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 Astra Militarum 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.

‘Clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, that you might take your stand against the foe. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the Ruinous Powers of the benighted warp and against the spiritual forces of evil in that infernal realm. Therefore, clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done all else, to stand.’

– Codex Astartes, Book of Aephesus (attr.)

ONE

Silence, thought Darin Aeroth, was a thing to be treasured.

It was all too rare that his life allowed him to experience true quiet. A silent battlefield was one where the fight was over, and that was no place for a Space Marine. A starship in the void was never quiet, the roar of engines and vibration of centuries-old – at the very least – hull plates a constant companion. Even on Macragge, in the Fortress of Hera, there was always the sound of Chapter-serfs scurrying to and fro, the distant echo of weapons drills and the low hum of the mighty void shield generators that protected the ancient edifice from orbital assault.

No, silence was definitely a thing to enjoy, and this was the closest he was likely to get. The only sound was the roar of the wind outside as the Fury of Gallicus descended into the atmosphere of Orath. Muted by the thick plasteel and ceramite plates of the gunship’s armour, it sounded like the breeze on a summer day on Iax. Appropriate, he considered. The planet below, according to the reports, was similar to the Garden of Ultramar, verdant and devoted to producing food for other worlds in Ultima Segmentum.

And it was protected by the Ultramarines. That was an important similarity. Aeroth glanced around at the other occupants of the Stormraven. Three members of his squad stood, as did he, arms raised, the outsized fists of their Centurion warsuits gripping thick bars bolted onto the ceiling of the cramped cabin.

The fifth and final Space Marine was clad only in a suit of particularly fine power armour. It was of ancient design, its deadly functionality augmented by baroque ornamentation. It was as black as the void, each plate engraved with passages from the Codex Astartes, the closest thing to a holy tome that the sons of Roboute Guilliman had. Where a battle-brother of the line companies might wear an aquila on his chest and battle-honours on his knee-pads and greaves, the black-armoured warrior had skulls. Each was tiny, carved from bone and engraved with a name.

There were sixty-seven such skulls on Chaplain Manet Sentina’s armour.

The Chaplain looked up and met Aeroth’s gaze. Sentina’s helmet was mag-locked to his thigh, the gleaming white skull of the faceplate staring at the floor. His skin was dark and his shaven head reflected what little light emanated from the lumen-strips running along the compartment’s ceiling. His eyes were set deep into a broad face, and they betrayed nothing of Sentina’s thoughts or mood.

‘Seventeen minutes to Fort Garm.’

Techmarine Isachaar’s voice cut through the silence, blaring from the vox-caster set into the corner of the cabin.

‘Acknowledged,’ said Aeroth. ‘How do conditions look on the ground?’

There was a pause before Isachaar’s emotionless burr, replete with mechanical undertones, answered.

‘No response from the fort. The main force on the northern continent reports infernal mists. Evidence of blight in the farmlands. Estimated millions dead. Unconfirmed sightings of civilians attacking one another.’

‘Attacking one another?’ cut in Brother Oenomaus. ‘What madness could make them do such a thing?’

‘Many things can turn brother on brother, young one,’ replied Lentulus. ‘Even within brotherhoods such as ours, civil war is not unknown. For undisciplined humans, anything is possible.’

‘The forces of the Ruinous Powers are at work upon Orath,’ growled the Chaplain, ‘Disease and disorder go hand in hand where the enemies of mankind walk.’

‘It seems likely.’ Aeroth had seen the so-called ‘Plague of Unbelief’ before. ‘There is a taint that sweeps across worlds, killing the human populace only to raise them by infernal warp-magic to walk again as mindless beasts, roaming the shattered ruins of their former homes. They are drawn to those still living, and when they find them… they feast.’

‘Melodramatically put, sergeant.’ Lentulus’s tone was harsh. ‘But accurate. They are no longer human, Oenomaus. Remember that when they stand before you. Not that they will be likely to harm us in these fine warsuits, eh?’

‘Be not overconfident, brother.’ Sentina turned his deep stare on Lentulus. ‘The Archenemy have weapons to breach any battleplate, save the Armour of Faith alone.’ The Chaplain pulled his helmet from his thigh and stared into the lenses of the faceplate. ‘If our faith is found wanting, we shall fail. If it is strong, victory will be ours.’

Lentulus’s face flushed. ‘I will not be found wanting, Brother-Chaplain.’

‘Nor I!’ exclaimed Oenomaus.

Aeroth smiled behind his helmet. This was the young battle-brother’s first deployment in a Centurion squad. His eagerness was palpable. He turned to the final member of his squad.

‘And you, Iova?’

‘I will do what I always do, sergeant. Approach what comes with my eyes open, my weapons primed and my mind sharp.’

Like Lentulus, Iova had forgone a helmet. Experienced Centurion operators often did so, preferring to rely on their own eyes and ears over the suite of auto-senses built into the warsuits’ headgear. Lentulus did so out of pride, Aeroth suspected, while for Iova it was a matter of making the most of the experience. Aeroth himself wore a helmet, painted the red and white of his rank. He had even allowed the ludicrous crest to remain attached, but only because he knew it annoyed Lentulus to look at it.

