CONTENTS

The 41st Millenium

Bjorn: Lone Wolf - By Chris Wraight

Kraken - By Chris Wraight

Iron Priest - By Chris Wraight

Wolf's Claw - By Chris Wraight

Wulfen - By Chris Wraight

Failure's Reward - By Chris Wraight

Bjorn: The Fell-Handed - By Chris Wraight

The Victim's Dance - By Ben Counter

A Trick of the Light - By Josh Reynolds

Runes - By Chris Wraight

Deathwolf - By Andy Smillie

Onyx - Chris Wraight

Unbroken - By Chris Wraight

Hunt-Sense - By Chris Wraight

In The Belly of The Beast - By William King

IT IS THE 41ST MILLENNIUM. FOR MORE THAN A HUNDRED CENTURIES THE EMPEROR HAS SAT IMMOBILE ON THE GOLDEN THRONE OF EARTH. HE IS THE MASTER OF MANKIND BY THE WILL OF THE GODS, AND MASTER OF A MILLION WORLDS BY THE MIGHT OF HIS INEXHAUSTIBLE ARMIES. HE IS A ROTTING CARCASS WRITHING INVISIBLY WITH POWER FROM THE DARK AGE OF TECHNOLOGY. HE IS THE CARRION LORD OF THE IMPERIUM FOR WHOM A THOUSAND SOULS ARE SACRIFICED EVERY DAY, SO THAT HE MAY NEVER TRULY DIE.

YET EVEN IN HIS DEATHLESS STATE, THE EMPEROR CONTINUES HIS ETERNAL VIGILANCE. MIGHTY BATTLEFLEETS CROSS THE DAEMON-INFESTED MIASMA OF THE WARP, THE ONLY ROUTE BETWEEN DISTANT STARS, THEIR WAY LIT BY THE ASTRONOMICAN, THE PSYCHIC MANIFESTATION OF THE EMPEROR’S WILL. VAST ARMIES GIVE BATTLE IN HIS NAME ON UNCOUNTED WORLDS. GREATEST AMONGST HIS SOLDIERS ARE THE ADEPTUS ASTARTES, THE SPACE MARINES, BIO-ENGINEERED SUPER-WARRIORS. THEIR COMRADES IN ARMS ARE LEGION: THE IMPERIAL GUARD AND COUNTLESS PLANETARY DEFENCE FORCES, THE EVER-VIGILANT INQUISITION AND THE TECH-PRIESTS OF THE ADEPTUS MECHANICUS TO NAME ONLY A FEW. BUT FOR ALL THEIR MULTITUDES, THEY ARE BARELY ENOUGH TO HOLD OFF THE EVER-PRESENT THREAT FROM ALIENS, HERETICS, MUTANTS - AND WORSE.

TO BE A MAN IN SUCH TIMES IS TO BE ONE AMONGST UNTOLD BILLIONS. IT IS TO LIVE IN THE CRUELLEST AND MOST BLOODY REGIME IMAGINABLE. THESE ARE THE TALES OF THOSE TIMES. FORGET THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, FOR SO MUCH HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN, NEVER TO BE RE-LEARNED. FORGET THE PROMISE OF PROGRESS AND UNDERSTANDING, FOR IN THE GRIM DARK FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR. THERE IS NO PEACE AMONGST THE STARS, ONLY AN ETERNITY OF CARNAGE AND SLAUGHTER, AND THE LAUGHTER OF THIRSTING GODS.

As he runs across it the earth ignites. He goes so fast that he might be flying, barely touching the charred plates, tearing through the blue-tinged tongues that ripple out from the fissures below. The sky is alive ahead of him, riven by the aurorae of a thinning veil.

He has seen the prey, towering above the boiling mass of bodies, and that is enough. Axes rise, silhouetted against fire, hurled into the faces of the damned as they scream, but none are his.

The entire Rout fights across the sprawling battle plains of Velbayne, its fury set against a host of madness. The Wolves are loosed, thrown into the furnace, just where they wish to be. The packs fight, covering one another, forming shieldwalls and axe-wedges. Screaming night-creatures crash against them, though such shrieks freeze in unholy mouths as they face the wrath of Russ. The primarch still fights, though his immense presence cannot be seen – there are horrors enough on this battlefield to keep even the Wolf King busy.

As for him, he has no pack to protect his approach, none to cover his desperate charge. He has been alone for long enough now that he no longer feels the strangeness of it. His axe whirls around him like a bolas, whistling, accelerating, ramping up for the strike.

The prey looms over him. It is massive and crustaceous, boiling with black-hearted fire. Its wings unravel into the tortured night, ragged and skin-stretched. Its hooves crack the earth beneath it, its blade rips the air itself, its bellows make the world shake.

It is a vision of mortal terrors, merged and bulked into colossal proportions and forged in madness. It strides across the fields of murder, lashing out with smouldering strikes. The fires leap up to greet it, rippling across blood-dark muscles and reflected in oil-slick spines. A long taurian face is crammed with tusks, weighed down by a crown of horns, wrinkled into a snarl of wrathful contempt.

He accelerates. He has seen the creature before. He recognises the curl of the daemonic skin, the axe it carries, the runes of destruction hammered into iron ingots. He remembers what it did the last time their fates crossed.

How could he forget? He remembers almost nothing else.

It sees him, and its roar of challenge shivers the battlefield. Its leading leg crashes down, sending cracks racing out over the fire-edged plates. Its weapon moves heavily, trailing streamers of boiling blood from the edge.

By then he is going too fast to stop. He jumps, vaulting past the lesser ranks of terrors, shouldering them aside and breaking through their ineffective cordon.

He calls out for the first time in years. He frees his tongue, held silent since the last of his pack brothers burned on the pyres. They are declaimed in the order they went into battle. He promised their ghosts as much, back when the funeral embers still glowed like dying stars.

Alvi. He shouts the name as he smites the creature for the first time. Gore the thickness of magma spouts across his axe-blade. Alvi, who had no deed name, who was the purest of them all. Alvi had died when his breastplate was crushed under the creature’s hooves, still hacking at its unnatural flesh even as his helm filled with blood.

The daemon howls, arcing down its own axe-edge, but he is too quick. He is moving like storm-lightning now, spinning out of contact and spearing in close – uncatchable, unhaltable.

Byrnjolf, Teller-of-Tales. The pack’s skjald, heavy-limbed but agile-tongued, the carrier of the pack saga and the memory of its slayings. Byrnjolf had died as the creature’s fist had dragged low, thrown back into the mire of Gryth’s eternal miasmic plague plains. With the Teller gone, the tales fell into silence.

The daemon tries the same trick on him, but he is too wily for that now. He is older, tempered in fires far hotter than those that harrow this world. He hastens aside, already coiled for the next thrust.

Eirik. Golden-haired, vital. Eirik had cut it deep before the end, clambering up the creature’s own body to stab at it.

He does the same now – he uses its massiveness against it, countering bulk with speed. The daemon’s axe sweeps around, heavy as a pendulum, missing him by a finger’s breadth. He plunges his blade into its chest, catching on to the chains of iron to arrest his fall and haul himself higher.

Gunnald Shieldbearer. How could Gunnald have died? What force could have ended such a bastion of defiance? Gunnald had weathered the worst of it until the end, wielding his thunder hammer and spitting curses even as his throat was throttled.

He does not try the same thing. He does not have the heft of Gunnald and so sticks to speed, clambering up the daemon’s hide of iron plates. It tries to shake him clear and fails. He can feel its mounting fear. It knows who he is now.

Hiorvard. Hrani. The twins, fighting together as always, levelling bolters and filling the air with curtains of explosive power. They had only been taken down when the creature had broken the assault and cast aside the last of the blade-bearers. He remembered the way they had cast aside their guns, drawn swords and charged. They had died as they had lived – shoulder to shoulder.

No more names now. He is fighting as if maddened, clinging to the daemon’s shoulder with his artificial clawed hand, working the axe with the other. It tries to throw him off, to hurl him away like it did before, but his talons are sharper now.

Everything is harder, deeper, older, wiser, tougher. In killing his pack it has made him into a slaughterer of apocalyptic stature. He is like the old huntsmen of legend – drawing in the strength of the slain.

The creature bats away his axe and bellows in triumph. It watches the blade tumble clear, flashing red before it hits the seething earth. In pausing to watch, it has erred.

He has been waiting for this. His wolf claw reaches for the creature’s neck. Adamantium blades, each crackling with actinic energy, clench tight around daemonic thews, pressing the stringy muscle together.

It thrashes. It claws at him. Its talons rake down his armoured back. All he has to do now is hold on. He presses harder, digs deep, pushing the physical air from un-physical lungs. He grits his fangs. He is bleeding now from the wounds it has inflicted upon him.

Its skin bursts, its vessels swell and flood, its strength ebbs. He hangs on, strangling the life from it even as it falls to its knees. The battle rages around them, a whirlpool of unfettered rage, but even the daemon no longer sees this.

Its red eyes glare at him a final time, and he stares back into them. It chokes, it writhes, but he never lets go.

Only when the creature is gone, its mortal frame turned to unmoving slag and ash, does he raise his bloody claw in triumph. He tears his helm from his head and lifts his shaggy head to the sky. Tasting unfiltered air, he howls in triumph.

His living brothers howl with him. They know that he will be coming back to them now. They know what manner of thing he has really killed.

He stands upon the smoking corpse of the daemon, grinding his boots into its slumped shoulders. Only one name remains to be declaimed, the last member of the pack, the one who hunted through the sea of stars for vengeance, the one they have called the Lone Wolf for too many years.

Bjorn.

He wore their names on his armour. The words had been graven deeply – a parting gift from the Iron Priest before he’d left Fenris. Nearly a centimetre deep, now crusted with the filth of years, just like the rest of him.

Eight names: four on the right side of his dented breastplate, four on the left. One was barely legible, scraped away by some massive, crunching impact a long time ago. The others were all faded, or obscured by burn marks, or bisected with scratches.

He remembered them all anyway. They came to him when he slept, whispering to him in old voices. He saw their faces, looming up out of the dark well of memory, their flesh still marked by tattoos, scars and studs. Sometimes they were angry, sometimes mournful. Their purpose in appearing, so he’d realised, was always the same: to urge him on, to stir him into action.

And so he never rested, not truly. He respected the demands of his vocation and kept moving. Oaths had been sworn, and they bound him more tightly than bands of adamantium. One world after another, blurring into a morass of sense impressions; some cold, some hot, all struggling, all playing their tiny part in the galaxy-wide war that had long since ceased to have boundaries.

It would have been easy to lose his sense of significance in all of that. It would have been easy, after twenty years of it, to give in to the darkness that lurked behind his eyes and forget the faces. He’d seen it happen to mortals. Their mouths drooped, their eyes went dull, even as they still clutched their weapons and made a show of walking toward the enemy. Then, as sure as ice follows fire, they died.

That was why he had the names put on his armour. The carvings would continue to fade or sustain damage, but some mark would always be there, some small impression to register what had once been lives as vital as his life.

And as long as there were marks to remind him, he would not slope off into despair. He would keep moving, seeking the final trial that would restore lost honour and still the whispers in the dark.

One world after another, blurring into a morass of sense impressions, some frigid, some hot. None that made much of an impression on his sullen mind, since their wars gave no opportunity to achieve the goal he craved.

None, that was, until the last of them.

None of those worlds made an impression on Aj Kvara until, following the eddies of fate, he came to Lyses, and the raw beauty of it stirred even his old, cold soul.

Morren Oen shaded his eyes against the morning glare, squinting as the green light flashed from the waves. Fifty metres below him, the downdraft of the flyer’s four rotors churned the water.

There shouldn’t even have been water down there. There should have been several thousand tons of dirt-grey plasteel, designation Megaera VI, humming with life and machinery. There should have been lights blinking along the smoothly curved tidewalls to beckon the flyer down to land, and the low grind of algal processors working their way through the endless harvest.

Instead there was a thin skin of floating debris bobbing on the emerald water. He saw a plastic hopper tumble by, rolling amid a web of tangled fibres. Below the surface, there were dark shadows, perhaps the outlines of struts and flotation booms, still half-operative even after the main structure had gone down.

‘Emperor,’ he swore, sweeping the scene of devastation for something, some sign of resistance or survival.

Four other flyers hung low over the water, each one full of men with lasguns. They pointed their barrels uselessly down at the debris. Whatever had happened to Megaera VI had moved on long before they got there.

Preja Eim leaned a long way over the edge of the flyer’s open-sided crew bay and took a few more picts. Her auburn hair fluttered in the warm breeze, catching on the upturned collar of her uniform.

‘Have enough yet?’ asked Oen, turning away from the view and leaning back against the juddering metal of his seat-back.

Eim carried on clicking.

‘Information,’ she said, her face screwed up in concentration. ‘There might be something. Some clue.’

Oen looked at her wearily. She was so young. Her freckled skin looked healthy in the sun, almost translucent. Perhaps, once, he’d been as enthusiastic in his work.

For the first time since joining up, he felt too old. Forty years of service on Lyses, rising steadily through the ranks, had taken its toll. Rejuve was expensive, and he had other commitments that prevented him splashing out. And so he felt the skin of his jawline sag a little and his stomach bulge out over his heavy old regimental belt. Watching Eim made him feel worse. It reminded him of what he had been, and how long ago that was.

‘Snap away,’ he said. ‘Don’t think you’ll get anything we haven’t already scanned for.’

He looked out aimlessly, keeping his hand over his eyes. The curve of the ocean ran unbroken across the horizon, deep green and smooth. The pale rose sky shimmered above it, warmed by the diffuse light of both suns.

Oen was used to the view of open seas. All of Lyses was open seas. All of it, that was, except for the floating hubs, strewn across the endless ocean like motes of dust, separated by thousands of kilometres and gently drifting.

They were being picked off, one by one. That thought, when he chose to entertain it, was quite thrillingly disquieting.

‘Procurator,’ came a voice over his earpiece.

‘Go ahead,’ said Oen, welcoming the distraction. Whatever news there was, it was unlikely to make him feel worse.

‘Grid Nine have a comm-signal. Ship entering the orbital exclusion zone. The hails all check out, but they thought you ought to know.’

‘Nice of them. Why, especially?’

‘It’s not in-system, nor Navy. They think it might be Adeptus Astartes, but they’re not sure.’

At the mention of the magic triplet of syllables, as-tar-tes, Oen felt his heart miss a beat. He didn’t know whether that was born of fear or excitement. Probably a bit of both.

‘They’re not sure? What are they not sure about?’

‘Perhaps you’d better get back to Nyx, procurator. They’re not going to try to stop it, and by the time you get back it’ll be in geostat.’

‘Fine. Keep them quiet until I get there. We’re just about done here.’

The link broke. By then Eim had stopped taking picts and was looking intently at the wreckage.

‘No signs of explosions,’ she murmured, watching the pieces float by. ‘It’s like some giant hand just… pulled it apart.’

‘Did you hear all that?’ asked Oen, ignoring her. ‘We’re going back in. You can take another flyer out here if you want to keep at it.’

Eim looked at him, and her freckled face was wide-eyed. There was a strangely childlike look of desolation in them.

‘What’s doing this, procurator? Why can’t we stop it?’

‘If I knew that, do you not think I’d have ordered something more potent than overflights?’ He smiled, trying to be reassuring, and knowing he’d probably failed. ‘Listen, the distress signals have been picked up. Trust in grace, Eim. There’s probably a whole company of Space Marines lining up on Nyx as we speak, and, believe me, there’s no more impressive sight in the Emperor’s own galaxy.’

He slumped in the chair in the reception chamber, leaning both hands on the only table, smelling like old meat. His scraggly beard spilled over the breastplate of his enormous armour, snarled and tangled. Grey streaks shot through it, making him look like an old, sick man.

Do they get old? thought Oen, observing him through the one-way plexiglass viewport in the corridor outside. Would they die of age, if given long enough?

Accounts of the newcomer’s landing from atmospheric control had been garbled. One transmission implied that the newcomer had blasted his way through the upper defensive cordon without warning, while another, from a low-order servitor-controlled station, indicated nothing but impeccable orbital manners.

One way or another, though, he’d gotten through, and his ship, now standing five hundred metres up on the landing stages, was like nothing Oen had ever seen – dirty, angular, covered in plasma burns and with a blocky aquila picked out in bronze on the sloping nose. It didn’t look big enough for inter-system travel, though it must have been, since its occupant certainly wasn’t from Lyses.

From the look of it the ship’s crew was entirely composed of servitors. They were strange looking creatures, with clunking servos and spikes and animal bones hanging from their pearl-white flesh. They’d stayed on board the ship after the pilot had stomped down the landing ramp, which Oen couldn’t be too sorry about. Not that the pilot was any less strange.

‘I thought you said…’ began Eim, gazing through the viewer, fascinated. Her query trailed off.

Oen knew what she meant.

‘I’ve been told they vary,’ he said, rather stiffly. ‘The only picts I saw were from a rogue trader who’d run a squadron out through Ultramar. Those ones were… different.’

Eim nodded slowly, running her eyes over the bulky figure sitting at the metal desk on the other side of the viewport.

His head was bare and bald. A knotwork tattoo ran across the tanned flesh from behind one ear, over the skull and down toward one eye. His face seemed to have several metal studs in it, each one a slightly different shape. His armour was pale grey, like dirty snow, and had carvings all over it. The lettering wasn’t standard Gothic – it was angular and close-typed, covered in marks and bisected with slashes like those made by animal claws.

Oen had imagined the armour of a Space Marine to be clean, polished and flawless, just like the ones in the devotional holos sent out by the Ecclesiarchy’s Office of Truth Distribution. He’d imagined bronze shoulder-guards and bright cobalt breastplates glimmering under the white lumens.

He hadn’t imagined the mess, and the dirt. He certainly hadn’t imagined the smell.

‘Finished gawping?’

Both Oen and Eim jumped. He’d spoken. The words were thickly accented, as if Low Gothic were a foreign language, and muffled by the dividing wall. He hadn’t looked up. His strange yellow eyes remained fixed on his loosely clasped hands.

Oen readied himself, shot Eim a reassuring glance, and went round the corner to open the door. As he entered the room, the newcomer looked up at him.

‘I’m sorry, lord,’ said Oen, bowing before taking a seat opposite. ‘Standard observational procedure. We have to be careful.’

The newcomer, massive in his armour, gazed at him with a profoundly disinterested expression on his savage face. He didn’t smile. His scarred and tattooed features looked almost incapable of smiling.

‘A pointless gesture,’ he said quietly. ‘If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. But since you’ve started, observe away.’

Oen swallowed. The newcomer’s voice was worryingly deep, underlined with a permanent, breathy growl and made eerie by the unusual pronunciation.

‘Do you have, er, a designation? Something I can use for the reports?’

‘A designation?’

‘A title, lord. Something I can–’

The huge figure leaned back, and Oen could see the metal chair flex under the huge strain.

‘I am a Space Wolf, Procurator Morren Oen,’ he said. As he spoke, Oen caught sight of long, yellow fangs flashing out from behind the hairy lips. ‘Have you heard of us?’

Oen shook his head meekly. He felt his heart beating a little too quickly. Something about the man in front of him made it very hard to retain composure.

Except he wasn’t a man. Not like Oen was a man, anyway.

‘Good,’ said the newcomer. ‘Probably for the best.’

Oen cleared his throat, trying to remain something close to professional.

‘And your name, lord?’

‘My name is Kvara.’

Oen nodded. He was aware he was gesturing too much, but he couldn’t stop it.

‘I’d expected… more of you.’

That had come out wrong. Kvara looked at him with amusement. His eyes were circles of gold. Animal’s eyes, lodged in a lined, worn and battered face.

‘You do not need more of us. One of us is more than enough.’

Oen nodded again.

‘Quite so,’ he said, casting around for something more intelligent to say.

Kvara stepped in then, tiring of Oen’s stammering enquiries.

‘The data in your sending was clear,’ he said. As he spoke, he lifted a gauntlet and flexed the fingers of it absently. Oen stared at it, distracted by the casual, supple movement. ‘You’ve lost five of your harvester stations in five local months. No survivors, no readings. Nothing but debris. Something is coming out of the water. A beast.’

Kvara let his gauntlet fall to the tabletop with a dull clang.

‘I have hunted beasts before.’

‘We’ve men assigned to this already,’ Oen said. ‘I’d hoped that–’

‘That I might join them?’ Kvara shook his head. ‘No. Tell your men to stand down. In this, as in everything, I work alone.’

Oen looked up into the golden eyes, and thought about protesting. Perhaps this… Space Wolf didn’t know how big a hub harvester was. Anything that could take down one of those things must be massive, far bigger than the flyer he’d returned to Nyx in. The security detail he’d had on alert for three months consisted of nine hundred men, and he’d been considering expanding it.

‘I’m not sure–’

‘You’re not sure I can handle whatever it is you’ve got attacking your people,’ said Kvara. ‘You’re not sure something looking as dishevelled and terrible as me could do much more than get himself killed.’

He leaned forward, and the metal of the table bowed under the pressure of his forearms. Oen recoiled, feeling the hot-meat breath wash over him.

‘This is not about you, Morren Oen,’ whispered Kvara, taking a cold pleasure in running his tongue around the words. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’

Oen tried to hold the gaze from those animal eyes, and failed. He looked down at the rivets on the table, ashamed of himself.

‘I need a flyer,’ said Kvara, sitting back. ‘Fastest you have. Then you can forget about me, and forget about your problem.’

Oen nodded for a third time. Being in the presence of Kvara was intensely tiring. He found himself happy to do almost anything to get the encounter over with.

‘It will be done, lord,’ he said, knowing that, whatever he’d expected to get out of that first meeting, he’d failed badly. ‘I’ll get straight on it.’

Eim looked sympathetic as Oen emerged from the room. She placed a hand lightly on his shoulder.

‘How’d it go?’

Oen shrugged and smiled wryly.

‘Not what I expected,’ he said, shaking off the hand and walking down the corridor. He went quickly, keen to be out of there. ‘Though I don’t really know what I thought would happen.’

Eim trotted after him, looking up anxiously.

‘How many of them have come?’

‘Just him.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘No.’

Eim snorted.

‘I’ll get the ’paths sending again.’

‘That may not be necessary.’

‘Of course it’ll be necessary,’ said Eim, scowling. ‘We need men. There must be Guard somewhere within range – they’d send a whole company soon enough if they thought tithe production was about to fall.’

Oen halted, looking thoughtful. Now that he was out of Kvara’s intimidating presence, he was beginning to think more clearly.

‘He doesn’t think he needs help.’

‘That’s his problem. I mean, did you see what he looked like?’

‘Right up close,’ said Oen, ruefully. ‘It wasn’t pretty.’

Eim shook her head irritably.

‘One!’ she snorted. ‘I didn’t think they ever worked on their own. I thought they came in squads – you know, like you see on the holos.’

Oen shrugged.

‘So did I,’ he said. ‘Maybe different types have different ways. He’s a Space Wolf. Heard of them?’

Eim shook her head.

‘Nice name,’ she said. ‘Suits his looks.’

‘Careful what you say,’ warned Oen, looking over his shoulder and back down the corridor. ‘His hearing’s very good.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Eim sighed, and ran a weary hand through her hair. ‘But, procurator, this is the last thing we needed. We lose another hub, and we’ll miss the next quota even if I keep the crews on triple rotation. For a minute there I was daring to hope we’d find a way out of this.’

This time it was Oen who put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

‘You never know,’ he said. ‘He may be more impressive than he looks.’

He leaned closer to her, and lowered his voice.

‘He’s taking a flyer out, soon as I can requisition one,’ he said, covering his mouth. ‘And, whatever he says, I want it tracked and a team placed ready for rapid deployment, just in case he finds anything. Can you do that?’

Eim shot him a tolerant, affectionate look.

‘Sure I can,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

The flyer skimmed low over the ocean, casting a deep green shadow on the waves. Kvara drove it hard, irritated by the lack of the explosive speed he was used to. One engine was already burning close to capacity, and the dashboard in front of him was active with red warning runes.

Kvara ignored them and concentrated on the view from the cockpit. Lyses stretched away in every direction, formless and empty, a wasteland of pure water and pure sky. The first sun was up, and the arc of the atmosphere was bleached salmon pink. The ocean was calm, veined with lines of white where the massive swells rolled under him.

It was pristine. In an Imperium where the hand of man fell heavily on everything it touched, Lyses was a rare jewel. In its inviolability it reminded Kvara of Fenris. On the death world, everything below the Asaheim parallel was barely touched by humanity. Lyses was more benign, but had the same vast, untouched quality.

Despite everything, that spoke to his soul. It had been a long time since anything had done that, and he found the experience, on the whole, uncomfortable.

There is one objective left, one mission, one task. Remember it.

He pushed the flyer down further, skimming it barely a man’s height above the waves. Spray flashed down the sleek flanks of the machine, spinning and frothing as he banked around in a long arc. Then he powered it up, sweeping along the trajectory the procurator had given him. For a moment, just a moment, he could have been back on a drekkar, relishing the steep pitch and yaw of the heavy wooden hull as it ploughed through the endlessly violent seas of his home.

But Lyses was too beautiful for that. Too beautiful, and too forgiving.

Below him, the algal blooms began to intensify. Deep green and cloudy, they hung just below the surface, bathed by the light of the sun. They extended for hundreds of kilometres, a vast mat of nutrient-rich matter, stuffed with proteins.

It was for them that mankind had come to Lyses, to suck up the endless stream of life-giving algae, to process it into foodstuffs ready to be transported off-world to the famished hives and forges elsewhere in the sector. Hub harvesters, mobile floating industrial behemoths, prowled the waters endlessly, slowly ploughing furrows through the infinite bounty, dragging it up and packing it into billions upon billions of dried and pressed pellets ready for transport to gigantic processing manufactoria on other planets.

According to the records Kvara had accessed in Nyx, Lyses hadn’t had a serious security incident for over five hundred years. The harvesters had just kept on going, criss-crossing the ocean, working the algae and scooping it into their maw-like hoppers, as if it would go on forever.

But nothing lasted forever – everything decayed, everything was tainted.

Kvara allowed himself a grunt of cynical satisfaction. A world without strife was an affront to his battle-hardened sensibilities. All that could exist in such a place was softness, and softness opened the door to corruption.

The blooms grew ever thicker as the flyer sped on. The green darkened, forming a solid mass under the waves. If things had been working properly, he guessed, it would never have been left to become so overgrown.

A green rune blinked on the forward scanner. Kvara sat back in the pilot’s seat, cramped in his bulky armour, and watched the ruin of the hub approach. He came in low, observing the way the broken struts still speared up from the waves.

The harvester had been massive. Wreckage littered the surface for a square kilometre or more, floating on the gentle swell or lodged in thick knots of algae. Kvara applied the air brakes, swivelling the engines forward to arrest his speed and achieve a low hover. He flicked a dial on the dashboard, and the bubble-cockpit slid back.

Warm, softly fragranced air rolled over him. The smell of the algae was rich and faintly sweet. Kvara hauled himself out of the seat and leaned over the side. His weight caused the flyer to tip violently and the engines whined as they compensated.

He narrowed his eyes, poring over the debris. No burn marks or signs of explosions marked the surfaces. Where the plasteel was broken, it looked like it had been snapped cleanly. Other pieces had the jagged evidence of claw-rakes on them.

Kvara studied each piece carefully, spending time observing the angle of the impacts, the force used, the frequency of them.

Is it worthy? Is it enough?

Early signs were promising. He felt a tremor of excitement in his hearts, and swiftly suppressed it. There had been too many disappointments for him to start thinking along those lines.

Keeping the cockpit-bubble open, Kvara sat back in the pilot’s seat and started a slow circle of the wreckage. As he did so, he abstracted his mind from the particular, and drifted into the general.

There were huge channels gouged through the algae blooms, marking the passage of something truly massive. Though there were several of them, Kvara had the sense that only one beast had made them.

Prey.

He closed his eyes, just as he would have done on Fenris where the spirits of hunter and the hunted intertwined closely, haunting the high mountain airs and staining the unbroken snow.

I see you. I see your path. I will follow it, and then comes the test.

He saw the trail of the beast in his mind, just as if it were a herd of konungur, twisting away into possible futures. He saw it plunge down into the frigid depths, as dark as the void of space, writhing along the jagged ocean floor.

He opened his eyes. Below him, a wide furrow in the algal carpet stretched off into the distance, jagging back and forth.

I see you.

Kvara nudged the flyer after it, following the trail. As he did during every hunt, he put himself in the mind of his prey, imagining the mental processes of the beast and the strange, sluggish thoughts in that giant mind. He had learned to do it with such acuity that, for a moment at least, he might have been one himself.

As he travelled, his certainty grew. He powered the flyer back into full propulsion.

Kvara sat back, eyes half-closed, the warm wind racing past him. He let his instincts play loose, running down the prey, chasing after it as if a physical scent had lodged in his nostrils.

It was the same then as it had always been. For a moment, the hunt took over, the quest became everything.

In simpler, harsher times, that was all there had been.

In the past that was now faded and hard to recall, he had lived for nothing else.

I see you.

The drekkar took a heavy hit and buckled over to starboard. It rolled across the heavy, gun-grey sea, lashed by the torrential rain. The deluge lanced down from the low cloud line, spears of liquid that bounced and rattled from the deck.

Everything moved. Waves crashed against the high flanks and cascaded down the deck, as cold as mountain-ice and hard as bullwhips. The masts screamed against the rigging, taut with ice crystals and shivering.

‘I see you!’ roared Thenge, bounding up to the prow with his long, white pelt in tow.

Olekk and Regg followed him, clasping tight to the railing, their boots slipping on the sodden deck-boards. Each one of them carried a long spear in their hands, crowned with a biting edge ground out of the iron by the priests.

Lighting flickered across the northern sky, followed by the crack, roll and boom of thunder.

Fenrys was angry, just as ever, and the seas boiled with that anger.

Aj Kvara hung from the high foremast by one hand, swaying far out over the water as the ship tilted and tipped. He hadn’t seen anything but the driving rain and riot of moving water.

He swore to himself, and hurried down the rigging. If Thenge had seen something from the prow, then his eyes had been the keener. That was bad. Kvara’s youth was supposed to be his advantage.

Then, before he was halfway to the deck, the sea off to port boiled up in a mass of bubbles and lashing, slapping fronds.

‘Here it comes!’ yelled Rakki, his voice high with excitement. From somewhere else in the longship, furious laughter broke out. Kvara dropped to the deck, grabbed a spear and raced to the side.

Ahead of them, breaking the surface a dozen fathoms off, something vast and black slipped above the turmoil of the waves before sloping back down again. Kvara saw a glossy shell, pock-marked with barnacles, rolling away from the pursuing hunters and diving smoothly. A geyser of water puffed up as the beast exhaled and drew in more air.

‘Hvaluri!’ roared Olekk, laughing like the others.

Kvara felt excitement spur up within him, and he leaned further over, craning for another glimpse. The drekkar carried over thirty warriors. Taking a hvaluri would feed them and their families for weeks, as well as providing much else of value to the tribe.

‘Faster!’ Kvara shouted, up at old Rakki who was master of the ship.

The big man, one-eyed and scar-faced, glared back at him from the tiller.

‘You hunt!’ he blurted, outraged. ‘I sail!’

The creature broke the surface again, closer that time, sweeping up through the choppy water and letting out a muffled bellow of anger.

Maggr was still up in the rigging, and was first to throw. His spear shot down through the rain, spinning on its axis. It hit hard, burying the jagged iron blade deep into the hvaluri’s armoured hide. The beast roared and went down again.

‘Hjolda!’ Maggr bellowed, balling his fists and sending his face red with fervour.

Other spears shot down, missing the target and splashing into the walls of moving water.

Kvara bided his time, waiting for the hvaluri to surface again. The ship slipped steeply down a precipitous leading wave, wallowing at the base of it before climbing up the next one. The deck rolled and swung like a berserker’s axe-lunge, testing the warriors’ precarious footing. They braced themselves against the ropes, edging closer to the tilting side of the ship, peering into the storm-lashed murk for a glimpse of the prey they hunted.

‘Round left!’ bellowed Thenge, getting frustrated and reaching for a second throwing spear.

The drekkar shivered as its prow came across, buffeted by the crashing seas. The skinsails, those that hadn’t been furled against the storm, stretched out taut, making the ship race through the spray like a loosed crossbow bolt.

‘I have it!’ crowed Olekk, leaping up on to the sharply pitching rail and taking aim.

Something long and sinuous flashed out of the water, lashing across at Olekk with spiked barbs and dragging him over.

There was no scream. He was gone in an instant, pulled down into the icy depths from which no living man ever returned.

Kvara ran across the deck, springing up to where Olekk had been standing. He had a brief glimpse of black tentacles thrashing in the water, covering a foaming patch of dark red before that was swept astern by the racing sea.

He hurled his spear down, but the edge of the ship bucked wildly, sending his aim wide.

‘Skítja,’ he swore, jumping down and reaching for another spear.

Then the drekkar shuddered heavily, as if something vast had hit it from below. Thenge lost his footing and sprawled across the deck like a drunkard. The whole ship shot up, briefly thrown clear of the waves, before crashing back down again, snapping whole lengths of rigging and making the loose ropes flail like scourges.

Maggr jumped from the broken ropes, still flushed from his success, and barrelled up to the prow, leaping over the grappling form of Thenge.

‘Ha!’ he crowed, grabbing two throwing spears and taking the lead warrior’s place.

Kvara chuckled at the presumption of it, leaping away from the rolling edge and grabbing a fresh spear of his own.

Everyone was still laughing and roaring – the ragged, caustic laugh of hunters gripped by the manic touch of the kill-urge. The whole ship was febrile with it, spilling over with savage, raw energy.

‘I want this kill,’ spat Kvara. His blond hair had come loose of its plaits, and lashed round his clean, ruddy face in the wind. He grinned as he spoke, and his white teeth flashed in the storm.

‘Then throw quicker, lad,’ said Maggr, taking up a spearing position and scouring the churning waves.

It came up again then, huge and glistening. Kvara saw a single eye the size of his chest, as round as the moon and grey like an oyster. It glared at them, burning with bestial hatred and fury.

He didn’t hesitate. Fast as a whip-snap, Kvara hurled the spear. It whistled through the air, striking straight through the heart of the eye. The shaft trembled, and it lodged fast.

The hvaluri bellowed, its roars making the water drum and vibrate, before rolling heavily away from the boat.

‘It won’t go down!’ shouted Thenge, back on his feet and braced for another throw. ‘Not now!’

Kvara raced to fetch another spear. His heart was thumping with glorious, brutal energy. Every muscle ached, every sinew was taut, but his heart sang.

I speared the eye! I did it!

The creature reared up, thundering out of the boiling sea, throwing water across its hunched, gnarled back in huge tumbling sheets.

‘Morkai!’ swore Regg, hurling a spear at it and somehow managing to miss.

The beast was massive, at least the size of the drekkar and much, much heavier. It thrashed around in a wallow of agony, the spears still protruding from its body. A huge shell of barnacle-crusted blackness rolled around, crowned with spines and bone-ridges. A mass of tentacles flashed out from under the skirts of the shell, twisting and writhing like a nest of prehensile tongues. Spray shot out, splattering against the masts and cascading down on to the warriors.

‘Too close!’ warned Rakki, heaving on the tiller.

The ship came round, but not quickly enough. Tentacles shot out, latching on to the railings and dragging the drekkar back. It tilted heavily, listing over nearly to the tipping point.

Thenge lost his footing again, raging and cursing as he slipped down the steepling deck. A tentacle spun out, clamping on to his ankle and gripping tight. He grabbed his axe from his belt and hacked down, severing it cleanly and freeing himself.

Other warriors charged, hurling their spears at the exposed underbelly of the beast. Some of the blades bit deep, disappearing into the forest of thrashing members, provoking fresh roars of pain. The sea frothed with a thick black sludge as the monster began to bleed. Some of it splashed out across Kvara’s face, hot and salty.

‘It’ll drag us down!’ shouted Rakki, toiling uselessly at the tiller.

More tentacles latched on to the ship, some reaching all the way across to the far side. The drekkar listed further, and water began to lap across the lower edge of the deck, washing up across the already drenched planks.

Thenge raced over to the nearest tendril, hacking away with his axe. He cut through it sharply, but two more fronds quickly whipped across. All across the ship, warriors swapped their throwing spears for short-handled axes and began chopping frantically at the strangling lengths of tentacle. Even as they worked, the ship slipped further down, dragged through the mountainous swell by the wounded beast.

Kvara drew his throwing arm back, only to feel a viscous, slimy wall of flesh hit him full in the face. He crashed back heavily, cracking his head on something unyielding on the way down. He had the blurred impression of a black tube the width of his arm snaking across his field of vision and falling over him. A hot wash of pain ran through his skull, and he felt blood running down the back of his neck.

Acting on instinct, he swept up his spear, still grasped in his right hand, shoving the blade of it up through the tentacle. It carved through sweetly, separating it into two pieces. The broken-off end continued to writhe on its own, jerking and spasming across the sodden wood.

Kvara staggered to his feet. The ship was going down. Waves rushed up the tilted deck, flooding into the hold below. For every tentacle the warriors slashed apart, more shot out, wrapping the drekkar in a morass of dripping, slippery tendrils.

‘Hjolda!’ he roared, grabbing his axe from his belt and throwing his arms back in challenge.

The beast loomed up at him, sweeping up out of the waves and roaring its own booming call of anger.

Kvara sprinted down the listing deck, leaping over the bodies of the fallen and veering past the flickering ends of searching tentacles, ignoring the hammering pain in his head. He ran straight at the huge domed shell, hacking away the snaking tubes of meat as they swept into his path.

It felt like he was running down a cliff-edge, straight into the depths of the bottomless ocean. He could see the bulk of the hvaluri below him, wallowing in a messy broth of broken spars and bloody water.

He leapt, flying away from the ship and through the air, plummeting for a moment, his long hair streaming behind him and his axe held high.

Then he landed, crunching on to the shell of the beast, feeling the hard surface flex from the impact.

He nearly skidded straight across it and over the far side, but managed to clutch at a bone-ridge with his trailing hand. He yanked to a halt, nearly blinded with spray and buffeted by the gusting wind.

The creature let out a deafening roar and hauled itself further out of the boiling sea. Tentacles shot up, trailing across its shell, reaching out to rip him from its back and hurl him into the water.

Kvara pulled himself to his knees, balancing precariously on the bucking, rolling curve, hacking at any tentacles that reached him. Blood still ran from his head wound, making him dizzy. Through the clouds of spray, he could just make out the drekkar rolling away, righting itself as the hold of the tentacles was released.

Kvara batted away a flailing length of tentacle, then slammed the axe-head down. It cracked open the shell, plunging deep into the translucent, sticky matter beneath.

The beast bellowed, thrashing and yawing in the waves. Jets of black ink spouted up, splashing across Kvara’s chest. He pulled the axe free, drew it up and chopped down again. The blade cracked open a new wound, shattering the beast’s armoured covering and tearing up the soft flesh beneath. More ink welled up, boiling hot and fizzing.

Kvara kept attacking it, ripping up the outer layers and burying the axe-head deep into the yielding blubber beneath. The tentacles lashed out, feebly now. The cries of the beast became plaintive rather than angry. Gouts of black murk pumped from its wounds, turning the roiling waves dark and viscous.

Kvara heard a heavy crunch close by. He looked up and saw Thenge by his side, scrabbling for purchase on the shell before getting to his knees. The big warrior grinned at him, an axe in each hand.

‘Brave work, pup!’ he laughed, whirling the blades in his hands before hacking them down. ‘We’ll make you a man yet!’

Then the two of them got to work, gripping the tilting shell and hacking it open, burrowing down, slicing through the hide of the beast, breaking up what remained of the hard barrier between them and the pulpy mass beneath. Out of the corner of his eye, Kvara saw the grappling hooks fly out from the drekkar, latching on the foundering creature, ready to haul it to the side of the ship. Other warriors were preparing to make the leap across, brandishing hooks and cleavers.

Kvara kept his head down after that, working hard. His pain at the back of his head wouldn’t abate, though it didn’t stop him working.

Amid all of it, he still grinned. He couldn’t help himself. The flush of victory ran through his veins, keeping his arms moving and giving his legs the strength to hold him in position.

This is my kill, he thought as he hacked away furiously, trying not to let his stupid, childish grin show too much.

My kill.

A day later and the storm lessened in its fury, though the seas ran hard for much longer. The drekkar made heavy work of it, labouring in the deep swell. The central mast still stood but much of the rigging had been ripped away. Several holes had been punched below the waterline, and no matter how fast the crew bailed it out, the bilges sloshed with seawater where the makeshift repairs had been hammered on.

Aside from Olekk, three other warriors had been dragged over the edge. That was a heavy toll for the tribe, through the scale of the prize compensated for that. The meat of the hvaluri would keep them fed for many months once the women had smoked and salted it. The tough shell would provide tools for them and the beast’s blood would be distilled into both fuel and food.

The ship ran low in the water, laden down with every piece of hide and blubber the warriors could fit aboard. It stank of the sea, acrid and salty, but no one minded that. It was a good haul, worth setting out across the blade-dark ocean for.

As they neared home Thenge sat with Kvara in the prow, chewing on a long piece of sinew and letting the grease run down his beard.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked good-naturedly.

Kvara nodded. He’d broken his arm on the leap back to the ship after the hvaluri had given up the fight, much to the raucous amusement of the rest of the crew. Even after it had been bound up with a rough splint, it still ached – not that he would ever show it.

His head was the worst of it. He didn’t dare to get it looked at by the priests. The blood still oozed thickly from the wound, and the pain grew with every passing hour. His vision was beginning to blur. It wasn’t healing.

‘I mean what I say,’ said Thenge, jabbing his finger at the blond warrior. ‘That was brave. The test of manhood awaits, and you’re ready.’

Kvara took up a string of sinew himself and chewed on it.

‘Not sure?’ asked Thenge.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Thenge snorted.

‘Why wait?’

Kvara looked away from him, down the longship where the rest of the crew laboured. They were his people, the ones he’d lived with all his short life. They’d never made him feel anything less than part of their world. The test of manhood, the long and solitary hunt across the icy wastes, daunted him. He didn’t fear death, and certainly didn’t fear danger, but something about the ordeal made him hang back.

He would do it, but not soon. The time wasn’t right.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, truthfully enough. He took another bite of the sinew, feeling the slippery flesh slide around his mouth. The action of eating dulled the pain slightly. ‘I’m not ready.’

He looked up then, up at the grey walls of cloud that shrouded Fenrys. In a rare break, where the sheets of occlusion gave way slightly, he thought he saw something up there, shadowing them. A huge bird, perhaps, but its profile was strangely angular. It seemed to hang motionless in the air.

‘Perhaps you’re not ready to be out on your own,’ said Thenge, resignedly.

Kvara nodded, not really paying attention. His head was getting worse. The clouds closed back together, hiding whatever it was that he’d seen.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s right.’

Kvara ran his finger over the names on his armour. The snow-grey metal was softened in Lyses’s warm light. Even the blade marks, the scorches and the dents looked a little less jagged.

He didn’t need to read the names in order to remember them. They were carved on to his mind just as deeply as they were etched into the ceramite.

Mór, his thick-set face framed by black, dense sideburns. Dark hair, pale skin, like a vision of an underverse spectre with the sardonic humours to match.

Grimbjard Lek, the polar opposite. Sunny, blond, his mouth twitching up into a wicked smile at the first excuse. He’d killed with a smile on his face, that one, glorying the Allfather with every swing of his axe.

Vrakk, the one they’d all called Backhand, bulky and blunt with his powerfist thrumming, a dirty fighter but useful enough to make up for it.

Aerjak and Rann, brothers-in-arms, inseparable and possessed of that uncanny awareness of the other’s state. Kvara had always had Aerjak down for the Rune Priests. He’d had a strange way about him, something tied to the wyrd, for all the good it had done him on Deneth Teros.

Frorl, the blade-master, swinging his frostblade with that unconscious, mocking ease, disdaining ranged weapons for the thrill of disruptors and steel-edge.

Rijal Svensson, wiry and fast, quick to anger and equally quick to laugh, his nose broken so many times that it had almost been not worth bothering with. He’d never accepted augmetic replacements, preferring to keep the stub of gristle and bone-shards in place to remind him not to get carried away.

Finally, Beorth, the quiet one. Only happy when hoisting his heavy bolter into position or at the controls of something huge and slung with big guns. He’d have been a Long Fang before he made Grey Hunter, if they’d let him. He’d laughed rarely, never sharing the coarse jokes the rest of them let spill from their profane lips, but when he had done, that rolling, rich, mirthful rumble had made Kvara grin unconsciously along with him.

Beorth had been the hardest, out of all of them. He’d been the one they’d never noticed unless he wasn’t there.

Kvara let his armoured finger trace out the names, clicking softly as it passed over the runic grooves.

Perhaps you’re not ready to be out on your own.

A warning light blinked on the dashboard. Kvara snapped out of his memories and took in the data.

The hub was in visual range and racing towards him fast. It was a small installation, a few hundred metres in diameter on the surface and crowned with a couple of comms towers, a few landing stages and a squat ops centre. Lights still blinked at the summit, flashing piercingly in the heat of day. The algae stretched away from it, sparse in patches and thick in others. Four lines of oily smoke rose from the harvester processing nodes, indicating that it was still working.

Kvara’s face wrinkled in disapproval. He could smell the thick stench of promethium already, a low-grade variant, greasy and sour.

His armoured fingers ran over the console, keying in the landing codes from the databank Oen had uploaded to the flyer. A pict over to his left immediately updated with the response. The protective cover of one of the landing stages withdrew, unfurling like an iron rosebud, and he banked the flyer towards it.

Nothing obviously wrong.

He touched the flyer down on the platform and jumped down from the open cockpit. Smoke poured from one of the engines, and the others wound down slowly, as if their bearings had been ground away.

Kvara strode across the apron, unconsciously checking his weapons. The bolt pistol at his waist was fully loaded and primed with the appropriate blessing. Blood, his own blood, ceremonially stained the muzzle. Across his back was strapped Djalik, his blade. It was a short, stabbing sword, notched and serrated along one of the cutting edges and with inset runes lodged under the bronze-lined hilt. Over the years the metal had been dulled with burns from the weapon’s disruptor field, making it as dark as charcoal.

Kvara sniffed the air, going watchfully. Everything was quiet. The installation barely moved on the placid waters. The warm wind blew across the towers and manufactoria units, washing over the grey plasteel in an endless, placid sigh.

Ahead of him, two doors slid soundlessly open, opening the way into the hub’s interior. Orange lights blinked on, illuminating a bare, clean corridor. Everything smelled of the algae – a mulchy, briny tang that lingered at the back of the throat.

Kvara paused before entering, taking a final look across the hub. Aside from the low growl of automating processors, all was calm. The green waters lapped softly at the flanks of the harvester, a hundred metres down from the landing platforms.

Where are the men?

Reluctantly, having got used to the clean, unfiltered taste of the air, Kvara retrieved his battered helm from its mag-lock and screwed it in place. The balmy atmosphere of Lyses disappeared, replaced by the filtered, sterile environment of his armour-shell.

Kvara took up his bolt pistol, and breathed a prayer, the same prayer he’d uttered during every quest since Deneth Teros.

Allfather, deliver me from safety and bring me into peril.

Then he walked inside.

‘Where is he now?’

‘Alecto XI. He’s landed.’

‘That’s a long way from the last site. Have we got anything from the crew?’

‘Nothing. Not a thing.’

‘When was the last transmit?’

‘Uh, hang on.’

Eim steadied herself against the sway of the flyer. It was a big one, capable of spending several days out over the water and accommodating a full assault company. She didn’t like using craft that big – their judder and yaw, as well as the fuel-tinged air, made her nauseous, and the grunts got restive cooped up in the holds.

‘We don’t have anything from them for six days, ma’am.’

Eim turned to the comms officer and raised an eyebrow.

‘Why wasn’t that picked up? They’re meant to be checking in daily.’

The comms officer, a grey-faced man with deep-sunk eyes and an unfortunate overbite, shrugged apologetically.

‘There are a lot to monitor.’

Eim swore and rubbed her eyes with the balls of his fists. Throne of Earth, she felt tired. Oen would owe her for this when she got back.

‘Okay, run a scan. Check for anything.’

‘I can’t see… whoa. I really don’t know… what is that?’

Eim pushed him aside and leaned over the augur console. As she watched the shapes clarify, she felt a sudden, cold thrill shudder through her body.

‘How close are we to him?’

‘A long way. Procurator Oen insisted on a range of–’

‘Forget that. We’re going in. Signal Nyx, but don’t wait for a response.’

She turned away from the comms officer and looked out across the cramped bridge space. Other officers looked up from their stations. Their expressions had switched from mild boredom into nervous expectation.

‘Get the men armed and ready to deploy,’ she said, speaking to the company commander, a squat, low-browed man called Frehis Aerem. ‘All squads, assault order, ready to drop on my word.’

Eim looked back at the console before he’d had a chance to respond. As she watched the augur line sweep round for another pass, she felt her heart start to thump faster within her chest.

‘Damn you, Oen,’ she muttered, shaking her head as she watched the data stream in. ‘You let him go out there – this is on your conscience.’

The corridors were quiet and lit only by dim orange light. Every metre of them was pristine, scrubbed clean and glistening. Octagonal hatches appeared at regular intervals along the walls, all closed. Kvara tried one of the handles, and it clicked against the bolt lock. He punched through the mechanism, cracking the handle, and the hatch swung open.

The chamber on the far side was empty. There was a desk, two metal chairs, a scale model of the harvester station on a sideboard. More orange light flickered from a semi-functional lumen, catching the jewels in a cheap devotional image of some primarch or other. No one was inside and, from the sterile smell of it, no one had been inside for some time.

Kvara turned back, walking through the network of corridors. Despite his heavy boots, his footfalls were soft. The power armour hummed – a low, grinding noise at the edge of mortal hearing – the only thing that broke the dense fog of silence.

Kvara paused, inclining his head, listening carefully. For a second, there was a trace sound, right on the edge of his audible range. Nothing he could latch onto, and not enough data for the helm to augment.

He started walking again, keeping his pistol held high. The grey hair along the back of his neck stood erect, brushing against the collar of his armour. He could feel his thick blood pumping vigorously around his bulky frame. His awareness had sharpened, causing his muscles to loosen and his pupils to dilate. He heard his own breathing resonate within the helm, close and hot.

I come for you. You know I am here.

At the end of the corridor was another intersection. He waited again, watching, listening, absorbing.

Show yourself.

The lights blew.

The corridor plunged into darkness. Something raced up out of the shadows, phenomenally fast, scrabbling on the metal floor as it came.

In the nanosecond before Kvara’s helm compensated, it swerved around the corner and out at him. A hellish face, obscenely long and crested, lashed up out of the dark.

Kvara loosed two bolts, aiming fast. They impacted with a crack and flash of light, shattering a brittle shell. High screams, alien screams, echoed from the walls.

More of them arrived, leaping over the fallen outrider. Jointed limbs clattered over metal, flashing ice-white as more bolt-flares lit them up. They came in a tangled rush, jostling each other, jaws wide and biting.

Kvara pulled back, firing all the time. His arm moved only by fractions, picking out target after target, cracking apart the growing swarm of xenos creatures. The intersection clogged quickly with smashed shells and oozing pulp, but he kept coolly firing.

Just as the ammo counter ran down, the onslaught ceased. The last of the chittering screams died away, leaving a pile of twisted, snapped and cracked shells in front of him.

Kvara ejected the old magazine, slammed a fresh one into the pistol housing and drew his blade with his left hand. Djalik’s disruptor field fizzed into life, throwing an electric blue aura out from the cutting edge.

He strode out into the intersection, wading through a swamp of broken, twitching carcasses, watching for more of the xenos to come at him.

He knew what they were. He’d fought such beasts on a dozen worlds.

Hormagaunts, the Imperium called them.

Kvara liked fighting tyranids. Unlike Traitors, for whom he could feel nothing but a blind, disgusted fury, or the greenskins, which were contemptible, tyranids were a force he could respect.

They were pure. They suffered from neither fear nor corruption nor fatigue. Like the native beasts of his own world, they lashed out with an unsullied primal aggression, driven to kill out of hammered-in instinct and never stopping until death took them or the task was completed.

They saw him as prey. He saw them as prey. That made things even.

Ahead of Kvara the corridor opened out into a wide, square room. Banks of equipment were arranged in long rows, all still clean and unsullied. Across them lay the bodies of the hub’s crew, very much not clean and unsullied.

They had been ripped open. Their bodies, what was left of them, hung in glistening loops of gristle and sinew all across the room. A few had tried to get out, running for the double doors on the far side of the space. The trails of blood, as thick and dark as engine oil, didn’t reach very far. The corpses still had looks of horrified surprise on their faces – those, at any rate, who still had faces.

Kvara swept the room with his pistol. The lights were still down, and his helm picked the outlines of the bodies in fuzzy grey light.

He sensed them coming before his armour’s equipment did. A skittering, scraping run, muffled by the closed doors to the corridor beyond, punctuated by the high-pitched rattle of xenos vocal cords. They were racing toward him – dozens of them, maybe more.

Kvara grinned.

The doors burst apart, thrown aside by a press of straining bodies. Blurred xenos outlines, skeletal and reptilian, swarmed through the gap and into the room, screaming at him with stretched-wide jaws, pouring over the surfaces in a rolling wave of needle-teeth and hooked claws.

‘Fenrys!’

Kvara charged straight back at them, leaping over a slumped pile of eviscerated bodies and bringing his blade round in a wide, blistering arc. He hurled himself into the tide, loosing volleys of bolt-fire that flashed out in the dark like storm lightning.

They came on, lashing out at him, and he shattered their talons. They leapt up to maul him, and he broke their snapping jaws. He spun round, shifting from one foot to another, punching out, slicing back with the blade, firing all the while. Scrawny xenos bodies smashed apart, bursting open and spraying fluid across his whirling, gyrating armour.

More of them poured in through the broken doors, streaming into the chamber and leaping up to make contact with him. They bounded over the bodies of their own dead, desperate to draw blood.

Kvara smashed his pistol-hand round, caving in a swollen xenos skull, before sending two more rounds spinning into two more targets, jabbing up with the blade and hauling it back through the entrails of another flailing monster.

They were all over him, tearing and screaming, but he was faster, bigger and stronger. As they howled with agonised frustration, he grunted with coarse satisfaction. His gauntlets were heavy and sticky with fluids, but he kept them moving. The liquid splattered over his breastplate, dousing the graven names under layers of filth.

He had been bred to do this. There was nothing left for him but this. Only in such work could his soul find a measure of peace even as his body pushed itself to the extremes of performance.

He was back where he belonged. Back in the fight.

‘Kvara!’

Mór’s voice was strained over the comm, broken up by the crackle of ordnance. Huge, thumping crashes distorted the feed.

‘Position, brother,’ snapped Kvara, running hard, feeling the sweat run down his temple.

‘Rann… all gone…’

And that was it. The comm spat a fog of static. Kvara kept running, keeping his head low, weaving through the rubble. Solid rounds fizzed over his head, impacting against the rockcrete and showering him with rubble.

Blood of Russ – where are they?

He sensed a detonation to his left, and leapt clear. The already ruined wall exploded, hurling out an orb of fire and rusty shrapnel. The blast wave threw him from his feet, slamming him into the nearside bulwark. His armour crunched through it, tearing up the stone and showering him in dust.

‘Position!’ he spat, righting himself and breaking into a run again.

Nothing but hissing came over the comm. The fractured sky of Deneth Teros rumbled with electric storms, and a fork of violet lightning licked the burning horizon.

‘Lek. Svensson. Position.’

He ducked down again and started to run. Above him, huge artillery trails lanced between the shells of the spires, exploding in a cacophony of overlaid, shuddering booms.

The static mocked him, and he blinked the feed closed. Far ahead of him, the city core was tearing itself apart. A vast hab-spire, hundreds of metres tall and crested with jagged towers, toppled over with eerie, magisterial slowness. Already broken open by a hundred major impacts, the walls imploded as it crashed down amongst the ruins, throwing up a bow wave of burning dust. The screams of those inside were lost in the ripping, flickering wind, burned away by the igniting promethium in the air.

Kvara raced across a narrow transit corridor, dodging the smoking craters and leaping over the lines of barbed stranglewire. Explosive rounds followed him, puffing up as they hit the tarmac. Since he’d left Vrakk, coughing up his own blood in the gutter with his lower body on the other side of the street, Kvara’s tactical display had showed nothing but interference. The location runes of his pack all showed blank.

We’re being torn apart.

He spotted movement, right on the edge of his left visual field, and swerved after it. Something – something big – ducked under a huge, low-hanging metal beam.

Kvara fired. The bolts screamed off into the fire-flecked murk, exploding as they demolished the beam in a cloud of spinning metal shards.

Then he was running again, leaping past smoking mortar holes and sweeping around smouldering heaps of twisted slag. He hadn’t killed it. He’d have known if he had killed it.

Warned by some inner sense, he skidded to a halt, dropping down to a crouch.

A ball of plasma seared out of the gloom, missing by centimetres, slamming into the wall behind him. Kvara lurched forward, feeling the heat as another plasma bolt flew across his back.

He rolled to one side, bringing up his pistol and firing blind. The bolts connected with something, there was a shrill shriek, and the plasma torrent ceased.

Kvara sprang up, bounding after the source of the noise, ducking and swooping across the broken ground. As he went, his senses processed a thousand minor events in every direction – Guardsmen howling and weeping with fear and pain, juddering fire from dug-in positions over by the refineries, the grind and crack of armoured formations coming up from the transit hub along what remained of the Joslynssbahn. He processed those sounds, but did nothing about them. Everything was focussed on the elusive shadow, the shape that stayed one step ahead, the shape that had come among them and summoned blood.

