack began. The only warning was a low ‘thump’ from somewhere out in the fog. A moment later, the sound of shattering glass sounded from the forecastle. Gustav turned away from the rail, following the direction of the noise. He saw a greenish haze settling across the top of the wheelhouse. Captain Piedersen and a pair of sailors collapsed in the midst of the cloud, coughing and grasping at their throats. Blood bubbled from their mouths and oozed from noses, eyes and ears. Before anyone could move to help them, the three men gasped their last.

More thumps sounded from the fog. The crackle of breaking glass rose from every quarter of the deck now. Aware that the green haze brought death, the sailors screamed and howled in terror, scrambling to and fro in their desperate efforts to avoid destruction. There was no escape, however, for as soon as the men reached a clear part of the ship a glass globe would come hurtling down and shatter against the deck. The deathly cloud would rise from the broken fragments, destroying all who inhaled its lethal fumes.

Fear kept Gustav frozen in place beside the rail. It kept him from joining the mad, hopeless dash across the decks. It was fear which again saved him when the half-crazed sailor beside him suddenly lunged to his feet. Screaming at the top of his lungs, the sailor hurled himself over the rail. The man’s flailing arms smashed into Gustav, knocking him over the side to join his comrade’s plunge into the murky river.

The cold water revived Gustav’s wits, if not his courage. After fighting his way to the surface, he was careful to keep quiet. He could hear his crazed companion sputtering and coughing, thrashing about in the water as he struggled to reach the marshy shore. Gustav felt a pang of guilt as he decided against trying to restrain his shipmate. There was nothing he could do. The sailor was making too much noise. Pirates or ghosts, whatever was out there in the fog had heard the commotion. Trying to help him now would only cause Gustav to share the wretch’s fate.

Treading water with as much silence as he could manage, Gustav found it easy to follow his crazed comrade’s progress. By now there were no more screams rising from the decks of the Aemilia; the barque was as silent as a grave. Only the sailor’s gibbering moans broke the quiet. He could hear the man swimming towards the marsh. Following the sound, he could also see a half-dozen of the green lights moving to converge upon the sailor.

Soon, the lights closed upon the moans and all was silent in the fog.

It was some little time before Gustav became aware of soft, furtive sounds rising from the river. Straining his eyes, he watched as more of the green lights bobbed into view. He could tell from the way they rolled and shivered that the lights were floating across the river, drawing near to the Aemilia.

Gustav ducked his body into the river, keeping only his eyes and nose above the cold water. Steadily the lights came nearer.

Then Gustav saw a dark shape loom out from the fog. It was a long, narrow skiff of the sort used by the Wastelanders to navigate their swampy home. Gustav had seen the same sort of boat thousands of times, had even owned one himself before forsaking the marsh for the river. Yet the very ordinariness of the skiff only magnified the horror he felt when he saw the creatures paddling it towards the Aemilia, for they were anything but ordinary.

Things ripped from nightmare and the darkest imaginings of childhood, the fiends leered out of the fog and mist. There were at least a dozen of the things on the skiff. Each was roughly the size of a man, with a semblance of the human shape about it, but there was little real similarity. The things had great, bloated bodies, warty and shapeless after the fashion of a toad. Their hands were flabby claws, their skin was green and slimy with an oily sheen about it. A long, whiplike tail coiled behind their bodies and lashing about with serpentine undulations.

The faces of the fiends were the most ghastly. They stretched away from the skull in long floppy beaks with no suggestion of lips or chin. Two enormous flaring nostrils rose above the beak, glistening with a moist blackness against the slimy green skin. Above the nostrils rose the most hideous aspect of the creatures, the crowning horror of their inhuman physiognomy. A single great glaring eye, blazing with eerie green fire. The source of the sinister lights Gustav had seen glowing inside the fog.

All the old stories of marsh daemons came back to Gustav as he watched in mounting terror while the grotesque monsters assaulted the Aemilia. The creatures drew long hooks and stout cords from the bottom of the skiff, swinging the grapples until they caught upon the ship’s rail. Then, with scuttling, skittering movements that belied their grotesque bulks, the monsters swarmed up the cables and boarded the ship.

Teeth chattering, his body numb with a cold that had nothing to do with the river, Gustav waited until the last of the marsh daemons left the skiff before daring to move. Praying the monsters would be occupied with whatever hellish purpose moved them, Gustav started to swim for shore.

He was the sole survivor. It was his duty to get back to Marienburg and tell the Aemilia’s owners what had befallen their ship.

Even if no one would believe him when he told them marsh daemons had emerged from the fog to claim the souls of the Aemilia’s crew.

‘Mad as a marsh hare.’

That was the decision voiced by Doctor Anton Kettmann as the physician turned his back on the dingy little cell. It was a decision that brought a frown to the white-robed women standing in the narrow brick hallway. The oldest of them, a silver pendant in the shape of a dove adorning her neck, shook her head and gave the physician a stern look.

‘There is always hope if you have faith in the goddess,’ she reproached the doctor.

Kettmann dropped his instruments into his satchel and tied the bag close. ‘Tell me, Sister Agatha, what kind of faith do you think that mad thing in there has?’ He jabbed his thumb back towards the door of the cell. ‘He’s been screaming about swamp devils for three days. The least Shallya could do is shut him up.’

‘That may be, but given that this is a hospice of Shallya, I advise you to apologize for your impious remarks.’ The threat came not from Sister Agatha or any of the other priestesses, but from a tall, grim-faced man dressed in light armour and with the band of a riverwarden tied around his arm. As a concession to the goddess of peace and mercy, the scabbard at his side was empty, the sword checked in the weaponhouse outside the temple grounds, but even without a sword, he looked ready for violence.

‘Please, Master Visscher, let there be no bloodshed,’ implored Sister Agatha, imposing herself between the riverwarden and the doctor. Kettmann hastily donned his hat and scrambled off down the hall before waiting to see if his antagonist would circle around the priestess.

‘You should listen to Sister Agatha.’ The advice came from a thin, wiry middle-aged man, his hair swept back in a widow’s peak, his prominent cheekbones and deep set eyes giving his face an almost cadaverous quality. A fine black cloak trimmed with martin hung from his shoulders, a black-work doublet and matching long breeches and fustian gloves about his slender hands. His appearance was one of refinement and elegance beside the rough crudity of the riverwarden. Yet there was something about Hein van Seeckt that suggested an air of menace more potent than all of Tjarda Visscher’s swords and armour.

‘That man in there is the only witness that has turned up!’ Visscher snarled. ‘Ten ships lost in the marsh and this madman is the only survivor!’

Seeckt closed his eyes and nodded. It was true what the riverwarden said. Ten ships had been lost over the past three months. Lost with all hands. It had been something of a miracle that this lone survivor had been found, rescued from the Wasteland by a frogcatcher who, by some whim of the gods, both knew how to read and had seen the reward posters offering five guilders for any information about the fate of the Aemilia.

Yes, Seeckt could understand the riverwarden’s frustration that this miracle might prove worthless. The loss of the ships, at first just a minor inconvenience, had escalated to the level of international incident, straining relations between the breakaway Free City of Marienburg and the Empire they had once been a part of. As the situation grew more tense, as the threat of war became more real with each vanished ship, the burghers of Marienburg increased their demands on the riverwardens.

Find out what was going on and put a stop to it, or find themselves languishing on Rijker’s Island. That had been the decision of the burghers. And, as the most esteemed and decorated officer among the riverwardens, Captain Visscher had been given the unenviable duty of accomplishing the seemingly impossible.

‘Gustav Mertens will tell us exactly what we want to know,’ Seeckt stated.

Anger drained from Visscher’s eyes, replaced with confusion. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he was well aware that his witness was a babbling lunatic. ‘He’s out of his mind! How can he tell us anything?’

Seeckt smoothed his expensive doublet and glanced at the brick walls around him. ‘In here, he can’t tell us anything,’ he said. ‘That’s why we’re taking him with us.’

‘You cannot!’ protested Sister Agatha. ‘This man has been entrusted into the care of Shallya’s mercy!’

Seeckt fixed the outraged priestess with a withering stare. ‘I am an agent of the Freeholders themselves,’ he told her, his voice dripping with the arrogance of authority. ‘If I say Gustav Mertens leaves with me, then he leaves with me.’ His voice became an audible sneer as he saw Sister Agatha’s jaw clench. ‘Consider how much your charitable efforts would be diminished if the burghers ceased to donate to your cause. Ask yourself which is more important: helping the many, or sacrificing them for a single man? Shallya is a merciful goddess, but I believe she is also a practical one.’

Seeckt stalked past the silent priestess. ‘Visscher, bring Mertens with you. I want to sail before nightfall.’

The Shakerlo sailed upriver after taking on cargo in Carroburg. There was a palpable feeling of fear hovering about the decks of the ship. Ten other vessels had made the same voyage only to vanish in the marshes. That thought was foremost in the minds of the crew.

It was also foremost in the minds of her passengers. Seeckt and Visscher paced the decks like two hunters scenting prey. Gustav Mertens simply huddled next to the mainmast, gibbering and drooling, his madness doing little to quieten the fears of the crew.

The riverwarden fingered the strange mask Seeckt had given him, a curious contraption of waxed leather that extended outward into a slender, birdlike bill. It reminded Visscher of old woodcuts he’d once seen showing Westerland during the Black Death, gangs of plague doctors fleecing the sick and the dying. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why Seeckt had distributed these weird masks to every man aboard the Shakerlo or why he had ordered everyone to keep the masks with them at all times. Indeed, three crewmen had been discharged and put ashore at the little fishing village of Mierdorf for violating the agent’s orders.

Everything about the voyage was strange. It made sense to Visscher that they would engage extra crew in case they ran into trouble and had to make a fight of things, but Seeckt had taken his preparedness to the next level, hiring the services of a dozen Carroburg swordsmen and a scruffy mob of Tilean crossbows. It seemed a colossal waste of gold should their journey back to Marienburg prove uneventful.

Visscher had a suspicion that Seeckt knew more about the vanished ships than he admitted. The agent was just a bit too certain they would encounter trouble. His assurance had to stem from something more substantial than Gustav’s deranged mutterings. There was something, some link between the missing ships that the riverwardens had missed, a connection between them which Seeckt had uncovered and which the agent had ensured the Shakerlo would share. When he challenged the agent about his suspicions, however, the only reply Visscher got was a wry smile and a warning not to meddle in the affairs of the burghers.

The tension became a palpable thing when the grassy banks of the Upper Reik gave way to the muck and mire of the Wasteland. The crew murmured uneasily among themselves as fog began to settle across the river, forming a grey veil across the horizon. Prayers to Manann, Handrich and even Sigmar became common as the sailors watched their vessel draw ever closer to the fog.

Seeckt held a speedy conference with the Shakerlo’s captain and officers. When he dismissed them, the men circled among their crew, making sure that each man was armed and had his weird mask ready. Seeckt watched the officers go about their errand, then turned and made his way to where Visscher stood just below the forecastle.

‘Have your mask ready,’ the agent hissed. ‘I think you will need it before much longer.’

Visscher removed the ugly mask from where he had tied it to his belt-sash. He grimaced at the long, beaked face and the dull, glassy eyes. ‘You’re more superstitious than any seaman if you think this will ward off marsh bogies,’ the riverwarden grumbled.

‘Humour me,’ Seeckt said, his voice thin and mirthless.

Visscher glowered at him, his pride bristling at the agent’s condescending manner. ‘You really think we’re going to run into trouble?’

‘I’m counting on it,’ Seeckt said. ‘I’ve done everything to ensure this ship matches the Aemilia in every way. What happened to her should happen to us.’

‘Now you can predict the ways of marsh daemons!’ Visscher scoffed.

Seeckt fixed the riverwarden with a cold gaze. He didn’t deign to respond to Visscher’s baiting, but instead jerked a thumb towards the mainmast. ‘Keep close to Mertens,’ he ordered. ‘Watch his every move. If he does anything unusual, don’t wait but shout the alarm at once.’ Seeckt prodded Visscher’s chest with the tip of his finger. ‘At once. You understand?’

‘Your madman is chained,’ Visscher snarled. ‘He’s not going to cause any trouble, however agitated he gets.’

‘I’m not worried about him,’ Seeckt said. ‘I’m worried about what might upset him.’

As though responding to Seeckt’s words, Gustav began thrashing about in his chains, an incoherent stream of moans and shrieks rising from his ashen face. The crew turned with undisguised horror as the madman’s wails became more crazed with each passing breath. A few of the sailors closed their hands about their knives, fear goading them to advance upon the chained lunatic.

Visscher moved to stop the frightened sailors. He had no affection for Gustav, only the sort of pitying contempt a man might show a feral dog, but the riverwarden was not about to stand idly by while the helpless lunatic was slaughtered. His stern eyes glared at each of the seamen.

‘I’ve had it with that madman’s screams!’ a broken-nosed sailor growled. He fingered the fat-bladed knife in his hand and glared back at Visscher. ‘Get out of our way!’

With one smooth motion, Visscher drew the sword sheathed at his side. The blade licked out in a blinding flash of steel, whistling past the broken nose. A bead of blood dribbled from the tiny cut left by the riverwarden’s steel.

‘Make me move,’ Visscher said. ‘But make your peace with the gods first.’

The sailors looked anxiously at each other, glancing at the short knives in their hands and the long sword in the riverwarden’s. They knew Visscher’s threat wasn’t an idle one. Their numbers might prevail against Visscher’s sword, but not before the blade had claimed a few of them. Frightened as they were, none of the seamen wanted to be the first to die.

Oblivious to the drama playing out only a few feet away, Gustav’s entire body contorted against the deck as the madman’s lungs gave voice to a howl of pure terror. The sound reminded the sailor’s of their own fears.

‘Keep that mongrel quiet!’ one of the sailors demanded. ‘Shut him up, or we will!’ The outburst brought angry mutters from the other seamen, pouring back into their veins the murderous determination Visscher had hoped to quell.

‘You have more important things to worry about,’ Seeckt’s calm tones intruded upon the scene. The agent stood beside the rail, gesturing with his gloved hand at the roiling fog which now surrounded the ship. Every man gasped in fright as he saw the weird green lights flashing through the mist, bobbing and weaving across the marsh. Whispers of daemons and spectres passed among the crew.

A final shriek rose from Gustav, accompanied by the sound of snapping chains. Laughing maniacally, the lunatic lunged across the deck, his broken chains dangling from wrists and ankles. Visscher tried to intercept the madman, but the cunning of insanity gripped Gustav’s crazed mind. Whirling about when he saw the riverwarden, Gustav dove for the portside rail. He leaped onto the rail, perched upon it for a moment, insane laughter shuddering through his body. Then, the moment passed and the madman lost his balance. He hurtled overboard, vanishing into the grey fog with a splash and the rattle of his broken chains.

Visscher reached the rail just after Gustav’s fell. The riverwarden’s eyes scoured the fog, trying to find any trace of the madman. Having taken it upon himself to protect Gustav from the sailors, he felt a sense of guilt that he had failed to protect the lunatic from his own madness.

Visscher was still staring into the fog when he felt Seeckt’s gloved hand close about his shoulder. The agent’s face was hidden behind the weird leather mask, his eyes just visible behind the tinted lenses. Seeckt pointed to the riverwarden’s own mask, motioning for Visscher to put it on. ‘Like I told them,’ the agent said, his voice distorted and muffled by the mask, ‘we have bigger problems to worry about.’

The riverwarden glanced across the Shakerlo’s deck. The crew and officers had donned their own masks and were huddled close against the sides, watching the green lights moving through the fog. Every man clutched a weapon in his hand, his body tensed for action. There were no more frightened whispers. The dread clinging to every man’s heart had silenced talk of daemons and ghosts.

‘Keep a careful watch,’ Seeckt told Visscher. ‘The attack will come soon. When it does, drop to the deck and play dead. You’ll know when to stop playing.’

Visscher gripped Seeckt’s arm. ‘Attacked? By who?’

A sardonic chuckle rose from Seeckt’s mask. ‘Marsh daemons, of course.’ He turned away, pacing across to the forecastle to issue final orders to the captain.

Visscher wondered what Seeckt’s plans were. Again, the riverwarden felt suspicion twisting his gut. Seeckt had been just a bit too assured that the ship would be attacked, yet even at this late hour he preferred to play coy regarding the nature of the menace threatening them. And what possible sense could there be in playing dead when these unknown enemies attacked?

Visscher set aside his questions when he heard something crash against the deck not three feet from where he stood. Through the lenses of his mask, he could see little fragments of what looked like glass scattered about the deck, a mist of vapour rising from the shards. He turned his head as he heard the sound of more glass breaking somewhere towards the stern. Again, he could see shards and smoky vapour.

The riverwarden couldn’t begin to guess the kind of weapon that had been set loose against the Shakerlo, but he knew enough to recognize it as a weapon. Clearly, Seeckt had anticipated just this sort of thing, issuing the weird masks to protect the crew from the undoubtedly poisonous vapour. Recognizing that much of the agent’s plan, Visscher thought he could guess the rest. Slowly, he dropped to the deck, stretching himself out in what he hoped was a convincingly dead attitude. He kept his hand closed about the hilt of his sword.

Once their attackers were satisfied their poison had done its work, they would board the ship in search of plunder. But this time the murderous pirates would be due for a surprise. Any fear of ghosts and spectres was gone now. Only something mortal would hurl glass globes filled with poison gas to kill an enemy. There was nothing supernatural about the fiends who had been preying upon the river trade.

Visscher was quite eager now to meet Seeckt’s marsh daemons.

Lying upon the deck, Visscher trained his senses upon the sounds around him. He could hear the creaking of the Shakerlo as she drifted through the water. He could hear the crackle of glass breaking as more globes crashed down upon the ship. Slowly these sounds abated, replaced by the splash of oars cutting water. Boats, many of them from the sound, were closing upon the Shakerlo. Visscher felt the tremor of the boats as they bumped against the ship’s hull. He smiled as he heard the scratch of grapples being thrown over the ship’s rail.

The scratch of the grapples was soon followed by the sound of feet scrabbling against the hull, the mutter of muffled voices whispering to each other. There was an unpleasant quality about those voices, unpleasant enough to make the riverwarden’s skin crawl. Despite the risk, he had to see what sort of men these pirates were. Visscher rolled his head against his arm, turning his eyes towards starboard.

What he saw brought every childhood story of fog devils and marsh daemons roaring back through his mind. The things crawling over the rail weren’t men at all, but were creatures straight out of hag-haunted nightmare! The flabby green skin, the single glowing eye, the floppy snout dripping down from the bloated face… how many times had he heard the old folk of the Wasteland warn against these horrors, these malignant denizens of mist and shadow!

