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Eye of Vengeance - Graham McNeill

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EYE OF VENGEANCE

Graham McNeill

It was the smell of Quintarn that hit you first, a gut-punch mix of turned earth, gaseous discharge from the domed agri-cities and the planet-wide reek of synthetic fertiliser. One of the bread basket worlds of Ultramar, its arid surface was hot and dusty, but no amount of desert wind could mask the pungent stench that wormed its way through even the most advanced air scrubber.

Deserts of red and gold covered much of the planet’s surface, making it an odd choice for an agri-world, though it was one of the most productive in the Imperium. Hundreds of sprawling agri-cities covered the planet’s surface, and each one contained millions of acres of arable land beneath its protective domes. In the normal run of things, Quintarn, along with its sister worlds of Tarentus and Masali were quiet, industrious and peaceful worlds.

But these were not normal times.

An invading army had descended upon the Three Worlds, a bastard host of murderous corsairs, war machines and diabolical priests of the Dark Mechanicus. They called themselves the Bloodborn, and they fought under the command of a nightmarish creature known as Votheer Tark. Little more than a filthy scrap of ravaged meat and neuro-synaptic tissue suspended in an amniotic vat, Votheer Tark’s legions of battle engines came not to conquer or enslave.

They came to destroy, but they would not find Quintarn lacking in defenders.

The 5th and 6th Companies of the Ultramarines stood against the Bloodborn, and their victories were legend, their names bywords for courage and honour. Quintarn itself boasted an impressive defence auxilia, thousands of men and women under arms and sworn to the defence their homeworld.

But the fate of Quintarn would not be decided by massed ranks of soldiers or the battle companies of the Adeptus Astartes.

It would be decided by a single warrior.

His name was Torias Telion.

Situated at the confluence of three rivers, the dome-shielded city of Idrisia rose like a cluster of sun-kissed blisters from the arid plains. Beyond its shimmering perimeter, a heat-hazed desert spread to the horizon, and sand drifted at the base of its armaglas structures. The planet’s star burned hot and white in the sky, like a metal disc heated in an armourer’s forge. Little could survive in the parched landscape, but beneath the city’s incredible domes, the landscape was rich with life.

Ten thousand soldiers of the Quintarn defence auxilia were billeted within the city, their myriad tents and vehicle parks crushing flat field after field of crops grown to feed the Imperium’s hungry mouths. Despite the auxilia’s best efforts, the Bloodborn had broken through the northern bulwarks, and the soldiers’ sky-blue uniforms were bloody after the retreat from Castra Mondus. Now, with the routes to the southern hydroponics cities wide open, Idrisia was sure to feel the Bloodborn’s wrath next.

But a force of warriors of far greater prowess now stood ready to face Votheer Tark’s demented war machines and blood-hungry army. The Ultramarines occupied the heart of Idrisia, and modular barrack buildings of gleaming azure jostled for space alongside temporary fortifications and the ancillary battlefield structures that came with the Adeptus Astartes at war. In the heart of the Ultramarines deployment sat an octagonal command structure with an arched roof that bristled with vox antennae, rotating auspex dishes and integral void shields.

Moisture formed on the gold-winged eagles stamped upon the breastplates of the ten Ultramarines stationed around the perimeter of the command tower. It dripped from their boltguns and their shoulder guards, five trimmed in iron black, the others in brilliant gold, and hissed on the hot vents of their armour’s power packs. All ten warriors stood as still as statues, immobile guardians of the captains within. To protect the army’s commanders was a singular honour, and only the best warriors from each company had been selected for so vital a duty.

Within its walls, banks of battlefield cogitators hummed with power, digesting information gathered from after action reports, vox-thievery, surveyor sweeps and inloads from the few remaining orbital auspex.

The picture they painted was one of a world on the brink of falling to the enemy.

Tech-priests moved in circular sweeps around the darkened chamber, pausing to burble a short burst of binaric prayer or minister to a piece of equipment. Aides and scrivener servitors kept to the shadows, ready to stand forward at their masters’ behest at a moment’s notice.

The four warriors tasked with defending Quintarn gathered around a central plotting table fixing the ghostly topographical image with piercing stares, as though force of will alone could alter the bleak strategic situation before them.

Captain Galenus of the 5th Company was the first to speak.

‘Idrisia,’ he said. ‘It’s the key. Lose it and we lose the war.’

‘You think I don’t see that?’ asked his fellow commander. Captain Epathus of the 6th folded his arms and leaned on the raised lip of the plotting table. ‘It’s the gateway to the southern cities, but it’s not strong enough to withstand an assault. Not yet.’

Antaro Chronus spoke next, his voice a throaty grumble, so like the engines of the tanks he commanded. ‘I can hold them for a time,’ he said, jabbing a fist at the projected map. ‘Here. At the edge of the Upashid Scar. With the armour units from the defence auxilia, I have enough vehicles to keep the bastards at bay for a time.’

‘How long?’ asked Epathus.

‘Long enough for you to fortify this damn place,’ replied Chronus. ‘I’ll kill a great many, but they are too numerous to hold forever.’

The fourth member of the command group nodded, his face obscured by a grim skull-faced helmet. Chaplain Ortan Cassius wore armour black as night, embossed with gold and blue, with a repeating skull motif worked into every trim and plate. Though none could see his disfigured face, they all felt the grim purpose of his gaze.

‘Votheer Tark’s Bloodborn make war like the Great Devourer,’ he said, his voice a wet rasp of damaged vocal chords that no amount of augmetic surgery could repair. ‘His Dark Mechanicus consume the iron bones of fallen machines and remake them to swell their numbers. Every piece of equipment and forge we lose is cannibalised to create more war machines for the Bloodborn.’

‘A bleak assessment, Chaplain,’ said Galenus.

‘An honest one,’ replied Cassius.

‘How do you fight an enemy that grows stronger with every battle?’ asked Epathus.

‘I think I can help with that,’ said a voice from the shadows above.

Every warrior in the command tower spun toward the speaker, and weapons were pulled from holsters with Adeptus Astartes speed. A half-glimpsed figure sat upon a structural rafter, an elongated bolter rested casually across his lap.

‘Security!’ barked Galenus, trying to fix on the indistinct form.

The warrior swung down from the darkness and dropped lightly to the decking of the command tower. The spectral half-light of the plotting table seemed not to touch him, leaving his spare frame shrouded in shadows where no shadows should be. His dusty fatigues were coated in ochre dust, and the blue of his armour was scratched and worn by wind-blown sand. A face tanned the colour of baked leather from the light of a thousand suns was framed by a neatly trimmed beard of silver, and regarded the assembled commanders with a faintly disapproving grin.