‘So say we all, brother.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘We don’t know quite what to expect below. We know that all contact with the garrisons at Forts Garm and Kerberos was lost months ago. Clearly, the situation on Orath is dire. Our orders are to secure Fort Garm, locate the Doom Eagles who were stationed there and report any enemy movements to the main force.’

‘Eight Centurions and a Chaplain to secure an entire continent.’ Lentulus’s tone was jovial, but with an undercurrent of bitterness. He would have preferred to join the battle at Fort Kerberos, on the other side of the world, and had made those feelings known, as well as his resentment of the reason why Squad Aeroth had been despatched on this mission. ‘I hope the enemy are ready for us.’

‘Captain Galenus believes that whatever enemy forces are on Orath are focused on Fort Kerberos.’ Sentina’s voice was steel. ‘The warp rift that now hangs above this world is above Kerberos, and orbital auguries detected a build-up of life signs there. Keeping Fort Garm secure is a precaution.’

‘A wise one,’ said Iova. ‘The two fortresses are the only notable defences this world has. If Kerberos has already fallen to the foe, Garm must be held.’

‘So why only us?’ snarled Lentulus.

‘Because the Fifth Captain is confident that he can retake Fort Kerberos from whatever awaits him,’ said Aeroth. ‘He has the bulk of three companies and half the Chapter armoury.’

Lentulus opened his mouth to respond, but his words were drowned out by an almighty clang as something impacted hard against the hull of the gunship.

Hell had come to Orath.

That was not a fanciful description, not a metaphor for some abstract concept. Alia Blayke had no time for that sort of thinking. No, the hell that had come to Orath was quite real. It was dangerous. It was personal. And it was in her way.

Alia swung her battered autorifle at the creature that stood before her. It, and another six of its kind, blocked the narrow alley between houses, her only way back to the ragtag group of survivors with whom she travelled. The heavy wooden butt of the autogun smacked into the monster’s jaw and she heard the satisfying crack of bone shattering. It stumbled back and she ran, pushing the creature to the side, feeling putrefying flesh give beneath her hand.

She should have been horrified. She should have felt fear, terror, panic. She had at first. Now, after months of encountering the shambling monstrosities on a near-daily basis, after hiding beneath piles of wet, rotten corpses to evade them, after smearing herself in their viscera to pass through a crowd when there was no other way, there was no fear left. No terror. No panic. Only numbness. Sometimes she wished she could feel again, but then she remembered the all-consuming mix of emotions that had seized her the first time she had seen one of them. Of course, it didn’t help that it had been… No. If she started to think about that, she would feel again, and it would all batter down her defences and come flooding in, and then she would be doomed.

The others faced away from her. She put her head down and stormed through them, swinging her rifle to sweep them aside. She was strong, the result of years of labour on her father’s farm, and the frail, rotting bodies of the plague victims were no match for her brawn. She continued to run, churning up the mud. They would follow, and she had to get back to the group, to warn them that there were enemies here, that they weren’t safe.

Right now, Alia didn’t think she’d ever be safe again.

She barrelled round a corner, taking it too tightly and hitting herself on the wooden wall. Pain shot up her arm, but she ignored it. She’d felt worse. The impact killed her momentum, and she dared a look back. The flesh-eaters were nowhere to be seen, but she could hear them in the distance, the low moaning that followed them everywhere. It was almost musical, like a funereal dirge. Appropriate. They were dead, after all. She turned back to see a figure looming over her. Screaming, she lashed out, intent on dashing whatever brains the thing had left against the wall.

‘Stop, girl! What are you doing?’

The burly figure before her was no monster. It was Keevan. He raised his meaty fists and grabbed the rifle before it hit him, pulling it roughly from Alia’s grasp. She fell, sprawling in the wet mud, and gasped for breath.

‘Keevan… I’m…’

‘Calm down, girl,’ said the big man, reaching down and pulling Alia to her feet. ‘What’s up?’

She took a deep breath. ‘I was checking the buildings on the southern edge, and there was a group of… them.’

Keevan tensed. ‘Did they see you?’

‘Yes. I had to fight my way through them. They’ll be following.’ She didn’t like the panic in her voice. How could she still feel panic, of all things, through the numbness? She knew the answer, of course. The things were the most dangerous creatures she had ever seen, ever known. They had laid waste to her world, to her entire life. What’s more, they went against every natural law. They were the dead, risen again to devour the living.

‘We have to get back to the priest,’ said Keevan, drawing his broad-bladed knife from his belt and giving it a quick kiss on the cutting edge. He claimed to have been a butcher in a farmstead on the east coast before the apocalypse had hit Orath, and that he had always kissed the blade before slaughtering an animal for meat. ‘It shows respect for the beast,’ he had told her when she had asked him about the habit. ‘And it’s a damn sight better than kissing the animal.’ His tone had been jocular, but the laughter hadn’t reached his eyes. He wore the same dull, blank expression now. The one they all wore.

So much had changed since the plague had come to Orath. Their way of life was over. Alia knew that nothing would ever be the same. Not since… She stopped that line of thought before it wandered to dark places. Everything had changed. That was enough. Some things had fallen by the wayside naturally, like the Orathian custom of burying bodies to nurture the soil. The sheer scale of the casualties had quickly put paid to that.

Of course, if they’d been able to continue doing that, the dead would have a harder time getting up and killing more of their former friends and family members.