The daemons dropped down onto the deck, their cyclopean eyes shining across the ship as they looked over the Shakerlo. Smothered laughter wheezed from their grotesque faces, laughter that made Gustav’s ravings seem beatific. More and more of the monsters climbed the rails until there were nearly two-score of the fiends prowling about the deck. Visscher could see the amphibian horrors shuffling towards the forecastle, their flabby paws closing about ugly bludgeons and rusty swords.

As the daemons approached the forecastle, they passed Seeckt’s prone body. The cyclopean monsters paid the seemingly dead agent scant notice. It was the last mistake they would ever make.

Seeckt’s lean body jolted upwards, a dagger clenched in each of his gloved hands. He drove one of the blades into the slimy throat of one of the daemons, slashing the other across the belly of its nearest comrade. Both of the monsters reeled back, black blood jetting from their wounds. The daemon with the transfixed throat crumpled without a sound, crashing to the deck, its body twitching, long tail drumming against the planks. The other daemon gave voice to a shriek and fell to its knees, its flabby claws pawing at its ghastly injury.

Seeckt threw the bloodied dagger full into the face of a third daemon, piercing one of its black nostrils. The fiend dropped to the deck, dead even before Seeckt drew his sword and slashed it across the monster’s neck.

The Shakerlo’s crew lunged into action at that moment. Seeckt had told them to wait for the right moment – the moment when the enemy was aboard and battle was joined. The sailors, emboldened by Seeckt’s violent display, attacked the fiends with a ferocity born of shame and outrage. To a man they had really believed these creatures to be some supernatural horror of the swamp. But Seeckt had shown them that these were no daemons, only mortal beasts that could bleed and die.

Visscher sprang onto his feet, tackling the monster closest to him. The cyclopean beats crashed onto its back, kicking and flailing at the riverwarden. The thing’s slimy skin made it as slippery as an eel, but Visscher clung to its shoulder and drove the point of his sword full into the creature’s glowing eye. The eye exploded in a burst of gas and glass, glowing vapour sizzling across the monster’s slimy face.

The riverwarden stared in amazement at burning wreckage of the fiend’s head. His wonder increased when the creature’s struggles became even more intense and its flabby paw slammed into his face, jolting him backwards. The creature kicked at him with both legs, driving him away, but before it escaped completely, Visscher saw beady eyes glaring at him from the black depths of the fiend’s nostrils.

As soon as it was clear of the riverwarden, the monster lifted its claws to its face and tore its own head off. The ruined, smoking husk of the cyclopean daemon fell to the deck. In its place, rising from the slimy shoulders, was an even more hideous countenance: the snarling muzzle of an enormous rat!

Visscher stared at the transformed monster, shocked, gripped with disbelief. The marsh daemons had faded back into the land of legend, but in their stead had come a creature just as fantastic, the verminous underfolk!

The ratman snapped its long fangs at the stupefied riverwarden, then lunged at him. Before the creature’s fangs could sink themselves into Visscher’s throat, a sword flashed between monster and prey. The slimy flesh of the monster was split open, exposing the furry body hidden inside. Black blood bubbled from a mortal wound and the ratman crashed to the deck, coughing and spitting as it tried to crawl away.

Seeckt stabbed the point of his bloodied blade into the ratman’s neck, then wiped the sword clean with a scrap of sailcloth. The agent turned away from the dead monster, directing a reproving look at Visscher.

‘Don’t worry about what they are,’ he told the riverwarden. ‘Just kill them.’

The battle was swift and brutal. By its finish, no less than thirty of the ratmen were dead, strewn about the decks in their ghoulish disguises. Four of the ship’s crew had fallen to the monsters. Surprise had thrown the ratmen into complete confusion, but Visscher thought the gods deserved some credit for delivering such a lop-sided victory.

The ship’s crew kept to the forecastle, watching the fog for any sign of more enemies. They hadn’t been pleased with Seeckt’s insistence that the bodies of the monsters be left on deck and even less happy with his demand that the Shakerlo remain at anchor. Only the threat of the burghers kept the men from throwing Seeckt and the monsters over board. Seamen all, they knew how far the enmity of the burghers could reach.

Visscher descended from the forecastle. There were enough eyes watching the fog. He was more interested in watching what Seeckt was doing. The agent was prowling among the dead ratmen, giving each a cursory examination before moving on to the next. There was something methodical about the way Seeckt was operating, and Visscher wanted to know the purpose behind it all.

‘They’re not beastmen, are they?’ Visscher challenged Seeckt.

The agent looked up from one of the bodies, a cold smile on his gaunt face. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

Visscher nodded his head and gestured with his thumb at the forecastle. ‘They don’t believe you either. We’ve all heard the stories. These things are underfolk.’

‘And does it make you happy to know the skaven exist?’ Seeckt’s voice dropped into a bitter chuckle. ‘Better to hold onto whatever lies you are told. You’ll sleep better.’ He stooped down over another of the ratmen, pulling away one of the flabby paws and exposing a furry hand.

‘They died easy enough,’ Visscher said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘If men knew how easily these things died…’

Seeckt reached down and lifted a fold of the slimy green costume the skaven wore. ‘They were lumbered down by their vestments,’ Seeckt explained. ‘Unencumbered, a skaven is faster than any man. By the time you can think to stick your sword in its heart, it has its claws in your belly.’

‘Then why did they take such a risk? Why make themselves vulnerable just to make us think marsh daemons were taking the ships?’

Seeckt tugged at the slimy skin, opening it along one of its seams. Visscher could see now that the flabby flesh was a sort of coat, with matching gloves, boots and pants. ‘Protection,’ the agent stated. ‘Not against us, because we should have already been dead, but against the poison gas they were using.’ He stared out at the fog. ‘Somewhere out on the marsh, if we cared to look, I think we might find some sort of mortar or catapult.’

‘The glass globes!’ Visscher exclaimed.

Seeckt pointed to one of the spots where a globe had crashed. The planking was burned and pitted where the glass had shattered. ‘Without our masks, we should have all been dead before they came near the ship.’ Seeckt stood suddenly, marching across the deck to one of the dead ratmen. He reached down and pulled the cyclopean head from the skaven’s shoulders. ‘Here is your marsh daemon,’ he said. ‘Nothing but a mask to protect them from their own gas. The glowing eye nothing more than a lantern to help them see their way through the fog. With their snouts locked away inside their masks, they’d be unable to pick their way by scent, so they’d need to keep their vision keen.’

‘But they look just like the old stories,’ Visscher objected. ‘The ones about the marsh daemons.’

Seeckt turned away, pacing to the rear of the body. Using one of his daggers, he cut away at the flabby tail, revealing it to be a leathery sheath covering a long naked tail. ‘I grant that to be more than coincidence,’ he said. Reaching to his belt, Seeckt withdrew a little bottle. ‘Their leader must know quite a bit about men, enough to exploit the old legends to conceal his raiders. Just in case somebody like Gustav got away.’ Casually, the agent opened the bottle, upending it and spilling it across the exposed tail.

‘Clumsy!’ Seeckt cursed. ‘I’ll have to go down to my cabin and get more.’ Rising, the agent motioned Visscher to follow him. When the riverwarden was close enough, he whispered to him, ‘Keep watching our “dead” friend over there. Don’t stop him, just watch.’

In a louder voice, Seeckt called out to the crew, telling them that he was done with the bodies. He advised soaking them in lamp oil and burning them on shore.

No sooner were the words out of Seeckt’s mouth than the ratman he had been examining leaped to its feet and scurried across the deck. Like the Shakerlo’s crew, the skaven had been playing dead, biding its time until the opportune time to escape. Seeckt’s decision to burn the dead monsters instead of simply casting them overboard had forced the ratman into action. Before any of the crew could do more than curse at it, the skaven was across the deck and leaping over the side.

Visscher rushed after it, feeling stupid for letting the creature escape, whatever Seeckt’s orders had been. The agent was more pragmatic. Calmly, he pointed to a glowing line of splotches that stained the deck.

‘I’m afraid our friend has some paint on his tail,’ Seeckt announced. ‘It should be easy for me to follow him back to his lair.’

‘You mean easy for us,’ Visscher corrected him. ‘It’s the job of the riverwardens to put an end to this piracy, whoever or whatever is behind it.’

Seeckt stared hard at Visscher. ‘This won’t be like rousting ship wreckers or bullying smugglers.’

‘I’m going to see this through,’ Visscher said, his tone brooking no objection.

Seeckt relented with a sigh. ‘On your head then,’ he said. Turning, he called out to the captain. ‘Keep the Shakerlo here until the fog burns off. If we’re not back by then, I leave you to your own judgement.’

So saying, the two men lowered themselves over the side. On the marshy shore, a little trail of glowing splotches beckoned them.

To the two men, the trail seemed almost without end. The little splotches of glowing paint meandered through the muck and mire of the marshes. Fog clung to the soggy earth, the grey mists so thick that Visscher thought they would need a knife to cut their way through. Sucking mud and black pools of stagnant water threatened them on every side, waiting to punish the men for the slightest misstep and drag them down into a nameless grave.

Quicksand and deadfalls weren’t the only fears preying upon Visscher’s mind. All the haunts and bogies of his childhood were lurking beyond the grey veil, the drowned corpses that lived again, the wailing swamp witches who could suck out a man’s soul with a kiss, the cyclopean marsh daemons who carried their victims into the mist – never to be seen again.

To these, Visscher now added another fairytale horror, a horror all the more terrible for its awful reality. The skaven, the underfolk of nursery rhyme and nightmare. Seeckt hoped to follow the ratman he had marked back to the thing’s lair, but how many more of the verminous creatures might even now be prowling the marsh looking for them?

The riverwarden tightened his hold upon his sword. He envied Seeckt’s cool implacable self-assurance. The agent hurried through the marsh, leaping from one splotch of paint to the next, never hesitating, never questioning. He was like a hound chasing down game, his mind utterly fixated upon the hunt.

Visscher hoped that Seeckt’s confidence was justified.

‘There,’ the agent suddenly hissed, his voice low and cautious. He pointed a gloved finger at a great jumble of mossy stones. The broken megaliths might once have formed some mighty castle or temple, but if they had, it had been long before the advent of man. There was a sense of hoary antiquity about the eroded, crumbling plinths that evoked a feeling of disquiet, an impression that the eye gazed upon something lost which had been better to remain forgotten.

‘Just the sort of place for monsters, is it not?’ Seeckt asked, indicating the line of glowing splotches. The trail led into the jumble of rocks, vanishing beneath one of the windswept stones.

‘If that’s their lair, we should go back and get help,’ Visscher suggested, fighting down the urge to simply turn and run. ‘There’s no telling how many of the vermin are down there.’

‘That is why we need to see for ourselves,’ Seeckt said. ‘We need to know how many of them there are. There could be more than the Shakerlo can handle.’

It was sound reasoning, but that didn’t make it any easier for Visscher to accept. He hesitated when Seeckt began stealing towards the mound of stones, tempted to leave the arrogant envoy to his fate. Then he closed his eyes and saw again the loathsome creatures they had battled on the Shakerlo. Grimly, the riverwarden trotted after Seeckt. No man could abandon another to such vile monsters and still call himself a man.

‘The swamp stink should help mask our scent,’ Seeckt advised Visscher as they approached the stones. ‘The fog will hide us from their eyes, but be careful about making any noise. The ears of a skaven are much sharper than ours.’

Staring down into the black gap beneath the stone, Visscher wasn’t reassured by Seeckt’s warning. The hole drove under the megalith at a slant, making the prospect of crawling down into it even more repugnant. A menagerie of odours drifted up from the cavity, a mixture of fur and filth, old bones and rotten meat and another, still more noxious smell that made Visscher’s nose burn. He reached down for his mask, intending to replace it over his face and block out the smell.

It was at that moment that the attack came. The attention of both men fixed upon the hole, Visscher further discomfited as he fumbled with his mask, the ambush caught them at their most unguarded. A dozen furry shapes sprang at them from the fog, leaping down from the mossy stones, pouncing from covered pits, scurrying from behind jumbles of rock. The two men were smashed to the muddy ground beneath a fury of snapping fangs and flashing claws. Scrawny paws ripped the swords from their hands, one of the monsters chittering with sadistic humour as it pulled the mask from Visscher’s grip. The ratman capered about proudly with his prize, then darted down into the hole when a larger skaven moved to take it from him.

The big skaven snarled in frustration, his black fur bristling as he glared after the vanished thief. He gnashed his fangs, then gestured at the two humans pinned to the ground. A stream of sharp squeaks and hisses rushed past the ratman’s fangs, the spit-speak language of the underfolk. Sullenly, the other ratmen responded to the black-fur’s commands. Visscher and Seeckt were roughly forced to their feet, prodded and kicked until they preceded their inhuman captors into the slimy murk beneath the toppled megalith.

How long the two men spent in the winding network of muddy tunnels and passageways, neither of them could say. At every step, the slanted floor seemed to drop away, causing them to stumble and slip in the slime that coated the floor. Their difficulties brought chitters of malignant mirth from their captors, who only kicked and clawed them with increased brutality each time the men fell.

There was no sense of organization or pattern to the tunnels. Occasionally a weird green lantern would appear, bolted to the stone ceiling overhead. The sickly green light did little to illuminate the darkness, but seemed to give the skaven a measure of comfort whenever they drew close. Visscher was reminded of the glowing lamps the Shakerlo’s attackers had worn and which he had mistaken for the eye of a marsh daemon. Recalling the caustic aftermath of breaking one of the lamps, Visscher wondered if the lanterns might not lend themselves to similar purpose.

After what seemed an eternity to the two men, the maze of winding tunnels opened into a vast hall-like cavern. Dozens of green lanterns illuminated the hall, casting weird shadows across the heaps of mud and splintered rock strewn about. Crates and boxes were piled throughout the chamber, the plunder from the ships the ratmen had been hijacking.

To one side of the cavern, where the stone ceiling was at its lowest, a jumble of rock was flanked by a nest of tattered flags and filthy banners, each of them bearing a three-clawed symbol picked out in yellow thread.

While there were skaven scurrying throughout the cavern, the largest congregation of them was around the pile of rock. The creatures sported a wild disarray of garments, from slick coveralls such as a smith might wear to spiked suits of armour. Several of the ratmen wore the same leathery green vestments as the Shakerlo’s attackers. A few of the monsters had massive harnesses strapped to their backs, an array of weird and menacing devices curling outward from the boxy frames.

All of the skaven faced towards a miserable figure who stood alone at the base of the rock pile. The protective green cloak and gauntlets had been stripped from the wretched ratman, but the phosphorescent paint clinging to its tail left no doubt as to its identity. The skaven’s naked body was torn and mangled, its fur bloodied from dozens of cuts and bites. It grovelled before the rock pile, pressing its snout into the mud and whining in a continuous stream of squeaks.

The monster perched atop the rock pile glowered down at the wretch, unmoved by its pleas. Taller than the other skaven, his lean body cloaked in a flowing robe of yellow silk, its edges marked with black symbols that seemed to squirm and writhe as the eye fell upon them. A belt of skin circled the skaven’s waist, a motley array of strange implements hanging from the many hooks fixed to the belt. Dark grey fur, mottled with specks of brown, clothed the creature’s body, fading into pure white at his throat. The eyes that glared down at the snivelling wretch lent a final aspect of horror to the skaven’s countenance, for they were of a weird, almost spectral green, gleaming with the pitiless malignance of an inhuman intelligence.

‘Gnawlitch Shun!’ The frightened whisper escaped Seeckt’s lips, giving name to the horror lording over this nest of monsters. The agent’s outburst brought angry squeaks from their captors, the black-furred bully raking his claws across Seeckt’s cheek. The ratman laughed as he licked the human’s blood from his paw.

Visscher’s mind raced. How was it possible that Seeckt knew this monster by sight? Exactly how much did the agent know about these underfolk?

There was no time for questions. A commotion had erupted at the base of the rock pile. Even as the ratkin with the painted tail was being dragged away, a spindly crook-backed skaven scurried out from the pack. He chittered happily at his enthroned lord, brandishing Visscher’s stolen mask with the flourish of a conquering hero.

Gnawlitch Shun silenced the capering ratman’s antics with an angry snarl. He raised his head, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air. The merciless green eyes turned, glaring directly at the mouth of the tunnel, fixing on the two human prisoners. The mask was proof that the men knew something about what the skaven had been doing and had come prepared.

‘So-so, no one followed your tail-trail,’ Gnawlitch Shun snarled in Reikspiel. His eyes still fixed upon the two humans, the ratman lifted his hand and snapped his claws.

A heavily-built skaven, his brown fur singed and scarred, lumbered out from among the pack. His bulk was curled under a massive metal drum, his face locked inside a bronze helmet. A monstrous, nozzle-like device was strapped about his left arm, a riot of wires and hoses streaming away to converge upon the tank tied to the ratkin’s back. The skaven turned a dial set into the side of the contraption, causing it to shudder into life with a grinding growl and a spurt of smoke.

The other skaven backed away as the menacing war-rat answered his master’s call. The captive ratman was unceremoniously shoved forwards into the space before the rock pile. For an instant, the unfortunate creature was frozen with uncertainty and terror. His head snapped from side to side in a frantic effort to find the safest route of retreat. On all fronts a mass of snarling skaven stood against his escape. Too craven to leap into any danger, the ratman remained gripped by indecision.

The war-rat pointed his left arm at the doomed skaven. Pulling back on a lever, he loosed the awful power of his weapon. Steam vented from the nozzle, sickly green light erupting from the barrel of the cannon and sizzling across the space between killer and victim. The wretch shrieked as the fur was flayed from his battered body, the murderous green light searing through skin and flesh, annihilating almost instantaneously everything down the very bone. It was a smouldering skeleton that crashed to the ground, its feet and hands and painted tail rendered still more hideous for their wholesome state. When death had struck, those parts had been outside the disintegrating green light.

‘Let that illustrate – Gnawlitch Shun is master of death,’ the robed warlock hissed at the humans. He pointed a long claw at the two men. ‘You will die-suffer when it amuses me and curse the ingenuity that led you here.’

Visscher felt his veins turn to ice as the skaven lord uttered his threat. The horrible way in which this monster had disposed of one of his own followers was a graphic demonstration of the fiend’s merciless mind. How much worse would the ratman treat with captives of another race?

Seeckt fell onto his knees in an attitude of terror and submission. The skaven around the two men laughed at his grovelling, snickering among themselves. The black-furred brute swatted the back of Seeckt’s head with his paw, glaring at him with undisguised contempt.

Doomed as they certainly were, Visscher felt a surge of fury rush through him. They were going to die, but at least they could die on their feet like men, not snivelling in the muck at the feet of vermin! The riverwarden surged forwards, seizing the black-fur by the shoulder, spinning the skaven around and smashing his fist into the creature’s nose. The black-fur yelped in pain, doubling over as he clapped both paws against his snout, leaving himself defenceless against the boot Visscher drove into the monster’s groin.

The moment his tormentor yelped in pain, Seeckt was on his feet, his voice lifted in a fierce shout. ‘Gnawlitch Shun!’ the agent yelled at the fiend on the rocks. ‘The Seerlord sends you the Twelfth Atonement!’