‘Telion? Is that you?’ said Epathus. ‘How in Guilliman’s name did you get in here?’

‘You know I’ll not tell you that,’ said Torias Telion, foremost Scout of the Ultramarines.

‘When did you get to Quintarn?’ demanded Galenus. ‘And why was I not informed of your arrival?’

Telion ignored Galenus. ‘My Scouts were on Quintarn long before you got here. Did you think the Bloodborn forges on the Kodian Uplands simply destroyed themselves?’

‘That was you?’ asked Chronus.

Telion nodded. ‘It was.’

‘Damn it, Telion,’ snapped Galenus. ‘You can’t fight alongside our companies without attaching yourself to the order of battle. How can we formulate strategy when we don’t know what assets we have in the field?’

Telion shook his head. ‘You have a more pressing concern than my omission from the order of battle, Galenus.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Your security,’ said Telion, gesturing to the roof space with a single upraised finger.

Galenus and his fellow commanders looked up.

Five scouts perched on the rafters, each with a weapon trained on the commanders below.

Telion waved his finger in admonishment. ‘If we had been the enemy, you’d all be dead now. Think about that while we re-arm and re-supply.’

It had been a long, hard run from the Uplands, a fast dash from mayhem with the enemy’s hunters dogging their footsteps through broken hinterlands between the burning ridge and the southern plains. The enemy had some capable hunters, and only forty-three of his sixty warriors had returned from the arid desert.

But none of the Bloodborn had the guile and skill of Torias Telion.

He had served under three different Chapter Masters, and earned more battle honours than any other Scout in Ultramarines history. No scrappy, half-trained machine-fused seeker was going to catch him in a pursuit.

He was tired, but did not let it show as he led his Scout squads through the familiar layout of the Ultramarines position. Everything was laid out as decreed in the Codex Astartes, regularly, precisely and… predictably.

This unannounced arrival at Idrisia wasn’t the first time Telion had bent the tenets of his primarch’s teachings at war, but it was certainly the most obvious. He knew of at least one captain who had been banished from the Chapter for such breaches of the Codex’s teachings, so kept his own little heresies out of sight of any command ranks that might object.

Telion saw Ultramarines warriors staring at his Scouts, and couldn’t suppress a flush of pride at the respectful nods he saw. His reputation within the Chapter was well known, and these warriors knew that with Torias Telion and his Scouts watching over them, they had guardian angels in place. The battle-brothers of the 5th and 6th Companies welcomed their arrival, even if Captain Galenus did not.

He heard steps behind him, knowing from the length of stride and weight of the footfall that it was Draco. The youngster was a hellion with the missile launcher he carried slung on his back, a dead-eye shot who could send a warhead up the exhaust port of a skimmer’s engine at five hundred metres.

‘Are we joining the battle companies, brother-sergeant?’ asked the boy.

‘For a Scout trained in stealth and evasion you’re remarkably obvious in your questions, Draco,’ replied Telion.

‘Just want to know what we’re about, sergeant,’ said Draco. ‘I don’t like the idea of making this a straight up fight.’

‘Then put your mind at ease,’ said Telion. ‘We’re not attaching ourselves to the companies. We’re just here to re-supply.’

Draco nodded and Telion suppressed a smile as the boy rejoined his squad. The snipers, Zeno and Dareios, seemed pleased with the news, though Agathon, their newest member, clearly didn’t share their enthusiasm.

‘That won’t please Captain Galenus,’ said Sergeant Kaetan. Though Telion had attached himself to Kaetan’s squad, the sergeant had naturally stepped aside to allow the veteran Scout to take command. No-one among the 10th Company, save perhaps Captain Antilochus, would expect Torias Telion to serve under them.

‘I don’t much care what Galenus thinks,’ said Telion.

‘He’s right though, we should attach to the order of battle.’

‘That’s not how we’ll be most effective, Kaetan, and you know it,’ said Telion.

Kaetan nodded and said, ‘I know that, but disregarding the wishes of a captain is a sure-fire way to get yourself sent on a Death Oath.’

Kaetan was a dark-skinned veteran of Masali, a hard taskmaster and thorough teacher. Telion respected his ways, and believed him to be one of the best sergeants the 10th Company had seen in decades.

Telion checked to see that none of the Scouts were listening and whispered, ‘Perhaps you’re right, but I see the anger he harbours towards Lord Calgar, even if no one else can. He blames the Chapter Master for the deaths of his men on the Indomitable.’

Kaetan’s fingers flickered in the Scout sign for Enemy Observing and Telion fell silent. He had heard the approaching footsteps, but had spoken anyway, knowing who was approaching. Chaplain Cassius marched across the plaza towards the Scouts, the spiked head of his crozius maul jutting out behind his left shoulder guard.

‘Chaplain,’ said Telion. He gave a short bow of respect to the venerable warrior.

‘Kaetan, Torias,’ said Cassius, one of the few individuals with the authority to call any warrior in the Chapter by his first name. ‘I came to wish you good hunting.’

‘Gratitude, Chaplain,’ said Telion, touching the Ultramarines symbol embossed on his Stalker-pattern bolter. ‘It’s not often you come to see the hunters loosed.’

‘You suspect me of an ulterior motive?’

Telion smiled warily. ‘I wouldn’t word it quite like that, but yes.’

‘Always a Scout, eh, Torias?’

‘Till the day I die.’

‘Then I will be as blunt,’ said Cassius. ‘You would do well not to antagonise Galenus. It is not wise to wound the pride of a battle captain.’

Anger touched Telion. ‘He sends you here on his behalf?’ he said.

‘You know he does not,’ said Cassius. ‘And your belligerence does you no credit.’

Telion sighed, knowing the Chaplain was right. ‘I apologise, Chaplain. It has been a long campaign for us. The abominable things we saw in the Uplands were beyond imagining. It makes me forget my manners.’

Cassius waved away his clumsy apology. ‘Galenus will get over a little wounded pride. The loss of half his company aboard the Indomitable has left a blight on his soul and he lashes out when he should look to his warriors that remain.’

Telion nodded and made to turn away, but Cassius stopped him with a firm hand upon his shoulder. Armoured in full battle plate, the Chaplain was a head taller than the Scout-sergeant, and it was impossible not to feel the threat and strength in his armoured form.

‘You take a great many risks,’ said Cassius. ‘Be careful you do not overstep your reach. Others who have done so have suffered greatly.’

‘I always watch my step, Chaplain. It’s what I do best,’ he promised.