Kvara tore round the shell of a burned-out Chimera, tasting the sweet taste of the hunt in his cloyed saliva.

Ahead, two hundred metres, he saw it again, dark between clouds of engine smoke. Huge, edged with spikes, loping like a maddened devil of the Helwinter. Corruption rolled from its carapace in a stink of oily shadow.

It turned, and eyes the colour of newborn flesh blazed at him.

Kvara fired as he ran, loosing a rolling column of explosive rounds and zigzagging through the broken remnants of the 576th Armoured Falchions.

The bolts connected, and the creature rocked back on huge, cloven feet. It cast aside a charred and broken plasma cannon and reached for a glittering blade. A scream sliced through the air, echoing in nightmarish polyphony.

Kvara didn’t slow down. The pistol clicked empty, and he cast it aside, drawing up his blade Rothgeril and activating the lashing disruptors.

The thing he faced had once been a man. After that, it had been a Space Marine. After that, it had become a living altar of sadism, a prophet of the darkest corner of insanity and depravity in a galaxy already drenched in it.

Its armour, a grotesque blasphemy of Tactical Dreadnought plate, had burst out and split from the pulsing flesh beneath. Translucent tumours swelled up in the cracks, glowing and leaking and trembling. A face – part helm-grille, part skeletal rictus – grinned out from under a cowl of whip-curl bronze snakes. Eldritch energy rippled across the warped ceramite like meltwater. Blood flecked and speckled the pale pink tracery, boiling and hissing as the raw ether touched it and recoiled.

Kvara swung the blade low, driving it with frightening speed and precision. He could sense the acuity of his own movements, and gloried in it. Every nanometre of his body was straining for the kill. His hearts thudded, his blood raged, his lungs burned with a cleansing pain.

The blades clashed, and a boom of power discharged, throwing Kvara back and blunting his charge. The monster reared over him, pulling its pulsing sword-edge round for another blow.

Kvara pulled away, opening up a narrow space and spinning round to build up fresh momentum. The creature sliced its own blade across at him, tearing the very air itself asunder and leaving a trail of agonised matter in its wake.

Kvara ducked under it, feeling the charged edge tear a chunk from his backpack. He thrust up, ignoring the sickly stench of filth that poured from the corrupted horror, grabbing the hilt of Rothgeril two-handed.

The sword bit deep, blazing like a field of stars as it crashed through the distorted ceramite and warp-addled flesh.

Then it was hauled away, dragged from his hands by a wrench so hard that Kvara lost his feet and was dragged, face-down, into the ash and dust of the ruined city. He recovered instantly, rolling away to evade the downward killing plunge before jumping back to his feet and backing away, disgusted at how easily his weapon had been taken from him.

Now the creature held two swords. One, its own, blazed with sick, overripe energy. The other, Kvara’s, held upside-down by the blade-tip. The beast’s long fingers squeezed through the furious disruptor field, bleeding dark purple blood where Rothgeril’s biting edge sunk deep into its twisted flesh.

It laughed, and the sound was like the screaming of children.

Weaponless, Kvara clenched his gauntlets and snarled, ready for the onslaught. The creature was nearly twice his height, mutated and imbued with the essence of the Ruinous Powers. The Grey Hunter gazed up at it through red helm lenses, fearless and desperate, judging whether any blow he landed could do any damage to such a monster, tensing to sell his life with as much blood and fire as could still be mustered.

But not yet. A hurricane of heavy bolter fire slammed into the towering monster, smashing up the twisted armour and churning deep into the rose-pink muscle. It reeled, flailing against the bludgeoning hail of exploding projectiles.

Beorth limped out of the roiling clouds, his underslung bolter thundering from his two-handed grip. The comm-link was still a hiss of nothing. In broken bursts, Kvara could only hear a strangled, desperate sound from Beorth’s feed.

The man, the big man, was roaring.

‘A blade, brother!’ shouted Kvara, stretching out a hand imploringly.

Beorth ignored him. He strode toward the staggering creature, firing all the while, ripping the armour-shell free of its sickening sigils and unholy signs. His own armour was as black as night, burned and rent open, and blood still poured from a dozen mortal wounds. He walked on regardless, massive and implacable, pouring a steady stream of withering, searing destruction from the red-hot muzzle of his huge weapon.

The monster waded through it, clawing at the bolts even as they punched into it, blowing shards from its armour and spraying plumes of purple. It staggered toward Beorth, screaming the whole time in a paroxysm of outrage and madness.

Then it leapt, streaming out in trails of blood and shell-discharge, arms outstretched and jaws open. It crashed into Beorth, knocking them both to the ground and rolling over. It savaged at his neck, tore at the cracks in his armour, stamped down with cloven hooves onto his prone limbs.

Kvara raced after them, pouncing onto the back of the creature. He grabbed the ornate lip of its armour and heaved, pulling it away from Beorth. The horror snarled and lashed round, trying to throw him off. Kvara clung on, digging his fingers deep into the exposed flesh under the ceramite, tearing it up and pulling it out in strips.

Beorth clambered back to his feet, drawing his blade. The heavy bolter thudded to the floor, spent and smoking.

The creature of Chaos threw Kvara off, hurling him to one side and swinging the twin swords down at his prone body. Kvara rolled away, evading them by centimetres, before Beorth charged back, slashing with his own combat blade, whirling and dancing with all the skill of Frorl.

Together, the two of them rocked back and forth, hacking and blocking. The Traitor was reeling now, weeping blood in rivulets down its shattered armour. Beorth’s left arm hung limply by his side, awkwardly twisted, his every move radiating agony.

Kvara lurched to his feet in time to witness his brother’s sword knocked away with a vicious swipe from the Traitor’s warp-tainted blade. It spun away, glittering in the firelight, clattering across the stone. Spurred on by desperation, Kvara scrambled after it, grabbing the hilt just as it came to rest.

He whirled back round, only to see the creature break Beorth’s neck with a final, horrifying lunge. The huge warrior was hoisted into the air and cast aside with a sickening crunch of bone.

Then it turned to Kvara, and grinned.

Kvara ignited the disruptor on Beorth’s blade, barely noticing the runes signifying ‘Djalik’ along the blade. It felt light in his hand, balanced the way a combat sword should be.

‘For the Allfather,’ Kvara breathed softly, staring at the murderer of his pack, sensing the death-spirit locked tight in the killing blade.

The creature charged at him, both swords flailing, but its movements were jerky and erratic. Massive wounds had opened out across its body from Beorth’s onslaught, all bleeding torrents.

Kvara darted forward, ducking under the first incoming swipe before jabbing up with the point of Djalik, twisting as the edge punched up through the outstretched chin of the Traitor.

The point cleaved cleanly, thrusting up through bone and brain. The monster, impaled on the lashing, spitting energy blade, jerked like a marionette, lashing out blindly with its twin weapons.

Huge fists battered Kvara, buffeting him from either side, but he remained firm. He fed power to Djalik’s disruptors, and the creature’s head bulged, cracked, and exploded.

A rain of pulp and bone shot outward, blinding Kvara and sending him reeling backwards again. Disorientated, he stumbled, landing heavily on his back. A sharp pain radiated from his side, and he caught sight of the Traitor’s blade lodged in his torso. Runes flashed red across his helm display, giving him a tediously thorough summary of just how badly hurt that made him.

The headless body of the Traitor toppled, thudding dully against the tortured earth of Deneth Teros. Tendrils of warp-matter flickered across its ruined corpse, dancing like grave-sprites.

Still on his back, Kvara grabbed hold of the corrupted blade, gritted his teeth, and pulled. It came free with a wet squelch, dragging strands of muscle and skin with it through the jagged gash in his armour. He could feel the poison in the wound already, hot and boiling away like a swarm of insects. He tried to rise, and failed. Blood was leaking out of him freely, defying the clotting agents in his body. His vision blurred, going black, and his head fell back against the hot soil.

Above him, the sky was scored with trails of fire. As if from far away, he heard the rush and clamour of warfare. The ground trembled underfoot as huge war engines trundled toward one another. High up in the dark skies, black silhouettes of drop-ships hung, shaky in the heatwash from their labouring engines.

Kvara watched it all mutely, feeling paralysis creep up to his lips. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, even as his ravaged body rallied against the poison frothing in his blood.

‘Position…’ he murmured, automatically, repeating the word he’d used so often over the last hour, feeling the bitter futility of it even as his mind lost its grip on the world of the senses.

Beorth was dead. Vrakk was dead. Rann and Aerjak had died together, just as they had surely been fated to do. The pack – all of them – were dead.

Kvara felt a solitary tear of rage run down his burned cheek. He wanted to take his helm off, to taste the air of the world that had done this, but his hands no longer obeyed his commands.

Night closed in on him, the night of oblivion. The last thing he saw was the helm display, functional and stark. The eight runes, eight identifier marks, were all blank, like empty holes into the void.

All dead.

The thought burned at his mind even as it retreated in nothingness. It stabbed at him, far sharper than the wound in his side, sharper than the many wounds across his battle-worn body, sharper than the knowledge, coming to him even as he lost everything else, that he was equal to the poisons, and that this would not be the last fight he would live to see.

That didn’t matter. For the first time since coming off the ice and taking the Helix, that didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

All dead.

‘This is your choice.’

‘I have made it.’

‘Not yet. You need more time.’

‘My decision won’t change.’

‘It may. I’ve seen it before.’

The eyes in the dark were red and slanted. If he had died, he would have expected eyes like those.

But he hadn’t died, not physically. The eyes behind those lenses were like his. They were sunk deep into a black wolf skull mask with teeth set around the helm-grille.

Around him, the isolation chamber of the Vrafnki hummed with the grind of sub-warp travel. He didn’t know where it was going, or how long it would be in transit. Much still had to be explained to him, though he was in no hurry to ask for information.

‘It’s a privilege, not a right,’ said the Rune Priest, though less harshly than he might have done.

Kvara let his head sink back to the metal surface of the medicae cot. Every part of him still ached. His blood felt painfully hot, as if he’d been given a transfusion of molten lead.

‘With all respect, lord,’ he said, working his swollen lips painfully, ‘I don’t believe you. It’s never been refused.’

For a moment, the skull mask remained static. Then a low, grating chuckle broke out from behind the black armour.

‘Maybe.’

The mask drew closer, looming over him, coming to within a few centimetres of his face. Kvara looked up through the translucent mask of the medicae shroud with the one eye that still worked. He felt the soft pulse of the machinery around him, cycling his blood, working his hearts, filling his lungs, keeping him shackled to life.

‘What do you think taking the lone path will be like, Hunter?’ he asked. ‘How long do you think it will take to find a prize big enough to extinguish your grief? When we pulled you from the ice, as near to death as you are now, you’d killed a hvaluri. How much bigger would your beast have to be, Aj Kvara, before its death would be enough?’

Kvara smiled grimly.

‘When I was a child, I dreamed of killing a krakken. That’s what I thought it took to become a Sky Warrior.’

‘Then you are a fool. The krakken cannot be killed.’

‘But Jarl Engir–’

‘The krakken cannot be killed. It will tear at the roots of the world for eternity, weakening them, making them frail.’

The Rune Priest withdrew his skull mask. Kvara closed his eye. He felt the drugs in his system dragging him back to unconsciousness, and he fought against it.

‘It can be killed,’ he said, feeling his words slur. ‘I know it, and you know it. Everything that lives can be killed.’

He kept moving, heading down, ever down, fighting through the hormagaunts as they swarmed up from the lower levels, relishing every wave of them as they crashed and broke against his armour. Djalik was slick with their fluid, as was the muzzle of his bolt pistol, now dangerously low on ammunition.

The creatures had come from below. They’d run up the sensor shafts from the underwater sections, fast and silent. The human crew would have had no warning – no time even to send off a panicked transmission before the living wall of teeth and claws ripped into them. Before Kvara had arrived they’d been dispersing again, falling back down in scattered packs, making way for the monster whose appearance they’d heralded. Only his intervention had stirred them again, rousing them back into the slavering, indignant fury they’d shown before.

Now, once again, their numbers had been thinned. Kvara wheeled around smoothly, knocking three of the creatures bodily into the chamber walls. Two thumped wetly against the plasteel, slumping to the floor. The other managed to get up, and he grabbed it, snapping its neck with a contemptuous twist.

The floor rocked as something collided with the outside wall. The collisions were getting more violent, and he braced himself against them. A hormagaunt, one of the last remaining, skittered into the chamber and threw itself at him. Kvara cracked his fist into its oncoming jaws, not bothering to use the blade.

The chamber lurched again, and a crack snaked across the wall. Kvara backed away from it, running a quick check over his armour’s integrity seals, knowing full well that he was several hundred metres below sea level.

The structure around him groaned and the walls began to bulge inwards. The cracks grew, as if something huge and prehensile had wrapped itself around the chamber and was pulling tight.

Kvara braced himself, gauging from the creaks and snaps of breaking struts how big the thing outside was.

The walls bulged further, breaking into a lattice of fractures, then broke. Seawater, opaque with bubbles, cascaded in, hitting him hard and knocking him off balance. Kvara thrust himself upward, kicking out against the sudden influx, rotating in the torrent and lashing out with his blade. Its edge connected with something viscous and mobile, snagging on it before cutting through.

He kept moving, pushing out from the rapidly disintegrating walls, powering through the rushing water. More tendrils snaked inside, thrashing after him. As he moved, he fought against a dizzying whirl of disorientation. Everything was in motion, frothing and racing. Water poured rapidly into what remained of the chamber’s outer casing, rushing up to waist-height, then shoulder-height, then over his head.

Through a blurred curtain of moving water Kvara saw a huge length of sucker-clad skin race past him, ripping away a length of armour-casing from the hub’s exterior. He kicked himself toward it. As he pushed off the crumbling floor gave way entirely, dissolving into a bubbling foam of broken mesh and cladding. More water bloomed up from under it, chasing out the last of the chamber’s air in a glistening bubble.

Kvara brought Djalik round in a curve, aiming at the tentacle snaking through the breach. The blade sliced into it cleanly, and a huge cry echoed throughout the water – a shuddering, booming bellow of pain.

Then the last remnants of the chamber caved in, bringing with them a fresh deluge of churning, bloody water from all directions. Kvara ducked down under a collapsing wall section, lurching away from it in slow motion even as he fell down deeper, supported now by nothing but collapsing struts and spars. He tumbled into the centre of the zone of destruction, dragged further into the abyss as the metal around him was crushed and whipped into nothing more than splinters.

The last of the air shot up in columns of glittering silver, leaving him plummeting through rapidly darkening seawater. His helm-visor partially compensated, rendering the scene around him into a riot of false-colour targets.

Kvara spun away from the forest of needle-thin sensor prongs jutting below the disintegrating harvester, still falling rapidly, still trying to get some kind of lock on the creature that was doing this. He had a vague impression of something vast moving just above him. He spun cumbersomely on to his back and fired upward. The bolts shot through the water leaving long trails of bubbles. A series of muffled thuds rang out and impact shocks rippled through the water.

Then Kvara hit the algae. He was dragged into a sticky, cloying morass of thick vegetation. It grasped at him, pulling on his limbs. He twisted around again, slicing out with his blade to clear it, still falling deeper. He reached out with his bolter-arm, ready to fire upward again, only to have a tentacle shoot down and lash round his wrist, wrenching it out of position.

With a violent jerk, he stopped falling. The algae rolled away from him and more tendrils snaked down, grabbing him and pulling him back up. He cut himself free, only for more suckers to grab on. Kvara felt his second heart thumping hard. His breath echoed, fast and regular, in the enclosed space of his helm.

He looked up, and saw the creature in full for the first time. A huge serrated crest of armour reared up in the gloom, ridged and pocked with barnacles. Jaws protruded from under the crest, lined with flashing lines of needle teeth. A massive torso, segmented and flexible, hung down from a spike-ringed neck. Tentacles flowed out from joints along the torso, writhing in the water as if they had sentience of their own. A long tail trailed back into the depths, terminated with a scorpion-like sting. The beast’s hide was glossy and streamlined, and it moved through the water with a ponderous, muscular grace.

As Kvara stared up at it, struggling against the tendrils that clutched at him, its huge jaws opened to reveal several flicking tongues, each one the length of his forearm. Six multi-jointed arms uncurled out from the forest of tentacles, stretching out to grab at him. As Kvara saw the claws extend toward him, he remembered the shattered pieces of plasteel floating on the water.

He wrenched his bolt pistol free of the tentacles and fired straight at the creature’s looming face. The rounds shot off through the water, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake.

With a mighty whiplash movement, the leviathan surged away from them, evading the projectiles with a sinuous ease. While it was moving, Kvara brought his blade to bear, severing the tendrils that still bound him and breaking free of their hold.

He dropped deeper, spinning around as his heavy armour dragged him down. The creature swam around and swept down after him, undulating through the blooms of algae like a colossal sea serpent of Fenrisian myth.

Kvara tried to control his cartwheeling descent and failed. The thick liquid dragged at his limbs and the turbulence buffeted him. The wrecked hub was now far above him and out of his eyeline. Even with his helm lenses compensating, it was hard to make out much through the murk other than the vast serrated shadow pursuing him.

Then he reached the bottom. The sea floor rushed up at him, dark and jagged. Huge rocks, each as sharp as butcher’s knives and many metres high, cut up into the fog of algae. Kvara arched his back, missing the tip of the nearest stalagmite by a finger’s width. He spun away from it and collided with the flank of another one. As he rebounded, he managed to mag-lock his blade and stretch out with his free hand. His fingers clutched at the sharp edge of another rock column and he clamped his gauntlet tightly over the rock. His body swung after it, crashing into the unyielding stone and grinding to a standstill.

The stalagmite held him, and his boots lodged firm against a narrow ledge on the stone. Locking himself in place with his free hand, Kvara swung his pistol up again and loosed another volley of bolts.

The creature had been close on his tail the whole time – too close to evade the point-blank shots. The bolts spun into its bony crest, detonating once they penetrated the hard casing and exploding with a series of blunt thuds. The beast screamed and jerked sharply back up, sending a backdraught of water washing over him.

He spotted the tail sweeping round at him almost too late. Kvara pressed himself back against the rock-edge and the bulbous sting swam past just in front of him, lashing furiously as it passed.

Then the creature was coming at him again, surging through the water, multiple arms outstretched. Kvara squeezed the trigger again, but the pistol jammed.

Spitting a curse, he let it drop and brought his blade up. His movements were as fast as he could make them in the thick soup of algae, but still too slow, too cumbersome. The first tentacles clamped on to his weapon-arm, pinning him back to the rock. Then more shot out, wrapping themselves around his midriff. They squeezed tight, and Kvara felt his breastplate flex under the pressure.

A clawed hand reached for him, aimed at his head. Kvara managed to pull himself out of its path, wrestling hard against the drag of the tendrils. The beast’s talons smashed into the rock behind him, shattering it and sending a cloud of dust floating out and up.

Kvara felt the first crack on his armour even before the warning runes started to flash. It ran transverse across the list of names on his right side, breaking up the inscriptions.

Then the creature went for him again, this time at his torso. Kvara kicked back against the rock, pushing himself upwards. He wrenched his blade-arm free and lashed out at the tendrils around him, briefly clearing a space to operate in. He struck deep, cutting into solid flesh and staining the water with the beast’s dark blood, before rolling away and down, sliding down the sheer rock in a flurry of kicked-up dust.

But the beast was far faster, and the abyss was its element. It shot after him, moving with unhurried undulations. The creature’s outstretched claws grasped at him, gouging new rents in the ceramite of his backpack where they made contact. More warning indicators flared red across his lens display.

Kvara rolled clumsily on to his back, swinging his blade round and slashing at the scrabbling talons. The beast clutched its claws pushing up and away from the flashing blade before punching them back down after it had swept across. Talons punched down, through Kvara’s guard, cutting into his trailing leg like a stud being struck into leather.

Kvara grimaced, wrenching his leg away as the flesh punctured. The leg-plate cracked open, leaving clouds of blood in the water behind him. Valves shut closed at his knee socket and his armour’s greave filled with water as the rents in the ceramite spun apart.

The creature swooped in closer, black against the shadow of the deep waters. Off-balanced and unsighted, Kvara crashed and wheeled down the sheer face of the pinnacle. He hit a jutting outcrop in mid-spin that arched his spine and sent him reeling in the opposite direction. Then he collided with another wall of rock face-first, cracking his weakened breastplate further. For a second he could see nothing but flashes of red light. He swung out blindly as he fell further and the sword bit into pursuing claws, darkening the water with the beast’s oil-black blood.

Then his boots connected with something solid and his dizzying plummet thumped abruptly to a halt. His vision cleared, though he could feel blood running down the inside of his helm. The cracks in his plate were leaking water and it sloshed around, freezing and pressurised, in the cavities between his skin and the armour.

He was lodged in a narrow cleft between two sheer peaks of rock. Frustrated for a moment, the beast scratched frantically at the pinnacles above him, pulling them apart to get at him. One elongated talon stabbed down clean through the gap, carving through the protection of his upraised sword-arm and severing it nearly clean through.

Kvara roared with pain, watching helplessly as his blade floated free from his control. Blood ballooned out from the wound, pluming in jets through the water.

Another claw shot down through the narrow cleft, reaching for his head and shoulders. Dizzy with pain and incipient shock, Kvara only just managed to punch up with his good hand. His gauntlet closed over the incoming talons and he twisted, using his whole body to leverage the manoeuvre. The talons ripped free, and the creature roared in turn, sending pulsating shivers radiating through the water.

By then Kvara’s armour had sealed off the severed vambrace. His blood had already started clotting, and his vision had cleared. Above him, the huge creature withdrew its tentative strikes and broke into a frenzy of pain-filled destruction. Its tail crashed round, demolishing the fragile peaks of the two pinnacles. Another pass, and the last of his protection would be ripped away. His sword-arm was useless, his armour was compromised, and his weapons were gone.

Kvara pulled two krak grenades from his belt and primed them. He clutched them both in his good hand and crouched down, coiled to spring.

Something like elation coursed through his heavily damaged body – the elation felt by a master swordsman having at last met his match in battle.

The beast had the measure of him. It was worthy.

I have found it.

Its tail crashed back across, demolishing the pinnacles on either side of the cleft, exposing him again to the full wrath of the wounded creature. When the debris cleared, Kvara just had time to see an enraged, bleeding face hurtling straight at him. It was obscenely stretched, utterly alien, devoid of anything but animal hatred and a primal lust for the coming kill.

Kvara pounced, propelling himself upward into the oncoming jaws, holding the twin grenades tightly in his one working gauntlet and thrusting them forward. The beast snapped its jaws closed out of instinct, ripping Kvara’s arm off at the shoulder.

He bellowed with pain. Dark stars exploded before his eyes, quickly lost in a blur of shock and agony. He saw his own blood stream out in a long, viscous trail as he fell back, hanging in the water like a slick of promethium. He felt more water rushing into the breaches in his battleplate, cracking open the ravaged protection and sending him tumbling back down into the shadow of the rock-cleft.

Above it all was the face of the beast, grinning with alien malice, triumphant and malevolent. It came in close, its teeth stained with his blood, ready to finish him.

Then the grenades went off.

Kvara was hurled down against the rock as the twin booms rocked the sea floor. The creature spasmed and bulged as the explosions tore through its innards. A shockwave swept out from the epicentre of the blast carrying scraps of flesh and carapace with it and carpeting the stark rock needles. The swirling mass of tentacles seemed to implode, shrinking back in toward the bony ridge of the creature’s spine before going suddenly limp. A long, echoing scream resonated through the water, hanging there until the beast, flailing for a moment longer in a desperate attempt to climb on to life, slumped immobile.

It still hung, buoyant and huge, drifting a little on the cold, dark currents, before beginning to tilt away, trailing lines of gore from its punctured torso.

With what little awareness that remained to him, Kvara gazed up at it. Though wracked by pain and feeling the frigid clutch of unconscious rush up to grasp him, he could still marvel at the beast’s size.

My kill.

Kvara’s head fell back onto the rock. Water had got into his helm, which was slowly filling up. Pain throbbed throughout his whole body, acute and blinding. He felt heady with stimms and adrenaline. Before they did their work, dragging him into the oblivion of the Red Dream, he only had one more thought – a correction – recognising the nature of the beast he had killed and the significance it possessed. The voices no longer echoed in his mind, and he could no longer see them as they had been. Death, next to that, seemed of little consequence.

Our kill.

The wound in his head never healed. He became sick, then dizzy, falling over the deck as the drekkar pitched with the winter sea. They laughed at him right until the time he couldn’t get up.

Kvara saw the world through a mist of confusion, nauseous and slurring. The sea went flat, and the wind came hurling down from the heavens in a blaze of fire and smoke.

He cried out for Thenge, looking for the big man through the rushing noise. Thenge wasn’t there. In his place stood a giant wearing a black metal skin and the mask of a wolf. His dried pelt cloak shook in the downdraught and he carried a skull-topped staff.

I am dead. This is the spectre of Morkai.

He felt hands reach out for him – human hands. He was pulled onto some kind of stretcher. He recognised the smell of those hands. Preja Eim, perhaps, the human female who had stood outside the interrogation chamber. Where was her superior, the man called Oen? There were others there, clad in environment suits and talking in low voices.

This is not real. I am not on Fenris.

The drekkar reeled, nearly sending him into the sea. He managed to lift his head, and saw the shaky outline of a huge metal casket in the sky. It was as grey as the clouds, and hung above the ship in defiance of all law. Gigantic rings of bronze thundered with flame, breaking through the storm and making the air shake with heat.

The giant with the black metal skin made a gesture, and more metal-clad warriors leapt down from the hovering casket. They wore snow-grey armour with runes hammered into it and none of their faces were visible. They lumbered up to Kvara, walking smoothly even as the ship plunged through the swell.

I have killed the krakken, and it has killed me. Now they come to take me to Halls of the Slain.

Kvara felt the water drain from his helm. In the distance, sounding as if still underwater, drills rang out, removing the surviving sections of battleplate. Lights flashed painfully in his eyes, surgical and piercing. He heard voices with the accent of Lyses Gothic coming in and out of hearing. A man came to the forefront, his forehead creased with concern.

That is Oen. He fears me still. What is he doing here?

They took him up into the hovering casket of fire. The pain in his head grew worse. Kvara looked down from his impossible position for a final time, seeing his own blood on the decks below. Then, at last, he saw Thenge and the others, huddled at the far end of the ship, gazing up, open-mouthed.

They were afraid. He had never seen them afraid of anything before.

Huge doors closed with an echoing clang, sealing him in. The lights dimmed. He heard the sound of medicae equipment being dragged closer.

Someone leaned over him. It might have been the black wolf-mask. It might have been the man Oen.

It didn’t matter. They both said the same thing.

‘You will not die, warrior.’

‘Could you not have got here quicker?’

‘Throne, Preja, I do have other things to worry about.’

‘He’s scaring the hell out of everybody.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Is he up and walking?’

‘No, he can’t get up. But he’s still fething scary, procurator.’

Oen walked as fast as he could down the corridors of the medicae unit, ignoring the nervous glances from the apothecary’s staff as he went. Eim trotted along at his side, irritable and tense.

‘What has he said?’

‘He wants his armour. He wants to know what we’ve done with his ship.’

‘And you told him?’

‘That he can have it, and that we left it the hell alone.’

‘Good.’

The pair of them reached the secure ward. Two sentries in full assault armour stood guard outside. They saluted briskly before opening the metal-banded doors.

The ward was spacious enough, but its lone occupant made it seem cramped. He lay on his back, his huge limbs barely fitting onto the reinforced slab of plasteel that served as a bed. Wires ran from his chest, his face and his limbs. One arm had been severed just below the shoulder and the stump was crowned with a metal cap.

As they entered, Kvara lifted his head. Even after so long, his face was still swollen with bruises. He looked at Oen and Eim with those strange, luminous gold eyes.

‘I came as soon as I could, lord,’ said Oen, bowing.

Eim stood to one side, chewing her lip nervously.

The Space Wolf took a long time to speak. When he did, his thick, growling voice had gone. His throat shook, and the sound that emerged was little more than a pale whisper.

‘How long?’ he rasped.

‘Two standard months,’ said Oen. ‘I’m told you’ve been in some kind of deep coma. We’ve done what we can, so I’m glad to see you awake again.’

Kvara ran his eyes over the wires jutting from his body, and grunted.

Oen watched him carefully. Kvara looked even more ravaged than he had done on arrival. His long hair and beard hung in grey straggles over the edge of the cot. His massive barrel chest, covered in scars and tattoos, rose and fell under a thin coverlet. His skin was studded with metal devices, none of which the surgeons had made any attempt to investigate. They’d been terrified of doing anything invasive to him and had been half-appalled, half-fascinated by his outlandish physiology. As far as Oen could tell from their reports, the Space Marine had essentially cured himself.

‘You recovered the creature?’ Kvara asked. His eyes met Oen’s blearily. Even with Kvara in such a state, the procurator found it hard to meet that gaze.

‘What was left of it, lord. The remains are preserved.’

‘The head?’

‘I… er, the what?’

‘Did you retrieve the head?’

‘We did.’

Kvara let his head fall back. His breath was ragged and shallow.

Oen looked at Eim, who shrugged. He had no idea what to say.

‘My armour,’ said Kvara. His voice had slurred, as if he were fighting against sleep. ‘Where is it?’

‘Here, lord,’ said Eim, motioning over to the far corner of the room. ‘We brought it here, just as you asked, when you were sleeping.’

Kvara lifted his head again with difficulty, screwing his eyes up and peering out as if through a thick fog.

The armour had been hung on a reinforced metal scaffold. Even the broken pieces had been mounted on the rig, each one carefully hoisted into place by a team of engineers who’d been every bit as reverent and afraid as the surgeons.

The breastplate hung in the centre. Where once the surface had been covered in eight lines of runes, it was now almost bare. A series of huge impacts had scoured the surface clear, wearing away the grey paint and boring deep into whatever material it had been constructed out of. The curved surface glinted sharply in the light of the medicae chamber, as raw as newly-tempered steel.

‘The names,’ whispered Kvara, looking at it intently.

‘Your pardon?’

Then the Space Wolf issued a dry, cracking chuckle. It seemed to pain him, and he looked away from the armour and back at Oen.

‘Come here, mortal,’ he ordered.

His throat dry, Oen shuffled closer. Kvara winced as he turned his head, exposing a pair of fangs between chapped lips.

‘How did you locate me?’ he asked.

Oen swallowed.

‘I disobeyed your instruction, and your movements were tracked. By the time our flyers arrived, you’d destroyed the creature.’

Kvara nodded.

‘I should add,’ said Oen haltingly, remembering how he’d felt when Kvara’s body had been retrieved, ‘that we’re sorry. We came too late. But, you should know, we did what we could for you. You were never alone. We couldn’t keep up with you, but you were never alone.’

Kvara smiled at that. Unlike the weary, sardonic smile he’d worn on arrival at Lyses, the gesture was natural, almost human.

‘Never alone,’ he echoed thoughtfully.

Oen swallowed again, uncertain of what to say to that. An uneasy silence fell over the chamber.

‘I don’t expect you to understand the ways of my kind, human,’ said Kvara at last, his voice low. ‘I don’t expect you to understand why I came here, nor why I must take the head of that beast back to Fenris, nor what that will mean for the blood-debt of my pack.’

His bestial eyes shone wetly as he spoke.

‘Their names have been erased, and it eases the torment of my soul. But we’ll remember them in the sagas for as long as such songs are remembered. And among them, in the position of honour, will be yours, human. Take that as you will, but there are those in the galaxy who would see it as a compliment.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Oen saw Eim raise her eyebrows and give a little shrug. He tried to think of something suitably polite to respond with.

It was difficult. For all the reputation of the Adeptus Astartes, the reality of them was hard to come to terms with. Perhaps the Space Wolves were a minor Chapter, a fringe example of the species with more eccentricities than the others. Maybe the other ones he’d seen on the devotional holos with their gleaming cobalt armour and gold-lined pauldrons looked down on them as quaint or inferior.

By the time Oen had thought of something, though, Kvara seemed to have drifted back into an exhausted sleep, and to say anything further felt rather superfluous. For the sake of form, though, Oen bowed courteously and gave his reply.

‘That’s very kind, lord,’ he said. ‘What a nice tradition.’

He had learned to use his new body out in the wilds of Asaheim, and it gave him the strength and poise of a demigod. Even out of his armour he could withstand the biting air of the Fang with barely a flicker of discomfort. He had been changed, dragged beyond himself and into the realm of legend.

For all that, the first time he met them his tongue felt thick and useless. He’d never been much of a talker, and they already knew one another as well as mortal brothers. He envied the way they were with each other – easy, casual, close.

‘So they’ve sent us a whelp,’ said the one they called Mór, scowling at him as he entered the hearth chamber with his false-confident strut.

The one they called Lek laughed at that, grinding the edge of his axe with a whetstone. He stopped the wheel and pushed a loose strand of blond hair back behind his ear.

‘So they have.’

Vrakk, Aerjak and Rann looked up from their game of bones. Vrakk shook his head wearily and went back to it. Aerjak and Rann exchanged a knowing smile, but said nothing.

‘Can you use a blade, whelp?’ asked Frorl, walking up to him and whirling a practice-sword expertly in his left hand.

‘Of course he can’t,’ snorted Svensson, wrinkling his ruined nose sceptically. ‘He’s just been pulled off the ice.’

He felt his anger rising at that. Since the changes in his blood, he could be made angry so quickly. The Rune Priest had warned him of that, but still he struggled to control it. Perhaps he would never control it. Perhaps, having been shown the realm of the gods and his place within it, he would still stumble at the final hurdle.

‘He’ll learn,’ said the big one, the one they called Beorth.

Of all of them, he was first to clap his hand on his shoulder. His rough palm fell heavily, like a blow, and he staggered.

‘You’ll learn, won’t you, whelp?’

He looked into Beorth’s eyes, and saw the calm, effortless strength there.

‘Don’t call me whelp,’ he said, holding Beorth’s gaze.

‘Oh?’ Beorth looked amused. ‘What do you want to be called?’

‘Brother.’

Vrakk snorted, still engrossed in his game.

‘You have to earn that,’ he said.

Aj Kvara didn’t look at him. He looked at Beorth, whose hand still rested on his shoulder.

The big warrior seemed like he was going to say something, then paused. He looked down at Kvara, who was still bristling with youth and anger and uncertainty.

‘Perhaps you will,’ he said. ‘For now, though, you need to learn to fight.’

Beorth grinned, and pulled out his blade. It was a short, stabbing sword, notched and serrated along one of the cutting edges and with inset runes lodged under the bronze-lined hilt.

‘Let me show you,’ he said.

Olvar goes watchfully, swallowing down fear, remembering what Aeolf told him about the place and how to stay alive in it. The sea smokes and belches and fire dances on the water. The earth moves like a floe cracking. He crouches, trying to see the way ahead through twisting sheets of smog. His skin runs with sweat. He is shivering, ankle-deep in slush and gravel. Ahead of him a mountain rises, vaster even that his imagination had made it, scowl-dark and crowned with fulguration.

He is burning with fatigue. He carries his axe in his right hand. The knapped head feels like a lead block in his trembling fingers.

Olvar knows he should move. For two winters he prepared for the forge-test and he cannot turn back. He had been unable to look into the eyes of his mother, who has already grieved for the loss of a son, expecting to see him again only in the afterworld.

Then Olvar hears it once more, closer this time. He snaps around, staring out into the dark, clutching the axe-hilt. Waters foam at the shoreline, flecked grey with cooling slag.

At first he sees nothing but low outlines of empty stone, streaked with melting snow, jagged against a bulging sky of thunderheads.

But he does hear something: a purr, a growl, a hair-lifting, skin-puckering snarl. It has been on his heels for two days, padding closer, hugging the shadows. He cannot see it, cannot smell it, only hear it. It stays downwind of him, slinking around columns of obsidian and granite, a ghoul of the boiling seas.

Olvar pauses. He should go on. He should head for higher ground, earth that does not shudder and crack as the sea drags it down and over into the abyss.

He waits, though. He shivers and he watches. In the gloom, under an overhang that scrapes into the sky like a sickle, he sees them for the first time.

Eyes, black-pinned, like golden orbs, shining in the dark.

Ragnvald strides toward the burning hab-block. Its internals are gutted and glowing, ringed by melting skeletal struts. The sky burns green, shimmering from refractive ice particles. The crump of artillery drums out a steady beat, making the earth shake.

Ahead of him a shattered highway snakes through ruins, strewn with the dead and the harrowed. His grey brothers lope ahead, streaking through shadows, heads low, bolters firing. Ragnvald moves more slowly, feeling ember-dry earth part under his boots.

The Rhino is on its side, half-buried, its smoke stacks still vomiting, its broken tracks stilled. Loer’s squad has already abandoned it, charging off towards the enemy, leaving the shell to be salvaged or scuttled.

But the spirit is intact. Ragnvald can sense it, chittering in agony, locked in the coils at the heart of the machine. He stoops and his servo-arm sweeps around, clanking as its jaws unlock. He links to the Rhino’s core, opening a service hatch. Wiring spills out like entrails.

Then he hears it – a purr, a growl, a hair-lifting, skin-puckering snarl.

Ragnvald unlocks his thunder hammer and races out from the shadow of the Rhino, but the enemy is already upon him, powering out of the roiling smoke, red-armoured, screaming in a language that makes no sense. Ragnvald sees a flash of copper-chasing, obscene bronze jaws, a chainaxe whirring in a swarm of noise.

They clash – Ragnvald’s hammer falls, cracking hard and crackling tight before sheering away. The chain-axe slews across him, digging into Ragnvald’s defensive servo-arm. Its blades bite, and he feels pain as if it were his own flesh. He falls back, stumbling as he goes, betrayed by the shifting soils.

The champion’s cracked helm-lenses blaze in triumph. He leaps, and the axe scythes down.

It leaps, coming at Olvar at last. All he sees is a barrelling wall of hair and flesh, dark as twilight.

He scrambles away, heart locking in fear. Its jaws gape wide for him, strung with yellow saliva. It is massive – the height of a man at the shoulder, hunch-limbed, long-pelted, slope-muzzled, ridge-backed. It bounds across the shifting rock, paws skidding on the ice.

Olvar stands his ground. He waits for the last moment, right until he can smell the meat-wash of the creature’s breath.

Then he swings. His axe collides with the beast’s skull, thudding against bone. He ducks and scrambles, evading the mound of muscle as it crashes over him.

He strikes again, cutting deep, working the axe hard. The beast turns on him, roaring. Its jaws sweep in low, going for his leg. He chops down even as he springs away, connecting, severing sinew.

It keeps coming, snapping, trying to pin him down. It is faster, stronger, bigger, fearless. Olvar slips on the slush and it catches him, clamping teeth on his trailing leg.

He cries out – a strangled yell – and hacks down again. Blood, his own and the creature’s, mingles in hot jets. Olvar’s movements are jerky, confined, driven by panic. His axe is slick, his fingers slippery.

Its head is over him now, leering and snarling. Golden eyes bear down on his. Slobber slaps on to his exposed chest.

Olvar screams in fury, and hurls the axe-head.

The chainaxe never connects. The champion is hit by something huge and fast. Ragnvald sees it surge past him – matted fur, metal jaws, glittering augmetics. The beast tumbles over and over with its prey, clamping it by the neck, shaking and ripping. The champion screams for as long as he has vocal cords.

Ragnvald gets to his feet, striding over to the blood-speckled scene of slaughter. He watches the creature. Its flanks are studded with metal; one leg is a piston-mount, wrapped in cabling.

‘Enough,’ he voxes, and the beast withdraws from the kill.

Ragnvald stands over the fallen champion, twitching in a pool of black blood. He hefts his thunder hammer and brings it down, shattering the crimson helm and breaking the bronze jaws. The movement ceases.

The beast stands at his side, quivering with hunt-anger, jowls running with blood, pelt clotted with ash and armour-shards.

Ragnvald remembers when he killed it. He remembers dragging the hot, heavy corpse to the iron mountain. He had been called something else then, but that was centuries ago and names of the old ice were no longer important.

He reaches down for the wolf’s nape and tugs his fingers through its thick fur. The creature growls and nuzzles against his armour.

It took a long time to make the beast anew – years at the forges, watched by the masters behind the masks. Now its teeth are iron, its spine adamantium, its eyes red orbs of sensor-bundles.

It is better now – his first creation, his favourite.

‘Come,’ Ragnvald growls, and wolf and master lope into the dark.

His enemy wore the scaled, blue-green livery of the traitors. He was massive, a heavy-treading monster in Tactical Dreadnought plate, with twin chainblades slung under combi-boltered fists. Already three Wolves of Fenris lay at his feet, bleeding and broken.

Bjorn crouched low, hugging the wall of the corridor. Ship combat was a close, claustrophobic thing – a matter of thick shadows and tight spaces. Only four remained of the pack he had brought with him onto the Alpha Legion frigate Iota Malaphelos. There was nowhere to fall back to, no cover to use. Three more traitor legionaries advanced in the shadow of the Terminator champion, crunching over the bodies of the fallen as they came.

Bjorn tensed, readying for the counter-charge. He felt the hunt-spirits of his surviving brothers prepare for the same.

And just then, just as his muscles flooded with hyperadrenaline and his hearts thudded with kill-urge, he remembered how it had been before. He remembered going to Slejek for the tools of war he needed, and what answer he had been given.

What would the Blademaker say, Bjorn wondered, now that the tide of murder had risen again? What curses would spit from those burned and blunted fangs, once he realised what had been done?

Down in the depths of the Hrafnkel’s forge-level, the fires never went out. Calderas of molten iron poured ceaselessly, flaring as the liquid metal hissed into the formers. Hammers rose and fell against adamantium anvils, and the whine of the conveyers was broken only by the steel-thin benediction of crimson-robed tech-priests.

Bjorn pushed his way through the toiling masses, heading with singular purpose towards his target. The flagship’s forgemaster, glowering in a near-black array of scored and ancient battleplate, was waiting for him before the open maw of a glowing furnace.

‘I wondered how long it would be,’ said the priest of iron, his face hidden behind a slope-grilled deathmask.

‘I seek the one they call Blademaker,’ said Bjorn.

‘We’re all called that, down here. But you’ve found the one you’re after, and he already knows what you want.’

Bjorn looked up at Slejek Blademaker’s towering servo-arm, slick with oils and bearing the chip-marks of recent work.

‘I need a gauntlet,’ Bjorn said.

Slejek laughed, his voice as dry as brazier coals. ‘The Wolf King likes you. Sent you down himself, I was told.’ He drew closer, and Bjorn smelled his acrid smoke-stench. ‘It won’t do you any good. You could be Lord Gunn himself, and you’d still have to wait in line.’

Bjorn raised his left arm. It terminated in a tangle of scorched and broken metal spars. Since losing his hand on Prospero there had been no opportunity to forge an augmetic replacement, and his last combat against the Alpha Legion had mangled what remained.

‘I can’t fight like this,’ Bjorn said, turning the stump in the light of the fires. ‘Not again.’

‘I heard you’d been doing fine.’

‘I need to grasp a blade again.’

For a second time, the forgemaster laughed. ‘More than one?’

‘This was my sword-arm.’

‘Best learn to use the other, then.’

Bjorn squared up to Slejek. ‘Don’t jest with me, hammerer.’

‘You think I jest? Look around you. I have four thousand warriors to clad and arm. Every hour that passes brings me another bloodied tally of cracked armour and broken blades. I have worked my thralls to death to meet the thirst for iron, and it will not cease while the Snakes have us by the throat. You have your sight, your strength and you can carry a bolter. That makes you one of the lucky ones.’

‘It is not enough,’ snarled Bjorn. ‘I need a gauntlet.’

Slejek stooped, lowering his blackened helm until it was a hand’s breadth from Bjorn’s. ‘Get… in... line,’ he said.

For a moment, Bjorn didn’t move. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, considering forcing the issue. It was a possibility. Slejek was big, but Bjorn had taken on bigger.

But then, grudgingly, he backed down. Brawling with his own kind would only accelerate their likely doom amid the rust-red stars of Alaxxes.

‘I will return,’ he promised, stomping away from Slejek. ‘You will not refuse me again.’

Slejek merely shrugged, and returned to his work. His servo-arms whirled into action, and the fires blazed anew.

Bjorn strode on past rows of labouring thralls, barely noticing the flicker of arc-welders against their heavy masks. His every nerve burned with fury. He would have to enter combat again as a half-breed, a liability, a cripple. His own death held no fear for him, but the thought of failing his pack-brothers soured his blood.

Then, in the final reaches of the forge-chamber, he saw it. It hung on adamantium chains, half-lost in the darkness, glinting sharply from the reflected light of the furnaces. It was complete, pristine, and savagely beautiful.

‘You,’ Bjorn said, picking out a mortal thrall. ‘Who was this made for?’

The thrall bowed clumsily in his thick forge-armour. ‘I know not, lord. Shall I beg knowledge of my masters?’

Bjorn looked at it again. The alloy was flawless. This was a singular thing, the work of an artisan-genius. The bearer of this would slay and slay until the stars burned out and darkness howled across an empty void.

‘Can you fit it?’ asked Bjorn, extending his withered arm.

‘Yes, but–’ began the thrall, uncertainly.

‘Do it,’ said Bjorn, reaching for the hanging chains. His pulse was already quickening. ‘Do it now.’

Roaring death-curses from the Old Ice, Bjorn leapt out at the enemy. His four adamantium talons snarled into energy-shrouded life, harsh blue against the gloom around him.

The Terminator champion came at him hard, chainblades juddering in a bloody shriek. The two warriors crashed together, and Bjorn felt the raking pain of adamantium teeth cutting into his pauldron. He took a bolt-round close to the chest, nearly hurling him onto his back. He veered, swerved and thrust, twisting to keep his foe close.

He thrust his wolf claw upward, catching the legionary beneath the helm. Lesser talons would have cracked and splayed, breaking on the reinforced gorget-collar and opening Bjorn up to the killing blow.

But these talons bit true. Their disruptor shroud blazed in a riot of blue-white, tearing into the thick ceramite. The claws pushed deeper, slicking through flesh and carving up sinew, muscle and bone. Hot blood fountained along the adamantium claw-lengths, fizzing as it boiled away on the edges.

The champion staggered, pinned at the neck. Bjorn twisted the blades and the enemy fell, his throat torn out, thudding to the deck with the heavy, final crash of dead battleplate.

Bjorn howled his triumph, flinging his claws wide and spraying blood-flecks across the corridor. In his wake came his brothers, firing freely, locking down the surviving Alpha Legionnaires and driving them back.

Godsmote, Bjorn’s second, chuckled as he ran past.

‘One-Handed no more,’ he remarked, glorying at the deed. ‘We shall have to find you a better name.’

Bjorn paid no attention. He was restored, ready to rip and tear and pierce, crippled no longer by fate and the whims of war.

Blademaker could curse all he liked – he would not be getting these claws back.

‘Slay them!’ Bjorn roared. ‘Slay them all!’

And, with a grind of battleplate and the crackle of disruptor energies, he strode out, whole once more, into the shadows.

His smell makes my nostrils pucker. Somehow, even amid all the grime and misery of this place, I can still detect his stink, like a clot of sweaty blood that won’t dislodge.

‘Name,’ I say again, wondering if he is capable of answering me.

He stares back, looking through me, slumped against the walls of Cell 7897, his limbs slack and his palms upturned.

I stare back at him, forcing myself to go through the prescribed procedure. Coteaz will want details of all of this. I do not wish to disappoint Coteaz; no sane woman would.

He is painfully thin. His cheeks are cadaverously sunken, his uniform hangs loosely about him. I can see a griddle pattern of ribs under his torn flak jacket. A hastily stitched regiment badge hangs from his chest. It bears the words ‘Creed’s Blade’.

All the other subjects have the same badges on their uniforms. I find the name ridiculous. Everything about these people is ridiculous. They were brave but stupid.

Perhaps there is little difference.

‘Tell me your name.’

The cell is just like all the rest: metal walls running with corrosion, lit by a single dirty lumen bar. It is dank, overheated, thick with the accumulated verdigris of human misery.

I wonder for how many centuries it has been in use. I wonder how many men and women have found themselves here, locked deep inside Coteaz’s fortress-moon without hope of release or recovery. None of them, I notice, took the time to scrawl their names on the wall or leave marks indicating their existence. Perhaps they would have done so if they had been incarcerated in some other kind of institution, one where a hope, however small, remained that they would see sunlight again.

But this is Coteaz’s place. They do not need to be told that to know that their lives are over. Only a very few are brought into the sunless chambers of the Inquisitor Lord; those who are damned, or have witnessed damnation, or who know too much, or who do not know enough.

‘You can still serve. Even now. Give me your name. That will be a start.’

I know his name. His name is Mattias Morbach. I know that he was once a sergeant in the 345th Cadian Armoured, and that he had a wife and family on Ulthor before it was destroyed. I know that he joined up with the Creed’s Blade regiment soon after that. Perhaps he was driven by grief; he does not seem to me to have the wide-eyed idealism of some of the others I have seen.

I know all the things I am asking him to tell me, but information, at this stage, is not important. I wish him to start with the simple things, and then perhaps we will be able to move on to those things that are less simple. So many of those poor souls brought here can no longer talk at all. I wonder if he is one of them.

I crouch before him. My soft leather boots crease. I feel my fur-lined cloak settle over my shoulders and the holster of my bolt pistol pinch at my armoured waist. I am warm, and I am beginning to sweat. Briefly I consider removing my cloak, but it would diminish my presence and I am reluctant to lose the trappings of authority.

I am Alisa Damietta, inquisitor of the holy Ordo Malleus. I have standards to maintain.

‘I know you have suffered. Tell me your name. You can still serve. We are not wolves, we are here to help you.’

Then he looks at me. I wonder what I said to unlock his attention. His eyes swim into focus, which is obviously painful for him. For the first time he seems to realise where he is.

‘Morbach,’ he mumbles. ‘Sergeant.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘That is a start. Let us build on it.’

He keeps talking. I am pleasantly surprised. None of the others got further than giving me their name. I listen. He tells me how he joined up with Creed’s Blade, what their hopes were, how they planned for the attack. I am moderately interested in this and ensure the words are recorded for further analysis. Perhaps someone in authority on what remains of Cadia can be implicated for the fiasco. It always helps to have someone to blame.

‘Good,’ I say. My voice does not do soft cadences easily; I have to work to keep it encouraging. ‘Now tell me what happened when you got there.’

He doesn’t reply at once. The stink of fear returns; an animal response.

‘Do you mean...?’ he begins.

‘Yes,’ I say calmly. ‘Tell me what happened on Voidsoul.’

The world’s name makes him shiver. Despite the uncomfortable ambient heat he seems incapable of getting warm.

But he starts to talk, and he keeps talking. Perhaps he needs to. I record all these words and listen carefully as they are stored.

‘We could see it from space before we landed,’ he says. ‘Red, like a scab on the void. Saw things moving across it. Thought they were clouds. Storm clouds. I remember thinking the descent would be tough. That was my main concern: might not make it down, miss out on the fighting.’

He gives a strange half-smile, a wry one, and his lips twist awkwardly. I see that he is breathing more heavily. His pupils start to dilate and a thin gloss of sweat forms on his forehead.

‘But we did. Somehow, we got down. Carriers discharged early. Landers shot down, too fast, far too fast. Everyone on edge. Knew something was wrong – air in the crew chamber suffocating. Everything vibrating, coming apart. Heard screaming. From outside. Checked my weapon, and my hands were shaking. Served for twenty years. Seen plenty of bad things. Hands never shook before.’

I watch him carefully. I note the red rims around his eyes and the twitching of his dry fingers. I see saliva at the corners of his mouth. I see his pupils dart back and forth.

He is there now. He is back on Voidsoul with his foolish brothers.

‘Made planetfall. Doors opened. Holy Throne, I don’t... I don’t have the words.’

He thinks, he remembers. His brow creases into withered folds.

‘The sky. Like… boiling blood. Everything stank. Hot metal and smoke. Couldn’t hear anything, not on the comm, not from anything. The screaming just made you want to cover your ears and cower. The air was screaming. Understand? The air was screaming.’

I begin to make preparations. I have seen men lose themselves in testimony such as this. I don’t want to kill him unless I have to, so I must be careful. For all that, I feel a vestige of pity for him. No human should witness what he has witnessed.

‘Some couldn’t get up – just wept in their harnesses, rocking like children. I got up, though. Started to break out. We ran down the ramps, trying battle-cries, trying to see where the standards were raised. Saw landers explode as they came down, hundreds of them, flaming. Saw the sky blister, like… boils. Like boils bursting.’

He shudders. He sweats.

‘They came,’ he says, and gaunt horror fills his face. ‘Swarms, thousands, over the red earth, flickering, shrieking. I saw them rip through whole battalions, carving them up. Like slabs of meat, gorging on blood, gulping it, gargling into it. Striding, trailing smog and guts, grinning, tearing. Red horns, teeth like black needles, and their eyes... The eyes...’

I sense the time has passed; he is falling into apoplexy. I should stop this, but I wish to learn more.

Let me be candid: I wish I could have seen what he has seen, if only for a second. The neverborn are my life’s study, but I have never been to one of their worlds. How could I? They would devour one of my kind in the space of a heartbeat. But part of me, a forbidden part that condemns me, wishes to glimpse what terrible places spawn the creatures of our nightmares. I will no doubt be punished for that yearning one day, but still it remains.

So I let him speak.

‘We tried to ascend a ridge, one running up from where our lander had come down. Somehow a command group had reached the summit. They’d got a banner up. I remember running towards it, tripping over rocks as sharp as knives, hearing my comrades being cut apart. Took seconds, just a few seconds, and so many had already died. Knew I was next. Emperor damn me, but I wanted to die! I was shaking so hard I couldn’t carry my weapon. Wanted to vomit but my body wouldn’t let me. They followed us. So fast!’

He gets more agitated. I withdraw, ready to prepare a sedative. This is interesting, and I resolve to petition Coteaz for more time with this one.

I don’t know how I miss his movement. He looks so near to death – he should be incapable of anything but an exhausted torpor – but he suddenly bursts up from the floor. His eyes are raging, splayed wide in terror and desperation. He does not see me; he sees the creatures of Voidsoul. For a moment, I am exposed.

He goes for my face, fingernails raking. I jerk back, feeling his skin-and-bone frame clatter against my gilt-edged breastplate. He screams at me, and his dehydrated spittle sticks against my cheeks.

I twist around, striking him on the shoulder with my closed fist. He crumples instantly, and something snaps under his skin. I follow up quickly, smoothly, drawing my pistol and cracking the grip across his temple.

He falls, out cold, scrawny limbs akimbo on the metal. Spots of blood mark his soiled uniform and drip onto the pressed-mesh floor. I am tempted to hit him again, just to discharge the shame I am already feeling, but I do not.

It is then that I see something on his neck, something I had missed before.

I stoop over him again, noting his trembling breaths and twitching fingers. Something is embedded in his flesh just below his shoulder-blade. The rough fabric of his jacket has come open, exposing grey, bone-stretched skin underneath. An angry weal disfigures it, raised and tight to the touch.

I probe gently, pressing gloved fingers on either side of the wound. The skin breaks and a foul swell of pus emerges. It is followed by a thin object, smooth like a pine-needle but triangular in shape, slightly curved and tapered, as long as my finger from knuckle to tip.

I withdraw it carefully. It has the look of a talon or a claw. Knowing where he has been, my first instinct is to destroy it, but something holds me back. I do not sense any corruption in it, and my sense for such things is usually good.

So I take it. I stow it in a capsule at my belt and pull away from the twisted body of Mattias Morbach. I regret that I allowed matters to get out of hand. He is scheduled for destruction; if I had more time, I might discover something of value.

I pull myself upright and dust myself down. A residual trace of mortal stink lingers on my fine apparel, a hazard of such dreary work. I turn, depressing the rune on my glove’s lining that will open the doors and allow me to leave the cell.

I am calm. The momentary exertion did not seriously trouble me. I have certainly experienced more taxing episodes when confined alone with a prisoner.

As I walk into the corridor outside, however, my belt feels heavy at my waist. This troubles me. I do not know why.

I walk quickly, heading up from the cell levels to the laboratoria. I go past dozens of locked doors, each one cut from unburnished metal and marked with a single number. The numbers are not in order: I pass 568, then 3458, then 998. Some numbers are missing entirely. Coteaz has his reasons for such a scheme. I do not know what it is, but then he is privy to esoteric knowledge that I am not.

The air remains humid. I hear the groans of the incarcerated. From lower down I hear the echoes of screams. Perhaps they are the result of prisoners’ nightmares, or perhaps the excruciation chambers are in use. Such sounds have been a part of my life since I arrived here five years ago; I barely notice them now.

I climb stone-cut stairs. Parchment scrolls hang from the walls, flaky with age. Each one has a benediction inscribed in High Gothic. The ink is brown. It is old blood.

At times I wonder if such theatricality is necessary, but Coteaz is one for the grand gesture.

‘I do nothing that is not needful,’ he once told me, his stern eyes shadowed by feathered ice-white eyebrows. ‘Nothing.’

And though I remain unsure about that, I trust him. I trust his knowledge, his commitment, his iron will. He inspires me as much as he scares me, which is, I suspect, exactly how he likes it.