Alia and Keevan turned and walked quickly through the warren of rough streets and alleys of the town stead they had been exploring. They didn’t know its name, and there was no one alive to tell them, or at least no one willing to announce their presence to strangers. No surprise there. In her months crossing the continent, Alia had discovered that not only the dead were to be feared. Her pa had always told her that some people were just plain bad, and waiting for a chance to unleash the evil within them. She had never really believed him, though he had darkly hinted that he had seen things that proved it.

She wished he had been with her when she had come across a camp a few weeks after fleeing the family farm. The men had taken her in, been warm and friendly, given her food and a tent to sleep in. But then, that night… She pushed the thought away. That had been a long time ago, and she had been a different person.

‘Stop,’ Keevan hissed at her, putting his arm out to halt her. She peered past him and saw a trio of shambling corpses, kneeling on the ground, heads buried in the guts of a poor unfortunate. Alia didn’t recognise the man, and he looked like he’d been dead a while. He had a hole in his head, and Alia didn’t need to ask why he hadn’t turned after death, rising to terrorise the living. Of course, if he’d shot himself here…

‘His gun might be around here,’ she whispered to Keevan. He nodded.

‘I had the same thought.’

Guns – and ammunition for them – were in short supply amongst the survivors. Alia had her rifle, but she hadn’t fired it since leaving the farm, all those months before. She had one round for it, hanging in a small leather pouch around her neck, next to the crude wooden aquila on its battered silver chain. She wasn’t going to waste that round. She knew she might need it.

‘We have to see,’ she said. ‘I’ll distract them, draw them away and you find it.’

Keevan turned and looked at her.

‘It’s too risky. We need to warn the others.’

‘And that’s what I’ll do. I can outrun them. I’ll get back to the square and we can form a defence. Just like the last ten times. But if there’s a weapon here…’

‘I know,’ sighed Keevan. ‘You’re right. Okay, go. But no unnecessary risks, girl. We need you alive.’ He lowered his voice, and she barely heard the rest of his words. ‘You’re the only one that bloody off-worlder listens to.’

She smiled, reached up and pinched his cheek. ‘I’ll be fine, Keevan. You keep yourself safe as well.’

He grunted in response and pulled his arm away. Alia stepped out and edged towards the group of flesh-eaters. A wave of foul odour hit her. She had become inured to the general stench of Orath, the rotting crops and the smell of the shambling once-people, but this layered something else on top, the stench of human innards, not yet rotten. She stepped closer to them, out into the open, scooping up a handful of mud, and cleared her throat.

‘You want something fresher?’ she shouted. Slowly, almost deliberately, they turned. Eerily, they did so in unison, as if some greater intelligence were guiding their actions. ‘Come and get me!’ she screamed, and flung the mud in the face of the closest. It wouldn’t impair the monster – it was guided by other senses than sight, she was sure – but it would certainly make sure that their attention was on her. With a last glance back at Keevan, she turned and ran.

TWO

As he pulled the Fury of Gallicus level, Isachaar’s mental cortex processed a number of subroutines at once. He checked the augurs to ensure that the Fury’s sister craft, Aeonid’s Lament, was still with him. It was, but was veering away rapidly, pursued by something fast and dangerous. He queried the cogitator databanks for a match for the attackers. He opened the vox to the crew compartment, tersely informing them that the Stormraven was under attack.

The response he received made him query why fully organic beings were so prone to raised voices and profanity. He dismissed that – in nearly two hundred years, he had never come to a satisfactory conclusion anyway – and focused on identifying the attackers. When he did, he checked the results and opened a channel to Chaplain Sentina.

Sentina squeezed the haft of his crozius arcanum, feeling the leather of the grip. Beneath the black armour, his knuckles would be white with tension, he knew. He hated being out of control, and he was rarely more so than in a battle like this. His vox buzzed and the pilot’s voice droned into his ear.

‘Brother-Chaplain, the attacking force consists of two fighters, conforming to the Hell Blade pattern used by traitor forces.’

‘Keep them off us, Isachaar. We’ll open the hatches and lend some fire.’ Sentina turned to the Centurions. ‘Two fighters attacking,’ he told them tersely.

Aeroth looked over at him. ‘Orders, Brother-Chaplain?’

‘We will engage them and destroy them. Do what you can to help. Put the weapons on those oversized battle-suits to good use.’

A thrill went through Oenomaus at the Chaplain’s order. This was far from his first taste of battle – a decade in the Scout company and five more years learning to use the many heavy weapons of the Devastators had seen him in plenty of combat situations – but using the Centurion warsuit was a new experience. He felt the thrill being echoed by the suit’s machine-spirit, and shivered at the sensation, a momentary burst of timeless, ageless hatred and fury. He let go of the bar above his head and stamped over to the portside hatch, steady and stable despite the rocking of the gunship as Isachaar dodged and weaved around the attacking fire.

Over the squad vox, he heard Sentina order the pilot to open the side doors, and then everything was drowned out by the rushing of air as the hatch before him opened, pulling smoothly to one side. Outside was anarchy. A green mist wreathed the sky, limiting visibility, but through it he could just make out contrails from the engines of multiple flyers. He activated the targeting systems in his helm and a series of filters fell across his display, scrolling information about atmospheric conditions, wind speeds and potential targets. He mag-locked his feet to the floor of the cabin and brought up his arms, willing the lascannons slung below each huge fist to power up. He couldn’t hear the characteristic whine over the sound of the wind, but his display flashed up both weapons with full charge.