Seeckt’s balled fist flashed forwards, flinging something at the rock pile. Gnawlitch Shun’s tall frame wilted into a cowering ball, his arms raised protectively across his face. It took the warlock a moment to recover from the surprise of Seeckt’s sudden attack, and another to appreciate that whatever havoc the human had intended, the Grand Warlock of Clan Skryre was unharmed.

Gnawlitch Shun jabbed his claw at his attacker. ‘Kill the man-things!’ he raged, sending the skaven gathered about the cavern scurrying towards the tunnel. The skaven around Visscher and Seeckt drew their blades, eager to carry out their master’s command. ‘Kill the traitor-meat!’ Gnawlitch Shun’s voice screeched.

In his fury, the Grand Warlock continued to shriek in Reikspiel rather than the squeak-spit of the skaven tongue, but the meaning of ‘traitor-meat’ wasn’t lost upon the ratmen surrounding Visscher and Seeckt. The agent had brought some weapon into the cavern in an attempt to kill the warlock. That was only possible if his captors had allowed it. To the skaven mind, every mistake was evidence of treacherous plotting and scheming.

The marked skaven squealed in fright and began scurrying down the tunnel, fleeing for their lives back into the maze of slimy passages. Visscher stared after them for a moment, before Seeckt grabbed his shoulder and urged him to follow the retreating ratmen.

‘Run!’ the agent ordered. ‘If we follow them we might have a chance of reaching the surface!’

As though to emphasize Seeckt’s words, a motley barrage of missiles crashed around the two men – bullets fired from long muskets by wiry ratmen, bolts of electricity thrown from the weird armatures of the warlock-engineers, sheets of green flame billowing from the mouths of ghoulish fire-projectors. A squeal of mortal agony rang out as the two men made their dash down the tunnel. Visscher looked back to see the black-furred skaven he had struck being disintegrated by the green ray. The bronze-helmeted war-rat glared after the two men, scurrying in pursuit with hideous speed.

Visscher was thankful for the darkness of the tunnels, feeling a sense of security in the all-encompassing blackness. Away from the lights of Gnawlitch Shun’s cavern, the riverwarden felt there was a real chance they might escape the inhuman monsters chasing them. Without realising it, he allowed his pace to slacken.

‘Keep running,’ Seeckt snapped at Visscher. ‘Just because they can’t see us doesn’t mean they can’t find us! I told you, a skaven follows his nose more than his eyes. They’ll have no problem following our scent down here!’

The reminder made Visscher’s stomach turn. Suddenly, the dark didn’t feel so safe. He clenched his fists in impotent fury. His occupation was one that fitted him to the role of hunter, tracking down smugglers and pirates. Playing the part of the hunted was new to Visscher, a novelty he found himself ill-equipped to accept.

‘Back there,’ the riverwarden said as he hurried to keep pace with Seeckt. ‘I… I really thought you’d given up.’

‘I needed to gull them into letting down their guard,’ Seeckt replied. ‘Our only chance to get out of there was to wrong foot them. Your attack on old black-fur was a perfect distraction.’

Visscher’s brow knitted with a question that had been nagging him. ‘Just what was that you told their leader? And what was it you threw at him?’

Seeckt’s sly smile was lost in the darkness. ‘I threatened him by invoking the name of one of the underfolk’s high priests.’ The agent laughed. ‘Then I threw a rock at him!’

Visscher joined in the agent’s laughter, taking strength from the simple trick Seeckt had played upon the monstrous skaven leader. Their mirth faded after a moment, smothered by the damp darkness all about them. ‘Do you think we really have a chance?’ the riverwarden asked.

‘No,’ Seeckt admitted. ‘But if they don’t pick up our scent, we might give them a good chase. Come on.’

The two men groped their way through the gloom, following the slimy walls of the passageway with their hands. Furtive sounds, the scurry of normal rats, the creeping hop of toads and lizards, brought sweat dripping from their brows despite the clammy chill of the tunnel. A few times they heard the spit-squeak of skaven voices in the distance. Once, Visscher was certain, he heard a plaintive cry which sounded uncannily human. It reminded him somehow of the crazed babble of Gustav Mertens.

When the green glow of a lantern appeared at the far end of the passage the men groaned in relief, a relief that they felt down to their very toes. They did not think of the sickly hue of the glow or the unpleasant vapours billowing from the lamp. After the unremitting darkness, it was enough that there was light. Without thought or fear, the two fugitives rushed headlong down the tunnel.

They were only a few yards from the lantern when they discovered their mistake. The skaven hadn’t been chasing them – they’d been waiting for them! By some infernal means, the ratkin had figured out which tunnel the humans were in and decided to lie in wait for them at the other end.

There were a half dozen of the monsters, their beady eyes gleaming in the ugly light. Foremost among them was the hideous war-rat with the bronze helmet and the warp-ray lashed to his arm. Spotting the two men, the war-rat snarled an order to his comrades, waving them forwards to seize the fugitives.

Visscher felt his stomach turn. He had seen for himself the speed these creatures could muster when they weren’t burdened with respirators and protective coverings. There was no chance at all they could outrun the unleashed rat pack.

Deliverance came from the most unexpected source. As the ratkin surged forwards to capture the men, the war-rat stepped back towards the wall. He lifted the nozzle of his weapon and drew back the lever. A blazing ribbon of green energy surged from the projector, striking down the other skaven with murderous precision. The partially disintegrated bodies crashed to the slimy floor, the dying shrieks of the ratmen echoing from the walls.

The fratricidal war-rat released the lever, cutting off the killing warp-ray once the last of his comrades was destroyed. A chitter of malicious laughter rattled through the bronze mask. The war-rat had been happy to let other skaven share the hunt, but he wasn’t going to let any of them share the rewards of victory.

The war-rat gestured with his weapon, motioning the two men to come towards him. ‘Gnawlitch Shun like live-take,’ the skaven’s shrill voice assured them.

Seeckt glared back at the gloating vermin. ‘Your master’s plans are ruined,’ he told the war-rat. ‘Run while you still have the chance.’

Again, the war-rat’s laughter wheezed through his metal mask. ‘Funny-squeak!’ the skaven hissed. ‘All man-things die-suffer now!’

The war-rat raised his warp-ray projector, his paw reaching to the lever. Before he could unleash the disintegrating green light, however, something went flying past his face. The war-rat ducked aside, but the projectile wasn’t aimed at him. Its target was behind the skaven, bolted to the ceiling. The glass face of the lantern exploded as the missile struck it, spattering the ceiling with phosphorescent dust and unleashing a cloud of sizzling vapour that crashed down about the war-rat.

Shrill squeals of pain shuddered from the war-rat’s mask as the corrosive gas settled upon him. The ratman pawed frantically at his smouldering body, trying to smother the chemical fires burning his body. On his back, the engine of the warp-ray projector was likewise suffering from the caustic gas, but without the panicked paws of a skaven to diffuse the destruction. The corroded engine began to sputter and spark, then exploded in a burst of emerald light.

The war-rat was hurled down the tunnel at the two men. He landed in a mangled heap, his back evaporated by the unleashed malignance of his own weapon. Seeckt stared at the dead ratman, blinking in disbelief. Visscher strode over and kicked the vermin’s armoured head.

‘That worked pretty well,’ the riverwarden quipped.

‘What did?’ Seeckt asked.

Visscher pointed at the shattered lantern. ‘I threw a rock.’

Seeckt shook his head, his face going white. ‘That lamp was fuelled with warpstone! You might have brought the entire tunnel down about our heads!’

Visscher shrugged, trying to hide the alarm Seeckt’s words caused him. ‘It looked like the eye-lamp the raiders wore,’ he explained. ‘I smashed one of those on the Shakerlo. I thought the lantern would do the same.’ He gestured to the mangled body at his feet. ‘Lucky for us it did.’

‘Lucky indeed,’ Seeckt said under his breath. The agent stooped, pulling a femur from one of the skaven skeletons on the floor. Raising it overhead, he scraped some of the glowing dust onto it. The result was too feeble to properly be called a torch, but at least it provided some illumination. Visscher followed his example and was soon similarly equipped. ‘Hold it away from your body,’ Seeckt warned. ‘This stuff is toxic even to them,’ he said, nodding at the dead skaven. ‘Pray we don’t need to use them very long.’

Back in the maze of tunnels, the two men resumed their search for a way back to the surface. The eerie sounds of the slimy corridors became incessant and a foul reek, like the musk of a snake pit, began to fill the air. Slopping, glottal noises slithered through the passageways, bearing with them a nameless sensation that made skin crawl and blood curdle. Twice, Visscher stopped dead in his tracks, certain that he’d heard a human cry mixed amid the weird sounds of swamp and mire.

‘I could swear I heard Mertens,’ Visscher told Seeckt.

The agent stopped, cocking his head to one side, straining to pick out the noise from the cloying darkness. ‘If he didn’t drown, the skaven might have captured him,’ Seeckt mused. He grimaced and directed a hard stare at Visscher. ‘Even if they have, there’s nothing we can do for the poor madman.’

‘It makes me sick to leave any man in the hands of such monsters,’ Visscher shuddered.

‘We have to save our own skins,’ Seeckt told him. ‘Get back to the Shakerlo… and let them know about Gnawlitch Shun.’

Visscher bowed to the sense of Seeckt’s decision, even as he felt his heart blacken with guilt. There was little enough hope of their own escape, they’d throw the small chance they had away if they lingered trying to find Gustav. He could only pray to Manann that the lunatic’s death would be quick.

The two men resumed their prowl through the muddy darkness. The musky stink in the air grew more intense, almost bringing tears to their eyes. Despite the discomfort, Visscher was grateful for the foul smell. With that filth choking the air, there was no way the skaven would be able to track them by scent. It was a small enough advantage, but one that gave the riverwarden some hope.

That hope withered as the two men turned a corner and found themselves looking down into a vast cavern lit by glowing green lanterns and littered with crates. They had no problem recognizing the skaven lair. All their wandering through the maze of tunnels had done was to bring them back to the place they started.

Visscher clenched his fist in impotent rage, despair clutching at his very soul. Their bold escape had come to nothing!

It was Seeckt who pointed out the change that had come across the cavern. A grey mist hovered above the floor, almost concealing the furry bodies strewn about the slimy stones. There were hundreds of dead skaven littering the cavern. Visscher thought at first the mist might be some of their poison gas, that some accident had struck and annihilated the scheming rodents. Then, through a gap in the mist, he was able to get a good look at the dead ratmen. The bodies were viciously mutilated, hacked and torn in an abominable manner. What had happened here had been no accident, but a massacre.

‘They’re all dead,’ Visscher whispered. ‘How?’

Seeckt shook his head, unable to conceive an answer. He turned his gaze across the cavern, then froze. He grabbed Visscher’s shoulder, turning the him so he faced the far end of the chamber.

On the ground, mutilated as badly as any of the ratkin, was the body of Gustav Mertens. But it wasn’t the lunatic’s corpse that arrested the attention of the men. It was the thing walking off into the darkness, vanishing into a mist-choked passageway. Taller than skaven or man, its body covered in slimy green skin, its beaked head twisted into a fanged snout and great baleful eye. A single eye, shining with malefic intelligence, exuding the immortal hate of an eldritch race.

‘When Gnawlitch Shun chose a legend to hide his raiders,’ Seeckt whispered, ‘he should have made sure the legend wasn’t real.’

It took more courage than either of the men thought he possessed to descend into the mist-choked cavern, but necessity forced them to climb down from their perch and brave their fears. They tried not to look too closely at the dead skaven as they picked their way across the devastated lair.

Visscher, however, could not quite constrain his curiosity on one point. As the two men passed one of the boxes the ratmen had stolen from the missing ships, he stopped to open it. The riverwarden almost gagged at what he saw. The boxes were filled with wood shavings, but buried amongst the material were grotesque objects about the size of a human hand. They were squishy yet covered in a leathery skein that made them rough and resilient. In shape… there was a horrible resemblance to a human infant.

Visscher turned away from the box in disgust. Seeckt glowered at him.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ the agent told him.

‘Handrich’s Purse!’ Visscher exclaimed. ‘What are they?’

Seeckt’s eyes grew cold. The agent paced through the mist. ‘They’re skaven pups, or at least they were. They were killed at birth and then injected with certain chemicals. The brood-mothers, the creatures that birth all skaven, will eat a dead or weak pup so they can produce more milk for their healthy whelps.’

Visscher shook his head, sickened by the image Seeckt’s words evoked. ‘Someone hopes to… to poison…’

‘The chemicals in these bodies would react with the brood-mother,’ Seeckt explained. ‘They’d make her produce a stronger litter. Black furred skaven, strong warrior-types. Clan Scuten needs warriors. Clan Moulder agreed to help them get them, but Gnawlitch Shun decided to intercept the shipments.’

The riverwarden gawped as he heard Seeckt speak. ‘How… how do you…’

‘How do I know all this?’ Seeckt frowned and there was a trace of sadness in his eyes. ‘The burghers pay me well for my services, but the skaven pay me better.’ Before Visscher could react, Seeckt sprang at him. While the riverwarden had been busy with the box, Seeckt had recovered a sword from one of the dead ratmen. The skaven blade slashed across Visscher’s neck. Taken by surprise, the man could only stare in uncomprehending horror as his life gushed across the slimy floor.

Seeckt turned away from the murdered man. It sat ill with him to kill a man who had saved his life, but he knew the riverwarden had to die. If not here, then when they returned to the Shakerlo. By now the skaven hidden in the ship’s hold would have finished off the crew and cleaned up the bodies of Gnawlitch Shun’s pirates. It would have been inconvenient to have Visscher tagging along when Seeckt went back to meet his employers. It was better this way.

Casting a last anxious look towards the tunnel he had seen the marsh daemon exit, Hein van Seeckt hurried towards the rock pile where Gnawlitch Shun had lorded over his minions. It was too much to hope that the Grand Warlock had shared the fate of the other skaven. A moment’s inspection proved Seeckt’s suspicions. The skaven overlord had built his perch so close to the roof of the cavern so that he could be close to a hidden bolthole.

Seeckt felt a certain irony employing his enemy’s escape route. He was certain that little detail would bring an amused titter from Seerlord Tisqueek when he reported to him.

One day, the teeming hordes of skavendom would sweep away the Empire. When that happened, Seeckt intended to have enough gold to live quite handsomely someplace far away.

PHALANX

Ben Counter

Chapter 9

The days following the Horus Heresy formed the forgotten apocalypse of the Imperium. The Heresy itself was the subject of legends known throughout the realm of mankind – the traitor Horus, waxing great in his jealousy of the Emperor, his treason against the human race and his death at the hand of the Emperor himself. The Scouring, the period of reformation that followed Horus’s death and the Emperor’s ascension to the Golden Throne, was an afterthought, a footnote in the approved histories preached by the Imperial Church. But the truth, appreciated only by a few historians who skirted with heresy in their studies, was that the Imperium was born in the Scouring, and it was born in a terrible tide of blood.

It was a time of vengeance. All those tainted by the deeds of Horus and the many who had sided with them, even worlds who had bowed to Horus under threat of destruction, were destined to suffer. The remaining loyal Primarchs led a campaign of bloody reconquest in which collaborators were hung in their billions. Planets full of refugees were purged lest their number contain the wrong type of war criminals. A thousand civil wars sprang up in the Heresy’s wake, the combatants left by the Imperial Army to fight among themselves until the survivors were weak enough to be conquered, subjugated and re-educated.

It was a time of reform. The Space Marine Legions were split up into Chapters, a process which sparked its own share of shadow wars and near-catastrophes as Space Marines fought in all but open warfare for the right to the heraldries of their parent Legions. The Imperial Army broke up into millions of fragments, miniature fiefdoms with no central command. The Imperial Creed was born among the religious catastrophes that tore at humanity in the wake of the Emperor’s ascension and the Adepta of the Imperium were formed to hold the shattered mass of humanity together. Born in desperation, the Priesthood of Terra and its component Adepta founded the principles of fear and suspicion that would determine their every action in the ten millennia that followed. Whatever image the Emperor had cherished for the future of humanity, its broken remnants were formed by the Scouring into something flawed, something half-born, something fearful when the Emperor had sought to form it from hope.

It was a time of Chaos. The powers of the warp had made their play for power over the human race and though the Emperor’s sacrifice had thwarted them, they had sunk a thousand tendrils of influence into realspace and clung on jealously. The daemonic legions unleashed in the Battle of Terra took decades to hunt down and exterminate, the Blood Angels and their newly-formed successor Chapters seeking them out to exact vengeance for Sanguinius’s death. Horus’s acolytes had opened portals to the warp in the Heresy’s dying days, seeking to seed the fledgling Imperium with secrets waiting to be uncovered and suffered by generations to come.

No one knew how many such portals had been built by the sorcerers and madmen under Horus’s command. Some were vast gateways on forgotten worlds, ready for explorers or refugees to speak the wrong words or cross the wrong threshold. Some were built into the foundations of cities rebuilt in the Heresy’s wake, runes worked into the streets or dread temples far beneath the sewers and catacombs. Others took stranger forms – prophecies woven into a tainted bloodline, the words of a story that opened the way a little more with every telling, a song sung by desert spirits which would become a gateway to the warp as soon as it was written down.

One gateway was an eye, ripped from some titanic predator that glided through the warp. Acolytes of the Dark Powers, gathered on a spacecraft in orbit around a star, brought the eye into realspace. Like another, living, planet, it settled into its own orbit. It looked out upon the void and wherever its gaze fell, daemons danced. The acolytes who had summoned it were shredded by the daemons that sprung up around them, their last thoughts of thanks towards the gods who had permitted them to be a part of such a glorious endeavour.

The Predator’s Eye was seen in divinations and séances across the Imperium. It was Rogal Dorn who stood up and swore to close it. The Chapters which venerated him all sent their own champions to assist, and in orbit around the blighted star were fought many of the most terrible and costly battles of the Scouring. Rogal Dorn himself set foot on the Predator’s Eye, evading the biological horrors that budded out of its gelatinous surface as well as the daemons that scrabbled to intercept him. But even as battle-brothers fell around him, Rogal Dorn did not falter. He was a Primarch, and in him flowed the blood of the Emperor. He plunged a fist into the pupil of the Predator’s Eye, and the eye, blinded, closed in agony.

Rogal Dorn’s surviving battle-brothers included a number of Space Marine Librarians, and for three days without rest they enacted a ritual to seal the eye shut. Dorn led their chanting and finally a sigil of power, born of his own valorous spirit, was branded against the shut eye to keep it closed.