I reach the level where the chirurgeons practise their trade. I pass through brightly lit chambers, each one lined with white tiles and harbouring arcane machinery. I see rows of coloured vials and racks of scalpels. I see half-dissected cadavers and strapped-down live subjects, their eyes bulging and fearful.

I keep walking until I find Chirurgeon-General Oskar Kieem. His apron is streaked with blood and his hands are pink from recently removed latex. He sits at his pedestal desk tapping on a data-slate. He does not look pleased to see me.

‘Damietta,’ he acknowledges, dipping his bald head.

I take the talon and show it to him. His eyebrow does not raise; he has no eyebrows. He has no hair of any kind.

‘What is this?’ he asks.

‘Embedded in a subject,’ I say. My voice is severe. Kieem is a proud man, and needs to be reminded who is in charge. ‘Why was it not detected during incoming quarantine?’

Kieem looks at it carefully. He tries to hide it, but I can see he is embarrassed. The wrinkled skin at his collar flushes a pale pink.

‘I do not know,’ he says. ‘We have had so many bodies to process. Perhaps–’

I do not let him finish.

‘Sloppy,’ I say. ‘I should report it.’

His flush grows.

‘Of course,’ he says.

‘Give me your expert judgement,’ I say, offering him a way out. ‘Is it tainted? Something I should worry about?’

He turns it over in the palm of his hand. Then he reaches down to a lead-lined drawer and takes out what looks like an array of spyglasses held together by a cage of metal. The brass rim has esoteric devices hammered into it, and I recognise wards against corruption engraved in the lenses. He adjusts dials and slides switches before looking at the talon through it. A soft green light bleeds out across his flesh. The machine hums. It smells of ammonia.

He studies it for some time before turning the device off. He hands the talon back to me.

‘I see nothing untoward,’ he says.

‘Then from an animal.’

‘Perhaps. If so, I do not know what kind. Beasts are not my speciality.’

I put the talon back in its capsule. I am relieved to find that it possesses no corrupt essence, but the mystery of its presence still remains.

‘I will make enquiries,’ I say, turning away from him.

‘And will you…’ he begins. ‘Will you report the failure?’

I do not answer. I keep walking, going back the way I came, leaving Kieem wondering. It will be useful to me to have him guessing for a while.

But he does not, in truth, matter much. My next appointment will be of more consequence.

‘No,’ says Coteaz.

I do not dare ask again, but I hesitate, just for moment, before acquiescing. That is rebellion enough.

In that minuscule pause, I look at his features as if for the first time. I see the scarred bald pate, the tanned skin as tough as flak-mesh, the immense shoulders with their ruffled, furred pelt standing proud. His armour is polished gold and his livery is blood-red. Even without it he would be broad-set and intimidating; within his timeworn plate he looks scarcely less imposing than an Angel of the Adeptus Astartes.

When he looks at me, it is as if he scrutinises me naked. I have many gifts and do not cow easily, but I cannot shake that belittling sensation. Of all his many powers, that is perhaps the most lethal and insidious: the capacity to make the mighty feel like children.

‘By your will, lord,’ I say, bowing my head.

Inquisitor Lord Torquemada Coteaz, High Protector of the Formosa Sector and Scourge of the Daemonic and Unclean, continues to look at me harshly.

‘You wish to object?’ he asks.

I do not. I wish for nothing but to escape his dominating presence. But I persist for a little while longer. I have been told I am a stubborn soul.

‘None of the others talked like he has,’ I say. ‘If I had a little more time, I might discover more.’

Coteaz does not look impressed. He places his heavy gauntlets together with a dull clink. Those hands have ended the lives of thousands. He moves them like a blacksmith might move his hands – heavily, deliberately, in the knowledge that they are the tools of his sacred craft.

‘Discover more, Inquisitor Damietta?’ he asks. ‘This is what we know of these fools. They formed themselves into an army called, fancifully, Creed’s Blade. They launched a suicide mission to the daemon world E678, which they call, fancifully, Voidsoul. Nearly all of them died. The few that survived are now mad or mute. Those who retain the use of their tongues rant only of their nightmares.’

As he speaks, he continues to stare at me with his dark eyes. I wonder exactly what horrors those eyes have seen.

‘We know that a daemon world is a world of nightmares,’ he says. ‘We do not need to be told it again in every detail.’

I swallow. There is little point in trying to hide my nerves.

‘Then what is the purpose of interrogating them?’ I ask.

Coteaz’s expression does not change. He does not smile, he does not frown. I have rarely seen his stony visage express anything other than imperious disdain.

‘One of them, one day, might tell us something we do not know,’ he says. ‘This one has not. He is broken. His usefulness is over.’

He towers over me. He keeps his killer’s hands clasped.

‘He will be annihilated, just as scheduled,’ he orders. ‘Now go. Sleep. Your next shift starts at dawn.’

This time I do not hesitate. He has indulged me more than I might have expected; I must not press my luck.

‘Yes, lord,’ I say, bowing in defeat.

I have never disobeyed him before, but this night I do so twice.

The first transgression is one of bodily weakness: I cannot sleep. I writhe in my bunk, feeling the sheets twist around me like fetters. It is too hot. The air is too still, too moist.

I open my eyes and push myself up. My vest is damp and clammy. In the darkness of my cell I see visions of another world. I see the vistas described to me by Morbach. I see a horizon of boiling blood, and brass-coloured plates of stone coating a core of angry magma. I see the sky screaming and men dying, hundreds at a time.

‘Lumen,’ I say, and the narrow chamber flickers into light.

I swing down from my bunk. I stumble to the wall-mounted ewer and splash water on my face. I dress, donning jodhpurs, a stiff tunic, boots and my cloak. I take my pistol. I do not take my armour – it would take an age to assemble, and I already feel time is pressing down on me.

I glance at the chrono above my bunk. It tells me that in four hours Morbach will be dead. As I watch the runes count down, I make the decision to disobey Coteaz for the second time.

The corridors outside are deserted and echoing. It is the deep of night, and the fortress interior is like a city of stacked tombs. I hurry along, feeling furtive and hunted. I have no need to feel this: I am an inquisitor with full licence to roam where I will.

But I cannot fool myself. I am doing this because a compulsion has been awakened in me. I am indulging that most base and trivial of sins: curiosity.

I reach Cell 7897. Morbach is lying where I left him, tangled and supine on the floor. I close the door behind me and crouch over him. His smell assails me again; it has got worse with time and confinement.

I withdraw a vial of combination adrenaline and locquazine from the casket array at my belt and load it into a syringe. I push the needle into Morbach’s withered arm, depress the plunger and wait for the results.

He awakens moments later, disorientated and shivering. I stay close, looming over him. I want him to be as scared of me as he is of his dreams.

‘Finish what you were saying,’ I order.

I see the confusion in his addled face, but he will not resist for long. The chem-mix already fizzing in his bloodstream will bring him to lucidity quickly. If he talked before, he will do so again.

‘Quickly,’ I say, feeding the word with a resonant threat-harmonic. ‘Speak quickly.’

He stares at me. He cannot tell where he is. Only when he starts speaking do I see that he is back on Voidsoul again. I doubt that he will ever truly leave.

‘Up on the ridge,’ he rasps. ‘They were coming up after us.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Keep talking.’

And the words spill out.

‘Dying, all of us dying. Fired my lasgun, aiming at something in the sea of teeth and horns. Don’t think I hit anything. Could we even hurt them? Don’t know. Didn’t see one fall. It had all been a mistake, a hellish mistake.’

His eyes swivel, as if scanning for targets. I watch him carefully. If he attacks me again, I will be prepared.

‘I saw one come for me. It bounded up the slope, bodies still in its claws. It saw me. It pounced. I could do nothing. Transfixed. It moved like men do in dreams – flickering, shifting, jerking. That was it. I was dead.’

Despite myself, I smile.

‘You were not dead,’ I say. ‘What happened?’

‘Don’t know,’ he says.

Then he smiles too. This time it is not wry; it is wistful. His face is transformed by it. He might almost pass for human again.

‘Don’t know what they were,’ he says. ‘One got me, grabbing my shoulder. The pain was terrible. Hurled away, right through the air as if I weighed nothing. Landed hard, nearly blacking out. Remember blood down the inside of my helm visor. Armour torn open.’

His smile lingers.

‘It had thrown me clear,’ he says.

‘What had?’

Morbach looks at me, his eyes drawing into focus.

‘One of the beasts,’ he says.

‘Beasts?’

‘In the armour of men. Massive, grey, howling. They were unstoppable. Brutal as the creatures that swarmed around us. They charged through the blood and smoke as if born to it. The monsters screamed back at them, but the beasts did not hesitate. The beasts could hurt them. They did hurt them. They made them yowl.’

He chuckles at the memory.

‘What were they?’ I ask again, pressing him. I remember the talon. I remember old myths, rumours, legends. I begin to wonder.

For a moment Morbach does not answer. He is lost in some reverie, a rare recollection of defiance amid a bloodsoaked swathe of shudder-cold memories.

‘Saw one of them clearly,’ he says, musingly. ‘The one who threw me? Maybe. Stood straighter than the others, like a man, but far greater. He carried an axe that glowed with blue fire. His beard was as grey as ash, long hair matted. He looked at me, just for a second. Eyes were mournful. Never seen a face so grim. So noble.’

Morbach’s smile fades.

‘Then he was gone, stalking off, his old cloak rippling in the wind.’ He looks down at his hands. They are still trembling. ‘Those of us still alive, a pitiful tally, we boarded the few landers that still remained. Remember clambering into the crew bay. My shoulder was agonising and inflamed, but I didn’t care. We got out. Limped back home. The rest you know.’

I am fascinated. Coteaz was wrong: this is something new. None of the others have given coherent accounts of what happened on Voidsoul. I see the conviction of truth in Morbach’s eyes, and wonder what else we can learn from him.

I struggle to contain my excitement. We have so few weapons against the daemonic. Since the ravaging of the Gate we are hard pressed. If allies exist, capable of cutting down the neverborn on their own cursed worlds, then we must learn more of them.

I get up.

‘Try to remember everything,’ I say. ‘Every detail: any symbols on their armour, any words they spoke. This is important. Your soul may yet be saved. I will return soon. While I am gone, try to remember.’

He looks at me strangely, confidently.

‘Do not fear for my soul,’ he says.

I slip out of the cell, taking care to lock the door as I leave. The space outside is empty and hung with shadows. I hasten down the corridor towards the stairway. I reach the spiral shaft and pick up the pace, taking the steps two at a time. I ascend one level, then another. As I climb, I activate the comms-stud at my collar.

‘A message for the Lord Inquisitor,’ I say, hurrying.

A servitor replies.

‘State nature of message.’

I curse. Coteaz is always busy, but time is short and I know he will be difficult to persuade.

‘Priority summons from Inquisitor Damietta. This will not–’

The lights blow.

Everything plummets into darkness. For a moment I am lost in shock. Then I regret the fact I do not have my armour-helm. I have no dark-vision and little protection. I draw my pistol and crouch low, listening.

I try to re-establish a comm-link, and get nothing but static. From far below I hear muffled bangs, like krak grenades going off.

My heart starts to race. I click the safety off and begin to move, creeping back down the stairs. I listen carefully, trying to make sense of what is happening. I hear movements from the levels below – doors slamming, more distant crashes, the echo of bootfalls. I try to gauge numbers, positions.

Then alert klaxons begin to sound. Emergency lighting flickers on, limning the corridors in blood-red. I spit another curse – my concentration broken – and start to move again.

I reach the corridor just above the level containing Morbach’s cell. It extends away from me, occluded despite the floor-level glow. Rows of locked doors line each side, intact and monolithic. The stairwell down is at the far end, a hundred metres distant. I barely make out its open aperture; just a black void amid the shadows.

I pad down the corridor. No noise emerges from any of the cells as I pass by; their inmates have barely enough life left in them to breathe, and if they have heard the disturbances then they will do nothing more than huddle against the far walls, eyes open and breath shallow.

I hear more noises from below – something like coarse snuffling, or maybe growling, breathy and hot. The hairs on the back of my arms rise. I smell cordite. I smell… other things: musty, bestial things.

I reach the spiral stairwell and edge downwards, keeping my pistol pointing ahead of me two-handed, going silently. My heart is thumping.

I reach the base. I am in a circular antechamber at the head of the cell corridor, less than ten metres in diameter. It is darker here, almost pitch black – something has happened to the emergency lumens. I can just make out the outline of the blast doors I need to pass through. They have been broken open and hang at angles from the frame. They are thick, those doors. Their edges are jagged, as if something has bitten into them.

I hesitate. For some reason, my nerves betray me. This shames me – I have seen combat on a dozen worlds against many foul creatures – but still I feel the cold touch of fear snaking down my spine.

It is then that I realise that I am not alone.

I turn, slowly, and see two points of light in the dark. They stare back at me, liquid and luminous. A vice of horror seizes my stomach.

I fire once, twice. My aim is not good – I am panicked. Two shells explode out and detonate in flashes of white against the far side of the chamber. In those two freeze-frames, stark and jagged with jolting movement, I glimpse fragmentary aspects of what lurks there.

I see something huge, far bigger than myself. I see armour pieces glinting, curved and lined with brass. I see a shaggy jowl, dripping with loops of saliva. I see yellow teeth pared back in a snarl, and ragged flails of pelts and leather. I see golden eyes, rimmed black and sunk into a bestial, hirsute face. I feel the rush of air as it leaps across me, veering effortlessly through my shots and bounding clear. Its stink overwhelms me, pungent and musky, before it is gone.

I shrink back, my arms shaking. It broke through the blast doors, shouldering the remains aside and crashing free.

Swallowing my fear down, I go after it. I clamber through the door-wreckage and out into the corridor beyond.

The space is silent. The aroma remains, cloying and potent, but I see no sign of its owner.

I edge forwards, sweeping the pistol muzzle gingerly. My heartbeat thuds heavily in my ears.

I reach Cell 7897. I already know what I will find. The doors are broken. The interior is deserted. No blood, no sign of struggle. Morbach is gone.

I look at the shattered doorway. It has been built to withstand immense impacts, but it has been ripped apart. I can see gouge marks on the steel, deep like stonemason’s grooves. I run my finger lightly along those marks. They come in fours, running parallel.

I remember Morbach’s last strange, confident look.

Do not fear for my soul.

I lower my weapon.

From deep down, buried in the heart of the fortress’s dungeons, I hear more noises – echoing, damp growls, hammer-blows, sporadic gunfire.

I make no move. I would not be fast enough. They have got what they came for. They are leaving now.

When Coteaz arrives I am still standing there, staring at the floor of Morbach’s cell. He is in full armour, as imposing as ever. The electric nimbus of his thunder hammer lights up the dark places, glossing them with a blush of gold.

He is furious. His face is tight with it. This is his place, ringed by hexagrammatic wards and layer upon layer of sentry walls. He had thought it inviolate. Even now, even after all that has taken place on Cadia, he still trusted in stone and metal to keep the bad dreams out.

‘What did you see?’ he demands.

I feel no fear of him this time. I am still unsettled by what I witnessed; beside that, Coteaz’s fury feels little more than mortal petulance.

‘I do not know,’ I say, truthfully.

He clenches a fist in frustration.

‘How can this be?’ he hisses, pacing around the cell.

He is as impatient as he is angry. He has nothing to fight. He has been humiliated, but he has no target to take his choler out on.

He turns to me again. He looks suspicious. I return his gaze equably.

‘All of those retrieved from Voidsoul,’ he says. ‘All of them. Gone. Their cells empty, no trace remaining. None of the others touched. How did they do it? Our grid has not been compromised.’

I have no answers. All I can see is the animal face in the dark – something like human, but so changed. I shudder to recall it.

As I think of something to say, we both freeze. A new noise has broken out, far away, beyond the perimeter of the fortress walls, audible even over the drone of the klaxons.

I listen, and it makes my blood run colder. Even Coteaz is stilled. I see his gauntlets grip the hammer-shaft more tightly.

They are howling out there. Out on the dark surface of the fortress-moon, under the hard, unmediated light of the stars, they are howling.

Coteaz scowls to hear it. The sound smacks of deviancy. If he could destroy those beasts, he would. I am sure he has already dispatched kill-teams to hunt them down, each one moving fast and armed to the teeth with forbidden weapons. I am equally sure that none of them will find anything but echoes.

I release the capsule at my belt and the talon falls into my palm. I look at it again, dull in the light of Coteaz’s metallic nimbus.

It is long, gnarled, old-looking. An animal’s, perhaps. Or maybe a man’s, his body changed by ancient arts of gene-sorcery, then tempered in the fires of daemon worlds. That is possible too.

I remember what Morbach said.

Stood straighter than the others, like a man, but far greater. He carried an axe that glowed with blue fire. His beard was as grey as ash, long hair matted. He looked at me, just for a second. Eyes were mournful. Never seen a face so grim. So noble.

‘So what were they?’ demands Coteaz.

I shake my head.

‘I do not think we will ever know,’ I say.

That is almost certainly not true. Archives will be scoured, leads hunted down. Coteaz is thorough. In time, he will at least have a name to pin on the creatures that broke into his interrogation chambers and took his subjects from him.

But I care little for that. As I listen to the last of the howls dying out and fading into silence, a new thought occurs to me.

They came for the ones who had witnessed them. They came for those who knew of their existence and had evidence that such half-breed things walked among men. No citadel of the Inquisition could keep them out.

I clutch the talon in my palm. I feel it dig into my softer flesh.

I have been told too much. I know too much. The after-echoes of the howls still linger, eerie and ephemeral.

Do not fear for my soul.

I let my curiosity get the better of me. I followed leads I should not have followed. I thought I was doing the hunting; perhaps that was a mistake.

They were unstoppable.

They came for him. They came for all of them.

And so I wonder then, remembering Morbach’s unexpected confidence, surrounded by claw-marks and emptiness, when they will come for me.

I don’t remember things well. Sometimes they come back to me. Sometimes, on the worst days, I don’t remember my own name.

I remember it right now: I am Tarolf. I have been Tarolf since I was born and the world’s sun shone upon me. I don’t know when that was. A long time ago, I reckon. Longer than some men live.

When I think like this, I remember the ice. I loved the ice. I loved the way it cracked and crunched when I was running. I can still smell the hides I wore on my shoulders. I wear hides on my shoulders now, but they smell of ash. My shoulders have changed too: they’re twice the size they were. I’d look like a monster now if I ever got back on the ice. I’d scare the Hel out of Two-bones and Ulfár if they saw me again.

Who are they, Two-bones and Ulfár? I’m not sure anymore. They must be dead. Or perhaps they were just dreams. I do dream about the ice – the way it shone wet when the sun was fierce – so maybe all of it was dreams.

Now I look down at what I’m doing. I know all about that. I’m good at my work. When I’m working, I neither dream nor forget, I just do. Pure. Careful. That’s what the priest reminds me, and it helps.

I cup the sacred piece of unfinished armour in my palm. It’s heavy, like a chunk of rock, even though in my big hands it doesn’t look heavy. I can’t remember what it’s made of. There’s a name, one I used to be able to say, but now I can never think what it is. It’s not steel, nor rock, nor heartstone. I just call it the piece. The others know what I mean.

So this is what I do. I use the anvil. I take the piece and I clamp it down in the vice. I wind the vice tight and sometimes the piece dents the iron edges, but you can’t damage the piece itself – it’s harder than granite. Then I smooth wax over the surface, a thick layer, wearing gloves to protect against the chem-burn. I take a long time over this. Once it took two days before it was done perfectly. When it’s smooth I like looking at it in the firelight. It’s soft like skin. Not my skin. Like a girl’s skin. Like I remember girls’ skin, anyway.

Then I take the engraving point, and I work. I work carefully. It can take weeks. Sometimes months. I don’t ever really know, because I get absorbed, and there’s no sun or moon down here – just fire and heat and men coming and going. They never look at me, not unless they want to bring me a new piece or take away a finished one. I don’t look at them much. I’m happy in my work.

I use the fine point, sharp as a fishhook. It’ll take your skin off if you slip, even mine. I bend over tight, my eyes as close as I can get them, tapping away at the wax. Tap, tap, tap. The sound is comforting. It reminds me I’m working, and I never think of the ice or the sun when I have work.

It can take months before I’m done. If I make a mistake I start again. There can be no mistakes on the finished piece: just one, even the smallest, and the magic will be weak. Once I had to start from the beginning, taking the piece back to the forge-heart and the priests deep in the mountain. They beat me for that, but I knew I had been right to do it even as the blood ran down my back.

Had I not failed, had I become what I had dreamed of becoming, I would not have wanted to wear armour that had a mistake in it. I think about those who succeeded and I want it to be the best even though I will never wear it like I wished to a long time ago.

So I work the wax and make the sacred images, and I trace the old lines and the curves and the knots. I make wyrms and wolf-heads and drake-wings. I do not make runes. Only the priests make runes, and they bind powerful magic when they do. I would like to watch them do that, and see how those shapes are burned on to the armour, but I know that it is secret for a reason.

When the shapes are made through the wax, I get the acid. I bring it in the cauldron and I spill it onto the piece in the vice. It hisses like snakes as it burns. I have to be careful: too much and the piece will be ruined, too little and places are missed. I have to hurry then, to smear it off before it dissolves into the anvil and makes the iron weak.

I got acid on my hand once. It burned through the glove. That is why I have three fingers on my left hand now, but I am lucky that I carve the shapes with my right and can still serve. I am more careful now than I was before. It was a good lesson.

When the acid is gone, I unwind the vice and chip the wax from the surface of the piece. I polish the surface with steel wool and rinse it with water. I pour oil over it, watching as it runs down the lines I have made. Sometimes I just hold the piece up, turning it in the firelight, seeing what I have done. I know when I do this that it will be the last time I ever see it, and that thought sometimes makes my stomach sick.

I take up a cloth and wrap the piece carefully. I walk to the priest and I kneel before him, offering it up, my head bowed. He inspects it. He can inspect it, sometimes, for an hour. Sometimes he sends me back. Most times he takes it. That makes me proud. Now that I have been doing this for a long time, he normally takes it. I have become useful, which on most occasions makes the sickness go away.

The last time I went, I saw them fitting the piece I had made. It was the only time I ever saw it happen. They clustered around a Sky Warrior with flame-red hair and smooth skin. He wore the rest of his armour, and it was new and unmarked. Only the piece I had made remained to be fitted. The priest took it to him and the tech-slaves drilled it in. They fixed it at his knee, between the bigger plates over his left leg. That made him complete.

I should have left then. I knew I should have left. But I stayed for just a moment. I saw the Sky Warrior standing there, and I thought back to when I did the tests and how close I came. I remembered how they had made my body stronger. I remembered how painful it was when I failed, and how I thought I would die. That made my stomach sick again. I remembered how I had wanted to die, and I wished they had let me.

But then the Sky Warrior looked at me, and he saw that I had made the piece. He nodded, once. Then he turned his face away from me, and they kept drilling. The priest noticed me standing there and I was taken away. They took me back down to the forges. They took me to the anvil and gave me a new piece to work on, one with no marks on it.

So now I look down at what I’m doing. I know all about that. I’m good at my work. When I’m working, I neither dream nor forget, I just do. Pure. Careful. That’s what the priest reminds me, and it helps.

I still get sick sometimes. Sometimes I don’t sleep, or I remember things I don’t want to remember.

But I have one dream that I like. I see the Sky Warriors in the sea of stars. I see them fighting. I see them wearing their armour. Some of them bear the marks that I made. Like everything they wear, the marks are perfect. Thousands like me have worked in the forges, cutting and crafting. The Sky Warriors do not know it. They do not have to know it. It is enough that they are served.

When I wake from that dream, I am content. I still remember that I once failed, but I also remember that I can still serve. That is the reward: I still serve.

I do not know how long I have been down here, in the dark and the flames. I do not know how long I will stay here. Maybe forever. Maybe until the end of the world.

I don’t remember things well. I am Tarolf, and once I loved the ice.

I wish I could fight. That was what I dreamed of.

But Sky Warriors do, and I help them. Sometimes that feels like enough.

Finnvid limped over to the fire circle, feeling the blood on his skin scab over. He was bone-weary, just like they all were, but the feeling was a good one. The fighting had been the way he liked it and the outcome had given honour to the Chapter.

His snow-grey armour was covered in salt-dust from Moreal’s Great Flat. All his brothers were crusted with it too, caked in a sparkling rime that caught the dying light of a red giant sun. As the battle had gone on, hour after hour, the crystals had turned into bloody rubies, kicked up by armoured boots and trodden back into the mire below.

They were singing now, celebrating their victory with weary, cracking voices. The banner of Russ was hoisted over the flat, hanging stiffly in a weak breeze. Landers bearing the livery of the Great Companies thundered down from orbit to carry the fallen back to Fenris and resupply those still on the surface. A hundred fires had been lit amidst the emptiness, each one a home to tight huddles of warriors just as weary as Finnvid.

He sank to the ground, feeling his armour-joints resist. He’d taken a battering – they all had. Daemon-kind had been among the fallen hordes, as foul and hard-dying as ever. Grimnar had sent a quarter-strength of the Chapter to expunge the taint from Moreal, and even that had barely sufficed.

One warrior had made the difference in the end. Just one amidst so many.

‘Skjald,’ acknowledged Guthorm.

Finnvid nodded, twisting his helm from his head and running his gauntlet through sweat-slicked hair. ‘Hel,’ he said. ‘Hard work.’

Guthorm grinned, exposing bloody fangs. He’d taken a deep wound across the forehead, bisecting his helm and driving deep into his scalp. He’d stitched it up himself before going back into battle, helm-less and raging with black wire still hanging from the tattered edges.

‘Tell us, then,’ Guthorm said.

‘Now?’

The rest of the warriors around the fire-pit nodded. They were all carrying wounds. The packs had been thinned, and empty spaces stood around the flames like gaps in a jawline.

‘You were there,’ said Guthorm.

‘I was,’ said Finnvid.

‘Then tell us.’

Finnvid looked at the faces. They were drawn, fatigued, heady with the fast-fading flush of victory. Daemon-kind were a strenuous test even for Sky Warriors. They deserved a saga, a tale to get their blood flowing again.

‘He was dropped into the heart of it,’ Finnvid said, trying his best to set it up. ‘His pod was so big I thought he’d crack the world’s crust.’

A ripple of hoarse chuckling. They’d all seen it come down too, hurled like a fiery spear into the heart of the fighting. They’d all cheered then, knowing the end would come swiftly.

‘I was up on the front, readying to storm into the core, lined up with Thrordric’s warriors. We’d spat our vows out and readied for death. My hearts were pumping. You all saw how big the beast was. All I wished for was to bury my axe into its chest before it ended me. I tensed for the order. It would have been a good way to go.’

Finnvid reflected for a moment. It would have been glorious. The daemon had been colossal, a prize worth a hundred deaths to bring down.

‘Blood-red skin,’ he said, remembering the way it had looked. ‘Horns in a crown, an axe of burning iron, wings like a shroud of Morkai.’ He drew in a wry breath. ‘It was good that the Fell-Handed came when he did. No other could have stood against it.’

For once, there were no smirks of dissension from the others, no one claiming they would have hurled it to the ground quicker.

‘How did he fight?’ came the question, spilling from more than one mouth.

Finnvid hadn’t enjoyed witnessing it. A Dreadnought was a strange thing in battle – slow, brutal, grinding, wreathed in smoke and smog, a mockery of post-human splendour.

‘Like the Fang,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Like the Mountain. He endured it all. Such… punishment.’ He felt himself getting maudlin and forced a smile. ‘Indestructible. By the end, he was just clawing it open.’

The others liked that. They liked to hear that Bjorn had dominated, just as he always had. There were some certainties in the universe worth clinging to – that was one of them.

‘Tell us more,’ they said.

Finnvid shook his head. ‘There isn’t any more.’

‘Tell us.’

‘I don’t remember.’

Guthorm looked at him darkly. ‘You’re the skjald. Tell us.’

It was hard to resist an order from Guthorm. In any case, why should they not know? Perhaps it was best shared.

‘I was close by then,’ Finnvid said eventually. ‘When the creature was killed. I heard them speaking.’

‘They… spoke?’ asked Guthorm.

‘They knew each other.’

That silenced them. Finnvid shook his head. It sounded incredible to him now, but it was the truth. He always spoke the truth.

‘Right at the kill, it was laughing,’ he said. ‘The Fell-Handed was tearing it apart, and it was just laughing. It said: I know you. I fought you when you were the fastest of your kind. I fought you when your mortal claw could reach around my throat. Do you remember? What remains of that claw now?’

The warriors stayed silent. They were rapt, hanging on Finnvid’s words.

‘The Fell-Handed did not reply. The creature kept talking. We are eternal. You know that now? Has the lesson finally been hammered home? We come back. We are unchanged. Your triumphs are temporary. A little pain, a flash of time, but we return. Look at you now!’

Finnvid had no trouble recalling the words. It was as if they had been seared onto his mind.

‘You called out names the last time. Do you remember them? I do. Tell them to me again. Tell me the names of those I killed.’

Guthorm stared at him through the flames, his wound looking black and angry. ‘Did he?’

Finnvid nodded. ‘The Fell-Handed spoke. He was still fighting, and he spoke. Russ, but that voice. Like something out of the sagas. I could barely understand the accent. It was like a dream coming alive. He reeled off a name every time he struck a blow. Alvi. Byrnjolf. Eirik. Gunnald Shieldbearer. Hiorvard.’

‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know. But then came the strange thing.’ Finnvid hesitated. ‘He couldn’t remember the last one. There was one more, but he couldn’t get it. The daemon laughed at him. I remember, it said. I will always remember. And when you are gone, I will be the only one who remembers. Think on that. If the Fell-Handed had been angry before, he fought like a baresark after that. He just piled on the pain. Hjolda, but I’ve never seen anything like it. The thing was still laughing when it died. Bjorn didn’t stop. He burned the whole carcass to ashes. He was still burning it when the battle fell away and we were given the order to stand down. Who was going to tell him to stop?’

Finnvid tried to smile at the others, to lift their spirits, but the story had made them uneasy, just as he’d feared it would.

‘How did it finish?’ asked Guthorm.

‘I saw him leave,’ said Finnvid. ‘The lander came down with its escorts. They had six priests waiting to usher him back. He stomped right past me, close as you are, covered in blood. Everyone fell back.’

Finnvid clasped his hands before him, slumping forward on his elbows. The fire didn’t do much to warm him.

‘He was still trying to get it. I heard him. He couldn’t remember. They took him up into the hold and he ignored them all.’

The fire crackled away, spitting into the gathering night.

‘He’s gone now,’ said Finnvid. ‘Back to the Mountain. Perhaps he’ll remember in there.’ As he spoke, he thought of it – the vaults in the deep core of Fenris, silent and frozen, lined with the tombs of the Revered Fallen. He didn’t like to think of the ancient warrior being hoisted down into the dark, still muttering over old memories that faded like the light in midwinter. He raised a smile again, a cracked one that exposed his fangs. ‘But he won! That’s the main thing. The Rout victorious. Heidur Rus!’

They all echoed the cry, but after that they didn’t ask him to tell them any more. Guthorm looked preoccupied.

Finnvid stared into the fire again. The flames were beginning to ebb but no one reached for more fuel. He wondered if he’d done the right thing. It suited them all to believe that the Fell-Handed would go on forever. Perhaps they needed to believe it.

What must it be like? he thought. He has seen the stars themselves grow old. He has walked with the Allfather. He can be forgiven a lapse after ten thousand years.

A cold wind moaned across the flat, skirling over the huddled groups of armoured warriors. The songs of victory sounded thinner as their muscles cooled.

But he will remember. The memory will return.

Far to the north, the corpse of the daemon crisped and spat, consumed by the stacked pyre and rendered down to ashes.

He will remember.

Then the last of the flames flickered out, leaving only coils of drifting smoke above the coals.

It was by the shell of Phalakan Academy’s debating hall that the pack got their first sight of their quarry. The aliens wore outlandish colours that shifted and bled into one another, infuriating eyes that refused to focus on them. They moved with flips and pirouettes, always dancing, even as the picked their way across the cratered courtyard and into the cover of the shattered hall.

‘How many do you count?’ asked Pack Leader Hengild.

Brother Tanngjost, the squad’s veteran, squinted through the magnocular he held to his eye. The five members of the Space Wolves pack, along with Rune Priest Ulli Iceclaw, had taken up a position downwind of the aliens. Among the orreries and star maps of the academy’s observatory they had a good view of the likely angles of approach.

‘Tough to tell,’ replied Tanngjost. ‘The xenos keep dancing around. How is that any way to fight a war?’

‘Best guess, Tanngjost,’ said Hengild. Where the pack might squabble and banter, Hengild was always curt and to the point.

‘No more than ten,’ replied Tanngjost.

‘Less than two each,’ said Brother Saerhimnar with mock sadness. ‘And there I was hoping this would be fun.’

‘One of them is a witch,’ said the Rune Priest. He was quiet and rarely spoke out, quite unlike the rest of Hengild’s pack, who would feast and revel in the Great Hall of the Fang until the Wolf Priests had to stop them brawling.

‘Can you be sure?’ asked Hengild.

‘I can smell it,’ said Ulli, which to a Space Wolf meant certainty.

‘You may have to deal with that then, Rune Priest,’ said Hengild. ‘We can move through the southern cloister and hit them before they have a bearing on this place. We have scouted it first and know the ground, and they do not. Let us turn that advantage into a heap of alien dead. Pack Hengild, are you for the hunt?’

‘I never knew a day when I was not!’ replied Brother Forgan, who carried the pack’s heavy bolter. His head had been left hairless and scorched by an eldar plasma grenade during the Phalakan campaign’s first exchanges.

‘Then, Forgan, take to the roof of the south cloister. The rest, with me. We will show them what happens when warriors fight dancers!’

The debating hall had once been a dome of stone and hardwood, but now it had a huge bite mark torn out of its roof. The faces of this world’s demagogues and politicians looked down at the speaker’s podium and the two hundred other statues that filled the debating floor, arranged as if listening intently. The students who had learned the way of Phalakan’s politics here had been expected to speak with passion even when the only ears listening were carved from stone.

Tanngjost prowled forward, his bolter, Frejya, in one hand, combat knife in the other. The alien stink was overpowering here, a heavy sour perfume that reeked of arrogance and inhumanity. It was the stench of the eldar. Tanngjost knew it well.

The pack circled into position to pounce. The eldar troupe processed in a circle around the centre podium. The troupe’s leader observed the ritual through a featureless faceplate without eyepieces. The rest of the alien was hidden in a hooded cloak coloured with checks of purple, white and yellow, and it held a tall, thin spear of silver. It was the witch, the one Ulli had sniffed out from across the academy.

‘Go for the throat,’ voxed Pack Leader Hengild.

Tanngjost leapt from cover. The closest alien wore yellow and red that rippled around its body as it moved. Beneath the shimmer was the hint of slender limbs and lean muscle, and a face mask the colour of bone. On the back of one hand was a stabbing weapon that ended in a sharpened tube, more of an oversized syringe than a blade.

Tanngjost’s combat knife stabbed down, aiming at the joint of neck and shoulder where a good thrust could plunge the blade down through bone, muscle, lung and heart.

The knife passed through nothing. The alien’s body was not where it should have been, its outline refracted and broken up by the field of shimmering colour around it.

Tanngjost landed and crouched, ready to drive his blade upwards. But the eldar flipped over his head, an impossible leap. His instinct told him that stabbing weapon would be aimed at his back and he spun, catching the outthrust arm of the eldar in the elbow of his bolter arm.

The eldar weapon spat an expanding spiral of silver wire. Where the filaments touched Tanngjost’s face he felt thin coils of pain. It was monomolecular, as thin as the edge of Tanngjost’s own knife. Adrenaline hammered through his twin hearts and kept the pain from compromising his body, but he knew when this fight was done it would hit him hard.

If he survived. The eldar was quicker than him, and through the storm of colour he could not make out any body parts to strike at.

Across the debating hall, the rest of the pack had leapt in for the kill. The eldar had been ready for them, reacting with a speed that even a Space Marine could not match. One had sliced off Brother Vinnjar’s hand with a long curved sword the colour of molten silver. Another had pirouetted out of Hengild’s way and sent the pack leader crashing into a statue to sprawl on the ground in a mass of shattered stone limbs.

The leader, the witch, rose off the floor, arms outstretched. Darkness and light flickered around it. Rune Priest Ulli ran at it, the sigils on his rune axe glowing white hot. The witch’s spear caught fire and the alien spun it in an arc. The attack was a feint – the witch made a gesture and lifted Brother Gildas off his feet with psychic force.

The aliens were ready. And they were fast. Too fast.

The alien next to Tanngjost stabbed again – Tanngjost dodged to one side but the alien followed up with a crescent kick that caught him on the temple and sent him reeling. It was instinct, again, that made him bring Frejya up and spray a volley of shots on full-auto in the direction of the eldar. The alien spun and flipped out of the path of the bullets, and fragments of colour shattered in every direction. The shots had not hit, but Tanngjost had known they wouldn’t – they had bought him a moment when the eldar was evading the bolter shells and not trying to kill him.

At the centre of the hall, Brother Gildas was thrown down onto the upstretched arm of a statue with enough strength to force the stone hand through his lower back and out through his stomach. Gildas’s head flopped back, his spine ruptured.

Ulli jumped at the witch, his axe drawn back to decapitate. Crackling blue lightning flared around him as the witch tried to earth a bolt of psychic energy through the Rune Priest’s body. The psychic circuits of Ulli’s power armour glowed cherry red with heat as they absorbed the force and Ulli pushed it back with his own mind, a flaming shield of power flaring around his head.

The witch cracked Ulli in the side of the head with the butt of its spear. Ulli held his ground but the witch, floating a metre above him now, had him reeling.

Chains of fire slammed down from above. Brother Forgan’s heavy bolter blasted a volley of shots into the melee. The speed and fury of the Space Wolves assault had not won the fight in the first seconds, and now they needed covering fire to regroup.

One eldar was dead. Its body lay draped over a statue, the colour field around it flickering out to reveal a deep wound across its chest, cutting through the layers of multi-hued fabric. Tanngjost saw that its mask was featureless save for a single triangular eyepiece.

The eldar that Tanngjost had been fighting dived out of the way of a trio of shots that slammed into the statue beside it. Tanngjost felt the shrapnel pinging across his face and armour. He dived for Ulli, who was about to be transfixed to the floor by the witch’s spear. The pair of Space Wolves tumbled away from the witch as another volley of shots hammered down.

‘To the cloister!’ voxed Hengild. ‘Regroup and face them in the narrows! Go! Go!’

A good plan. The cloister was a passageway between the debating hall and the academy’s museum. In the narrow confines, bolter fire might trump the eldar’s acrobatics.

Tanngjost ran for the doorway, firing as he went. He knew he was unlikely to hit anything, but it was enough to keep the aliens somersaulting out of his line of fire while the Space Wolves broke off. In the bedlam he spotted Pack Leader Hengild engage with one of the eldar who dropped down in front of him, twin blades flashing.

The pack leader parried one blade, turned the other with his shoulder guard and thrust his chainsword through the alien’s throat. The eldar’s head came away as the chain-teeth chewed through clavicle and spine. Another eldar dropped behind the pack leader and plunged its stabbing weapon into Hengild’s back.

It was the same type of weapon that had almost killed Tanngjost, the one that fired a spray of monofilament wire. Hengild’s face went slack as the wire unravelled inside him, shredding his internal organs. Hengild dropped to his knees and his eyes filled up with blood.

‘Hengild is down,’ voxed Tanngjost as he ran. ‘Pack leader down.’

The survivors reached the doorway: Tanngjost and Rune Priest Ulli, Saerhimnar, and the wounded Vinnjar. Brother Forgan crashed down a stairway beyond, heavy bolter smoking in his hands.

The eldar did not follow. One of them propped Hengild’s corpse up against the central podium and, with a blade of humming crystal, cut through the seal that ran down the side of his breastplate. It took only a handful of seconds to pull the breastplate away and reveal Hengild’s chest, criss-crossed with surgical scars. The eldar had done this before.

The witch thrust his spear through Hengild’s chest. In response, the eldar danced and spun, a riot of colours surrounding the scene like a storm of stained glass.

‘Tanngjost?’ asked Vinnjar, who was leaning against the wall and holding the stump of his wrist to stem the bleeding.

Tanngjost was the most senior member of the squad now. It was his choice how they fought next. They could charge back in to recover their dead, and die themselves. It would be heroic, but the life of a Space Marine was not something to be wasted with a gesture.

‘Fall back to the arboretum,’ voxed Tanngjost. ‘Good order. Keep firing. We will be back for our brothers, and Fenris’s fury will come with us.’

The Phalakan Academy had once been the forge of a planet’s rulers, where the oligarchy had trained their offspring for politics, war and leadership. It had been a world of rigid social order where one’s status and responsibilities were determined by birth and changed only by rewards for great service or punishments for great crimes. For a world to have survived so long without its society collapsing was admirable, and the Imperium had taken many drafts of able Imperial Navy and Guard officers from its ruling classes.

The planet’s society had then decayed as quickly as unharvested fruit. Whole social strata became isolated and debased, with caste inbreeding resulting in mutants who had no place in any civilisation. Rebellion and discord ruled. Then the eldar had come for Phalakan, though for what reason, no Imperial mind could divine. It was possible the eldar had been involved in the world’s decline, but plenty of planets in the Imperium had managed such a fall on their own.

The Phalakan Academy stood as testament to the order and structure the planet’s society had once boasted. The oligarchs had preserved it as a symbol of their superiority and their right to rule. The eldar had bombed it from orbit in the battle’s early stages, striking against a symbol that might help unite the fractured society against the aliens. The arboretum had suffered more than most parts of the Academy complex. The glass domes and vaults had been shattered and the massive trunks of ancient trees torn down. The result was an ugly tangle where once there had been a beautiful artificial forest for relaxation and contemplation. It was difficult ground to fight over, as dense as a death world jungle, and perfect for Space Marines to defend.

‘I saw its mind,’ said Ulli, as he crouched by a fallen tree trunk to keep watch.

Tanngjost sat nearby, checking the workings of his bolter. ‘The witch?’

‘It was only for a moment,’ said Ulli. ‘And it was not like a human mind. Even corrupted, a human mind still has enough humanity in it to navigate. This was alien, but… but I think I know why they are here.’

‘To sabotage behind our lines?’ asked Tanngjost. ‘To spy on our forces?’

Ulli shook his head. ‘For the dance,’ he said.

‘The dance?’ asked Brother Vinnjar. ‘What warrior goes to war to dance? What kind of insult is that? I feel it almost as keenly as this.’ He held up the sheared-off stump of his wrist. The blood had dried to a thick, dark red crust and stopped flowing, but the pain was still written on his face.

‘It is a ritual,’ continued Ulli. ‘They play the role of executioners, and their prey is the victim. At the climax of the dance, the victim is executed with a single thrust to the heart. That was what we saw them do to Hengild, but he was already dead and I felt their disappointment that the dance had not been perfect. They are searching for a victim to play that part and they cannot return to join the war until they find him.’

‘And for this I lost my hand,’ growled Vinnjar.

‘This would be a better galaxy if everyone fought as we do!’ said Brother Forgan. ‘With honest fury, like the ghosts of Kjaalhalla. We fight to win and to glorify the name of Leman Russ, not to tell a story!’

‘Recall, Brother Forgan,’ said Tanngjost, ‘the lessons Russ taught us. War is not just headlong fury, though it is best when it is. Sometimes we must take whatever the enemy gives us and turn it against him. We are outnumbered and these aliens surpass all others of their kind in skill, so if we fight them head-on we will be lost. That would be a poor memorial for Hengild and Gildas. Think on what these eldar have given us to use against them. Their leader’s mind was unguarded for a second, and now we know what they want.’

‘Then what do you plan to do, Brother Tanngjost?’ asked Vinnjar.

‘Forgan here says we do not make war to tell a story,’ said Tanngjost. ‘But I do not think that is always true.’

The eldar had remained in the debating hall, where the blood of Hengild and Gildas had dried on the statues. They were surrounded by spinning fractals of light as they ran through the endlessly complex steps of their dance. The witch hung in the air between them, hands outstretched, watching the dance unfold.

The witch cocked its head to the side as a howl echoed through Phalakan Academy. It was a sound both mournful and furious, a challenge to a fight and a mourning cry for the dead.

The witch gestured and the eldar halted in their dance. This was a turning point in the story, the executioner’s tale, the tale that needed only a victim to be complete. The witch drifted to the floor and led the eldar out of the debating hall, towards the sound of the Space Wolf’s howl.

Soon the dance would be finished, and the gods of the eldar would bless the war for Phalakan.

Tanngjost stood alone in the academy’s museum, keening out the last seconds of his howl. When he was finished, he hung his head and drew in long measured breaths, settling into a state of calm and vigilance before the fight.

The museum was a monument to the ruling class of Phalakan. It was a desperate illustration of their superiority, as if it could halt the slide of the planet into anarchy. There was something tragic among the displays of heraldic weaponry and preserved warhorses, the sceptres and crowns and the skulls of beasts slain by young princes. Perhaps someone could spend enough time here among the sham finery to believe that Phalakan’s aristocracy still had some meaning, but that belief would be dispelled the instant they walked out into the real Phalakan.

The museum had escaped the worst of the bombardment. A corner of the ceiling had fallen in, scattering a display of ancient armour across the floor, but aside from that the displays were intact. Tanngjost stood in the centre of the great hall, with a glass case of tarnished gold jewellery on one side and the stuffed corpse of an enormous elk-like beast on the other.

The eldar approached warily, shifting between cover so quickly they had no outline, just sprays of broken light. They flipped and rolled around the edge of the room, keeping their distance from Tanngjost as they moved to surround him. Tanngjost stared straight ahead at the alien witch, who hovered in the doorway. The Space Wolf was armed with his bolter and twin combat knives, both holstered.

‘You have a story to tell,’ said Tanngjost. ‘So do we. What you do with your dance, we do with the sagas of our forefathers. For every Space Wolf of the Fang there are a hundred thousand warriors of Fenris, warring to become the hero of their own saga. What eldar has done what King Skjelmagor did, among the fjords of the Sea of Serpents? What war dance encompasses his glory and ferocity? And yet he is but one of a million tales I could tell, all recorded among the stones of their cairns, or in the memories of the thralls who recount their deeds!’

The eldar had completely surrounded Tanngjost now, forming a circle around him. If they understood his words they made no indication of it. The witch stayed in the doorway, perhaps listening, perhaps sizing up the Space Wolf to play the part of the victim.

‘Skjelmagor was a boon to his friends and a bane to his foes,’ continued Tanngjost. Still he had not drawn his bolter Frejya or his combat knives. ‘Many there were like him, but he is the one of whom I shall speak. A king of his people, he wandered the coasts of the Sea of Serpents, fighting the sea raiders and the nomad tribes for survival. And yet the serpents themselves were the greatest foe, vast beasts from the deep oceans of Fenris, and they would beach themselves to have their fill of any soul in their way. Skjelmagor looked upon his people, on his sword and shield, and cried, “What does it matter that I spend my days red to the elbow in battle if the beasts of the Sea of Serpents will always mock me as a greater conquest than any man?”’

It was an old story, one that every Space Wolf and thrall knew. It was one of many, for there were indeed countless tales of battle and glory bandied about in the Great Hall of the Fang. But Tanngjost himself had told it often, for it was his favourite.

‘Thus did Skjelmagor speak,’ continued Tanngjost. ‘And he took his sword and shield and walked upon the fjords until he came upon a great rock that leaned out into the ocean, as if daring the waves to smash it down. His people pleaded with him to return and his wife said she would hurl herself into the sea if he continued with this folly. But Skjelmagor listened not! Conquest and glory meant more to him than any soul, even those whom he loved and who loved him.’

The witch drifted a little closer. The spear in its hand glittered, so the long spike of its tip seemed to be on fire.

‘The serpent rose from the deep. Its maw was as wide as a longboat is long. Its teeth were as tall as the oaks of the Icencleft Valley. It had a hundred eyes and its tongue was another serpent still, writhing and hissing from between its jaws. It opened those jaws wide, and with a single gulp swallowed up Skjelmagor and the rock on which he stood, and half the water that swirled in that fjord! The people who had lost their king howled and wept. His wife screamed and tore at her hair, and swore she would skin the serpent alive with her nails or die trying.

‘But even as the serpent turned its massive head to the people watching on the shore, its eyes rolled back and its mouth lolled open. It reared up, just once, so those watching could see the long expanse of its barnacle-covered belly, studded with shipwrecks and the bones of long-drowned men. And then it crashed back down upon the shore, coughed up a flood of seawater, and died! And when the people of King Skjelmagor came to butcher the serpent to make their spears from its bones and their shields from its hide, they found the sword of King Skjelmagor still embedded in its brain. That is the saga of King Skjelmagor, and how he came to slay the beast of the fjords.’

Tanngjost drew his combat knives and threw them to the floor. He did the same with Frejya. ‘I have told my tale,’ he said, still looking up into the witch’s featureless face. ‘Now it is time for you to tell yours.’

Tanngjost undid the clasps beneath his shoulder guards and shrugged them off. His gauntlets and the plating around his arms went next. Finally he unfastened his breastplate, and as he pulled it away the many cables and neural jacks came free. He stood unarmoured from the waist up, segments of his power armour lying on the floor around him. All Tanngjost’s battles were written across his chest and back – the puckered skin of bullet wounds, the raised dark red lines of blade scars, and the gnarled stretches of burns from flame and acid. The new wounds on his face were at home with the old. Beneath the wounds of war were the scars of his surgery, where a lifetime ago he had been cut open and implanted with the organs that turned a man into a Space Marine.

The eldar closed the circle. The witch hovered in front of Tanngjost and took its spear in both hands. The eldar had propped up Hengild’s body on its knees – Tanngjost adopted the same position now, kneeling on the floor among his discarded arms.

The witch drew back the spear. The eldar danced with inhuman elegance, the circle around Tanngjost becoming a ring of multicoloured light. The xenos threw back their heads as the spear arrowed downwards.

It punched into Tanngjost’s chest, a strike precisely through the centre of the heart. It emerged through his back, the cut so clean there was no blood on the silvered tip.

The witch raised its arms and the eldar kneeled before it, the victim despatched, the dance finally completed.

Tanngjost’s hand dangled by his side. His fingers brushed the hilt of the combat knife on the floor beside him.

The dance was done and the eldar took a second to bask in the glory their tale had brought to the gods. This was a sacred work that was rarely completed so perfectly. The aliens allowed their guard to fall, just for a moment, for now their battle was finished.

Tanngjost’s hand closed around the knife. His eyes opened. He planted a foot on the ground and lunged at the witch.

The eldar knew much, for they were an ancient race and they had seen the history of the galaxy unfold. But they did not know everything. They knew that the Space Wolves were valiant and relentless foes, and that for one to play the part of the victim in their dance was the best possible omen. But they did not know what went on inside Tanngjost’s chest, about the extra organs implanted in him to make him more than a man.

They did not know that he had two hearts, and that the witch’s aim with the spear was so perfect it was guaranteed to impale him through only one.

Tanngjost moved faster than the witch could think. His teeth were bared and his eyes wild as he rammed the blade of the combat knife into the underside of the witch’s jaw, punching through the faceless mask and forcing the tip up through the roof of the mouth and into the alien’s brain.

The seconds that followed happened in slow motion. Adrenaline flooded Tanngjosts’s system as his body compensated for the loss of his primary heart. He tore the knife free with one hand as he slid the spear from his body with the other. The dead witch had not hit the ground when he spun around to face the eldar leaping at him for revenge.

He grinned at them, his teeth flecked with his own blood.

The eldar cared for nothing but to kill the human who had dared to defile their dance by breaking from the character of the victim. For the second time in as many heartbeats, they let their guard down.

Beneath the museum were the storerooms where exhibits were cleaned and stored, an endless dusty warren of forgotten heirlooms awaiting restoration that would never come. Into this warren had crept the Space Wolves of Pack Hengild, who wired their remaining grenades to the ceiling. Explosions stuttered through the museum, shattering glass and throwing fragments of ancient armour everywhere as sections of the floor were torn up and the Space Wolves attacked from below.

Saerhimnar leapt out first. He smashed his axe into the back of the nearest eldar’s skull so hard that the weapon’s haft broke, leaving the head embedded in the eldar so deep the alien was split in half almost to the waist.

Brother Vinnjar fired his bolter with his remaining hand, bracing the weapon in the crook of his elbow. Three shots slammed into another eldar’s torso, ripping it wide open.

Ulli Iceclaw vaulted onto the museum floor and tackled another eldar to the floor. With the same motion he brought his rune axe down into its body and with a burst of psychic will, tore the alien’s soul away.

The eldar’s numbers were cut in half. Tanngjost killed another, impaling one through the abdomen with the witch’s spear. The silver burned angrily in his hand, but he barely felt it.

Brother Forgan hauled his heavy bolter out through the gap blasted in the museum floor. One of the eldar was on him in a storm of colour before he could bring the weapon to bear – he clubbed with it instead and the eldar wrenched it from his grasp with a motion more like a pirouette than a wrestler’s hold. Forgan grabbed the eldar around the waist and forced it down onto the floor as Saerhimnar snatched up the heavy bolter and rattled off half its ammunition belt into the eldar still bearing down on Tanngjost.

The fight lasted a handful of seconds, but afterwards Tanngjost could recall every move, every drop of blood and every spent bolter shell. The eldar who did not die in the first few seconds fought back, but with the witch dead and half their number gone the Space Wolves had them reeling. Their colour fields bought them a few more moments as they evaded the Space Wolves bolter fire, but they no longer had the numbers or the alien witch to turn the tide in their favour.

It was the last lesson learned at Phalakan Academy: even the eldar could not dance forever.

Tanngjost led the pack through the playing fields of Phalakan Academy, where the planet’s future rulers would learn to hunt and duel amongst the forest groves and rolling grassland. Now it was speckled with craters, the follies and summer houses in ruins.

They hunted by scent.

‘He cannot hide his stink,’ said Saerhimnar as he followed the trail along the shore of an ornamental lake. He carried the pack’s heavy bolter – Forgan’s arm had been broken in the final melee and he had granted his battle-brother custody of the weapon. ‘He tried crossing the water to lose the trail, but we will find him.’

‘There,’ said Vinnjar. He gestured with the stump of his wrist, as if forgetting for the moment that there was no hand there to point with. Across the lake was a fragment of colour, darting for the cover of the trees.

Saerhimnar and Forgan opened fire at the last eldar, the sole survivor of the aliens who had come to the academy to complete their dance. Tree trunks shattered into clouds of splinters.

‘Did we get him?’ asked Forgan, squinting across the lake.

‘I cannot tell,’ replied Saerhimnar.

‘I hope he lives,’ said Tanngjost. The pack looked at him strangely – he had barely spoken since he had put his armour back on and joined them in hunting down the survivor.

‘The alien is here to tell his story,’ continued Tanngjost. ‘Now his story is of how the Space Wolves fight back twice as hard when they are wounded, and how every one of ours they take will be repaid ten-fold. If he returns to his people, they will all know what happens when they choose a Space Wolf for a victim.’

The smoke and debris cleared. The alien was gone. But whether it was dead or had escaped, the lesson had been taught. The dance was over, the victim had refused to die, and the story could never be told again.

Lukas was tired.

Exhaustion had become the sum totality of his existence. Fatigue-poisons pumped through his system, slowing everything to a glacial pace. More than once, he stumbled, nearly losing his footing on the ice. The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet were raw and bleeding, where they were not numb.

Everything hurt.

Not just from the cold and the effort. The ache he felt went deeper than that, into the very marrow of him. His gut churned, as if something sought release. A gout of breath escaped his lips, and a groan. A laugh pursued the groan. The laugh circled like a scavenger bird, before dissolving into agonised chuckles.

Everything hurt.

Lukas looked at his hands, to make sure that they were still his. They were bigger than he remembered, thicker. Patches of red – some of it hair, not blood – marked his bare arms. He curled his fingers into fists, and his knuckles popped like shifting ice. Something inside him shifted, changing position, growing larger. Nausea ripsawed through him.

He stumbled and sank to one knee, head bowed against the wind sweeping down from the north. The cold thrummed through him, teasing every nerve. His skin was thicker now, but the cold was as sharp as a serpent’s fang. He could see farther, but his eyelids were crusted with ice. His lungs were bigger, but they were filled with the cold. Nonetheless, a fire burned in him.

They called it the Canis Helix, those priests in the great mountain. But he knew it was the blood of the gods. A red, wet wolf, let loose inside him, hollowing him out and filling his empty skin with its strength. A spasm of pain rippled through him, as his spine realigned.

‘Click, crack, pop,’ he grunted, mimicking the sound of shifting bones. His jaw sagged and something that was as much a moan as a laugh slipped out, to dart from rock to rock until it was swallowed by the vast, white emptiness which surrounded him.

The wilderness into which he had been abandoned was a labyrinth of ice and occasional spurs of stone, of flurrying snow and arctic mist and freezing temperatures. The thick packed ice shifted underfoot, cracking and reforming. High above, great trees clustered against the jagged fangs of rock, marking the border between sky and earth. Past this border, the great peaks of Asaheim. And at their heart, the Fang – the greatest of them all, stretching upwards into the eternal night-sea where the stars floated, like a dagger driven up into the belly of the sky.

‘Or maybe it’s just drool dripping down from the Star-Wolf’s muzzle,’ he muttered. His fingers ached. He looked down. ‘Ha,’ he said, wonderingly. Curved splinters of bone had pushed through his fingertips. Those were new. He laughed and then winced, clutching himself with his new claws.