Oenamaus looked around for a target. Something flew past at amazing speed, the velocity too high for even his armour’s enhanced auto-senses to track. He pivoted in the direction it had been flying, and there it was – through the ghostly emerald hue of the mist, he saw the distinctive shape of a Hell Blade, long and slender, twin wings jutting out from a small central core with an elongated spike on the rear. The fighter had a bank of vicious looking cannons mounted below the cockpit that were spitting rounds at the Aeonid’s Lament. He locked on the craft and prepared to fire.

The Stormraven lurched and turned, and he almost lost the target, but his auto-senses compensated and he was rewarded with the ping of a confirmed target lock. Taking a deep breath, he opened fire.

Twin beams of ruby light lanced out from the long cannons mounted beneath his arms and struck the Hell Blade on one outswept wing. It sparked and the craft juddered. He adjusted his aim and prepared to fire again, this time targeting the cockpit.

But he had drawn the attention of the craft’s pilot. It swung towards him and pulled closer through the malefic fog, revealing the unmistakable forms of autocannons mounted in two banks of two.

Isachaar had obviously noted the Hell Blade’s approach, as he banked steeply and pulled the Stormraven out of the smaller craft’s arc of vision. As it swept by, Oenomaus caught a glimpse of the cockpit.

It was empty.

‘Brother-sergeant, Chaplain,’ he shouted over the squad vox. ‘There is no pilot in that fighter.’

‘That’s impossible,’ cut in Lentulus, who was at the starboard hatch, heavy bolters blazing at another enemy flyer. ‘They can’t fly themselves.’

‘Nothing is impossible when we deal with the Archenemy,’ said Sentina, his voice sepulchral.

As the Stormraven banked around once again, the Hell Blade came back into view, flying directly towards the Ultramarines vessel. A targeting solution crossed Oenomaus’s view and he opened fire, crimson lances spearing into the fighter’s prow as autocannon rounds impacted against the larger craft’s hull. One slammed into Oenomaus’s leg, but the warsuit’s thick plate was proof against the shot. As Isachaar accelerated the Stormraven out of the Hellblade’s path, Oenomaus noticed something else.

Along the long, slender, spiked wing of the Chaos-tainted fighter were a cluster of grotesque, unlidded eyes. And they were staring at him.

Aeroth gripped one of the rails above his head and fired another volley of shots from his grav-cannon out into the maelstrom. Iova stood to his side, back against the compartment wall, both heavy bolters blazing into the mist. They were at the rear hatch of the craft.

‘This is useless, brother,’ grumbled Iova over a closed channel. ‘All we’re doing is scratching the paint.’

‘Do you have any better suggestions?’

‘Not really. But complaining makes me feel better.’

‘I’m so happy for you,’ said Aeroth through gritted teeth as he let go of the rail and leaned out to follow the path of a Hell Blade, sending a pulse of gravitational energy in its direction. He saw the craft’s engine casing crumple with the impact, and it seemed to pause for a moment as one thruster ceased working.

‘I’ve killed the starboard engine on one of them,’ he put across the general vox.

‘I see it,’ answered Isachaar. ‘Tracking.’

Isachaar slewed the Fury around sharply, following the damaged Hell Blade. It was slower, its movements easier to track, but even then the targeting cogitator was struggling to keep up. He hammered las-fire towards the stricken craft, scoring deep gouges in the hull. Absently, he noted that they looked like cuts in flesh, red-rimmed and leaking a fluid that might have been blood. The true horror of Chaos, he had often thought, was that it could take something with the purity of the machine and imbue it with organic weakness. Well, he would put the machine-spirit of this craft out of whatever misery it was trapped in.

The targeting systems finally caught up and Isachaar released the safety on one of the stormstrike missiles slung beneath the Fury’s wings. It flew straight and true, and obliterated the corrupted vessel in a storm of fire. Isachaar allowed himself the organic indulgence of a smile.

It would be the last time he would ever do so.

Sentina stood in the middle of the passenger cabin, mag-locked to the floor, turning to observe each of the Centurions as they continued to track the foe. It made him proud to call them brothers. Though their effectiveness against the enemy would be slight, and the danger they faced by exposing themselves at the hatches was great, not one of them flinched. It was not quite true that Space Marines knew no fear. They knew it, but at their best they mastered it and used it to propel them forward. That was what Aeroth, Iova, Lentulus and Oenomaus did now. And through their efforts, one of their attackers was already destroyed.

‘By your efforts shall we defeat this foe,’ he intoned across the vox.

The rest of what Chaplain Sentina had been going to say was lost when a third Chaos fighter, that had been hiding lower in the mist, emerged vertically and fired a slew of autocannon rounds straight through the Fury of Gallicus’s cockpit.

A few seconds later, the Stormraven gunship exploded.

‘Incoming!’

Alia’s voice rang through the central area of the small town, and the group of men and women clustered in small groups around the large, open area snapped to attention. She skidded to a halt and shouted again. ‘Dead incoming!’