Dorn did not possess enough battle-brothers to destroy the Predator’s Eye permanently. His Librarians were exhausted and many had not survived the ritual. He knew that one day he would have to return to finish the job. The Predator’s Eye would have to be opened before it was destroyed, and so Dorn placed a condition on the ward that sealed it so that only his own blood could open it. He buried the Eye’s location in myths and legends, such that no one Chapter would know the full story of its location and purpose, and swore that one day, when the countless other threats had subsided and he had found another corps of Librarians and champions to face down the terrible gaze of the Predator’s Eye, the warp portal would finally be destroyed.

But the Imperium was beset on all sides by threats that did not let up. For every daemonic foe that was despatched, rebellion or the predations of the xenos would spring up, every new danger threatening a new form of oblivion for the Imperium. For centuries the Predator’s Eye lay hidden just below the level of mortal sight, blinded yet possessing a bestial sense of anger and frustration born of the warp’s own hatred. And eventually, Rogal Dorn died, to join the Emperor at the battle at the end of time.

The Predator’s Eye remained orbiting its star, forgotten.

The name of that star was Kravamesh.

Scamander braved the first volley of bolter fire that streaked across the archive. The walls exploded in torrents of burned and shredded parchment around him as bolter rounds from the Howling Griffons flew wide. One caught Scamander in the chest and blew him back a pace. Another tore through the reading table in front of him and exploded against his thigh. A storm of shrapnel crackled against him.

‘You will never see us kneel!’ yelled Scamander and he looked up to the ceiling, his bared throat glowing scarlet. Flames licked up from his hands, over his shoulder guards and face. Ice crusted around the table and the floor around him as the heat energy bled into him to be concentrated and forced out by the psychic reactor that churned in his mind.

Scamander looked down at the Howling Griffons, face wreathed in flame. They were charging heedless towards him, competing for the honour of first blood. Captain Borganor was among them, ripping out volleys of bolter fire.

Scamander breathed out a tremendous gout of flame that washed over and through the first Howling Griffons. Some were thrown off their feet by the wall of superheated air that slammed into them. Others were caught full in the blast, ceramite melting in the supernaturally intense heat, armour plates exploding. Three or four fell as the nerve-fibre bundles in their armour were incinerated, robbing them of movement as the joints melted and fused.

Borganor leapt through the fire, crashing through a reading table already collapsing to ash under the force of Scamander’s assault. He took aim without breaking stride and put a bolter round square into Scamander’s abdomen, throwing the Soul Drinker back onto one knee.

Other Soul Drinkers returned fire in the wake of Scamander’s attack, and the Howling Griffons struggled through the flame to get into cover and drive them out. Borganor ignored the rest of the fight and dived under the table Scamander was using for cover, his bionic leg powering him forward.

Borganor came up face to face with Scamander. Scamander’s bolt pistol was in his hand and the two wrestled over their guns. Scamander was half-glowing with heat, half-slippery with ice, but Borganor kept the muzzle of Scamander’s pistol away from him. His own bolter was too unwieldy for this close-quarters murder – he let it drop from his hand and took his combat knife from its sheath.

Scamander immolated himself in a cocoon of fire. Borganor yelled and fell away. Scamander got to his feet and blasted at Borganor as he stumbled away, holding the wound in his abdomen with his free hand.

Borganor rolled through the flames, bolter fire impacting on his shoulder guards and backpack. Chains of bolter fire hammered across the archive room and shredded parchment fell in a burning rain, filaments of ash rising on the hot air and flames licking up the walls. The huge rolls of parchment were ablaze, falling in spooling masses like waterfalls of fire and silhouetting the shapes of the Howling Griffons as they ran from cover to cover, firing all the time.

Scamander raised his free hand, black with charred blood from his wound. Flame sprayed from his fingers and Borganor grabbed hold of a table leg to keep the burst of fire from carrying him off his feet. He trusted in his ceramite, in the rites with which he had blessed his wargear and the spirit of Roboute Guilliman he had beseeched to enter his heart and make him more than a man, more than a Space Marine. He trusted in the force of his vengeance, the shield of contempt which could spread out from his iron soul and keep him alive long enough to execute the traitor he faced.

Borganor forced himself forward a pace, knife held out in front. Scamander raised his pistol again but Borganor swatted it away.

‘Traitor,’ hissed Borganor. ‘Witch.’

Scamander replied with a breath of fire, a narrow tongue of flame as concentrated as a las-cutter’s beam. Borganor ducked it and rammed the knife up into Scamander’s face. The blade passed up into Scamander’s jaw, ripping through teeth and tongue. The flame sputtered as clot of blood sprayed from Scamander’s mouth.

Borganor leapt forward, a knee on Scamander’s wounded stomach. Scamander fell against the back wall of the archive room, where he was bathed in the burning remnants of centuries of parchment records. Borganor grabbed the back of Scamander’s head and wrenched it up, exposing the Soul Drinker’s throat.

Scamander’s eyes were full of hate. Borganor grinned as he saw the tiniest glimmer of fear there, a twitch at the corner of the eye.

‘Everything you die for is a lie,’ said Borganor, and slit Scamander’s throat.

The Howling Griffon had to push the Soul Drinker’s body up against the wall so the gout of fire that ripped from his torn throat shot upwards instead of into his face. The fountain hit the ceiling and spread, flame like liquid pooling outwards. Then it sputtered as if whatever fuelled it was running out and Scamander fell limp. Fire licked from the corners of his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and smoke coiled from the joints in his armour.

Borganor threw the body aside. He looked around him. The burning room was in chaos, half held by the Howling Griffons, half by the Soul Drinkers. Many Howling Griffons had died to the Soul Drinkers Librarian, but now Soul Drinkers were dying to the numbers and firepower of the Howling Griffons.

Borganor’s fight with Scamander had brought him out of cover. Only smoke and flames concealed him from Soul Drinkers guns.

‘Brothers! The trickster is dead! Let bolter fire be your truth!’ Borganor yelled over the gunfire, standing proud of the fight even as bolter shots fell around him. He snatched his bolter up off the floor and got into the battle proper, hammering volley after volley into the hazy purple-armoured shaped that loomed through the smoke.

‘Onward! Onward! This is but a welcome, my brothers! The celebration is yet to come!’

Sarpedon heard the gunfire, and smelled the smoke rolling in from the reading room. In the heart of the library labyrinth, alongside Captain Luko, he waited for the wave to break against the Soul Drinkers defences.

‘Scamander is lost,’ said Luko.

‘Then we have something to avenge,’ replied Sarpedon calmly.

‘I promised myself that no more Space Marines would die by my hand,’ said Luko. ‘I have made many such promises to myself, but I have a problem keeping them.’

‘You promised yourself peace, Captain,’ said Sarpedon. ‘You will have it. But not just yet. Hold on for a few more moments, for your battle-brothers.’

The first volleys of bolter fire, sharp and crisp, cackled from the interior of the library. The Howling Griffons were in, past Scamander’s forlorn hope and into the death-trap the Soul Drinkers had created for them.

‘At last it will end,’ said Luko. ‘I don’t have to lie any more. Thank the Emperor it ends here.’

‘And we decide how it ends,’ added Sarpedon. ‘How many men can ever say that?’

Luko did not reply. The power field around his lightning claws flared into life, and loose papers on the shelves scattered in the electric charge.

The gunfire rose towards a crescendo as the vox channels filled with bedlam.

‘Side by side with me, brothers!’ yelled Graevus, charging shoulder-first down the narrow corridors of the library. Burning books rained down around him, thousands of words flitting by as pages turned to ash.

Graevus crashed around a corner straight into a Howling Griffon wielding a two-handed chainsword like an executioner’s axe. The blade screeched down and Graevus turned it aside with his power axe, his mutated strength redirecting the blow into one of the bookcases beside him. The chainsword tore into the ancient wood and the Howling Griffon paused for a moment to wrench it free. That was all the time Graevus needed to bring his axe up into the Howling Griffon’s chest, carving through ceramite, ribs and organs as his opponent’s chest was cleaved in two. The Howling Griffon was still alive as he fell but his death was held off only by his fury. His lungs were laid open, a well of blood flooding his bisected ribcage and pouring like an overflowing fountain across the dusty floor.

More charged in behind him. This was the position of honour for the Howling Griffons – the head of the charge, the first men in, who suffered the greatest chance of death but would bring out of the battle the greatest acclaim whether they fell or survived.

Graevus was supposed to have Scamander alongside him. Scamander was dead. Graevus would have to do the killing for both of them.

More Howling Griffons were forcing their way through the narrow library corridors. A burning, armoured form crashed through the bookcase ahead of Graevus – a Howling Griffon, blazing from head to toe, the shape of a flamer-wielding Soul Drinker just visible through the curtain of smoke and flame that surrounded him. Graevus hacked off the Howling Griffon’s head with one slice of his power axe, whirled with the force of the blow and followed up with a lateral strike that shattered the chainblade in the hand of the Howling Griffon who charged around the bend just ahead of him.

Soul Drinkers behind Graevus vaulted over the body of the dead Howling Griffons to get to grips with the enemy. In the confines of the library there was no room for numbers to tell. The battle was a series of duels, vicious face-to-face struggles without enough room even to feint or manoeuvre. It was war without skill, strength and fury the sole factors in victory. Graevus had plenty of both.

A Soul Drinker fell beside him, a plasma pistol wound bored right through him in a charred tunnel. Graevus dived into his killer, slamming him against the bookcase and smashing the butt of his hammer into his face. The stunned Howling Griffon fell to one knee and Graevus cut off one of his arms, the backswing shearing the top half of his head off.

Another Soul Drinker died, shattered body riddled with bolter fire. A long corridor up ahead was swept with volleys of fire from a Howling Griffon with a heavy bolter at the far end. The bookcases were disintegrating and Graevus could see the tally the Howling Griffon had already reaped through rents in the wall. Burning books gathered in drifts around his feet, gutted spines falling while their pages flitted up towards the ceiling on a scalding breath of hot air.

Graevus charged on through the bookcase. It splintered underneath him. Heavy bolter shots erupted around him, filling their air with a thousand explosions. Graevus relied on his momentum to take him through the weight of fire and he slammed into the Howling Griffons warrior, hacking and wrestling as the two fell into the flames.

Graevus let the battle-lust in him take over. It was a rare that he permitted himself to completely let go, to abandon everything that made a Space Marine a disciplined weapon of war and allow the born warrior, the celebrant of carnage, to take control.

Graevus’s mutated hand clamped around the Howling Griffon’s head and dropped his axe among the burning debris. He twisted the Howling Griffon’s head around until a seal gave on his helmet, and the helmet came away.

The Howling Griffon was the image of Graevus himself, a gnarled and relentless veteran, the kind of man that could be trusted to hold any line and execute any order when the fire came down.

These are our brothers, thought Graevus.

They are the same as us.

The thought broke through Graevus’s battle-lust. He tried to force it down but it would not be quieted.

Graevus took a step back from the Howling Griffon. The Griffon, disarmed with his heavy bolter lying down in the wreckage, scrabbled away from Graevus. Graevus picked up his axe, not taking his eyes from his opponent.

‘Fall back!’ shouted Graevus. ‘Fall back! To your lines! Fall back!’

An instant after Graevus gave the order, the library in front of him erupted in flame and ash. Heavy weapons hammered through the bedlam. The Howling Griffons had brought their big guns up.

Their first attack was to drag the Soul Drinkers into the fight, to bog them down in melee. The second was to shatter the cover of the library and fill the Soul Drinkers positions with burning ruin, to open up enough space for the Howling Griffons to use their numbers to their fullest.

Ordinary soldiers could not have done it. The men of the first line would have been at fatal risk from the heavy guns of the men behind them. But the Howling Griffons were not ordinary soldiers; the first Space Marines in trusted in the aim of their battle-brothers.

The library was torn apart. Graevus forged through the flames, kicking shattered wooden bookcases out of his way and shielding his face from the thousands of burning books falling as thick as a blizzard. Lascannon blasts lanced through the chaos, glittering crimson and shearing through everything they touched. Fat white-hot bursts of plasma fire ripped out of the smoke.

Graevus saw the form of a fallen Soul Drinker at his feet. He grabbed the downed brother by the shoulder guard and dragged him after himself as he ran. The Soul Drinkers had fortified choke points and firebases further in and Graevus saw one of them up ahead, guarding a wide corridor with toppled bookcases and heaps of broken furniture as a barricade. The Soul Drinkers behind it – Graevus recognised Sergeant Salk among them – waved Graevus over and he vaulted the barricade.

The battle-brother he had brought with him had been shot in the thigh, hit by a lascannon blast. The leg was hanging on solely through the tangled strips of torn ceramite that remained of his leg armour. Graevus could not tell if the Soul Drinker was alive. Other Space Marines dragged him down out of danger.

‘They’re burning us out!’ shouted Graevus to Salk. ‘Big guns and flamers!’

‘Then we are the gun line!’ shouted Salk. ‘We’re ready!’ He handed Graevus a bolter, no doubt taken from a wounded or dead Soul Drinker who had no more need for it. Graevus nodded, checked the movement of the bolter, and took his position kneeling at the barricade. His left hand was his trigger hand, because his mutated right was too large to fit a finger into the trigger guard.

Howling Griffons stalked through the smoke. It was impossible, with the smoke rolling thick and dense, to tell now where the remnants of the library stood, where they burned, and where they had been completely shattered. The air was too thick and toxic for a man to breathe; only the lung augmentations of the Space Marines kept both sides from choking. Visibility was well below bolter range.

Graevus could see the red and yellow livery of the Griffons, smudged and filthy through the haze and soot, reduced to a contrast between light and dark forming the quartered design the Griffons wore on their armour. Half a dozen approached down the fire point’s field of view.

‘Fire!’ yelled Salk. The Soul Drinkers at the barricade, six or seven of them including Graevus, opened fire. They rattled through half a magazine of bolter rounds each, pumping shells into the armoured shapes advancing on them.

Some fell, cut down. Others stumbled, alive but wounded. All who still lived returned fire and the barricade shuddered as the thick wooden slabs were chewed through, a layer of cover getting thinner with every half-second. Explosive shells threw handfuls of splinters into the haze and Graevus gritted his teeth against the stinging rain that fell against his face.

Salk swapped out a magazine. A Soul Drinker had slipped down to the floor beside him.

‘It’s not bad,’ said the Soul Drinker. Salk clapped a hand to the wounded Space Marine’s shoulder, then turned to fire another volley.

Graevus strained to see through the smoke. The wounded were being dragged away. A bookcase had been toppled for cover and the Howling Griffons were regrouping. Soul Drinkers up and down the line were sniping at movement but the Howling Griffons would not attack in ones and twos. They would advance again, coordinated to move as one.

‘This is no battle,’ said Graevus. ‘This is not warfare. This is just…’

‘Attrition,’ said Salk. ‘We killed Mercaeno. They all made an oath to avenge him. They’re willing to spend a few of their lives if that means they are the ones who get to kill us. They have more bodies than we do. That’s what it comes down to.’

‘It’s no way for a Space Marine to fight,’ snarled Graevus. ‘By the Throne, they could starve us out if they wanted. They don’t have to die.’

Salk looked at Graevus, uncertain.

‘They don’t have to die!’ repeated Graevus. ‘Our Chapters are brothers! On Nevermourn it was different, but here there is no need to fight! What does it matter to them how we are killed? None of us are leaving the Phalanx alive, this battle is needless murder!’

‘They made an oath,’ said Salk. ‘Mere logic cannot compete with that.’

‘Let none mourn the losses,’ said Gethsemar. ‘Let no sorrow cloud the celebrations of our victory. Bring joy, my brothers, as you bring death.’

In the shadowy confines of choristry chamber, the Angels Sanguine had gathered to pray. The chamber was lined with servitor choirs, the corpses of gifted singers transformed into machines that could sing for days on end without need for maintenance. On the Phalanx they were used in rituals of contemplation, when the deeds of Rogal Dorn were matched against every Imperial Fist’s qualities and achievements. Now they were silent, their hairless heads bowed on their metal shoulders, the lungs stilled.

Gethsemar’s war-mask glanced between his Sanguinary Guard, as if he was speaking a silent prayer that only each of his brothers could hear. Then Gethsemar drew his glaive, a two-handed power weapon with a blade of polished blue stone.

‘We are ready,’ he said.

‘Thank Guilliman for that,’ said Siege-Captain Daviks.

Daviks’s Silver Skulls and the Angels Sanguine had gathered in the choristry chamber because it adjoined the library. Daviks’s warriors, skilled siege engineers, had already set up the demolition charges on one wall. The sound of gunfire came from beyond it as the Howling Griffons alternately advanced through the burning ruin of the library and swept the chaos with heavy weapons fire.

‘You see no art in war,’ said Gethsemar. ‘And if a Space Marine’s life must consist of nothing but war and the preparations for it, that means there is no place in your lives for art at all. So sad, my brother. So sad.’

‘We live with it,’ replied Daviks.

‘This is Borganor!’ came a voice over the vox-channel. ‘We have them engaged! Now is the time!’

‘Very well,’ replied Daviks. ‘We’re going in.’

Daviks gave a hand signal to the Silver Skull holding the detonator. The Space Marines backed off and knelt, turning away from the wall, and the charges went off. They were shaped to direct the full force into the wall and it disintegrated, leaving a huge black hole from floor to ceiling. The shockwave and debris toppled many of the servitor choir, once-human components spilling out.

Gethsemar’s Angels Sanguine charged in before the debris had finished pattering onto the floor. Smoke boiled out past them and the gunfire was louder, the yells of orders overlapping with the cries of pain as Space Marines fell.

Daviks followed Gethsemar. His squad was a siege engineer unit, armed with bolters and demolition charges, while Gethsemar’s was an all-out assault unit. Gethsemar soared forward, his jump pack hurling him horizontally down the narrow alley of bookcases that confronted him. His Sanguinary Guard were equally nimble with their jump packs, jinking around the tight corners with bursts of exhaust, their feet barely touching the ground. A Soul Drinker watching the rear of the library was cut down as Gethsemar roared past him, his power glaive slicing the sentry’s arm off before another Sanguinary Guard finished the job with a downward cut that nearly bisected him.

The first Soul Drinkers were reacting to the sudden second front opening up in the library. Daviks swapped bolter fire with Soul Drinkers who ran around the corner in front of him, scattering books in the volley of bolter fire his squad kicked out in reply. Two Soul Drinkers fell and Daviks paused in his advance for long enough to put a bolter round through the head of each. A Silver Skull did not take death for granted. It was his way to be sure.

Gethsemar fell back past a corner up ahead. His golden armoured body crashed against the bookcase behind him.

‘Gethsemar!’ yelled Daviks into the vox. ‘What is it?’

The thing that lumbered around the corner after Gethsemar was an abhorrence that Daviks’s senses could barely contain. Composed of screaming heads gathered in a roughly humanoid shape, its lumpen shoulders brushed the ceiling of the library. The terrible cacophony that keened from it was enough to all but stun Daviks, filling his mind with the awful sound of pain and grief distilled. The thing’s hands were bunches of withered and broken human arms, arranged like fingers, and its head was a yawning maw ringed with bleeding jawbones. In its throat, thousands of eyes clustered. The thing stamped a pace closer to Gethsemar, trailing masses of entrails and tangled limbs in its wake.