It hurt to laugh. Lukas did it anyway, forcing the sound out. Laughter was a weapon. His only weapon. The ice, the cold, the gods and their priests, even his own people at times, all wanted him dead. He’d nearly died on the day of his birth, when he’d been cut from his mother’s belly, blue-faced and silent. His father had almost cast him to the waves then, but even dying, his mother had been as fierce a she-wolf as ever trod the deck of a raiding ship. And so little Lukas had survived. Had grown, and learned the truth of life, from a broken father and a dead mother, and a tribe which gave little thought to either.

And so, he laughed. The wind howled, and he laughed. He forced himself to his feet, and the cold lashed at him. Trying to knock him down. Trying to make him bow. The world, and its men and gods, had always sought to make him bow.

Instead, Lukas laughed.

And when he could no longer laugh, he slumped. He was tired. He wanted this to be over. One way or another. He sat on his haunches, waiting. His least twitch was echoed and redoubled, swelling to fill the emptiness. He turned, studying the way he’d come. The path he’d taken was clear, his deep-set tracks marring the snow. Sweat steamed on his body, filling the air with his scent. His trail was obvious. Even a blind man could follow it.

‘I know you’re there,’ he said, softly.

Knowknowtherethere came the echo. It mingled with the fading echoes of his laughter, to give the impression that something, somewhere, found this situation amusing.

‘Push on, boy. Push on, before it catches up.’

He turned, listening. There were many voices on the wind. But this one was familiar. He shook his head. ‘Kveldulf – go away, you’re dead.’

‘Do I look dead, boy? On your feet, we’ve leagues to go yet, and this meat won’t carry itself. Up. Up!’

He scraped the ice from his eyes. Kveldulf was as he remembered, tall and iron-haired, with his plaited beard and hauberk of dragon-hide. Kveldulf, who bore the scars of a troll’s claws on his face. Kveldulf, who’d been ripped open and strung like a red trail across the white by a trick of the light. The phantom crouched, blood from his wounds pooling beneath him. Kveldulf grinned. Bone shone through the ragged tatters of his cheek. ‘There, boy. Pick it up.’ A gore-stained finger pointed. The elk lay on the ice, steam rising from it still. ‘Get that on your shoulders and let’s go. The others are waiting.’

He remembered the elk. He remembered tracking it, with Kveldulf and the others, for three rises of the moon, into the north wind. Following spots and splashes of blood. ‘It ran us a good race, boy, but nothing escapes us,’ Kveldulf said. ‘Up now. The tribe needs meat. Can’t let them starve, boy, even if they do throw rocks at you on occasion.’

‘You never threw rocks at me.’

‘No. But I thought about it. Up.’

He pushed himself up. Kveldulf was right. The tribe needed meat. They had been counting on the hunters. The season had been bad for them. The sea ate their island home bite by bite as the weather turned and the waters rose. No man knew how much the landscape would change with the turning of the season, and solid ground was an illusion. The sea had its due eventually, and inexorably.

His childhood had been spent aboard ship, as the tribe navigated across the icy waters. It had been a savage, sea-borne existence – grinding, deadly tedium, broken by moments of sheer terror. When they’d finally found a scrap of rock to call their own, little had changed. They’d exchanged many-tentacled things with razor-beaks for ice trolls, and drowning for starvation. It was all faintly ridiculous. Lukas had learned to laugh early, and often. The others hadn’t understood. They hadn’t got the joke.

‘We fought so hard, and for what?’ Lukas said. ‘A bit of rock that will sink into the sea sooner or later, and carry all of us with it, that’s what.’ He looked around. The elk was gone. So was Kveldulf. ‘You weren’t here,’ he said. He wanted to howl. Kveldulf was dead. They were all dead. Killed by a trick of the light, with only him to tell the tale.

And that was the cruellest joke of all. Because no one would ever hear it, and even if they did, no one would believe him. He’d told too many stories, made too many boasts, to ever be believed in anything he said. Lukas Lie-Tongue. The son of a witch and a pickled corpse. Fit only for bedding women, avoiding work and being pelted with stones.

‘Not a bad life,’ he said, half-hoping Kveldulf would come back to tell him how wrong he was.

When no reply came, he shook his head and pushed on. The only sound was the crunch of snow. It echoed strangely, hesitantly. Crunchcrunch. As if someone were stepping on his shadow. He wanted to turn, but he didn’t want Kveldulf to yell at him again. The tribe was counting on them. They needed meat. It was soon to be the Time of Ice and Fire, and they would have to move, to flee the rising waters and seek higher ground.

Only the tribe had already moved. And Kveldulf was dead. It had been months since the others had died. Months into the season of upheaval, when the ice melted and the seas rose. He clutched at his head, trying to shake his thoughts into coherency. What was the past, and what was the present? The wolf in him growled. For beasts, all time was the present.

‘But I’m not a beast, am I?’ he said. ‘Not yet.’ His grip tightened, drawing blood. The pain was good. It brought clarity with it.

He knew who he was, where he was. And he knew why. This was a test of worth. The second test of Morkai, the great two-headed wolf who guarded the gates of the underworld. The Sky Warriors were testing him. To see if he deserved a place among them. And so they had forced a wolf into his belly, and cast him out into the wilds of Asaheim, to see if the beast chewed its way free of his flesh.

‘Those the Canis Helix does not kill, it transforms forevermore.’

A rough voice, like the crash of waves against the hull of a ship. He looked up, into the wise, ancient eyes of the Rune Priest who had overseen his first test, when he’d first stepped through the Gates of Morkai. The Sky Warrior loomed over him, taller than even Kveldulf and thrice as broad in his frost grey war-plate and thick robes of wolf-fur. Bone fetishes and runestones were set into the crannies of his armour, and each one crackled with untold power. A face like carved wood, inset with gleaming yellow stones for eyes, glared down at him, in judgement.

‘There is a shadow on your trail.’

Lukas looked down at his shadow. ‘So I see.’

‘No, you don’t. Your mind is strong, though your body is frail. But what good is strength against the fire inside? For that is what we have awakened. Will you walk free, or be consumed?’

‘And who asked you to stir it up?’ Lukas spat. His jaw ached. He could feel the bones warping and thickening. His teeth split and flowered into fangs. He closed his eyes, trying to force down the rising heat. ‘I was quite happy to die on the ice.’

The Rune Priest frowned and leaned on his staff. The runes etched into its length blazed like thousands of tiny stars. ‘That is not your decision to make.’

Lukas stopped, swaying. ‘That’s where you are wrong. I can die here if I wish.’

The Rune Priest didn’t answer. He wasn’t there any longer, if he ever had been. Lukas pawed at his face, trying to resist the urge to simply… sit. Sit and wait. ‘Death will be along, by and by,’ he murmured. A saying of Kveldulf’s. Very fatalistic, Kveldulf. Lukas could see the appeal, just now. He looked towards the horizon, and the distant stretch of rock that was the Fang. Were his tormentors watching him? He wanted nothing more than spite them, to show them the folly of forcing their demands upon him.

‘I’ll just sit here and freeze,’ he said. ‘If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me.’ An empty threat. They wouldn’t come. They didn’t care, not really. The old wolf had explained that much, at least.

Thought of the Wolf Priest made him snarl again. That grim ancient, with eyes like fire, made Lukas want to keep going, if only so he could spit in the old wolf’s face. Memories burst across his mind, like barely healed scars tearing open. Of lying in the snow, his blood pumping from deep wounds, his mind slowing, drifting into the mists of death.

It had all gone wrong. From the moment that they had set out, their luck had been bad. The elk had proven stronger than their aim, and had led them a faltering chase across melting ice and up into the wild places. They’d followed, because what else could they do? They’d tracked it to its place of dying, only to discover that another hunter had beaten them to it. One who’d been in no mood to share.

Egyl had died first. Killed in the moment of discovery, his screams cut short as the snow swallowed him up. The others had followed, one at a time, until only Lukas remained, struggling on, fleeing south to the imagined safety of the tribe. Their killer had stalked him for days, following as close as his own shadow, until, at last, it had struck – and he had struck back. He’d sworn to whatever gods might be listening to take its pelt, if they would just give him the strength to do so. His blood and that of the beast had mingled on the snow as they fought, and it had fled, leaving him where he lay. He had been unable to move, for the pain. Things had been broken in him, or else torn loose from their moorings.

It had been a good death. Not the sort he would’ve preferred, but a fine death regardless. A worthy passing, if unseen. Only it hadn’t been unseen. There had been an observer to the entire ordeal, from Egyl’s passing to Lukas’ last stand. As he’d lain there, leaking out his life, he’d felt a tremor pass through the ground. The crunch of ice and rock as something heavy strode towards him, out of the snow. Something black and massive, like a shard of night made flesh.

Red eyes had glowered down at him. Red eyes, set into a helm of bone and metal, a helm in the shape of a wolf’s snarling muzzle. A gauntlet of black metal had reached down and caught up his broken body, despite his weak protests. A Chooser of the Valiant, claiming his soul. ‘You could have chosen any of them,’ Lukas said, to the snow. ‘Instead, you chose me. You must be feeling very foolish, just about now.’

As if in answer, the wind rose, blistering his flesh. Shards of ice pricked his eyes and stung his breath from him. His shadow stretched back for leagues, drawn out by the sun. For the moment, he fancied he had two shadows. He listened to the wind and his breath, and the echoes of his movements. Crunchcrunch.

‘Why are you stopping, Lukas?’ Gunnhild hissed, so close he almost jumped out of his skin. Her face was red, worn raw by the cold and wind. Her eyes were wide. Scared. They were all scared, though he was the only one to admit it. He laughed about it, but the others didn’t. They couldn’t see the humour.

‘I heard it,’ he said. ‘It’s behind us.’

‘It’s been behind us for days. We have to keep going.’ Gunnhild spoke forcefully. She was forceful in everything she did. Older, sweeter memories slipped to the surface, and he brushed them aside. Now wasn’t the time.

‘If we could just see it…’

‘Keep moving.’ She grabbed one of his plaits and yanked on it. ‘We have to keep moving or we’ll wind up like Kveldulf and the others. The blink-devil will take us too.’ Lukas looked at her, trying to focus. There was blood on her furs. There was blood everywhere. On her face. She was still talking, but he couldn’t hear her over the wind. But he could hear the echoes of his footsteps, and he could hear his second shadow.

When Lukas looked back, Gunnhild was gone. He almost called out for her, as he had then. And like then, it would have been wasted breath. The blink-devil left no survivors. Those it hunted, vanished. All save him.

Why had he alone survived?

Unseen, something snarled. He turned. His heart – his hearts? – thumped and rattled against his ribs, like a wild beast in a cage. The sound might have come from beside him, or many miles away. Volcanic fury welled up in him, savage and insistent. He scanned the white, hunting his second shadow. Wanting to leap, to tear.

But there was nothing, save the wind and the light of the sun on the snow and the ice. He closed his eyes, trying to still the rage, to calm himself. He laughed. It was more like a growl. That only made him laugh harder. Lukas wondered what Gunnhild would make of him now, naked and laughing in the snow?

‘She’d throw a rock at me,’ he said, as he turned back.

It wasn’t his fault that he had a sense of humour. If the gods did not expect him to make use of it, why give it to him? Unless they too liked a good joke.

‘No, that’s not it,’ he mumbled. He’d met the gods, and they were a humourless lot. He had seen the halls of Russ, and the high crags of Asaheim, though he’d never dreamed of, or wanted, such a thing. He was not the stuff of sagas. He was not a hero, not a Sky Warrior, no matter what the old wolf believed.

He was Lukas Lie-Tongue. He was boastful and foolish. He was a champion of japes and jests, not war. He had only been on the hunt because he’d infuriated one husband too many, and needed some time away. Kveldulf had dragged him by his ankle out of bed – not his own – and through the snow, lecturing him the entire way. The older warrior had taken Lukas in hand after his parents had died, reasoning that someone needed to. He hadn’t done a very good job, but at least he’d tried. It was more than Lukas could say for some.

‘You hear me, old wolf?’ he growled. ‘You made a mistake.’ Lukas did not know the Wolf Priest’s name, and he was certain that the old wolf didn’t know his. Nor, he suspected, did the old wolf care. What did the gods care for the names of mortal men? ‘You’ll know my name before I’m done, though. Whatever comes.’

As if in reply to his boast, the white wavered. The ground was shaking. A tremor. Not unusual for this time of year. Lukas heard ice grinding and water sloshing. He leapt an instant before the ground split, and slammed into the fang of ice as it pierced the way ahead. Water spewed upwards with a crackling roar, and a blanket of cold enveloped him. He sprang for stable ground. He would have to run.

Despite his fatigue, he moved fast, springing from ice-chunk to ice-chunk until he was within sight of solid ground. The last spar of ice began to crack under him, and he prepared himself to make one final leap. His hearts were hammering. It wasn’t fear. Not really. It was frustration – the thought of dying here, like this, drove him on. Maybe that was why the old wolf had left him out here – to die.

The ice exploded upwards, ejecting a profusion of slippery tentacles, encrusted with barnacle-like growths of bone. They snagged him as he leapt, tightening about his limbs. He was jerked down into the water with bone-rattling force. The cold water hit him like a fist, and then he was twisting down, caught in a deadly net of flesh.

Kraken mostly kept to the depths of the sea. But sometimes, when the waters rose, one swam inland, only to become caught in whatever shallow basin or lake it found itself in when the waters inevitably receded. These unlucky beasts often starved, unless they were fortunate enough to happen across prey. Like, say, a lone warrior stumbling across the ice, distracted by memories and ghosts.

Lukas cursed, filling the cold water with a flurry of bubbles. He tore an arm free of the thrashing coils and grabbed hold of a bone spur, holding it back from impaling him. His blood billowed, clouding the water. Through the veil of red, he saw a razored beak roughly the size of a man rising towards him. Eyes like torches flickered greedily in the depths. It was a small one, thank the Allfather. If it had been full sized he would have had no chance at all. A tentacle coiled about his throat, bone hooks digging painfully into his flesh. He lashed out with his feet, first jerking them free and then kicking away the slashing tentacles. A blow caught him on the back of the head and sent him spinning.

For a moment his mind turned to broken glass. Memories pricked at him, overwhelming him. Gunnhild laughing, screaming… dying. The feel of hard rocks against his back as the old wolf dragged his bloody carcass to the foot of the Fang and left him there for the thrall-servitors to collect. Even then, he’d been underestimated. They had expected him to expire before his training could begin. But he lived, if only to spite them. Lukas had never done as others expected, and he wasn’t about to begin now.

A coil tightened convulsively about his other arm, and he felt his bones creak in protest. The pain startled him from his reverie. Snarling, he ducked his head and buried his fangs in the tentacle. Bilious ichors flooded his mouth and throat as he savaged the unnatural flesh. As he’d hoped, it released him. But not for long. Bone hooks slashed down, tearing at him. Kraken were relentless, once provoked. They would cheerfully fight larger monsters, just for a scrap of flesh.

Lukas kicked and flailed, trying to thrash a gap in the weaving thicket of tentacles that sought to bar his escape. His much-enlarged lungs strained as bludgeon-like blows struck him from all sides. He needed to get clear. He caught a blow on his forearm, letting the hooks dig into the meat and muscle, and sank the newly grown claws of his free hand into the tentacle. He braced his feet against the serpentine length and bit the kraken again. The wounded limb spasmed and swept out, carrying him with it.

Lukas snapped loose of the tentacle and tumbled slowly through the water. The kraken undulated after him. He began to swim for the dim light above, as quickly as his aching limbs could manage.

The kraken rose beneath him. The tips of its beak touched the soles of his feet, and he braced himself as its momentum carried them both out of the water. Lukas flipped through the air as the kraken twisted in its frenzy. Its beak snapped shut, just shy of his torso. He plummeted back down towards the ice. The kraken fell after him.

The ice nearly buckled beneath them. Lukas rolled aside as a tentacle slammed down over the spot where he’d landed. Out of the water, he could more easily discern the kraken’s shape, and the squirming mass of its body. It was a yellowish colour, stripped with jagged markings of bluish green. Panting, he cast about for a weapon. He spotted a sliver of ice, as long and as thick as a spear, jutting up nearby. It would have to do. He sprang towards it, hoping to reach it before the kraken recovered.

The monster was wheezing like a bellows, its eyes rolling wildly in their filmy sockets. It heaved itself towards him, beak snapping. Bone-hooks thunked down, anchoring it as it hauled itself along. The ice was splintering beneath its weight. Lukas knew that if he didn’t act soon, he’d be right back in the water, at the creature’s mercy.

His hand closed around the splinter of ice and he wrenched it up, turning just as a trio of tentacles slapped down at him. He dodged one, rolling, and backpedalled away from the second, fighting to hold onto his makeshift spear. The third snared his ankle and jerked him into the air.

The kraken made a sound like the shriek of tearing metal and forced itself up, triangular head rising, beak wide open. It intended to swallow him before it slipped back into the water. He twisted in its grip, nearly popping his trapped leg from its socket. It released him, and he tumbled towards its open mouth. As he fell, he hurled the splinter of ice at one of the lamp-like eyes with all the force he could muster. Then the beak was closing about him, seeking to grind and pierce him. He caught the dorsal mandible on his palms and managed to brace his feet against the ventral, holding them open. The saw-edged inner curve of the beak bit into his flesh, eliciting fresh agonies. The kraken was thrashing about, squealing in what he hoped was pain. Its muscles jerked and the pressure on his limbs increased.

Strong as he was, he wasn’t capable of holding the monster’s mouth open forever. Already, the beating he’d taken was wearing him down. Sweat stung his eyes. Lukas swung his head, looking for an escape route. Only one presented itself. With a curse that was almost a howl, Lukas thrust his arms and legs out to their fullest extension, momentarily dislocating the kraken’s jaws. He seized the opportunity to throw himself down its gullet. He could’ve risked heading for open air, but the chance of the beak snapping shut on him was too great to ignore. This way, he at least had a hope of staying in one piece.

The kraken’s throat was a narrow tube of rigid cartilage, lined with curved blades of bone. Lukas snapped several of these off as he slid down, inflicting more damage on himself as he did so. He wrenched one free of its mooring and began to hack at the cartilage with increasing desperation. The kraken was writhing in agony, and gusts of hot air rose up from beneath him, bathing him in an oily stench. He knew that he had to tear himself a hole before the monster managed to heave itself back into the water. When he’d succeeded in creating a crack, he forced the spine of bone into it and levered it into widening further.

He sank his fingers into the wound and began to pull. A low, throbbing sound pulsed upwards, like the reverberations of some unseen bell, and he began to wrench and jerk at the cartilage, until the gap was at last wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. Burning torrents of ichor poured over him as he forced himself into the gap. Rubbery purple flesh lay beyond and he tore at it with his teeth and fingers. There was a sound like sailcloth tearing, and then a blast of arctic cold washed over him.

Lukas, accompanied by a gout of ichor, sprawled on the ice, gasping. Behind him, the kraken made a choked, gurgling sound that resonated through his bones, and then collapsed. It tentacles squirmed, striking at everything in its death throes. Lukas scrambled out of the way, lungs heaving.

‘Bit off more than you could chew, eh?’ he said, falling onto his back. He watched the kraken’s final moments with dull interest. When it at last grew still, he realised that his stomach was rumbling.

It wasn’t an elk, but it would do.

The change his body was undergoing was akin to a fire that needed constant fuel. He tore a tentacle free of the carcass and began to gorge on the rubbery, possibly toxic, flesh. As he assuaged his hunger, he noted that his spear of ice had struck its target – one of the creature’s eyes was gone, burst in a welter of gelid muck. But so too was the other eye. Something had torn the semi-luminescent orb from its socket and left it squashed on the ice. There were gouges on the kraken’s skull and what looked to be bite-marks on its tentacles.

Something had attacked the monster, even as it tried to devour him. The marks were familiar – indeed, he had similar scars on his own hide. Lukas grinned around a mouthful of kraken. ‘So that’s the way it is,’ he mumbled. He snatched a handful of snow from the ground and thrust it into his mouth. As it melted, he swallowed it, enjoying the soothing coolness. He’d screamed himself raw, fighting the beast. He sniffed the air, scenting nothing but the ichors of the kraken.

But the creature was nearby. It had been on his trail all along, following him at a careful distance. He wondered if it had been surprised, when it had caught his scent. Probably. He chuckled. ‘A good joke,’ he said. ‘Dropping me there. A good joke, old wolf.’ The old wolf had left Lukas where he’d first found him. Where the blink-devil had almost claimed him. He looked around, but saw nothing save falling snow and water vapour. ‘A very good joke,’ he said again, more quietly this time.

‘You and your damn jokes.’

‘It’s not my fault you have no sense of humour, Thord,’ Lukas said. Thord crouched in the snow, his intestines pooling around his ankles. Like Kveldulf and Gunnhild, Thord was dead. Meat for the beast, his complaints stifled by crushing jaws.

‘Quiet, Smiler. It’s out there… watching us.’ Thord didn’t look at him. Lukas was thankful. No one should have to see his cousin’s face stripped to bloody bone. Thord’s wounds were dripping, turning the white snow pink.

‘Let it,’ Lukas said, still chewing on a mouthful of kraken. ‘Let it watch, let it follow.’

‘If not for your jokes, we would not be here, Smiler,’ Thord said, accusingly. Smiler. The name some of Lukas’ kin had given him. They spat it like a curse. As if a smile were a weakness. As if good humour were the flaw in otherwise strong iron. Don’t joke, Smiler. Don’t laugh, Smiler. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

His kin had always tried to impose their will on him, to force him into the shape they dictated. And he had ever escaped that fate, if only by the skin of his teeth. They wanted a warrior, he became a lover. They wanted stern, and he laughed at every opportunity. They thought him a coward, and he fought with animal fury, when pressed. He was not snow, to be packed and shaped. He was fire, rising and falling as it willed. He met Thord’s cloudy gaze.

‘If not for my jokes, Thord, we would be somewhere worse,’ he said.

‘We would be home.’

‘As I said.’ Lukas dipped his head to take a bite.

When he looked up, Thord was gone. Like Gunnhild. Like Kveldulf. Gone. He closed his eyes, remembering. Kveldulf had died third, after Egyl and Harada. They had become lost after that. And one by one, they’d all gone, save him. Vanishing into the white, lost to snow and ice. Lost to the blink-devil.

That was what his people called it. Other tribes had other names for the beasts, but blink-devil described it well enough. The beasts were shapeshifters and lightbenders. They were never where you thought, and never looked the same way twice. According to the stories he’d heard as a boy, they were always behind you, no matter which way you turned. They moved in the blink of an eye, and between breaths. They hid in men’s shadows, and lurked just out of sight.

Worst of all, they had a sense of humour. They would trail their prey for days, weeks, even months, harrying it to the point of exhaustion and madness before they struck for the final time. The common wisdom was that when one caught your scent, it was best to just cut to the chase and gut yourself.

Lukas had considered that, after it had taken Gunnhild, if only to spite the beast. He’d been alone then. But he’d always been alone, after a fashion. Part of the tribe, but separate. But the blink-devil had taken even that from him. And he’d resolved to take its life, in recompense. A bitter smile crept across his face.

‘Only that didn’t work out, did it?’ he said. His words echoed back at him, and the kraken meat in his belly turned sour.

The ice suddenly dipped, as the weight of the kraken’s corpse finally caused it to shatter. The mass slid into the water, nearly dragging Lukas with it. He leapt back, scrabbling for the rising edge of the ice. His fingers and toes found cracks and he pulled himself up, hand over hand, until he was balanced on the edge. He took a steadying breath, and leapt. The reverberations of the kraken’s sinking stretched outwards, pursuing him as he dropped to the next floe of ice and began to run.

Head down, Lukas pelted for solid ground. His limbs pumped, carrying him to safety. The cracks pursued him for longer than he liked to think about, zigzagging in his wake. He leapt over them when they crossed his path, and tried to outpace them.

When the ground at last stopped trembling and the ice subsided, he allowed himself to sink down, panting. He could barely hear the wind over the rushing of his blood. He looked up, trying to spy the way ahead. The snow was falling more thickly now. A black shape watched him from a ridge of ice and stone many leagues away. He blinked. He could see further now, but even so, he could just barely make out the hulking shape, clad in thick furs, standing amongst the scrub trees. He recognized it regardless. The old wolf was watching him. He forced himself to his feet, chest heaving.

‘Feel free to applaud,’ Lukas shouted, casting his voice into the teeth of the wind.

Snow swirled, obscuring his vision. When it cleared, the shape was gone. He threw back his head and laughed. ‘You’ll miss the best part.’ His words did not echo. The snow swallowed them up. He took a step.

Crunchcrunch.

Lukas shifted, tensing. ‘Is this it, then?’ he said. ‘Kraken not to your taste, perhaps?’

Crunchcrunch.

He whipped around, bare fist hissing through snow. He thought – just for a moment – that he’d touched something. Then it was gone. He could hear the sound of ice cracking. And voices on the wind. He clutched himself, as the thing inside him surged up, rocking his frame with its exertions. It wanted to be free, to hunt.

‘Can’t hunt what you can’t see, fool,’ he hissed, through clenched teeth. He’d learned that the hard way. They all had. One by one, the blink-devil had taught them to fear the unseen. All except him. He’d taught it to fear him.

It came back in a rush. The stink of blood, the too-sweet odour of its oily hide. A glint of fang. The sound of claws sinking into flesh, tearing. And the weight of his knife. He’d let it get close, let it show itself, thinking him worn down. And then he’d seen the colour of its blood, spattering the snow. How it had shrieked!

It had underestimated him. It wasn’t alone in that. Everyone underestimated him, even the gods. They’d left him out here, naked and alone. His hands flexed. He wished he had his knife, something, anything to cut with. Claws were fine, but he wasn’t yet a beast…

Out in the white, wolves howled. Or maybe not wolves. He wasn’t alone out here. He wasn’t the only one being tested by the Allfather. Part of him wanted to join them, to throw back his head and howl. Howl until the ghosts left him alone. Howl until there was nothing left of him but the red wolf nestled in his gut. But he still had a hunt to finish. He set his feet back on the path to the Fang and began to walk.

‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ he muttered, talking both to himself as well as the creature lurking just out of sight. He remembered the heat of the great fiery rivers which ran to either side of the Gate of Morkai, down in the roots of the Fang. He remembered the apprehension which had gripped him, as he looked up into the dual muzzles of the wolf-god carved there over the portal; the worry that he was truly as unfit as he believed, and that all his days were done. That he’d been saved from certain, if honourable, doom only to meet an ignoble end in the kingdom of the gods.

He laughed. ‘And wouldn’t that have been the perfect end to a perfect life?’ But it hadn’t ended there. Determined to be done with it all, for good or ill, he had braved the gate, and found the Rune Priest waiting for him there. They had spoken at length, in the dark and quiet. About what, Lukas could not fully recall. And then had come the final test. The old wolf had come for him, and dragged him away. Had taken him out of the Fang and into the wilds and thrown him down onto the ice without a word.

‘Right back where we started. And what’s the point of that?’ Lukas continued on, cursing the old wolf the entire time. He owed the old wolf, for taking him into the blizzard, to Asaheim. Owed him and hated him in equal measure. If he hadn’t been watching…

‘You would have died,’ Kveldulf said, striding along to the right of him, one arm holding in his torn guts. ‘Just like us, boy.’ He gestured, blood dripping from his fingers. Lukas didn’t have to look around to know Kveldulf hadn’t come alone, this time. ‘And wouldn’t that have been the joke of a lifetime?’

Lukas stopped. ‘You never really understood what a joke was, did you?’

‘Too late to learn now, I suppose,’ Kveldulf said.

Lukas looked away. ‘He should have saved you.’

‘Too old,’ Kveldulf said. He looked down at his stomach. ‘Who knew a body had so many guts in it? Like a coil of rope, unspooling across the snow.’

Lukas grimaced. ‘Then he should have taken Thord, or Egyl, or Gunnhild…’ He glared at the snow. ‘One of the others.’

‘And when have the gods ever chosen a woman to journey to Asaheim, you great dunce?’ Gunnhild said, appearing to his left. She didn’t sound bitter, merely amused. ‘Outside of those vulgar stories of yours, I mean.’

‘I’d have gone, but you got me killed,’ Thord said. He stood in Lukas’ path, flanked by the others; indistinct faces blotted out by the snow and his own failing memories. The tribulations he had undergone had weakened his recall, layering new lessons over the old. Lukas glared at his cousin.

‘Go to Hel, Thord.’

‘Already there, Smiler.’ Thord held his hands out, letting his wounds gape open and his insides bulge out like startled serpents. Lukas laughed.

‘You dropped something.’

Thord grimaced. Then he was gone. Lukas wondered if ghosts sulked.

Behind him, something growled. Softly, softly. A susurrus of intent. Lukas crouched, muscles tensing, teeth bared. No wonder Thord had left. Something slunk through the snow, circling him. Keeping its distance. How long had it been following him? Hours? Days? He shook his head. How long had he been out here?

‘Not long enough.’

The voice was guttural, like ice floes colliding in a storm-tossed sea. The old wolf stalked beside him, war-plate creaking. He left no prints in his wake, despite his weight. ‘Not long enough to learn respect. To learn that you are nothing but what the Allfather chooses to make of you, pup.’

The Wolf Priest had refused to call him by name, as if Lukas were not worthy of such familiarity. ‘You’re not worth anything,’ the old wolf said, reading the look on his face. ‘Not yet. Not until you join the pack.’

‘Who says I want to join?’

The old wolf grunted. ‘The Allfather.’

‘Your Allfather watched them die,’ Lukas said, his fingers curling into fists. His new claws gouged wounds in his palms. He knew the old wolf wasn’t here. He was just another trick of the light, like Kveldulf and Gunnhild. A phantom sent to torment him. To test him. Regardless, he would say his piece. ‘You watched, and they died. You could have done something.’

‘I did.’

‘Besides that,’ Lukas growled.

‘I am not your nursemaid, pup. I did my duty. I am a Chooser of the Valiant.’

‘Then you chose poorly.’

The old wolf was silent. Then, ‘Maybe so. But we will not know until you fail.’

Lukas smiled. ‘I’m tempted to let it kill me, just so I can see the look on your face.’

‘If you are dead you will see nothing at all, save the jaws of Morkai as he feasts on your soul,’ the old wolf said, his voice as deep as the sea, from shore to shore.

Lukas stepped back, unnerved despite himself. ‘I don’t understand this.’

‘You do not have to understand.’

Lukas felt he’d had this conversation before. He shook his head. ‘Shut up. You’re not here. Just a trick of the light. A trick of my weakness.’ He laughed and closed his eyes. ‘For that matter, am I even here? Perhaps I still stand in the Gate of Morkai, dreaming, as the Rune Priest digs through my mind.’

When he opened his eyes, the old wolf was gone. Lukas snorted. That was gods for you… never around when you needed them. But now that he’d made his appearance, perhaps this saga was coming to its close. Behind him, something growled softly. He heard the whisper of heavy paws, treading on his tracks. He was hurt. Bleeding. Weak. Lukas smiled thinly. The blink-devil was clever. It had been waiting for him to tire, to grow weary. The kraken must’ve surprised it. It had thought the creature was stealing its prey, and had attacked like any enraged predator. The way it had attacked Egyl, at the beginning of all of this.

‘And here is the lesson,’ Lukas said. ‘All of it – an accident. A mistake from beginning to end.’

‘And thus you betray your foolishness.’

Lukas turned. A different Sky Warrior now. Not the old wolf, but the Rune Priest again in his bone charms and rune-etched war-plate, a stern look on his ancient face. Lukas grinned.

‘Come back for another chat?’

‘There is a spark in you, pup. A spark which may yet be fanned into a flame of greatness.’

Lukas laughed. ‘No one has ever accused me of being great.’ This was the same conversation they’d had beneath the Gate of Morkai, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. Were these hallucinations, or memories? Or maybe both. Maybe this moment and that were all one. Wolves experienced only the present. For them, past and future blended into an eternal now. Why should it be any different for these wolves, though they walked on two legs rather than four? What did time mean to an immortal, after all?

‘No, I expect not.’ Thin lips twisted in a mirthless smile. The Rune Priest shook his head. ‘Then, in the eyes of the Allfather, even the least of us might yet prove our worth before the Wolf Time.’

Lukas stopped. He could feel the sea surging deep beneath the ice. ‘And is that what this is all about, then? Me proving my worth?’

‘It is a test. All of it. From the moment of your birth, to the method of your dying.’ The Sky Warrior stared down at him. ‘That is what you do not understand, pup.’

‘I understand,’ Lukas said, resisting the urge to snarl. ‘But I don’t like it.’

‘It is not up to you to like it. Merely to accept it, and persevere. Such is the will of the Allfather.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He speaks to us.’

‘He must do so very quietly, because I’ve never heard him.’

The blow came so suddenly, that Lukas was on his hands and knees before he registered it. He wheezed and clutched at his chest. His palm came away bloody. The skin of his torso was marred by claw marks. The Sky Warrior was gone. Something else, infinitely preferable for all its hostility, was in his place.

‘Well then,’ Lukas growled, thrusting himself to his feet. ‘Finally.’ He lunged. He was off-balance, and the movement was awkward.

Even so, he got a handful of greasy fur. Claws tore along his ribs and back as the blink-devil leapt on him, biting and tearing. He couldn’t see it properly. It vanished, spilling his blood and dancing away with an eager whine. His nerves caught up with the damage and he staggered. Vibrant streaks of red sluiced down his shoulders and flanks, staining the snow.

‘You remember me, don’t you?’ he gasped. ‘I’ve only ever been hit like that by people I’ve personally offended. You must have taken that stabbing personally.’

All was silent, save for the susurrus of the snow. But it was still there, still circling him, watching him, jaws sagging. It had a taste of him now and wouldn’t flee again. He was grateful for that – for a chance at a proper ending to things. ‘Yes, you took it personally, didn’t you? They always take it personally.’

Suddenly dizzy, he sank to one knee. The ice spun about him. His limbs felt like leaden weights and his blood made rosettes on the snow. ‘Just like before,’ he said, chuckling harshly. ‘Only no knife, now. And I’ve been chewed up and spat out by a kraken.’ He ducked his head, and peered surreptitiously at his shadow. Just the one, for the moment. That would change. ‘But you’re still afraid, aren’t you? That’s why I’ll have the last laugh – that’s why I survived, when the others died. Someone has to laugh over your lonely grave, beast, and who better than me?’ He turned in place, arms spread, inviting attack. Hoping for it. ‘The gods interrupted us last time. They bought us both a little time to prepare for this moment, but that’s done now. So let’s get to it.’

Out in the snow, something snarled. He fancied he heard an element of frustration in that sound. Of gratification long-delayed. How long had it hunted him? How long had it lingered here, with the taste of his blood in its mouth and the ache of his blade in its flesh? It had followed him across cracking ice and through frost-shrouded forests, down valleys and up mountains. And for what? Had the gods truly known, or was this simply fate? Was it truly the same creature, or was he simply deluding himself into seeing an end to his story where there was none?

‘No,’ he said, smiling. ‘Not even the gods are that cruel. To deny one of us, certainly. But both – never.’ His smile vanished as the blink-devil lunged at him again, vaulting out of the snow onto his back. He was knocked flat by its weight. Teeth dug into the back of his neck, but only for an instant. He threw his head back, and felt bone crunch. His attacker yelped and retreated, too swiftly for him to follow.

Lukas rolled to his feet. He touched his neck, and felt wetness. He was a mass of wounds, none of them debilitating as yet. But each one slowed him down just a bit more. And the creature was fast. Faster than him, even if he hadn’t been injured, and maybe stronger. It was hungry, and hunger lent it ferocity. He knew the feeling. Whatever strength he’d drawn from the kraken was almost used up.

He tried to spot the blink-devil in the snowfall, but it was impossible to focus on for any length of time. He couldn’t see it clearly, no matter how much he squinted. There were three of it, and then five and then none. It flickered in and out of sight, becoming snow, rock and other things. It was disorientating, like trying to fight a nightmare. Every blow he launched passed through where it had been. It wasn’t changing shape – not really. It merely reflected your perceptions back at you. It showed you what you expected to see.

Claws tore furrows in his back, and he stumbled forward, cursing. It had got behind him, somehow. He was stronger than he had been, and tougher. But the creature was stronger still. Jaws fastened in the meat of his calf, and he was yanked off balance. He fell face down, busting his nose. He kicked out with his free foot, and felt something give beneath the wild blow. The blink-devil rolled away, yelping.

Lukas dragged himself to his feet, limping now.

‘Come on,’ he growled. ‘Is that it? You got a taste before. Come have the full meal.’ He could smell its stink on the air, growing stronger and fading away again, as if it were drawing close and then retreating. It was a wary beast. Even now, drawn by the scent of his familiar blood. He wondered if his blows had hurt it – or maybe it had been injured by the kraken, earlier. ‘Here I stand, beast… alone, bleeding, freezing. I’m here. Come and get me.’

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed familiar faces. The dead were watching him. Kveldulf, Gunnhild… even Thord. They had all gathered to watch this moment, their faces set, grim. Even now, they refused to laugh. Lukas shook his head, trying to clear it. ‘Let’s give them a show, shall we?’

‘This is not a joke,’ the Rune Priest said. Lukas couldn’t see him, but heard his voice as if the Sky Warrior were looming just behind him. Lukas licked his teeth, tasting his own blood.

‘I disagree,’ he said, simply. Another test. It was all a test, of him, of his worth. Perhaps, as he’d joked, he was not on the ice, was not truly facing the creature that had killed his friends and kin. Perhaps it was all in his head. He laughed. ‘No. If this were in my head, you’d be a woman, old devil. Or a table, groaning with food and drink. And I’d have trousers on, at least. But it’s the same test, isn’t it?’

The Test of Morkai. Two tests in one. ‘Two heads, same wolf,’ Lukas said. He laughed again, relishing in the sound. ‘That’s a good joke, isn’t it?’ He tapped the side of his head as he turned, trying to follow the blink-devil’s movements. ‘They make you think it’s two, but it’s all the same test, to see if you’re worthy. And it never ends, does it? They keep testing you, keep trying to make you fit, to force you into the grave they dug for you before you were even born. But I refuse to lay down for anyone but myself…’

The blink-devil came at him in a rush. Crunchcrunch. The sound of its footsteps, in the echo of his own. It moved with him, breathed with him, growled with him. It was his shadow. Lukas blinked. He glanced down. He had two shadows now. He smiled. Crunchcrunchcrunch. He spun, hands extending to catch hold of a hairy throat as something launched itself at him, out of a snow flurry.

‘There you are,’ he spat, as its momentum carried them both backwards. The ice cracked beneath them, and he rolled over, dragging the beast with him. Its fangs pierced the flesh of his forearm, and he tightened his grip on its throat, trying to throttle it. It had him pinned, its weight almost equal to his own. Even now, it could kill him, if he didn’t kill it first. And even now, part of him hesitated. To kill it was to do as the gods wished, and he desperately wished to spite them, to show them that he was not their puppet.

The blink-devil snarled and the bones in his forearm cracked as its jaws tightened. Up close, he could see that it resembled a wolf, but only in the sense that it had four legs and a tail. It was as much a kraken, or an elk, as a wolf, as if some mad god had taken the most unpleasant bits from all of the other animals and tied them together with strings of malice. It was a shadow on clear ice, a shape seen out of the corner of the eye, a nightmare of fangs and claws and shimmering fur.

He felt no fear, staring into its mad, yellow eyes. Only a sense of purpose, of satisfaction long delayed. Here was the last, best moment of an ill-starred life. The gods thought this moment theirs, but it was his. They had given him the tools for victory, but it was still his hand which wielded them. He would kill the beast, but not for the Sky Warriors in their icy fastness. He would do it for Kveldulf, and Gunnhild and even Thord. He owed them that much. But mostly, he would do it for himself.

‘You can’t kill me, old devil… I was born dead,’ he snarled. He jerked his bitten arm aside, yanking it off balance, exposing its neck. He buried his new-sprouted fangs in its hairy throat. It struggled, whining, and he wrapped his legs around its middle, trapping it. No more running. Its blood tasted bitter, and he drank deeply of it. Claws dug canyons into his chest and sides. It kicked at him, trying to disembowel him. He took the pain as he continued to savage its throat, tearing flesh and muscle, cracking bone. Laughing as he did so.

With a final kick, the blink-devil died. A shudder ran through its frame and it became a dead weight, pressing him against the ice. Lukas shoved the limp carcass aside and spat out a lump of gristle and sinew. Panting, he stared up at the sky.

‘Did I win?’ he said. ‘I hope so, otherwise I’ll never get to see the old wolf’s disappointment.’ He looked over at the blink-devil. It lay still and stiff, frost already collecting on its matted fur. Even dead, it was hard to perceive. Soon, it would vanish forever, and take his triumph with it.

He was tired. And cold.

Lukas rolled over, and crawled towards the creature. The wolf in him wanted to feed, to gorge on the cooling meat of his kill. But he had other priorities. ‘I swore to the Allfather that I’d take your pelt, beast. Even I wouldn’t go back on such an oath. So, off it comes. Now, hold still, eh?’ Lukas caught a handful of the beast’s pelt and began to slice it free from the body with his claws. It was rough going, but he managed.

‘I feel as if there were easier ways of doing this,’ he said, as he worked. ‘A drinking contest, perhaps? Last man to the bottom of a cask loses. Or an eating contest. We always said that a man who could stomach Gunnhild’s cooking was worthy of joining the gods.’ He ignored the flash of pain her name caused. Gunnhild was dead.

‘And you are not.’

Lukas looked up. The voice echoed in his head like distant thunder, and drove out the cold that clung to his bones. A golden figure, shining like the sun at the height of summer, was watching him. He could not make out its features, such was its radiance, but he recognized the being regardless.

‘No, I’m not,’ he said, his voice hoarse with fear, or perhaps hope. ‘Why? Why choose me?’

The Allfather said nothing. Lukas peered up at him, waiting for him to do something. Anything. Then, softly, slowly, like the rumble of a distant avalanche, the Allfather chuckled. Turned away. Vanished. As if he had never been. And maybe he hadn’t. With such a being, it was impossible to say. Either way, Lukas had his answer.

His gods might not laugh. But their god certainly did.

Lukas’ grin almost split his face. He bent to his task, and finished stripping the blink-devil of its fur. He stood and swung the dripping pelt over his shoulders. He looked down at the carcass. It was shrunken, somehow, in death. A thing broken by its own hubris. It had assumed itself the stronger, and seen him as prey. As the kraken had. But he had proven it wrong, even as he had proven his people wrong.

As he had proven the old wolf wrong.

Lukas looked around. The dead surrounded him, watching as the Allfather had. Then they too faded, one by one, until he stood alone on the ice. He missed them, but he was alive and they had gone somewhere he had no intention of going until the time of his choosing. He still had so much to do.

Wrapped in the skin of his shadow, Lukas continued his journey. And when he at last reached the base of the Fang, the old wolf was waiting for him, skull-helmet tucked beneath one arm.

‘You still live,’ the old wolf said, looking down at him.

‘I do.’

‘Mayhap your survival is a credit to me then, as well as yourself.’ The old wolf grimaced as he examined the pelt Lukas wore. ‘You slew the doppelgangrel, then.’

Lukas didn’t have to ask what the Wolf Priest was referring to. ‘You knew it was out there,’ he said, without rancour.

‘It was–’

‘A test, yes,’ Lukas said, his grin tight. The wolf in him snarled with fury, but he forced it back into its cage. ‘To see if I was worthy.’

‘Even so.’

‘And I passed. The question I have now is… are you worthy of me?’ Lukas was gratified to see a look of incomprehension pass over the old wolf’s face. He pulled the blink-devil – no, the doppelgangrel – pelt tighter about himself, and he realised that it still held its glamour. The old wolf squinted at him, trying to focus.

‘I saw in you the spirit of the wolf, and you have not proven me wrong.’ One black gauntlet gestured to his trophy. ‘Toss that filthy pelt aside. You no longer require it.’

‘I think it suits me,’ Lukas said. The gods saw the world in grey absolutes, but the world was more like the stinking fur he wore – ever changing. He wondered if perhaps that was why he had survived – not for vengeance, or to prove his own worth, but to test theirs. Perhaps that too was the Allfather’s will.

Or maybe, he simply had a sense of humour.

The old wolf’s grimace slid into an uncertain frown. ‘Then keep it. And keep your scars as well. You’ve earned them. The Allfather welcomes you, pup.’

Lukas met the Wolf Priest’s gaze unflinchingly.

‘My name is Lukas,’ he said.

And he laughed.

Baldr Svelok slammed hard into the acid-laced rock. His plate crunched against the stone, sending warning runes flashing across his helm-feed. Instinct told him another blow was coming in fast, and the Wolf Guard ducked. A massive tight-balled fist tore into the rock where his head had been, showering him with shards where the impact had obliterated the cliff.

Svelok dodged the next crashing fist, his augmented limbs moving with preternatural speed. He almost made it, but the monster’s talons raked down across his right shoulder-guard, sending him sprawling to the ground and skidding across pools of acid. He landed with a heavy crack, and something snapped across his barrel chest boneplate. He felt blood in his mouth, and his head jerked back from the impact.

Throne, he was being taken apart. That did not happen.

He spun onto his back, ignoring the heavy crunch as the creature’s clawed foot stamped down just millimetres from his arm. It towered into the storm-wracked sky, a living wall of obsidian, five metres high and crowned with dark, curving spikes. Lightning reflected from the facets of its organic armour, glinting off the slick ebony. Somewhere in the whirl of jagged, serrated limbs was a monotasking mind, a basic alien intelligence filled with an urge to protect its territory and drive the infiltrating humans back into space.

Svelok had never seen a xenos like it. The closest he could get was a creature of demi-myth on Fenris, the Grendel, but these bastards were encased in plates of rock and had talons like lightning claws.

‘You all die the same way,’ he growled. His voice was a jagged-edged rasp, scraped into savagery by old throat wounds. He sounded as terrifying as he looked.

The storm bolter screamed out a juddering stream of mass-reactive bolts, sending ice-white impact flares across the creature’s armoured hide. It staggered, rocking back on its heels, clutching at the hail of rounds as if trying to pluck them from the air. The torrent was relentless, perfectly aimed and deadly.

The magazine clicked empty. Boosted by his armour-servos, Svelok leapt to his feet, mag-locked the bolter and grabbed a krak grenade.

Amazingly, the leviathan still stood. It was reeling now, its hide cracked and driven in by the barrage of bolter fire, but some spark of defiance within it hadn’t died. A jagged maw, black as Morkai’s pelt, cracked open, revealing teeth like a row of stalactites. It lurched back into the attack, talons outstretched.

Whip-fast, Svelok hurled the grenade through the open mouth. The massive jaws snapped shut in reflex and the Space Wolf crouched down against the oncoming blast. There was a muffled boom and the xenos was blown apart, its iron-hard shell smashed open and spread out like a splayed ribcage. The behemoth crumbled in a storm of shards, toppled, and was gone.

‘Feel the wrath of Russ, filth!’ roared Svelok, leaping back to his feet, fangs bared inside his helmet. He seized a fresh magazine, spun round and slammed the rounds into the storm bolter’s chamber. There’d been three of them, massive stalking beasts carved from the stone around them, horrors of black, tortured rock bigger than a Dreadnought.

Now there were none. Rune Priest Ravenblade loomed over the smoking remains of the largest, his runestaff thrumming with angry, spitting witchfire. Lokjr and Varek had taken out the third, though the Grey Hunters’ armour was scarred and dented from the assault. The xenos monsters were tough as leviathan-hide.

‘What in Hel are these things?’ Lokjr spat over the comm, releasing the angry churn of his frostblade power axe.

‘Scions of this world, brother,’ replied Ravenblade coolly.

‘Just find me more to kill,’ growled Varek, reloading his bolter and sweeping the muzzle over the barren landscape.

Svelok snarled. His blood was up, pumping round his massive frame and filling his bunched muscles with the need for movement. The wolf-spirit was roused, and he could feel its feral power coiled round his hearts. He suppressed the kill-urge with difficulty. His irritation with Ravenblade was finding other outlets, and that was dangerous.

‘How far, and how long?’ he spat, flexing his gauntlet impatiently.

‘Three kilometres south,’ said Ravenblade, consulting the auspex. ‘One hour left.’

‘Then we go now,’ ordered Svelok, combat-readiness flooding his body again. ‘There’ll be more xenos, and I still haven’t seen one bleed.’

Kolja Ravenblade loped alongside the others, feeling his armoured boots thud against the unyielding rock. Gath Rimmon, the planetoid they’d been on for less than an hour, was a hellish maelstrom of acid-flecked storms. The sky was near-black, lit only by boiling electrical torment that scored the heavens with a tracery of silver fire. In every direction the landscape was dark and glossy, cut from unyielding rock and glinting dully in the flickering light. Acid pooled across the jagged edges, hissing and spitting as it splashed against the Astartes’ armour. The four Space Wolves ran south through narrow defiles of jet, each worn down by millennia of erosion, each as pitiless and terrible as the ice-fields of Fenris in the heart of the Long Winter.

This world was angry. Angry with them, angry with itself. Somewhere, close by, Ravenblade could feel it. It was like the beat of a heart, sullen and deep. That was the sound that had drawn him here, echoing across the void, lodged in the psychic flesh of the universe. Something was hidden on Gath Rimmon, something that screamed of perversion.

And it was being guarded.

‘Incoming!’ bellowed Varek, halting suddenly and sending a volley of bolter fire into the air.

Ravenblade pulled out of his run and swept his staff from its mag-lock. His helm-display ran red with signals – they were coming from the sky. He spoke a single word and the shaft blazed with fluorescent power, flooding the land around.

Above them, dozens of creatures were flinging themselves from the high rock, talons of stone outstretched. They were carved from the same material as the planet, each of them crudely animated creatures of inorganic, immutable armour. Eight spindly legs curved down from angular abdomens, crowned with extended rigid plates for controlled gliding. At the end of the metre-long body, wide jaws gaped, lined with teeth of rending daggers. They plummeted towards the Space Marines soundlessly, like ghosts carved out of solid adamantium.

‘Fell them!’ ordered Svelok, his storm bolter spitting controlled bursts at the swooping xenos. The rounds all hit, sparking and exploding in showers of shattered rock. The Wolf Guard made killing look simple. A shame, thought Ravenblade, that he had no time for anything else.

Varek’s bolter joined in the chorus of destruction, but some xenos still got through, wheeling down and twisting through the corridors of fire.

For those that made it, Lokjr waited. The massive warrior, his armour draped in the pelt of a white bear and hung with the skulls of a dozen kills, spun arcs of death with the whirring blade of his frost axe.

‘For the honour of Fenris!’ he roared, slamming the monomolecular edge in wide loops, slicing through the glistening rock-hide and tearing the flyers apart as they reached him.

Watching the carnage unfold, Ravenblade grasped his staff in both hands, feeling the power of his calling well up within him. The wind spun faster around his body, coursing over the rune-wound armour. Acid flecks spat against his ancient vambraces, fizzing into vapour as raw aether rippled across steel-grey ceramite.

‘In the name of the Allfather,’ he whispered, feeling the dark wolf within him snarl into life. The runes on his plate blazed with witchlight, blood-red like the heart of a dying star. He raised the staff above his head, and the wind accelerated into a frenzied whine. A vortex opened, swirling and cascading above the four Space Marines, billowing into the tortured air above them.

‘Unleash!’

A column of lightning blazed down from the skies. As it reached Ravenblade’s outstretched staff it exploded into a corona of writhing, white-hot fire, lashing out from the Rune Priest in whip-fronds of dazzling brilliance.

The surviving flyers were blasted open, ripped into slivers by the leaping blades of lightning, crushed and flayed by the atomising power of the storm. The Rune Priest had spoken, and the creatures of Gath Rimmon had no answer to his elemental wrath.

As the last of them crunched to the ground, Ravenblade released the power from the staff. The skirling corona rippled out of existence and a shudder seemed to bloom through the air.

By contrast with the fury of the storm, the Rune Priest stood as still and calm as ever. Unlike his brothers, his pack-manner was stealthy. If he hadn’t been picked out by Stormcaller, perhaps the path of the Lone Wolf would have called for him.

Kilometres above them, the natural storm growled unabated. The planet had been cowed, but remained angry.

‘Russ damn you, priest,’ rasped Svelok, crushing a fallen flyer beneath his boot and crunching the stone to rubble. His helm was carved in the shape of a black wolf’s head, locked in a perpetual curling grimace. In the flickering light its fangs glistened like tears. ‘You’ll bring more to us.’

‘Let them come!’ shouted Varek, laughing harshly over the comm.

Svelok turned on him. The Wolf Guard was a hand’s breadth taller and broader than the Grey Hunter, though the aura of his ever-present battle-lust made him twice as terrifying. His armour was pitted and studded with old scars, and they laced the surface like badges of honour. Rage was forever present with him, frothing under the surface. Ravenblade could sense it through the layers of battle-plate, pulsing like an exposed vein.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Svelok growled. ‘There’s no time for this.’

Ravenblade regarded the Wolf Guard coldly. Svelok was as angry as the planet, his hackles raised by a mission he saw no use or glory in, but he was right. Time was running out. They all knew the acid tide was racing towards them. In less than an hour the ravines would be filling up, and ceramite was no protection against those torrents.

‘I’ll be the judge of that, brother,’ warned the Rune Priest. ‘We’re close.’

Svelok turned to face him, his bolter still poised for assault. For a moment, the two Space Wolves faced one another, saying nothing. Svelok had no patience with the scrying arts, and no faith in anything but his bolter. He had almost a century more experience on the battle-front than Ravenblade, and took orders from no one but his Wolf Lord and Grimnar. Handling him would be a test.

‘We’d better be,’ he snarled at last, his voice thick with disdain. ‘Move out.’

Six kilometres to the north, Gath Rimmon’s dark plains were deserted. The tearing wind scoured the stone, whipping up the acid that remained on it and sending curls of vapour twisting into the air.

In the centre of a vast, tumbled plateau of rock was a circular platform. Exposed to the atmosphere, it looked raw and out of place. Lightning flashed across the heavens, picking out the smooth edge of the aberration.

Suddenly, without any signal or warning, a crystalline pinprick began to spiral over the platform. It span rapidly, picking up speed and flashing with increasing intensity. It moulded itself, forming into a tall oval twice the height of a man. At its edge, psychic energy coursed and crackled. The rain whipped through it, vaporising and bouncing from the perimeter.

Then there was a rip. The surface of the ellipse sheered away. One by one, figures emerged from the portal. Eight of them. As the last stepped lightly from the oval, the perimeter collapsed into nothingness, howling back into a single point of nullity.

The arrivals were man-shaped, though far slighter than humans, let alone Space Marines. Six were clad in dark green segmented armour. They carried a chainsword in one hand and a shuriken pistol in the other. Their closed-faced helmets were sleek and tapered, and all had twin blasters set into the jowls. They fell into position around the platform, their movements silent and efficient.

Their leader remained in the centre. He was arrayed in the same armour, though his right hand was enclosed in a powerclaw and the mark of his shrine had been emblazoned across his chest. He moved with a smooth, palpable menace.

Beside him stood a figure in a white mask carrying a two-handed force sword. The blade swam with pale fire, sending tendrils of glistening energy snaking towards the ground. He wore black armour lined with bone-coloured sigils and warding runes. Ruby spirit-stones studded the surface, glowing angrily from the passage through the webway. He wore no robes of rank over his interlocking armour plates, but his calling was unmistakable. He was a psyker and a warrior. Humans, in their ignorance, called such figures warlocks, knowing little of what they spoke.

‘You sense it, Valiel?’ asked the claw-fisted warrior.

‘South,’ nodded the warlock. ‘Be quick, exarch; the tides already approach.’

The exarch made a quick gesture with his chainsword, and the bodyguard clustered around him.

‘Go fast,’ he hissed. ‘Go silent.’

As one, the eldar broke into a run, negotiating the treacherous terrain with cool agility. Like a train of ghosts, they slipped across the broken rocks, heading south.

Svelok felt battle-fury burning in his blood, filling his muscles and flooding his senses. He was a Space Wolf, a warrior of Fenris, and his one purpose was to kill. This chase, this running, was horrifying to him. Only the sanctity of his mission orders restrained him from turning and taking the wrath of Russ to every Grendel-clone on the planet. He knew the acid ocean was coming. He knew that the entire globe would soon be engulfed in boiling death. Even so, turning aside from the path of the hunt for the sake of a Rune Priest’s dreams sickened him.

They were coming to the end of a long, narrow defile. The stone walls, serrated and near-vertical, blocked any route but south. A few metres ahead, hidden by a jutting buttress of rock, the route turned sharply right.

Svelok’s helm-display flickered, and he blink-clicked to augment the feed. There were proximity signals on the far side of the buttress. Plenty of them.

Varek whooped with pleasure. ‘Prey!’ he bellowed, picking up the pace. By his side, the bear-like Lokjr kicked his frost axe into shimmering life and returned a throaty cry of aggression. ‘Fodder for my blade, brother!’

Only Ravenblade remained silent, and his wolf-spirit remained dark. Svelok ignored him. Energy coursed through his own superhuman limbs, energy that needed to be dissipated. He was a Wolf Guard, a demigod of combat, the mightiest and purest of the Allfather’s instruments of death, and this is what he’d been bred for.

‘Kill them all!’ he roared, his hearts pounding as he tore round the final corner and into the ravine beyond. His muscles tensed for impact, suffused with the expectation of righteous murder. A kind of elation bled into the fanged smile under his helm.

