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Loyal to the End – Thomas Parrott

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Kingsblade’

A Black Library Publication

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Loyal to the End

by Thomas Parrott

The Armiger’s chain-cleaver carved through the masses of warp spawn in greasy sweeps. The war machine’s actions were connected directly to Bondswoman Constance’s neural impulses by virtue of her Helm Mechanicum. This was not a fight that Warglaives were properly equipped for: they excelled in the crippling of singular mighty foes.

These vile daemons flowed to her in a wave of noisome corruption. Great sealed reservoirs lay all around this place, one of the district’s primary water purifactorums. It would be an unmitigated disaster if it fell to the daemons. For each that she smote from existence with blade or thermal spear, ten more filled the gap. The heavy stubber on top of her mount’s carapace fired non-stop, spewing shells. The barrel glowed red from extended use.

The foes were literal nightmares made disgusting reality. Tiny gibbering horrors, half tumorous flesh and half corroded metal. Lumbering cyclopean shapes with distended bellies spilling infected viscera. They spurted pus and worse when crushed, splattering indescribable vileness across her Armiger’s plating. She wasn’t killing them fast enough. She couldn’t. They were swarming up her legs and across her body, fingers and blades searching for any gap in her defences.

Constance could feel her breath coming in gasps now as the panic rose. They were going to find a way inside. They would–

A wash of cool calm flowed across her mind. ‘Steady.’ It was the fearless voice and presence of her liege lord, Sir Valeon. ‘A clear mind honours the Omnissiah. We shall yet triumph.’

The infusion of his seemingly limitless confidence was welcome, as was the reminder that she did not fight alone. The rest of the lance was out there fighting as well – two other Warglaives like herself, and their bonded master in his Knight Preceptor. She could see the flash of the former’s thermal spears and the sweeping beam of the diffused las-impulsor on the latter as they reduced daemons to ash. A detachment of skitarii rangers fought about their legs, galvanic rifles sparking as they volleyed into the daemonic horde again and again. She did her best not to tread on them as she grappled with her foes; she had not always ridden high in the saddle herself.

They all fought in the defence of Forge World Agripinaa. Once it had been a lynchpin of the Cadian defence, but with the coming of the Great Rift the Adeptus Mechanicus stronghold had found itself swallowed by warp storms and endlessly beset by vile foes. Far from defenceless, the magi had rallied defenders and repulsed a number of invasions. This most recent one was exceptionally deadly, however: the Legio Mortis had come in force with all of their corrupted Dark Mechanicum allies, including the infernal lapdogs of House Vextrix.

House Viti, which Constance served, were sworn bannermen of the Legio Praesidium Vortex and had come to defend it in its hour of need. They had been trapped here as well. Desperate fighting had become their way of life. Constance swept the howling teeth of her cleaver across her carapace. Sparks flew where she brushed her armour a few times, but there was no other way to clear the horrors off. Putrescent goo blinded her auspex as it sprayed in waves across her sensors. New daemons seemed to be scrambling up her hull as fast as she could destroy them. She focused on the steady resolve of her lord and fought on.

Pain stabbed through her. One of the daemons on her hull screeched in triumph and held up a chunk of armour. Inner workings still clung to the inside of the metal, sparks flying. In the blink of an eye, that comforting presence was gone.

It was a void in her mind, shocking in its absence. She had fought alongside Sir Valeon for years and been honoured by their connection. It had never been severed in battle before.

‘My liege!’ she called.

Only silence answered. Constance’s vox-net was completely down. The stillness seemed to amplify the sounds of the battle. She could have sworn she heard the creatures hammering on the carapace of her Armiger now, trying to get in. Gritting her teeth, she bore down and returned to fighting. The damage could be dealt with once these abominations were purged.

She slashed into them with a fury, manoeuvring the heavy stubber with the back part of her mind. Each blast of her thermal spear could not help but pierce several of the creatures at once. Righteous fury filled her as her fear faded. That this filth had dared to damage a sacred creation of the Omnissiah inspired fierce disgust in her. Their destruction was the only option.

Sir Valeon was fiercely embattled himself. She caught glimpses of him struggling now with some daemonic horror of a scale similar to his Knight suit. It was supported on seven immense talons of bone and surmounted by a crown of great ribs arrayed into a cauldron. Writhing guts filled the space within. Tentacles of slimy intestine reached from inside that cage, lashing at the noble Preceptor. Everywhere they touched, armour bubbled and hissed as if coated with acid. Others whipped out to snatch up any skitarii who got too close, dissolving them into sludge in an instant.

Valeon sheared away these viscous tendrils with a sweep of his chainsword, causing the daemon to screech in agony. On the return swing he shattered the two legs closest to him, scattering fragments of noisome bone in all directions. The monstrosity staggered back. The Knight gave it no chance to recover, following in its wake. High-powered blasts from his las-impulsors punched into it over and over, splintering ribs and boiling the vile offal beyond.

At last the damage the creature had suffered was too much. It collapsed in on itself impossibly, fleeing back to whatever unthinkable hell had spawned it.

The interminable flood of daemons died away. The warp tides that were sustaining them must have receded for the time being – tied to the presence of the greater abomination, perhaps. A few lingered and Constance drove her chain-cleaver through such a one in a piercing lunge, splattering its guts across the ground.

‘Steady.’ It was the familiar voice of her liege once again. Her heart rose for a moment, until she realised it was merely registering on her audial receivers.

Constance shook some slime from her warsuit and turned until she had him on her visual feed. His mighty steed stood half again taller than hers, a towering presence. Painted in the black with red accents of Agripinaa and the cog-and-spear heraldry of their House, he seemed to radiate invincibility even coated with filth.

‘I have lost our connection, my lord,’ she reported dutifully.

‘Yes, I detected the damage,’ replied Sir Valeon. The other two Armigers patrolled the perimeter as he approached and examined her. ‘Are you still capable of battle otherwise?’

‘I am,’ she replied hastily. ‘My combat abilities have not been compromised, my liege.’

‘Your armour is compromised,’ he corrected firmly. ‘An eagerness to serve is commendable, bondswoman, but it must not displace honesty to one’s superiors.’

‘Forgive me, great lords,’ came a small voice from below.

Both Knight and Armiger shifted to look down. The alpha of the skitarii rangers stood there addressing them. They were in error, of course – Constance was elevated to her position as a bondswoman from peasant stock. It did no harm to allow the lesser warriors to pay due respect to the House, however.

‘What aid can we provide you, fellow servant of the Omnissiah?’ asked Valeon courteously.

‘If it is repairs that you require, there is a magos in the field a few miles east of here. They would likely be able to remedy such damage.’