‘Be sure that you do, Torias,’ said Cassius, lowering his voice so that only Telion could hear him. ‘When this war is over there will be many wounds that must be healed, and not all of them can be treated in an apothecarion. Suspicion and mistrust have taken root in our Chapter, and we will need to purge ourselves of their poisonous taint. Your voice is much respected within the Chapter, and if you show disrespect, others will hear of it and take heed. Think on that before you are so brazen with your reckless disregard for the chain of command.’

Cassius turned away, and Telion waited until he was out of sight before leading his Scouts onwards. The Chaplain’s words had angered him, but he didn’t know whether it was the deeper truth that had touched a nerve or the fact that he was being admonished for his behaviour. Truth be told, either explanation sat ill with him.

What had Cassius meant by suspicion and mistrust? A Scout lived or died by the awareness of his surroundings, and it galled Telion that he was ignorant of the subtler happenings within the Chapter. But these were questions for another time. He couldn’t let thoughts beyond his immediate concerns distract him from their mission.

The ammo stores were housed within a modular construction built against a solid structure that had once served as an administrative centre for Idrisia. The quartermaster was a Techmarine from the 6th Company, and Telion was more than a little surprised to find that Captain Galenus’s authorisation for the release of ammunition and supplies had already been communicated to the quartermaster.

The Scouts picked out what they required from the stores with the efficiency of looters, but took no more than they required, knowing through experience what they would need in the field and what was unnecessary weight. Within ten minutes, the Scouts were fully equipped and ready for combat operations again.

Telion gathered Kaetan’s Scouts in a small square with a stag-headed satyr at its centre – a holdover of Quintarn’s ancient beliefs from the days before the Imperium. A number of marble statues of wild animals surrounded this figure, sitting around him like the audience of a storyteller.

‘We’re heading north,’ he said without preamble. ‘Our brothers and the defence auxilia need time to fortify Idrisia for attack, so Antaro Chronus is leading an armoured formation north to fight the Bloodborn’s battle engines at the Upashid Scar. We’re going to lend a hand.’

‘What kind of enemy are we looking at?’ asked Dareios.

‘Armoured,’ said Telion. ‘Battle engines, transports, mobile artillery, that sort of thing.’

He was pleased by the absence of fear in his Scouts. In their lighter armour and without heavy support, they would be achingly vulnerable, but they had Torias Telion to lead them, and their faith in him was a potent force in itself.

‘We help out where we can, but this isn’t our fight,’ said Telion ‘We have another mission, and I don’t want us dragged into an armoured brawl, understand?’

A hand went up.

‘Draco?’ said Telion.

‘If we’re not engaging fully, then what’s our mission?’

‘It’s a dangerous one,’ said Telion. ‘One that only the best damn scouts of the Adeptus Astartes can take on. We’re going to take out the enemy forge at the Maidens of Nestor and win the war for Quintarn in one fell swoop.’

The Scouts set off within the hour, each squad taking its own route to separate targets as Antaro Chronus’s armoured strike-force assembled. Telion led Kaetan’s squad through the cracked red gold deserts, skirting the plains and keeping to the rocky uplands wherever possible. They moved swiftly, but silently, hugging the few shadows on this arid world and leaving no trace of their passing.

Telion watched the squad as it moved through the hot, dusty environment, offering advice and instructional pointers as they went. It was a strong squad, already bound as brothers and eager to prove their worth.

Dareios was the taciturn killer, a sniper of methodical skill and calculating intelligence. He had mastered the intricacies of the long-range kill with ease, yet there was no flair to him. The lad would make a fine warrior, but Telion suspected he would never have the passion to become more than a line officer.

In contrast, the squad’s second sniper was rash, but a quick learner. Zeno had natural talent, yet lacked the focus to be the patient hunter. Younger than Dareios by a year, he had time yet to master his temperament.

Draco’s worth had already been proved, and he’d be a natural fit within the Devastators upon his elevation to battle-brother.

The squad’s most recent addition was Agathon, a devoted youngster from the forest world of Espandor. Over the centuries, his family had sent two previous sons to the Ultramarines, and Telion remembered them both. They were dead now, slain on Tarsis Ultra and Ichar IV, both victims of the Great Devourer.

After ten hours of swift march, Kaetan called a halt to rest and re-hydrate as a vicious wind blew down from the mountains, wreathing the parched deserts of Quintarn in a scouring haze of dust particles.

They took shelter in a jagged crevice in the rock, and while Dareios kept watch, the rest of the squad rested in preparation for the next push. The Imperial armoured units would be following the Scouts, and Telion wanted to get into position before they arrived.

Agathon took a drink from a canvas-wrapped canteen and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. The young Scout’s bolter was cradled easily in his arms, like a mother holding a newborn babe. Telion was pleased to note that even with the dust and hot winds scouring Quintarn, the weapon was as pristine as one fresh from the crate.

‘Can I ask you something, Sergeant Telion?’ asked Agathon.

‘What is it, lad?’

‘Do you really think this mission will win the war?’ asked the youngster.

Telion grinned as he saw the other Scouts turn to hear what he had to say.

‘I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think so,’ he said. ‘But let me turn it around and ask you a question. Why are we losing this war?’

Zeno ventured an answer. ‘Because the enemy outnumber us?’

Telion shook his head. ‘No. These Bloodborn are chaff, a host of bastardised war machines led by a warlord who wouldn’t know strategy if came up and bit his metal arse.’

‘It’s because the Bloodborn don’t care about losses,’ said Dareios. ‘Any war machine they lose or capture is re-forged into some other weapon.’

‘Exactly,’ said Telion, ‘but their leader has made the mistake of relying on that to win him this war. That makes him vulnerable. Take it away and he’s got nothing.’

‘And the forge-temple at the Maidens of Nestor is his vulnerability?’ asked Zeno.

‘Exactly,’ replied Telion. ‘The other forges we destroyed were important, certainly, but they were just processing hubs. The forge-temple at the Maidens of Nestor is where the enemy creates its most lethal battle engines. They turn crop sprayers into flame-tanks, threshing machines into flesh tearers, harvester leviathans into battle fortresses. We take this forge out and the Bloodborn are just another ragamuffin host of corsairs and renegades.’

Draco patted the missile launcher propped up beside him and said, ‘Just show me where to shoot, Sergeant Telion.’

They laughed at Draco’s bravado. Sergeant Kaetan stood and shook the dust from his camo-cape.

‘If Sergeant Telion has finished dispensing his pearls of wisdom, we need to move if we’re going to play any part in the battles to come. On your feet!’

The Scouts responded instantly, and minutes later, they were on the move, all sign that they had stopped obscured by the howling winds.