Past the buttress, tall cliffs of stone soared away on either side, cradling a narrow stretch of open ground. The massive Grendel-creatures were there, stalking like Titans across the stone, silent and dark. Flyers swooped among them. There were smaller creatures too, all encased in the acid-washed rock-hide of their kind, multi-faceted and covered in diamond-hard spikes and growths. Their vast mouths opened, each ringed with armour-shredding incisors.

Something was in their midst, hunted and cowering. The xenos had come to slay.

‘Humans!’ called out Lokjr, barrelling into the nearest walker. His frost axe slammed against its trailing leg, throwing up shards and sparks.

‘Preserve them,’ ordered Ravenblade, dropping to one knee and spraying bolter fire up at the circling flyers.

Svelok charged into the nearest spiked xenos, ducking under a clumsy swipe and punching up with his power fist. The stone chest shattered as the crackling disruption field tore through it. He threw an upper-cut at the monster’s head, ripping away spikes, before cracking it apart with a savage back-handed lunge. What was left of the xenos fell away and he ploughed on, heading to the heart of the melee.

A dozen weapon-servitors, grey-skinned and fizzing from the acid in the air, were being torn apart by two of the Grendels. Even as Svelok raced to intercept, a big one was ripped limb from limb by a talon-thrust, its pallid flesh impaled on the tips of massive claws, implanted machinery snapping and crunching. Las-blasts spat out in all directions, bouncing harmlessly from the rock-hide of the xenos.

‘What are they doing here?’ growled Varek, taking down his target with a volley of superbly positioned bolter rounds and whirling to confront the first of the slower-moving walkers.

Svelok sent a column of bolter shells into another spiked creature and charged into assault range. Above him, a Grendel was turning, its massive fists clenching with intent.

‘Russ only knows,’ he snapped. ‘Just finish them!’

There was a crack of thunder above them and forks of lightning plunged from the sky. As coolly as ever, Ravenblade had got to work. Bolts of searing witchfire slammed down, punching through rock-hide and breaking limbs apart. The rain of whining destruction was withering, and the smaller flyers were cut down from the air.

Svelok engaged the nearest Grendel, glorying in the crackling aura of his power fist. The wolf-spirit howled within him, and he crunched his fist into the creature’s leading knee-joint. The stone shell shattered, bringing the massive xenos down. It plunged its own fist at Svelok’s head, but the Space Wolf was already moving, darting to the left and releasing a barrage of rounds at the Grendel’s open mouth. The bolts exploded, dousing the monster in a cataclysm of sparks.

‘Death to the alien!’ roared Svelok, his ragged voice ringing out of his helm’s vox-unit and echoing across the ravine. His fist clenched around the trigger, and the twin barrels spat more streams of rock-tearing bolts.

Thrown back by the fury of the assault, the Grendel toppled, broken limbs grasping for purchase. Svelok leapt after it. His armour powered him into the air and on top of the creature’s chest. He plunged down, pinning the monster, his power fist thrumming. Twice, three, four times he punched, his arm moving like a piston, his disruptor-shrouded gauntlet tearing up stone and delving into the heart of the xenos. It cracked, stove, crunched, shattered.

Then he leapt free, whirling to face his next target, clenching the power fist for another assault.

The Space Marines had sliced through the xenos as they’d been made to do. Only one of the big walkers remained. Ravenblade had it enclosed in an aura of blazing light, raised from the ground, coils of lightning crackling between it and the Rune Priest’s staff. Helpless, it writhed within the nimbus of psychic power, trapped inside like an insect in amber. Ravenblade uttered a single word. The cracks in the creature’s armour blazed white-hot, frozen for a second in a lattice of blazing tracery, then it blew itself apart in an orgy of bursting aether-fuelled immolation. Massive chunks of broken hide tore through the air, smoking and fizzing from the Rune Priest’s warp-born energies.

Varek and Lokjr let their heads fall back and howled their victory, swinging their weapons around them like the barbarous warriors of Fenris they’d once been.

‘For the Allfather!’ Svelok bellowed, giving vent to his battle-fury. As Lokjr raised his massive arms in a gesture of defiance and triumph, the skulls at his belt clattered and swirled around him.

Only the Rune Priest remained unmoved. He let the vast power at his command bleed away and strode silently forwards. The bodies of servitors lay before him, ripped to shreds by the acid, or the xenos, or both. In the middle of them all hunched a human shape, clad in some kind of suit and unsteadily regaining its feet.

Svelok cursed under his breath. What was wrong with the priest? Were his fangs so blunted by meddling in runes that he couldn’t revel in the joy of victory like a Son of Russ should? He reined in his own exuberance grudgingly, and made his way to the cowering form on the ground. Varek and Lokjr took up guard around them, no doubt eager for more combat.

The survivor was clad in bulky armour of an ancient template, blood-red in colour and fully covering his body. It looked obsolete, scored with the patina of years and covered in esoteric devices Svelok didn’t recognise. Brass-coloured implants studded the surface, humming sclerotically and issuing hisses of steam. As the human rose, servos whined in protest and a thicket of mechadendrites scuttled out from hidden panels at his shoulders to begin repairing surface damage. Across his chest was the skull of the Adeptus Mechanicus, pitted and worn from age.

The man’s face was hidden beneath a translucent dome of plexiglass filled with a thin blue mist. His head was little more than a dark shadow within that clouded interior, though the spidery shapes of augmetic rebreathers and sensor couplings could be made out.

‘Speak, mortal,’ ordered Svelok in Low Gothic, determined to interrogate him before Ravenblade could.

A series of clicks emerged from the dome. Eventually, hidden behind a wall of distortion, speech emerged from a vox-unit mounted on his sternum. There was no emotion in it, barely any humanity. It had been filtered through some proxy mechanism, cleansed of its imperfections and rendered blank and sterile. Svelok felt nothing but disgust.

‘Adeptus Astartes,’ came the voice. Then a train of jumbled clicks. ‘Low Gothic, dialect Fenris Vulgaris. Recalling.’

Ravenblade stayed silent. Even through the barrier of the runic armour, Svelok could feel his keen interest in the pheromones his pack-brother emitted. Something had got the prophet worked up. Another vision? Or something else? He suppressed a low throat-rattle of irritation. There was no time for this.

‘Identify as Logis Alsmo 3/66 Charis. Departmento Archeotech IV Gamma.’

Another pause.

‘I should add,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

They came to a standstill. As they’d headed south, the plains had given way to twisting, steep-sided gorges. Pools of fluid could be seen glistening at the base of the defiles, harbingers of the deluge to come. They were closing on their quarry, but time was running out. The acid was coming.

‘What do you sense?’ asked the exarch.

The warlock remained silent, his head inclined to one side. Above him, the sides of the gorge soared upwards.

‘Mon-keigh,’ he said at last. ‘And something else.’

Even as Valiel finished speaking, there was a crack in the rock face closest to him. The warriors snapped into a defensive cordon around the warlock.

A pillar of rock seemed to detach from the cliff nearest them. As it did so, jagged arms broke free from the torso, showering corrosive fluid. Silent as death, an eyeless creature, obsidian-clad and uncurling talons of stone, began to move towards them. Further down the gully, spiked variants detached, unfurling glossy limbs and exposing gem-like teeth.

‘This world dislikes intruders,’ said Valiel.

The exarch hissed an order, and the troops fanned out into a line in front of the warlock. The creatures lumbered nearer.

‘Was this in your visions?’ asked the exarch over his shoulder.

Valiel let the psychic surface of his witchblade fill with energy. These creatures hadn’t been, but then glimpses of the future were always imperfect. That was what made the universe so interesting.

‘You don’t need to know. Just kill them.’

Ravenblade glanced at his auspex. Thirty-nine minutes.

‘Your purpose here, tech-priest,’ he said, towering over the logis. ‘Speak quickly – I can kill you as well as those xenos.’

He could still feel the dark wolf within him panting, circling impatiently, thirsting for more release. It would have to wait. There was also a shard of fear from the logis, generated by the vestigial part of whatever humanity he’d once had. The Space Wolves towered over him, their massive war-plate draped in gruesome trophies and adorned with runes of destruction.

‘Rune Priest,’ said the logis. ‘Artificer armour, Fenris-pattern.’

Svelok growled his displeasure. ‘Stop babbling, mortal, or I’ll rip your arms off. Answer him.’

The logis shrank back, cogitators whirring. Communication in anything other than binaric seemed difficult.

‘Gath Rimmon,’ Charis said. ‘Third world Iopheas Secundus system. Acid surface, total coverage, impenetrable, sensor-resistant, hyper-corrosive. No settlement possible, no surveys archived.’

Svelok took a half-step forwards, his gauntlet curling into a fist. ‘We know this!’ he rasped over the mission channel to Ravenblade. ‘He’s wasting our time.’

‘Let him speak,’ replied Ravenblade. His voice was calm, but firm.

‘Single satellite, class Tertius, designation Riapax. Orbit highly irregular. Period 5,467 solar years. Proximity induces tidal withdrawal across polar massif for three local days, total exposure thirty-four standard hours. Opportunity for exploration. Sensors detect artefact. Mission dispatched. Xenos infiltration unanticipated.’

‘What kind of artefact?’

‘Unknown. Benefit analysis determined by age. Assessed Majoris Beta in priority rank system Philexus. Resources deployed accordingly.’

‘You have a location?’

‘Signal intermittent, 2.34 kilometres, bearing 5/66/774.’

‘Then we need him,’ said Ravenblade to Svelok on the closed channel.

‘Forget it,’ said Svelok. ‘Too weak.’

‘He has a lock. We don’t have time to waste looking.’

‘Morkai take you, prophet!’ cried Svelok, spitting with vehemence. ‘What is this thing? We diverted a strike cruiser for your visions.’

Ravenblade remained impassive. Svelok was the deadliest killer he’d ever seen, a single-minded inferno of perfectly controlled rage and zeal. Despite all of that, the Wolf Guard had no idea of the power of the Wyrd and the knowledge it gave Ravenblade. How could he? How could anyone but a Rune Priest understand?

‘He comes with us. We have less than an hour to find it and return to the pick-up coordinates. The acid is returning, brother. When it comes, the chance will have gone for another five millennia.’

‘Then let it lie. This worm can scurry after it.’

Ravenblade felt the dark wolf issue a low psychic growl, hidden to all but his aether-attuned instinct. Svelok was a stubborn bastard, as stubborn as the Great Wolf himself, but there were other ways of deciding this.

‘Enough.’

He twisted open a casket hanging from his neck to reveal a dozen pieces of bone, each inscribed with a single rune on both sides. He spilled the pieces into his gauntlet’s palm, marking how each fell. As he worked, he saw Svelok turn away in exasperation. The Wolf Guard had no time for the runes. That was his problem.

Ravenblade studied the sigils. Rune patterns were complex and subtle things. He opened his mind to the patterns in the abstract shapes. Across time and space, the angular outlines locked into their sacred formation. The sequence fell into place. He had his sign.

‘The runes never lie, brother,’ he said. ‘We are meant to be here, and we are on the right course. The strands of fate demand it. And there’s something else.’

He looked at Svelok, and this time spoke over the standard vox. Another element had emerged, one he’d not foreseen.

‘I sense xenos,’ he announced. ‘They are here.’

The exarch called his warriors back. None of the creatures remained alive. Two had died in the assault, their fragile armour rent by the talons of the world’s guardians. Once the shell was broken, the acid rain did the rest.

‘Safeguard the spirit stones,’ ordered Valiel, sheathing his witchblade and bringing his breathing under control. The survivors did his bidding silently.

‘Are we near?’ The exarch’s voice, muffled by a damaged speech matrix, was tainted with accusation. Valiel regarded him carefully. The exarch was the deadliest killer he’d ever seen, a relentless master of close-ranged combat. Despite all of that, the warrior had little idea of the full power of the warp and the knowledge it gave Valiel. How could he? How could anyone but a warlock understand?

‘See for yourself.’

Before them, the series of winding gullies opened out into a wide valley which ran towards the southern horizon. At the far end of the valley was a cliff of cloud, flecked with pale lightning at its base. A distant roar came from it, just like the sea coming in.

‘The tides approach,’ said the exarch, resentment still in his voice. He feared nothing but that which he couldn’t fight. So it was with all those lost on the warrior path.

‘What we seek lies on the precipice of danger,’ said Valiel. ‘Remember your vows, killer.’

The warriors returned and waited. Valiel could sense their doubt, just like their master’s.

‘Follow me,’ said the warlock. He didn’t wait for the exarch’s assent. Now, above all else, he trusted in the vindication of his vision. The artefact was at hand. Ignoring the acid rain as it streaked across his armour, the warlock strode down the floor of the gorge and into the valley beyond.

Svelok’s pack broke from the cover of the gorges and into a wide, bowl-shaped valley. At its far end, a few kilometres distant, the storm raged unabated. A low roar echoed from the mountain walls on either side. The tide-line was almost visible. Even now the rocks underfoot were sodden with puddles of gently hissing fluid. The planet’s inhabitants had been driven off for now, but the pack was still being shadowed by flyers, circling out of bolter range like vultures.

They kept running, kept the pace tight. Twenty-five minutes. Ravenblade could taste the acrid stench of the distant acid ocean. Readings scrolled down his helm-display detailing atmospheric toxicity. Nothing his armour couldn’t handle. For now.

‘Bearing,’ he ordered over the mission channel.

‘Imminent, Space Marine,’ responded the logis, struggling to match the pace in his archaic armour. ‘Recommend halt.’

The Space Wolves came to a standstill and waited for Charis to catch up. The rain streaked and steamed from their battle-plate. Lokjr’s bear pelt was being eaten away, and the runes of Ravenblade’s pauldrons were still glowing an angry red, like wounds washed in iodine.

‘Located,’ said Charis. A laser-sight extended from his right shoulder and pointed out a piece of flat rock a few metres distant.

‘Russ, that’s nothing!’ mocked Varek.

‘Silence!’ ordered Svelok, his mood clearly still dark. ‘We’ll examine it.’

As Ravenblade approached the site he had a sudden lurch of remembrance. He’d seen it before. Like a déjà vu, the blank gap in the stone loomed up towards him. He had no doubts. This was where he’d been drawn to.

No more than five metres square, a shaft had been bored directly down into the valley floor. It plunged vertically, sides smooth and open to the elements. It was perfectly black, as if it went all the way down to Hel. There were no steps, and few hand-holds. Far above them, the thunder growled, echoing from the valley sides.

‘That’s it?’ demanded Svelok.

Ravenblade nodded, mag-locking his staff. ‘Where we’re meant to be, brother.’

‘You sense it?’

The psychic signal filled Ravenblade’s mind, drowning out the pheromone-signatures of his battle-brothers. All that he could sense was the thing that had drawn him, and the stench of the xenos. Both were close.

‘Trust me.’

Svelok turned away. ‘Lokjr, you’ll hold. Drop anything that gets close. Varek, take point. We’re going down.’

Panels on Charis’s gauntlets and vambraces opened up, revealing clawed extensions capable of gripping the rock face. The Space Marines, with their occulobe-enhanced vision and superhuman poise, needed no such aids.

Varek swung himself over the edge, his boots finding instant purchases against the rock, and started to descend.

Ravenblade turned away, reaching for the runes again. Surreptitiously, keeping them shielded from Svelok, he spilled the bone fragments into his palm once more.

‘What do you see?’ The rumbling voice was Lokjr’s. Unlike his superior, the Grey Hunter had a pious respect for the readings.

Ravenblade stared at the figures resting on his gauntlet. The fragments glistened pale in the darkness. Shapes swam before his eyes, resisting interpretation. Elk, Fire, Axe, Death, Ice. None of them stood in their proper relations. There was no pattern. Ravenblade felt a rare pang of unease. For the first time in his life, over a hundred years of service, the runes were blank. There was nothing.

‘All is at it should be,’ he said, snatching up the bones and putting them away. ‘Time to go.’

Svelok went carefully but quickly, testing each hold before placing his weight on it. He knew as well as the others that when the tide came up the valley floor it would cascade down the shaft on top of them. Whatever happened, they had to be back up on the surface before then. Damn that priest. This mission was pointlessly dangerous. They didn’t even know what they were hunting down. His pack-brothers respected the Wyrd, but he’d never trusted it. There was a thin line between augmentation and corruption, and Rune Priests walked it perilously.

He blink-clicked a feed from Ravenblade’s auspex to his helm display. Twenty minutes.

‘Report,’ he snapped.

There was a low thud from below him as Varek leapt to the bottom of the shaft.

‘At the base,’ he responded. ‘No targets.’

Svelok checked his proximity readings.

‘Teeth of Russ,’ he spat. ‘Where are those xenos?’

He crunched to the ground beside Varek. On three sides, the stone walls continued to the level of the floor. The fourth opened out into a small underground chamber carved roughly from the rock. As Ravenblade and Charis completed the descent, the lumen-beams of the Space Marines’ helms ran across the enclosed space.

A circular access hatch had been carved into the floor of the chamber. Svelok’s helm detected the force field across it – one strong enough to
withstand five thousand years of acid erosion.

‘The mechanism may prove–’ started Charis.

A blast rang out across the chamber, and the embedded control panel exploded with a gout of oily smoke. The field shimmered and gave out.

‘Varek, with me,’ barked Svelok, his bolter barrel glowing from the discharge. ‘Priest, keep an eye on the mortal.’

Then he leapt through the hatch, landing heavily several metres down and throwing up a cloud of fragile debris. He sprang away, whirling his bolter round.

Still no targets. His lumen-beam ran over banks of equipment. Cogitators, they looked like, ancient and dark. He heard a crash behind him as Varek joined him. Together they swept the space with their weapon muzzles.

Nothing. The room was empty. It had been empty for millennia. A chamber no more than ten metres square, packed with defunct machinery, heavy with decay. Coils of translucent piping lay breached and desiccated in the dust. Bundles of machine-spirit conduits led from cogitator banks to an elaborate brass altar, black with age, studded with skulls and obscure control runes. There was a faint hum from somewhere, as if the force field had a counterpart hidden in the chamber. Cracked crystal viewports were as dark and lifeless as the shaft above them, and the floor was thick with ancient dust.

Ravenblade and Charis clambered down from the hatch via footholds in the wall. Svelok lowered his bolter and widened his lumen-beam.

The altar was the centrepiece. Though tarnished and old, the pipes and embellishments were massively complex. The hum came from its base, and a faint power reading registered on his helm display. Sitting on the altar was a box. A small, black box. Fascinated, Charis edged towards it.

Svelok turned to Ravenblade.

‘You sensed xenos,’ he said. ‘Where are they?’

The Rune Priest didn’t reply. He was looking at the space where Svelok had landed. There was a shattered ribcage on the floor, brittle with age. Other bones littered the floor. Ravenblade snapped his gaze towards the altar.

‘They’re here, Space Wolf.’

Charis’s voice had taken on a fresh clarity, and he suddenly seemed to have no trouble with rendering Gothic. Svelok and Varek spun round to face him. The logis withdrew his gauntlet and exposed a grey-fleshed claw of a hand, riddled with mechanical components. He took the box.

‘They’ve always been here.’

Valiel dropped through the hatch, landing lightly on the pristine metal floor. He sprang clear, making room for the warriors to follow. The dark green figures leapt into the room, rolling away and uncoiling into attack poses, the exarch close behind.

The chamber was harshly lit and lined with gleaming machinery. Coils of translucent pipes pumped coolant from cogitator banks to an elaborate brass altar, studded with skull-and-cog devices and surmounted by a humming containment field. Runes flickered across crystal viewports as the arcane clusters of machinery clicked through their protocols. A low humming gave away the power stored in the room, enough to supply a protective field of prodigious strength.

The chamber’s lone occupant whirled round to face them. A human, wearing bright red armour. The close-fitting plates were covered in gleaming mechadendrites, all clicking animatedly, sparkling under the bright strip lighting. His domed helmet had been retracted, revealing a thin, young face. Only a few augmetics marred the taut skin, though there already fresh incisions on his cheeks where more would be added.

He looked terrified.

Valiel let a ripple of sapphire pass down his blade.

Kill, he ordered psychically.

The warriors sprang towards the human. Two kept low, sending a stream of metal from their mandiblasters. Two more leapt into the air, chainswords whirling. The exarch took the direct route, firing from his shuriken pistol as he swung his claw into position.

It all happened in a single heartbeat, and yet the human reacted. That should have been impossible.

Mandiblaster darts homed in and folded out of existence. Shuriken bolts disappeared, winking into nothingness. The man raised his hand and the warriors crumpled into agony. Valiel felt their psychic screams as their souls were ripped from their bodies and sucked, howling, into the box. Dark tongues of matter like strings of ink shot out from the box. They clamped on to the exarch, tearing his spirit from his body. His broken husk fell to the floor, his faceplate distorted into a many-dimensioned mess.

So quick. Valiel remained calm, feeding his blade energy. Tendrils of aether-born plasma curled round his armour like the tails of cats.

‘So you’ve learned some of its tricks,’ he said in heavily-accented Gothic. ‘That won’t help you. If you keep using it, they’ll find you.’

Logis Alsmo Charis walked forwards. As he did so the box folded up and switched aspect in his hand. At times it resembled a cube, at others a pyramid, others a rhomboid. Every heartbeat, a new shape. Valiel knew, as the human could not, that it was folding across many dimensions as well. It was an abomination, the product of a mind beyond the imagination of a mon-keigh, and its power had been proscribed on the craftworlds for millennia. Despite his long training, Valiel felt his gaze drawn to it.

So terrible. So beautiful.

‘You think I came here to use it?’ the logis said, his voice growing in confidence. His fear was fading. ‘I came here to hide it. The trail will die.’

‘Then so will you.’

Charis flexed his fingers, already laced with steel slivers of augmetic technology.

‘I’ll find a way.’

He launched a lashing column of black fire from the box.

Valiel sprang clear, kindling the witchblade as he rose. He somersaulted clear of the box’s blast, landing lightly on a cogitator bank. His blade shot out, spitting a flurry of brilliant silver stars towards the human. The man evaded the strikes and leapt back towards the warlock.

His outline shimmered like a Warp Spider’s. The box was shifting him.

Charis twisted the box. A black mirror flew into being, rotating across the chamber, reflecting thousands of possible states on its shimmering surface. Valiel knew what it was instantly. He twisted away, but the glass enveloped him. As it passed through him, bulging like water across his body, he felt his soul dragged from his body, folded into miniscule shards of pain-filled insignificance. He was pulled from the bank and crashed to the floor.

The surface of the warped glass shattered. Valiel came to a halt, prone, locked down. His sword clattered away. He felt his essence dissipated. There was no physical pain, but the psychic agony was unbearable. He stifled his screams as the human loomed over him. The box was still in his hand, and was changing shape quickly now.

‘Unwise, to try and prevent me.’

Valiel let his eyes flicker to the roof.

Too powerful. Why was I led here?

He opened his tormented mind, bent all his fading power towards the multiple paths stretching away from this moment. The structure of the universe always gave you options.

I am only a part of this.

Valiel felt the humming malevolence of the box grow. With all the strength that remained in him, he locked away everything he knew about the device, its origins, his mission. History, time itself, condensed into a single form. A glyph. A key. One with the right power would know how to use it.

With a cry of agonised effort, a final blast of witchfire streaked from his clenched fingers, tugging at those strands of his soul still gathered together, tearing the psychic sinews of his inner self.

Charis moved quickly, trying to deflect it with the box, but the bolt flew clear, striking the metal rim of the hatch above, cracking it and careering across the roof. As the flame burned out it left a trail behind it on the stone. An intricate trail.

Charis ignored it. The last traces of terror had left his eyes, and flickers of a confident hatred distorted his features.

‘A waste,’ he spat, spinning the box-forms on his palm idly. ‘You’re no different from the rest. Think carefully on that, alien filth. Your people started this. I will finish it.’

Valiel tried to speak, but his mouth no longer obeyed him. The mon-keigh was mistaken about that, like so much else. He knew nothing of the varied allegiances of Valiel’s ancient kind. The mon-keigh were so crude, so simple.

The box opened. Defenceless, Valiel felt his soul dragged into isolation, his remaining essence torn from his material form and sucked within the shifting walls of the device. For an instant, while his eyes still worked, he caught a glimpse of what was inside. Part of him understood what was in there, knew it from myths and scraps of legend. He could see movement, layers, shifting upon shifting, the dark heart revolving before a...

He tried to scream, but his vocal chords were no longer his own.

The box clicked shut.

Charis looked down at the burnt-out corpse of the warlock. Not as powerful as he’d been led to fear. The dark ones had been worse.

He hurried over to the altar and placed the box in the receptacle he’d made for it. Leaving it was hard, but he had to master the secrets of it, and they were coming. He withdrew his hand and his armoured gauntlet extended over the exposed flesh, sealing him in against the acid. He depressed a rune on the nearby panel and the cogitators clicked into life, feeding the containment field, keeping it safe. A whiff of ozone burst across the chamber, and the air began to crackle with bounded energies.

The tides were returning. The xenos had delayed but not defeated him. With a final glance across the chamber, Charsis let the dome close over his head. He had to leave – they’d be tearing space apart to find him. Once he was safely away, there was work to be done. Lore to be studied. Secrets to be uncovered. And then the long years of stasis while he waited for Riapax to uncover the shaft again.

So much to do before he’d be back. But then there was so much to learn.

Ravenblade’s staff burst into flame, kindling on the angular incisions inscribed along the shaft, and the dark wolf’s hackles raised. The box held by Charis was shedding psychic energy. Incredible amounts. It was opening and closing in on itself with dizzying speed.

Svelok and Varek moved instantly.

‘Lokjr!’ Svelok barked into the comm-link. ‘Down here. Now!’

The sergeant barrelled across the chamber, power fist crackling. Varek let fly a stream of rounds, each aimed with exact precision: head, neck, armour joints. As they hit, they folded out of existence. Nothing left as much as a mark.

Then Svelok was in range. He hurled a heavy blow with the power fist, aiming for the gap between shoulder and helmet. Charis fell back astonishingly quickly, but the fist still caught him, sinking into the armour. It disappeared. The ceramite crumpled and distorted, and the disruption field flew wildly out of frequency.

Svelok fell back with a snarl and snapped up his storm bolter. Before he could get a round away Charis’s gauntlet punched him heavily in the face. As the fist impacted, black flames exploded from the blow, spiralling out like seeker flares. Svelok was hurled backwards, feet flung from the ground before crashing into a bank of cogitators. The muzzle of his wolf-helm had been folded in on itself.

‘Death, traitor!’ roared Varek, tearing straight at Charis, discarding his bolter for his fists. He smashed into the logis, closing his gauntlet over the box, aiming to tear it away.

‘No!’ cried Ravenblade, swinging his staff into position.

Varek bellowed in agony as his arm was sucked from real space, dragging him after it. The limb was ripped into a vortex of distortion, blood flying in concentric spirals, armour cracking and flesh tearing.

Ravenblade let fly with a searing ball of lightning, engulfing Charis’s breastplate and ramming him against the altar. What was left of Varek slumped against the floor, gurgling in a froth of blood, half of his body ripped away. Ravenblade swung round for a second strike, and his staff crackled with storm-pulled fury.

He didn’t even see the blast from the box. All he felt was the pain as it hit him. The rending, mind-unlocking pain. That was what the device was for, its only purpose. It had been made by a master of technology so advanced that it looked like sorcery. In that moment, exposed to its searching mind, Ravenblade knew its name. In the ancient xenos language now only spoken in one city in the galaxy, it was the Ayex Commorragh. The Heart of Agony.

Black fire shattered his defences, tore through his psychic wards. He felt himself being lifted backwards, armour aflame. He hit the wall with a crack, crashing into the rock. The fire kept coming. Blood trickled down the inside of his helmet. He felt his breastplate rip away, exposing the flesh beneath. The black carapace bubbled and split, shredding the skin, tearing up the muscle.

‘For the Allfather!’

Ravenblade half-heard Lokjr’s charge into the chamber, his frost axe pulsating with energy. Charis whirled to deal with him, but Svelok was back on his feet too, his bolter spitting. Ravenblade felt consciousness slipping away, and fought to hold on to it. He was collapsing into shock. He needed to fix on something. Anything.

He let his head fall back. His eyes flicked to the roof. That was when he saw it. Blasted into the ceiling of the chamber, scored in witchfire, was the thing that had drawn him. The rune. It had been in his dreams for months, deep in the void, out on the strike cruiser. It was the key.

It was enough. His mind unlocked.

Deep within him, crippled and bloody, the dark wolf opened its yellow eyes. A succession of images raced through his consciousness, overlapping with each other as they crowded into his mind. He sensed the souls thronging around him, impossibly old, long-dead. There was a warlock in a white mask and black armour. He’d been here, five thousand years ago.

More images rushed into his mind. Another planet, covered in Adeptus Mechanicus complexes, hells of industry. Dark shapes streaked across the burning skies, jagged-winged flyers, crewed by nightmares. There were men and women running, faces contorted with terror. Among them strode thin-limbed corsairs. Eldar they were too, but of a different kind. In the midst was the architect of the Heart, the haemonculus, hunched over his machinery of terror, watching the slaves being herded through the webway portal. His skin was grey, riddled with black veins. The eyes were pitiless wells of ennui, windows on to a heart driven cold by centuries of horror. There was a terrible intelligence there, a mastery of forbidden arts. He’d used the box to create pain from outside the bounds of the universe. That, and that alone, was why it had been made.

The vision shifted. There was fighting, ranks of human troops moving through the shattered cityscape. The corsairs were driven back. The haemonculus had lingered too long, and soldiers in carapace armour, skitarii, ordinatus, all piled into the vision. There were crippling explosions, massed volleys of las-fire, a retreat. The webway portal closed. The nightmares were gone.

It shifted again. In the midst of the ruination, surrounded by weeping survivors and smouldering rubble, a young logis came. He looked handsome, his flesh as yet unmarked by the touch of the Machine-God. He bent down, drawn by a strange black box. It had a certain pleasing construction. He took it, covering it in his robes. He’d keep it secret, learn how to use it.

But the nightmares knew how to find the box. They came back, pursuing him across the stars. While he had it, they could find him. He could never rest long enough to master it. It had to be hidden. Somewhere far away. Safe while he learned what it was. Safe until the trail died and he could come back to collect it.

Ravenblade snapped back into consciousness. The visions shuddered into nothing. He hadn’t been summoned here by the box. He’d been summoned here by the witchfire rune, left by the xenos whose presence he still sensed. The real world rushed into focus around him. All that remained of the mind-transfer were five words.

I have weakened the portal.

Ravenblade tried to pull himself up. Even his superhuman constitution was near collapse. Blood, half-coagulated, pumped from his exposed chest. Lokjr and Svelok fought on. They were being ripped apart. None of their weapons bit. They ducked around the vicious blasts of black fire with all their skill, but the end was only a matter of time. Even as he watched, Ravenblade saw Lokjr’s frost axe suddenly pulled across dimensions and smashed into scraps of metal by the Heart.

He dragged himself into a half-seated position, lungs burning. Charis had closed the hatch above them, sealing them in. He had control over every device in the room and had ensured that none of them would escape.

But Ravenblade was a son of Fenris, and escape was the last thing on his mind. Just like Svelok, he was a dealer in death, a predator, a hunting beast of the endless war. Only the manner of the kill differed.

Ravenblade closed his charred eyes and opened his mind to the immaterium. The dark wolf growled with pleasure. The runes on his armour went black as Ravenblade pulled all his remaining power to himself. He went back to the essence of his Rune Priest training, the primal tools of his art.

The elements. And this was a world of storms.

‘Unleash.’

Ravenblade screamed as the pain coursed through his body and mind. Far above, he could sense the torrent answer his call. Clouds boiled and raced, hurtling to the source of the summons. Acid oceans, already close, surged across the blasted land, swollen unnaturally by the power at Ravenblade’s command.

The rain increased. It became a deluge, hammering against the rocks. Even shielded by twenty metres of stone, Ravenblade could feel the breaking fury. Corrosive fluid rushed across the valley floor and down the shaft above the chamber, bubbling and churning. He piled on more energy, ignoring the warnings of terminal stress from his body. He felt his primary heart give out, but still the maelstrom responded to the call. He could sense the weight of the acid as it pressed against the hatch. The metal began to steam.

He opened his eyes. Lokjr had been cast aside, his face half-dissolved by the Heart. Even as he watched, Svelok was thrown backwards, a two-metre tall giant in full power armour hurled like a doll across the chamber, shattering machines as he skidded along the floor. Then Charis came for him.

‘Russ guide me,’ whispered Ravenblade, seizing his bolt pistol from its holster, swinging it upwards and firing at the hatch.

The metal exploded instantly, blowing shards across the chamber, unleashing the torrent. Acid sheeted down. The cogitators fizzed and exploded, sending blooms of sparks skittering across the floor. Ravenblade went into spasms of fresh agony as the searing liquid ran across his open wounds. His back arched as he cried out, doused in gouts of boiling liquid pain.

Too slow, Charis’s naked hand was snatched back into its gauntlet. The acid tore through the exposed flesh, eating through skin, bone and metal. The logis shrieked in his turn, his fear unfiltered by the vox-distorter. He tried to clutch the box, but his fingers were gone, washed into the slew of ankle-deep acid bubbling at his feet. It tumbled from his grip, dropping into the seething, corroding mass.

As it hit the liquid, it flipped into a dizzying array of shapes. For a moment it span desperately, its walls folding impossibly fast. Then, feeling even its infinite malignance threatened, the spinning stopped. There was a shudder, and the air around it burned away in a sudden blaze of ozone. The acid bath surged into a boiling sphere, furious and infused with black fire. The box emitted a deafening scream, as if a million tortured voices had been sucked back into the mortal plane for an instant.

Then the acid ball exploded in a blinding, whirling inferno. At its core, the box folded itself out of existence and the psychic backwash from its departure tore out from the epicentre.

Ravenblade cried aloud as the warp echo scored his exposed soul. Eyes bleeding, lungs burning, he hauled himself to his knees, trying to shelter his open chest cavity from the tumbling rain. Every move was a symphony of agony, physical and psychic.

‘You... killed it!’

Charis stumbled towards him, his remaining gauntlet clutching impotently. Freed from the protection of the box, his armour was corroding fast. Mechadendrites extended, blades whirring. The Rune Priest, chest ripped open, psychic senses seared away, had no defences left. He snatched the bolt pistol into position, but it slipped through his broken fingers.

‘For Russ!’

His voice ringing with rage, Svelok burst from the acid like a leviathan rising from the ocean, armour streaming with fluid. He staggered into range and smashed his fist straight through Charis’s visor. The glass shattered, cracking the logis back against the altar and snapping his spine. For a moment, Ravenblade caught a glimpse of a hideously ruined face within, riddled with augmetics. Then it was gone, consumed by the foaming deluge.

Ravenblade’s vision wavered. He was close to passing out. The acid burned against his chest, eating its way into his core. The liquid was now knee-deep around him.

‘We have to go, priest,’ Svelok rasped, his battle-plate pitted and steaming. The combat-fury was gone from his voice, replaced by grim resolve. He dragged Ravenblade to his feet, sending fresh needles of pain shooting through his body.

‘The staff,’ gasped the Rune Priest.

‘No time.’

Svelok hauled Ravenblade to the footholds, shouldering the Rune Priest’s massive armoured weight. Fluid showered down from the portal, sluicing over Ravenblade’s breastplate, snaking under the ruined carapace, worming into his wounds. His organs were failing.

He gritted his teeth. Not yet.

Svelok went first up the ladder, pulling Ravenblade after him. His strength was incredible. It was all Ravenblade could do to hang on, keep his feet on the holds, stay conscious.

The ascent up the rock was a nightmare. Falling acid burned through the armour plate with horrifying speed. Every agonising step saw their protection thinned a little more. Ravenblade watched the runes on his vambrace blaze red as the liquid sank into the impressions. The runes he’d carved himself, now smoking into oblivion.

They reached the top of the shaft. Shouldering his bulk against the torrent, Svelok pulled himself back onto the valley floor. With an almighty heave, he dragged Ravenblade up behind him.

The fury of the heavens had been unleashed. Lightning streaked across the angry sky. Rain fell in swathes. Acid swilled across the full width of the valley floor, bubbling and foaming. To the south, there were white-topped waves. Riapax was heading back into the void, and the ocean was reclaiming its own. They were out of time.

Ravenblade’s helm lenses flickered and went dark. Acid must have got into the mechanism.

‘Nearly as... bad as... Fenris,’ he gasped, feeling the tightness in his throat grow.

Svelok dragged Ravenblade to his feet, pulling the Rune Priest’s arm over his shoulder. Despite his wounds, he was still a furnace of energy and determination. For the first time, Ravenblade began to see his true value to the pack. He was everything a Son of Russ should be.

‘Nearly as,’ Svelok agreed grimly, dragging them both to higher ground. They reached a flat-topped outcrop, jutting from the rising acid around them. It wouldn’t last long. Even now the liquid at its foot was knee-deep. It would soon be waist-deep.

The two of them clambered onto the rock shelf. Ravenblade collapsed against the stone, his breath ragged. Far above them, thunder rolled across the valley. The torrent surged by, washing against the edges of their little island.

Svelok bent over Ravenblade, trying to shield the stricken Rune Priest from the downpour.

‘Hold on, prophet,’ he said, then corrected himself. ‘Brother. We’re not dead yet.’

The Wolf Guard hid his emotions poorly. Ravenblade could sense the full range of frustration and regret. They were far from the pick-up location. Better to prepare for the end, to meet the Allfather with honour. Battle-rage had its place, but not now.

As for himself, he could no longer feel anything in his limbs. His torso was lost in a dull ache, the nerve-endings burned away. A task had been achieved on Gath Rimmon, even if it wasn’t the one he’d expected.

‘They were blank,’ coughed Ravenblade, tasting the blood in his mouth.

‘What were?’ Svelok’s voice was no longer coloured with suspicion. Two battle-brothers had gone. Two pack-members. The bond between them was severed. Now a third strand would be cut.

The roar above them got louder. It wasn’t just thunder. There were lights in the clouds, and the whine of engines.

‘The runes,’ said Ravenblade. He saw the huge shadow of a Thunderhawk descend from above, searchlights whirling. That was good. Svelok would live to tell the saga.

‘Don’t speak, brother.’

The pain went. The Allfather had granted him that, at least.

‘I will speak,’ Ravenblade croaked, letting the last of the air in his lungs bleed away. ‘You must learn from this, Wolf Guard. We were part of a greater pattern here. There is always a pattern.’

His vision faded to black.

‘Your fury gives you strength, but it is fate that guides you. Remember it.’

The dark wolf gave him a final, mournful look, then loped into the shadows. Ravenblade was truly alone then, just as he had been before taking the Canis Helix.

‘Even across so much time and space,’ he rasped, feeling Morkai steal upon him. ‘The runes never lie.’

Mon-keigh were such easy prey. Gomor’s mouth twisted into a grin as he watched one of the pathetic creatures pace around the power hub. He observed it stumbling around, finding its way only by the grace of the torch clasped in one of its weakling hands.

It seemed these mon-keigh were born afraid of darkness. Even the boldest among them were unwilling to bear it for any length. Yet their simple minds could not comprehend the true terror that awaited them within the black folds of the universe.

Gomor detached himself from the mon-keigh’s shadow, writhing into realspace with a wet hiss. The human turned, abhorrence etched on his face as he met his killer. Gomor thrust ice-cold talons up into the mon-keigh’s abdomen, drawing substance from his terror, feeling the warm touch of his heart before it stopped beating. The runes covering Gomor’s inky skin shivered, invigorated by the kill. He emitted a warped clicking noise and two more of his kind slithered into the corporeal realm. The pair regarded Gomor, their mouths stretching in a low growl as he touched the orb they carried. The silver-skinned device shimmered, ancient eldar rune script flaring into life under his touch. Gomor issued another tortured noise from his throat as black flame seeped from unseen pores to wreathe the orb in obsidian fire. The other mandrakes nodded in acquiescence, and let go of the device. Free of their grip, the smouldering orb rose up into the air. Settling several metres above Luetin Hive’s primary power hub, the device continued to burn. Within moments its ensorcelled innards bled into the atmosphere, its metallic shell flaying away until nothing remained.

A fulgurant web of coal-dark energy erupted in the air, its arcing tendrils cutting minute tears in the fabric of realspace. Gomor smiled, a wicked, humourless expression, as he watched the bonds of the linear universe fray away like torn silk. The event was invisible to mortal sight, but the mandrake was born of the otherworld. A child of darkness and implausible reality, Gomor’s eyes were accustomed to seeing the unseen. It pleased him that the populace of Leutin would remain unaware of their impending doom. The humans would die as they had lived, ignorant and afraid.

The frayed edges of the vortex crackled and receded as a pall of darkness spilled from the webway, forcing apart the rift until a swirling portal the size of the power hub it shadowed hung in the air.

Gomor growled, low and soft in satisfaction. His task complete, the mandrake seeped back into the shadows.

Strike before the prey is roused. Take his heart before the twins of anger and desperation can lend him strength.

The Shattered Hand were consummate hunters, their every waking moment dedicated to perfecting their murderous art. They had carried out Archon Vranak’s orders with brutal efficiency. Luetin’s defence force hadn’t stood a chance. The Imperial Guard of the 109th Luetin Rifles and the levied regiments of conscripted workers, who had hastily put down their rock-drills and picked up lasguns, had been overwhelmed without pause. Vranak’s Cabal had emerged through the webway portal in a vengeful tide, bursting into realspace in a flash of eldritch flame. Dozens of arrow-swift skimmers and barbed sky-craft had soared unmolested across the slabbed expanse of Luetin’s defence perimeter to deliver a punishing attack on the hive. Lithe warriors in battle armour and leering female gladiators had dismounted into the streets, stalking and killing with unrelenting malice and vigour.

The hive was burning.

Archon Vranak sat immobile on her flesh-throne as her personal transport glided towards the main spire. Beneath the ghoulish curves of her polished helm, she smiled with both of her mouths. Gomor had done well. The mandrake had disabled the gun towers and energy fields meant to serve as a first line of defence, and murdered several high ranking officers, using their dismembered corpses to spread terror among the Luetin forces. In such a fragile state, the heaving necropolis was a tender target, the hive’s innards exposed to the scything attentions of the Shattered Hand.

Luetin’s subterranean shafts were rich in dense mineral deposits and precious ores, every iota of which would be mined from the earth and put to use in her weapon shops and forges. But most precious of all the hive’s assets, the thing that had drawn Vranak to it like a dying man to faith, were the teeming millions of indentured miners and their Adeptus Administratum overseers. She would take them as slaves and transport them to Commorragh, where the humans would learn the true meaning of despair. The lucky ones would be rendered down in flesh-troughs to provide sustenance and genetic material for the vile experiments of the haemonculi. Others would be tortured in one of the Dark City’s many pleasure palaces, their agonising deaths drawn out to provide soul-fuel for its denizens. Those that could not be captured would be put to the blade. One way or another, Vranak would ensure that the Shattered Hand hunted the populace of Luetin to extinction.

Vranak opened the cabal-wide channel, cautioning her warriors as they boosted into Luetin city proper. ‘Mind your surroundings, the distinction between prey and bait is a small one. Through such carelessness have many hunters become hunted.’

‘All-Father, forgive us.’ The age-line scoring Erik Morkai’s brow deepened at the sound of glass crunching under his boots. The fragments of coloured glass were all that remained of the thousand arched panes that retold the story of the Emperor’s arrival on Luetin. But the windows were made to look at, not through, and Erik had needed a better view.

Erik stared down at Luetin’s narrow streets. Strong winds buffeted the Wolf Lord’s gnarled face, pinning the plaits of his beard to his chest plate. Without the burden of his helm, he could smell the tang of ozone and hear the tortured cries of the populace below. He was a hunter, born of hunters, but gifted with the Canis Helix the Wolf Lord could embrace the elements in a way his forefathers never had. Standing on the precipice of Luetin Hive’s parliament building, the grey-blue ceramite of his battle-plate striking against the building’s dull pallor, Erik watched his prey. The sleek eldar vehicles sped below him, darting between the jutting columns and protruding spires of the cathedral-like buildings that made up the hive. Erik’s enhanced eyes followed every change in their trajectory as they twisted at incredible speeds to avoid the sporadic fire coming from the lower concourses.

‘Mark me well brother, they shall sing glorious sagas of this day.’ Erik turned to Agmund as he spoke. The Wolf Guard was crouched low, peering over the edge with a critical eye at the eldar transports and slave ships that sped past underneath them.

Agmund grunted in affirmation, the long scar that ran from his temple to his neck stretching as he grinned.

‘Prepare yourselves.’ Erik voxed the command to his Great Company. He took a step back from the edge, unsheathed his plasma pistol and flicked the activation stud on his chainaxe. Beside him, Agmund and Ivar readied their weapons. The Wolf Lord rolled his shoulders; they felt light without the hulking bear-pelt. The ancient trophy wasn’t fit for what he was about to do.

‘Vlka Fenryka!’

The comm-feed in Erik’s ear crackled with a chorus of responses as his entire Great Company echoed his call to battle. From the windows and balconies of Luetin’s towering edifices, the Space Wolves leapt towards the dark eldar craft, free-falling in a hail of grey armour.

Erik landed hard in the middle of an eldar craft, the enhanced musculature of his legs absorbing the bone-breaking impact. He moved with the vehicle as it rocked under his weight, killing the prow gunner with a back-handed swipe of his axe. A dozen dark eldar stared at the Wolf Lord in frozen confusion as the gunner’s head fell amongst them. Erik growled in amusement, opening fire on the tightly pressed xenos. His plasma pistol shone white-hot as he fired, vaporising the eldar cadre.

At the corner of his peripheral vision, Erik saw Agmund and Ivar. The pair were on an adjacent craft, their armour splattered with xenos blood.

A torrent of rounds stung the Wolf Lord’s armour, forcing a curse from his lips. ‘Alien anzviti.’

He turned, tracking the eldar gunship that was bearing down on him. Crouching low, Erik took cover behind a guard rail as another burst of fire stitched towards him. Pulling a melta-charge from his equipment, he mag-locked it to the skimmer’s hull and primed its core for a four-second detonation. One, two, three. Erik waited as long as he dared, and leapt off.

The melta-charge detonated, engulfing the eldar transport in a halo of expanding fire. The shockwave threw Erik towards the oncoming gunship. He swung out with his chainaxe, its teeth biting into the ship’s hull. An instant later the Wolf Lord was on the deck, his axe feasting on soft eldar innards. He slipped left as the last of the crew lunged at him, smashing his forehead into the alien’s helm. The helmet buckled under the blow, folding back into the eldar’s skull.

‘Weaklings,’ Erik spat.

He flicked the xenos blood from his axe and used the moment’s respite to assess the situation. Neural implants fed him a slew of tactical data that scrolled over his enhanced eyes in Fenrisian rune-script. A dozen of his brothers had died in the descent, their ident-tags disappearing from his tactical display. Two dozen more had been injured. He growled, banishing the overlay with a thought, and turning his attention to the swarm of single-man craft headed towards them.

‘Thorolf, kill them.’

Nestled among the forest of sensorium that grew up from Luetin Hive’s highest echelons, Thorolf Icewalker received his Wolf Lord’s order.

‘For Russ. For the All-Father!’

Without igniting his jump pack, Thorolf leapt from the sensorium stack and plunged downwards. His thirty-strong Sky Claw pack followed, diving with him down through the kilometre-thick layer of smog that had masked their presence. A line of warnings flashed across Thorolf’s helmet display as the hive’s architecture rushed up to meet him.

He fired his jump pack, gunning it in short bursts to alter his flight path. Gargoyle-encrusted balconies and protruding ventilation ducts flashed by centimetres from his face. A red rune shone over the Space Wolf’s eye. He was falling at such speed that any impact would kill him. Thorolf ignored the warning, blinking it away. A slew of targeting reticules and situational data sprang up in its place, filling his display as he cleared the smog. With a practised ease born of decades of warfare, the Space Wolf sifted through the icons, zeroing in on Erik and the squadron of eldar skimmers.

Thorolf ignited both boosters, keeping one eye fixed on the altitude counter as his jetpack accelerated him downwards. The eldar were almost in firing range. His arms straining against the crushing force of the descent, Thorolf detached his bolt pistol and boltgun from their mag-locks. Thrusting his arms out towards the approaching skimmers, he looked every bit like the valkyries he’d seen daubed in ancient caves on Fenris. Warriors of myth and legend, the valkyries were often depicted in full battle-armour, descending from the heavens with sword and spear. The comparison drew a smile across Thorolf’s face.

Range. The word flashed on Thorolf’s display. He opened fire, his muscled forearms unmoving as the bolt weapons barked into life. Behind him, the Sky Claws opened up with their own weapons, sending a hail of explosive rounds into the eldar craft. The skimmers were fast and incredibly nimble but the Space Wolves had taken them by surprise, and the volume of fire pumping towards them was too vast to dodge. The sleek craft were shredded, breaking apart as bolt rounds punished them.

Flames licked Thorolf’s armour as he fell through the wreckage of the eldar vehicles, blinding him for a moment as his helmet’s optics reset.

‘The skies are clear, lord,’ Thorolf voxed to his Wolf Lord, firing his boosters intermittently to hold his altitude. ‘What would–’

A target swam onto Thorolf’s display. It was moving too fast for his helmet’s auto-senses to process, appearing as a solid line across his vision. ‘Disperse!’

The Sky Claws burst into motion at Thorolf’s order. But it was too late. The speeding eldar craft cut through them, leaving a cluster of aerial mines in its wake. The floating charges detonated, spewing flame and shrapnel in all directions.

Thorolf’s world went dark.

Thorolf came to with a jolt. Pain flared up his spine, forcing a grimace. He hit the release clasp on his jump pack and rolled onto his front, dislodging a layer of rubble and glass. The pack had saved his life, diffusing the force of the impact as its boosters crumpled inwards. Thorolf’s display stuttered, spitting distorted images and tactical data. He snarled, ripped off his damaged helmet and tossed it aside in frustration. His head was ringing from the explosion and his ribs ached. The Space Wolf sat up and examined his surroundings. He’d fallen into some sort of chapel. A cobbled floor lay cracked under his armoured bulk while stone saints stared down at him from plinths. He looked around for his weapons, cursing when he couldn’t find them. Pushing himself up, he staggered to his feet and gazed up at the shattered sky-lights and domed spire that had broken his fall. He cracked his neck, twitching as his enhanced physiology pumped adrenaline around his system.

‘Glory find you, Jorik,’ Thorolf muttered his thanks to the Iron Priest for maintaining his armour’s pain suppressors. Pain focused the mind, made it easier to kill than think. Gritting his teeth, Thorolf stepped out of the chapel and let the sounds of battle guide him towards a ruined street. He paused for a moment, while his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom. Daylight didn’t reach the lower galleries of the necropolis, the sun’s light blocked by the towering hive and its myriad solar collectors. He sniffed the air, growling at the scent of xenos. They were close, perhaps on the same level. He followed is nose, stepping over the corpses of preachers who’d been gutted by the eldar war-party and left to rot like diseased cattle.

Thorolf crouched low as heavy bolter fire resounded from up ahead. He listened for a moment, pinpointing the weapon’s location. It was to his left, midway along the next avenue. The Space Wolf advanced, picking up the crack of lasguns and the smooth snap of eldar rifles as he moved to the Administratum building marking the intersection. He pushed his back against the wall and risked a glance around the corner. Three Imperial Guardsmen were holding a sandbagged emplacement against five eldar approaching from the north-west. The rest of the squad lay dead in the road, their bodies torn to ribbons by the aliens’ barbed rounds.

Thorolf heard the bolt round slip as it left the magazine; there was no mistaking the crunch of a jammed round. He dashed from cover and ran flat out towards the Guardsmen as the heavy bolter fell silent.

‘Keep firing! Keep firing!’ one of them shouted.

‘I can’t, I’m trying.’

‘They’re coming, fire!’ The voice grew desperate.

‘Emperor damn it! The slide’s stuck.’

‘C’mon, c’mon, let me see that.’

‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ another screamed.

Thorolf backhanded the screaming Guardsman across the face, breaking his jaw and knocking him unconscious. The other two Guardsmen stared up at the Space Wolf, their eyes wide with fear. Thorolf doubted they’d ever set eyes on a Space Marine before. Right now he was more terrifying than the eldar pirates that were coming towards them.

‘Give… Give me the weapon,’ Thorolf grunted, his voice thick with pain.

The older looking of the two Guardsmen opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.

‘Russ’s teeth,’ Thorolf growled in irritation. He pushed past the trooper, reaching down and snapping the heavy bolter from its mount.

The foul scent of xenos flesh choked the Space Wolf’s nostrils. The eldar were almost upon them. Grunting with superhuman effort, Thorolf racked back the heavy bolter’s slide and opened fire. ‘Back to the abyss!’

The advancing xenos died in seconds, their frail forms exploding in clouds of red mist. The remainder broke for cover, but Thorolf gave them no respite, blasting apart rubble and wrecked vehicles they sought to cower behind. Formerly a Long Fang, the Space Wolf was as familiar with the subtleties of a heavy bolter as he was with the age lines of own face. It took him less than twenty seconds to track and kill the eldar cadre. Thorolf sniffed the air, checking for survivors. There were none. A pungent aroma drew a scowl from the Space Wolf. He looked down at the cowering Guardsmen, noticing the expanding wet patches on their trousers, and grinned.

Erik roared as the teeth of his axe chewed apart another of the eldar. He stood atop a mound of its dead kin, his battle-plate swathed in their blood, examining the tactical overlay on his display. The initial ambush had gone well, with over half the eldar force killed or routed. But the attack was at a critical juncture; one mistake and the Space Wolves could lose the momentum. The eldar still outnumbered them dozens to one and his forces were spread the length and breadth of the hive. He could ill afford to let the xenos seize the initiative.

A series of concussive blasts drew Erik’s attention to the south-west. A huge eldar craft, larger than any they’d yet encountered, had entered the local air space. Its arrowed-prow scythed through the burning remains of lesser skimmers as it forged towards Ragnavalld and his scouts.

A battery of elongated energy weapons flashed from the craft’s flanks. The Wolf Lord gritted his teeth in rage as Ragnavalld’s ident-tag blinked dark.

‘Russ devour them. We must take down that craft.’ Erik cursed as six more ident-tags faded from his display.

‘It’s wreathed in some sort of energy shield. We cannot board it directly, and we cannot get close enough to plant charges,’ said Agmund.

‘We must find a way. We–’

As if in answer to the Wolf Lord’s demand, a hail of heavy bolter rounds roared up from the lower hive to hammer the shield. The translucent energy bubble flared and spat as the high-calibre shells found their mark.

‘Now! For Russ! Now!’ Erik motioned towards the exposed skimmer with his axe, ordering the attack as the shield overloaded in a storm of disjointed noise.

Erik leapt onto the Archon’s transport. Agmund and Ivar landed beside him. The Archon’s bodyguard attacked without pause, striking at the Space Wolves with crackling halberds. Erik blocked a strike meant to sever his head and shot one of the eldar point blank in the face. The plasma discharge vaporised the xenos’s skull and killed another that was moving in behind him.

The eldar were skilled combatants but they fought as individuals, their selfish desire to kill leaving them open to counter. The Space Wolves fought as a pack, each thrust and cut of their blades working in unison with their brothers’ attacks to plug gaps in their defences and overwhelm the foe.

Ivar gestured with his blade. ‘Your left!’

Agmund turned and raised his weapon, parrying the eldar’s blow before slashing down into its shoulder. He growled as his chainsword rang off the xenos’s armour. The segmented battle-plate worn by the Archon’s bodyguard was heavier and more robust than that worn by the other eldar. Coupled with their martial skill and preternatural grace, it was hard to land a killing blow.

‘Enough of this dance.’ Agmund ducked his opponent’s riposte, mag-locked his chainsword to his armour and shouldered the eldar backwards. He stepped in as the eldar tried to recover, pinning its arms and locking a gauntleted hand around its frail neck. ‘Russ bring you luck dodging the ground.’ With a grunt of effort, Agmund tossed the struggling eldar from the skycraft.

Ivar grinned, following the Wolf Guard’s example and using his bulk to knock the remaining two xenos to their doom.

‘I think Ivar wants your place at the feasting table.’ Erik joked with Agmund and turned his gaze on the archon. The sinister figure was still immobile on her throne. Her polished, charcoal armour was in stark relief to the bleeding corpses that made up her nightmarish seat.

‘I am Vranak. Remember that name, mon-keigh. Tell it to your corpse-god when you stand at his side.’

The eldar shot from her throne in a stream of darkness to strike Erik in the chest with an outstretched fist. The blow flipped the Wolf Lord, spinning him backwards.

Erik dropped his plasma pistol and caught hold of the aft guard rail. Dangling from the edge of the skimmer, the Wolf Lord fought to remain conscious, feeling as though a war mammoth had stepped on his chest. A fissure ran the length of his breastplate, blood running from it.

The Archon moved to finish him, but Agmund and Ivar blocked her path with their burring chainblades. Vranak ghosted between them, parrying their blows with deft turns of her sword. Agmund cried out as the Archon whipped her weapon round to slice the Wolf Guard’s legs off at the knee, the crackling blade passing effortlessly through armour and bone. Ivar died a heartbeat later, Vranak pivoting to thrust her blade through the Space Wolf’s primary heart, cleaving his secondary heart with the return stroke.

‘Clumsy apes,’ Vranak spat as she kicked Agmund’s twitching body from the transport.

Erik growled and pulled himself back onto the platform. ‘Your death will bring them glory.’

The Wolf Lord gripped the haft of his axe with both hands, separating the twin-weapons that made the whole. Twirling both blades once to gauge their weight, he charged. Erik struck out with all his fury, with all of his skill, but the teeth of his weapons carved only air. In return, the Archon flowed around him, slashing at the Wolf Lord’s thighs and cutting open his midriff. Erik roared. Vranak was toying with him.