A figure pushed his way through the crowd that began to develop around her, a small man, portly, wearing ragged green robes, his ruddy face crowned by a greying tonsure of dark hair.

‘Are you all right, child?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘There are dead following, father. At least three, but maybe more. There were others, but we lost them.’ She was breathless, and babbling, she knew.

‘Rose, Bragg.’ The priest nodded to a pair of men who stood clutching makeshift spears, grim expressions on their faces. One was tall, his hair long and dirty blond, the other short, a ragged beard emphasising his balding crown. They shared a first name, and so were referred to by their surnames. ‘Did you hear young Alia?’ Father Andronicus continued.

‘Aye. We’ll set up a perimeter in the direction she came from, and keep an eye on the other exits to the square,’ said the shorter one.

They nodded and set to it, looking faintly ridiculous next to one another as they started to organise a cordon.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me “young Alia”,’ she muttered as the priest returned his attention to her.

‘Ah, but you are, child,’ he said, pulling a battered canteen from within his robes and offering it to her.

‘I’m older than at least ten other people here,’ she protested, grabbing the canteen and unscrewing the top. She took a swig and nearly spat it back out. The liquor was strong, burning her throat. She coughed.

‘Oops.’ Andronicus smiled broadly. ‘Wrong drink.’ He rummaged in his robes again, and Alia shook her head.

‘No, that’ll do,’ she gasped. She heard a shout and turned her attention to the group of men Rose and Bragg were organising. They stood in a rough line, spears pointed at the group of three walking corpses Alia had exhorted to follow her. As she watched, the trio of creatures pounced, desperate to get between the wall of spears and tear into warm human flesh. All three were impaled, but seemed not to notice, continuing to pull themselves forward even as their innards unravelled, smearing the shafts of the weapons with blood and pus.

The three men whose spears had caught the creatures – Rose and Bragg amongst them – shifted apart to allow another group through. These were armed with axes, and Alia looked away as they set to hacking the heads from the monsters. She didn’t want to watch. Monsters or no, they had been human once.

‘You said there were more?’

‘There are. Lots more.’ Keevan pushed his way through the group of blood-spattered men who were dragging the corpses of the undead away. ‘At least a hundred. And they’re acting as a pack. And coming this–’

He was cut off by an immense explosion that echoed around the square and beyond. It seemed to come from all about Alia, and above. She looked up to see, in the distance, the aftermath of a great flash blazing fiercely through the greenish mist.

‘Ah…’ breathed the priest, his head also turned skyward. ‘At last.’ Then he turned and raised his voice. ‘Everyone, gather together and prepare to move on.’ He offered no further explanation.

‘Again?’ groaned a voice from somewhere in the crowd of bodies. Alia recognised it as belonging to Pieta, a lad from a village they had passed through the month before. They had found him hiding in the basement of his family home. Of his parents and brothers, there was no sign. He was eight years old, and had lived in relative luxury, the son of a scholam instructor and a nurse at the local medicae. He hadn’t adjusted to life on the run yet, and every time they found a new settlement, he was the first to voice the hope that this might be a clear town, that they might be able to settle here.

It was a fool’s hope, Alia knew. She had dared to express it herself in the early days, but cynicism had soon set in. Part of her hoped it would do so in Pieta as well. His constant hope annoyed her. But then she saw him, so like little Felip, and she hoped that his dreams stayed alive. Maybe they would even come true, if the priest was right and they found help at the distant edifice of Fort Garm.

‘Again, Pieta,’ boomed the priest. ‘I know, I had hoped for longer here as well, but we must accept that the God-Emperor is pushing us onwards to Fort Garm, where salvation awaits.’

A general grumbling met the priest’s words. No one really believed that there would be anything at the ancient fortress other than more death. Andronicus was an outsider. He didn’t know the stories of Fort Garm, and its counterpart on the northern continent, Fort Kerberos.

‘Come on now!’ bellowed Keevan. ‘Gather everything together. Are we missing anyone?’

People started moving with purpose, Keevan amongst them. Alia caught his arm.

‘Did you find a gun?’ she asked.

Keevan grimaced. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Empty. Looks like he used his final round on himself.’ He pulled away and delved into the crowd, shouting orders. Crestfallen, Alia clutched the leather pouch around her neck, squeezing it and feeling the solid shape within. Her fingers brushed the crude wooden eagle as well. She looked into the crowd and caught a glimpse of Pieta. For a moment, he looked just like Felip. Just like her brother.

Thirteen thousand years ago

The tide of monsters stretched to the horizon, and beyond. From his vantage point atop the Hill of Beginnings, Kharanath could see little but a roiling mass of ever-changing flesh, the raw stuff of the otherrealm become real. Everywhere he looked, it formed bodies that looked wrong, with too many joints, impossibly rippling muscles and bone-like blades that jutted directly from skin. When they were struck by one of the eldar in the small – and shrinking – knots of defenders, the flesh split, deformed, then reknitted, sometimes the same, sometimes in a completely different configuration. The things couldn’t die. The warriors of Meldaen had held out against them for weeks now, awaiting reinforcements in vain. Now only one hope remained.

‘The mon-keigh have a word for them,’ whispered a voice in his mind. ‘A name from their most ancient myths. Daemon.’