Flames from burning vehicles lit the underside of the clouds, and strobing bursts of gunfire lit the craggy surface of the Upashid Scar. A tectonic flatland of shallow canyons, teetering mesas and glassy riverbeds, it was a bleak patch of striated desert that stretched from coast to coast. Booming traceries of artillery pounded the southern ridges as Bloodborn tanks fought through the winding gullies or hauled their bloated bulk over vitrified dunes on clanking, multi-jointed legs.

Explosions shook the ground as a volley of shells slammed down in the midst of the Bloodborn, masterfully guided in by Sergeant Vorean’s spotters. A dozen vehicles were vaporised in the pounding barrage, and only a single survivor crawled from the wreckage on fire-blackened stumps.

As impressive as such destructive power was, it was a drop in the ocean against the Bloodborn host. Telion counted at least a thousand enemy vehicles, a creeping horde of diabolical war machines crafted by degenerate minds twisted in ways too terrible to imagine.

No two were alike, and each was a horror of blasphemous mechanised arts, abortions of brazen iron and flesh. Giant crawlers crushed the earth beneath their bulk, moving like blood-fat leeches across the sandy rock and leaving a trail of stinking engine fluids in their wake. Tanks with pulsating hulls that glistened like flayed muscle fired hideously organic cannons and blazed with weaponry that seemed grown rather than attached.

Juggernauts of bloodstained steel stamped forward on piston-driven legs, braying their war cries from loathsomely organic horns. Shattered glass carapaces shawled them, flapping at their weapon mounts with the sound of a million windows breaking at once.

Others resembled giant insect creatures, bulbous and glossy, with lethal antennae that spat fire and lances of destructive energy. From a distance, the battle engines of Votheer Tark resembled escapees from a madman’s workshop, but Telion did not allow their bizarre appearance fool him as to their capabilities.

Facing the monstrous horde was a glorious host of tanks in the azure of the Ultramarines and the blue and white of the defence auxila. Though outnumbered by nearly three to one, the Imperial forces had angels on their shoulders.

Telion took the first kill with his Stalker-pattern bolter, putting a burst of fire through the fuel lines of a chittering vehicle that resembled a low-slung spider with mechanised legs and a bulbous turret that spat torrents of lasfire. Blazing fuel emptied into its hull, and the machine buckled as its crew died and the vehicle collapsed to the sand.

Draco took out tank after tank with missiles fired through the weaker top armour of more conventionally designed tanks. Zeno and Dareios guided each other’s sniper fire to take out exposed commanders, ammo feeds and fuel lines. With Telion’s expert guidance, no shot was wasted, and Zeno put a kill shot through a cracked vision slit in the turret of a battle engine that might once have been a Baneblade, but which now resembled a mobile fortress of blades and gibbets. Whatever had commanded that monstrous vehicle died with that shot, and it was easy prey for the tank-killer vehicles of Antaro Chronus.

With each kill, the Scouts moved on, each squad firing only once from any position within the Scar, taking advantage of the natural cover and speed to evade any return fire. The machine intelligences of Votheer Tark’s battle engines were cunning, and it took all of Telion’s superlative skill to stay one step beyond their reach.

‘Spider tank, ten o’clock,’ shouted Zeno, tracking a vehicle through the scope of his sniper rifle. ‘Range, six hundred metres.’

‘Engaging!’ said Draco, dialling in the range to his launcher as a missile fed itself into the breech. Telion watched the young Scout as he led the vehicle, depressing the firing trigger with a soft squeeze.

The missile leapt from the launcher, arcing up into the sky like a star shell before turning the seeker head back towards it target. It streaked back down to earth, a blur of phosphorent light that slammed into the spider tank’s topside. The warhead blew and a searing plasma jet punched into the vehicle, instantly incinerating its crew and blowing the turret ten metres into the air.

‘A fine shot, Draco,’ said Telion, slapping the Scout on the shoulder guard.

‘Target of opportunity!’ cried Dareios, his eye fixed to the scope of his rifle. ‘Dead ahead, a thousand metres.’

Telion knew they should displace, but crouched next to the Scout and pressed his own sighted bolter to his eye, scanning the ground before him. He had seen armoured clashes before, but was rarely this close to a tank fight. Scouts paved the way for the battle companies or harried the enemy from the flanks and rear, they didn’t usually get this close to a tank fight.

‘We’ve lingered here too long,’ warned Kaetan. ‘We should move to another position.’

‘I know,’ said Telion. ‘But Dareios rarely offers up targets without good reason.’

Kaetan scowled, but nodded. ‘What do you have, Dareios?’

‘Command walker by the looks of it,’ replied the Scout. ‘Looks vulnerable.’

Telion had to agree.

Superficially, it resembled the defence auxila’s Sentinels in that it was a two-legged war machine that supported a pilot’s armoured compartment. But where the Imperial walker was a practical response to the needs of war, this seemed a ludicrous folly. Instead of an armoured cockpit, the reverse jointed legs supported a sphere of blackened glass in which frothing amniotic fluid sloshed back and forth with the machine’s bow-legged gait. Dozens of whipping aerials protruded from its rear section and Telion saw something fleshy and foetal floating in the viscous suspension. Jagged runes were branded into its sides, and the embellishment in its workings convinced Telion that Dareios was right to call it in.

‘Take it out,’ he ordered.

‘Engaging,’ said Dareios.

The Scout took a breath and let the air ease from his lungs rather then expelling it with a force that might upset his aim. His rifle fed him wind velocities, ambient temperatures, local gravitational fields and myriad other variables that would affect his shot.

The rifle snapped as it fired, and Telion watched the walker as the blackened glass sphere hazed where Dareios’s shot struck. Cracks spread out from the point of impact, and less than a second later, Zeno’s shot took the kill. The glass broke like a blister and steaming liquid poured from the ruptured interior. Arcs of electrical energy blazed from the wreckage as a scrap of deformed meat and distended bone flopped out onto the sand, trailing a forest of copper wires and crackling input plugs.

Telion didn’t waste time by wondering what vile flesh-alchemy had wrought such a by-blow, and said, ‘Up! Good kills, but it’s time we were going.’

The scouts scooted back from the edge of the ridge and followed Telion as he ran low through a shallow gully, taking turns apparently at random. Explosions burst overhead and the deafening, percussive force of shellfire and impacts rolled over them. Roaring engine noise echoed weirdly around the gully and streams of gunfire disintegrated its upper edges. Stone fragments fell like rain, but Telion kept going. A thunderous impact on the ground made them all stumble, and Telion held up a fist. He pushed himself back against the stone walls of the gully as the ground shook once again with a pounding reverberation. A shadow filled their hiding place as something enormous passed overhead, its mass large enough to traverse the gully without effort.

‘What in Hera’s name was that?’ breathed Draco.