As his mind raced for a way to triumph, warning runes flared across the Wolf Lord’s retinal display. He ignored them. His body would cope. There was no way to counter the eldar’s attacks. She moved too fast, even for Erik to see. But the Wolf Lord could smell her. He could hear the beat of her devil heart.

Vranak sprang forwards, her blade aimed at the Wolf Lord’s throat.

Erik heard the excited rush of the Archon’s breath as she prepared for the kill. He slipped left, swinging an axe low towards the eldar’s abdomen. The Archon darted backwards. Erik tracked her scent, throwing his other axe where his nose told him. The spinning weapon clipped the Archon, unbalancing her for the briefest of instants. Erik seized the chance. He dived forwards, wrapping his vice-like arms around the eldar and dragging her over the edge.

The two armoured figures fell to their doom.

‘You kill us both.’ Vranak rasped as her lungs struggled against the Wolf Lord’s embrace.

Erik smelled the Archon’s fear. He listened with grim satisfaction as the eldar’s heart-rate continued to speed. His own heart remained slow and steady as his chronometer counted down the seconds to impact. At the edge of his hearing, the Wolf Lord picked up the skimmer he had sensed was coming. He listened to the roar of its engines as it joined the battle, felt the displaced air on his skin as it cut a path towards them. When he had first glimpsed the skimmer it was a tiny dot, a speck on the horizon. Now, metres below him, the sleek craft all but filled his vision. Moments before her death, the Archon realised the error of her assumption.

The Wolf and the eldar slammed into the transport.

Vranak let out a wheezing grunt as every bone in her body cracked under Erik’s weight. The Wolf Lord got to his feet and glared at the cadre of eldar warriors surrounding him. ‘Who’s next?’

A shrapnel-rain doused the lower reaches of Luetin Hive as the eldar raiders burned, their skimmers falling from the sky in droplets of twisted metal.

‘Cowards!’ Thorolf swung round, bringing his heavy bolter to bear on a cluster of single-pilot skimmers as they sped past, fleeing the hive and the Space Wolves’ wrath. He opened fire, stitching a line of destruction through the towering hab blocks as the eldar craft jinked left and right.

Thorolf growled a curse and adjusted his aim, pumping a stream of explosive rounds into the buildings above and ahead of the skimmers. The eldar pilots held their course, blindsided by the debris that tumbled onto them. The lead craft slammed straight into a chunk of falling rockcrete, exploding in a ball of fire. The other two slowed sharply, diving in an attempt to avoid the worst of the rubble – just as Thorolf had expected.

The Space Wolf grinned and gunned the trigger, shredding the pair in a barrage of sustained fire that tore through the skimmer’s armour and ignited their fuel cells. He kept firing, holding the trigger down until the weapon stuttered and the ammo counter flashed zero.

The Space Wolf dropped the weapon and fell to one knee. His wounds were catching up with him. He felt his muscles weaken as his body diverted blood and nutrients to repair the damage to his internal organs. Thorolf took a long, agonised breath and stopped. Something was wrong. He sniffed the air, analysing every particle for the source of his discontent. He smelled nothing save his own scent, not the smoking shell casings scattered around him or the vapour trail left in the air by the eldar skimmers. Thorolf’s muscles bunched in anticipation as he realised that the world had fallen silent.

He could no longer hear the battle raging in the distance, neither the staccato of bolter fire nor the thrum of the eldar skimmers. Thorolf willed himself to stand and cast his gaze around around the street. Darkness spread towards him as one after another, the luminators blinked out. The air turned cold, his feeling of unease intensifying as a thin layer of frost began to rime the edges of his armour.

‘Show yourselves, devils!’ Thorolf snarled, his murderous gaze fixed on the darkness.

Gomor bled from the darkness, a trio of his kin following him into the corporeal realm in a series of wet, sucking noises.

Thorolf drew his knife and smiled, his long canines glistening under the light of a single flickering luminator as the Mandrakes came for him. Not for the last time, the Space Wolf’s world went dark.

Kaivon had always considered Valmar’s Gorge a fortunate posting. He made good money, which he was able to transfer back to his family on Herephalomos Tertius. He planned to work for another two years or so, relying on the crackly vid-bursts of his two daughters and single son that arrived on data-slates with each six-month deep-void transport to keep him sane.

It was hard graft, working the lifters that carried the ore up from the mine-face and into the greedy maws of the processing hoppers. Dangerous, too – the infirmary was usually full of broken limbs, respiratory problems, the occasional cloth-covered corpse – but then everything worth doing, he had always told himself, carried danger with it. The priests reminded them of that often enough, and he paid attention to what the priests told him, and so worked harder.

In any case, there wasn’t much else to do on Valmar’s Gorge besides work, sleep, and listen to devotional screeds. The rest of the workers, men and women both, were just like him – scraping together enough of a nest-egg to set up somewhere more civilised, keeping sweat-dripped heads low, working the machinery, thinking of better times ahead.

They would come. They all knew that.

The mining installation was small by the ancient standards of the Phalomos ore-belt – a single building cluster occupying a speck on the rocky face of the deep-void asteroid Valmar. There had once been dozens of similar stations – Valmar Primus, Valmar’s Edge, Saint Violetta, Karlspar Magna – but they had been mined out over the centuries, and were now abandoned to emptiness. Only Valmar’s Gorge remained in operation, though all knew that even there the workings would one day wind down.

Kaivon occasionally speculated on what would happen when all the worlds of the galaxy had been exploited. The quantity of minerals in the charted Imperium must once have seemed infinite, though he had overheard mutterings from overseers that supplies of all but the most abundant raw materials were becoming harder to locate. Humanity’s peerless fecundity, its endless wars and voracious appetites had, over ten thousand years, done the near-impossible and depleted what had once seemed limitless.

Still, that mattered little to him. He was twenty-nine standard years old and, if lucky, could expect to live for twenty more. He’d be reunited with Janna in time, and the children, and they’d petition for a work-slot on an agri-commune, using the product of his labours to procure passage, permits and grease the palms of the officials where necessary.

It was a good plan. It was sober and considered. It was industrious. He was doing his duty and advancing the cause of his family, just as the Imperial cult demanded. Kaivon had every reason to believe that it would cause him to prosper.

The installation itself clung like a limpet to the inner cliff-edge of a vast caldera of gouged rock. The chasm below, broken open by ancient tectonic movements, delved into the very heart of the obsidian-dark asteroid, its edges limned only faintly by a distant sun. Valmar’s Gorge was a motley collection of constructions, dominated by the colossal shell of the processing foundries. Mined ores were funnelled into the receiving end via hundreds of trackways, beyond which kilometres-long manufactories beat, sorted, hammered and refined the contents into usable ingots. At the far end of the production lines lay the lifter stations, each capable of berthing massive Grade IX ore-carriers.

The station’s accommodation section was tiny in comparison. The main domed assembly hall was capable of holding the roughly five thousand workers who were stationed on the Gorge’s edge at any time. Radiating out from that hub were the administratum buildings, the infirmary, the comms station, the chapel complex, the armoury, then the long, grim lines of dormitory blocks. It was all covered and insulated, for Valmar’s old terraformed atmosphere was now barely thick enough to breathe. The installation was a precarious thing, established with the sole objective of sucking up the vital resources needed to keep the starships and hive-spires of the Imperium functioning.

One day they all knew it would be gone. All of them believed that day would be a long way off.

Kaivon was returning to his dorm-unit after a five-hour shift at the ore face when it happened.

He was covered in a thick layer of dust, and, as ever, wanted nothing more than a scrape-shower, to dump his fatigues in the corner of his hab-unit and crawl into his bunk. Every muscle throbbed with lactic acid, and his head was beginning to ache. If he could summon the energy, he might take a detour to the infirmary and see if he could grab some anti-inflamm from the dispenser he’d become friendly with.

As he reeled down the corridor with the drunken fatigue-walk that all off-shifters affected, the sodium lamps set in the walls suddenly flickered out. Kaivon stood still, surprised. He could hear the breathing of the other workers around him, all doing the same thing.

Then the lights came on again. Kaivon found that he’d been holding his breath. That surprised him – it was just a power fluctuation.

‘End of the world,’ said the woman next to him wryly.

‘Yeah,’ said Kaivon.

He’d got to the end of the corridor and into the dorm-unit’s antechamber before the lights failed again. This time, they didn’t come back on. Instead, emergency lumens glowed up from the floor, red and flickery.

Now he was unnerved. Everyone else in the antechamber did the same thing – look stupidly up at the low ceiling where the lumens were now unlit. Why were they doing that?

Then he heard it. It was a like the wind moaning across the distant rooftops, except that Valmar’s meagre atmosphere had no winds. Something about that noise chilled Kaivon to his stomach – it was like nothing he’d ever heard before, not even on vid-reels.

He went over to a cogitator pillar placed at the centre of the antechamber. It was a communal facility, one capable of patching into the installation grid and showing up processing movements and carrier positions. He brought the pict screen into life and punched in the command for a full system overview.

For a moment, he thought that the system might have gone down with the main lighting grid, as the readings made no sense to him – there were location markers shooting all over the installation schematic, whirring in and out of life like insects. They might have been flyers, but for their speed – nothing moved that fast.

Then he heard a crash from deep in the heart of the installation, followed by more high-pitched whines. An alert klaxon started to sound and was quickly silenced. The emergency lights flickered badly, threatening to plunge them all into darkness.

Kaivon felt his heart thumping hard. Something about what was happening scared the hell out of him. The others, too – they were already hurrying for their dorm-units, shouting contradictory things about core-breaches or processor malfunctions.

Kaivon didn’t follow them in. There were procedures for events like this, protocols to be followed. He started to run, jogging back down the corridor he’d walked along, heading towards the installation’s heart. If there had been some major systems failure then they had to congregate in the main assembly area and await instruction. He tried to ignore the sweat on his palms as he went. Why was he so scared?

As he closed in on the station centre, he saw that others had had the same idea, and soon dozens of ore-workers and administratum staff were jostling to get into the assembly hall’s outer chambers. More crashes made the walls shake, and the high-pitched whine began to mask out all other sounds. Kaivon heard people shouting – or was it shrieking? – from both ahead and behind. He began to doubt whether he was doing the right thing. Perhaps he should have stayed in the dorm-cluster and waited for more data from central command, but by then it was too late, and he was being carried along by the crowds.

They all broke into the domed assembly area, and Kaivon instantly found himself gagging. The air felt painfully thin, as if the hall’s outer skin had been pierced and the compensators hadn’t kicked in yet. He looked up, towards the high curved roof that covered the main seating area, and his heart missed a beat. A perfectly circular hole had been burned into the apex, and there were intruders streaking down to ground-level on lengths of gossamer-thin wire.

For a moment, all he could do was stare at them. They were outlandish figures, oddly compelling, kitted out in glossy black plate armour with tall, smooth helms. At first Kaivon thought they were human, until he saw the way they moved.

He tried to back up then, to push his way into the doorway again and out of the hall, but the press of bodies kept pushing him inward. More armoured figures emerged, seeming to spin out of the air like black twists of lightning. Crackles of cold energy snaked across the chamber’s width, followed by the stink of ammonia.

Kaivon began to panic. Others around him shoved and jostled, and the whole mob surged further in. As they did so, the intruders opened fire.

Their slender-barrelled rifles were near-silent but the projectiles were deadly. Kaivon saw the man in front of him ripped into shreds by a rain of razor-sharp slivers. The dying man’s blood splattered hotly across his face, shocking him into immobility.

By then the screaming had started in earnest. Kaivon did what everyone else did – frantically kicked his way through the masses to get out. More bodies exploded around him, throwing blood up against the walls. He heard laughter, but it wasn’t human. He was screaming himself by then, tearing at those around him to get to the safety of the doorway. Somehow, propelled by the energy of sheer terror, he made it to the portal before the razor-shards caught up with him, and he stumbled over the threshold.

As he broke clear of the hall, he risked a last look over his shoulder. The intruders were now at floor level and opening fire with their shard-guns. Others were swooping into the crowds on grav-boards, grabbing their prey and hauling them up into the heights. The xenos were killing, but not quickly or cleanly. They were enjoying themselves.

He ran on, feeling vomit rise in his gorge. He staggered down the feeder corridor, knowing they’d be after him soon, knowing he couldn’t possibly escape them. As he gave in to primordial urges, running like an animal, only one cogent thought flashed through his terrorised mind.

Why us?

The chamber was lit intriguingly. Inquisitor Aoart Halliafiore of the Ordo Xenos, was a man who enjoyed the theatre of the clandestine, and every station he oversaw was kitted out in an almost parodic image of the secretive. Shadows pooled and clustered. Sigils nestled under the faint glow of lanterns, tracing old lineages back to the distant days of pre-Crusade Terra. Perhaps he even knew what they signified. It was not impossible; the Inquisition had a long memory.

He was a thin, spare man who wore finely tailored robes. The only badge of office he allowed himself was an iron aquila icon on his left breast; otherwise, he could have been any courtier on any civilised world. His skin was smooth, almost youthful despite his several centuries’ service, and he had tight features, the result of over-aggressive rejuvenat work. His movements were measured, precise and contained.

He stood in the centre of a circular chamber, illuminated by a single shaft of blue light. Seven giants stood around him, each towering over the slight figure in their midst. They wore black armour, relatively unadorned, in the Mk VII pattern. Only the right pauldrons varied, giving away the Chapter origins of the squad-members: Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Executioners, Angels Puissant, Iron Shades, Space Wolves. They were helm-less, which was the only other source of variation. Callimachus of the Ultramarines, the squad leader, had a close-cropped, blocky visage. Jocelyn of the Dark Angels wore his dark hair long. The Blood Angel Leonides’s pale skin looked almost ghostly in the low light.

Ingvar of the Space Wolves struggled to maintain the icy composure of his brothers. Halliafiore’s mannerisms wore at his nerves. The mortal was so quiet, so dry, half-dead, hardly worthy of a warrior’s attention. The others were nearly as bad. They were deadly – he had trained with them long enough to know that – but they were... bloodless. None of them, not even the Blood Angel, truly had the rage, the heart.

Perhaps that would come out during the mission. It felt like he had been waiting months for it to come, though it was hard to mark the passage of time in the lightless tunnels of an Inquisitorial fortress.

‘This is your target,’ said Halliafiore, summoning up a ghostly hololith from his outstretched palm. It showed a schematic star-cluster. Several of the systems were marked with a death’s head. ‘The Phalamos Belt. Value to the Imperium: production of raw materials, rhodium, magnesium, sundry rare earths. Predated by xenotype eldar, sub-species tertius, for nine standard years. Seven installations lost. Three hive worlds raided, resulting in heavy loss of life and, more to the point, frequent interruption of tithe production.’

The inquisitor’s manner, more suited to a scrivener than a lord of the Allfather’s everlasting realm, never ceased to grate.

‘Study the pattern,’ Halliafiore said. ‘What do you note?’

Ingvar looked at the star-map, and saw nothing but a trail of destruction. The raid-marks all had a date-stamp on them, which told him nothing.

Xatasch, the spectral member of the Iron Shades Chapter, was the first to respond. ‘The mark is incomplete,’ he said in his near-whisper.

Halliafiore nodded. ‘Elaborate.’

‘Xenotype datum 347,’ said Xatasch, recalling the element of Deathwatch training pertinent to the species. ‘Attack-patterns subordinate to aesthetic considerations. The breed takes pleasure from marking the void in certain symbolic forms. They are tracing a rune.’

The hololith zoomed in, homing down to a point on the edge of the attack distribution. Soon it showed a single point – a remote asteroid bearing the ident ‘Valmar’.

‘This completes the symbol,’ said Halliafiore. ‘Xenosavants identify it as the rune yllianua, known to be significant for seven eldar factions operating in the subsector. One of these is of particular interest, given the physical presence, so reports allege, of a flesh-twister.’

Flesh-twister. The colloquial name for the xenos subtype haemonculus, identified in Inquisitorial intelligence as being part of the species’ command hierarchy. To catch one on the battlefield was rare, for their attacks were so rapid and so well-coordinated that few records were ever left behind. Ingvar remembered the scarce scraps of vid-footage he’d been shown in orientation training – grainy images of warped, hunched grotesques floating on suspensor cushions, their long clocks hanging with hooks. The purpose of the haemonculi was not fully understood, though it was clear that they were the often the architects of the raids, and therefore the primary target for retribution.

‘Then we know where they will strike,’ said Callimachus. ‘We can protect it.’

The Ultramarine was always keen to propose the squad’s course of action, as if itching to gain the inquisitor’s approval. Ingvar loathed that and was pleased to see Halliafiore give Callimachus a disdainful look.

‘Do you think they would strike, if we were known to be protecting the station?’ he asked.

Callimachus glanced at the installation statistics, undeterred. ‘Its annual tithe production is significant. Its loss will harm weapon production in the subsector.’

Halliafiore gave him a tight smile that said stop talking now. ‘The flesh-twister is the target. It will be disabled, contained and brought here, to be placed under the instruments of information-extraction. All other considerations are negligible.’

The inquisitor turned his pristine visage to the rest of them, looking at them in turn. ‘Your first mission, Onyx,’ he said, using their squad designation. ‘Always a delicate time. Greater tests will come, should you perform adequately.’ Hallifiore fixed Ingvar with a particularly lingering gaze. ‘Operate as a unit. Do not deviate from the mission parameters.’

He smiled for a final time, just as mirthlessly and perfunctorily as before.

‘The Emperor protects,’ he said, which told them all that the briefing was at an end.

Tallia ran down the corridor, pushing past the bodies around her. They had lost their heads, all of them, giving into a kind of herd-like panic at the first sign of trouble. Throne, they disgusted her. There were standing orders to follow. In her service in Phalamos’s militia she’d had the importance of discipline drilled into her, and the old habits hadn’t quite gone away. At forty years of age, and having seen plenty of foulness on the battlefield, she was better equipped to deal with what had just happened on Valmar than most of her counterparts.

The whole place was now slippery with blood. The xenos were beginning to move through the complex. They worked incredibly quick. The Emperor only knew what had happened to the automatic defence grid – it seemed to have shut down as soon as the enemy arrived, perhaps jammed by some forbidden xenotech, or – as was entirely possible – maintained so badly it had failed to detect the incoming threats at all.

Tallia swore aloud in frustration. Valmar’s Gorge was such a backwater – she should have arranged a transfer back to Tertius months ago.

She skidded around the last corner before the comms-array chamber, and the volume of bodies lessened. They were all running the other way now, down towards the armoury to kit themselves out and lock themselves in. That was pointless, and would do little but slow the inevitable. The only chance, to the extent that any still existed, was to call for help.

The slide-doors of the comms-chamber were open and gaping. Tallia threw herself inside and punched the lock controls. The doors hissed closed behind her, sealing her into the perfectly dark interior. As the bolts clicked home, she scrabbled around for a lumen activator. Her fingers closed over the controls and she depressed the switch.

Carmine emergency lights flickered briefly, showing up a circular space dominated by a central console. She caught a glimpse of equipment lockers running around the edge of the far wall, each one several metres tall and wide, enough to house the racks of spare machinery needed by the array. Beyond that was the transmission room, stocked with standard message canisters. All she needed to do was get there, slot a distress canister into the proper cogitator housing and activate the transport. It would be relayed through the system network in seconds, hopefully being picked up by a Guard patrol before they were all wiped out.

She stumbled through to the transmission room, tripping on cables snaking across the floor, and the lights blew again. Cursing, she felt her way forward, running her hands over the equipment ahead of her. She traced the outlines of the central console and hurried around it towards the transmission room doorway. Guessing she’d come far enough, she edged out into the dark, her arms outstretched. Her fingers brushed against the door-frame, and she clung on tight.

Too late, she realised that no door-frame was that smooth.

With a lurch of horror, she tried to jerk away from it. A slender fist clasped tightly around her wrist, hauling her back. Two jewelled eyes, slanted like a snake’s, glowed in the dark before her.

How long had it been there? Had it been waiting for her the whole time? Or could they even slip through locked doors?

She saw a blade flicker up towards her in the cold blue light of the glowing eye-lenses, and a soft, alien breath from behind a twisted metal vox-grille. It was taking its time.

Tallia hauled with all her might, yanking her arm free with a sudden burst of strength that surprised even her. She managed to scramble away from the creature, falling on to all fours and scrabbling away in panic. Somehow she found the inner doorway in the dark, and scampered through it. Behind her, she could hear a delighted hiss of pleasure and a soft swish as the xenos followed her in.

The emergency lights snapped on again, for just a split-second, showing up the interior of the transmission room. One of the equipment lockers stood open, a black gulf in the otherwise uniform walls.

Then the darkness returned, and she felt the cold grip of an alien hand around her ankle.

She screamed. Terror lodged deep in her psyche ripped the sound from her throat, and though she thrashed again, this time the grip was secure.

For some reason, though, the expected dagger-strike never came. She kept on screaming long after the vice at her ankle relaxed. She would have screamed further, had a metal gauntlet not been clamped over her mouth.

‘Be silent,’ came a grinding, vox-deepened voice close to her face.

Tallia opened her eyes. A black helm loomed over her, different from the one the xenos had worn. It was far larger, built with the angular bulkiness that marked all Imperial construction. Even in the almost complete darkness, broken only by the faint glow of the lenses above her, she knew what that helm represented.

She could have wept. If it had not been for the crushing sense of awe, she could have grabbed hold of the monster crouching over her and hugged him. As it was, it took all of her scant remaining wits not to move and to do as he had told her.

‘We must transmit,’ she urged, whispering as she gestured towards the comms mechanism.

The Space Marine rose, activating his armour-lumens so she could see, and shook his head. ‘Negative. They believe they are undisturbed.’

He stowed the shortsword he’d used to gut the xenos warrior, and drew his bolter from its holster. As he did so, Tallia noticed the blue-and-white pauldron on his otherwise perfectly black armour. The Space Marine reached into the open equipment locker, located a lasgun, checked the charge and threw it over to her.

‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘Do not activate the comms. If they come back, defend yourself with this.’

Tallia nodded mutely. The aura of command possessed by the Space Marine was absolute – if he had ordered her to charge back into the living hell of the assembly area, she would have complied.

‘By the Emperor,’ she managed to stammer, ‘thank you.’

He looked down at her strangely, as if he didn’t quite understand. Then he turned and stalked through the outer doors, already searching for the next target.

The empty ore storage hoppers were lined with 50 millimetre-thick adamantium. No light or sound penetrated their interior, and even augur readings were subject to interference. Remaining stationary for six weeks inside those coffin-like spaces had required the partial use of sus-an immersion to shut down peripheral bodily functions, but they had mostly remained conscious, mentally reciting battle-litanies and tactical outlines to remain sharp.

Ingvar had found it harder than the others. He was closeted with Leonides and Prion, neither of whom were troubled by the long inactivity. Prion was complete in himself, perfectly content to slip into the long trance knowing that it would be followed by explosive action. He was a siege specialist, used to boarding actions in the genestealer-infested Aymar Belt, and had spent literally years cooped up in the creaking holds of immense space hulks. Leonides, by contrast, simply enjoyed the subterfuge. Like all Blood Angels, he had a deep-grained appreciation for intrigue, birthed from Baal’s complex and radiation-soured culture. Perhaps the hopper reminded him of the coffin-capsule he had once emerged from.

For Ingvar, though, it was torment. He was unable to fully lapse into complete immersion and spent long days waiting fruitlessly for the call to arms. At times he felt close to ripping the locks free and blasting out of the ignominious hiding place, roaring out his defiance before the startled looks of the menials around him.

But that would only have reinforced the verdict his brothers had already formed of him: rash, barbaric and insular.

When the order came, though, flashed across his helm display, he could have screamed with relief.

Operation commences. Enact retrieval action.

Prion stirred instantly, coughing slightly as he swam to full consciousness. Leonides took a moment longer, struggling against the deep trance before snapping back into focus. Ingvar’s helm quickly lit up with Xatasch and Vhorr’s locator-signals, just a few metres away.

‘At last,’ he growled, reaching for the locks and slamming them free. The hopper’s shell cracked open and cantilevered clear. Ingvar was the first out, grabbing the hopper’s edge and swinging himself over. He landed heavily, his muscles sluggish after weeks of inactivity.

Leonides landed next to him more expertly. ‘Rusty?’ the Blood Angel asked.

Ingvar ignored him and pulled his bolter from his belt. Six of Onyx squad were in a mined-out section of the installation’s underbelly, at least three hundred metres above the main workings but a long way below the inhabited sections. Insertion into the unused cavern had been easy enough, given the station’s meagre defences and the sloppy guard-rotation, and there had not been a sniff of disturbance since.

From the far side of the cavern, the other two emerged, their black armour glistening from helm-lumens. Ingvar had already learned to identify his battle-brothers solely from the way they carried themselves – Vhorr strutting, Prion heavy, Leonides lithe, Xatasch like a liquid shadow. All of them carried stalker bolters with attached silencers and Deathwatch-issue rounds that would explode with no more noise than a fist crunching into flesh.

They ran their checks and final weapon-rites efficiently, in moments, ensuring the mechanisms were free of defect. Ingvar was still getting used to the sheer perfection of Deathwatch wargear – he had been shocked to discover just how far it outmatched his old Fenrisian battleplate. In it, his senses were sharper, his movements smoother, his reactions even quicker.

‘All done?’ asked Vhorr, blunt as ever, eager to be going. Ingvar liked Vhorr.

Leonides ran an augur sweep of the levels above. In Callimachus’s absence, he was in command. ‘Objective located,’ he reported calmly. ‘Multiple targets, moving out from ingress point. Shade incoming. Suffer not the xenos to live.’

They repeated the mantra, then broke out into the dark, heading for the heavy ore-lifts that would take them up into the heart of hell.

Callimachus sped through the dark corridors, the way ahead lit up with his helm’s false-colour images. There were no mortals out in the open now. Those who had bolted for the sanctuary of the main assembly hall were already dead or rounded up; the rest were being culled at the xenos’ leisure. The squad had precious little time: the entire assault would be over in minutes, after which no ship in the Imperium would be able to catch the fleeing xenos landing craft.

He reached an intersection and crouched against the nearside wall, listening. Standard power armour was audible even to mortal human ears, but his was as quiet as the tech-adepts of the ordo could make it, and if used with care might just fool even a xenos’ hearing for the necessary microseconds.

Proximity scans revealed nothing, so his slipped around the corner and ran towards the main dorm-unit antechambers. The volume of screaming was decreasing, which was bad news – the xenos were getting through their prey quickly.

The corridor turned sharply. Beyond the corner, fifty metres ahead of him, he saw the first of them – a slender figure, two metres tall in armour, its helm splattered with gore and skulls of different sizes clattering from chains at its belt. Three humans trailed behind it, blind in the dark, their wrists manacled and spikes driven between their bleeding lips. The eldar warrior had just disabled another and was stooping to shackle its prey for delivery.

Callimachus aimed and fired in one movement, striking the eldar in the chest and hurling it back against the wall. The bolt-round punched through the creature’s breastplate, exploding with a wet pop and cracking the shell from within.

A second later and Callimachus was standing over it. He placed the bolter-muzzle against the creature’s forehead and fired again. The xenos’s head exploded, throwing black brain-matter across the floor.

Two of its human prey stretched their chained hands out to him, moaning weakly as they tried to part bloody lips. Callimachus glanced down at them, just for a fraction of a heartbeat.

That was enough. Another xenos warrior opened fire as it raced down the corridor towards him, moving in a blur of speed, leaping from wall to wall as it came. Callimachus’s armour took hits, showered with projectiles that scythed through the upper layer of ceramite.

He fired back one-handed, reaching for his blade, but the xenos closed too quickly, bounding into him and lashing out with a flickering sword. Callimachus missed with his shot and only just managed to parry with his blade. Up close, the eldar’s movements were astonishing – like a snake striking, it punched out with its own hooked blade, gouging deep into his pauldron, before loosing a second flurry of shard-projectiles at point-blank range.

One of Callimachus’s helm-lenses shattered, and he felt the hiss of cabling rupturing. He swung hard, using his greater bulk in place of speed, and managed to smash the barrels of the xenos’ rifle. That didn’t slow his enemy, who slashed across Callimachus’s breastplate, driving him back with a whirl of ink-dark steel. Callimachus, off-balance, crunched into the corridor’s near wall, just managing to block a swipe at his throat. The defence left him exposed, and the xenos whipped a blade-strike into his chest.

The edge never cut. The eldar was blown sideways, limbs bent like a crushed spider. More bolt-rounds slammed into it, pulverising what remained of the brittle armour-shell.

Callimachus looked up to see Ingvar and Vhorr crouched down at the far end of the corridor, both bolters still trained on the eldar’s twitching body. He pushed clear of the wall, bent down and cut the xenos’s neck.

That had been too close. He would have to learn from it.

‘Shade incoming?’ he asked calmly, noting the interference from his damaged armour-augurs.

Vhorr nodded, as Ingvar, bristling with palpable battle-anger, swept his bolter muzzle back down the other direction. The two of them backed up towards him.

‘Two minutes,’ said Vhorr.

‘They have mustered in the assembly hall,’ said Callimachus, setting off. As he did so, the shackled humans on the floor started moaning again.

If there had been time Callimachus would have helped them, but there was none and he kept going. As he did so, Ingvar pushed past him.

‘Space Wolf...’ warned Callimachus, but it was too late. Ingvar broke the mortals’ bonds with his own hands, twisting the metal shackles into pieces. Then he stood up again and looked at Callimachus defiantly.

Callimachus felt the old frustrations flare up instantly. The Space Wolf was impossible to command, chafing against every imposition of authority like a caged beast pacing the bars. He did it to provoke, to challenge and demonstrate his superiority to the orders that bound them.

Savage.

‘We move now,’ he ordered again, setting off, filing away the slight for another day. ‘No more delays.’

Kaivon couldn’t stop weeping. As he crawled along the air-duct passages, scraping against the hot metal in the dark, the tears streamed down his face.

The things he’d seen. The things he’d heard. It was burned into his mind now, flash-frames of horror he would never be able to erase. There just shouldn’t have been that much cruelty in the universe – and for what? Why did they do it?

He’d seen dead men before, and he’d seen some bad things in the lower hive-levels, but nothing, nothing, compared with what he’d witnessed back in the hab-units. Even when he screwed his eyes closed he still couldn’t shift the images of torn skin, the sutures being pulled tight, the extractions, the incisions, the long gouges...

Enough. He had to find a way to get out. He tried to fix his mind on Janna, the family, the old friends back on Tertius, anything to keep his limbs moving and his mind from seizing up.

He’d somehow managed to break free of the central hub, though he was one of only a handful that had done so. There were only a few dozen of the xenos, but they appeared to be everywhere at once, throwing bolas and spiked netting and hauling dozens of human prey at a time.

Right at the end, just before he’d managed to break into the cramped network of air-ducts, he’d seen the worst one of them all, hovering over the entire flesh-carnival like a corrupted saint in a devotional picter. That one had been more twisted than the rest, clad in a cloak of skins and draped with chain-length hooks. Kaivon had seen a withered face, as dry as ash, and eyes that radiated such chilling ennui that his heart had almost stopped beating. The monster had been gazing over the slaughter with a kind of dull-eyed, scientific curiosity, deaf to the horrific tide of screaming.

After that, Kaivon had just run, and run, and run. He knew the ducts wouldn’t keep them out for long, but there was nowhere else left to go. He had no idea where he’d crawled to – perhaps over the comms station? Or the chapel units?

He stopped, listening hard. His own heartbeat thudded in his ears, hard and erratic.

For a moment, he thought he’d managed to get away. Then, with a lurch that made him want to gag, he heard the scratching from further down the duct. It was already close, and getting closer. He imagined his pursuer – scrabbling like a spider up the narrow twists, the needles held ready and a collar to drag him back with.

Kaivon pressed on doggedly, fighting against the raw panic that threatened to freeze him up completely. He saw a break ahead, a maintenance panel that he could lift up and drop through. He scurried over to it, fumbling as he tried to lift the security catch.

From behind, the scrabbling got closer, echoing up the shaft, surely no more than a few metres behind him now. His fingers shook, and he slipped on the catch, expecting at any minute to feel the touch of cold fingers on his ankles.

He heard a thin chuckle just as the last catch broke free. There was a thin whine, like a weapon powering up, and the panel broke open.

Kaivon dropped through the duct’s floor, carried down by the panel’s fall. As he fell, an intense heat passed over him, and he detected the stink of melting metal.

Then he hit the floor, hard. It was a four metre drop, and it nearly stunned him. He reeled, tasting blood in his mouth, knowing his pursuer was right on his heels. He tried to twist onto his back, to at least see what was coming after him, but then agonising pain spiked through his left shoulder. Something thin and metallic had speared him, pinning him to the metal floor. He craned his head, and saw something black, almost insectoid, crouching in the gap in the ceiling. It was going to leap, to follow him down. It was already reaching for something that looked like a cluster of hypodermics.

As he screamed out his terror, he barely noticed the las-beams whipping up from floor-level, one after the other, all aimed with unerring precision. The xenos’s armour deflected some of them, but the volume of fire was too much, and it tumbled from the gap, crashing to the floor next to Kaivon.

Kaivon pushed himself away, crying out in pain as his shoulder ripped free from the barbed spear, and shuffled away from the xenos’s corpse. In his bewilderment, he had no idea where the las-shots had come from – the chamber was dark, lit only by flickering emergency lumens, and all he saw were more shadows.

‘Get away from it,’ hissed a woman’s voice from floor-level, over by the wall.

Kaivon did as he was told. The woman edged gingerly over to the downed xenos, aimed her weapon carefully at its head, and send another four las-blasts into it. Soon the stench of burning flesh, subtly different to human aromas, filled the chamber.

The woman turned to him. Kaivon was trembling so badly by then it was hard to even focus on her. He was in shock, and couldn’t kick himself out of it.

‘Any others?’ she demanded.

Kaivon could only shake his head. He had no idea.

Tallia hefted her lasgun, unclipping the charge pack and slamming in another. ‘Stay down. If any more try to follow, they’ll get the same.’

Ingvar broke into the central hub, flanked by Callimachus and Vhorr. For a moment, just a fraction of a second, even his psycho-conditioned senses rebelled.

The domed roof was broken, neatly breached at the apex. Long chains hung down from a circular hole, each one hauling a struggling body up into the gap. More than a hundred humans were being extracted, all impaled on the chains like fish on a line. Many more victims were waiting at floor-level in improvised pens, all of them bearing signs of recent mutilation. The stench of faecal matter and sweat mingled with toxic aromas from the xenos’ chem-weapons. Blood and filth swilled freely across the floor, the slick studded with floating eyeballs.

Twenty eldar were corralling the slave-chains, lashing out with barbed whips that sliced chunks of flesh from the shivering victims. Rows of eviscerated corpses hung on hooks from the vaults, their empty rib cages twisting in the thin air, slopping trails of gore to the floor below. The chamber had been turned into a charnel-vision of utter depravity, a slaughterhouse stocked with human meat.

Ingvar’s hunt-sense kicked in. The three Deathwatch Space Marines opened fire, each picking his target. At the same time, Prion, Xatasch and Leonides burst in from the far side of the hall and did the same, filling the space with the soft whoosh and thud of stealth-shells impacting.

Taken by surprise, several eldar were downed outright. More were felled as they tried to extract themselves from their torturing, and the numbers rapidly evened.

Ingvar leapt across a railing and ran into the centre of the hall, firing all the while. He saw Leonides charge towards one of the lead slave-takers, peppering its slender body with round after round until the armour blew apart in flecks of ebony. Callimachus, Vhorr and Prion maintained ranged fire, picking out the eldar with merciless accuracy, while Xatasch moved silently to block the far exit.

The xenos had been caught, their attention focused on whatever rites they had come to enact. Even with their peerless reactions, it took time to switch from torture instruments and take up their splinter weaponry.

Ingvar had been told not to use his Fenrisian battle cries on the operation, but as he charged towards them his throat unlocked in a ragged howl of fury. He kept on firing, whirling through the meagre projectile hail that the xenos mustered, smashing his way through the broken seats of the old assembly chamber and towards the nearest enemy. The eldar warrior tried to get a blade up at his throat, but by then Ingvar’s momentum was unstoppable – he crashed into it, punching out with his gauntlet and shattering the creature’s fragile carapace. His fist plunged up into its viscera, and he hoisted it clear from the floor, bellowing death-curses as its foul blood rained down on him.

‘Vlka Fenryka!’ he roared, hurling its broken corpse away and sending it slamming into the edge of an overturned torture-slab with satisfaction.

As he tensed to charge on into the remaining xenos, his helm-display flashed with a single command – flesh-twister – and his head snapped up.

The haemonculus emerged into the open, ascending from the piled-high bodies at the centre of the hall. It soared high above the bloody floor, its hide-cloak twisting under the buffeting lift of suspensor columns. All six Space Marines immediately opened fire, and its skeletal body was shrouded in explosions.

That didn’t stop it – bolter-detonations splash-patterned across some kind of energy-field. Ingvar could see an impossibly aged face in snatches within, glaring at them with pure contempt. It made some kind of gesture, and the chains hauling bodies up to the dome’s aperture fell away, coiling down to the floor in clanging spirals.

The few remaining eldar warriors fought back then, launching splinter-volleys at the Space Marines, but their challenge was no longer significant. Vhorr and Prion filled the chamber with wide-scatter bolter-fire to lock them down while the others pursued the haemonculus.

Leonides was quickest, firing the whole time as he leapt up to grasp at the xenos’s chain-tails. His gauntlet grasped on to a flailing length of metal, but his whole body immediately spasmed with fork-lightning, and he slammed to the floor, his armour steaming.

Ingvar ran over to him, scanning for life-signs even as he maintained fire on the haemonculus above. By then, Leonides was already dragging himself back to his feet.

‘It’s got some tricks,’ rasped the Blood Angel, hefting his bolter again.

‘As do we,’ hissed Xatasch, reaching for a bulbous object at his weapon-belt, one that looked more eldritch and alien than anything else in the chamber. He primed it with a flick, then hurled it at the haemonculus. Before the creature could react, it exploded in a whirl of neon, sending a blast-pattern sheeting out in radial spirals.

The haemonculus’s energy-field shattered, exploding like glass, and something like a high-pitched wail broke out amid the carnage. It plummeted, thrashing out with prehensile hook-chains even as Xatasch’s arcane weaponry ate through its protective aegis.

Callimachus was already in position, hefting a claw-shaped weapon that looked to have been carved from ivory. He trained its sights on the haemonculus and opened fire just as the creature crashed back to earth. A flare of eye-burning light enveloped the struggling xenos, enclosing it in what looked like rapidly-solidifying crystal. It cried out words that none of them could understand in a voice that sounded like iron nails being dragged across granite. Then the crystalline lattice entirely engulfed it, ending both its screeching and its movements.

When the debris of Xatasch’s weapon had subsided, they could see the result – a solid-mass stasis field, with the haemonculus caught in its centre like a wasp in amber. Its outraged scream was frozen on its face, lost amid translucent layers of xenotech.

Ingvar still hated to see that – witch-weapons, forbidden to all but the servants of the ordo. Bolter and blade should have been enough. There was no time to regret their use, though, for with the capture of the haemonculus the remaining eldar warriors were roused into a frenzy. As if their lives depended on it, they came clawing back into the fight. Reinforcements from the rest of the installation came careering back into the hall through unguarded entrances around its edge, cartwheeling and pirouetting as they fired their deadly armour-cutting ammunition.

‘Defensive,’ ordered Callimachus, hefting his bolter again and laying down a fresh wave of fire.

The Onyx squad members retreated towards the centre of the hall, drawing back to where the haemonculus’s stasis-enclosed body lay on the floor surrounded by stray slivers of electric-discharge. As they ceded ground, those humans still capable of speaking cried out for aid, reaching out with bloody hand stumps and eyeless faces. They knew that the bringers of pain were coming among them again, and what sanity remained in them forced them to cleave to the deliverers that had arrived so suddenly.

Ingvar hunkered down next to Vhorr, and the two of them launched bolter-round after bolter-round into the enemy. It felt like they’d already killed all the xenos in the installation, but more emerged all the time, spinning into view as if bursting out of the rockcrete itself. Their already balletic fight-style took on a frenzied edge as they weaved and ducked through the hurricane of shells to get at their prize.

Ingvar watched his ammo-counter tick down to zero, and instinctively reached for his blade. He’d already seen how quickly Callimachus had been outmatched, and relished trying some sword-work out for himself.

Just a little closer... he thought, watching the nearest xenos dance towards him.

Then a massive explosion ripped the roof apart in a cloud of shattering metal and armourglass. A heavy, thudding sound followed, growing louder as the debris bounced around them. The xenos were hurled back, knocked from their feet by the downdraft of enormous engines.

Ingvar didn’t need to look up to know what was descending through the annihilated roof-dome. A second later, heavy bolter-fire opened up, carving through the surviving xenos and blasting their fragile outlines into explosive clots of blood and armour-shards. The whole chamber drummed with the rubble of the Thunderhawk’s descent, stirred up by the hurricane of the gunship’s arrival.

‘So, you have something for me?’ came Jocelyn’s sardonic voice over the squad-comm.

‘Open it up,’ snapped Callimachus, backing towards the haemonculus’s cocoon.

Only then did Ingvar look up. The ink-black outline of the Shade hung less than ten metres above them, filling a large chunk of the assembly hall’s broken dome and labouring on atmospheric thrusters. Like all Deathwatch-issue craft, it was kitted out with bulky archaeotech artefacts along its flanks, and the only insignia was the deathshead sigil of the Ordo Xenos. Its sponson-mounted heavy bolters juddered on full-power, ripping apart any surviving eldar careless enough to keep moving. As the guns swept the hall, the far walls were lost in blooms of dust and blown masonry.

The gunship dropped down further, and with a screech of metal on metal the fore crew-bay door swung down, revealing an illuminated interior lined with esoteric field-amplifiers. An open casket lay within, twice the height of a man, connected by lengths of cable to the hull.

Once the gunship was hovering two metres up, Callimachus and Leonides leapt into the crew-bay, boosted by their armour-servos. Lengths of adamantium chains clattered down, fastened to the haemonculus’s stasis-cocoon by Xatasch and Prion. Ingvar and Vhorr kept up the punishing barrage of shells until their ammo-counters finally clicked empty.

‘We leave,’ voxed Callimachus from the gunship’s interior.

The haemonculus was hoisted into the crew-bay and secured within the casket. Working quickly and expertly, Leonides fastened a series of probes to the exterior of the crystal, and lights began to flicker along the edge of the instruments. By then the others had hoisted themselves up into the gunship’s interior.

Ingvar was the last to leave. He looked around the hall for a final time, his attention snagged by the scene of complete destruction. The remnants of the old Imperial architecture slumped amid the pools of blood left by the torturers. Hooks and eviscerators swung from what remained of the ceiling-arch, glistening from the gobbets of flesh still attached.

‘Space Wolf,’ growled Callimachus.

Ingvar pulled himself over the edge of the crew-bay door and away from the gore-swilled floor. As he did so, the hatch-pistons hissed and pulled tight, closing off his view. Shade powered up its thrusters, and lurched towards the broken-tooth edge of what had been the hall’s roof.

By the time Ingvar had clambered up into Shade’s cockpit, the Thunderhawk was high above the installation. From the nearside real-view portal he could see the sprawling structure clinging to the obsidian surface of the asteroid. There was very little sign of damage, save for the shattered dome of the assembly hall. The far vaster ore-workings were entirely intact, and the gunship’s sensors reported the full functioning of all life-support systems.

Five hundred metres away, smouldering gently in Valmar’s thin atmosphere, lay the remains of a xenos starship. Its vanes and sails were crumpled, and its swollen hull was open to the elements.

Jocelyn grunted with satisfaction as he powered past the downed eldar vessel. ‘It was fast,’ he remarked, ‘but fragile.’

Ingvar studied the wreckage carefully. The human prey had been herded into it during the assault, hauled through the roof like raw meat. Presumably most were still inside the lightless hold, perhaps alive, or perhaps succumbing to the wounds they had suffered.

Every fibre of his being strained to go back, to at least cut them loose. As Shade gained height, the window for opportunity was shrinking quickly.

‘I know what you are thinking,’ said Callimachus, sitting next to him in the cramped cockpit.

Ingvar looked at him. The Ultramarine’s helm had been ravaged by the xenos shard-weapons, and it would take the artificers weeks to restore it. The tone of Callimachus’s voice was just as it always was – reasonable, calm, phlegmatic. If Ingvar had defied his commander on Fenris in the way he had done with Callimachus down in the corridors, he would have new scars to adorn the old. That was what infuriated him so much – the reasonableness.

‘We could secure the station,’ Ingvar said, already knowing all the arguments against but unable not to at least protest. ‘Alert the Guard, get them help.’

Callimachus shook his head. ‘Mission orders,’ he said, though there was no great satisfaction in his voice. ‘The system’s authorities will respond. They must not know we were here.’

Ingvar’s irritation flared up again, and he was about to tell Callimachus what he thought of mission orders when a warning alarm chimed from the command console. Jocelyn immediately banked the Thunderhawk hard to the right and brought it back down close to the asteroid’s surface.

‘Incoming,’ the Dark Angel reported, powering up the gunship’s weapons again.

On the far side of the curved horizon, more than one signal had been picked up. They were closing with tell-tale speed – no Imperial vessels moved that fast.

‘Xenos, fighter-class,’ said Ingvar, taking in the tactical reading and reaching for the gunnery controls. ‘We can down them.’

There were four blips on the augurs, nothing that Shade couldn’t handle. It was just as Jocelyn had said – they were fast, but they were fragile.

‘Negative,’ ordered Callimachus. ‘Resume exit trajectory, full velocity.’

Jocelyn did as he was ordered, and the Thunderhawk screamed along at low-level, leaving the installation far behind.

‘We’re running?’ demanded Ingvar, disbelieving.

Callimachus nodded. ‘We are.’

‘They’ll finish what they started,’ protested Ingvar. ‘They’ll harvest them.’

Callimachus turned on him. Through the broken helm-lens, Ingvar thought he could see an anguished expression on the Ultramarine’s face, but it was hard to tell.

‘We have what we came for,’ Callimachus said. ‘Nothing will be allowed to jeopardise that.’

‘Skítja, we can take them out!’

Callimachus snapped his gauntlet out, catching Ingvar on the chest and slamming him back into the cockpit’s inner wall. ‘And that is your answer to everything, is it not, Space Wolf?’ he snarled. ‘Nothing you can’t fight, nothing you can’t kill.’ He shook his head disgustedly. ‘They will keep coming, and the longer we stay, the more will come. They bend space in on itself. You know this.’

Callimachus let go. Ingvar’s first instinct was a strike out in turn, to avenge the insult, to establish his place in the squad. It was what he would have done on Fenris. If he hadn’t, he would not have lasted a week in the packs.

But the Ultramarine had already turned away from him, ready to assist Jocelyn in the task at hand. Shade was powering clear at full thrust now, its huge engines augmented with all the forbidden technology the ordo had at its disposal. The pilots had more to worry about than him.

Ingvar, feeling his blood pumping in his temples, glanced down at the tactical display. The xenos craft had pulled out of the pursuit, and had returned to the installation. They were already descending on the ruined dome, no doubt preparing the ground for landing parties.

There was no going back now. Shade would make the rendezvous with Halliafiore’s command ship as planned, on schedule and with no casualties to report. The flesh-twister would be delivered alive to the tender mercies of the interrogators, and over long decades imprisoned in the void-shielded depths of the Inquisition’s darkest oubliette-fortresses would have priceless information extracted.

It was a valuable prize, one worth celebrating. That knowledge would save countless more installations, and ones worth much more to the Imperium than Valmar’s Gorge.

Ingvar punched the wall hard, denting the metal and sending a clang resounding around the cockpit’s interior. None of the others so much as looked at him – they were already busy with course-plotting, or securing the cargo in place, or just reflecting on a clean first mission.

He imagined how it would be if he could have gone back. He would have drawn his blade and taken on the xenos, bringing them down one by one. They would have come in their dozens, and he would have slaughtered them in their dozens. If they had brought him down, it would have been a fine death, standing between them and the mortals like the warrior-kings of the old ice.

They would be inside the perimeter by now. They would be creeping back through the corridors, their needles already withdrawn and their dark minds turning to vengeance.

Ingvar turned off the scanner. He could already picture Halliafiore’s sleek, satisfied face welcoming them back, and more than anything else he had seen on Valmar’s Gorge, he knew it would make him sick to his stomach.

The comms room remained dark. Both of them had heard explosions for a long time, like grenades going off. Then there had been the huge booming noise, like a starship coming to land, that had made the whole station shake. They’d felt a massive impact, like a hammer blow against the asteroid’s core.

Then, for a while, nothing.

Kaivon was the first to speak. ‘Do you think they’ve done it?’ he whispered.

Tallia and he were both crouched in the flickered dark. She still had her lasgun trained on the air-duct opening, her eyes locked on to it with impressive dedication.

Kaivon admired that. She was everything that he wasn’t – disciplined, focused. He could hardly stop shaking still, and every time he blinked he saw again the horrible sights that made him want to start weeping again.

Eventually, Tallia relaxed. She lowered the weapon by a fraction, though she kept her finger tight on the trigger.

‘They’ve done it then, have they?’ asked Kaivon again, anxious and urgent. He wished he’d seen one of them himself now – an Angel of Death, just as the stories said they were, emerging at the time of darkest need, the protectors of the faithful, the guardians of the immortal soul of humanity.

‘He said to stay here,’ said Tallia, warily.

Kaivon scrambled to his feet. He found that moving helped him a little. If he started to walk, the trembling ebbed slightly. ‘They must have killed them all,’ he said, his voice picking up. ‘Praise the Emperor!’

Tallia tried to grab him, to haul him back down, but missed the edge of his jacket. ‘Remain still!’ she hissed.

By then, Kaivon wasn’t listening. A kind of euphoria had taken over, an ecstatic release from the vice of fear and nausea that had clamped on him since the first inklings that something was wrong.

He edged into the larger chamber beyond, the one with the central column where Tallia had dragged the two xenos bodies up against the walls. They held little fear for him now, for the true masters of battle were in the station now, and with all his remaining strength Kaivon determined that he would at least lay eyes on them.

They had to be thanked. They had to know, even if it only lasted seconds, that he was grateful, and that their arrival had vindicated every scrap of faith that he had ever possessed, for it was one thing for the priests to tell them that the Emperor’s Angels would always be there for them, but it was another thing to have it demonstrated.

He reached the outer door, and paused. The lights had been partially restored on the far side, and he could see a ribbon of red glowing around the joints. Something was moving outside, coming towards the doors. He saw the light broken.

He found himself suddenly unwilling to open the lock. Suddenly, the fear returned, as sharp and debilitating as before.

‘Don’t open the door!’ hissed Tallia, staying where she was and keeping the lasgun trained for firing. ‘Get back here!’

He didn’t know why he still reached for the lock mechanism. He saw his hand moving long before he realised what he was doing, and the portal slid open.

Tallia opened fire, sending lasbeams fizzing past him and into the dark. A return burst of splinter-shards ended the barrage, somehow missing him entirely and whistling into the chamber beyond. Tallia gurgled and gagged, and the lasbeams ceased.

Kaivon stood perfectly still, his eyes wide, his limbs frozen. Before him, in the dark, hung two glowing lenses, like a snake’s eyes. He heard the faint sound of alien breath coming from a glossy mask.

He wanted to scream, but no sound came from his mouth. He wanted to resist as the hooks and the collar came towards him, but his body no longer obeyed his mind’s commands.

If he’d had any wits left, he would have wished for death to come quickly, but from somewhere, deep down, despite all the choking fear that consumed him again and made his thoughts sluggish, Kaivon knew that he would be alive yet for a very long time indeed.

As the first of the hooks went in, he couldn’t even close his eyes.

He runs, head low, bolter held loosely one-handed, loping over terrain broken by a mortal generation of war.

He moves faster than should be possible, his steel-grey armour a blur in the desert sand, whining from servo-strain, driven to its limits by the hunter’s mind encased within. He is a dust-cloud, a djinn of vengeance launched across the parched wastes.

The world around him howls its outrage. The skies crack with flame, throbbing amid tumbling amber cloudbanks. Every footfall is a violation, an imposition of alien matter on tortured soil.

This world hates him. It hates his armour, forged on a planet of relentless cold. It hates the angular runes on his shoulderguards, carved in black and choked with the dust that fouls all things here. It hates the fact that he is alone, for Armageddon is a world of limitless hosts, of Legions stretching from lightning-scored horizon to horizon. As he runs, this world tries to throttle him, to snatch away his breath, to seize him up.

He feeds from the hatred. He looks up at the ember-glowing skies and laughs. He feels the beating heat on his back and snarls for more. Blood-red flickers dance across the western desert-edge, and the incipient storm-rumble makes the dust shiver.

He is panting now, his saliva viscous. He has been running for hours, a constant rhythm since being dropped into the deep desert by the lifter. Ahead of him squats the ridge, carved like bone from the desert, crested, wave-like and dominating the surrounding flatlands. It rises two hundred metres, jagged and earth-dry, scored by gulches that will never gush with water again.

He sees the summit, zoomed through his helm’s ocular augmenters, beaten flat and crested with withered scrub. The peak is the target. It is the stronghold, a citadel, a natural fortress of bare stone and wind-flayed columns amid the baking expanse of desert. Xenos-cattle would break against that rock like spilled blood, foaming back into the gasping earth in their anger. He intends to make them.

He grins and pants harder, dog-like. He can hear them coming for him now. They have picked up his spoor, and they are breaking away from their pits and towers along the river’s edge, a kilometre to the east. He can already see them in his mind’s eye – roaring, stamping, furious. They will come for him, racing across the sands, desperate to bring him down, to crush his spine and trample his lifeless body into the red soil.

The thought of it makes his battle-spirit sing. He feels his axe clatter against his thigh as he runs and burns to pull it free.

Not yet, he thinks. Not until they are on him, piling in around him, bellowing with tusked mouths gaping and spittle flying into his face.

He runs. He keeps running. But though he is the prey, he is not running from them. He has never run from an enemy in his life.

The dust flares around him, curling like a cloak. The skies burn, the heat shimmers.

Ahead of him, the summit nears. It looks, for a moment, like a cairn on the peaks of Asaheim.

‘What was his name?’

Regimental Commander Holth vol Vergion is not good with names. He is capable of recalling and deploying complex deployment orders with precision, but names pass over him now – the living and the dead, for there have been so many.

Commissar Ferd Naghro does not miss a beat, staring through the aperture of his long-range magnoculars with the squint that always marks his jowly face. ‘Svein,’ says Naghro. ‘He called himself Svein Last-of-Eight.’

Vergion grunts. His narrow chin is lined with sweat already, and it is less than an hour after the red-glow dawn. He can feel the dust rising, settling, filtering, worming its way into every crevice. ‘What does it mean?’

Naghro puts the magnoculars down. ‘His squad is gone,’ he says. ‘He is the remaining warrior.’

‘They could reinforce him?’

‘They won’t.’ Naghro looks sourly approving.

All around the two men, fumes churn into the toxic sludge of Armageddon’s atmosphere. Columns of Chimera transports sway through the dust, gouging out long track-lines as their smoke-stacks belch soot. A flight of Valkyrie gunships powers overhead, hanging low, their hunched wings heavy with weaponry. Ranks of mustard-yellow troopers trudge through the swirling dust-clouds, wet cloths draped over their rebreather masks, all heading for the remaining transports that will take them, once again, over the killing grounds of the inter-hive badlands.

The regiment’s command group has pulled up ahead of the mustering vanguard, positioned on a scrubby rise to watch the muster complete. The 172nd are getting good at it now. They have been on the move on and off for seven months, and it is hard to remember sleeping on something that isn’t mobile. Naghro’s Salamander transport idles halfway down the slope, a little lower than Vergion’s Crassus super-heavy command vehicle. The company commanders have already taken their positions at the head of the columns – Kallack leading the Tauros and attack-bike flanking squads; Vervis, Helt, Celif and Llom commanding the main mechanised infantry battalions; Jeherren and Gorghi leading the pure tank columns – Leman Russ, Hellhounds and a few surviving Wyvern suppression units, though those units have taken a beating on the crossing from Acheron into the contested zones.

Vergion notes, with some satisfaction, that Naghro seems content with progress. He hasn’t launched into one of his frothing rages, nor has he dragged his Commissariat staff down the front line to berate the men for slovenliness. For once, he seems to be in accord with the spirit of the regiment.

For his own part, Vergion feels that mix of trepidation and enthusiasm he always does before a major action. This is a significant push, one that holds the promise of securing the desert south of the last remaining rok fortress and cutting off reinforcements to the beleaguered ork offensive positions. It has been weeks in the preparation, and resources have been pulled from five other fronts to lend it heft. Get it right, and they will blood the greenskins badly. Get it wrong, and they’ll be hauling burned-out tank carcasses from the sand for years. It all depends on taking the objective and holding it.

He feels the dust on his lips, and licks them. Everything tastes of grit, oil and blood.

‘How far away is he?’ Vergion asks.

‘Already close,’ says Naghro, snapping his magnocular case closed. ‘I should take my place now, commander.’

Vergion takes a final look around him, and at the multiple ranks of armour, all gouging its way into the desert, overflown by Valkyries and Avengers. It is a formidable battle-group, war-hardened and brutally drilled. He thinks of Svein Last-of-Eight, out in the deep desert, alone.