Kharanath snorted in amusement. ‘We have words for them as well, Elthaenneath. Neverborn, soul thieves, darktide, bloodwights. A million names, for the million or more forms they take.’

He had to admit that the word did fit though. ‘Daemon,’ he repeated softly. It was a surprisingly simple word to encompass such complex creatures with their seemingly infinite variety, but it had a good weight to it.

‘They believed that creatures such as these were the servants of evil gods, that they existed to steal souls and put them to eternal torture.’

The psychic conversation with his brother helped to keep Kharanath focused. His arms ached, his body protesting after days of near-constant battle. His spear was harnessed on his back now, his pistol long since discarded for want of ammunition. Further down the slope, his Seventeen Swords – or ‘Nine Knives’ as Kotris, the eternal joker, had dubbed them, with regard to their remaining number – fought against the front-line troops of the foe, tall and rangy beasts with crested and horned heads, and backwards-jointed legs. They gripped great brass blades in their claws, and their lean bodies seemed soaked in gore. The smell of them infused the battlefield.

‘Battlefield,’ he said ruefully. ‘All of Meldaen is a battlefield now.’

‘Not for too much longer, my brother,’ came Elthaenneath’s voice, whispering through his senses. ‘The ritual nears completion. The seals take shape.’

Elthaenneath stood far beneath Kharanath’s feet, deep in the tunnels beneath Meldaen. He was no warrior, his brother. While Kharanath had studied the arts of battle, the way of the blade, his twin had toiled to become an artisan, learning how to sing wraithbone into shape.

That was what he was doing in that chamber far below, crafting a wraithbone capstone with which to seal the rift in the otherrealm that had opened in the heart of their world. Another bonesinger was doing the same on the other side of Meldaen. When their work was complete, the horde of monsters – daemons – that surged across the world would be banished. Or so they hoped.

Of course, that assumed that the eldar lasted long enough to complete the seals and end the incursion. The death toll had been horrendous, the damage to the population of the previously idyllic world incalculable.

‘I wonder if the doomsayers in the coreworlds have a point, my brother,’ he said.

‘In what way?’

‘You have heard the tales of the excesses in the heart of the empire, the orgies of bloodletting, the festivals of indulgence. What if they are disturbing the fabric of the otherrealm? What if those who claim farsight are right, and a blade is coming through the darkness for us? What if this is its leading edge?’

Elthaenneath had no response.

Kharanath returned his attention to the battle below. The knots of eldar warriors – brave men and women who had taken up blade and rifle to save their world, though they had lived long lives of peace and luxury – were getting smaller, and the enemy host was undiminished. He sighed, and began the climb down the steep hill, picking his way sure-footedly through clusters of loose stones and skipping across the eldar dead from the last time the daemons had broken through the lines of the Seventeen Swords and made it partway up the hill.

‘We can’t even bury our dead,’ he muttered bitterly. The creatures were relentless, their assaults ferocious, and each time they pushed forward, they came closer to overwhelming the exhausted eldar entirely.

‘And the living cannot hold out much longer,’ said a voice from behind him, soft and feminine.

‘No, we can’t,’ Kharanath agreed, not turning. Althyra was his shadow, his protector, the only one of his Seventeen Swords not guarding the slopes below. She was sworn to keep any threats from reaching Kharanath. Ultimately, he knew, she would fail, unless Elthaenneath and his fellow bonesinger completed their work. ‘But if we fall, we fall as heroes, Althyra. It is time for our last stand.’

Drawing his tall spear from its harness on his back, Kharanath stepped forward and thrust the weapon into the air. It sang as it sliced, a long, low keening that would have pierced the souls of his foes, had they souls to affect.

‘Seventeen Swords! To me!’ he bellowed, his voice carrying across the clash of blades and bestial sounds of the unnatural monsters below. He broke into a run, feeling Althyra following, and leapt into the fray. Allowing his training and deadly instinct to take over, Kharanath started to kill.

As his blade cleaved through infernal unflesh, spilling corrosive black blood that stained the soil, he cast his mind back to his brother.

‘Elthaenneath, how goes the ritual?’

He was vaguely aware of his remaining guards gathering around him, each performing mighty deeds that would be commemorated in song and story, should any who saw them survive long enough to record them.

Here, Alandris the Deathshaper leaped high into the air, carving his way through the pilot of a flying chariot that burned with blue flames, before skipping his way across a flight of manta-like beasts that followed in the chariot’s wake, stabbing each with one of his paired mirrorblades as he bounded from their predatory forms.

There, Althyra slipped from shadow to shadow, her skills defying mortal comprehension, bringing herself closer to a towering, disease-ridden warrior who directed the march of a host of smaller creatures ten thousand strong, each clutching a misshapen sword dripping with virulent fluid and oozing blood and pus from a dozen wounds across their bodies. The creature didn’t see Althyra coming. She appeared behind it, coming from the shadow cast by a great flapping banner marked with sigils that made Kharanath’s soul itch. With a single line of monofilament wire, Althyra took the enemy leader’s head from its shoulders. It was to little avail – there were a dozen more to take its place, and the march of the plagueridden soldiers continued unabated.

And all the while, Kharanath slew, his spear driving through enemy chests, bursting from their backs in showers of corrupt blood and slicing limbs from bodies. And all the while, he waited for a response from Elthaenneath. But there came none.