Daviks’s squad opened fire, covering Gethsemar as he scrambled out of the beast’s way. Bolter fire thudded into its hundreds of heads but it did not falter. It turned to Daviks, mouth yawning wide as it roared, and a gale of utter foulness shrieked around the Silver Skulls.

Bloodied hands reached from the bookcases. Mouths filled with gnashing teeth opened up in the floor to snare their feet. The Angels Sanguine were stumbling through the confusion, laying about them with their glaives at every shape that loomed through the smoky gloom.

‘Stand fast!’ yelled Daviks. ‘Onwards, brethren, for the honour is ours! Though the Griffons reap the tally, it is we who shall take the head of the arch-traitor! Sarpedon is here! Onwards and take his head!’

Daviks felt a flare of pride. It was unbecoming for him to lust after an honour in battle, but it came unbidden, and he let it push him forward through the horrors unfolding around him.

He knew that Sarpedon was here.

He knew it, because he had walked right into hell.

‘Do you know where you are?’ said the grating metallic voice of Daenyathos.

N’Kalo struggled. He was chained. His consciousness barely surfaced over the thudding of pain, but the feeling of his restraints sang clearly. He forced against them, but they held.

He had been battered senseless. He remembered Iktinos, the skull-helm of the Soul Drinkers Chaplain emotionless as the crozius hammered again and again into the side of his head. Where and how still escaped him. He was a captive, he was sure, and over him stood a purple-armoured dreadnought that could only be the legendary Daenyathos.

N’Kalo did not answer.

‘You are somewhere you will never leave,’ said Daenyathos.

N’Kalo was aware of a room of immense size. His vision swam back beyond the dreadnought and he saw that he was in a cargo hold, a vast space that could hold legions of tanks and Rhino APCs. It was empty now save for the area set up in the centre, at the heart of which N’Kalo was chained. He was surrounded by a complicated circular pattern scorched into the deck, scattered with bones and flower petals, gemstones and bundles of herbs, pages torn from books, human teeth, bullets and chunks of rock torn from alien worlds. Around this sigil knelt the pilgrims who had arrived on the Phalanx, they had claimed, to oversee the trial of the Soul Drinkers, and they held their standards of the blinded eye aloft. They were hooded and robed and issued a low chant, dark syllables repeated in a terrible drone.

N’Kalo was aware that he still wore his armour and his battered helm was back on his head. It made no sense for his captor to leave him armoured. He might not have a weapon in his hand, but a Space Marine in armour was still more dangerous than one without. It could help him when he broke out, and there was no doubt in his mind that he would. Whatever agenda Daenyathos had, and whether the Soul Drinkers were heretics or blameless, Daenyathos and Iktinos had revealed themselves to constitute a moral threat and N’Kalo had a duty to escape and bring them to justice.

‘You wear your thoughts on you as if they were written on your armour,’ said Daenyathos. ‘You desire escape. That is natural. A Space Marine is not created to be caged. And you desire revenge. You would call it duty or justice, but it is ultimately death you wish on me for orchestrating your defeat and capture. This, again, is natural. A Space Marine is a vengeful creature. But do you see now, helpless as you are, what a pitiful animal you truly are? Freedom and vengeance – what do these things mean, when compared to the matters that shape the galaxy? How much does your existence mean?’

N’Kalo struggled again. His chains were set into the deck of the cargo hold. They were probably chains built into the deck to keep tanks from sliding around when the Phalanx was in flight. One Space Marine could not break them.

‘My duty is within myself,’ said N’Kalo. He knew he should have stayed silent, but something in Daenyathos’s words, in the way he seemed genuinely passionate in spite of the artificiality of his voice, compelled him to reply. ‘Though the galaxy may burn and humanity collapse, I must fulfil my duty regardless. And so I call myself a Space Marine.’

‘That is the response of a weak mind,’ said Daenyathos. The dreadnought’s body turned away to something off to the side, outside N’Kalo’s frame of vision. ‘You choose to ignore the matters that affect the galaxy, and shrink your mind down to one battle after another, one petty victory over some xenos or renegade, and tell yourself that such is the totality of your potential. I chose instead to abandon the duties that restrict me, and rise to become one of those very factors that mould the galaxy at their whim. It is a choice I made. Yours is a mind too small to make it. The Soul Drinkers were like you, and I had to make that choice for them. Were they wise enough to understand, they would have thanked me.’

Daenyathos’s massive tank-like torso swivelled back to face N’Kalo. One of his arms was a missile launcher, while the other ended in a huge power fist. That fist was now encased in a gauntlet from which protruded several smaller implements – manipulator limbs, blades, needles, an assortment of attachments for finer control than the dreadnought’s power fist afforded.

‘What is this?’ said N’Kalo. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

‘That is a question I am willing to answer,’ said Daenyathos. ‘But not through words.’

A circular saw emerged from among the implements. N’Kalo tensed, forcing against his bonds with every muscle he had. He felt joints parting and bones cracking, shots of pain running through him as his muscular power pushed beyond the limits of his skeleton.

The chains did not move. Perhaps N’Kalo could break and twist his limbs until they could be slipped out of their bonds. Perhaps he could crawl away, steal a weapon from one of the cultists.

The circular blade cut through N’Kalo’s breastplate. Sparks flew, and bright reflections glinted in the lenses set into Daenyathos’s armoured head.

Daenyathos worked quickly, and with great precision. Soon the breastplate was lifted off in sections, smaller manipulator limbs picking apart the layers of ceramite until N’Kalo felt the recycled air of the Phalanx cold on his chest.

The chanting changed to a terrible falling cadence, a piece of music about to end. N’Kalo felt the power charging in the air and saw a glow overhead, as if from a great heat against the ceiling of the cargo hold. Crackles of energy ran down the walls, earthing off the massive feet of Daenyathos’s dreadnought body.

N’Kalo felt pain. He gasped in spite of himself, the impossibly cold touch of the saw blade running in a red line along his sternum.

The ceiling of the cargo hold was lifting off, metallic sections peeling apart and fluttering into the void like dead leaves on the wind. The hull parted and the air gushed out. The pilgrims looked up at the rent in the side of the Phalanx, calm and joy on their faces even as the sudden pressure change made their eye sockets well up red with burst vessels. Hood were blown back by the swirling gale and, in spite of the pain, N’Kalo’s mind registered the face of a woman ecstatic as foaming blood ran from her lips. Another one of the pilgrims was their leader, impossibly ancient, and his dry and dusty body seemed to wither away as he raised his wizened head to the origin of the light that fell on him.

The light was coming from Kravamesh, the star around which the Phalanx orbited. A burning orange glow filtered down through the debris swirling around the hull breach. The hull parted further, like an opening eye, and the last tides of air boomed out.

The pilgrims were dying, each moment robbing another of consciousness. N’Kalo realised his armour had been left on so that he could still breathe while the cargo hold fell apart.

The saw was withdrawn. Without air, the only sound was now vibrations through the floor. The faint whir of servos as a manipulator arm unfolded. The rattling breath N’Kalo drew through the systems of his armour as the cold hit the open wound in his chest.

‘Do you know,’ said Daenyathos, the sound of his voice transmitted as vibrations through his feet, ‘what you are to become?’

N’Kalo gritted his teeth. He could see Kravamesh above him, its boiling fires, and though its fires looked down on him its light was appallingly cold.

‘The key,’ continued Daenyathos. The manipulators extended and hooked around N’Kalo’s ribs. N’Kalo yelled, the cry not making it past the insides of his own armour. ‘Dorn’s own blood is the only key that will fit the lock he built around Kravamesh. The Soul Drinkers do not have it, though it suited me for them to continue believing they did. You have it, Iron Knight. The blood of Dorn flows in your veins.’

The manipulators forced at the edges of N’Kalo’s fused rib breastplate. The bones creaked. N’Kalo strained every muscle in his body, forcing against the pain as well as his restraints.

He saw Rogal Dorn, his golden-armoured body kneeling at the Emperor’s fallen form. He saw the Eye of Terror open, and the battlements of Earth burning. Some ancient memory, written into the genetic material on which his augmentations were based, bled in the final moments into his mind.

N’Kalo felt the impossible pride and fury of Rogal Dorn. They filled him to bursting, too much emotion for a man, even a Space Marine, to contain. The Primarch was an impossible creature, in every aspect superior to a man, in every dimension vaster by far.

N’Kalo could see Rogal Dorn at the Iron Cage, the vast fortifications manned by the soldiers of Chaos, the shadow of the entire Imperial Fists Chapter falling on it as Dorn orchestrated the assault.

The last images were ghosted over the monstrous eye of Kravamesh opening wide, vast and unholy shapes emerging from its fires.

Daenyathos punched the mass of his power fist into N’Kalo’s chest, splintering through the ribs. Daenyathos ripped the fist free and N’Kalo’s organs were sprayed across the cargo bay deck in the shape of bloody wings. The gore iced over in the cold of the void.

Daenyathos’s massive form leaned back from N’Kalo. The pattern scorched into the deck glowed red as if it was drinking N’Kalo’s spilled blood. The glow was met by the burning orange light from above. The head of Daenyathos’s chassis looked up towards the tear in the hull as the fires of Kravamesh billowed suddenly close.

From space it looked as if a bridge of fire was being built, reaching from the mass of Kravamesh towards the speck of the Phalanx. Shapes rippled along the bridge, tortured faces and twisted limbs, howling ghosts that split and reformed like liquid fire.

The observation crews on the Phalanx saw it right away. Every sensor on the Imperial Fists fortress-ship screamed in response. But the Phalanx was embroiled in open warfare, its crew managing the chaos unfolding from its archives, and without the whole crew at their stations the huge and complex ship could not react in time.

The tendril of fire touched the hull of the Phalanx. Daenyathos stood in the swirling mass of flame that incinerated the remains of N’Kalo and the pilgrims. From the flame emerged shapes – leaping, gibbering things, limbs and eyes that turned in on one another in an endless mockery of evolution. They danced madly around Daenyathos as if he was the master of their revel. Reality shuddered and tore as the insanity formed a huge circular gate in the centre of the cargo bay, the fire rippling around a glassy black pit that plunged through the substance of the universe and into a place far darker.

Daenyathos stood before the warp portal. The fires of the warp washed around the feet of his dreadnought chassis, and the daemons slavered as they slunk through the flame. But Daenyathos did not falter. He had seen this moment a million times before. He had dreamed it over thousands of years in half-sleep under Selaaca.

Vast mountains of filth and hatred shifted in the darkness beyond the portal. Tendrils of their sheer malice rippled through the substance of the cargo hold, blistering up the metal of the deck with spiny tentacled limbs. Blood-weeping eyes opened up in the walls. The daemon cavalcade shrieked higher and higher as one of the forms in the portal detached itself and drifted, half-formed, towards the opening.

It coalesced as it approached, taking the shape of something at once beautiful and appalling. A vast and idealised human figure, glistening pale skin clad in flowing white silk, surrounded by a halo of raw magic. Torn minds flowed in its wake, ruptured spirits shredded into madness by the warp. A taloned hand grasped the flaming edge of the portal, hauling its vastness towards reality.

The perfect, maddening shape of the head emerged. Its features looked like they were carved from pure marble, its eyes orbs of jade. The music of the warp accompanied it, a thousand choirs shorn of their bodies.

‘It is time,’ said Daenyathos. ‘The threads of the destiny meet here.’

‘Free!’ bellowed the daemon prince in its thousand voices. ‘Banishment, agony, all over! A vengeance… vengeance flows like blood from a wound! The wound I shall leave in the universe… the hatred that shall rise in a flood. Oh unriven souls, oh undreaming minds, you shall be laid to waste! Abraxes has returned!’

SALVATION’S REACH

Chapter One

Dan Abnett

Something, perhaps the year of living by the skin of his teeth on occupied Gereon, or merely the fact of having been born a sly and ruthless son of a bitch, had given Major Rawne of the Tanith First a certain edge.

He could usually smell trouble coming. That morning, he could definitely smell trouble coming. As edges went, his was as fine and sharp as the one along the blade of his straight silver warknife.

At dawn, with the twin suns beginning to burn up through the petrochemical smog across the city bay, he left the regimental billet and walked down to the rockcrete wasteland of the bayside revetment. There, he wandered as far as the bridge, and crossed over to the pontoons in front of the island guardhouse.

The pontoon walkway clunked underfoot. Looking down through the mesh, he could see the water, toxic brown and frothy. The massive galvanic plants along the bay, Mechanicus developments that powered and lit the hive city’s core systems, had just flushed their heatsinks, and filled the coastline with its morning dose of radioactive effluent. There was steam in the air, steam that stank of sulphur and rolled like a fog bank, white in the suns’ light. The waters of the bay and estuary had been corrosively acidic for a thousand years. It was sobering to think that anything still lived in it.

But things did. Just below the surface, they squirmed and moved, leech-mouthed, slug-slick, with dentition like crowded pincushions and eyes like phlegm. Rawne could see them, following him beneath the surface, a dark, wriggling mass. What gave them their edge? Was it the sound of his footsteps, the passing heat signature of his body? Pheromones? His shadow on the water?

They were survivors. They had adapted to their environment instead of allowing it to kill them. And they killed anything that threatened them.

Just like him.

Three Urdeshi troopers were manning the guardhouse. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them. They weren’t his concern. He had chosen that particular morning because it was pretty much the last chance he was going to get before the regiment shipped out. The point of no turning back had been reached.

But still, there was the nagging discomfort of his edge. Something was off. Something was wrong. He’d chosen the wrong day to try it. Maybe the troopers suspected him of something, maybe they were wired up for some reason. Maybe something had given away his true intent.

Under ordinary circumstances, the doubt would have been enough to make him abort, turn around, and go home. The uncertainty would have been sufficient to make him blow it off and try again another day when the odds were more favourable.

Except there weren’t going to be any more other days. It was now, or it was never. There were no more chances. The monster, that monster, should have been dead long since. Justice and decency demanded it, and only the dedicated efforts of good men who ought to have known better were ensuring the monster’s salvation.

Dedication. Rawne had always possessed a measure of dedication. He knew what was right and what was wrong. He knew when an order was a bad thing and needed to be ignored. He knew that sometimes a man had to be counter-intuitive. A man had to do what looked like a bad thing so that everything else would be right in the end.

The monster was destined to die. Its death was required, demanded. Efforts had already been made, by more than one interested party. Rawne couldn’t stand by and let things carry on.

Rawne was a man of serious convictions, after all. Thankfully, they’d all been wiped from his record the day he joined the Imperial Guard.

The Urdeshi watched him as he approached. What did they suspect? Did they know what he had really come for?

He stopped at the outer cage gate. The Urdeshi troopers wore black metal pins that indicated they had been seconded to serve the Commissariat’s S Company, the close protection and security detail. They asked him his name and his business, and studied the papers he passed through the metal letterbox. One of them took a long time over the Contact Permission document signed by Rawne’s commanding officer, as though he had literacy problems.

They let him through. They checked his ID tags. They eyed his tattoos with scorn. He was some kind of heathen farm-head from an agri-world, an indentured barbarian, not a proper fighting man from a civilised place like Urdesh. Only his rank kept the insults at bay.

They took his sidearm, put it in the guardhouse locker, and made him sign for it. Then they patted him down.

The Urdeshi had been fairly thorough up until that point, but now the long night shift and a clutch of caffeine headaches began to show. Rawne had been patted down by the very best in his time. He knew precisely how to twist or turn, innocent movements that looked like balance-keeping, so that even somebody taking the pat-down seriously could be misled and misdirected. Rawne kept his hands raised. By the time they’d finished, they would believe they had methodically checked everywhere, where in fact he had kept them entirely clear of one or two areas.

They found the knife. Tanith warknife, straight silver, buckled to his right shin.

‘What’s this?’ asked one.

‘Back-up,’ replied Rawne.

They took it, made him sign for it.

He’d wanted them to find it. It was the decoy. People believed they’d done a thorough job if they found something. People usually stopped searching at that point.

‘You’ve got thirty minutes,’ said one of the guards. ‘That is the permitted duration authorised by your papers. You will be back here in twenty-nine minutes. If you’re not, we will come looking for you and you will be considered a justified target.’

Rawne nodded.

They opened the inner cage gate. Its chain hoist clattered. He walked through the guardhouse and out onto the inner causeway of the pontoons. The tide clearly caught here between the vast stone piers of the island. There was a pronounced stink of sulphur, and a soupy mass of dissolving garbage lapped against the slimy walls of the inlet.

He left the pontoon walkway and climbed stone steps that brought him in under the archway entrance. The island was an artificial atoll of stone and rockcrete built to support a squat, formidable lighthouse tower. The bridge that had originally connected it to the shore had long since rotted away. It had been replaced by the metal pontoon and the walk span.

The lighthouse hadn’t burned for a long time. Dark and neglected, the tower’s thick walls and inaccessibility had been put to other uses.

Once he was out of sight of the guardhouse, Rawne stepped back into the shadows. He reached down to his left calf, and removed the other Tanith warknife he was carrying. He had tied it around his shin with boot laces. The one he’d surrendered had been Meryn’s. Rawne had taken it without asking. Meryn would probably be searching his billet for it already. It added to Rawne’s enjoyment of the whole enterprise to think that, whatever else happened, Meryn would end up on a charge for misplacing his regimental dagger.

Rawne believed the knife would probably be enough. It certainly ought to be enough for any self-respecting Tanith-born to get the job done. But he wanted to cover all the variables.

Off to the side of the lowering entrance archway was a dim stone cistern. It had once been the chute of a garderobe, or a drain-away built to cope with heavy storm swells. The edge of his warknife, deftly applied, freed the lip of the cast iron cover. Rawne hooked his fingers around the bars of the cover and lifted it out. There was a damp stone well underneath, with water lurking in the darkness at the bottom. Other things lurked down there too, things with pincushion gums and egg-white eyes. He could hear them slopping and writhing gleefully, as if entertained by his cunning.

The cord had been attached to the underside of the drain cover, so that it hung down into the shaft of the well, weighted by the waxed burlap musette bag on the end. He pulled the line up, and the bag with it, opened the drawstring top, and took out the heavy object wrapped in vizzy cloth.

It was a collection of objects in fact, all of them dense and heavy. Machined metal components. Rawne spread the cloth on the stone floor beside the drain, and laid the parts out on it. He slotted them together, quickly and skilfully. He’d done it a thousand times before. He could have done it blindfold. Each piece clacked or wound into place. The smell of gun oil was sweet and strong in his nostrils.

Standard Munitorum-issue laspistol, Khulan V pattern. It was one of the original stamped blanks shipped from Khulan for finishing in the armouries of Tanith, prior to issue at the Tanith Founding. The palm-spur had been fitted with a handmade nalwood grip, and age and use had lent the figuring greater beauty than any varnish or lacquer could have achieved.