Constance took a moment to survey the horizon. Agripinaa had been known as the Orb of a Million Scars even before this latest spate of wars. Great swathes of the planet’s surface lay in ruins at any given time, ravaged by this conflict or that disaster. There was no clear rhyme or reason to either: some places hummed with industry next to rusting fields of debris that had sat untouched for decades. East in particular led through an abandoned manufactorum district.

It was cold on this world, scarcely above freezing most of the time, and the sky was a dull grey. The air was thick with toxic effluvia of various kinds. For most humans an unprotected walk on the surface would have meant a gasping, shivering death in short order. It posed no threat, of course, to the pilots ensconced in their mighty war machines, or the heavily augmented skitarii. They had been first made to fight in exactly such bitter circumstances.

‘Your input is welcome, master skitarius,’ Valeon answered the alpha. He paused. ‘Forgive me, we are receiving a transmi–’ His voice was drowned out by howling feedback for a moment before the Preceptor’s laud hailer clicked silent.

‘My liege?’ asked Constance uncertainly.

The Knight Preceptor stood curiously frozen. On her auspex Constance noted that the other Armigers had done the same. They had simply stopped in their tracks. She was unwilling to take her visual feeds off Sir Valeon, however.

‘Our voxes have been overrun with scrap data,’ noted the alpha with some small irritation in their flat voice. ‘Some sort of hostile communications denial, as conjecture.’

‘Something is wrong,’ Constance said to the skitarius.

As if to confirm her words, all three of the other warsuits began to judder uncontrollably. Their legs remained stiff but their upper bodies lashed and quivered as though caught in some unimaginable storm. This time she couldn’t resist a glance at the others to confirm her auspex readings. They, too, were caught in this paroxysm.

As quickly as it had begun, the movement stopped. Without warning, the Knight Preceptor scooped the alpha up from the ground in a single jerky motion. Sir Valeon lifted the skitarius up in front of his face, as though to examine a curiosity.

‘What–’ exclaimed the skitarius.

‘Sir Valeon–’ began Constance.

The Knight Preceptor closed its Thunderstrike gauntlet. Blood and sacred unguents pulsed through the fingers in a gory spray, and pulverised flesh and metal oozed from the bottom of its grip. Constance took a step back in horrified alarm. Without conscious thought, energy flowed to her thermal spear and her chainblade spun up. Her next impulse was revulsion, however. To turn her weapons on the noble she was sworn to was unthinkable.

A thermal spear roared, snatching her attention away for a moment. The two other Armigers had turned on the skitarii as well and begun to openly slaughter them. For all their augmentations, the forge world’s foot soldiers were no more resilient against Knight-class weaponry than the daemons had been. Each blast and slash slaughtered one or more with casual ease.

‘Sir Knight, I must protest… Is there some reason that…’ Constance fumbled for words.

There was no response. There was something mindless about their attack. Sir Valeon was the veteran of hundreds of battles. He should have immediately assessed that Constance and her Armiger were the greatest threat, and neutralised her. Instead, the towering Knight set about stomping fleeing infantry. They were scattering, seeking cover, as confused as she was. His reaction was to purge those who had got further away with a flash of his las-impulsor.

This was wrong, she repeated to herself. Something had gone terribly wrong.

The Preceptor finally lurched to face her. There was no hesitation. The las-impulsor erupted the moment it was aimed at her. Constance swiftly scrambled to the side, avoiding anything worse than scorched plating. The Knight Preceptor – she couldn’t think of it as Sir Valeon any more – began to close, the disruption field crackling to ominous life around its Thunderstrike gauntlet. The las-impulsor flashed again, just as she ducked behind a nearby silo for cover, the metal of the structure erupting into molten shards on impact.

For a moment, the thought of fighting crossed her mind again, only to be rejected just as quickly. Even could she bring herself to do so, her Warglaive was no match for the Knight. And that was assuming the other two Warglaives didn’t weigh on his side and make her defeat even more crushingly certain. No, there was only one option.

Run.

She had to find help, someone who could help her correct this terrible aberration. A burst of plasma fire drew Valeon’s attention. The skitarii were fighting back now that they’d reached cover. This might be her only chance. Constance turned and fled the field.

It was not long before the auspex chimed a threat indicator, letting her know she had not got away clean. Two signatures were in rapid pursuit. The other Warglaives. Her frantic escape must have drawn their attention. Fulgent Blade and Honour in Service. She knew them and their pilots well, both children of lesser nobles, enthused at the chance to serve. Such knowledge seemed hollow now, if they had been subverted with the same madness that had claimed Sir Valeon.

Her mind flashed to the strange priorities the Knight Preceptor had shown. Whatever had happened to them, it had stripped them of all tactical acumen. She riddled a nearby reservoir with bullets from her heavy stubber. Water flooded out, hundreds of thousands of gallons. A swift application of her thermal spear converted a lot of it to hissing clouds of steam. They billowed up through the area in a thick fog, confusing to auspexes and visual scanners alike.

Constance faded back around the container she’d emptied and waited. She scarcely dared to breathe. No pilot in their right mind would fall for such a trick. Her heart surged when she heard the steps on the other side of the reservoir. She aimed her thermal spear with great care, following the sound. The moment the sound passed beyond the cover, she triggered the weapon. A scouring beam of energy lashed forth. It carved through the mist and into the side of the lead Warglaive pursuing her.

At this range, the weapon ravened with endless hunger. It scoured great sheets of armour from the side of Honour in Service and devoured inner workings within. The Warglaive staggered sideways, caught off guard and thrown off balance. Everything Valeon had taught her demanded she not waste such a chance. She lunged forward, powering up her chainblade as she went. She jammed it into the rent the spear had created, and twisted. Shattered fragments spewed outward.

The assaulted Armiger collapsed to the ground with a tremendous crash. Now Fulgent Blade knew where she was, however. Its thermal spear spat forth and swept across her leg. Not a focused hit, but plenty to leave the limb sparking and damaged. Agony lanced through Constance’s own limb in sympathy and she gritted her teeth and staggered back.

She couldn’t get back far enough in time. Blade was counter-charging her and coming on fast. Her weapon flamed again, but she only managed a glancing hit on the enemy’s shoulder. It was blade against blade now, both too close to bring their spears to bear any further. Chain weapons clashed in great gouts of sparks where whirling teeth met. Constance fought with skill and self-possession, but the heedless assault of the corrupted Armiger was dangerous in its own right.

The struggle tore rents in both of their warsuits and sent warning runes flashing in her visual displays. She was forced to parry one strike with her thermal spear, the weapon mangled beyond recognition in the process. An alarm keened as that happened and the distinct sensation of her arm breaking tore a cry from her. That bought her an opening, however, and she seized it. She plunged her chainblade through the front sensors of the other Armiger. Sensitive machinery shattered and she pushed into the innards.