‘Elthaenneath?’ he sent again, allowing concern and a touch of panic to colour the message. Still nothing. He spoke aloud. ‘Althyra, I have lost contact with my brother. We must get below. If he is lost, we all are.’

She was suddenly at his side, clenching and unclenching the fist that controlled her monofilament wire spinner. ‘Then we go, my lord. The other Swords?’

Kharanath hesitated. If the daemons had overwhelmed Elthaenneath’s guard, the Seventeen Swords would be of immeasurable use. Yet they were direly needed up here. He shook his head. ‘They stay.’

Althyra nodded. ‘Then let us go.’ She bounded away towards the hidden entrance to the caverns, some kilometres distant, away from the bulk of the fighting. Kharanath followed. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

THREE

The wind rushed around Sentina, deafening and dizzying. There was no up or down as he fell, no sense of location, time or distance. He remembered – barely – an almighty explosion, immense heat and deafening noise, and the Stormraven losing control. He remembered dropping, and being grabbed by a great fist. Oenomaus. The young battle-brother had pulled him onto his huge shoulder guard. And now they were falling, the wind buffeting them as they tumbled through the mist. The Chaplain heard – barely – a bleat over his vox-link and blink-clicked the volume to maximum.

‘…ryone… ke it… plan…’

It was Aeroth’s voice, and the Chaplain struggled to hear what the sergeant was saying. ‘Repeat, sergeant!’ he shouted, his voice booming but still almost lost to his ears as the wind rushed and whipped against his helm.

‘…aid…ve a plan…’

Sentina growled. Aeroth had a plan. How very reassuring. He focused all his efforts on locating the other Centurions. His helm display blinked with their transponder icons, though it was clearly struggling to keep up with the pace of their descent, altitude markers flicking digits quicker than even his enhanced eyes could follow.

He struggled to make sense of where they were in relation to him. Three-dimensional navigation was, he believed, something better left to pilots. As best he could tell, they were all within twenty metres of one another horizontally, but at differing altitudes. He shouted into the vox again.

‘Your plan had better be good, sergeant, or this is going to be a short and painful mission.’

Aeroth couldn’t make out exactly what the Chaplain had shouted over the vox, but he caught the general idea. He muttered a quiet response, knowing it would never be heard.

‘I hope it works as well, Manet…’

The plan was simple, but not exactly one that was Codex-approved. For some reason, the wisdom held within that mighty tome didn’t include what to do to survive a fall of several kilometres without jump packs, so some degree of improvisation was required. If the worthies of the Chapter objected, Aeroth would simply be glad to be alive to hear it. Assuming the plan worked and whatever waited for them on the surface of Orath didn’t kill them.

With a thought, Aeroth brought the controls for his grav-amp up on his helm display. The arcane piece of technology that was built into his left arm had no function on its own; its purpose was to enhance and regulate the gravitational effects of the cannon slung under his right limb.

Grav-weapons fired a focused graviton beam that created a temporary increase in the Newtonian force around a target, crumpling armour and mangling organic tissue. The grav-amp allowed the user to increase or decrease the power of the created anomaly.

Or reverse it.

Aeroth manipulated the controls with a series of gestures and blinks. What he was doing wasn’t quite what the weapon was designed for, but it would work. It would have to.

As he completed the adjustments, warning lights blinked red on his display. He was sure alarms were sounding as well, and he silently thanked the Emperor that he couldn’t hear them. He dismissed the warnings and, with a grunt of effort, forced his right arm to move against the onrushing wind, pointing directly down. He did some calculations, aiming at a point past Brother Iova, who would be the first to know – in spectacular and messy fashion – if the plan failed.

He closed his eyes and fired, holding down the trigger and sending a steady stream of gravitic particles towards the rapidly approaching ground.

All of Sentina’s attention was on the rapidly spooling numbers on the altimeter. It took him almost a full second to realise that they were slowing. And if the numbers were slowing, so too was their descent. They slowed further as they approached zero. The rushing of the wind lessened and details began to resolve. He could see the ground coming closer, but as though they were falling through the low gravity of an airless moon. He didn’t know what was causing this, but he wasn’t going to complain.

Oenomaus had obviously caught on, orienting himself so that his feet were to the ground. It was still going to be a rough landing, but the Centurion warsuits were made for combat deployment from a hovering gunship. They could survive this.

The impact rattled every bone in Sentina’s body. He felt teeth crack as they ground together and his helm display flashed up with damage runes. He scanned and dismissed them. Nothing that would impair him too badly.

He felt another impact as Oenomaus released his grip on him and he fell from the Centurion’s shoulder guard to the ground. For a moment, he lay there. His enhanced physiology allowed him to avoid the worst effects of dizziness and nausea, but his head spun nonetheless.

‘No weakness,’ he muttered and pulled himself to his feet, muscles protesting. He pulled up a medical analysis on his display. It reported some minor bone fractures, already healing, and some torn muscles and ligaments. He would be in pain for a while, but he would live. He looked up, and saw stars falling to earth. No, he corrected himself, not stars. The remains of the gunship. It was gone then. Isachaar was likely dead. The rest of the squad, though…

He opened the vox. ‘Squad Aeroth, report.’