Telion silenced him with a glare. He darted across the gully and sprang onto an embedded boulder, peering through a cleft in the rock to see what had passed them by. He saw it in fragments, but pieced enough together in those glimpses to identify the war engine.

The Imperial designation was Stormlord, a monstrously heavy tank bristling with weapons, any one of which could wipe out the Scouts with barely a moment’s pause. A hellishly large bolter cannon was mounted on the turret, and a plethora of powerful weapons jutted from bladed turrets and blister-like sponsons: rotary machine guns and promethium jets. Its hull was a corroded rust colour, and a figure in rubberised overalls and a bestial-moulded gasmask stood arrogantly in the upper hatch. He waved a bloodstained flag, like he rode in a triumphal parade instead of in a battle.

‘That’s just asking to get a bullet in the head,’ said Telion.

‘Would that they were all that stupid,’ agreed Kaetan, coming alongside him.

‘Stormlord,’ said Telion, dropping back into the gully. ‘Nasty.’

‘Let it go,’ warned Kaetan, seeing the glint in Telion’s eye.

Telion shook his head, and scrambled onto the upper edges of the gully. The Scouts followed him, keeping close to the jagged edges so as not to silhouette themselves.

The Stormlord rolled over the rocky terrain with a teeth-loosening rumble, moving far too fast for so heavy a machine. The cannon on its turret swung around as a pair of defence auxila Chimeras rounded a leaning arch of rock. Fire blitzed from the chugging barrels as a hurricane of solid shot shredded the light armour of the Imperial tanks. Both transports skidded to a halt, wounded and bloody soldiers spilling from their blazing interiors. The Stormlord lurched forward and a spurting tongue of flame played over the survivors.

The screams were mercifully short-lived as the monstrous tank’s guns finished the job of murder.

‘Come on, Torias,’ said Kaetan. ‘It’s a super-heavy. We don’t have the weapons to take it out.’

‘At least let’s take out that cocky bastard in the turret,’ replied Telion. ‘One shot and we’re like ghosts.’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Kaetan. ‘We have a mission.’

Telion sighed and nodded. ‘You’re right, but it would have made an impressive notch on the Stalker.’

Too late, Telion saw Zeno aim his sniper rifle towards the Stormlord’s commander, frowning as his sights returned nonsensical information with every pulse of the range finder.

‘Don’t!’ hissed Telion, but the damage was done.

The turret swivelled toward the hidden Scouts, like a prey creature suddenly catching the scent of a hunter. Its weapons clattered as the tank’s loaders prepared to fire.

‘Emperor’s blood!’ hissed Kaetan. ‘It’s onto us.’

‘Everyone down!’ shouted Telion as the sky lit up with pyrotechnic fury. Metre deep gouges tore through the lip of the gully and craters punched deep into the opposite wall of rock. The noise was deafening and Telion heard at least one of the squad cry out as ricocheting shrapnel sliced through light armour.

Dust and grit choked the gully, and even Telion’s genhanced vision could see nothing though the billowing clouds. The echoes of the barrage had barely begun to fade when he heard the heavy rumble of the Stormlord drawing near.

‘Move!’ he yelled. ‘Get out any way you can and we’ll rally a kilometre to the north! Go!’

Telion ran as fast as he could, looking for an escape route through the choking dust clouds. Stone crashed down behind him as a portion of the gully collapsed under the super-heavy’s tracks. Telion risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the tank’s guns depressing to fire along the gully.

An Imperial tank commander would never have wasted such a powerful vehicle’s energy and ammunition on so few infantry, but the Stormlord had the scent of blood in its nostrils. The kill was all that mattered, not any grand strategy of its master. It had their scent and wasn’t about to let go until it had taken their corpses to mount on its track guards.

Volcanic fire blazed down the gully, filling its width with a blitzing storm of shells. Telion threw himself down a side passage, feeling the air being sucked from his lungs by the supersonic jetwash of the Stormlord’s fire. He rolled onto his front, letting his secondary lung sift the reduced oxygen content of the air, crawling away from the main passage of the gully on his belly.

A column of hot dust billowed through the passages of the gully, and he changed direction often, moving on his hands and knees for greater speed. Telion heard the angry roar of the super-heavy behind him. It was circling, looking to confirm its kills, and he caught sight of its jagged outline through the clouds of smoke thrown up by its gunfire. A few desultory muzzle flashes lit up the smoke, a sniper rifle and a bolter.

A good Scout knew when to fight and when to escape, and Telion forged a path onwards through the dust-filled gully, knowing he could do nothing against so powerful a foe. Zeno’s foolishness had cost them dear, and Telion hoped enough of the squad had survived to continue the mission.

Thirty minutes later, Telion regrouped with his Scouts. He was grateful to see that the entire squad had survived, though Dareios and Agathon had taken shrapnel wounds from the exploding rock, and everyone else was covered in dust and bruises. The mood was ugly, and the focus of the Scouts’ anger was directed at one of their number in particular.

‘You could have killed us all,’ hissed Kaetan.

Zeno had the good sense to look contrite, but the sergeant wasn’t finished. ‘It is disrespectful to aim your rifle and not take the shot.’

Telion raised a hand to stem Kaetan’s tirade.

‘It was foolish, Kaetan,’ he said. ‘But we still have a mission to accomplish. Punish Zeno when we return to Idrisia.’

‘His mistake could have killed us all,’ protested Dareios.

‘Aye, lad, it could have, but it didn’t,’ said Telion. ‘Let that be enough for now.’

Dareios nodded curtly and turned away. Telion saw the anger in his face, but let him go. A methodical killer, Dareios did not take kindly to his fellows making mistakes.

As the Scouts prepared to head off once more, Kaetan approached Telion and said, ‘You are getting soft in your old age, Torias. Time was you’d have flayed that boy alive for a mistake like that.’

‘I know,’ agreed Telion. ‘But we yet live, and the lad won’t do it again. Call it a hard won lesson. They’re the kind that stick.’

Kaetan shrugged, ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but we should get on with the mission.’

‘Absolutely. We’ll assume ingress positions by twenty-one hundred hours local in the foothills of the Maidens, a kilometre from the forge-temple.’

Kaetan consulted his chronometer. ‘That doesn’t leave us much time.’

‘Then we’d best move fast,’ said Telion.

Kaetan’s squad made their way from the armoured clash at battle pace, leaving Antaro Chronus and the vehicles of the defence auxilia to continue the fight without them. Kaetan was right, they didn’t have much time, so Telion drove the Scouts hard, setting a murderous pace that tested even his fully developed Adeptus Astartes physique.