Blade had its chain-cleaver loose of her mangled limb now and was striking at her repeatedly, carving new holes in her armour with each impact. Constance gritted her teeth furiously and ignored the pain, digging deeper and deeper with the whirling teeth of her weapon. More and more curious internals sprayed forth, and then the blade hitched strangely. A moment later, red mist sprayed forth.

Blade stiffened and collapsed, a dark hole dug into the very core of it.

The steam was dissipating now, condensing onto all the cold surfaces around. Constance stood a moment, staring at the ravaged bodies of her former comrades. If there had been some way to reverse what had been done to them, it did not matter now. She had ruined that possibility, and destroyed sacred machines in the process. Her gorge started to rise and she fought it back down.

Wearily she turned and limped on.

Constance had travelled miles to the east across the ruined industrial landscape of Agripinaa. Her whole world had been turned on its head, but the war continued as if nothing had happened. This required no conjecture on her part. The sounds of artillery raged distantly. If she turned her visual feeds to the north, she could see a duel of gods playing out. An Imperator Titan of the Legio Praesidium Vortex was engaged in a battle with a pair of Reaver Titans sworn to the Legio Mortis. Weapons flashed between them, like lightning hurled between warring mountains. They were so far away the reports even came seconds later, like thunder from a distant storm.

A warning flash through her neural connectors told her she’d been distracted at the wrong time. She started to warm up her weapons as she turned, but they already had her dead to rights: three Kataphron Destroyers, their heavy grav-cannons and plasma culverins glowing. They had come out of the shadow of the storage buildings that lay all around, rusted and empty. An infantryman would have found being ambushed by the lumbering cybernetica to be a humorous prospect, but size differential made a tremendous difference.

Instead, she drew herself up and fell back on the weapon that remained to her. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ she demanded imperiously.

‘You speak,’ replied a mechanised voice.

A figure emerged from the shadows, smaller than the Destroyers. Curiously small even for a human. They were wrapped in black robes and hunched forward under the weight of their own augmetics. Mechadendrites writhed behind them, and gleaming lenses shone from beneath the hood. The figure leaned on the long hilt of an Omnissian axe as they approached.

Constance bent her knees briefly in respect. ‘Magos.’

‘Magos Dominus J3-Nu-Trideka,’ the tech-priest clarified. ‘You are Swift Justice.’

‘I am Bondswoman Constance Row. I have the honour of piloting Swift Justice,’ she replied.

The magos gestured dismissively as if the distinction carried no meaning. ‘You are Swift Justice. You have not succumbed to the scrapcode. Why?’

Caught off balance by the abrupt question, Constance’s own questions seemed to fall by the wayside. ‘Scrapcode? Forgive me, magos dominus, I do not know of what you speak.’

Instead of answering her directly, the tech-priest swept their gaze across her Armiger. Her auspex pinged, warning her she was being actively scanned by penetrating sensors. ‘You are damaged in a number of places, it seems, but your vox-system in particular. That is why you were spared.’

‘Yes!’ She seized on this. ‘My vox was damaged, and then the rest of my lance started slaughtering skitarii, and tried to kill me.’

‘The scrapcode, yes.’ The tech-priest sounded impatient, if anything. ‘It has impaired communications through this region and compromised Knight-class assets.’

‘More than just my lance?’ The thought shook Constance. She had hoped that whatever had happened had been some isolated horror. ‘How far has it spread?’

‘Communications are impaired,’ the magos repeated slowly, looking into the distance. Both Reavers were badly mauled, but the Imperator was worse. It retreated slowly, a volcano smouldering from a dozen enraged craters. The tech-priest hummed to themself. They turned and began to trudge along to the south. ‘The front collapses. All assets must fall back and regroup for a counter-offensive. You will come with us.’

‘I cannot,’ she said, startled. ‘If what you say is true, I could be the last loyal pilot in this region. I must find my princeps and his court and warn them of the danger.’

The tech-priest paused and glanced back at her. ‘There is no guarantee they are not compromised as well,’ they said, remorselessly.

Constance swallowed hard. ‘Perhaps. That does not change my duty, however. I am sworn to Sir Valeon, and through him to House Viti. If the House is in danger, I must do what I can.’

The tech-priest contemplated this. ‘Hierarchical expressions of loyalty are an optimal trait in your class, to be encouraged. So be it. Do not move.’

The bondswoman did as she was told. The magos came over, followed by a Kataphron. The cybernetica war-form lifted the robed figure up so that they could examine the damage Constance’s Armiger had suffered. Mechadendrites stretched forward, tipped with curious tools and the flicker of plasma torches. It was an odd sensation, translated through the Helm Mechanicum. It was as though someone had reached inside her torso and was fine-tuning her innards and rearranging the broken bones of her limbs.

‘Glitchlings,’ muttered the magos to themself. A tendril extracted a rusty knife from somewhere inside and tossed it away. ‘Vile affronts to the Omnissiah.’

They withdrew, and the Kataphron set them back down. ‘Your systems are functional once more. Mobility should be restored to your lost limb. Your thermal spear will function for the time being, though repeated use will suffice to break it again. As for your vox, it is back online.’ The magos held up a hand sharply. ‘However! Do not activate it until you are certain you are on safe ground.’ Without further ado, they turned to depart with their cybernetica escort.

‘Thank you, magos dominus!’ called Constance after the retreating figure. ‘May we meet again in kinder times!’

‘Improbable!’ they called back without turning, and continued on.

More miles had passed under the tread of her Armiger. Constance was making her way along an old arterial supply road. Derelict cargo haulers lay about, corroded by long exposure. The manufactorum complex she had seen in the distance was closer now, likely only a mile or so away. Based on the deployment briefing they had received before this engagement, the princeps and his court should be on the other side. Assuming they had not fallen back as well. Assuming they were still alive.

The structure was so immense that she would be able to walk through it. There was no telling what it had once constructed, in truth. Given the scale, perhaps it had even produced Titan components, or voidship munitions. It had only been labelled ‘abandoned M35’ on the map. It seemed surprisingly intact, all things considered. She wondered why no one had reclaimed it.

The truth, Constance admitted to herself, was that this was more pleasant to think about than what might be waiting at the end of her journey.

Her auspex jolted her with a threat alert.

‘What have we here?’ rasped a laud hailer-enhanced voice.

The bondswoman turned warily and her heart immediately sank. A twisted mechanical figure stood there, right at the edge of where her auspex could have detected it. It was half again as big as her, as big as the Knight Preceptor that Sir Valeon had piloted. This was no noble warsuit of House Viti, however. It was painted in vivid greens and blacks, embossed with the symbol of a black skull within a white cog, pierced by a black sword. Bloodied chains wrapped its skull-encrusted form. One arm was dominated by a massive chainsword, dripping blood, and the other a Thunderstrike gauntlet.