‘Then we are being outpaced,’ Vergion replies, trudging to the open crew-hatch of his Crassus command vehicle. ‘That will be rectified. Now move out.’

He smells them before he sees them. The ridge is still three kilometres to the north, and unprotected. They burn up from the east, out of the river’s jagged gulch, aiming to cut him off. Their stench rolls ahead of them – a fungal fog, hot and clotted with sweat-wet dust. Next come the clouds, kicked up by hundreds of trampling boots, churning like frothing mjod in the barrel. They are panting, bawling, jostling like the animals they are, latching onto his own scent and seeking him out.

Svein keeps running. He wants to make the first broken rock-edge before they reach him, and that will be tight.

Lactic acid is already burning in his thighs, and the pain spurs him on. Both hearts are thudding in a tight rhythm; his lungs are straining and his skin is tight with sweat under his armour. His whole body is a machine now, speeding, locked to the drumbeat of the chase, tight as cured hide.

He remembers running through the snowdrifts on his home world, hunting down prey in the years before he’d been taken, his skin open to the cut of the wind and his nostrils flaring with the unfiltered scents of pine and stone. He remembers the old pains of his body before the changes were wrought, and they are much the same now. He remembers how he would use his mind’s eye to chart the course of the prey before him, placing himself in its position, judging where it would run and angling his pursuit in order to cut it off. He wonders if the xenos can do the same. They have been cunning in the past. They have laid low hive-spires and brought ruin to whole tracts of this world.

They are only here to slaughter. On the one hand, he despises that – he cannot help it, it is bred into him, and he loathes the greenskin more than he loathes any other living thing he has fought. On the other, he recognises the purity in it. They are the same as him – made to kill, bled clean of remorse or fear, their minds set on the target as tight as docking clamps.

He sees the first of them, clear of the river now, charging across the flat-beaten earth. Those are the fastest, not the biggest, and they will die quickly. They know this too, but they sprint after him nevertheless, blind with their species-rage, seeing only his blood-trampled demise in their stimm-flared brains.

You will have to fight for it, he thinks, opening fire with his bolter, sending the shells streaking out across the desert. The first xenos fall, crashing to the ground, rolling over and over with momentum, leapt over by those behind.

It is a plunging wave – a tsunami of bodies, crashing across the gasping, forge-hot land. It will overtake him.

Svein looks up. The rise is close now. He tears towards it, firing all the while. The ammo-counter clicks down to empty, and he slams another clip home, never breaking stride. They are sending runners to outflank him, bringing up the heavy warriors through the centre of the horde. They disregard the mass-reactive shells that slam into them, wrenching and catapulting them from their feet. Some get back up, carrying huge wounds but still roaring their fury, powering awkwardly back into the hunt.

He admires that. He wishes to kill those ones cleanly.

How many are after him now? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?

Vergion, positioned further still to the east, between the orks and Acheron, will be on the move now. His tanks will already be rumbling across the wastes. Svein remembers Vergion. He liked the mortal commander, and he liked his commissar even more. They both looked him in the eye and did not insult him with honorifics. They treated him like a soldier, which is what he is, and he hopes he did the same. It can be hard not to belittle the mortals, despite all they have done. He hopes he did not do that.

He hopes, too, they will be on time. Vergion had the look of a man who would keep his promises.

The xenos keep closing, spilling over the ash like rats. Their guttural language is audible now, hurling out bestial hatreds. He admires that, likes the spirit it shows, but he keeps his own mouth closed. His own death-curses can wait.

He keeps firing, running down another clip until it clangs empty and replaces it again. He keeps running.

Ahead of him, the ridge looms up, blocking the light of the sun.

The 172nd surges across the badlands, all men now encased in their vehicles. Vergion’s command group manoeuvres into the centre of the formation, flanked by two mechanised infantry divisions. They spread out across the burning earth, adopting the standard Astra Militarum convoy pattern: heavy armour in the centre, artillery pieces at the rear, light units on the flanks and scout bikes up ahead.

Vergion holds on to the shuddering chassis of the Crassus, peering into the tactical picter. All around him his crew shout and sweat and work, keeping the armoured behemoth on the route. The whole structure shakes as the tracks labour. Armageddon is a hateful world to wage war on – the soils crumble under weight, the heat is crushing and the electric storms scramble the augurs. The planet is an enemy just as formidable as the hated xenos.

The carrier jolts, slamming Vergion into the inner wall of his command chamber. He curses and rights himself, feeling the hot trickle of blood down his temple.

The Space Wolf has covered so much ground that Vergion’s columns will have to work hard to meet the schedule. That is absurd – a whole regiment, powered by huge promethium and diesel engines, struggling to match the pace set by a single warrior. But then Vergion has seen the Space Marines fight, and knows what they are capable of. He has seen lone members of the Adeptus Astartes cut their way through whole mobs of heavy-armoured xenos, fighting with such speed and discipline that it has lifted the populaces of the spires to new heights of heroism.

He cannot be cynical about them, not like some of his envious peers. Vergion knows he has done his duty by the Emperor, but also knows that it will never compare to that performed by the lowliest of the Angels on Armageddon. How could it? Within their sacred bodies they carry a fractional spark of the Emperor’s own essence.

‘They are like unto the gods themselves,’ Vergion mouths to himself, watching the kilometres click by. ‘They are the instruments of our Protector. They are perfect, unwearied and unsullied.’

In the west, he sees the first signs of the xenos horde on the scopes. Its size does not surprise him – the greenskins know the value of the objective and are there in force. He sees the first flickers of the augur readings, signifying movements and deployments. As usual, it is a scattered mess.

But they are already charging. They are already making for the target. It is all happening so fast.

‘Signal the forward units,’ voxes Vergion, glancing at the chrono and not liking what he sees. ‘Break two points south – we are coming in high.’

He can adjust, he can nudge, but in truth all has been set in train now. He will have to hope, and trust, that it has been enough.

Vergion looks back into the scopes, his fingers turning white with tension where they clutch the metal housing.

The ridge beckons. It rears up, veined with ochre, a great fold in the cracked earth, worn down by fire-laced winds into folds of sandstone. He vaults up the first boulders, leaping from one to another, but then they are on him.

They clutch at his ankles, still scrabbling as he blasts at them. Blood splatters up his greaves, but still they come. He climbs faster, racing up the crooked defile, using his free hand to power between the steepening rockfaces. They adopt the same tactic, grabbing any handhold, hauling their stinking bodies after his. The scrawniest of them scampers ahead, trying to power past him before he reaches the summit. The brawniest are still far behind, hampered by iron-plate armour, but now catching fast.

Svein pushes on. Solid rounds explode around him, showering his shoulders with rubble. The gun-carriers are close enough to fire now, and the heavy ammunition pulverises the stone. He darts and weaves, belying his ceramite bulk to power upwards, defying gravity, using every handgrip and foothold.

He reaches a ledge and half turns, emptying his bolter into the oncoming herds. In that moment, he sees them all before him, streaming up from the desert floor, and his hearts spike with exhilaration. They are massive. They are unending. They clamber over their own dead, low-slung jaws dribbling with gore-flecked saliva. He sees the greater xenos-beasts lumbering towards him, shoving lesser creatures aside with claws of rusting steel. He sees goggled fanatics lowering flamers, and augmetic pistoned horrors limping unsteadily into range.

‘Fenrys!’ he roars, as the last shell cracks from his bolter’s barrel.

He has already carved a swathe of blood, and it makes him savagely glad. The same xenos-breed took his pack down, one by one, during the months of relentless fighting on Armageddon – in Acheron, in the wastes and in the void above the fiery curve of the cursed planet’s atmosphere. Each of his brothers slaughtered hundreds before the end, and Svein is honour-bound to exact the same tally.

He starts moving again and mag-locks his empty bolter, for this is no place to make a stand. The bullets whizz past him, scraping the edges of his armour. He is struck, and his armour takes the impact. They almost catch his trailing leg, but he surges up faster. As he climbs, he reaches for his axe and pulls it clear. He is leading them up, up, up – pulling the whole horde from the plains and into the heights.

They hit him again, and he stumbles. His footing slips, and he slashes down hard with the axe, taking off a xenos’s claws at the wrist. It is the first blade-kill, and he grunts with the release. He crests a rock-shelf, no more than a metre wide, and plants his boots firmly for the first time in hours.

They clamber up to fight him and he obliges. He exchanges blows with inch-thick metal cleavers, whirring chainswords, mauls, flails and snub-barrelled rifles. They crash against him, and he kicks them back to the desert floor. The blows are vicious, heavy as pig-iron. The sandstone explodes into clouds around them, wreathing the furious combat in a cloak of swirling translucence. He takes wounds, for they are warrior-born just as he is. His armour is dented and scored, and he is knocked against the stone wall at his back, but his vision is better than theirs and he is still faster and more skilful, and he uses those advantages. His axe flies a fraction faster, a fraction tighter and a fraction harder. He kills dozens, then dozens more, and their bodies crunch and break away from him. Black blood paints the stone in streaks, staining like engine oil.

They waver. The momentum of the tide flickers, and he sees the damage he has already done.

He angles his axe down at them, fangs bared under the death-snarl of his helm.

‘One-of-Eight!’ he roars in Fenrisian, not caring that they will not understand him. He is not speaking to them anyway. They roar back, goaded, and surge up the slope again, galloping on all-fours now. He sees more greenskins rumbling across the dust-filmed desert below, disgorged by juggernauts and half-tracks.

Then he springs back up the cliff-face, climbing rapidly. He looks up and sees the furnace of the sky sweep across his visual field. It is scored with the dirty trails of mortars, and that gives him satisfaction.

Vergion must be close. The beat of engines is on the edge of his hearing.

He keeps moving. They come after him. There is nowhere left to go, and ahead of him the summit rises.

Vergion gives the order. The tanks grind to a halt, churning up sand, rocking with inertia even as their gunners angle the long barrels. They are performing the calculations quickly, for much has already been pre-cogitated. The ork defence lines of the river-course are less than a kilometre ahead now. The xenos themselves are massed and out in the open, vulnerable to close-packed fire. The summit of the ridge looms beyond them, hazy from dust.

The tanks shoot high, sending cluster-bombs, mortars and infantry-shredding shrapnel charges arcing into the greenskin positions. The sky goes black with discharge, masking the red light of Armageddon’s angry star. More tank formations reach their coordinates, and the punishment becomes withering. Shells slam from the sky, pounding the desert, annihilating all under its devastating curtain.

The troop transports advance under the cover of the tank-barrage, trusting in the spotters to keep the cascade well ahead of them. Vergion orders the Crassus to follow them in. He climbs the ladder to the observation hatch, unlocks it and pushes out into the open. Even though he wears a full-face helm and rebreather, the heat and the noise hit him hard. He reels, gripping the circular rim, gaining his bearings.

Everything stinks of cordite and promethium. The sky has gone, replaced by the roaring trails of projectile fire. The shells hammer along the route of the dry river, still a long way from the high-point and sweeping west in a grinding, disciplined movement.

Vergion spies Naghro’s Salamander powering its way towards the very front, and smiles – the commissar would not be anywhere else. Behind the black-clad vehicle are the lead Chimeras, already reaching their deployment coordinates. Vergion sees them skid to a halt, their crew-doors slamming open and troopers spilling from the interior onto the sand. They form into squads – the lasgun-bearing main assault squads moving forward and supported moments later by the heavy-weapons teams. Vergion sees the mortars being unloaded, assembled and loaded, ready to add to the barrage from the battle tanks.

It is assault in the best tradition of the Legion – fast, overwhelming, rapidly escalating as the forces are delivered to the pre-arranged fire-bases. Ranks of unloaded troopers advance through the smoke-filled landscape, firing whicker-sharp volleys of lasbeams through the murk, their helm-lumens glowing in the artificial dusk.

The orks come back at them – of course they do – for even the opening barrage has not killed all of them. They stumble out of the nerve-shredding hellstorm, half-blinded. The counter-strike is furious. Vergion sees huge greenskin warriors blasted apart by grenade-strikes, sliced into blood-whirl shards by concentrated lasfire and pulverised by mortar-fall. Still, more crash into contact. They are bewildered now, shocked into a kind of feral rage by the hammer blow of the assault, but still they do what comes naturally to them – fight, fight, fight.

The second wave of infantry carriers pushes on, aiming to reach the river-course before resistance can be fully organised. The rain of artillery sweeps ahead of them, smashing apart trench lines and barricades in a rolling fire-tide.

‘Where is he?’ demands Vergion, speaking to his augur-operator.

The reply comes back over the unit-comm, crackly and distorted. ‘Tracking movement toward the summit. He’s still fighting.’

‘Throne of Earth,’ breathes Vergion, relieved. ‘Push on, then. Push on.’

The air around him burns, igniting with the tang of spilled promethium. Everything is a death-marker – the smells, the sounds and the throbbing earth. He is at the epicentre now, orchestrating the close-packed fury of his regiment.

They approach the river. To the west, partly hidden by the clouds of smoke, the summit still stands, sundered and raging in visual range.

He is nearly ended before making the horn-curve peak. They are firing again, launching crude explosives from shoulder-mounted tubes, trying to blast him clear from the rock, to drag him down where they can hack him to slivers.

He darts to one side, warned by preternatural hunt-sense. The cliff-face he had been aiming for disappears in a riot of falling stone; flying boulders smash against his armour. He reels, nearly losing his grip, but manages to keep climbing. More projectiles strike his back, punching into the ravaged ceramite.

He reaches the lip of stone before the summit and grabs it with both fists, hauling himself over the edge. The flat of the peak runs away before him, the high-point amidst the flatness, its red-brown surface scoured by dust-winds.

They follow him over like rats up a hawser and crash into him – a solid mass of green flesh, encased in motley armour and bearing improvised weapons. A dozen, then two dozen, then more, throwing themselves wildly.

He fights back, matching their savagery. His axe is wielded two-handed, hurled around in baresark curves. He decapitates a broken-toothed monster and bisects the chest of a roaring opponent. Blood flecks, spurts and swings around him in hanging trails. He kicks out, breaking bones. One xenos gets close, and he head-butts it, snapping the thick fore-skull, before finishing it with the axe-edge.

They land their own blows. His greaves are cracked now, half-shattered by the solid rounds that slam in all the time. His right hand leaks hot blood under its gauntlet, and there is no time to heal it. His breastplate is dented, pressed against his labouring chest, and his arms burn with the raw pain of overexertion. Every indicator in his helm flashes blood-red, screaming at him to stop, to pull out, to get away.

He cannot. He will not. He is Svein, Last-of-Eight, a Lone Wolf. He has a task to fulfil.

They come again. The axe bites, tearing up alien flesh in hot slices. He makes the killing-edge fly, propelling it one-handed again and punching with his free fist, cracking bone and ripping muscle. The xenos blur into a screen of blood and fury, surrounding and rearing over him, poised like a wave of the grey-white seas of home, ready to tear him from the ridge and cast him into oblivion.

He forgets everything but the combat. He forgets his old pack, his old missions, the orders that brought him to Armageddon. All he has is the physical test – pitiless, furious, pure. If he had any spare breath in his lungs he would cry out for the pleasure and glory of it, for this is fighting, as elemental and unrestrained as he has always dreamed of. He is no longer an individual, but a force, as torrential as the Helwinter.

He swings round, clearing a space ahead of him. A red-eyed xenos collapses back in its agony, knocking others down, breaking the unity of the tide before him. In a fraction of a second, he looks up, out across the plains, aware again of a world outside the circuit of his axe-strikes.

He sees the dry river far below, skirting around the eastern edge of the ridge and snaking out into the ash-wastes. He sees the smoke rising from the artillery bombardment, and the vehicles tearing across the divide. Vergion is on schedule. The mortal has kept his promise.

Svein smiles, but there is no time for that any more. In that fraction of a pause, he realises how damaged he is. Every muscle of his augmented body is shrieking at him. His carapace is broken in three places. The bones of his left hand are broken. He has a fractured skull, the flesh over his ribcage is torn, and his right boot is filling with blood.

Then they run at him again, thundering in their fractured, overlapping mania.

He grips his axe, judges where to hit first, and strikes back hard.

The 172nd charges through the greenskin positions on the far side of the riverbank, storming them in waves of tight, ordered violence. They take the dens one by one, hurling in grenades, launching flamers through the sight-holes, then blasting the doors open and sending troopers in. These positions have been occupied for a long time, and the xenos are dug-in, but it does not help them. The assault is overwhelming, the numbers telling, the speed more than they can handle.

Valkyries swoop in low, engines whining, launching their attack runs and strafing the guntowers and the greenskins that are still above ground. The artillery barrage has now moved on, freeing up the infantry to tear through the heart of the xenos strongholds along the banks. They place charges against the tangled walls of scrap and looted masonry, and blow the defence-lines into rubble. Then they storm the smouldering remnants, bringing pain to the enemy that has given them so much pain of its own.

It feels good to return it. It feels good to torch their lairs and make them squeal.

Vergion’s Crassus smashes through a half-severed line of razorwire, and thunders to a shuddering halt. The commander adjusts his rebreather, slams opens the hatch, and steps out on the earth again, flanked by his bodyguards. As his boots touch down on the ash, he takes in the situation with his own eyes.

They have taken the shoreline positions. They have driven the greenskins from their defensive redoubts and now occupy in force. With the xenos artillery points negated, they will be able to send in landers within the hour. Aegis lines will be constructed, making the dry river-course into a fortress. The orks will be denied passage towards Acheron along the protected way, leaving them only the open desert, where they will be vulnerable to airstrikes and detectable by the hive’s functioning augur arrays.

Objective achieved.

He allows himself a twinge of guilt, though he knows none should be forthcoming. Naghro would have chastised him for it. The plan was the Space Wolf’s – he had proposed it, back in the bunker with his thick finger jabbing at points on the tactical hololith.

‘I draw them out,’ he’d said in his accented Gothic. ‘I pull them from the river. Then you take it.’

Vergion had hesitated. Even the commissar had hesitated.

‘And then?’ he had asked.

The Space Wolf had never replied, but the smile he’d given had made Vergion shiver.

Vergion looks up, westward. He can see the summit before him, bordering the deep wastes. It is crawling with greenskins, all surging up the precipitous cliffs, seemingly oblivious to the destruction wrought on their stronghold. They have been goaded and they have responded, pursuing their prey with such single-minded obsession that they have allowed themselves to be destroyed by it.

Even now, Vergion wonders if he can alter the arrangement. Perhaps the Valkyries could be re-routed, clearing the summit of xenos. He could call in assault-troops, delivered in airborne carriers, and try to pull the Space Wolf back before he is lost. The value of one such warrior is beyond price – as he has shown by dragging the orks out of their entrenched positions and enabling the 172nd to overrun them with such crushing speed.

As he looks up at the summit, Naghro’s Salamander draws up alongside him. The commissar dismounts and limps over.

‘Do not think about it,’ he says. ‘This is the priority.’

Vergion smiles coldly. ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘Though I regret it.’

‘I think he wished for it.’

Vergion does not believe that. He stands up straight, guessing the gesture will never be seen, but some things have to be marked.

He salutes, slamming his clenched fist against his chest, acknowledging the lone warrior on the ridge who has pulled the greenskins from their lairs and given him his victory. He will not cheapen that sacrifice by altering the plans now. He will hammer the remainder into the dust, and fortify the lines, making them so strong that when the xenos on the summit limp back with blood on their claws they will be cut to pieces by his newly-fixed guns.

This is his stronghold now. He will make it unbreakable.

Svein sees the salute. Before the horde closes around him again, he sees the tiny outline of Vergion against the sand, marking the sacrifice.

Then the blows come in again, harder now that the xenos are on the flat, pressing in, frustrated by his survival. If they have realised what their hunt has cost them, they give no sign – they are obsessed, focused only on the kill, roused to a frenzy. Their bloodlust has damned them, just as he promised the mortal commander it would.

He fights again, knowing that this will be the end. There are dozens already pressing on him. Soon there will be hundreds and he will kill until the sun turns black. But it will not be enough – a blade will find its way through, a claw will penetrate, a shell will find its mark.

He does not grieve. He has slain more this day than ever before, and this is the manner of a warrior’s passing – surrounded by heaps of the slain, his axe-blade red, his voice hoarse from death-curses. This is how he has always envisioned it.

He fights on. In his mind’s eye, he hears the laughter of Russ at his back.

He fights on. He feels the ice-wind in his plaited hair, the cold edge that stirs his hearts to fervour.

He fights on. In his amber eyes there is something like ecstasy.

He was driven by hunger. It flailed at him, clawing at the inside of an empty belly, making him move faster and search harder. His vision had become sharp from privation, even in the deep winter night which glowered around him. Everything was more real, more defined, made vivid by his need.

He stopped running, panting heavily, leaning against the bole of the nearest tree. Ahead of him ran the snow, shin deep, glowing blue-white under canopy-obscured stars. The trees soared above him, their bases massive and ridged, slick as oil, glistening faintly. The gaps between the trunks were pure black pools into which light tumbled and was devoured. The thick cover above choked off most of the rest of it, leaving only the streaks and patches of luminous snow underfoot.

He could feel sweat on his back. Dangerous to pause – if he cooled down too fast his muscles would seize up. If he seized up, he would not make it back out of the forest. The heavy furs over his shoulders would only ward the night’s chill for so long. He needed fire to warm his bones, and meat to fuel them.

Flesh. The idea made him salivate. It made his stomach snarl and his hands tremble. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten well. His people would be waiting for him, back up on the high moors, shivering around the fire pit, waiting for the hunter to return, dragging a carcass behind him. The old rune-reader would be scrabbling around for signs of his fate, and the whelps would be screaming from their own famishment.

But he could not think of them now; all there was now was the hunt, the chase, the dark and the light, the smells, the faint sounds, the feel of the earth under his feet.

He sniffed deep, flaring his nostrils, risking the intake of more cold air for a whiff of his prey out in the dark. Snow-heavy branches creaked above him, and the wind skirled across the broken ground like a ghost. The chill was complete, a vice that locked all living things in its deadening embrace.

The beast was there, somewhere, out amid the towering pillars of trees, hunkered down, breathing huskily amongst some lattice of broken thorns, waiting for him.

He angled his head, trying to gauge distance, direction, putting himself into the mind of the pursued.

Hunt-sense, Ulfán had called it long ago: slipping into the mind of the prey, seeing where it would run, charting the invisible paths of fate as they wound along the narrow paths of the solid world. The hunters who prospered all had it – they could tap into the wyrd of the beast, just as the gothi tapped into the wyrd of men.

He sniffed again, feeling the weight of the canopy in the heights, smothering all but the biting wind. He might as well have been underground, locked in the underverse, trapped in the caverns that wormed and gaped under the restless surface of Fenris.

This forest was younger than he was, but the trees were already a hundred feet tall, writhing and gnarled as they thrust towards the scant light, rigid as bone, solid as iron. If he went onwards, the forest would close around him further, forcing him down the clogged paths that bristled with hoarfrost and had thorns that could punch a hole in a man’s stomach. The beast would be down one of those, panting, purring, coiled for the spring. It would know he was coming for it.

He gripped his axe. As he moved it, scratched runes on the blade-face caught the starlight – thin lines of silver.

He had named it himself, spiting the gothi who should have reserved that honour for himself. Skulbrotsjór, he had chosen. Skull-breaker. It felt light in his hands – just a shaft of wood, an iron blade wedged through the cleave and bound with leather. Not much of a weapon, but the winter had been hard and they had had to scratch and scavenge for what they could.

Guide this blade, he offered, glancing skywards for a moment, glimpsing a scatter of stars in the narrow break between the branches, not knowing whether the gods of slaughter and luck would be ghosting through the high airs that night.

Then he pushed off again, flitting between the trees, his long hair rippling.

They infiltrated via the Thunderhawk Helspite.

The Chapter’s war-scryers had identified an old void-facing hangar on one of the jumble of hulls and accumulated space debris that made up the hulk’s outer skin, and the gunship’s battlecannon was potent enough to gain entry.

On the flight in, wheeling under the hulk’s flank, Gunnlaugur had been able to observe its face at close range, soaring away in every direction, mottled by age and horror, still glimmering from the wisps of aether that glowed like corpse-gas across its tortured expanse.

There was no data on the interior configuration, no archive records of previous sightings, no tactical return from sensor-sweeps of the exterior. The behemoth might have been lost in the warp for millennia, or mere centuries. It might have been empty and echoing, or it might have been crawling with xenos. Indeed, it might have been nothing more than a vast asteroid but for the vanes and turrets protruding from the ossified binding matter. Starships were buried there, some as old as the Imperium, some perhaps older. As they neared and the viewportals filled with its scabrous shell, Gunnlaugur felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

Maleficarum. The hulk had been vomited from the warp, and the stink of old aether reached out across the void, triggering the same reaction it always did. He gripped the shaft of his thunder hammer tighter, channelling the kill-urge into something more focused.

Helspite slipped under the shadow of the shattered hangar aperture, pushing hard on thrusters to hold position. Inside the gunship’s crew-bay, red lumens bled into the dark and warning lights danced across the embarkation ramp’s hatchway.

‘The Hand of Russ,’ came the pilot’s voice over the pack-comm, and the void-locks blew, sending the ramp slamming down. ‘Hunt well.’

Gunnlaugur was first out, crashing down the ridged metal in his Terminator war-plate, savouring the immense heft and craft of it as he moved. His four pack mates came down with him, each in the same ice-grey ceramite, their footfalls heavy and ponderous.

Helspite turned on its thrusters, manoeuvring tightly in the confined hangar shell, before blasting clear again, ready to hold guard-station two hundred kilometres distant.

The hulk had been given the name The Sorrows of the Just by Imperial taxonomers ever since it had appeared on the long-range augurs of the Lophrax Sector’s military deep-void stations. The standard protocol assistance requests had gone out soon afterwards, resulting in the mobilisation of the Space Wolves kill-team eldurstjorm from proximal duties. The timing had been auspicious: it allowed infiltration long before the hulk rolled into inhabited space, giving the pack time to clear its foetid depths before the explorator teams from Adeptus Mechanicus response stations were due to arrive.

The Terminators fell into pack formation: Gunnlaugur, Slay and Arfól in the centre with close-combat weapons – thunder hammer, lightning claws, power sword and storm shield – and Variek and Fjurn flanking with storm bolter and assault cannon.

The hangar’s atmosphere had blown out on entry, and there were no sounds outside his own armour. The hulk’s gravity field was erratic, generated perhaps by ancient devices buried in the conglomeration’s heart, and they used compensators in their armour to keep them securely anchored. The Wolf Guard pack advanced slowly and silently, crunching across the hangar floor, overlooked by ancient buttresses and age-withered support columns.

Gunnlaugur heard the cycle of his respirators, the slow thud, thud of his hearts, the ambient throb of the colossal power packs, the whine of his servo-joints flexing. The helm readings scrolling across his visual field were unfamiliar – a far older design than the standard helm he usually wore, with obscure sigils glowing across a foreign tactical screen.

Ahead of them loomed a portal, broken open by the impact of Helspite’s destructive entry and gaping like an open mouth. It was perfectly black within, unbroken even by the faint light of the starfield beyond.

Gunnlaugur activated his helm-lumens with a blinked command, throwing pools of silver light across the jagged interior. As he did so, he remembered another hunt, by moonlight, carrying a blade that had also been called skulbrotsjór.

But only for a second. As he advanced, he felt the first tremors running along the metal floor, picked up by both his armour-sensors and his own alertness. Things were already moving, unfurling, dropping, scuttling, scraping. He could see them in his mind’s eye – down in the depths, awakened by the impact of the pack’s insertion, opening alien lids and extending incisor-crammed jaws.

It would not be long.

He ran harder. His body briefly forgot its hunger-pangs, fuelled by adrenalin and ancestral anger. He could smell the quarry now – the musk of wolf, matted and pungent, as wet as a dog’s hide, sticky with blood. Had it killed? Or was it wounded?

He swerved around the knotted roots of a monstrous trunk, plunging down between snow-shivered branches. His feet were bleeding, his boots lacerated by the rocks below. Layers of bindings had slipped from his hands, making his fingers raw where they clutched the axe.

The land fell away steeply, dropping towards a frozen gulch-bed thick with trees and thorn bushes. The vast shapes blurred past him, hazy in the gloom. He navigated by smell and touch, crouching under branches, leaping over boulders, skidding on the glass-dark ice and crunching through piled snow.

His lungs were painful now, strained by the frigid air and the exertion. He was looking everywhere as he ran, switching his head from side to side, peering into the murk as if he could prise it apart with his mind.

Think. Trace the land. Where would it go?

Ahead of him ran a crooked path to the gulch-bed, barred by thorns that looked like crossed swords. To the left was a rising granite cliff, glinting with embedded ice and crowned with heaps of snow. To the right were more trees, marching off in ranks like the columns in a jarl’s hall.

He sniffed, but the scent was everywhere now. The path leading down beckoned him, promising to unearth the lair. He almost went down it, tripping and sliding along the steep incline.

He scraped to a halt, kicking up snow, and looked up at the cliff-face to his left – an axe-throw high, broken by a crack in the centre. He could climb it.

You came this way. You saw this place. You saw the chance to pounce.

He leapt at the first handhold and started to clamber. The ice made his fingers freeze, the stone cut his flesh. He gripped his axe in his teeth, and ascended rapidly. As he went, he smelled the hot stink of wolf on the ice, and knew it had come this way.

He crested the summit, scrambling hard to get to his feet, to get the axe into his hands. A flat surface ran away from him, piled with starlit drifts.

His heart leapt when he saw the tracks – heavy treads, a pad and four claws, pressed down deep. He started to run along their path, sprinting across the summit of the rise, heading towards another bank of frozen briars crowned with arm-length thorns.

He saw the eyes too late, held low under the twisted branch-mass, waiting for him to run past along the line of the tracks, watching him go, following the hunt-sense.

He twisted around, swinging his axe, but the beast moved first. It burst out of cover, devouring the space between them in two bounds, jaws wide, trailing saliva, shaking the snow with its roars. It was as tall as he was at the shoulder, a monster, a blackmane, clad in corded muscle, hunched and heavy-boned.

He didn’t have time. It moved so fast, crashing into him, snapping at his arms, trying to rip his throat out and drag him down. Somehow, he managed to slash his axe across its face, divert the snap of teeth, stumble away, slipping on the ice. He lost his footing, felt the earth giving way under him, and he fell, cartwheeling back down the far side of the cliff-edge, down towards the gulch-bed.

Before he reached the bottom, he saw the sky go dark. The wolf had leapt, following him, legs extended, yellow eyes flared open.

Then he hit the stone, hard, and the pain began in earnest.

Two levels down, back into pressurised zones, and the first ambush came. There was no surprise to it – every Wolf Guard had fought in hulks before and knew the pattern of xenos attacks – but the speed of it could still astonish.

They had edged down a sloping corridor, thick with rust and the stain of ancient engine oils. The walls pressed in close, pushing against their pauldrons and helms, restricting movement and limiting them to advancing two abreast. Gunnlaugur and Slay took the vanguard, going as fast as their heavy armour would let them, followed by the others.

The first xenos burst out from a loose panel in the roof, crashing and scrabbling at the head of a swarm. They were xenotype genestealer: milk-white in the glare of the lumens, six-limbed, thickly carapaced, red-eyed, a flail of hook-claws and tentacles and teeth, all whirring and scything in a smear of speed.

Gunnlaugur ripped his thunder hammer around, crushing the lead xenos against the far wall. Skulbrotsjór’s disruptor charge flared and the creature’s skull exploded, showering them both in cranial matter.

Slay surged into the swarm, lightning claws slicing. Three xenos were torn apart, their chitinous hides hacked into shards, but more boiled down from the breach, dropping into the cramped corridor in a wave of writhing limbs. They clambered over one another, clogging every scrap of free space, seething like a single entity built of jaws and tongues and talons.

Another panel blew, this time behind them. Variek swivelled to meet the threat, opening up with his storm bolter. Arfól piled in with his storm-shield, crushing two against the nearside wall before punching into the rest with a juddering chainblade.

Fjurn gave a pre-arranged signal, and both Gunnlaugur and Slay immediately slammed back against opposite walls of the corridor, opening up a narrow space between them. Fjurn’s assault cannon roared out in a concentrated burst, barrels cycling in a hammering whirr, gouging through the swarm ahead of them and drenching every exposed surface in streaks of thrown alien ichor. As the echoes died away, Gunnlaugur and Slay charged into the remains, piling in with the killing edges of their crackling energy weapons. The corridor swayed and flashed with light as the helm-lumens shifted, illuminating snarls and alien screams in broken freeze-frame.

The genestealers fell away at last, leaving piles of broken bodies on the corridor floor, skittering down the length of the tunnel. Slay started out after them, feeding power to his spitting claws, palpably consumed by kill-urge. Fjurn lowered his assault cannon arm and followed suit, stamping through the knee-high piles of twisted carapaces.

Gunnlaugur kicked his way after them, feeling suddenly wary. The corridor plunged onwards, angled down, heading towards a deep shaft beyond. His armour sensors picked up movement, dozens of signals, mustering for a fresh assault.

He halted. The pack stopped moving, and Slay turned his red-eyed helm towards him. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

The memory came again – the starlit wood, the blackmane on the high ground, the spoor trailing down, hunt-sense warning him.

The xenos, the wolf. Both prey, both with the same mind.

‘They are leading us,’ Gunnlaugur said, striding over to the corridor wall. The panels were pressed metal, weakened from age but still thick enough to mask augur-sweeps. He pulled his hammer back and swung, smashing the nearest one open. It came loose from its fixings and fell away, revealing a void beyond. He shoved the hanging remnant aside and pushed into the gap.

A chamber opened up before him, underlit red from still-active power-coils, hung with chains from old lifter-stations. Rows of xenos eyes glared back at him in the dark, crouched amid ancient machine-clusters, the closest less than five metres away.

It was there too, further in, the guiding intelligence, now sensed clearly. It had kept its creatures back, baiting the corridors with lesser warriors, goading the Wolves to advance. Once down in the shaft, this swarm would have piled in after them, dropping over the shaft’s lip like rats, smothering them with numbers.

Gunnlaugur hefted his hammer two-handed as his pack-mates clambered into the chamber after him. The xenos were already leaping at him, furious, hissing, their hellish eyes caught in the moving glare of the helm-lumens.

He fed more power to skulbrotsjór, enjoying the sharp feedback of the leaping energy arcs. He took a single stride, building up power in the swing, then smashed the heavy head into the first of them.

The wolf was all over him, snapping at his throat, ripping at his chest with its claws. He could barely see – blood was in his eyes and across his face. Something had sliced through the muscles of his lower back. The blackmane had him pinned, locked down against the ice of the frozen gulch.

Somehow he managed to slash across its face with his axe – another wild swipe, born of desperation. The blade snagged across the wolf’s jaws, tearing flesh from the gums, and the blackmane reared up, yowling, its own blood now mixing with his.

He managed to pull away, scrambling on his back, kicking out with his legs and wriggling clear of the wolf’s breathy embrace. It reeked, its aroma making him want to vomit, but he kept going, sliding underfoot, doing anything just to keep moving.

The wolf came back at him, pouncing at his midriff, aiming to bite his stomach out and shake the entrails loose. He hacked again with the axe and it connected, forcing the creature back.

He dragged himself to his feet, shaky now, bleeding, his head swimming. The wolf, holding back, paced around him, head held low, jowls dripping. It was huge, massive, a brooding black ghost of the deep woods, golden-eyed, yellow-fanged, bloody-mawed. He could see its muscles bunching again, tensing for the pounce. He could see the wounds he’d given it.

He clutched his axe one-handed with a fear-slick palm. As he moved the blade, he saw its eyes following the iron edge. It knew the axe brought it pain, and never let it out of its gaze.

He could use that. He knew its mind – it feared the iron. It would be wary of it, seeing that as the one claw he possessed that could hurt it. With his other hand, he reached down to his belt, fingers searching.

The wolf leapt again, barrelling into him like a cracking thunder-surge, growling and snapping, in a frenzy now from the blood in the air. He had known what it would do – it tried to take his axe-hand off at the wrist, to swallow it down and de-fang him. If he were quick enough, he might have been able to snatch the hand away, spinning round to try another strike at its neck.

But he didn’t. He kept his hand in place, and felt the clamp of steel-trap jaws over his wrist.

He roared out loud from the pain, feeling the wolf’s teeth chew down into his bone, mauling and tearing the flesh from it. His vision shuddered. He was only barely able to bring his other hand to bear – the one that had reached for the dirk at his belt – and which he now buried in the wolf’s flank, twisting the iron in hard.

The wolf spasmed in agony, its jaws still latched on to his right hand, its eyes rolling, its mouth foaming. He pressed the dirk in deeper, carving through muscle towards the heart. He kept on crying out, screaming his pain into the night, clinging to consciousness even as the wolf ripped his hand from his wrist in a sick snap of bone.

He never saw the blood fountaining from the wound, as rich and hot as pitch. His mind was now locked on his left hand, ripping along the wolf’s belly like a butcher’s flensing knife. The blackmane tried to go for his throat, but its massive legs gave out under it, knocking them both to the ice again.

He was drenched in blood now, his own and the beast’s, and it steamed against the red snow. His legs were heavy. Its lupine head lolled against his, jamming him against the cold-seared ground. He could barely breathe, for the creature’s ribcage crushed him. He felt the heat of life squeezed out of him, pouring from the wound, hollowing him out.

He tried to stay conscious. He clung to his soul with his one good hand, grabbing it as it fled the halls of his body, jamming it back within the cage of bone.

He was delirious. Blood loss was making him crazy. He saw masked figures around him, gazing down at him – gods of the hunt, angry with his failure.

‘I killed it!’ he protested, as the wolf’s lifeless corpse crushed him into the earth.

But that was pointless – there was no pleading with them. The only thing he could still do was drive the dirk in deeper, parting the hot flesh of the predator, making sure of the kill even as his own life slipped away from him.

He tried to keep his eyes open. The trees stood over him, silent sentinels, bars of black against the sea of stars beyond.

He kept fighting, right until the end. Then the dirk fell from his grasp, its blade skittered across the stained ice, and the night took him.

The Terminators charged, lumbering up the centre of the chamber. The floor cracked under their tread as they came, and the xenos leapt out at them, talons extended and long tongues writhing. They pounced down from the heights and surged up from the pits, pouring out of hidden vaults in the everlasting dark. The only light was the angry glow of half-dead power coils, the flash and spin of moving helm-lumens, the neon flare of disruptor fields biting.

Slay and Fjurn went right, Arfól and Variek left, driving the xenos back into the shadows. The warrior pairs worked in tandem – ranged fire and close-combat, locked together, studies in destruction. The genestealers howled and shrieked, darting and sweeping, trying to get their armour-shredding talons close enough, but they were blasted apart by the heavy rain of bolter shells. Any that got within blade range were torn open by lightning claw or power sword, their carapaces cracked and the mucus within flung across the chamber.

Gunnlaugur had no part of those fights. His brothers drove into the mass of the enemy, slaughtering with brutal efficiency, keeping the swarm at bay. He strode down the centre up to where it waited, thunder hammer snarling.

He had sensed it for hours, its presence growing firmer in his mind with every stride. Now it stood before him, its huge outline flickering in the broken light. It was as pale as the others, six-limbed like they were, with the pronounced cranial ridge and arched, bone-vaned back. It crouched, its armoured hide glistening, its ovipositer lashing like a whip.

It was the master. It was the killer. It was, as the Imperium had come to categorise its kind, the broodlord.

Gunnlaugur lowered his thunder hammer and made the ritual challenge. The death-words of Fenris echoed out from his vox-amplifier, drowning the xenos-screams for a moment. He felt his hearts pump hard, the hyperadrenaline surge, the kill-urge spike, the primordial love of the hunt bursting into the flood.

The broodlord moved with blinding speed, powering into the air, arms splayed. Gunnlaugur got his thunder hammer into guard, slamming it into the creature’s path. The hammer head collided with a crack, shattering a length of chitin, but the broodlord scythed round with another limb, slicing deep into his left arm-guard.

Gunnlaugur reeled, swinging the hammer back to knock the broodlord’s talon away even as another one came in. Its claws were everywhere, punching out, curling back, lashing across. Gunnlaugur fought back hard, driving for every scrap of speed, pushing his armour to its limit. He wielded the hammer one-handed, smashing its crackling head into the broodlord’s bleeding back even as the creature savaged his own defences.

They locked together, tearing, snarling, cracking. Gunnlaugur’s right pauldron was smashed, exposing the cabling beneath. His breastplate was cracked, his vox-grille dented. The talons burst through into his flesh, scoring his ribcage, slashing down across his gauntlets.

He couldn’t land the killing blow. The broodlord darted away from the arcing thunder hammer, evading the lethal disruptor-bite before leaping up again to slash at him with blood-flecked claws. Gunnlaugur caught glimpses of its face – grotesque, semi-human, distorted with a grinning sadism, a corpse-mask nightmare from the recesses of species memory.

Gunnlaugur hacked crosswise, wheeling the hammer-head hard, going for the broodlord’s throat. The xenos veered clear, then pushed in close, gouging at him with three arms at once, aiming to overwhelm him with more strikes than he could counter. Gunnlaugur parried one with his hammer-arm, twisting away from another, but the third penetrated, mauling deep under his breastplate and cutting into the flesh.

Gunnlaugur fell back, already bleeding from a dozen wounds, racked by pain. The creature came after him, panting and slurring. The echo and slam of bolter fire rang around the chamber, punctuated by the rush of flames and the snarl of energy weapons.

The memory came back to him again then, as vivid as the dreams of gothi. He saw the wolf arched over his body, snapping at his throat. He felt the rip as his hand was torn, and the breath of the predator in his face.

The broodlord would go for the thunder hammer.

Just as before, the beast would rip the weapon from his fist, tearing away the thing that brought it pain before turning on the owner. Gunnlaugur saw the intent a fraction before it moved, placing his mind within that of the alien. He instantly dropped down to his left, straining every servo to move fast enough, dragging the sacred energy-weapon out of its path and away from strike-range.

The broodlord pounced for it, already committed. Gunnlaugur thrust back up, his thunder hammer out of contention but his left fist in range. The curled gauntlet cracked into the creature’s skull, and he heard the snap of breaking chitin. He punched again, then again, pummelling the creature in a flurry of whip-fast movements.

It reeled, losing its footing, and he stamped down on its trailing leg, cracking the carapace and crippling it. It swung at him with a trailing arm, breaking the armour under his knee-joint, but now Gunnlaugur towered over it, bringing the thunder hammer back into play.

Once he had sacrificed his weapon for the kill, but never again.

Grabbing the shaft two-handed, he hoisted skulbrotsjór above his head, built momentum, then smashed it down. It connected with the broodlord’s neck, driving its bloated skull into the floor and pushing on through, annihilating the metal underfoot with a blaze of energy-field discharge. The broodlord’s body twitched madly for a moment, limbs shaking like a giant insect, before it collapsed into inertia.

Gunnlaugur threw the hammer down again, pulverising the foul flesh beneath, spraying ichor across his devastated armour shell. Then he whirled around, roaring in triumph, holding the blazing thunder hammer above his cracked helm.

‘Fenrys!’ he bellowed, and the amplifiers in his armour made the chamber shake.

Before him, the wolf pack was in full murder-make, grappling with xenos, their fists bloody and their weapons singing. Variek was down, the genestealers crawling all over him, trying to prise his battleplate open. The others were hard pressed, matching the blind rage of the alien with concentrated fury of their own.

It was a brutal, glorious sight, the scions of Fenris locked in mortal slaughter with the Hel-spawn of the boundless stars. Gunnlaugur’s rage was tempered with the hot edge of joy then, for he had been made to fight these fights – his every sinew forged to purge the unclean from the realm of humanity, to break them on the anvil of his wrath, to hunt them in the primordial way of his savage home world.

So he strode back into contact, skulbrotsjór snarling and sizzling, poised to plunge back into the path of killing, lost in the righteous rage, his hearts thudding with the drum-beat of violence.

The hunt went on. So it had always been. So it would ever be.

When he next woke, there were no trees, no stars, no wolf. Pain throbbed throughout his body, worse than the clamp of jaws. He tried to lift his head, but it was held rigid by an iron collar.

Terror rose up within him, pure and throttling. He saw thin lines, translucent like animal skin, threaded into his arms. The air around him tasted foul – no smell of animal, no smell of earth, just metal everywhere. He tried to move, and the threads in his arms yanked painfully at his flesh. He was on his back, pinned, groggy.

He couldn’t see clearly. Everything was blurred, a mess of shadows and light-patches. Something huge swam into his visual field. For a moment, in a brief flash of clarity, it looked like a massive skull with glowing red eyes.

He wanted to scream, but the tube running down his throat prevented him. The skull stared down at him impassively, studying him like a man studying a weapon.

Then the skull loomed lower, and an iron fist pulled the tube from his throat, making him gag but allowing him to speak. Another iron fist floated over him, clutching at a slender-bladed axe with teeth-marks on the shaft.

‘What is this called?’ came a voice, grinding like glacier-ice, as deep as mountain-roots.

He had to answer; he had no choice, even though his throat was red-raw and the terror had not gone away.

‘Skulbrotsjór,’ he rasped, and his voice sounded pathetic, a ghost’s whine next to the god’s voice that still echoed in his mind.

The skull-mask nodded.

‘Keep the name,’ it told him. ‘We will give you a weapon worthy of it.’

The atmosphere in the steering chapel of the Spiritus Sancti was tense as the scouts pushed through the brocade-curtained archway into the cool basalt fastness of the command centre. Tech-adepts chanted, counting down the range. The machine language gibberish of shaven-headed monitors hummed in the background, a constant, incomprehensible babble. Above them, on the cat-walks, dark-robed figures strode from control-icon to control-icon, checking the purity seals of the major systems and wafting censers of burning incense. The chapel bustled with a controlled panic that Sven Pederson had never encountered before. The young Space Marine didn’t need the red warning globes hovering on either side of the holo-pit to tell him that the starship was at battle-stations.

‘Ah, gentlemen, there you are at last. I’m so pleased you could join us.’ The measured tones of Karl Hauptman, commander of the vessel, cut easily through the noise.

‘You summoned us, jarl. We are your bondsmen and we obey.’ Sergeant Hakon spoke evenly but Sven could tell that the rogue trader’s mockery had touched a nerve. Hakon was a proud old warrior, passed over for Terminator duty, and it rankled to have to serve under this foppish aristocrat, supervising a bunch of scouts on their first training mission. Still, he was a Space Wolf to the bone and had to obey.

Hauptman lounged easily behind the master lectern, projecting effortless authority, the one man present who seemed perfectly calm. He seemed more than Hakon’s equal in stature although the giant Space Marine towered over him.

The shipmaster gestured to the holo-pit with one long, perfectly manicured finger. Control runes flickered emerald on the lectern, underlighting his face and giving it a hollow, almost daemonic look. ‘Give me the benefit of your wisdom, Brother-Sergeant Hakon – what do you make of that?’

One of the monitors closed his camera-eyes and intoned a mantra. Sven had a clear view of the cyberlink feeds that connected the man to his work-lectern. Each tiny fibre pulsed with light. The rhythm of the pulses slowed until they coincided with that of the chant. When the monitor opened his eyes again, their mirrored lenses caught the light, burning in the gloom like tiny red suns.

An object appeared in the pit: it was greyish and round, and looked like a small asteroid. Hauptman gestured again. The plainsong of the tech-priests swelled, echoing under the groined ceiling of the chapel. The smell of hallucinogenic incense grew sweeter and more sickly. Sven felt slightly nauseous as his system adjusted to the drug then neutralised it. The air blurred, lights flickered and the object expanded then came into better resolution.

For no reason he could think of, the sight filled Sven with dread. He glanced at Brother-Cadet Njal Bergstrom, his closest friend among the other Space Wolves. The ruddy light of the warning globes stained his pale face, making the look of horror there more intense. Njal had tested positive for psychic abilities and, if he survived his cadetship, might be trained as a librarian, just as Sven would be trained as a wolf-priest. Whatever, Sven had learned to respect his comrade’s intuition.

‘Extremely unusual. Are those doorways in the thing’s side? Is it a base of some sort?’ Hakon was clearly puzzled.

Hauptman stroked his beard, cocked his head to one side. ‘Astropath Chandara assures me that it is alive. Sensor divination appears to confirm this.’

The man he had mentioned stood beside the command throne, clutching at the arm-rest as if it were the only thing that held him upright. Sweat beaded his dark, pudgy face and formed deep circles under the armpits of his white robes. Chandara looked stricken, like a man in the latter stages of some fatal fever. His eyes had the fey, haunted look that Sven had seen in whalehunter shamans when the death-madness came upon them.

‘I beg of you, shipmaster, destroy this abomination. Nothing but evil can come from preserving it a moment longer.’ Chandara’s husky voice carried a strange resonance, the certainty of prophesy.

Hauptman spoke reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, my friend. If it proves necessary I will destroy it instantly. However it may be that this deviant artefact contains something of use to the Imperium. We must investigate, if only to increase the knowledge of the scholars of the Adeptus Terra.’

Sven could tell that Chandara disagreed but could not challenge the shipmaster’s authority. The astropath shrugged in resignation. Like many of the crew he had become completely used to obeying orders.

Sergeant Hakon understood where all this was leading. ‘You want my men to investigate this deviant nest.’

Hauptman smiled as if Hakon were a child who had been quick on the uptake. ‘Yes, sergeant. I’m sure that you are competent enough to manage this.’

Sven saw how the statement trapped Hakon; to refuse would be to call his ability into question. He was manipulated only for a moment but that moment was long enough. Hakon responded instantly and with pride: ‘Of course.’

Sven would have liked him to have asked more questions and he could see that once the words were out of his mouth the sergeant wished that he had done so. Now it was too late. They were committed.

‘Prepare the boarding torpedo.’ Hauptman said. ‘Your squad can begin its investigations immediately.’

Helmets ready, preserver systems primed, the Space Marines sat in the cold, dark fuselage of the boarding torpedo. Sven studied each of his companions in turn, taking a last glimpse before they donned their almost insect-like breather masks, trying to fix their faces in his mind. Each ragged visage was obscured by war-paint. He was suddenly, painfully aware that this might be the last time he ever saw his comrades alive.

Sergeant Hakon sat still, his body tense. His bolt pistol held firmly against his chest. His taut-skinned, thin lipped features were set. The cold blue eyes peering out from beneath a skullcap of silver-grey hair. Unlike the cadets, Hakon did not keep his head shaved except for a single strip of hair. He was a full Space Marine.

Njal sat opposite Sven beneath a stained glass window that showed stars through a portrait of the apotheosis of the Emperor into the Throne of Eternal Life. Njal had his hands folded as if in prayer, his fine ascetic features were composed and calm. Sven guessed that he was sub-vocalising the Litany Against Fear.

‘Why didn’t Hauptman send in his house troops?’ asked Egil, his bulldog face set in its characteristic permanent sneer. Of all the Space Wolf cadets he was the most flawed. His eyes held the cold, frozen, madness so characteristic of troll-blooded berserkers. He had broken two of Sven’s ribs during unarmed combat practice back on Fenris and smiled coldly as the younger scout was carried to the apothecarion. Sven had overheard Sergeant Hakon tell Brother-Captain Thorsen that he would be keeping a special eye on Egil. Whether that was good or bad, Sven had never decided.

‘The guards were probably too scared to travel in this rust-bucket they call a boarding torpedo. By the ghost of Leman Russ, I can’t say I blame them.’ This came from Gunnar, the squad support man who grinned amiably as he said it. He smiled, revealing the specially lengthened incisors that were the mark of the Space Wolf gene-seed. There was something reassuring about Gunnar’s broken-nosed, heavily pock-marked features, Sven thought.

Hakon let out a short bark of mirthless laughter. ‘When you have seen as much combat in the Emperor’s service as those Guardsmen have then you will be true Space Marines. Till then, mock them not. Simply thank the Emperor for providing you with this chance to show your own bravery.’

‘I hope this thing is full of deviants.’ Egil said with relish. ‘I’ll prove my bravery soon enough.’

Gunnar slapped a cartridge into his weapon. ‘Don’t worry, Njal, we’ll see you’re safe.’

Sven knew that Gunnar was just teasing. The worried expression on Njal’s face made it plain that he did not.

‘I can look after myself.’ he said sharply.

Gunnar clapped him on the shoulder of his armour and laughed. ‘I know you can, little brother. I know you can.’

‘Final checks.’ Sergeant Hakon said. Each Marine fell silent as he concentrated on the prayers necessary to activate his armour.

Sven knew that his suit was well-maintained. He had carried out all the maintenance rituals himself, washing the armour with scented oils while intoning the Litany Against Corrosion, greasing the articulated joints with blessed unguents, checking the pipes of the rebreather with coloured smoke from an auto-censer. He believed firmly in the old Space Marine saying, if you look after your equipment it will look after you.

Yet it went deeper than that. He knew that the armour he had been given was really only loaned to him. He felt a sense of reverence for the ancient artefact. It had been worn by a hundred generations of Space Wolves before his birth and would be worn by a hundred more after his death. He was part of a family of Wolves that stretched off into the fathomless future. When he touched the armour he touched the living history of his Chapter.

Now, as he touched each command rune in turn, he tried to imagine the previous wearers of the armour. Each, like him, had been chosen from the blond haired seafarer clans of the island chains of Nordheim. Each, like him, had undergone the years-long basic training of the Space Marine. Each, like him, had undergone the implantation of the various bio-systems that had transformed them into a superman far stronger, faster and more resilient than an ordinary mortal. Some had gone on to glory; others had died in this armour. Sven had often wondered which group he would belong to when his time came. Now the sense of foreboding he had felt when he first saw the alien artefact returned.

He was aware how much he relied on this armour for protection. Its ceramite carapace to protect him from heat and cold and enemy fire. Its auto-sensory systems that let him see in the darkness. Its recycling mechanisms that let him breath in hard vacuum and survive for weeks on his own reconstituted excrement. As these thoughts filtered into his mind, his prayers moved from being an empty recital of a well-worn litany into something genuine and sincere. He did not want to die and perhaps his suit might save him.

He fitted the comm-net ear-bead into place and checked the position of the speaking circlet over his larynx. He bowed his head and prayed that the ship’s Tech-Adepts had taken as much care of the equipment as his order’s own lay-brothers would. Once inside the alien artefact it might be his only means of communication with his fellow scouts.

He pushed his hands together in prayer, feeling the muscle amplification of the suit’s exoskeleton lend him the strength of dozens. He closed his eyes and let the pheromone traces of his companions be picked up by the suit’s receptors. He knew that if the alien artefact was pressurised he could identify his companions, even in total darkness, by scent alone. With an act of will he switched his hearing from normal sound to comm-net pickup. The sub-vocalised activation litanies of his companions rang in his ears, interspersed with the comms chatter of the ship’s crew.

‘Helmets on.’ the sergeant said. In turn the Space Marines donned their protective headgear. One by one, each gave the thumbs up sign. When his turn came Sven did the same. He felt the click of the helmet lock as it slid into place. Targeting icons appeared in his sight underneath the Gothic script of his head-up display. All the read-outs were fine. He gave the signal. The sergeant put his own helm on last.

‘All clear. The Emperor is served.’ Hakon said for them all.

‘The Blessing of the Holy One upon you.’ responded the ship’s controller. There was a hiss and a fine mist filled the air as the cabin was depressurised. The external temperature dropped sharply; a frost-blue icon flashed an appropriate warning. It clicked for three heartbeats to indicate a lack of air-pressure. There was another click from the neckband of the armour. Sven knew that his helmet had locked into place and could not now be removed until his suit had checked the atmosphere and found it safe for breathing.

There was a faint kick of acceleration. For a moment Sven felt weightless as the boarding torpedo left the artificial gravity field of the Spiritus Sancti, then a fraction of his normal weight returned as the torpedo accelerated. In the view monitors the starship showed first as a vast metal wall. As it receded, the turrets that studded its exterior became visible, then the whole ship from winged stern to dragon-beaked prow. The sheer size of the ship was obvious from the hundreds of great arched windows, each of which Sven knew was the length of a whaling ship and taller than its mast. The rogue trader’s ancient vessel dwindled until it was nearly lost amid the stars, just one point of light among many. In the flickering green forward monitors, the alien object swelled ominously in size.

‘There’s no turning back now.’ he heard Njal mutter.

‘Good,’ Egil said.

With a violent, lurching shudder, the boarding torpedo lodged itself in the wall of the alien artefact. Sven opened his eyes and ceased praying. He hit the quick release amulet on the restraining straps and floated free for a moment before the boarding torpedo’s artificial gravity returned.

The squad had moved to ready positions covering the forward bulkhead doors with all their weapons. Vibration thrummed through the soles of Sven’s boots as the boarding torpedo’s drilling nose-cone bored into the other vessel’s walls. After a moment the motion ceased.

+Squad, ready to disperse!+ Hakon’s voice came clear over the comm-link.

+Opus Dei!+ the squad responded.

The bulkhead doors swung open and the scouts covered the area with their weapons, just as they had practised a thousand times in training. Sven braced himself as air rushed into the torpedo, misting as it hit the chill within the vehicle.

+Ghost of Russ!+ someone breathed. +I don’t believe it.+

Their helmet lights revealed an awesome vista. They stared down into a vast corridor, as high as the chapel ceiling on the Spiritus Sancti and the colour of fresh meat. The walls were not smooth and regular; they looked rough and were covered in innumerable folds, like the exposed surface of the brain the medics had shown him during his novitiate. The walls glistened with pink mucous.