They did not stop to rest or re-hydrate, but kept pushing up the craggy haunches of the mountains. As darkness drew in, the Scouts reached the end of a shadowed valley that cut a ragged path towards the Maidens of Nestor. And there, atop a vast shelf of rock that was all that remained of a mountain planed flat, was the forge-temple of Votheer Tark.

The Maidens of Nestor were all that remained of Quintarn’s tallest mountain. Named for the thousand priestesses who had hurled themselves from its cliffs rather than be taken prisoner by greenskin reavers, it had been razed flat by an orbital barrage and the molten rock sculpted into a monument to their sacrifice. Around the circular plateau, a thousand toothed fangs of glassy basalt reared up like a sharpened fang, one for each of the lost maidens.

In the centre of the vast stump of the mountain, a churning mechanical edifice thundered like the engine of the most colossal starship imaginable. More machine than structure, its chaotic assembly was a nightmare of thundering pistons, fire-belching stacks, geysering overflows and arcing electrical towers. Streaming banners flapped in the nightmare thermals billowing around the mountain, and hellish runes of blasphemous entities were stamped on every piece of blood-soaked iron that had gone into the forge’s construction.

A constant stream of heavy mass-carriers bore thousands of tonnes of captured machinery into the blackened forge, feeding the dark adepts within the raw materials with which to craft the battle engines of the Bloodborn warlord. Acrid smoke hugged the ground, a ready-made smokescreen.

Telion halted the squad in the shadow of one of the Maidens and reached up to touch the smooth stone.

‘Maidens of Nestor, grant me a measure of your courage,’ he whispered. He felt eyes upon him and turned to see Kaetan watching him.

‘For luck,’ he said.

‘I didn’t think the great Telion needed luck,’ said Kaetan.

‘The more I fight, the luckier I get, but it never hurts to have a little spare.’

Telion attuned his senses to the myriad noise patterns among the clanking acoustic mess surrounding the forge-temple. Even amid so horrific a place, there was rhythm and pattern. This forge was the domain of the Dark Mechanicus, twisted machine priests who melded the power of the immaterium with that of their blasphemous mechanical creations. And such abominations worked to the beat of artificial hearts. Beneath the cacophony of sound echoing from the mountainsides, Telion heard the regular booming crash of giant forge hammers, working in time with heaving presses and ore furnaces.

He scanned the side of the temple, seeking an entry point. He found what he was looking for fifteen metres above the plateau, an intake flue that drew great gulps of polluted air to feed the furnaces within. A web of pipework snaked across the flanks of the structure like corroded vines, and they would be easy to climb.

‘Be ready,’ said Telion. ‘Move when I move and keep low.’

He counted along with the percussive sounds of the forge, waiting until the crash of metal hammers echoed over the mountains before breaking cover and sprinting through the reeking vapours. Almost instantly he was running blind as the temple spewed a poisonous breath and screamed with every one of its exhaust vents. These were birth cries. The forge was howling its pleasure and pain at the monstrous by-blows taking shape within its mechanised guts.

Telion heard revving engines and the heavy footfalls of ironclad machines. He saw blurred outlines of hideously altered servitors and brain-cut labour brutes, slave creatures formed from random machine parts and organic debris.

They ignored the Scouts, and Telion returned the favour.

The soaring iron cliff-face of the forge loomed out of the noxious yellow fog, and Telion leapt onto the pipework. Hand over hand, he climbed to the flue and peered within. A slowly rotating fan filled the circular pipe, around two metres in diameter. Telion swung around the edge of the pipe, ducking beneath the slowly rotating blades, and ran towards a grilled vent.

Shouldering his bolter as he ran, Telion fired four shots, one to each corner of the vent, and kicked it free of its mountings without breaking step. Behind the vent was a bizarre machine, part sucking compressor, part pumping mechanism fashioned from the upper torsos of steel-clad creatures that might once have been men.

Behind the machine was mesh grille through which spilled a hellish red light and the thundering sounds of heavy industry. As Telion crouched at the grille, the rest of the squad emerged into the pumping chamber, immediately taking up defensive positions.

‘Through there,’ said Telion, tapping the grille with the barrel of his gun.

Using their combat blades, Telion and Kaetan removed it from its mountings and set it aside. The Scouts slipped through the hole in the wall, dropping onto a tangled mass of ductwork. Pushing forward on his belly, Telion eased his way onto a corroded junction box and peered down into the hellish workings of the forge-temple.

Orange light filled the cavernous space, a fane to a ruinous parody of the Machine God. Glowing ore vats bubbled like volcanic pits along the edges of the colossal chamber, and giant cauldrons of brazen iron suspended on iron chains drooled blood into each pool of molten metal. Hundreds of chanting priests in dark robes consecrated it with scrapcode prayers of impossible binary, and the stench of burned metal and scorched flesh caught at the back of Telion’s throat.

Streams of molten bloodmetal were drawn along grooved channels towards hellish forge machines that rolled, pressed and shaped weapons of war. Foremost amongst those machines was a vast furnace that growled and hammered with animal hunger. And tending to this black altar of hellish creation was a towering abomination of steel and fire.

‘Emperor’s teeth,’ said Telion. ‘What in Guilliman’s name is that?’

It had once been a Warhound Titan, but it had been brutally augmented with so many loathsome additions that its original builders would have wept to see it so degraded. The battle engine towered over the attendants that surrounded it, though it was hunched over like a bent-backed scribe. A complex arrangement of mechanised arms that were an indivisible mix of weapons and machine tools depended from its carapace.

‘A high priest?’ suggested Kaetan.

‘I think you might be right,’ said Telion. ‘I need to get down there.’

‘I just knew you were going to say that…’ sighed Kaetan.

The Scouts gathered around Telion, and he outlined his plan of action with succinct clarity. Ambiguity would see them all dead. Worse, it would see the mission fail. Satisfied everyone in the squad understood their role, Telion moved off, finding a trunk-line of cabling that led to the floor of the temple. Blasts of superheated steam gusted from brass-rimmed vents, and Telion waited for a particularly thick cloud to drift past before sliding over the edge of the ducting to shimmy down to the ground.

The heat on the floor of the forge was like the hottest desert Telion had ever known. The fumes from the bloodmetal pits sucked the moisture from the air and made it painful to take a breath.

A Scout was proficient at creating havoc behind enemy lines, but Torias Telion was the master of mayhem. He had already identified the most vulnerable parts of the forge from the ductwork above, and knew exactly where to place his melta bombs. He moved swiftly and carefully through the chamber, keeping to the shadows where possible and making the most of the industrial cover.