A Knight Despoiler of House Vextrix.

The corrupted Knight began to walk towards her. The approach was slow and relaxed, the studied disinterest of a predator regarding prey. ‘A little hound all alone. Do you fear death, little hound? Have you run away from your masters?’

Constance eased back a step for each one that the larger war machine took towards her. ‘I fear only failing in my duty. Cowardice is the provenance of traitors and heretics like you.’

She did her best to keep her voice fierce, but the situation did not bode well. How she longed for her fellow Warglaives, or the comforting presence of Sir Valeon. She was not helpless, but this foe was not an honourable match. The thermal spear could damage it, but if she manoeuvred to within optimal range she would be in danger of her enemy closing the gap with a burst of speed.

Cruel laughter boomed from the heretic. ‘You have a little spirit! Good. It’s always a joy to grind the bravado out of you scrap-mongers.’ It tapped its carapace with the gauntlet. ‘I am Breaker of Faith, sworn to House Vextrix.’ There was elaborate, mocking courtesy in the words. ‘Thus you may know who is your death.’

‘I am Swift Justice, in service to House Viti. If only so you may know what it sounds like to honour your oaths,’ she replied with unfeigned contempt.

The traitor paused. ‘House Viti?’ It laughed again, seeming surprised and entertained. ‘Why, you may well be the last of your fallen line. One little hound, all alone indeed.’

‘Lies,’ she rasped angrily. ‘You know nothing.’

‘Believe what you will, abandoned bondling. You need not miss them long. I will end your suffering swiftly.’ With no further warning, the Despoiler lunged into motion. It charged down the road towards her, crushing supply haulers under the tread of its colossal feet.

Constance turned and fled headlong down the road. Her rage begged her to silence this lying beast with her weapons, but dying here served no one. The princeps had to be warned. Instead, she desperately tried to think of a way to escape Breaker of Faith. The only possibility that she saw was to get to the manufactorum before it, and evade it somewhere within the complex.

She had a small edge in speed, fortunately. She could hear the traitor’s heavy stubber hammering away as she ran. Bullets sparked from her armour, felt dully by her like raindrops against her back – she found herself fervently praying to the Omnissiah that it would not find some gap.

The sound of it crashing through the smaller auto-carriages and carriers behind her spoke of eager destruction waiting to be unleashed. It caught up one of the vehicles and hurled it in her direction with its gauntlet. The groundcraft fell blessedly short, skidding along the road in a spray of sparks. Smaller, she was forced to weave and leap to avoid them as obstacles, lest she trip and be overtaken.

The gate into the manufactorum lay ahead. It closed from the top down, and whenever this place had been abandoned it had been left half shut. Constance could fit thanks to the building’s massive scale, ducking beneath the opening and into the darkness of the complex. Her sensor suite compensated for the loss of light immediately, pulling in preysight and auspex data to supplement the loss of visual data. The shadow of great machines lay all around, their purpose opaque to her. Some were as big as hab-blocks, with dusty passages between them like streets and alleys. House Viti worshipped the Machine-God, but the deep mysteries of technomancy lay beyond her.

A great crash behind her drove her to running again. With no chance of squeezing through as Constance had, the traitor was simply smashing its way forward. The metal caved and tore under the assault. The giant form of the Knight Despoiler erupted through moments later in a spray of fragments. She fled down the shadowed space between two of the great mills.

Constance turned corners at random as she hurried on. She doubled back and then back again, trying to put as much space and substance between her and her hunter as she could. It would have seemed absurd to an onlooker on foot, this game of hide-and-seek between mighty war machines. Yet if her encounter with the Kataphrons had shown her anything, it was that the gap in size between them might allow her to hide after all.

This place was full of oddities that became clearer the longer she explored. Bodies lay about, fallen so many years ago that they were just skeletons of bone and metal. Whatever robes and flesh they had worn had decayed long since. Some of the great machines had been wounded in those bygone days, their metal substance disrupted by weapons fire. Even the great skull-cog symbols of the Adeptus Mechanicus were defaced. This place had been fought over. Not just abandoned.

Constance slowed her stride despite her terror and listened closely. She could still hear her pursuer, echoing through the space with heavy stomps. They were coming in spurts, however.

‘Come out, come out, little hound,’ it cajoled, the twisted inhuman notes of its voice harsh in the stillness. ‘I will make your death a swift one.’

Not a tantalising offer, she thought dryly. As quietly as she could, she edged around another of the machines and continued on. If she could find an exit from the manufactorum and escape with the Knight none the wiser, she might live. A small hope, she clung to it all the same.

‘How does it feel?’ it called now. ‘To be the last of a line of failures and cowards. You could not save this world. It’s surprising the forge has held this long with such lacklustre defenders. Look at you, running and hiding. In the end, you won’t even be able to save yourself.’

Constance gritted her teeth, biting back an angry response. That was what it wanted, she told herself. These were nothing but lies to lure her into revealing where she was. The princeps and his court yet lived, she was sure of it. She would find them, and they would know what to do. She did her best to focus on her auspex readings for the surroundings. There had to be something here she could use to her advantage. If only she wasn’t so damned ignorant.

‘You don’t even know what to do, do you?’ It echoed her thoughts unnervingly and made her twitch in her pilot crèche. ‘Just another sad little toy, marching to your orders. What are you? Pathetic cadet cousin? Special-bred hunting dog? Jumped-up peasant?’

The last one sounded uncomfortably true. No, she told herself. She was chosen for valour and faithful service as a foot soldier. She had earned her place. She would prove it. She would–

There.

An old cistern. It had pinged old warnings on the noosphere. She might be ignorant of many things, but she knew what those runes meant. Corrosive. Explosive. There was no telling what this foulness had been used for, but it had sat here untouched for millennia. She had to hope…

‘You’re the peasant. I can tell. That rough voice. A cadet would have the courage to face me, and a dog would have died with its master as it should. You think you have a greater destiny, that you’re meant for more. Laughable. You are nothing but a broken slave, begging for scraps from your masters. And now that they’re dead, you’re nothing at all.’

Constance let out a hiss of fury but restrained herself. Not yet. It would work. It had to work. She pushed on to the other side of the cistern, a good hundred feet down. Then she turned and called at maximum gain on her laud hailer, ‘Enough of your prattle, traitor. Can you bandy aught but words?’

Laughter boomed. Heavy footsteps came closer. It loomed into view, stepping out in the avenue between the machines. ‘Well, the peasant found her courage. How wonderfully foolish.’ It revved its chainsword then began to sprint towards her once more.