The pistol had been smuggled into the lighthouse over a period of weeks, one part at a time. It lacked a power cell, a flash sleeve and the side casings. Rawne reached into his belt pouch. Inside were two cigars rolled in black liquorice paper. The S Company sentries had taken them out, sniffed them, and given them back. Each cigar was in a little tin case. Except they weren’t. One of the tin cases was actually a flash sleeve. Rawne blew out the traces of tobacco fibre and screwed the sleeve onto the end of the barrel.

The Urdeshi had also failed to notice that he was wearing four tags, not two. Rawne unlooped the two side plates from the slender chain, dropped the tags back down under the neckline of his vest, and slotted the side plates into position.

Then he struck the tip of his knife into the back of his boot heel, and pulled the heel block away from the upper. The power cell was secured in a cavity he’d hollowed out of the heel. Rawne stamped the heel back in place, then slapped the cell into the gun. He toggled off, armed it, got a tiny green light on the grip just above his thumb. He felt the ambient hum of a charged las weapon.

He dropped the drain cover back, slipped the knife into his belt, and walked up the steps from the entrance archway with the pistol down at his side in his right hand.

There was a semicircular stone chamber beyond, large and full of echoes. Munitorum issue armoured window units had been bolted or heat-fused into the gaping stone sockets. Rawne passed on into a larger stone chamber, fully circular and three or four storeys high. It was the core of the lighthouse. In the base, dead centre, stood some of the old lampwork, a great, engineered brass contraption with a wick-mount, winding handles, and a reservoir feed from the promethium sump below. A huge frame of gearing and chainlines surrounded it to elevate the lamp to the beacon room at the apex of the tower once it was lit.

The brass lampwork was black with age and the chains had rusted. The gears and winders were so corroded they had frozen, blotched green and white, and would never turn again. Decades of dust had accreted on the black grease of the lamp head and wick assembly in such quantity it looked like some exotic, thickly furred animal mounted on display.

Rawne walked up the stairs that ran around the curve of the chamber wall. There was no rail, and he made no sound, though the latter was not even deliberate. Like many Tanith, he had been taught, by that great educator Life, not to give himself away.

He smelled caffeine and the unmistakable aroma of fried nutrition fibre. Slab, staple of the common lasman’s diet, cornerstone of Guard rations.

Rawne reached a landing space. There was a doorway ahead. A guard, another Urdeshi man, was sitting beside the doorway on a chair borrowed from another building. Rawne kept the laspistol against his hip so that the man wouldn’t see it immediately. He kept walking. It was all about confidence. Confidence was the key to everything. Use enough of it and you could pull off any scam, win any fight, or bed any mamzel. The more you acted like you were absolutely supposed to be doing something, the less chance anyone would ask you what the feth you were up to, until it was too late, and they were, depending on the circumstances, financially worse off, dead, or surprisingly naked.

The guard didn’t spare him a second look. Rawne passed him, and went in through the doorway.

The room had originally been the tower master’s chamber. It was bare boards and grilled windows, and the corkscrew staircase ran up the inside wall to the platform levels higher in the tower. The room currently contained a heavy wooden cot, a small trolley table and an old wooden chair.

The cot was neatly made, the blanket and bedroll laid out as if for a barrack hall inspection. On the table was a small glow-globe lamp, some books and a cookhouse tray. On the tray was a tin cup and a flask of caffeine, a salt shaker, a mess dish with the remains of a serving of slab cake, hard biscuits and refried bean paste, and a worn metal spoon. Rawne was surprised they’d allowed a spoon. A determined man could turn a spoon into a weapon. He could sharpen it against stone, stab with it. If he didn’t have time to work its edge, he could improvise. Even blunt, it could do damage to an eye or a throat if driven with enough force.

Maybe it’s me, Rawne thought. Maybe I just see weapons in everything. Maybe to other people, that’s just a spoon.

The books were all Imperial tracts and trancemissionary pamphlets, stamp-printed on brown, low-quality paper. It was all the monster ever seemed to read. He said they helped to settle him and fortify his resolve.

The monster was sitting in the chair beside the table, reading one of the tracts while he digested his breakfast. He was wearing unmarked black fatigues, boots and a brown hide jacket. His shaved scalp and face were covered in deliberate ritual scars, old and puckered, but the hands holding the trancemissionary treatise were soft and unmarked.

The monster became aware of Rawne’s approach. He stopped reading and looked up.

‘Major Rawne,’ he said. ‘I did not expect to see you this morning.’

So fething polite. Like a real person.

‘Pheguth,’ Rawne replied.

The monster looked startled for a second. It wasn’t just the fact that he had been called traitor in his own, abhuman tongue. It was the fluency of it. Rawne’s time on occupied Gereon had allowed him to acquire a conversational grasp of the Archenemy language. He didn’t merely know the word for betrayer, he could deliver it with colloquial authenticity. It was as though a part of the monster’s old life had come back to threaten him.

The monster saw the weapon. He saw Rawne raising the laspistol from the guarded place beside his hip.

‘Major–’ he began.

Rawne said nothing else. He took aim and fired.

The crack of the discharge echoed around the room. Rawne heard seabirds, roosting in the upper parts of the lighthouse, launch into the air at the sound of the shot. Nothing else.

Footsteps. There would be footsteps. Which side would they come from? What angle did he need to cover?

Rawne looked at the monster. The monster, Mabbon Etogaur, looked back at him.

‘Come on, or you’re a dead man,’ Rawne said.

Mabbon got up out of his chair. Rawne’s shot had severed the heavy iron chain that linked the etogaur’s manacles to a hefty floor pin. He looped up the trailing, cut end of the chain around his right hand.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mabbon said.

‘No time to explain,’ Rawne replied.

It was going to be from the right. He suddenly knew it.

The sea window blew in, exploding in a spray of armoured glass fragments. There was a man outside the window on the lighthouse’s external walkway.

Rawne tackled Mabbon and brought him down behind the trolley table and the cot. Three more las shots shrieked in through the blown window space and scorched holes in the opposite wall. Prone, Mabbon looked at Rawne.

Rawne gestured for him to keep down.

The shooter outside switched his lasrifle to full auto and unleashed a storm of rounds into the room. Several struck the side of the heavy cot, splintering the wood and slamming the frame backwards. Some hit the trolley table and knocked it over. Some punctured the back of the old chair and filled the air with dust and floating animal hair fibres.

Silence. Dust and smoke drifted in the sunlight. Mabbon looked set to move. Rawne, still flat on his belly, reached out and picked up the salt shaker that had been knocked off the tray. He used it like a pen, and drew on the stone floor in salt. The looping white lines formed the scratch symbol for ‘play dead’. The Blood Pact scratch symbol. Some said Rawne had learned far more on Gereon than was entirely good for him.

Mabbon looked at the symbol and nodded.

The shooter was cautious. He had killed the guard at the door before Rawne’s arrival: cut his throat and left him sitting in his chair. Then he’d gone out onto the walkway and circled around, probably intending to get up and get a shot at Mabbon from above. The noise of Rawne’s shot had forced him to make his play earlier than he had intended.

A minute passed, a full minute. It felt like a year to the two men pressed down on the floor behind the cot as they tried not to twitch or breathe. A second minute was almost up before something moved against the light and a figure stepped in through the blown window.

An Urdeshi trooper, by his clothes and his lasrifle; uniforms and Guard-issue weapons could be stolen. The boots crunched on the broken glass.

Rawne let him get a metre or so into the room, then fired under the cot. The las-shot clipped the man’s left calf and he toppled with a squeal. Rawne leapt up at once, bounding over the battered cot to finish things. He was hoping to take the man alive for interrogation, but he was also fully prepared seal the deal with a kill shot if necessary.

He almost fell off the cot mid-bound as shots tore down from above. A second shooter was firing from high up inside the tower, perched on the rail-less spiral of the stairs.

Rawne landed on top of the first shooter. It was an accident, but he worked with it. The man fought back. Rawne saw his face, close-up, and recognised him. They wrestled. Shots from above struck the floor beside them. The man had Rawne’s wrist. Rawne couldn’t aim his pistol. The man’s lasrifle, looped around the man’s torso on its strap, was wedged between them.

Rawne threw a hooking punch. He couldn’t aim with the pistol, so he struck with it. The butt collided with the man’s cheek and snapped his head around, but the impact tore the pistol out of Rawne’s grip, and it went skittering away across the floor.

More shots struck the ground around them from above. Rawne rolled over hard, dragging his dazed assailant with him, like two lovers tumbling. He couldn’t pull the lasrifle off the shooter because of the strap, but he got his right hand around the barrel to direct it, and his left hand down and low to squeeze the trigger.

The weapon was still set on full auto. Las shots hosed up the throat of the lighthouse, deflecting off the curved walls, blowing out chunks of brick and stonework. It wasn’t the cleanest piece of shooting Rawne had ever executed, but he managed to drag the chasing wildfire across the section of screwstair where the second shooter was crouching.

Hit, though perhaps not fatally, the second shooter yelped and fell. He somersaulted down a dozen steps, cracking off the stone edges, and then grazed against the curve of the wall and flew right off the staircase entirely. He dropped eight metres, straight down, onto the prisoner’s wooden chair, which exploded into kindling and dust under the impact.

Rawne was up. There was no opportunity for respite. A third assassin had appeared, rushing in through the main doorway. Like the other two, he was dressed as an Urdeshi trooper. He had a lasrifle with a bayonet fixed. He, too, had a face Rawne knew.

Rawne’s laspistol was out of reach. The lasrifle was tangled around the body of the first shooter on the floor. Rawne went at the third attacker instead, closing the distance between them as fast as he could, ripping out his warknife.

The third assassin fired, but Rawne’s straight silver had already parried his bayonet and turned the muzzle aside. The shot went out through the blown window. The assassin tried to re-aim, but Rawne fenced with his blade again, and deflected the bayonet up, so that the next shots went clean up the tower space.

The assassin tried to club Rawne with an underswing of his tilted rifle. Rawne spun his warknife so that the pommel was behind his thumb, and then punched the blade sideways, knuckles up. The blow slashed the assassin’s throat, left to right. Blood gouted into the air, as though someone had tossed a beaker of red ink. Rawne ripped back in the opposite direction, and tore a second cut across the man’s torso, right to left. The assassin fell on his knees with a deadweight thump, his lifeblood exiting his body under pressure through the two huge splits. He collapsed onto his face.

Rawne stepped back, spinning the warknife back upright in his hand, and then swung around, alerted by a sound from behind him.

The first shooter had got back up on his hobbled leg, raising his rifle to his broken cheek to shoot Rawne in the back. But Mabbon had seized him from behind. The etogaur’s broken manacles were wrapped around the man’s throat, crushing the life out of him. Mabbon’s face was absolutely expressionless.

The man struggled and made a cracked choking noise. Mabbon slammed his face into the stone surround of the blown window and then let the chain go slack, dropping him dead on the floor.

‘The timing of your visit was quite fortunate,’ he remarked.

Rawne nodded, picking up the third assassin’s rifle in case there were any further surprises.

The three dead assassins all had the same face.

‘Rime wants you dead,’ he said.

‘Half the sector wants me dead,’ Mabbon replied.

Rawne shrugged.

‘So, did you get some kind of tip-off that Rime was sending his Sirkle after me today?’

‘No,’ said Rawne. ‘This was a coincidence. I came here this morning to prove a point.’

‘What point?’

‘That the Tanith First can protect you better than the S Company details the Commissariat assigns to you. We’ve all used our visits in the last few weeks to test security, to look for weakness, to smuggle things in. Today, I was going to demonstrate that if we could get a weapon inside, so could anybody, and thus convince the Commissariat to assign S Company duties to my platoon so we could take over from the buffoons they’ve been using to watch you.’

‘Because Gaunt would be happier that way, because he trusts his own to do the job properly?’

‘Something like that,’ said Rawne. ‘And it’s Colonel-Commissar Gaunt to you.’

‘My apologies,’ said Mabbon.

Rawne looked at the bodies. Outside, he could hear men approaching, and an alarm started to sound.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘as demonstrations go, this proved the point well enough.’

‘I’m pleased that my security will be your business for the remainder of my stay here, major,’ Mabbon said.

‘The Suicide Kings will look after you,’ said Rawne.

‘Suicide Kings? Like the card game?’

‘Never mind. It’s a private joke,’ said Rawne. ‘Anyway, there won’t be much of a remainder. That’s why I had to make my point today. It’s also why Rime had to make his move. That suggests he has good intelligence.’

‘You’re moving me. We’re going to begin at last?’

‘Approval has been granted,’ said Rawne. ‘The mission has been authorised. We make shift at nightfall tomorrow.’

‘I take it that when we make shift, we will be en route to Salvation’s Reach?’ Mabbon Etogaur asked.

‘That’s classified,’ said Rawne.

COMMANDER SHADOW

Braden Campbell

I am a warrior of the fire caste. I have seen the carnage of battle before, wherever the Greater Good has struggled to overcome the dark barbarity so prevalent across the galaxy. Death and destruction are distasteful, yes, but I now know the deeper truth. They are an inevitable by-product of our people’s civilising mission. They cannot be avoided, and thus must be embraced. That is a lesson not found in the curricula of the military colleges on Bork’an. That is something only my time here as Overseer of Cytheria could teach me.

The battle of Herzen Ridge is where it began. My enlightenment, that is, not our conflict with the gue’la rebels. That, as you well know, is a struggle that has dragged on for quite some time. We made great strides initially. By the third day of our occupation, we had destroyed an entire armoured regiment of the planet’s primary defence force, the warriors of the ‘Ka’Tashun Sept’. Yet, despite the fact that they had been decisively beaten in honourable combat, they refused to acquiesce. Remnants of their units retreated into the jungles and continued to engage us in a most uncivilised manner. They abandoned whatever standard military uniforms they might have once worn, making them visually indistinguishable from the gue’la citizenry who had submitted to our authority. They would remain hidden instead of openly presenting themselves, and would only attack vulnerable targets. So underhanded were their methods, so ignoble, that there existed no word in our language to describe it. My attaché, Por’el Tan’bay, eventually taught me the gue’la term for such violent opposition: ‘insurgency.’

What kind of a people would consider this an acceptable methodology? That’s the question I should have been asking myself all along; because the answer, when arrived at, would have clearly showed me the form my response should have taken. Instead, I dawdled. I tried to negotiate with them. I appealed to their reason. I hoped against hope that they would eventually come to their senses and see the futility of resistance. Then, I was called out to Marae’Taa Gorge.

For fear of Ka’Tashun snipers, I travelled via modified piranha. The normally open top of the skimmer was now covered by a thick, windowless canopy. Even the cockpit was completely sealed. My pilot navigated with the aid of vidscreens and cameras mounted on the hull. Thus, I was unable to see anything of the surrounding countryside as I drew close to the site, but I could imagine the scenery blurring past. We were far beyond the plains by now, heading into the jungle highland with its dark red foliage, raging rivers, and jagged, broken topography. To one side of me was the mag-lev line; the track, when completed, would link Cytheria’s two largest colony sites together with high-speed monorails.

Infrastructure. That’s what the Tau Empire brings. When I first arrived here, the gue’la lived in a shameful state with their machinery in disrepair and their urban centres nothing but crumbling ruins. They believed this to be quite acceptable, for they had never known otherwise. I began to change all that. Before long, Cytheria had clean water to drink and fresh food to eat. Ample power ran to structurally sound buildings. Still, the Ka’Tashun called us oppressors. They were doing so even as I travelled to the gorge. All morning, the airwaves had been filled with their pirate signal, claiming responsibility for the attack on the railhead.

‘The enemy is reeling,’ a voice proclaimed through the static. ‘Today, we have struck a decisive blow for freedom, and in the days and weeks to come, we will do it again and again. We will not rest until the xenos have been eradicated. Take heart citizens, for the Emperor is on our side. His wrath is coming, and will soon deliver us from the oppression of the Tau!’

No one had yet been able to discern the source of these transmissions. It was maddening.

The vehicle slowed, and the canopy opened. As I climbed out of the piranha’s rear compartment, I was immediately met by Tan’bay; typical of him to have arrived on the scene before me. I first met him the day the annexation of Cytheria began and had found him to be the epitome of the water caste ever since. He was always prepared with whatever pertinent information I might need, even before I myself realised that I required it. His demeanour was one of unchanging calm. He seemed never to show worry or doubt. When he spoke, his sentences flowed unceasingly, free from any pauses or interruptions of thought.

Tan’bay’s hands were folded inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe as he bowed in deference. In the sky, an orange sun beat down, but his enormously brimmed hat kept his placid face in shadow. True to his years of training in the fields of diplomacy and interspecies negotiation, he constantly referred to himself using majestic, plural pronouns. One could actually hear the capitalisation in his voice. It was as if, when he spoke, he did so on behalf of the entire Tau race.

‘The Shas’o honours us with his presence,’ he lilted. ‘May it please him to hear our initial assessment of the events preceding his arrival?’

Tan’bay was standing so close that I couldn’t see past him. ‘What is it?’ I asked gruffly. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d had more than a few hours of sleep. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Our people have suffered yet another attack at the hands of the renegade gue’la of the Ka’Tashun Sept,’ he said. ‘A small contingent of fire warriors, assigned to guard the site, have fallen in battle, and will be remembered with all due honour for their valiant defence. The greater number of casualties consists of members of the earth caste; engineers and technicians involved in the building of the mag-lev bridge, which, to my lasting sadness, I must report has been effectively destroyed.’

I pushed past him then, and he dutifully melted off to one side. Marae’Taa Gorge, for those of you unfamiliar with Cytheria, is part of a massive chasm that bisects most of the continent. A river, which to my knowledge has never been named, rushes along the bottom. On average, the distance between the canyon walls is quite wide but in this one particular place, they are narrow. It was, therefore, a natural place to construct a crossing for the mag-lev system. I had seen the architectural designs months before. I am no expert, but I thought them to be quite aesthetically pleasing. The Fio’o in charge of the project was smiling as he described it, but I doubted he would be doing so now. The completed portion of the bridge had been firebombed; hit repeatedly with rockets and shaped explosive charges. Where once there had been graceful, white curves and support pillars, there was now only a twisted, blackened thing; a metal skeleton that sent plumes of acrid smoke up into the air even as the superstructure bowed down towards the river.

Then I saw the bodies. The rapid response team was reverently arranging them into two groups, earth caste on one side and fire warriors on the other. Within these, the fallen were being further organised into rows and columns from those with the highest rank and station to the lowest. Later, in accordance with caste traditions as old as the Greater Good itself, the workers would be buried and the soldiers would be cremated. The order and civility of it all should have given me some sense of peace, but it did not. The sheer number of the dead overrode such feelings.