None of the black-robed priests ever saw him as they made their ritual circuits of the bloodmetal pits. With calm surety of purpose, Telion picked his way through the chamber, planting his melta charges behind junction boxes, buried within cable nodes or on the reverse of pressure gauges.

The battle engine moved through the chamber with booming footsteps, devotional squalls of scrapcode burbling from augmitters mounted upon its carapace. Each static outburst was greeted with answering spurts of faulty machine noise from the priests. Telion could understand nothing of the noise, but registered no hostility or sense that he’d been discovered in the tonality of the sound.

With only two charges remaining to be set, Telion moved towards the giant machine at the end of the chamber. Even as he drew close to the seething, hammering, machine, he knew something was wrong. Seething vents pulsed with fiery light, like windows into some hellish inferno. Though he knew it was ridiculous, Telion felt as though the machine was watching him, regarding his intrusion with a mixture of amused curiosity and irritation.

He dismissed the thought, but the nagging suspicion that something was amiss would not leave him. Telion paused. He had not lived this long without trusting his instincts, and right now they were screaming at him that something was very wrong.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Kaetan’s voice over the vox-bead in his ear.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Telion. ‘Any change in the enemy?’

‘None I can see,’ replied Kaetan. ‘Wait… Telion! Get out of there!’

Though he could see no obvious threat, Telion obeyed Kaetan’s warning without hesitation. He turned away from the great furnace and swiftly retraced his path through the forge-temple as a towering bellow of machine noise filled the temple, like a million vox-servitors screaming in unison. The bloodmetal pits spurted geysers of blazing ore in a raucous bellow of volcanic anger.

Stealth would avail him nothing now, and Telion sprinted through the temple with his bolter pulled tight to his shoulder, the muzzle moving to match each motion of his eyes. Three of the robed priests appeared before him, wielding jagged trident-like weapons that buzzed with electrical fire. Telion put a bolt-round through the chests of the first and second as a sniper round from above pulped the skull of the third. He didn’t break stride and vaulted the corpses before they’d even hit the ground.

‘Go right,’ ordered Zeno in his ear.

Telion obeyed and darted around a tangled webwork of pipes. Three more of the machine priests came toward him, but a missile impact blew them from their feet, leaving a searing afterimage on Telion’s retinas. Draco’s aim was as sharp as ever. Even over the howling, mechanical rage of the forge-temple, Telion heard the distinctive snap of sniper fire, punctuated by the deeper report of Agathon and Kaetan’s bolter fire.

‘Start blowing the charges!’ ordered Telion, shooting down another dark machine priest.

‘You’re still in the kill box,’ Kaetan pointed out.

‘Blow them or I’ll never leave it,’ snapped Telion.

A pulse from Kaetan’s vox triggered the first of the melta charges, and a section of the metal plating surrounding one of the bloodmetal pits vanished in a searing column of incandescent fire. The pool of liquid metal poured out, like tidal flood through a disintegrating levee. Moving with viscous slowness, it oozed onto the floor of the forge-temple, spreading further with each passing second. Another charge detonated and yet more magma-hot metal surged from its confinement. A third and a fourth blew, and fires erupted all through the temple as pipes melted in the heat and sprayed flammable liquids and gasses in blazing arcs. Telion blasted a path through the disintegrating temple, ducking behind a rising nexus of cables and pipes as a rattling hail of bullets sprayed the ground before him.

The machine priests had triangulated his position, and were closing the net on him. He rose from cover and sent a snap shot through the face of a robed priest that clattered through the temple on multiple legs like a mechanised spider.

Twin bursts of fire drove him back to cover, and a ricocheting fragment of metal scored his cheek. Blood welled in the cut, then clotted almost instantly.

‘Clear me a path!’ ordered Telion.

‘We don’t have a shot,’ replied Kaetan.

‘Why not?’ demanded Telion, but the answer was soon revealed.

Emerging from a rising wall of flames and smoke was the battle engine, its hideous bulk silhouetted in the glare of the temple’s dissolution. The towering machine’s carapace was daubed with dripping runes of blood, its head worked in the image of a grinning daemon. Its armour was studded with bladed spikes and corpses hung from its trophy racks.

The cockpit glass shone red, and its weapon arms clattered as autoloaders slotted home magazine hoppers capable of holding thousands of heavy calibre rounds. Telion threw himself flat as the battle engine’s weapons unleashed their fury and a blitzing hurricane of shells tore a metre-deep trench in the metal floor of the temple.

Telion sprinted through the furious storm of the battle engine’s wrath, hearing the booming thunder of its footfalls behind him. He fired without aiming, hearing the shots impact the titan’s voids with a bray of electrical discharge. The engine let out a keening screech as it came for him through the smoke. Telion knew he couldn’t outrun the machine and made the only choice he had left to him.

He turned and ran towards it, firing as he went. Every shot struck the titan with sparks of void flare, but did nothing more. Its weapon arms depressed, the barrels shrieking as they spooled up to fire.

Telion dived forward as the guns opened up, but he was within their minimum range and the weapons tore collimated trenches behind him. The machine halted, as though confused as to why its target was not destroyed. Telion rolled to his feet and slung his bolter as he leapt for the titan’s right leg. A blade sliced the armour at his shoulder as he gripped the leprously oily body of the battle engine, taking hold of its rivets, bolts and lubricant pipes to haul himself up.

The engine spun, sensing the insect crawling over its body and Telion hung on for dear life as the machine crashed back and forth. Choking clouds of toxic smoke billowed around the engine as it thrashed to dislodge him. Shapes moved in the smoke, and Telion caught flashes of the robed priests crushed beneath the engine’s stomping feet.

By the time he’d climbed halfway up the titan’s leg, Telion’s hands were bloody and torn, his armour battered and pierced. The engine slammed into an iron column, sending an arcing blaze of energy skyward as its voids buckled and blew out on its right side. The flash of its collapsing voids almost blinded Telion and the thunderclap of energy scorched his armour black. The underside of the princep’s compartment was almost within reach and Telion wrapped his arm around a hissing coolant feed line that throbbed with a repulsive peristaltic motion. He wedged his foot in a gap between armoured plates and drew his combat blade.

Telion sliced along the length of the feed line and a disgusting, viscous substance spurted from the wound. Oily and reeking of rancid meat, it drenched Telion’s armour and he gagged, tasting the loathsome biological make-up of the fluid as it spilled down his face. The machine howled and swung around with such violence that Telion’s grip slipped and his blade spun away into the smoke.

With his free hand, Telion reached down and plucked one of his last melta charges from his belt and rammed it into the ruptured feed line. A second followed, but before he could arm them, the battle engine smashed its body on the edge of a bloodmetal pool with a last, desperate heave.