Constance braced as if to meet this charge, her own chain-cleaver held wide and howling. Her thermal spear, however, was targeted all the while. It was closing in now, nearing the mark. One breath. Two. Three. It crossed the line and she fired.

The beam went right past the corrupted Knight and slashed into the cistern instead. She prayed with all her heart. It had sat so long, what if–

The cistern detonated with the force of an air-dropped warhead. A globe of fire boiled out and enveloped Breaker of Faith completely. The shock wave was enough to send Constance’s own warsuit staggering. Her helm rattled against the side of her crèche and her connection faltered. She was in the darkness of her crèche, cut off from Swift Justice. She reached up swiftly and reseated it, panicking.

The link re-established, and she found herself staring into flaming ruin. The great machines on either side of the avenue had collapsed into a mountain of broken metal. She mumbled an apology to their spirits for this offence. Worse damage had been done on Agripinaa before, though not by her hand.

If the traitor Knight was still here, it was lost to sight under all that wreckage. Perhaps it was truly destr–

Something stirred amidst the debris, sending fiery chunks scattering in all directions.

Constance knew the better part of valour. She fled.

Beyond the other side of the complex was the destination she had sought for so long. She walked up the road towards it wearily. For all her bravado and determination, her spirits were flagging. What if the traitor had been right, and all that waited for her was death? Was all this struggle worth it?

Then she saw the banner of House Viti flying in the cold wind, and her heart rose. Constance set off at a sprint towards it, charging around the bend. There, in a cleared area amongst ruined buildings, were those she had sought so faithfully. Princeps Icandra stood in her resplendent Knight Valiant, Glory Everlasting, mighty even amongst the shapes of her baronial escort.

One of them, the master of the forge in his Knight Paladin, turned his battle cannon on her as she approached. Constance pulled up hastily in terror, skidding to a halt. It all made sense to her in this moment; who knew how many lesser Knights had been corrupted as her lance had? They must think–

‘Do not cut me down, my lord!’ she called in fear. To have come so close to victory only to be shot down by her own was an irony she would not be able to stand.

‘Hold your fire,’ said the princeps calmly. She stepped forward to meet the much smaller Armiger without fear.

‘I bring dire news, your highness.’ The words were rushing out of her now. ‘A grim threat over the vox, a scrapcode that is somehow capable of twisting loyal Knights to madness.’

‘Yes, we know,’ replied Icandra. ‘How did you escape?’

‘My vox was damaged. A stroke of battle’s fortune is all, your highness.’ The image of Sir Valeon came into her mind momentarily, bitter with sorrow. ‘I was the only one of my lance the attack did not take.’

‘A pity,’ was all the princeps said. ‘Perhaps you have been spared to a purpose, however. Tell me, bondswoman, where do your loyalties lie? To me, or to Agripinaa?’

‘I– What?’ Constance fumbled for words, bewildered.

It all clicked into place. How easily the scrapcode had subverted the protected systems of her lance. The scorn of the traitor. The court had been spared, somehow, while knowing what had happened.

Princeps Icandra had betrayed them. She had thrown her lot in with Chaos.

‘Why?’ was all the bondswoman could whisper.

‘Why?’ Icandra seemed genuinely confused. ‘Ah,’ she said a moment later in realisation. ‘A bitter business, yes? Valeon would never have gone along with it, however. Too much starch and old oaths in his line. The necessity would have escaped him.’

Valeon, excluded intentionally. Sentenced to that horrible… ‘Necessity?’

‘Look around you, bondswoman! Agripinaa is falling. If not now, soon. All who stand with her will die, or worse. House Viti, however, can yet be saved. There are uses for those with the proper flexibility. Myself, those with me. You, if you are wise.’ The princeps leaned in. ‘If the gods have spared you, little one, do not throw their gift away rashly. It is a simple choice.’

It was a simple choice. Icandra wasn’t wrong. Yes or no. Her House, who had raised her up from nothing to sit amongst the mighty. The forge, dying inch by inch. No matter what she chose, it was a betrayal, was it not? Only one path let her live and the other demanded she died.

Sir Valeon, whose last conscious acts had been helping to protect and calm her.

Constance could not betray that memory. To profit from the murder of her liege lord, from the destruction of the world she had sworn to protect, was unthinkable. To fight here was hopeless, however, and would see her family slaughtered for her defiance.

Such a simple choice.

A choice she refused to make. There was another path, she realised… One that did not demand betraying anyone save herself. One final decision, and then oblivion.

With a thought, Bondswoman Constance turned her vox back on. A howl came through the system, a terrible screech that slid right into the depths of her brain.

It drowned out everything else.

About the Author

Thomas Parrott is the kind of person who reads RPG rule books for fun. He fell in love with Warhammer 40,000 when he was fifteen and read the short story ‘Apothecary’s Honour’ in the Dark Imperium anthology, and has never looked back. ‘Spiritus In Machina’ was his first story for Black Library, and he has since written ‘Salvage Rites’, ‘Fates and Fortunes’ and the novella Isha’s Lament.

An extract from Kingsblade.

Danial Tan Draconis, kingsward of House Draconis and heir to the throne of Adrastapol, willed himself not to throw up. He was strapped firmly into his throne mechanicum at the heart of his Knight Errant, Oath of Flame. His throne’s neural jacks were plugged into his cranial augmetics and its armaplas webbing cradled his body tight. The Knight itself – a forty-foot-tall, roughly humanoid war machine – was mag-locked within its armature, one of a dozen looming metal giants dominating the debarkation deck of the drop keep. Still, Danial was shaken like a ragdoll. The turbulence of the combat drop was savage, the pressure of gravity scarcely less so. And then there was the disorienting sensation of the ghosts within his throne. It was a little like standing alone with his back to a curtain, knowing that just beyond it crowded dozens of whispering strangers who might at any moment reach through to grab his shoulder. There again, it was like staring into a mirror and feeling his reflection looking back through his own eyes. Then it felt like embracing myriad thoughts and dreams, only to endure the jarring dislocation of realising that not one of those mental fragments was his. It was like all those things, but not them. Every effort he made to rationalise the sensation only added to his nausea. Danial battled the sickness with the grim desperation of a drowning man clinging to his last spar of driftwood. If he couldn’t even win the fight with his own biological failings, or master his throne before his first true engagement, how was he to win a real battle on the glorious field of war? Besides, he wasn’t about to give Markos the satisfaction of seeing him fail.

‘A bracing plunge, isn’t it, Da?’ Luk’s voice crackled over the vox-net. Exhilarated. Of course he was. Nothing fazed Luk Tan Chimaeros. At least nothing Danial had seen yet.

‘It is,’ he managed, biting out the words.

‘Hah! That a little drop sickness I hear in your voice, Da?’