‘Four hundred and seventy-seven killed,’ Tan’bay said gently. ‘None wounded.’

I turned to face him. ‘You mean there are no survivors? Not one?’

The man’s face was impassive. ‘It is half the reason we requested the Shas’o come in person.’

I blinked in the intensifying noon-day sun. ‘What’s the other half?’

Several buildings were still standing intact near the destroyed bridge. Tan’bay led me into one that, until recently, had been a facility for repairing heavy lifting equipment. It was now a makeshift field command. As we entered, several fire warriors of middling rank stopped their busy activities to bow. I was taken into a small office that contained two chairs set before a large vidscreen. On a nearby table lay a collection of metal tubes in varying sizes. As I seated myself, Tan’bay closed the door and dimmed the lights. He pulled a data crystal from some hidden pocket and, after inserting it into the machine, poured himself soundlessly into the chair next to mine.

The scenes that flicked past me were memory captures retrieved from damaged or destroyed security drones. They must have been stationed not only on the bridge itself but all around the compound, for the perspective was constantly changing. Through their electronic eyes, I watched with growing horror as the Ka’Tashuns launched their early morning assault.

No one saw the first barrage coming, but it was certainly audible. There was a series of muffled booms, followed by a high-pitched whistling. Many of the earth caste looked around in puzzlement, or turned to ask one another if they had heard the same thing. Then the first of the missiles slammed into the bridge’s support pillars. The structure shook and, as the workers began to flee, part of the deck twisted to one side. With a terrible, shearing sound, the entire thing sagged downwards. Those who had been trying to escape clawed frantically for handholds, but there were few to be found. Their eyes were wide as they fell off the bridge, tumbling down, down into the gorge to smash apart on the jagged rocks or drown in the churning water.

The element of surprise was now spent. Unlike the workers, our fire warriors were calm, disciplined. Within seconds they had formed into cohesive squads, and began to shoot back. Their pulse rifles tore the tree line to shreds with crackling beams of energy. Even the drones were firing now, following their programming and networking themselves into squadrons. Despite all this outpouring of fire, it was impossible to tell if any of the Ka’Tashuns were actually being hit, ensconced as they were in the jungle foliage. The quiet, ordered peace of the morning was now filled with the cacophony of battle.

There were small explosions all around. The ground was being cratered by some type of shell or heavy canister. Then two things happened. The workers began to clutch their necks and collapse on the ground and the heads of the fire warriors began to snap back sharply as, one after the other, they fell down dead. A fine, red smoke began to drift across the scene. At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. The fire warriors were being specifically targeted by long-range snipers; that much was obvious. But given the speed with which they were being cut down, the number of enemy marksmen hiding out there must have been great. The workers and engineers who had collapsed were now clawing the air, seemingly oblivious to everything else around them. Their eyes were bulging and their faces began to turn a deep purple. Suddenly, one of them shuddered so violently that I could hear his spine break. Something exploded from his mouth and nose. His body shook, and he was still. The same thing was happening to all of them now. Every Tau not wearing a suit of environmental battle armour was likewise dying in a suffocating, epileptic fit. The red smoke thickened as it drifted across the scene.

I looked over at Tan’bay. ‘Some kind of chemical agent?’

Tan’bay rolled one hand over in the air, a gesture he did often as if he were casting something away. ‘The Ka’Tashun Sept is widely known to employ hyperlethal poisons.’

‘Their snipers, yes’ I replied sternly. I had studied the Ka’Tashun’s methods and tactics down to the most minute of details. ‘But never like this. This is being delivered in shell casings. That implies portable mortars or shoulder-mounted launchers.’

The vidscreen was a panorama of death now. Hundreds of earth caste lay twisted and broken on the ground. Red foam filled their every orifice. My fellow warriors were also gone. Only the drones remained, but they were being quickly dispatched by volleys of lasers. Those that did not explode outright, wobbled as their flight systems failed. When they crashed, they recorded a world turned at odd angles, where the land and sky were reversed or completely knocked askew.

‘And in such a volume,’ I continued. ‘How could they produce so many toxins with their limited resources?’

‘We believe the compound to be organic in nature,’ Tan’bay said. ‘I regret to inform the Shas’o, it is also most abundant in the deep jungle areas of this world to which our foe has now retreated.’

With that, he rose and went to the table. He picked up one of the grey metal tubes and handed it to me. It was sealed at one end and had a diameter large enough to accommodate my forearm. A fine, red, powdery residue clung to the interior. I wiped some off with my finger and immediately felt a stab of burning pain.

‘These are sporepod blooms,’ I said with realisation. The interior of Cytheria’s major landmass was a steaming, foetid rainforest so thick as to be nearly impassable. It was home to all manner of biting, poisonous things, but few as bad as the hata’le bush. The fruit of this leafy, burgundy-coloured plant was a hollow pod about the size of a clenched fist. The slightest amount of pressure would cause it to spew forth its spores in a misty cloud. They were harmful to both tau and gue’la alike, burning any exposed skin they might land on, and causing haemorrhaging if ingested.

‘Indeed they are,’ Tan’bay replied.

‘They can be dangerous, but not deadly. Certainly not like this.’ I gestured towards the vidscreen where the slaughter continued to play itself out.

Tan’bay’s voice was clinically calm. ‘It appears that the Ka’Tashans have somehow managed to amplify the plant’s natural toxicity. The modified blooms are taken into the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract, where they begin to reproduce almost instantly. The victims not only bleed internally and go into toxic shock, but end up asphyxiating themselves as a hata’la bush literally takes root in their chest and nasal cavities. The sponge-like growth you see coming out of the victims’ mouths are actually their lungs being forced outwards by the expanding plant.’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘How could they have done this?’

‘To that, Shas’o, We regretfully have no answer. Yet one thing is certain. What you now face is a weapon that works on two levels. The first as seen demonstrated here, but secondly, and of perhaps a more pressing concern, is the fear that it will generate; fear among our populace, both tau and acculturated gue’la. Fear leads to distrust, distrust to disharmony, and that, as the Shas’o well knows, is anathema to the Greater Good.’

‘Using fear as a weapon,’ I mused. The Ka’Tashun barbarity was physically sickening. I rose quickly, and turned to leave. Then I heard a voice speaking in the harsh language of the enemy.

‘Sir, this one’s still running.’

My head snapped back towards the vidscreen. One of the drones, whose camera eye was still functioning, had been lifted from where it had crashed. The image jostled for a moment, then came to rest on a gue’la’s face. His skin was painted thick with mud and some kind of red camouflage. His mouth and jaw were covered by a stubbly, animalistic growth of fur. His brow was dark and heavy, and his eyes blazed with a white-hot hatred.

‘Shas’o Rra?’ he sneered. ‘Can you hear me?’

I knew at once who it was by the insulting name he used. Only one person on Cytheria had ever called me that. Ezra Mihalik, the self-proclaimed leader of the Ka’Tashun Sept.

‘Of course you can,’ Ezra continued. ‘That diplomat of yours will drag you out here in the name of procedure. And what’s more, someone of your education, you’ll want to see this first-hand.’

Off-camera, there was the sound of laughing.

‘I’ll be brief. This attack was a test and, I think, a pretty effective one. You and all your forces have eight days to leave Cytheria. If you don’t, my men will release these spores into each and every population centre on the planet. And don’t think I won’t actually do it because my fellow humans would also be killed. You should know that, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who isn’t helping to resist you is collaborating with you, and they deserve what they get.

‘Eight days, Shas’o Rra, or watch your people die.’ He looked away and nodded. The drone dropped back to the ground. From its new vantage point, I watched as several sets of boots walked away.

Tan’bay said nothing. Perhaps he was giving me time to think. Or perhaps there was simply nothing more to be said. I had one week to break the resistance. One week to somehow find Ezra Milhalik, and stop him. I’ll show you, I remember thinking. I am no ‘Commander Shadow’.

Ezra Mihalik had come up with his insulting name for me during our first and only negotiations. This was perhaps a month prior to the attack on the railhead. I was still suffering under the delusion that he was a logical being. So I sent out word that I would meet with Mihalik and try to put an end to the Cytherian conflict. A short time later, my offer was accepted. Two heavily muscled Ka’Tashun soldiers arrived at the gates of my compound. They were shirtless, dressed in heavy boots and camouflage-patterned pants. Each of them wore a bright red cloth tied around their heads. They were armed only with knives. One of them carried some kind of large communications device strapped to his back. They told the guards that they were envoys from the Ka’Tashun Sept come to see me, but were otherwise stoic and silent.

Once they had been disarmed and scanned, they were brought into a spacious meeting room where Tan’bay and I were already waiting. They placed the bulky device on the table in front of me, switched it on, and then stepped back with their hands clasped behind their backs. A voice began to emanate from a tiny speaker in the machine. It spoke in the choppy, harsh language of the gue’la. Fortunately, I spoke it too.

‘Are we good? Can you hear me?’ it said.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I can hear you. To whom am I speaking?’

‘Why, this is Ezra Mihalik, commander of the fifty-sixth Ka’Tashun Company. I also speak for the few remaining members of two other Ka’Tashun companies, the twenty-sixth and fifty-first.’

‘I see. I take it then that you have chosen not to meet with us in person.’

‘You’re very perceptive,’ the voice replied.

I looked at the two Ka’Tashuns. Their faces were impassive, but behind their eyes, they were smiling.

Tan’bay leaned forwards and launched into his carefully prepared opening. ‘Commander, this is Por’el Tan’bay speaking on behalf of the Tau Empire, and may we begin by saying how pleased we are that you have agreed to negotiate with us, no matter the forum. If our two peoples can learn to live together in peace, then the benefits for both sides will, without doubt, be enormous.’

‘Emperor wept,’ Mihalik groaned. ‘Are you the guy in charge?’

‘If you are asking as to whether or not we are directly responsible for Cytheria’s pacification and regime change, then, no. If, however–’

‘Fine’ Mihalik interrupted. ‘Then let me talk to the one who is.’

I sat forward in my chair and addressed the transmitter. ‘I am the person in command of our military forces.’

‘Ah, good.’ There was a creaking in the background as Mihalik leaned back into whatever he was sitting on. ‘What do I call you?’

‘I have not yet chosen a name,’ I said slowly. ‘You may address me by my rank: Shas’o.’

Mihalik chuckled softly. ‘You… you have not yet chosen a name?’ he parroted. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

Tan’bay answered him with a lesson in protocol. ‘Personal names should only be used between family members and close friends. At all other times, it is proper to address others according to their station in life. The only exception would be for those who have earned the right to embellish their title with simple descriptors, certain achievements, or places of importance.’

‘And you haven’t any of those, is that it?’ Mihalik asked me.

I was anxious to move past such a personal subject. ‘I am a commander of the fire caste. Thus, you will address me as Shas’o.’

‘You said that means ‘commander’, right?’

‘Correct.’ I had the growing suspicion that the voice on the other end of the radio had no intention of negotiating for peace. ‘Let us begin by–’

‘Just commander,’ Mihalik mused. ‘Nothing else. Because you haven’t chosen the name yet. Or because you haven’t earned it?’

I took a moment to consider my reply. Before I could say anything more however, Mihalik spoke again. His voice was low and direct.

‘They put you in charge of a whole planet, so this can’t be your first time out.’

I cleared my throat. ‘It is not. I have survived four trials by fire.’

‘But there was nothing in those four that stood out enough for you to add them to your name, huh? And if ‘trial by fire’ is Tau for ‘tour of duty’, then how did you earn your rank with so little experience?’

‘Commander Mihalik,’ I began.

‘Oh, you can call me Ezra. I have a name.’

‘Ezra, then. If you must know, I was given the rank of Shas’o when I graduated from the most prestigious military training centre in all the Empire. I may have only completed four trials, but I have studied the art of war for half my life. It would be a mistake for you to underestimate me.’ I smiled then, confident that the weight of my credentials would put this backwater rebel leader in his place.

‘So,’ Mihalik said after a pause, ‘you read about war in a bunch of books, and now you think you have what it takes to actually conduct one. You’re the shadow of a commander. You’ve got no substance. Hey, diplomat, how do you say ‘shadow’ in Tau?’

If Tan’bay was as outraged as I was he didn’t show it. ‘Rra,’ he replied helpfully.

‘Then that’s what I’ll call you: Shas’o Rra,’ he said, once again speaking to me. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘I don’t care for it,’ I said between clenched teeth. ‘May we return to the subject of negotiating a cease fire?’

For a long moment the only sound coming from the machine was background static. The silence stretched out so long in fact, that I thought the transmission had somehow been cut off. I was about to ask Mihalik if he was still there when he spoke up.

‘No,’ he said flatly.

‘No what?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘No, we can’t discuss a ceasefire. You see, Shas’o Rra, you and I are a little bit alike. I’ve spent half my life studying war too. Only I didn’t do it in some nice, clean school. I did it in swamps, and jungles, and burning cities. I learned about wars by actually being in them.

‘So, in the interests of… diplomacy, I’ll give you a choice. You can either pack up all your men, all your little drones and all your fancy war machines and go back to wherever it is you come from, or you can stay here and try to take me on. You haven’t got what it takes to beat me, I know that now, but I promise you’ll get a real education while you try.’

‘I have two of your men here, Ezra,’ I warned him.

‘Yeah, good men. They volunteered for this mission. You know, what you should do is torture them for information and then kill them. But I figure you’ll just set them free. They’re unarmed, they haven’t done you any harm, and it would be the civil thing to do. But maybe you’ll prove me wrong. Either way, they’re prepared.’ With that, he signed off. ‘See you around, Shas’o Rra.’

I released his men.

It didn’t take long to discover where the Ka’Tashun were hiding. Their radio broadcast was easy to trace. At first, I thought this was strange. The enemy were very adept at relocating themselves and their dwindling supplies of weapons and equipment. Every time that our forces would locate and destroy one of their hiding spots, they would simply reappear days later in a new one. Only after I had met with Kor’el Che’rod did I understand.

Like all members of the air caste, everything about Che’rod was long and thin. A flex-screen map was spread out on my desk and he pointed to a highlighted area with a finger that was twice the length of mine. ‘Here,’ he said. His voice was a throaty whisper. ‘Herzon Ridge.’

I leaned in to get a closer look. Che’rod was pointing to a plateau in the deepest heart of the jungle. It appeared to be completely inaccessible.

‘You’re certain?’ I asked.

His face contorted slightly. ‘There is no doubt, Shas’o. My pilots are most skilled. This is the location that you seek.’

I blanched. Of course he was certain. Kor’el Che’rod was not only a decorated veteran with far more trials to his name than I, but he was also many years my senior. How dare I question the validity of his actions like that? The lack of sleep was beginning to affect my judgment.

Tan’bay, seated in a corner, immediately came to my rescue. ‘We are certain the Shas’o meant no disrespect,’ he said. ‘However, the stakes in this particular instance are so high that there cannot be the slightest doubt. We are certain the Kor’el would agree?’

Che’rod’s eyes flicked from Tan’bay, to myself, and back again. ‘Indeed,’ he breathed. He squared his narrow shoulders and continued. ‘The renegade gue’la are broadcasting their propaganda across half the planet, utilising a transmitter far more powerful than any they have in the past. It was quite easy to triangulate its source. The location was then visually identified using orbital satellite imagery, and double-checked by multiple overhead fly-bys with barracuda-class fighters.’

Che’rod tapped the screen, zooming in on the ridge. A few outlines of buildings could be glimpsed through the otherwise unbroken canopy of red leaves. ‘According to records, these structures are a botanical research station, constructed by the gue’la and dating back several centuries.’

‘A botanical research station,’ Tan’bay murmured. ‘That would explain how the Ka’Tashan are able to produce so many altered sporepod blooms.’

‘Our sensor sweeps indicate the presence of between sixty and seventy personnel. There is no evidence of any vehicles or anti-air defences.’ His report concluded, Che’rod clasped his hands behind his back and waited.

‘This is most excellent, Kor’el,’ I said, beaming. That arrogant fool, Mihalik, had let his pride cloud his actions. His braggart radio messages would be his undoing. Things were finally about to turn around on this accursed planet. ‘It would appear Herzon Ridge is where control of Cytheria will be secured once and for all, and the honour falls to you and your men. You may begin bombing at once.’

I could see it now. Plasma torpedoes would fall from the sky like a cleansing rain, and the cyclonic winds generated by the exploding cores would sweep the Ka’Tashun’s ashes away. It would be quick and painless. A far better end than they deserved. Who’s the shadow of a commander now, Mihalik? I thought.

Kor’el Che’rod was frowning. ‘With all due respect, Shas’o, given the apparent nature of the gue’la bio-weapon, that would be most unadvisable.’

I narrowed my eyes at him, but a moment later understood. Of course. Whatever spores weren’t consumed in the initial explosions would be carried up into the atmosphere by the shockwaves. The prevailing winds would then spread them across half of Cytheria. No wonder then that Mihalik was unabashedly transmitting his location. He knew quite well that I daren’t vaporise his stronghold from the air.

‘Again, he mocks me.’

‘Shas’o?’ Che’rod asked, and I realised that I had been thinking out loud.

I cleared my throat to compose myself, and then nodded towards the door. ‘I understand, Kor’el,’ I said. ‘You have executed your duties in this matter with honour and efficiency. Take my thanks to your men.’

Che’rod bowed his head, and left. I stared down at the map until my eyes were burning. The ridge couldn’t be attacked from the air, which left a ground assault as the only option. However, the jungle was far too thick for sufficient numbers of battle suits to operate in, and any fire warriors sent in on foot would simply end up as fodder for Ka’Tashun traps and ambushes. My enemy seemed untouchable. Perhaps Mihalik had been right after all. All my years of study on Bork’an had failed to prepare me for this type of scenario.

‘There is a gue’la expression,’ Tan’bay said softly after some moments, ‘that the Shas’o might be wise to meditate on. ‘One cannot fight fire with fire’.’

I scowled at him. ‘That only proves what a backward people they are. Fire is the element of war. Soldiers should always be pitted against other soldiers. Anything else would be uncivilised.’

‘Then the Shas’o would agree the axiom is incorrect; that in effect, the only way to fight fire is with fire? That like should be met with like?’

‘I would,’ I snapped without consideration.

Tan’bay pressed his fingers together, and lifted his head to gaze up at the ceiling. At the time, I took it to be a pose of contemplation. Now I suspect that he was intentionally avoiding eye contact. He inhaled deeply and said, ‘We are an enlightened people. The methods of fighting as have been displayed by our enemies on this planet are simply not in our nature, and that is well. However, there exist within the Empire certain other species who, owing mostly to cultural retardation, are not so civil. We have seen them in combat. They can be… quite effective. ‘

Outside, the sun was setting. The room began to darken.

‘Where was this?’

‘Along the eastern edge of the Empire. In our youth, we undertook a prolonged tour of the worlds beyond the Perdus Rift.’