From each fold of the wall protruded thousands of multicoloured cilia, each metres long and as fine as titanite thread. They swayed like ferns in a breeze. Here and there huge, muscle-like sacs pulsed. Orifices in the wall opened and shut in time with their pulsing, making sounds like fast laboured breaths. Sven guessed that they were circulating air. Fluid gurgled through transparent pipes that lined the walls like great veins.

+Looks like the place is inhabited,+ Gunnar said. His voice sounded too loud over the comm-link.

Spores danced and glittered in the air, catching the light and twinkling like stars in the void of space. As they responded to the helmet lights, they seemed to ignite with phosphorescence, like fireflies, and the glow became dazzling. Sven blinked and his second, translucent eyelids dropped into place, filtering the light back to a manageable level. His armour’s glowlamps dimmed automatically as the ambient light increased.

While Gunnar covered them, Egil and Njal moved forward, following a standard, well-drilled pattern. As they left the torpedo, their feet sank into the spongy floor of the alien vessel. They walked as if on a thick carpet, disturbing the waving cilia. Sven wondered whether the fronds were some sort of early warning device or whether they might even be poisonous.

The atmosphere icon on his display flashed green three times and then settled. There was a click as the neck-lock of his helmet released. Sven advanced into the alien vessel, flexing his knees to compensate for the gravity shift. The ship seemed to be generating its own internal gravity with centripetal force from its rotation. Even so, Sven felt as if he were only half his normal weight.

Sergeant Hakon had already undone his helmet, and stood taking several deep breaths. He grimaced as his bio-engineered system adapted to the local conditions. Sven knew that he would soon be acclimatised to the local conditions and immune to any toxins present in the atmosphere. After a long, tense minute, Hakon gestured for them all to remove their helms.

The first thing that surprised Sven was how warm it was. The air seemed almost blood heat. He started to sweat as his body compensated for the temperature and the humidity. He coughed as the membranes within his gullet filtered out the airborne spores. The sparkling colours of his surroundings filled his sight; the inside of the ship was a riot of hues glowing with phosphorescent fire in the vessel’s warm, shadowy interior.

He was reminded of the coral reefs around the equator on Nordheim where the Space Wolves kept their summer palaces, far from the icy mountains and glaciers of Fenris. He had often gone swimming through the reefs after the battle exercises on the warmer tropical islands. The walls reminded him of certain formations of hard coral. He wondered whether this ship had been created from similar creatures, colonies of microscopic organisms joined to form one vast structure. Everything looked tranquil; it seemed safe and relaxing.

Suddenly, something lashed past him and stung his face. He flinched and reflexively swung his pistol up and fired. The bolter kicked in his hand as it released its missile. In the brief second between pulling the trigger and watching the thing explode, he caught sight of what looked like a metre-wide jellyfish, drifting parachute-like on the air currents. His face went numb as bio-systems moved to cope with the toxin.

‘Careful.’ said Sergeant Hakon. ‘We don’t know what we’ll find here.’ He moved over to Sven and passed a medical amulet over the wound. The small gargoyle headed talisman did not flicker. It gave no warning chime.

‘You seem to be coping.’ Hakon said calmly. At the sound of the shot the rest of the Space Wolves had taken up positions facing outward covering all lines of fire. Nothing obvious menaced them. No more floating jellyfish came in sight.

The ceiling had started to glow; long veins of bio-luminescent tubing had flickered to life as if in response to the presence of the scouts. They illuminated the corridor which curved downwards out of sight. Sven was reminded of the inside of a snail’s shell.

Sven felt slightly nauseous as the tailored antibodies of his bloodstream dealt with whatever invaders the alien creature had injected. He was struck by a comparison. Perhaps the jellyfish thing had been an antibody responding to the appearance of the scouts.

He tried to dismiss the thought as mere fancy but the thought kept returning that perhaps the alien ship had other ways of dealing with intruders.

They advanced cautiously through the pulsing dark. Their cat-like eyes had adjusted to the gloom. They kept their weapons ready to deal death. At every turn and junction they left comm-link relays. These kept them in touch with the Spiritus Sancti and served as navigation beacons.

‘Ghost of Russ!’ Sven cursed, slipping and falling on the mucus-covered floor. The spongy surface absorbed the impact as he rolled back into a crouch. Njal moved over to make sure he was all right. Sven could see the look of concern on his face. He waved his friend away, almost embarrassed by the fall.

‘We are in the belly of leviathan.’ Njal said, studying walls the colour of bruised flesh. Sven grimaced; the rotten meat stench of their surroundings made him want to gag. He glanced round.

In the dim light, the other Space Marines were spectral, ghostly figures. Gunnar was on point duty; the rest of the scouts straggled back in a long line behind him. The sergeant brought up the rear. Breathing sacs deflated and a stream of mist and spores erupted forth, refracting the light from the scouts’ armour, turning it into rainbows.

‘I never much cared for that story, brother.’ Sven said quietly, wiping mucus from his armour. His father loved telling him the old tale: of the fisherman, Tor, who was swallowed by the giant sea-monster leviathan and lived in its vast belly for fifty days before being rescued by the original Space Wolf Terminators and being asked to join their order. His father had used it to frighten Sven and his brothers to keep them from stealing out to sea on their makeshift rafts. At least he had, until the day when he had set out on his dragonship and never returned. As a child, Sven had always suspected that leviathan had got him.

When he had finally become a cadet, he had laughed at such childish stories. He had consulted the archivum of the Order and discovered that the story of Tor and the leviathan was a truly ancient tale, one dating back to before the Imperium, to the distant, time-lost days of primordial Earth. It existed in one form or another on many Imperium worlds, a distant trace memory of a time before humanity colonised the galaxy. He had never thought to be troubled by it again.

Now, within the bowels of this alien ship, he found the horror of the ancient tale had returned to him. He could hear his father’s rasping voice speaking in the darkness of the longhouse as the winter gales howled outside. He remembered the chill that filled him when the old man had dwelt on the nauseating things found in the sea monster’s belly.

He recalled as well looking out to sea on stormy nights when gale-driven waves lashed the black rocks and imagining huge monsters, bigger than his home island lurking beneath the sea. It was the memory of his strongest boyhood fear and now it returned to haunt him. He felt the same way now; all around he sensed the presence of a huge, waiting monster.

All around him in the gloom he sensed presences. Overhead, he thought he heard the flapping of wings. When he glanced up he was startled to see dark forms like a shoal of manta rays, flapping along the ceiling. As he watched, they vanished into orifices in the flesh wall.

Fluids gurgled through the pipe-veins around him. He was within some vast living being and he knew it for certain now. And he was sure that it knew of his presence in some dim, instinctual way, sensed him and resented his intrusion. There was a sense of evil, malign intelligence about this alien vessel. It was a presence inimical to humanity and any other form of life.

Sven felt an almost claustrophobic terror. His heartbeat sounded like thunder in his ears. His breath seemed louder than the breathing of the valves of the ship. He fingered the hilt of his mono-molecular knife uneasily and recited the comforting words of the Imperial Litany to himself. In this place, at this time, the words sounded hollow, empty. He met Njal’s gaze and saw the unvoiced fear there too. Neither of them had expected their first mission to be like this.

‘Move on, brothers.’ Hakon’s voice seemed to come from far away Sven forced himself to move deeper into the darkness.

From the moment he had set foot on this alien ship, Njal had known he was doomed to die. More than any of his companions, he was aware of the strangeness of this vessel and the fact that it was alive. He knew that it was dormant at present but it would take only the slightest of actions to waken it. It was only a matter of time. He felt it in his bones.

Ever since he had been a child, that feeling of unconquerable dread had continually been proved correct. Njal had never been wrong. He had watched Sven’s father’s ship, the Waverider, set sail that fatal morning knowing it would never return. He had wanted to warn them but he knew that it was useless. Each man aboard had been marked for death and it was unavoidable. And so it came to pass.

He had watched a party of hunters led by Ketil Strongarm disappear into the mountains above Orm’s Fjord. The stink of death was upon them. He had wanted to warn them not to go. He knew without being able to explain why they would never return. Two days later, word came back that Ketil and all his brothers had been killed by an avalanche.

The night that his mother had died Njal had sensed the presence of death, swooping like an immense, midnight-black hawk to carry the old woman away. The whalehunter shaman had assured his father that the fever had broken. Njal knew differently and in the cold, mist-strangled morning he had been proved correct. He had not cried as the pall-bearers were summoned. He had said his farewells long before in the darkness.

He worried about his inability to speak, at what had locked his lips. He had been unable to talk about his forebodings even with his tutors in the Space Wolves’ citadel. In later years he had worried that it was pride. His gift had set him apart from the others and if he had warned them, he would have proven it wrong. Perhaps the future was fixed and there was nothing any man could do about it; or perhaps he wanted to be correct, needed the secret, almost proud knowledge of his own uniqueness. He smiled bleakly to himself. Many and subtle were the traps of daemons.

He was a sensitive; the Space Wolf librarians in the Fortress Among the Glaciers had confirmed this. They said that, in time, his talent would mature and they would teach him how to channel it. All he had to do was ward himself from impure thoughts. But his time had ran out and he knew it. He did not want to die so soon and all of the training he had received could not alter the fact. He was more scared than he had ever been.

Shocked by his own blasphemy, he cursed the old librarians. What could the old fools who ruled Fenris like gods from their cloud-girt citadel, know of how he felt? A single, sensitive youth isolated among people who might burn him as a daemon-spawned freak. Since the time of the ancient wars, the Sea Peoples had been wary of anything that smacked of the preternatural. Anger and resentment surged through him.

He felt more alone than ever surrounded by his fellow cadets, all of whom except Sven made fun of him. They reminded him of the older lads in his home village of Ormscrag who had mocked him until the day he had grown large enough to give them a good hiding. Marching here in the alien gloom, Njal felt his lifelong resentment of the others, the lesser mortals, the ungifted, return.

The intensity of the feeling surprised him. Why was he so filled with bitterness towards the comrades with whom he had gone through basic training? Why did he hate the patronising tutors of the order who had done nothing but good for him? Was it because they had circumscribed his choices, had forced him onto the dark path that had led to this terrible place of death?

Njal tried to calm himself. All roads lead to death eventually, he told himself. It is the manner in which you walk the path that is important. Somehow, at that moment, the noble sentiment of the old Chapter saying seemed cheap and tawdry.

Briefly, he considered that the thoughts might not be his own, that they might be being projected into his mind by some outside source. Then, abnormally quickly, he rejected the idea and decided that it was simply his lifelong feelings emerging in the face of death. He was being made uneasy by the strangeness of his surroundings and his own forebodings.

All around him, the things that slept in the darkness stirred towards wakefulness.

Sven glanced down the long corridor. The composition of the walls seemed to have changed as the scouts made their way deeper into the alien vessel. They were slicker, smoother and gave more impression of life. It seemed darker and more alive. Here and there, vein-pipes vanished beneath the flesh of the walls, leaving only smooth bulges.

‘It seems to be getting more active the deeper we go.’ he said into the comm-link. ‘The walls seemed engorged with blood.’

‘I think the beast stirs.’ Njal said.

Sven stared back at him coldly. The last thing he wanted to be reminded of was that they were inside some vast living creature.

‘I hope Hauptman is getting good pictures of this.’ Gunnar said cheerfully. ‘If I’m going to be swallowed alive I want it to be in a good cause.’

‘That’s enough.’ Hakon said. His voice was edgy. He had obviously detected the undercurrent of fear in the scouts’ nervous chatter and decided to put an end to it. The cadets fell silent for a while.

The corridor ended in a massive fleshy sphincter valve.

‘It looks like an airlock.’ Sven said, studying it. The doorway rippled moistly. The scout warily eyed the folds of flesh surrounding the valve.

‘I’ll open it.’ Egil said and blasted away at it with his bolt pistol. The bolts tore into the flabby mass of flesh. The valve-door spasmed as if in pain, the whole floor shaking as underfloor muscles joined the action. The scouts were thrown flat, unable to keep their footing on the unstable floor. Sven’s head struck something hard and his vision filled with stars for a moment.

‘Is everyone all right?’ Hakon asked after the floor settled back down again. Everyone nodded or murmured. Hakon glared at Egil. ‘Don’t ever do that again. Don’t even think about doing anything like that ever again unless I specifically order you to!’ Cold menace filled the sergeant’s voice.

Egil looked away and shrugged.

Sven inspected the door. Great gobbets of flesh had been torn out of it but it still barred their way. Another shot would tear the ruptured muscle away. He didn’t know whether they should risk another small earthquake.

He paused to think. The more they proceeded, the more the alien spaceship resembled two things: a giant living body, and the work of some alien technology. There was obviously some plan to its layout. The plan might be incomprehensible to the human mind but it was there. These sphincter valves were obviously airlocks of some kind but they were too far into the ship for them to open onto vacuum.

Perhaps they were a safety measure like the bulkheads on the Spiritus Sancti, designed to section off an area if decompression occurred. Or perhaps they were security systems barring access to certain areas.

Either way, there must be some means of opening them. Suddenly it dawned on Sven that he was thinking from a purely human perspective. It did not need to be true. Perhaps the doors sensed the presence of authorised personnel and opened automatically or perhaps they responded to scent cues the scouts could not duplicate. If either of these theories were the case then perhaps Egil’s was the only way forward.

Sven noticed a small fleshy node near the valve. Acting on impulse he reached out and stroked it. The partially-torn door flapped open with a soft, almost animal sigh. Egil looked at the fingers of his gauntlet. They were covered in pink slime. It was scented like musk. He wiped his fingers against his chest piece, taking care to avoid touching the two-headed Imperial eagle on the breastplate.

Sergeant Hakon nodded at him in approval, then gestured for them all to proceed. Sven stepped through into the fleshy gloom.

Egil glared eagerly out into the shadows. Murder-lust burned in his heart. He felt the same warm excitement as he had felt the night before his first great battle. Anticipation filled him. He could sense the danger here, the threat of the unknown. He relished it, confident in his ability to master whatever stepped into his path.

He glanced contemptuously at Sven and Njal and smiled to himself. Let the white-livered cowards be afraid, he thought. They were unworthy to be true Space Marines and in this test they would be found wanting. A born Space Wolf knew no fear. He lived only to slaughter the enemies of the Emperor and die a warrior’s death, so that he might sit at the right hand of his god in the Hall of Eternal Heroes.

Seeing the worried look on Sven’s face, he felt like laughing. The whelp was afraid; the prospect of death made him uneasy! Egil knew in his heart that death was a warrior’s true and constant companion; he had done since he tore out an Ormscrag warrior’s throat with his teeth during his first night-raid. Death was not something to inspire fear. Rather, it was the true measure of a man: how much death he could inflict and how he faced his own.

He did not expect anything better from Njal and Sven. He had always been astonished that the Space Wolves recruited from the islanders. They were a puny people, hardly worthy to be called warriors. They cringed on their islands and cruised only the coastlines of their tiny domains. His own people were much better kin to the Gods of the Glacier.

The Storm-riders took their ships to the four corners of the world, raiding where they pleased and following the ocean-going herds of leviathan. Yes, they were much more worthy. It took a true man to stare into the eye of a leviathan and still be able to throw a harpoon straight. It took a true man to sail the open sea where the only company was the mammoth shark, the leviathan and mightiest of all, the kraken. He felt almost pity towards the islanders. How could they understand the great truths of his people?

He glanced at the great hallway with its arch of bone white ribs visible through a tightly stretched ceiling the colour of putrefying meat. He looked at the cancerous growths that marred the floor and walls, at the strange pods of translucent membrane that expanded and contracted like a child’s balloon. He looked at the puddles of rank, bile-like fluid that covered the floor. He wiped beads of sweat from his face and took another lungful of the acrid acidic air.

Egil knew that it did not matter to a true warrior whether he died here among the alien growths or at sea with storm winds tossing his hair and the salt spray lashing his face. Like the others, he sensed the presence of the hidden enemy – but unlike the others, he told himself, he longed to face it. To feel the cold supercharged frenzy of battle and the sweet satiation of his killing lust.

He knew he was a killer, had done ever since he butchered his first leviathan calf. Egil had enjoyed the sound the harpoon made as it plunged into flesh. The scent of warm blood had been perfume to his nostrils. Yes, he was a killer and he was proud of it. It did not matter to him whether his prey was a mindless animal, another man or some alien monstrosity. He welcomed the chance of combat. He knew that he would face whatever came like a true warrior and, if necessary, die like a true man.

He hefted his knife, admiring its fine balance, and touched the rune that activated the mono-filament element. Egil knew that it could slice the bonds between actual atoms if he wanted it to. In his secret heart he hoped that he would have a chance to use it. He felt that the true worth of a man was measured in breast-to-breast combat, when the action got close and deadly. Any fool could kill at a distance, with a bolt pistol. Egil liked to look into his foe’s eyes when he killed them. He liked to watch the light go out of them.

Egil glared out into the warm dark, daring his foes to appear. In the distance he felt something respond.

Sven saw the strange sneering smile appear on Egil’s youthful face and he shuddered. He wondered what was going on. All of his companions seemed to be behaving a little oddly. He wondered whether it was simply the strangeness of the place combined with the feeling of danger that was bringing out hidden facets of their personality or whether there was some strange force at work here.

He could understand it if it were the eerie nature of the place. The deeper they went, the more sinister the place became. The air seemed thick with acrid stenches. Long columns of glistening flesh rose from floor to ceiling. Slime dripped from the ceiling to form phosphorescent puddles in the depressions of the floor. The slow drip-drip-drip kept pace with his own heartbeat. The noise mingled with the gurglings of the vein-pipes and the laboured gasping of the air-valves.

Occasionally out of the corner of his eye, Sven would catch sight of small scuttling things, moving with the speed of spiders between the patches of shadow. The further the Space Marines proceeded, the more apparent it became that they had disturbed something. It seemed like the whole place was waking from a long period of hibernation.

Hakon gestured for them to be still. Everyone froze in place. The sergeant advanced, moving cautiously towards a patch of darkness. Sven brought his bolt pistol up to cover him, focusing down the sight. As the sergeant filled the cross-hairs it occurred to Sven how easy it would be to kill him. A life was such an easy thing to end. All he would have to do is squeeze the trigger…

Sven shook his head, wondering where the thought had come from. Had something outside tried to influence him or was some long concealed flaw in his own personality come to light. He pushed the thought aside and concentrated on his duty to provide support for Hakon.

The sergeant stood over something, looking down. He kicked it with his foot. A skull rolled into the light. Sven recognised the sloping brow and rows of protruding tusks from his comparative anatomy classes.

‘Ork,’ he said.

Egil gave a short, barking laugh that sounded harsh and shallow in this alien place. ‘This place doesn’t belong to orks,’ the Space Wolf sneered.

‘No… but maybe they’ve been here before us,’ Hakon said. His expression was grave as he considered the possibility of a new threat from this unexpected quarter.

‘It’s been dead a long time,’ Njal pointed out. ‘Maybe there are no more about.’

Sven bent down to examine it, noting the column of snapped vertebrae that depended from the neck. ‘Then the question is: what killed it?’

The scouts exchanged worried looks.

‘Perhaps we should return to the ship,’ Njal suggested. ‘We’ve seen enough, surely.’

‘No.’ Hakon said firmly. ‘We’ve to perform a complete survey.’

‘We’ve come too far to back out.’ Egil added fiercely.

‘Surely you’re not scared, little brother.’ Gunnar said. There was a hint of fear in his own voice.

‘Enough.’ Hakon said. He led them on down the path. His stride was determined and Sven knew that the sergeant was going to see this thing through to the bitter end, whatever it might be.

The joke froze on Gunnar’s lips as he looked down into the long hallway. Back when he was younger, he had seen the body of a leviathan washed up on the beach. His father’s bondsmen had surrounded the great mammal, hacking open the creature and stripping off great flaps of blubber from its ribcage. The stink from the great cauldrons in which they were melting down oil mingled with the corrupt stench of the creature’s innards. It rose from the beach to assail his nostrils even atop the cliff on which he stood.

He had gazed down into the thing’s guts and seen, naked and exposed, the pulpy hidden workings of its guts. A bondsman had climbed in and was ploughing through the great ropes of the intestine with a knife. His hands and face and beard were smeared with blood and filth.

Looking down from the jaw-like ledge of flesh, the moment returned to him with sudden force. He felt simultaneously like his younger self and like the old fisherman ploughing through the disgusting meat. The full horror of their position rammed itself home in his mind. They were in the belly of the beast. They had been swallowed like the ancient seafarer, Tor, and for them there would be no Terminators to rip them free.

He rubbed at the slime that now coated his armour and fought down an urge to gag. Not for the first time, he wished he were back home in his father’s longhouse, safe under his protection and lording it over the villagers.

He knew that was impossible. There was no going back. His father had exiled him for killing young Strybjorn Grimson in that fight. It did not matter that the death had been an accident. He hadn’t really meant to throw the boy off the cliff; he had meant merely to frighten him. It did not matter either that his father had only sent him west-over-the-sea to avoid retribution at the hands of Strybjorn’s kin, who had refused weregeld for his death. Gunnar still felt bitter about it, even if he hid his bitterness the same way as he hid his unease, behind a smile and a sarcastic joke.

He let his breath hiss out between his teeth; at least his reverie had distracted him from their predicament, trapped within this alien monster. He saw Njal looking at him and he restrained a taunt. It was too easy for him, the son of an upland jarl, to patronise Sven and Njal who were born freemen. He felt guilty about it. They were his battle-brothers, all equal in the eyes of the Emperor. If the Space Wolves had not chosen him after the great contest of arms at Skaggafjord then he would be a simple landless man, less even than a bondsman. He vowed that in the future he would do his best to contain his feeling of superiority, if only the Emperor would protect him this once.

And now he was attempting to bargain with his Lord and Emperor, a demeaning act for both the deity and a Fenris noble. He tried to clear his mind and make a most devout prayer of atonement but when he did so the only thing that sprang to mind was the picture of the dead beast lying on the shore, with the gore-streaked old man burrowing through its filthy innards.

‘What was that?’ Sven asked in a hurried, panicky whisper, raising his bolt pistol to eye-level, readying it to fire.

‘What was what?’ Hakon asked. The sergeant looked tired and haggard, as if all the weight of command had suddenly pressed down upon him. He had the abstracted air of a man facing an insoluble problem.

‘I thought I heard something.’

The sergeant paused for a moment, then shook his head.

‘Sven’s right. He did hear something.’ Njal chipped in. ‘I heard- There it is again!’

They all strained to listen. It was as if a great pump had started in the distance. The sound carried for a long way, seeming to echo down the riblike arches of the corridors from far off. The sound was like the slow, measured beat of a massive drum. Sven shuddered, suddenly very cold within his ancient armour.

The scouts stood frozen. The breathing valves moved in time to the beat. The gurgle of liquids through the pipes rose to a rush. A waterfall of viscous fluid tumbled slowly from ledges halfway down the corridor. Steam rose from the stinking pools it created. Shapes seemed to writhe within the flesh of the walls. Sven was reminded of the movement of maggots within rotten meat.

‘It’s waking up,’ Njal said softly, his voice trembling. ‘We should go back.’

Egil sniggered. ‘Are you a Marine or soft-skinned girl? Why should a little noise scare us?’

Sven whirled to confront the berserk. ‘Can’t you see the changes that are happening? Who knows what’s going to occur next.’

‘Why’s this happening?’ Hakon asked. ‘Is it because we’re here?’

Sven paused to consider. ‘Yes, I think so. It’s probably reacting to our presence. The whole ship seems to be alive. It’s been rousing since we’ve come aboard. Think of the changes we’ve seen as we’ve come deeper. The outside walls were hard as rock. These ones still seem to be living flesh. Maybe we should go back, wait for reinforcements.’

‘No.’ Hakon said. ‘Let’s explore further. We’ve yet to find anything of real interest.’

He took the lead, leaping lightly over the steaming pools of bile. In the distance Sven thought he could hear a sound much like scuttling, or the clacking of giant pincers. The sound made him think uncomfortably of scorpions. Looking about him he knew the others had heard it too. The sound disappeared, drowned out by the slow thumping of that monstrous heartbeat.

Sven made the sign of the eagle across his chest and tried very hard not to think about the fisherman, Tor, and his sojourn within the innards of leviathan.

Njal could sense the mind of the Beast. It was a slow, steady pressure in his head, perceptible as the vessel’s heartbeat or the bellows breathing of the life support systems. He felt its oppressive weight bear down on him, adding to the claustrophobic feel of the long, intestinal corridors with their vile yellow floors and tiny digestive nodes whose acid scarred his armoured boots. He sensed the being’s ancient might and the sheer, incomprehensible alienness of it.

He was caught in the cross-currents of its thoughts as he was caught within the coils of its body. Sometimes strange hungers and longings flickered through his mind and Njal felt himself roused by alien lusts and desires: flashes of bizarre, inhuman memories, views seen through a myriad infra-red receptors, sounds overheard by organic radio antennae, the incommunicable sight-smell of pheromone analysers.

Nausea had filled him. There were times when he felt human, long minutes in which he doubted his sanity. Then micro-second exposures to the alien impressions rocked his being to the core.

The strangest thing was that the thoughts appeared to be coming from all around him. There seemed to be no fixed source of consciousness, no psychic beacon radiating through the eternal night the way the will of the Emperor was said to be visible as the flare of the Astronomicon.

No, what he was picking up was coming from every direction, from myriad points of consciousness. It was like the chatter of many individuals over fhe comm-net. Yet there was a pattern, an organising structure to it. He could sense it but could not comprehend it fully. The thoughts simultaneously seemed to belong to one mind and many – as if thousands of telepathic nodes of consciousness surrounding him seemed to make up a single greater mind.

He caught sight of what he suddenly knew was himself through a tiny eyeball high in the corridor ceiling. He scuttled along the ledge, looking down on himself. At the same time he was aware of himself looking up to see the things scuttling in the shadows. He opened his mouth to scream a warning. He saw himself gazing up into the alien darkness, frozen in terror…

Several things happened near-simultaneously. The entity which had been overwhelming him became aware that it was being eavesdropped on and all contact ceased. He was himself once more. The warning left his lips, coming out in a long incoherent shriek in alien words.

And the scuttling things moving along the wall leapt to the attack.

When Njal screamed, Sven reacted immediately, throwing himself down and rolling along the spongy floor, scanning his surroundings with a quick movement of his head. He caught sight of the segmented black objects descending from the ceiling. Their fall seemed strangely slow in the low gravity.

He lay on his back and braced his bolt pistol in both hands, blasting at the thing springing at him. It reminded him of a cross between a scorpion and a giant termite. It had an armoured, multi-segmented body and great claws. Eight evil eyes glittered in the gloom. Venom dripped from clicking mandibles.

The pistol roared and kicked in his hand. The monster exploded in front of him as the shells slammed into its alien body. Yellow phosphorous light limned its corpse as gobbets of meat were thrown everywhere by the explosion. He felt wetness on the back of his neck. At first he thought it was his target’s blood, then he realised it was fluid pumping from tiny broken capillaries in the fleshy floor. He scrambled to his feet, seeking another target.

The sergeant stood as still as a statue. His whole form flickered with the light from his blazing pistol. With every shot, an alien monster was destroyed.

‘Fire at will,’ Hakon shouted. ‘Choose your targets carefully. Don’t let them get too close.’

Sven sighted on a thing that moved across the floor like a great manta ray, its body undulating with every bump and depression in the carpet of alien flesh. His mind was paralysed with fear but his body seemed to respond like some mechanical automaton. The long hours of training where he repeated every combat action until it was ingrained like habit had paid off.

Without thinking he pulled the trigger and as his target flew apart, he re-aimed and fired, re-aimed and fired. The howl of bolt pistol fire filled the air as his companions did the same.

Nearby, Egil crouched in the slime, a feral snarl revealing his elongated incisors. The blue flare of his pistol flickered in the gloom. The light-trails of his bolter shells blazed towards their targets. The creepers were blown asunder, their shells cracked; burning meat oozed from within. Egil held his knife ready in his left hand in case any got too close; he would be ready to tear them to pieces.

Gunnar wheeled from the hip, his heavy bolter swivelling with him. His hand pumped furiously on the trigger mechanism. Short controlled bursts stitched across the oncoming tide of creepers, tearing them in two.

Only Njal stood frozen, a look of horror on his face. As Sven watched one of the aliens reached his face, claw extended, ready to snap into his neck. Quickly, heart racing, Sven drew a bead and fired. The claw of the creeper was torn off, black blood spattered Njal’s face. He shook his pale face and moved like a man waking from a trance. Sven felt hundreds of tiny legs tickle his neck, and a weight descended on his back. He wheeled and found himself staring into the tiny eyes of one of the monsters.

Filled with panic and horror he thrust it back one armed, bludgeoning it across the head with the barrel of his pistol. There was a sickening crunch as he broke its armour. A foul spray burned his flesh.

The memory of those small legs on his flesh, so like those of a centipede made him shudder. He flicked out his knife activating it and as the creature rushed at him, rearing to use its claws, he slashed it across the chest horizontally. Then, with a backhand sweep, he cut it again vertically. Its warm innards sprayed out uncontrollably, drenching him.

Sven looked around. The wave of attackers seemed to have broken on the Space Marines’ defence. All of the scouts remained upright and seemingly unscathed.

‘Any injuries?’ Sergeant Hakon asked. Everyone shook their head. Sven noticed uneasily the fixed, hungry grin on Egil’s face – and the pale horror on Njal’s.

‘Very well. We’ve seen enough. I think it’s time to return.’

Thankfully, the scouts agreed.

Behind them, things moved in the darkness.

Egil strode forward confidently. This was more like it! No more skulking round in the darkness. No more waiting for the hammer to fall. Now he had a foe to face and what more could any true Space Wolf ask for? The only flaw was that they were heading in the wrong direction. Hakon should be leading them deeper into the alien vessel, towards the source of the evil that polluted it.

He paused at the junction, noting how unusual, near-spherical objects were moving through the vein-pipes in the wall. They looked for all the world like eggs that had been swallowed by a snake. Whatever new threat they represented, Egil welcomed it. Now was his chance to show his bravery, to prove his worth as a Space Marine.

The berserker fury burned within him, a dim coal ready to be fanned into bright flame. He clutched his knife tightly, feeling the inset runes even through the thick stuff of his gauntlet. He longed to plunge it into the breast of a foe. Killing the creepers had only whetted his appetite for bloodletting. Now he wanted worthier enemies for his blade to taste.

To the right, down the pale, flesh-walled corridor Egil picked up a sound. It sounded like the thrashing of something trapped. He moved to investigate, hoping that some new foe was almost upon him. As he passed, he slashed at the tiny arteries lacing the wall and laughed as black fluid ran down the central channel of his blade. Excitement filled him. Now he was truly alive, perched on the razor-edge between life and death. This was the place for a true warrior.

+Egil, where are you going? You are not following the beacon-path!+ Hakon’s voice sounded worried, even through the distortion of the comm-net.

+There’s something moving down here. I’m moving to secure the flank.+

+Hold your position. We’ll send someone to support you.+

Egil smiled… and bounced his gauntletted palm against the comm-net circlet: +Say again. I can’t hear you. There appears to be some comm-net distortion.+

He ignored the sergeant’s orders just as he ignored the massive sphincter door closing behind him. He stood in a great chamber. The ceiling was as high as that of the great cathedral in the fortress among the glaciers. It was supported by immense, rib-like arches that met high overhead, where the bone of each rib emerged from the pink flesh. Great vein-pipes ran all around them, tangled into tight pleats. At the far end of the chamber was a huge mass of flesh that looked like a massive kidney, suspended by dozens of pumping, vein-like tubes, each thicker than Egil’s leg.

Great blisters, twice the height of a man, covered the walls. The skin around them seemed near-translucent, like the shed skin of a snake. Within each, a massive figure seemed to struggle and squirm. There was a sound like tearing as whatever was within started to loosen its bonds.

Even as Egil watched, eyes as wide as saucers, one of the massive blisters split and from it something emerged, like a chicken new-born from an egg. It uncoiled rising unsteadily to its full height and it let out a triumphant scream that sent mucus blasting outward from its throat.

It looked almost like a dinosaur, one of the primeval sea-dragons who dwelled in the warmer seas around Fenris’s equator. Its head was large and bulged back, its horny carapace protecting a hefty brain case. Its ribs seemed to be outside its body, like the exo-skeleton of an insect, and its internal organs were clearly visible. Egil could see its lungs pulse with breath and its heart beating underneath them.

It had four muscular arms, two of which terminated in long claws; the other pair clutched a long weapon that looked like a strange rifle. Its long legs ended in hoofs and raised it to over twice Egil’s height. A lengthy stinger lay curled between its legs. The shape of the creature’s structure reminded the scout of the ship. It was all long curves and exposed innards. It reminded him of pictures he had seen of genestealers, but from memories of archivum pictures, he recognised it as something even worse.

‘Tyranid,’ he breathed, barely daring to pronounce the word. ‘We’re in a tyranid ship.’

As he spoke the words into the comm-net, the thing swung the alien gun to bear on him. From all around there was the sound of other blisters ripping.

Egil’s words sent a paralysing chill through Sven. He recalled studying the aliens in the archives of the order. The Space Wolves had come late to the campaign against Hive Fleet Behemoth and the records of the action had been scanty.

A company of assault troops had taken part in the ground action on Calth IV, facing the giant monsters and their legions of hideously mutated bio-killers. Afterwards, the tyranids had swiftly decomposed as mortuary micro-organisms devoured their bodies, preventing proper forensic analysis.

Most of what the archives contained was little more than speculation. The theory was that the tyranids were an immeasurably old, extra-galactic race; they drifted from system to system via a network of warp gates. They searched for new races to conquer and consume, breaking down their gene-runes to create their terrifying bio-engineered horrors.

The tyranids used bio-technology for every conceivable purpose. They had muscle-engined living chariots to carry them into battle. Their guns seemed to consist of clusters of symbiotic organisms that fired hard-shelled organic bullets or acids. Their starships were vast, living creatures, true space-going leviathans that swamed the unknowable currents of the warp.

They had an organised, powerful society, most of which worked on principles incomprehensible to or indecipherable by Imperial scholars. Hive Fleet Behemoth had been totally inimical to mankind. It devastated an entire sector in its sweep through the galaxy. It had shredded worlds. Legions of its creatures had dropped on plague-weakened planets, carrying entire populations into the maw of the motherships, never to be seen again. They had dropped asteroids on some worlds, and brought many others to their knees with deadly biological contaminations.

Some, more superstitious peoples had turned from the worship of the Emperor and abased themselves before the image of Behemoth. In the time of anarchy that the hive-fleet brought with it, Chaotic cults had gained power promising salvation from a threat against which the Imperium seemed powerless. Trade had been disrupted; nests of genestealers had been uncovered. A new Dark Age seemed about to fall.

It had taken a full military mobilisation of the Imperium to stop Hive Fleet Behemoth. More than orks, more than eldar, the tyranids were the most dangerous threat that humanity faced outside of the Eye of Terror. And even then, Sven speculated, another Behemoth might match even the threat of Chaos. He wondered whether this ship were perhaps some remnant of Behemoth, a straggler cut off from the main hive-fleet that had drifted powerless through space for centuries until the crew of the Spiritus Sancti had disturbed it. He prayed to the Emperor that this was the case.

The alternative – that this was the out-rider of a new hive-fleet, a successor to Behemoth – was just too dreadful to contemplate.

Throwing himself to one side, Egil blasted the newly-hatched tyranid warrior. His bolter flared in his hand but his shot went wild. The gun in the tyranid’s claws gave out a hideous grinding sound. The sacs at its base pulsed and then a stream of shrapnel and steaming acid belched forth. A terrible acrid stench filled the air. Something burned Egil’s cheek as he dove aside. He gritted his teeth against the searing pain and rolled behind one of the nodes of cartilage protruding from the floor.

The ammunition warning rune of his pistol glowed red. He fumbled in his belt pouch for another clip. While he did so the alien monster lumbered closer. He could hear its hoof-beats and its slow, laboured breathing coming nearer and nearer. In his efforts he ignored the frantic comm-net chatter of his fellow Space Wolves.

His fingers were covered in mucus from the broken capillaries on the floor and the clip slid free. He grabbed it before it hit the floor and tried to ram it home. The shadow of the tyranid fell upon him. He felt its warm breath on his neck. Frantically he twisted to bring his bolter to bear. He glared up into blank, pupilless eyes. The thing’s dinosaur-like head seemed to smile as it pointed its weapon towards him.

Egil looked upon the face of death and grinned back.

The scouts raced down the corridor towards Egil’s last known position. Sven’s heartbeat was hammering in his ears, more from fear than exertion. He skipped over a pool of slime and saw the sphincter door ahead. He dreaded to think what lay beyond it. All of his childhood nightmares concerning monsters seemed to be coming true. He felt that if he had one more shock he would most likely go completely mad.

‘Brother Egil, report! Report, damn you!’ Sergeant Hakon was bellowing. ‘What is your situation. Come in!’

Sven strained to hear any response. There was none. The Space Marines now stood by the door. They were ready to enter.

‘Njal, watch the way we came, in case anything comes behind us! Gunnar, cover us! Sven, we’re going in! Get ready. When I say the word, open the door!’ Hakon’s orders were crisp and clear. Sven nodded to show he understood. He swallowed again and again; his mouth felt so dry he thought he might choke at any moment.

‘Go!’ Hakon shouted and Sven stroked the bulbous protrusion that would open the door.

The scene that greeted them was a vision from Hell. From blisters in the walls of the vast, fleshy chamber, dozens of giant monsters were hatching, each clutching an obscene-looking weapon. Some carried two swords of bone, others long alien guns. The tyranids themselves looked as if they didn’t need weapons. They were huge and their fighting claws looked deadly.

Egil lay behind a mound of flesh on the floor. His face had been horribly burned by acid, revealing bone and some scorched muscle. Near him lay a dead tyranid. Its ribcage had been torn open by the explosive blast of a bolt shell. Egil looked at them and gave a thumbs-up sign.

‘Ghost of Russ!’ Gunnar breathed.

‘Fire at will.’ Hakon shouted.

Sven sighted on a newly-hatching monstrosity. It stood, shaking the slime off its glittering carapace. He took careful aim and put a bolter shell through its head. The thing toppled like a felled tree. Sven heard Gunnar working the pump action of his heavy weapon and behind him the whole vast chamber was illuminated by the incandescent blast of a Hellfire shell. Shadows danced around the bony ridges. Two tyranids caught fire, seeming to perform a horrific dance of death in their final agonies.

Gunnar worked the Hellfire action repeatedly, laying a carpet of fire between the tyranids and Egil.

‘Come on, let’s get him!’ Hakon ordered, setting off across the chamber, bolter spraying all around him. Sven raced after him. When he reached them, the sergeant had already raised Egil to his feet and was offering him support. Egil shook him off.

‘Leave me alone! When I cannot stand on my own two feet it will be time to set me on my funeral pyre.’ There was a wild, dangerous look in the berserk’s eyes. He seemed half-crazed with pain and murder-lust. He reeled on his feet but stayed upright. ‘I’m alright. It will take more than a little acid to finish me.’

Through the dying flames of the Hellfire curtain loomed the mighty figure of a tyranid warrior, a bio-sword held in each claw. The blades were surrounded by a sickly greenish light that reminded Sven of a festering wound. It raised its blades like scythes to cut down its chosen prey.

‘Watch out!’ Sven shouted leaping forward, swinging his knife left-handed. Its blade cut deeply into the tyranid, cleaving through bone and skin. Sven felt his hand and blade imbed themselves in the tyranid’s alien flesh. He felt the soft clammy pressure of the thing’s innards on his hand. As he withdrew his blade there was a vile sucking sound.

‘Fall back!’ Sven tugged Egil towards the door. For a moment the acid-burned man stood looking at the scene of the battle and Sven thought he wasn’t going to come. Then Egil turned and loped to the door.

There was a hiss as the sphincter sealed behind them. Egil let out a horrible laugh. The sound seemed to bubble out from his ruined cheek. ‘We showed them who the masters were.’ he crowed.

Sven kept silent, wondering how many other such nightmarish hatcheries there were.

While the battle raged, Njal fought down a growing feeling of panic. The sense of the alien presence had returned to his mind, a pressure as constant and morale-sapping as the unceasing, metronome-regular pulse of the distant heart. This time he sensed the alien was being more subtle. It sought to undermine his resolve. It saw him as the weak link in the squad.

And he feared that it was correct.

He felt the surge of its mighty alien mind about him, each thought emanating from a single creature, one small brain that housed a component of the group-mind.

It was hopeless, he knew. Why fight it? His premonition would come true, as it always did. Would it not be easier to simply give up? At least that would end the waiting and the fear. Why not simply lay down his weapon and welcome the inevitable? It was hopeless; he and his brethren could never escape from within the beast. It was a living world and everything in it would be aligned against them. Nothing could escape.

Even as Njal tried to dismiss these thoughts as coming from an inimical, external source, another idea filtered into his confused brain. Perhaps the group-mind might even spare them, welcome them as a slave-race, let them live and adapt them to dwelling within the breast of the hive-fleet. Then he would be safe, comfortable, welcome.

Had he not been lonely all of his life? Apart from the people around him, misunderstood, separate? If he joined the group-mind he need never be alone again. He would be part of a greater whole, a new and essential component to be sent forth and deal with other humans. The hive-fleet would nurture and protect him, make him its own. The day of humankind was done. A new order was rising in the universe. He could be a part of it, if he wished.

At first, Njal tried to dismiss the thoughts as fantasies created by his fear-crazed mind but as they continued he understood that he was not deluded. He was in touch with the hive-mind and the offer was perfectly sincere.

He was tempted. He did feel isolated and alone and had done all his life. He did not want to die, even though he knew that this was a blasphemy against his faith. A true Marine would choose death over dishonour or betrayal without thinking. The hive-mind was offering him not only a chance to live and be part of its community but perhaps even a form of immortality within itself.

For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of succumbing to temptation – then he stepped back from the brink.

He realised that he wanted to remain apart, to be himself. The loneliness that his gift brought was like the gift itself: it made him who he was.

It made him unique and he wanted that more than anything. His sense of self made him human, and made him alive. If he submerged it within something else he, the unique being, would cease to be as surely as if he had died.

More than that, being a Space Marine was part of his identity too. They had made him who he was. He was surprised to find that he did accept their way. He had spent too much time with his companions to betray them. Shared hardship and shared danger had forged bonds between them that sometimes, when he wanted it, caused his isolation to fade. They were his community. They allowed him to be himself and yet part of something greater.

For a second, though, he saw a parallel between the hive fleet and his Chapter. The Chapter was, in its own way, a living thing. Its flesh was the men who served it. Its traditions and obligations were its memories and its mind. It, too, demanded a loyalty and a submission of self – but it was of a different order to what the tyranid wanted. He could live with that.

As if sensing his rejection of it, he sensed the presence of the hive-mind withdraw. He stood alone, in an ominously empty corridor, while behind him battle raged.

Sven finished spraying Egil’s face with field dressing. He took a deep breath, revelling in the cool disinfectant tang of the stuff, a momentary release from the revolting stink of the place. He hoped that the antiseptic synthetic flesh would be enough to keep the berserk going till he could be got to an apothecarion.

Egil certainly seemed to think so. He lurched to his feet, beat on his huge chest with one fist and said, ‘Ready!’

Hakon surveyed Sven’s work critically. ‘It’ll do.’

Sven glanced at Njal. He was worried about his friend. Since this expedition had started he had seemed more and more distracted. Sven hoped that he had not crumbled under the strain of combat.

Gunnar finished checking his weapon and worked the loading action. It clicked loudly. He grinned from ear to ear, unnaturally jubilant.

‘We’re still alive. We showed them what Space Wolves can do, right enough.’

‘We’re not free of this place yet, lad.’ Hakon said evenly. ‘We’ve still got to follow the beacons home.’

‘If we meet any more they’ll taste my knife.’ Egil sneered. Gunnar nodded emphatically and grinned again. The relief of surviving his first real combat was obviously getting to him, Sven thought.

‘Don’t be so cocky.’ Hakon said. ‘We beat a few half-awake monsters who’d been in suspended animation for only Russ knows how long. The next batch will be ready for us. We’d best move fast.’

His calm, commanding tone sobered the mood of all of the scouts except Egil. He continued grinning maniacally. ‘Bring them on.’ he muttered happily. ‘Bring them on.’

Gunnar was happy, happier than he could ever remember being. His breath sang within him. Every heartbeat was a drumbeat of triumph. He was still alive.

His weapon felt light in his grip. He felt like kissing it. He had been so afraid when he saw the monsters but he had overcome his fear. He had kept firing and he had killed them before they could kill him or his companions.

For the very first time, he knew the thrill of triumph in real combat. There had been nothing accidental about the deaths he had caused. He had meant to kill the alien monstrosities. It had been either their lives or his. He felt no guilt about it, just a sweet sense of release and relief. The waiting was over. It had been the worst part. Sneaking down these loathsome, stinking corridors not knowing what was round the next bend. He had not realised how much the tension had played on his nerves, on all their nerves.

Now he knew what they faced and it was horrible. But now he could put a picture to the horror. It was not as frightening as the ghastly phantoms his imagination had populated the place with, nor ever would be again. They were mortal. They could die, just like any other living thing.

He felt vindicated. He knew that his action had saved the lives of his comrades. His covering fire had let the sergeant and Sven save Egil. It was the most important thing he had ever done, saving the lives of his friends. All his ambivalent feelings towards them had melted away. He knew that they were true brothers, relying on each other for their very lives in this hellish place. In the face of the awful alien menace of the tyranids, all men were brothers. Petty differences over race or class or colour meant nothing.

He smiled happily. Having faced death, he felt truly alive. He was glad simply to be able to draw another breath, see another stretch of corridor, feel the distance back to their own ship dwindle under his booted stride. He had never truly appreciated what a wonder it was to simply be.

Not even the ominous change in the beat of the distant heart or the scuttling sound in the distance could break into his mood of good cheer.

Sven braced himself for another attack. Something was closing in. He could hear regular, padded footfalls on the fleshy floor behind him. He turned to look back – and saw something ducking slowly back into cover behind him.

He took a snap-shot but the shell slewed into the wall and exploded, sending gobbets of flesh everywhere. Ichor oozed from small broken blood vessels. The thing moved back into view. Sven saw it was small and dark-skinned, with six limbs – a termagant. It slowly raised its slime-dripping bio-weapon at him. He took careful aim and pumped a shell into its chest. The thing reeled backwards, squealing and scrabbling.

Sven wondered if these, too, were newly-awakened creatures, summoned forth to deal with the human trespassers. He shrugged the thought away and shot it again. His bolt burst through its target and out of the termagant’s head, sending jelly-like bits of brain everywhere.

More termagants moved slowly into view from the shadows. From behind Sven, his battle-brothers’ fire erupted into the advancing group. Sven fired again but the red ‘empty’ warning rune on his bolt pistol flickered and he realised he was out of shells. Caught in the crossfire between his own side and the oncoming termagants he threw himself flat to reload.

Shells whizzed all around him, lighting the gloom with their firework contrails. The roar of small arms echoed down the corridor, reverberating in the small space until it was deafening. As he slotted the new clip smoothly into place Sven wondered about how the termagants had got there. Were they captives taken as slaves on some alien world or were they some newly-evolved product of this vile craft? He thought the latter more likely. But how did that explain the ork skull they had found earlier?

Once more he opened fire, feeling the heavy bolt pistol kick in his hand with a kind of grim satisfaction. The withering fire of the Space Marines soon drove the termagants back into concealment. Sven knew they would be back though and wondered how many other nasty surprises the alien ship had in store.

Njal took point. He was happy to lead the way back. Having resisted the temptation to succumb to the hive-mind he felt so much stronger. His premonition of doom had receded. Perhaps, just this once, he would be proved wrong.

Slowly, he picked his way along the slime-covered floors, avoiding the strange circular valves at his feet. He pointed downward to indicate his fellow scouts should do the same. He heard them move to one side in response to his instruction and was glad. They were almost half-way to the boarding torpedo. Soon they could rest once more on the Spiritus Sancti and let Hauptman blow this alien nest to kingdom come.

Relief made him careless. He slid on the slippery floor and tumbled forward on top of one of the circles. He put his hand down to steady himself and the whole floor seemed to give way. He tumbled into darkness, feeling the walls squash shut round him. He reached back up through the valve to grab the edge and felt Sergeant Hakon’s strong hand grasp his. Relief filled him. The sergeant could lift him back into the light.

The walls around him began to contract and then expand. He felt their glistening sides press on him. He was reminded of a man swallowing – and he was the tasty morsel. As a mindless panic rose within him, he tried to pull himself up frantically. Sergeant Hakon attempted to aid him. Njal felt him strain against the downward pull of the tunnel-throat. For a moment he was pulled upwards… then he felt the sergeant’s grip falter and slip on his slime-covered gauntlet.

‘No.’ he screamed as he was sucked downward into the darkness. When the motion ceased he was in corrosive liquid. He could sense it eating away at the ceramite of his armour. One by one, the red emergency icons on his sleeve came on. Bathed in the eerie light from their useless warnings, he felt the warm digestive acid began to eat his flesh and etch his bones. As his life faded he seemed to hear the gloating thoughts of the hive-mind.

One way or anomer you will become part of me, it said.

‘No. He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do!’ Sven felt Sergeant Hakon’s hand on his shoulder pulling him away from the valve. He stopped beating futilely on it with his fist and prepared to blast it.

‘Brother-Sergeant Hakon is right,’ he heard Gunnar say. ‘There’s nothing we can do. Nothing. Njal is gone and we’ll be joining him if we don’t move.’

Slowly, sanity started to percolate into Sven’s mind. His friend was gone, never to return. He was dead. The thought had such a terrible finality to it. Sven shut his eyes and gave out the terrible death-howl of his order. The feral wolf-cry echoed down the corridors and was swallowed. The distant heartbeat of the ship continued undisturbed.

‘There will be time to grieve later.’ Hakon said gently. ‘Now we must return to the ship.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Egil said, his eyes glittering with murder-lust. ‘He will be avenged. I swear it.’

Sven nodded and pulled himself to his feet. He gripped his pistol firmly in one hand and his knife in the other. He crossed them across his chest in the ritual position and said a brief prayer to the Emperor for the soul of his battle brother. Then he followed the others on the long path back to the boarding torpedo.

Sergeant Hakon was next to die. The thing uncoiling from the air-vent got him. A four-armed, fanged and clawed horror with hypnotic eyes tore his head off before he could even swing his chainsword.

Egil didn’t wait for his turn. He launched himself at it, aiming his knife squarely at its back. The thing turned with eye-blurring speed and batted him aside effortlessly with one mighty hand. He felt ribs crack under the force of the blow. Even his ceramite breastplate did not protect him. If it had cut him with its pincer, Egil knew he would have died. He did not care.

A red haze was upon him. He ignored the pain, gathered his legs beneath him and prepared to spring again.

‘Genestealer.’ he heard Sven mutter. ‘By Russ, is there no end to the horrors in this place?’

A red haze fell over Egil’s vision. He howled his warcry and leapt. He knew he had made a mistake when the thing’s claw swept up like a scythe. He knew he was about to receive a disembowelling stroke and he welcomed it with open eyes.

The stroke never fell.

Sven shot the genestealer twice in the head. It reeled backward under the impact. Shrieking with frustrated bloodlust, Egil tore it to shreds with his knife.

Behind him he heard Sven mutter: ‘Two down.’Three to go.’

‘I can’t believe the sergeant is dead.’ Gunnar said. He tossed a Hellfire shell almost negligently in one hand. ‘I mean, him and Njal both gone. It’s- I—’

‘Believe it.’ Sven told him firmly. He felt a growing coldness in his heart. He was numb. He seemed to have gone beyond pain, beyond any feeling at all. All he felt was a growing hatred for his enemies and a cold determination to survive and present his report to the Imperium. It was the only way he could think of to give the deaths of his companions any meaning.

He studied the other two, trying to gauge how much use they would be. Egil looked gaunt and evil; a strange light was in his eyes and his loping stride suggested a blood-maddened beast. There was a coiled ferocity within the berserker just waiting to be unleashed. Sven knew that he could be counted on to fight – but could he be trusted to make a sensible decision?

Gunnar’s mood seemed to have swung from near-insane cheerfulness to depressive gloom. He looked bewildered by the sudden deaths of his comrades. He seemed unable to come to terms with the fact they had died so suddenly.

Sven coldly assessed their chances and knew it was up to him to take charge. He was the only one who seemed capable of rational decision making. ‘Right. We’d better go.’ he said.

‘But what about Hakon’s body? We can’t just leave it here.’

‘He’s dead, Gunnar. There’s no point in encumbering ourselves with a corpse. I’ll cut the gene-seed from him, for his successor. He won’t go unremembered. I swear it.’

Fitting action to words, he set about reclaiming the sergeant’s gene-seed, the control mechanism that transformed him into a Space Marine. It was gory work and soon Hakon’s blood mingled with that of the enemy on Sven’s knife.

They nearly made it. The tyranid ambushed them from behind the branches of a carcinoma tree. Sven leapt backward as acid spurted over the ground where he had stood. The shrapnel from the monster’s vile living weapon gouged across his cheek, drawing blood. He ignored the notch torn from his ear and took aim at the monster. It lurched back into cover as Sven’s shots raked its hiding place.

‘Gunnar, burn that thing!’ he yelled, but Gunnar stood stock still, not loading his weapon, not doing anything.

‘More coming behind us.’ Egil roared.

Sven cursed. He considered haranguing Gunnar but wasn’t sure it would do any good. Instead he unclipped a grenade and lobbed it at the tyranid. The explosion sent the thing reeling into the open. Gunnar snapped out of his immobility and sent a blast of automatic fire dancing across its chest. Its top half suddenly separated from its legs, the tyranid collapsed, shrieking.

Sven risked a backwards glance. A line of tyranids was bounding up the corridor towards them. Their gait seemed slow and awkward but they covered the ground at a tremendous rate. Sven knew that the three of them could not outrun the monsters. He moved forward anyway. Perhaps they could make a last stand behind the carcinoma tree.

‘Follow me.’ he shouted and leapt forward into cover. Gunnar and Egil swiftly followed. The distant pounding of the ship’s heart sounded as loud as thunder now and the air was thick with the acidic stench of tyranid blood. Sven sighted on the leading tyranid and fired. It pained him to have come so near to escape and to fail at the last. His shot glanced off its armoured hide. He aimed at the head.

‘Gunnar. Use the Hellfire!’ he shouted.

‘I can’t – the mechanism’s jammed!’ Gunnar yelled back.

Sven cursed. A spray of shots from the tyranid’s weapon sent him ducking back into cover, the memory of claw-armed monstrosities leaping towards them burned into his mind. There were just too many of them. The scouts were doomed.

‘You two – get out of here!’ yelled Egil. ‘I’ll hold them off.’

‘It’s certain death, man.’

‘Don’t argue! Just do it!’

Sven swiftly weighed things up in his racing mind. He could stay here and die – or he could save the sergeant’s gene-seed, himself and another Space Marine. The balance had already been tipped; there was no choice.

‘Goodbye.’ he said, rushing towards the last beacon, the one belonging to the boarding torpedo.

‘Farewell, landsman.’ he heard Egil say. ‘I’ll show you what makes a true Space Wolf.’

Egil howled his laughter and fired again. He leapt to his feet and pumped the trigger of his pistol, blasting shots wildly at the tyranids. Their advance halted in the face of the withering fire. The Space Wolf scout unclipped a grenade and lobbed it at them. They ducked back behind a sphincter-door. The grenade exploded against it. The door buckled but didn’t give.

Suddenly it was quiet. Egil risked a glance back over his shoulder towards where Sven and Gunnar had vanished. Briefly he considered following them. Yet he couldn’t guarantee that the tyranids wouldn’t follow him and overtake him. Better to keep them pinned down.

He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. The tyranids had circled round and entered the chamber from the other side. Good, Egil thought, feeling the killing rage build within him. More enemies to take to Hell with him.

The tyranids rushed at him. He swung his pistol round but a blast from an organic gun tore into his arm, ripping the bolter from his grasp and shredding his flesh to the bone. He fought to keep from blacking out as unquenchable agony seared him. He gripped his knife tight and howled with rage. He lurched to his feet and ran towards them.

‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!’ he shouted, blood-specked froth staining his lips. The last thing he saw was the monster take careful, direct aim at him. He pulled back his knife to throw.

The sound of fighting stopped. Sven bundled Gunnar into the torpedo, slammed the hatch shut and hit the control icon.

As the alien craft shrank smaller and smaller in the flickering green view-screen, Sven commended Egil’s soul to the Emperor. He noticed that Gunnar was weeping. Whether it was from sorrow or relief, Sven could not tell.

Hauptman watched as the plasma-bombs raked the tyranid craft from end to end. Within scant moments the organic ship was utterly destroyed. As Hauptman stared in rapt fascination, the solar wings so recently unfurled tore off and drifted into space. The men in the Spiritus Sanctis turrets used them for target practice. He saw the look of satisfaction on Sven’s face as he watched the alien artefact being cleansed.

‘Well.’ he said. ‘I think that ends that.’

‘I think not.’ Chandara the astropath said from next to the pair of them, pale faced and drawn. ‘Before it died, it sent out a signal of enormous psychic power. It was tightly focused in the direction of the Magellanic Cloud but it was so powerful that I picked up its overspill.

‘It was a signal, shipmaster. It was summoning something. Something big.’

An appalled hush fell over the steering chapel of the Spiritus Sancti.

Sven looked down at the gene-seed in his hand. He swore to be worthy of his dead comrades. If war with the tyranids was coming, he was ready to fight.