‘Not at all,’ Danial replied, before pressing one gloved fist to his lips in desperation. His Knight’s machine-spirit responded with a sympathetic churning of internal gears, a slight shudder running through its hull-plates.

‘Honoured ward of House Chimaeros,’ came a firm, female voice over the vox. ‘We are about to enter a live warzone. I would ask that you refrain from any further squiresyard banter at my brother’s expense.’

‘Apologies, lady’ responded Luk, only slightly mollified. His Knight, Sword of Heroes, inclined its helm with a whine of servomotors. ‘You’re right, Jen. No distractions.’

‘Her title,’ came a heavy, gravelly voice over the vox, ‘is Jennika Tan Draconis, Gatekeeper of the Exalted Court. When in panoply I would remind you to address her as such, lad.’ Danial grimaced at the curtness of the exchange. Markos Dar Draconis, herald of the Exalted Court and his father’s first Knight. Not one for tact, or bandied words. Danial knew his friend like a brother; Luk would take that reprimand badly.

Danial’s train of thought was interrupted as the soft emerald light within his Knight’s cockpit flashed an angry red. A dolorous chime rang through the debarkation deck of the drop keep, carried to the ears of each Knight by the audio-pickups on their warsuits’ hulls. Danial gritted his teeth as the drop keep’s landing thrusters fired in sequence, increasing the pressure further. Ingrained training kicked in, and he began final checks, floods of information flowing through his neural jacks as he communed with Oath of Flame. Runes scrolled across his retinas, and his vision expanded to take in everything that the Knight’s external sensorium arrays could see. To an untrained mind it would have been a violently overwhelming experience, a pseudo-sentient and maddening mechanical violation. For Danial it was a sort of ascension. Adrenaline surged, then focused to a bright point. Nausea fled, along with the feeling of the webbing and straps that encased him. Danial’s body became plasteel and ceramite. His heart beat as a thundering plasma furnace. His senses became auspex readouts and inload shunts. In that moment Danial Tan Draconis became one with his Knight, and knew its hunger for battle.

The drop keep hit bedrock with a titanic boom, sending a shockwave through Danial’s metal body. Ahead, behind and to both sides, his fellow Knights disengaged the plasteel cages of their armatures. Gas vented in hissing streams and runelocks flashed from amber to green as the huge bipedal war machines shook off their fetters and prepared for war. From the shadows edging the cavernous deck, electrobraziers lit with roaring flames. Muffled by the thick plates of the drop keep’s outer hull, Danial heard an automated fanfare blaring, throaty and glorious. It was accompanied by a staccato thunder that he realised must be the keep’s weapon batteries opening fire. They were shooting at enemy targets, just outside. In moments he would face the foe himself. His heart thumped and threatened to shake his focus, but with an effort of will the young warrior held steady.

‘Knights of Adrastapol,’ a regal voice rolled through the vox network, filling Danial with fierce pride. His father, High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis, addressed the assembled hosts. ‘Noble sires of Houses Draconis, Chimaeros, Minotos, Wyvorn and Pegasson. Honoured allies of the Astra Militarum, of Tanhollis and Mubraxis and Cadia. Today we do the Emperor’s bidding. Today, we are the cleansing flame. This world of Donatos has known the insidious touch of the mutant. The heretic. The traitor.’ The High King spat the words with such disgust that Danial’s own hatred for the enemy burned hot. ‘But no more! Today the Knights of Adrastapol will march forth and show these turncoats what becomes of those who shun the light of the Imperium. Honoured sires, for Adrastapol and the Emperor. Let them know no mercy, only death!’

‘Only death!’ roared the assembled Knights, their voices carrying across the vox from the debarkation decks of twenty separate drop keeps. Danial’s voice was joined with those of the warriors around him, and he felt stronger in that moment than he ever had before. The ceramite portcullis at the front of the drop keep rattled upwards. The thunder of battle washed over Danial’s Knight. Infernal light spilled inwards, accompanied by a scattered hail of las-bolts and bullets that ricocheted from the red and black armour of his comrades’ steeds.

‘In Excelsium Furore,’ cried Sire Tolwyn to his House Draconis comrades.

‘Wield the fires within,’ they shouted back, the ancient battle cry of their Knightly House. With that, they willed their machines forward to war.

Danial watched the Knights in front of him engage their motive systems and advance. Hydraulic tendons flexed. Gears whirred to speed. Spumes of smoke and incense boiled from exhaust vents atop armoured carapaces, filling the debarkation deck with churning fumes. The Knights’ helm-lumens shone in the gloom, and Danial was reminded of the mythic dracon that gave their house its name. Suddenly the way before him was clear, Sires Daeved and Garath smoothly walking their Knights forward into battle ahead of him. Danial felt a moment of panic as every lesson he had ever learned fled his mind. For a second his Knight hesitated, shuddering on the spot. Angrily, the young kingsward thrust the feeling aside and engaged his motive actuators. Oath of Flame took a long stride, and then another that carried it to the edge of the assault drawbridge. Another, and he was out into the fiery light of a strange world. A fierce grin spread across his face as he stomped down the drawbridge and into the maelstrom of battle.

Danial drank in the data feeds and imaging returns of his auspex. The drop keep had landed right on target, demolishing a guildhall as it slammed down amidst the northern commerce district of Pentakhost. Others like it had crashed down to the east and west. They had unfurled their house banners, begun their rolling fanfares and unshrouded their servitor gun-towers, forming a line of towering fortifications that choked off the neck of the peninsula. The traitor foe was trapped between the wildfires and the Knights, just as King Tolwyn and Viscount Gerraint had planned. As Oath of Flame ventured onto the cracked plaza before the guildhall, Danial saw a jumbled skyline silhouetted against the inferno. Smoke rose in thick black pillars that seemed to hold up the lowering clouds like titanic columns.

Over his Knight’s head fluttered flights of servo-cherubim, the grotesque little creatures winging their way into the sky on grav-impellers and rotor-wings. Released from each drop keep, the cherubs would form a low-altitude sensor-web that would greatly enhance the auspex acuity of the Knights below. The Sacristans called them the Heavenly Host, and were clearly proud of their macabre progeny. The infant servitors made Danial uncomfortable, and sad somehow.

Ash fell like snow, coating the grubby buildings that crowded in around the plaza and swarmed with enemy contacts, revealed by Danial’s pinging auspex runes. From his high vantage they were tiny, insects scurrying from one ineffectual scrap of cover to the next. Some waved tattered banners bearing unclean sigils, and many were visibly mutated.