There was a silence between us. Tan’bay waited. He was an advisor, not a military commander. His job was to offer avenues of action, to open doors. Whether or not I followed or stepped through was left entirely up to me.

‘Where is the closest War Sphere?’ I said at last.

‘As it so happens, there is one in-system.’

‘Contact it.’

Tan’bay’s robes rustled as he stood. He bowed his head and spread his arms wide. ‘It is an honour to serve the Shas’o,’ he said.

When he was gone, I moved to the window and stared out across the grounds. Dark clouds were gathering across a violet sky. Out in the jungle, Ezra Mihalik was sitting atop Herzon Ridge, smugly thinking that he had beaten me. He was positive that I lacked the bloodlust required to shift him, and he was right. Such a thing was beyond a tau such as myself. Not so for the kroot.

During my officer’s training on Bork’an, I studied all of the tau’s various alien allies. The kroot were even taller than the air caste, but not at all fragile. Their limbs were taut with ropey muscles. Their skin was greasy leather. Their heads were crowned with quills and their faces dominated by a massive, serrated beak. They had a knack for picking up new languages and when they slept, they did so lightly, crouched together in large groups. They were also ferocious cannibals. They believed that by eating the remains of their fallen enemies, they could gain their strengths. This may have been more than primitive superstition, in fact. Scientists within the Empire were of the opinion that something in the kroot genetic structure did indeed cause them to take on the characteristics of whatever they ate. Despite decades of trying, no one had been able to break them of this particularly barbaric trait. Still, they were so adept in certain areas that commanders across the Empire were willing to turn a blind eye to it. Their homeworld, Pech, was covered in vast coniferous forests, and thus, they were renowned for their ability to move through even the thickest cover at great speed and in absolute silence.

They were exactly what I needed with which to fight the Ka’Tashuns. Fire with fire.

I planned to lead them myself. Allies though they may be, a people as primitive and uncivilised as the kroot must still be supervised. More importantly though, I was now determined to kill Ezra Mihalik personally. He would not be captured or subdued. Nor was he going to die in an honourable or gentlemanly way. I was going to shoot him into pieces and leave him in the jungle as fodder for the beasts. It was what he deserved.

For the next three days, I met with earth caste engineers and modified a stealth battle suit specifically for my needs. It was nearly completed when Tan’bay appeared to tell me that the kroot had arrived. Dawn was still hours away and the sky was pouring rain. I walked out of the mechanical bay to appraise them. There were forty in all. They stood barefoot in the mud, naked, save for a few scraps of leather armour. Their skin, the grungy brown colour of dead leaves, was exuding a greasy substance that made the rainwater bead and run off. They stank of dirt and sweat, salty and earthy. In their taloned hands they each clutched a long-barrelled rifle made of wood and tarnished metal. Some of these were adorned with clusters of feathers or glass beads strung on pieces of copper wire. Every one of them was capped with a primitive bayonet. Several canvas packs lay scattered about them. Off to one side, a pack of roughly two dozen kroot hounds snorted about in the sopping ground and nipped at one another viciously.

Tan’bay gestured, and one particular kroot stepped forward. He wore a string of half-chewed bones around his waist, and had applied some kind of white makeup underneath his left eye. Otherwise, he would have been completely indistinguishable from the rest. They all look alike to me.

‘Shas’o,’ Tan’bay announced loudly, ‘may it please you to meet Shaper Awl.’ I nodded slightly

Awl made a clicking noise from somewhere in the back of his throat. ‘We have sworn to fight for the tau.’ The pitch and tone of his voice was disturbingly melodic, like birdsong echoing up from the bottom of a well. ‘Their enemies are our enemies. Lead on. We will follow.’

‘I take it you have been briefed on the nature of this mission?’ I asked him. ‘You know our objective?’

Awl had no lips with which to smile. Instead he opened up his beak, and clacked his thick tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘You shall have your prize,’ he said slyly. He whistled sharply to the other kroot, and they began to gather what meagre supplies they had. As they did so, Tan’bay moved to my side.

‘Good fortune to you, Shas’o. We will take our leave now, and hope to see you again upon your safe return.’

‘Wish you were coming along?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘The Shas’o has no need of us,’ Tan’bay replied. He looked at the kroot, then turned back to me. His face had a gravity to it that I had never seen before. ‘There will be no diplomacy where he now goes.’

A pair of drop ships waited on the nearby landing field. By the time I had encased myself into the stealth suit, the kroot had already clamoured aboard. I joined them, sealed the ramp behind me, and signalled for the pilots to take off. Within minutes, we were airborne, speeding over the plains towards the jungle lowlands. I spent the time in silence, checking and rechecking my suit’s systems. I synchronised its inbuilt positional relay to the satellites above, and studied our insertion route on my heads-up display. I ran a test on the integrated shield generator. Finally, I familiarised myself with the automatic stimulant injector, an experimental piece of technology that would flood my bloodstream with painkillers should I become wounded. The kroot, on the other hand, jabbered incessantly in their squawking, clicking, chirping native language. They made barking sounds that I assumed were laughter. Awl haphazardly poured some kind of thin oil all over his rifle, then produced a leather rag and began to work it into all the mechanical housings. He seemed to take no notice of how the others behaved until we were very near the landing zone.

The lights in the troop compartment changed from white to yellow, and we began our descent. Awl barked for his troops to get ready, and they immediately fell silent. The aft ramp opened, and within a minute, we were out. The engines flared as the drop ships rocketed away. I watched them vanish up into the heavy clouds above. When I turned back, the kroot were already moving swiftly into the thickening underbrush. I activated my suit’s adaptive camouflage and followed. It was not always easy. The kroot preferred to climb up into the trees and swing from limb to limb. The hounds kept pace on the ground. They raced from one trunk to another, constantly snorting and sniffing the air.

The rain had let up, but very little light managed to filter through the foliage above. I walked along the forest floor surrounded by a deep gloom. I saw increasing numbers of hata’le bushes, all of them picked clean of their sporepods. Hours later, as I pushed my way through a thorny shrub twice my height, I stopped to find Awl crouched on the ground ahead. His head was cocked to one side. All about him, kroot were clinging to the sides of the trees. The second he saw me, his clenched fist snapped up, and I froze. Without saying a word, he gingerly brushed at the ground before him. Buried just below the surface there was some kind of explosive device.

Awl spoke to his warriors in a rapid string of squeaks, and they vanished back up into the trees. He turned to me. ‘Plasma mine,’ he said quietly. ‘Short proximity sensor.’ Then, with a single bound, he too leapt back up into the jungle above. I carefully manoeuvred around the trap, all the while amazed how Awl had known it was there. I double-checked my scanners, but there were no telltales. Whatever materials the Ka’Tashuns had used to make their landmines, they did not register.

The afternoon was growing late and the rain had begun again when we arrived at Herzon Ridge. I cautiously moved forward and joined Awl, who was lying prone beneath a bushy shrub. I saw no sign of the other kroot, but knew that they couldn’t be far off. Awl pointed to his eyes, then flicked a talon forwards. Ahead of us was a rough clearing with three sizable buildings. The first was low to the ground and rectangular-shaped. It had a single large door set into one face, and only the thinnest of slots for windows. A tall, metal tower adorned with dishes was affixed to its otherwise flat roof. The second structure was an enormous glass-enclosed dome filled with plants and greenery; a multitude of cylindrical storage tanks that ran along one side of it. The third building, set apart from the other two, was actually more of a raised, flat area. It was octagonal in shape, and stood atop four squat pillars. Armoured walls hung from every side, but these look rusted and long since used.

‘Landing platform,’ I whispered to Awl.

He nodded, and pointed to the thickly shadowed area underneath it. ‘There are gue’la under there. Thirty or so by the smell. They must not like the rain.’

Switching my optics into the infrared, the enemy platoon sprang to life. The Ka’Tashuns, for reasons I had never been able to fathom, eschewed environmental combat armour. Their multiple areas of exposed skin therefore lit up my display in brilliant hues as they radiated their body heat. Oddly, when I looked back at the kroot shaper, he was nearly the same colour as the surrounding jungle. The disgusting grease that his skin exuded was apparently some natural adaptation for stealth.

‘More over there,’ I said, indicating the area between the glass dome and the building with the radio tower. Another thirty men milled about. Underneath waterproofed tarps, I noted the telltale shapes of two huge machine guns; blocky things that fired kinetic bolts the size of my fist. ‘I think they’re expecting us.’

Awl grunted. ‘We must strike quickly, and close the distance. We will stand little chance against their heavy guns. What is the Shas’o’s command?’

‘We’ll divide in two. Take half your fighters and circle around to the left. Eliminate that unit near the glass dome. I’ll go with the others and clear out the area beneath the landing field. Then, we converge on the final building.’

Without another word, Awl slithered backwards and vanished into the undergrowth. I made my way as close to the elevated pad as I dared, and found twenty kroot waiting for me. A dozen hounds lay in the mud, panting softly. I was about to ask how it was they kept the beasts so controlled and quiet, when the jungle around me exploded.

I had no idea how the Ka’Tashuns knew that we were about to strike, but it didn’t matter. They opened up on us with everything they had. A mortar shell sailed up into the trees above me, and detonated. Huge shards of wood rained down. Lasers tore into the underbrush all around me, striking several of the kroot warriors. Their death screams were ear-piercing. A second shell of some kind landed directly amidst the hounds. The explosion lifted half of them high into the air and smashed them against the trees.

‘Go! Go!’ I shouted, but all the kroot still able to do so were already charging towards the Ka’Tashuns. I stood and ran into the clearing. I now saw that there were four groups sheltering underneath the landing platform. One of these contained a heavy weapon, and the kroot made straight for it. They leapt up into the air with their rifles clutched two-handed above their heads. Then they crashed down, caving in skulls and shattering limbs as they swung their weighted guns every which way. The remaining three Ka’Tashun squads backed up a few steps and prepped their rifles. I recognised the strategy. They weren’t going to rush in and try to help their comrades. Instead, they were going to let them die, sacrificing one small unit so that the rest could gun the kroot down in a massive, point-blank volley.

The stealth suit’s robotic exoskeleton amplified my every movement, and with a single bound, I had flanked them. The barrels of my burst cannon became a blur as I opened fire. Pulse blasts ricocheted off the nearest support column, and several of the Ka’Tashuns, forgetting about the kroot for a moment, ducked low. They searched about frantically, but my adaptive camouflage made me appear as little more than a moving blur, a ghost, a piece of the jungle come to life.

I am a shadow, I thought.

The kroot had finished slaughtering the heavy gun crew, and were moving towards a fresh target. More than a dozen Ka’Tashuns fired into them with their primitive laser weapons and sniper rifles. It had little effect. The kroot were like a wave of violence now, surging forwards and smashing into the foe. I continued to provide covering fire for them, but the truth was that they were doing fine without me. I gunned down the two gue’la closest to me and moved to yet another position.

There was one Ka’Tashun there that I took to be an officer of some kind. He wore a crimson rag tied over his hair, and his arms were covered with scars and tattoos. His sidearm was also larger and heavier than any of the weapons carried by the others. He levelled it and let loose with a bolt of plasma. It bounced harmlessly off of my shield generator, splashing across the surface of my battle suit in brilliant blue droplets. His face registered a look of stunned disbelief that was almost amusing. I let the burst cannon roar and he flew apart into gristly chunks.

For a moment, I stopped moving and drank in my surroundings. Lightning lit the clouds in ripples of purple. There were corpses everywhere. Many of the trees, I noted, were on fire, despite the pouring rain. Nearby, a pair of hounds were gnawing on a fallen Ka’Tashun. He was screaming obscenities and stabbing at them with his combat knife. They severed one of his arms and pulled off his face and he finally shut up. I watched several kroot use their rifles to sweep another man’s legs out from under him. Then they beat him relentlessly, breaking his limbs and pulverising his ribcage. Across the clearing, there was an orange flash as one of the few remaining rebels used his flame thrower. Several hounds caught fire. They ran around in circles as they burned to death, barking and whining. I saw Awl, in retribution, kick the man in the head with such force that it nearly flew off. Less than a quarter of his kroot were still alive, but those that were had formed a ring around the final Ka’Tashun.

For a moment, I thought it must be Ezra Mihalik, cornered at last, and my pulse raced. As I ran closer though, I saw that it wasn’t. He was just another officer, dressed similarly to the one I had blown apart a moment ago. He had a crimson head wrap and heavily tattooed arms. He held a sword in one hand that crackled and glowed, and in the other he had a pistol. His face was a portrait of defiance: his eyes narrowed and his teeth barred. He was a cornered animal. The last three hounds were circling around him, growling and snapping as they looked for an opening. It never occurred to me to put a stop to such cruelty. The kroot were delighted to see this sport, and I left them to it. I had prey of my own to find.

There was no movement in the glass dome. That left the flat roofed building as Mihalik’s only possible remaining location. The solitary door did not appear so thick or armoured that I couldn’t break it down, but I knew better. It would be trapped somehow, or would have a half dozen heavily armed men waiting just behind it. I followed the example of the kroot and simply avoided it altogether. I squatted down, then kicked out hard. The stealth suit’s augmented legs and thrust assist boosters sent me rocketing upwards. As I descended, I pulled my legs in tight, and fired my burst cannon at the building’s roof. When I landed, I again kicked out, crashing through the roof and landing in a crouch.

I sprayed the room. The pulse blasts sparked and snapped as they impacted on tables and chairs, blew through computer screens, shattered glass and overturned wooden supply crates. The ammo counter on my heads up display rolled backwards at a furious pace. Finally, I stopped. There was no one here. I was surrounded by all manner of destroyed electrical and scientific equipment, but a quick sensor check revealed it to be devoid of life. I briefly considered the possibility that the entire building was a trap of some kind; that it was about to explode and release the sporepod blooms across Cytheria. Then the audio pickups built into the suit registered something below me.

I saw now that there was a stairwell in one corner of the room. I moved to it and peered cautiously over the railing. Metal steps vanished down into a basement level. I amplified the background noise and heard the distinct sound of running feet. Of course, I thought as I descended after them, attack and run. That’s what you do, Ezra. No glorious last stands. No honourable self slaughter. Just run and live to fight another day. But not this time.

At the bottom of the stairs was a long hallway roughly hewn into the bedrock. Multiple doorways branched off to the left and right. I followed the sounds, passing unoccupied rooms filled with beds, and a sizable eating area where food still steamed on plates. There was an open doorway at the end of the passage. I moved towards it and was met with a volley of laser fire. Most of it was safely absorbed with the additional armour plating I had specifically installed into the battlesuit, but as I barrelled into the next room, I felt a white hot stab of pain in my left shoulder. Alarms lit up inside my face plate, informing me that my suit had been breached. Not a second later, there was a soothing, hissing sound as painkillers were automatically injected into my bloodstream, and topical medicines were applied to the wound.

I had charged into a generator room. Four huge, blocky fusion reactors provided cover for Mihalik’s small cadre of veteran bodyguards. There was a heavy-looking blast door set into the back wall. There was a control panel beside it, at which Mihalik was frantically working. I raised my burst cannon, but before I could shoot, his men had rushed me. Three of them tackled me around the waist, hoping to knock me down. I leaned in to their charge and braced my legs against the doorway so as to remain upright. The fourth man activated a long melee weapon with jagged, metal teeth that blurred into motion. He drove it down across my helmet. My face was stung from a hundred shallow cuts as my faceplate shattered, but again, the suit’s medical systems made even this pain a distant and irrelevant thing.

I cleared the chainsword out of the way with my burst cannon, then punched its wielder in the face with all the strength I could muster. His nose exploded with a spray of blood and a snapping of cartilage, and he stumbled back. To his fellows, I delivered a flurry of elbow strikes and low kicks until they too had been distanced from me. Before they could recover themselves, I shot them dead.

Mihalik froze in place. He had a pistol holstered on his hip, and a ridiculously oversized mechanical glove on one hand. The heavy door was open now. Beyond it, I could make out a vertical tunnel and a ladder. A warm breeze blew into the room.

His eyes flashed. ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘I guess you don’t plan to let me escape. Are you here to respectfully demand my surrender, then?’

I levelled my weapon at him.

‘Oh,’ he nodded. ‘OK then.’

Mihalik dashed forwards with a speed of which I would not have thought him capable. He held one arm rigid across his body like a shield, while his other, the one bearing the robotic fist, wound up to deliver a crushing blow. Had the thing not been so heavy and cumbersome, he might well have killed me. However, its awkwardness worked to my benefit. I grasped his shirt and used his own momentum to throw him to the floor. He landed with a heavy thud, and tried to swing his armoured fist into my thigh. I stomped down, pinning it, and with a burst from my cannon, blew off his forearm. The mechanical hand skittered across the room.

The stump below his elbow fountained blood. He began gasping for breath, but I was taking no chances. With two powerful kicks, I broke both of his legs. Then, still holding him by his shirt, I began to drag him along the corridor and back up the stairs.

‘Wha… what are you… what are you doing?’ he sputtered.

‘I promised myself that I would leave you to the beasts.’ I said flatly.

Outside, it was still raining. The kroot were making a meal out of the dead Ka’Tashuns, tearing off pieces of them and shoving the meat, raw and dripping, into their beaks. When I emerged from the building, they rose to their feet.

I threw Mihalik down into the mud. Awl approached. He clacked his beak the way another creature might salivate before an especially delicious meal. The other kroot began to gather around. The rebel leader’s eyes grew wide as he realised how it was about to end.

‘Shas’o Rra,’ he panted. ‘I guess… I was wrong to… to call you that.’

‘No,’ I responded. ‘As it happens, you weren’t.’

I did not turn away as they ate him. Nor did I try to mentally block out his agonising screams. I simply stood there. I felt neither remorse, nor disgust, nor pity. I didn’t even feel a sense of satisfaction or poetic justice. I felt nothing. I was totally and absolutely cold inside. I embraced it then, the name the gue’la gave me. Mihalik had called me the shadow of a commander. He meant it as an insult, but I no longer saw it that way. I would be Shas’o Alo’rra – Commander Cold Shadow – and wherever the enemies of the Tau are hiding, I would be there… intangible… unfeeling.

There were other, smaller groups of Ka’tashun yet to be dealt with. So in the days that followed, I ordered that the remaining kroot, who had been in orbit until then, land on the surface of Cytheria. I unleashed them into the wilderness and gave them free reign to seek out and eliminate whatever resistance they found. For a time, it worked wonderfully. Their savagery was more than a match for the rebels, and their bellies grew fat with the flesh of the enemy. Cytheria became largely pacified. Recently however, I have received a number of disturbing reports. The kroot increasingly refuse to obey the orders of their tau superiors and have taken to wearing red scarves around their foreheads. They speak in the gue’la language when they think no one is listening. Perhaps worst of all, in my subsequent conversations with Shaper Awl, he has begun calling calling me Shas’o Rra.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

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

Cover illustration by Stef Kopinski

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ISBN 978-0-85787-992-9

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