This time Telion couldn’t hold on, and he tumbled through the air to land with a bone-crunching impact on the lip of the pool. Lava heat burned his armour and burned the skin beneath the canvas of his fatigues. He fell away from the molten metal and kept rolling until he was clear of the madly thrashing battle engine. Its foot slammed down on the spot where he had landed, cracking the ground, and he rose to his feet with a grimace of pain.

‘Go forward ten metres!’ shouted Kaetan. The vox was lousy with static, but Telion obeyed as he heard the machine’s auto-loaders once again. Telion saw the cable run he’d climbed down and leapt onto it, shimmying up like a vine-creeping cudbear until he’d reached the level of the twisting ductwork.

Kaetan’s Scouts were spread throughout the structural members, firing down into the gathered masses of machine priests. Bullet impacts on the wall behind them, and scorched patches where electro-throwers had struck testified to the ferocity of the overwatching battle they had fought.

Telion jerked his thumb at Draco and shouted, ‘The voids on its right flank are down! I jammed two charges on its underside. The junction of its legs and princep’s compartment.’

Draco understood immediately, and worked another missile into his weapon’s loading breech. With the missile launcher slung over his back, he slid down the pipes towards the ground. The battle engine let out a triumphant roar as its infernal detection gear finally pinpointed its prey. Its footsteps shook the temple as it loped toward them, and the whine of its guns cut through the air like a bloody knife.

‘Spread out!’ ordered Telion.

He pulled his bolter tight into his shoulder and fired three quick bursts of fire at the titan’s unshielded flank, each shot exploding against the armoured carapace without effect. Sniper rounds blew off trophies and bulbous extrusions that might have been sensor arrays, but did little else.

The machine’s upper body swivelled, its guns ratcheting up as they prepared to obliterate them in a hellstorm of shells. Time slowed to a crawl. Telion saw the firing arms pumping shell after shell into the spinning barrels. Before any of those shells were fired, Telion heard the whoosh of a missile launch, followed an instant later by a deafening bang of superheated air as two melta bombs exploded.

Spun around by the force of the blast, the battle engine’s guns tore an arc of white-hot fire through the central columns of the temple. The machine lurched backwards like a punch-drunk fist-fighter, and gobbets of molten metal dribbled from its underside, like wax from the candles in the company chapel. Spurts of flaming oil and engine fluid sprayed in jetting arcs. The titan took a broken step forward. Metal squealed, and the machine stumbled as its wounded leg finally gave way. Off balance, the battle engine crashed to the ground with a thunderous howl of buckled metal and mechanised anger.

It thrashed like a dying animal, its one remaining leg churning the air as it fought to right itself. Sparking cables flopped from the wound and iridescent bio-fluids pooled around its shattered carapace. The machine’s binaric death-screams echoed throughout the forge-temple, a gurgling rasp of agony and hatred that hurt to hear and left bitter taste in the back of the throat.

Telion let out his breath as the red light faded from the slit windows of its daemonic head.

The forge-temple loosed a cry of loss and hatred, each one of the black-robed priests falling to the ground and convulsing as the scrapcode backwash of the engine’s death blew out portions of their cognitive architecture.

Explosions flared all through the forge-temple as systems controlled by the engine began to fail. The destruction wrought by Telion’s bombs, combined with the death of the temple’s high priest, was causing a catastrophic chain-reaction of destruction. Klaxons blared, binaric warnings screeched from roof-mounted loudspeakers and a cascade effect of collapse was marching through the forge-temple.

‘We need to go!’ shouted Kaetan. ‘Right now!’

Telion nodded and keyed the vox-mic. ‘Draco!’ he shouted. ‘Get back here now! Immediate exfiltration!’

He received no response and desperately looked for any sign of the lad. Blazing fires and expanding lakes of bloodmetal hazed the air with smoke and choking fumes, making it next to impossible to see anything clearly. Kaetan led the rest of the squad back through the vent shaft that had brought them inside the forge-temple, and Telion knew he would have to join them soon.

‘Draco!’ repeated Telion. ‘Respond, damn it!’

The smoke parted for an instant, and Telion’s gaze fell upon an Adeptus Astartes pattern missile launcher slowly melting in a sinuous river of lava-like steel. Draco would never abandon his battle gear, and with sinking heart, Telion knew the Scout had perished saving their lives.

‘Guilliman watch over you, lad,’ said Telion, turning and making his way to safety. A titanic explosion tore the end of the forge apart as he reached the vent, and Telion gripped the edge of the opening as he took one last look around the collapsing temple for any sign that Draco might somehow still be alive.

There was nothing, and Telion ducked into the shaft as the forge-temple tore itself apart.

They watched its final collapse from a rocky ledge two kilometres from the Maidens of Nestor. The entire plateau was a glowed haloed in sunset orange as tears of molten metal wept down the mountain’s flanks. Each glassy monolith reflected the glow of the forge-temple’s destruction, standing proud amid the devastation.

No more would the Bloodborn craft engines of war to slaughter the defenders of Quintarn. No more would they be able to replenish their losses with impunity. Now the battlefields would be places of attrition to them, and Votheer Tark’s lack of ability as a warlord would be hideously exposed.

Now the Ultramarines were in the ascendancy.

Telion ran a hand across his shaven scalp before making the sign of the aquila over his heart. Behind him, Kaetan, Dareios, Zeno and Agathon did the same, honouring their fallen brother.

‘I shouldn’t have lost him,’ said Telion.

‘You didn’t,’ said Kaetan. ‘The war took him.’

‘The war?’ replied Telion, shaking his head. ‘No, I let him down, and now the Chapter has been deprived of a fine Scout, a son of Ultramar who never had the chance to be the warrior it was his right to become.’

Kaetan put his hand on Telion’s shoulder and said, ‘Think on it this way. Draco’s sacrifice saved all our lives. And how many lives will we go on to save?’

‘One life for many? Is that what you are saying?’

‘It is, and you know I’m right,’ said Kaetan. ‘I too grieve for Draco’s loss, but if his death allows us to win the war for Quintarn, then I believe it was a price worth paying.’

Telion nodded. ‘I know you are right, old friend, but to see those in their prime cut down while an old warhorse like me endures feels very wrong.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Kaetan. ‘You are Torias Telion, the Eye of Vengeance, and you will live forever.’

Telion did not answer him, and turned towards home.

And behind him, a mountain burned.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graham McNeill has written a host of novels for Black Library, including the ever popular Ultramarines and Iron Warriors series. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Originally hailing from Scotland, Graham now lives and works in Nottingham.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Originally published in 2012 as an audio drama.

This edition published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

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Cover illustration by Hardy Fowler

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