‘They’re like rock-roaches,’ said Luk over the vox, his Errant moving up alongside Danial’s as they both lit their ion shields and searched for targets. The contempt in the young Knight’s voice was clear, and Danial found it hard to argue. The sense of power rushing through his body was immense. The foe seemed small and weak by comparison. Already their comrades were engaging, tilting their ion shields expertly to absorb the hail of small arms fire that stuttered from broken windows and vehicle wrecks.

To Danial’s right, Sire Olric’s Crusader-pattern Draconsflame opened up with all guns. The scream of his avenger gatling cannon was deafening, its torrent of shells chewing along the front of a refectorum and leaving rubble and bloody corpses in its wake.

To the left, Sire Daeved’s Knight Gallant, Pyrefang, advanced through hails of autogun fire. His reaper chainsword carved out the front of a building to send rubble thundering down on the screaming cultists below.

‘Why are they even trying to fight?’ Danial said aloud. ‘Guns like that can’t harm Knights.’

‘Hate? Panic? Desperation?’ came his sister’s voice in reply, Jennika’s Fire Defiant striding past Danial’s flank. ‘Don’t try to fathom the motives of heretics, little brother. Just kill them. And don’t underestimate them either.’ As if to underpin her words, a missile streaked out from a nearby rooftop and exploded against Jennika’s ion shield. The energy field flashed blue as the warhead’s force dissipated harmlessly, and a second later Fire Defiant’s battle cannon boomed twice. The rooftop erupted in flame and shrapnel, obliterating the luckless heretics and their tank-busting weapon.

‘Kingsward,’ said Sire Markos across the vox, ‘form lance on Lady Jennika. Take Tan Chimaeros with you. Both of you try to learn something, and keep your damned shields up. I’ll not be the one to explain to either of your fathers why a rabble like this managed to unseat their precious sons.’

Danial obeyed swiftly, feeding power to his servomotors and feeling acceleration as his steed strode forward. The ground shook beneath his tread, and targeting data filled his thoughts as his thermal cannon powered up. Luk’s Knight followed, the green and grey of House Chimaeros incongruous amongst the crimson and black heraldry of his Draconis comrades.

‘You know you’re both Exalted Court, yes?’ said Luk resentfully over a private channel. ‘He’s no authority over you, Da.’

‘But he’s a veteran of a dozen wars and more,’ replied Danial, lengthening his stride to keep up with his sister. ‘This is our first. We don’t know what we’re doing yet, not really.’

‘Maybe you don’t,’ Luk answered, a moment before a massive heat bloom lit Danial’s auspex. For a second he panicked that his oldest friend had somehow been hit and killed, then he realised that the flare was Luk’s thermal cannon discharging. The searing blast of superheated energy bored through the façade of a nearby building, and a handful of traitor runes blinked out as the entire structure collapsed upon itself.

‘Good shot,’ said Jennika. ‘Now, form column. We’re pushing down the Tetrae Processional as far as mark seven-oh-seven-two, and there’s only room enough to go single file.’

Danial moved up, manoeuvring his striding war suit in behind Jennika’s and matching her pace. Luk pressed close behind, his eagerness for battle clear in the swift, aggressive motions of his steed. As they advanced onto the processional, the enemy fire petered out for a moment. In place of its idiot din, the Knights heard the mournful crunch and grind of their ironshod footfalls crushing rubble barricades and wrecked vehicles. The towering buildings of Pentakhost closed in around them like mountains, muffling the sounds of their comrades’ continued battle on the plaza and making Danial feel suddenly isolated. The Knights were huge machines, but these buildings were bigger still, grim slabs of ferrocrete and iron that stood hundreds of feet high. The kingsward took in their grubby, soot-stained walls, their grimy windows and ash-blackened statuary. Tangles of razor-wire hung from looming gargoyles, strung with the macabre remains of those who had resisted the rebellion.

‘This place is nothing like home,’ he murmured. For a moment, the whispers of his throne surged, the words hovering tantalisingly close to the edge of audibility. Images flashed unbidden across Danial’s mind’s eye; a wind-whipped tundra dominated by looming spires of ice; a sucking quagmire of mud and tangled razor-wire where warriors brawled like animals amidst the filth; a bone-hued desert, the sun beating down upon glittering silver cities. He understood in that moment that his ancestors were showing him places where they had fought, perhaps even died, and that the galaxy was a far vaster and stranger place than Danial Tan Draconis yet knew.

He was brought back to the present by a collision alarm, and he swore as he felt Oath’s left shoulder guard clip a towering hab-block.

‘Watch where you’re walking, Da,’ cried Luk as falling rubble fizzed against his ion shield.

‘Sorry,’ said Danial, correcting course. He made obeisance to his Knight’s machine-spirit, and felt a surge of reassurance in response. His steed was undamaged.

‘Your throne?’ Jennika’s tone implied she already knew the answer to her question.

‘Yes,’ admitted Danial, swivelling his Knight at the hip as they crossed an intersection littered with corpses. No life signs showed on his auspex. This part of Pentakhost seemed already dead.

‘Stay focused,’ his sister told him, her tone sharp but not unkind. ‘Our thrones are a great source of strength and wisdom, but it takes time to master them. The Becoming is only the start, and while your link to your ancestors is still incoherent any mental slip you make is dangerous. And this plan was never the safest to begin with.’

Danial nodded, his interface translating the gesture into a pip of acknowledgement across the vox.

The processional gently sloped downhill between the towering buildings. A flight of Imperial Navy Thunderbolts swept low overhead, the roar of their ramjets echoing down the canyon-like street. Their weapons flashed, spitting las-fire at some distant target, and Luk growled in frustration.

‘Seems safe enough to me, Jen. Where are all the traitors? Wasn’t the fire supposed to herd them onto our guns?’

‘We’re out near the flank of the advance, Luk. Widen your auspex for a moment and look. Danial, you too.’

Danial willed his perception to broaden, his subconscious directing his steed while he took a moment to inspect the broader strategic situation. As the highest ranking noble of the invasion force, it had fallen to High King Tolwyn to martial not only the strengths of the Knightly Houses, but also those of the Astra Militarum and space-faring Imperial Navy that accompanied them. His plan had been typically audacious. The naval lance strikes had set a wildfire that drove the dug-in traitors out of their nests and into the Knights’ guns. Yet to sit back and wait for the enemy would be ignoble, not to mention time-consuming. The High King had decreed that, with a world to win back, the Imperial forces could ill afford to dither in securing their beachhead. Instead, he had ordered his attendant regiments of Imperial Guard to land their forces in reserve and hold the line around the drop keeps, ensuring that no traitors slipped through. The Knights would then advance into the burning city and shatter the largest concentrations of resistance. In this way the enemy could be quickly exterminated, while at the same time any danger of a concerted heretic breakout was neutralised. Taking in the strategic overlay and runic force dispositions that hovered on his retinas, Danial could see that it was working.

‘You see there?’ asked Jennika, highlighting several key runes so that they flashed upon her comrades’ retinal displays. ‘Markos has relieved the besiegement of the Arbites Precinct. And there, the greatest concentration of the foe is pushing straight up the centre.’

‘And they’re dying in droves,’ said Luk with relish.

‘There, Jen, converging on our target coordinates,’ said Danial, fingers twitching unconsciously as he highlighted runes of his own. His cockpit shook and swayed with every great stride his steed took, but the information stood out clear as day to him. ‘We’ve enemies ahead.’

‘Well spotted, brother,’ said Jennika. ‘You’ll get your fight, Luk. But be careful, both of you. I read armour amongst that rabble. Shields fore, weapons ready, lengthen stride. Let’s get to the next intersection before they do.’

Danial followed his sister’s commands instantly, seeing the wisdom in her words. The foe was moving up the Tetrae Processional from the south with their armour at the fore, and whoever reached the intersection first would be able to bottleneck their enemies between the Pentakhostan hab-blocks. The kingsward returned his attention to the immediate combat, but left the wider strategic map underlying his perceptions. It intrigued him to see where their fight slotted into the broader tapestry of the battle, and even as he focused his mind upon the task at hand he continued to watch the swarming runes flow across the wider stage.

The first enemy fire whipped in at them just as Fire Defiant surged from between the towering hab-blocks and out into the open space of the crossroads. Shells and las-fire splashed from Jennika’s ion shield as she trampled over heaps of wrecked administratum groundcars. As his sister slowed to a stop at the centre of the intersection, Danial guided his steed onto her right flank and registered Luk doing the same to her left. With booming footfalls, the three Knights came to a halt, drawn up in a shield wall to meet the onrushing foe.

Planetary militia tanks were roaring as fast as they could up the processional – mostly infantry transports, with a few battle-tanks churning along in their midst. Crude slogans had been daubed across the defiled machines, while ragged banners flapped above. They bore twisted symbols, icons whose precise meaning Danial did not need to know to recognise them as evil. From a few dangled the wire-wrapped corpses of those who had presumably refused to turn traitor along with their comrades. Behind this armoured fist, the auspex read the runes of an infantry rabble, a couple of hundred foes at least. Danial felt his throne’s ghosts stir, and with an effort he pushed them back.

‘Not. Now,’ he hissed, focusing on targeting solutions and the firepower hammering against his shield.

‘Knights Draconis and Chimaeros,’ intoned Jennika solemnly. ‘Fire at will.’

The power in Danial’s thermal cannon surged as his will became fire. Clenching one haptic gauntlet, he punched it forward to loose his first shot. The killing heat leapt outward, spearing from Danial’s fist to tear through the enemy tanks. A traitor Leman Russ took the main brunt of the blast, its armour flashing from grey to red to white hot in an instant before vaporising into scalding, super-heated mist. Other renegade tanks around it caught the edge of the blast, their tracks melting as they slewed out of control. Armour plates buckled and ran like wax. Engines and ammunition stores exploded, while exposed crewmen didn’t even have time to scream before they burst like blisters. So great was the thermal cannon’s fury that it gouged a great crater into the road, leaving a vitrified ditch into which two more traitor tanks skidded. They crunched to a stop, smoke rising from their engines. Between vehicle wreckage and the still-glowing crater left by Danial’s shot, the processional was as good as blocked.

Danial’s ears rang and his mind was numbed with shock. He had done that. He had killed, for the first time, extinguishing the lives of a slew of heretics as easily as he might crush worms beneath his boot. The surge of exhilaration was overwhelming. The kingsward was jolted back to reality as a cannon-round punched through his shield and exploded against his Knight’s chest, staggering it. Sparks drizzled from several cockpit systems, and Oath of Flame gave a rumble of mechanical protest.

‘Shield, brother!’ barked Jennika, hammering battle cannon rounds into the stalled enemy tanks with precision. Danial hurriedly adjusted his ion shield to protect his steed. Despite the jarring impact, he was grinning like a lunatic. He could hear Luk laughing.

‘What a shot,’ crowed his friend as he let fly with his own thermal cannon into the remaining enemy tanks, ‘Danial Tan Draconis, master marksman and slayer of heretics.’

More traitor vehicles exploded, trapping the enemy infantry between the flaming wrecks to their fore and the hungry wildfires now sweeping up the street behind them. Enemy runes scattered on Danial’s auspex as traitors smashed through shop fronts and hab windows in their desperation to find safety.

‘Don’t let them disperse,’ said Jennika.

‘Understood,’ responded Danial, striding forward to get a view over the top of the blazing traitor tanks. His heavy stubber kicked to life, hosing high calibre bullets into the ragged traitors still caught in the street. At the same time his thermal cannon flashed again, burning through the front of the nearest building and annihilating the infantry trying to escape through its corridors and chambers. Rebar supports melted, masonry evaporated, and a great slab of the hab-block’s frontage sheared away to crash down upon the processional like an avalanche. Danial’s auspex showed Jennika and Luk wreaking equal havoc, as enemy runes snuffed out like candles in a high wind.

Danial’s strategic overlay showed that the story was the same all along the battlefront. The renegade rabble of Pentakhost were no match for the Knights of Adrastapol, and were dying by the thousand. A handful of Knights showed minor battle damage on their manifolds, but it was nothing that the Sacristans would not soon fix. Tertiary vox data flashed back and forth amongst the Astra Militarum as they prepared to deploy their artillery batteries and blast a firebreak through the middle of the city. The wildfires had done their job, and now the Imperial forces would preserve what they could of Pentakhost for their own use.

As the last localised enemy runes blinked out, Danial slowly backed Oath of Flame into the intersection to survey the annihilation that he and his comrades had wrought.

‘Is this what it means to be a Knight?’ he breathed in awe.

‘It means victory,’ replied Luk, burning with pride and excitement. ‘It means death to our enemies.’

‘It means duty,’ said Jennika, though Danial could hear the exhilaration in his sister’s voice also. No one could wield power like this and not feel something. His heart was hammering in his chest. The whispers of his ancestors had grown to a clamour, still indistinct but surely congratulatory and full of bloodthirsty excitement. Danial wanted to fight again, to feel the godlike power at his fingertips. But the battle was won and the flames closing in.

‘We should return to the keep,’ said Jennika, her voice steady again. Danial pipped his vox in acknowledgement and turned his steed. They had claimed victory here, but as his natural pragmatism beat out the newfound flames of battle-lust Danial remembered that this was just the beginning. They had their beachhead, but there was a world out there yet to be re-conquered.

Click here to buy Kingsblade.

A Black Library Publication

First published digitally in Great Britain in 2020.by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by John Michelbach.

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