There was an almost imperceptible pause before the responses came. Iova, Aeroth, Lentulus. They had been separated by the fall, landing some distance apart. Only Oenomaus was silent. Sentina looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was in a field, the crops rotting and dying. A green mist emanated from them, from the ground itself, rising upwards, obscuring vision beyond a few metres. Nothing his helm’s sensor suite wouldn’t be able to compensate for. The younger warrior’s Centurion suit stood silent and motionless beside him.

‘Oenomaus,’ he said, using his external vox-casters. ‘Brother, are you–’

‘Present and correct, Brother-Chaplain,’ boomed the Centurion’s voice. ‘My apologies. The impact reset my systems. The warsuit is powering up now.’

‘No apologies necessary, brother. Are you capable of doing your duty?’

‘I will be in a moment.’

‘Then do so. That is all the Emperor requires of us.’

‘And we can start now,’ came Iova’s voice over the vox. It was tinged with something unusual for a Space Marine. In a lesser being, Sentina might have called it panic. ‘Hostiles converging on my position.’

Sentina was already moving as he asked for details, his helm display showing Iova’s location relative to his own. ‘Plague victims?’

‘Negative, Brother-Chaplain. I can confirm daemonic presence on Orath. Repeat, confirm presence of daemons.’

Sentina broke into a run, sprinting in the direction of the heavy bolter fire that now echoed through the green mist shrouding the plains. That was where Iova was fighting. Daemons, he had said. The situation had obviously deteriorated rapidly on Orath if the immaterial servants of the Ruinous Powers were able to force their way across the veil. He activated his crozius arcanum, the crack of the energy field igniting and the hum of the generator as reassuring a sound as he could imagine. With the threat of daemons ahead, the eagle-headed maul was something solid he could hold onto. More solid than his faith in himself anyway.

As he ran, he tried to raise the second Stormraven, which carried the other half of Aeroth’s squad. There was no response. Out of range or, more likely, destroyed. And with the rest of Captain Galenus’s warriors half a world away, Sentina’s small force of Ultramarines could expect no help now.

He heard the slow, crashing footsteps of Centurion warsuits behind him, and the heavy bolter fire was so close he could almost feel the explosions of the mass-reactive shells. A horror from beyond nightmares loomed out of the mist before him, long, gangling arms clutching a wicked-looking cleaver in both hands, holding it in front of a hideously bloated stomach that seeped gases from several ruptures. One bulbous eye was set deep into the head that lolled atop a slender, bubo-covered neck, a head crowned with a single long horn. He swung instinctively, the crozius thudding into the daemon’s midriff and bursting through it, trailing rotting viscera. The creature staggered on, atrophied limbs reaching for Sentina. He pulled himself to the left and swung again, obliterating the daemon’s head. It fell.

He ran on, taking his crozius in a two-handed grip as he forged ahead through the greenish murk. He broke through the mist and came into a clearing, where the tall and bulky form of Iova was twisting left and right, sending bolt-shells scything through putrid flesh. Where the rounds exploded, gore splattered over more daemons as they shambled towards the Centurion. In the skies above, more of the daemons, one-eyed monstrosities wielding dripping blades of corroded steel, their skin rent and broken to reveal hideously rotten innards and oozing, unnatural fluids, clutched onto the backs of gigantic mutated flies. Sentina felt nothing but disgust for them.

‘Brother-Chaplain,’ boomed Iova. ‘I could use a hand dealing with the creatures above.’

Sentina nodded, paused for a second, pulling himself back and deactivating his crozius, and then sprinted towards the Centurion, who ducked ponderously down. Nimbly, the Chaplain jumped onto the rumbling heavy bolter arm even as it continued to spit shells at the daemons massing on the ground. From there, he climbed up onto the broad shoulder guard and, gathering himself once again, made a massive bounding leap from the back of the straightening Centurion.

The daemons didn’t see him coming. He grabbed the rear claw of one of the immense rot-flies. It was like sinking his hand into putrid meat, but he gripped onto the bone and bodily swung himself up, reigniting the power field on his weapon as he did so and driving the maul into the daemon’s gut. The swing brought him level with the one-eyed creature perched on the broad back of another fly. He kicked it from its mount and it plummeted to the ground below, landing with the sickly sound of flesh and bone being sundered.

Sentina paused for a second as the fly bucked beneath him, almost losing his balance even as the immense weight of his power armour drew him into the warp spawn’s pallid flesh. He pushed down, hearing the crack of the beast’s spine breaking and launched himself off again. He passed another and thrust his crozius deep into the rider’s ribcage. And then he was falling – again. For a brief moment, he was staring upwards at the warp rift in the sky. Clearly, it was not confined to the sky above Fort Kerberos, half a world away. And, impossibly, it looked bigger than it had before.

He landed on a plague daemon, gore and pus soaking his armour as it was pulverised by the impact. For a moment, he lay there dazed, sharp agony coursing through him, before his armour administered pain suppressants and his genhanced body began repairing the damage. He groped around for his crozius, ignoring the sickening mess in which he lay. His fingers closed around the haft and he pulled it towards him and rolled, activating it and battering it into the plague daemon that loomed over him, sword raised. He was rewarded with a low moan and a shower of stinking viscera. Shrugging it off, he pulled himself to his feet and looked around for more enemies. Seeing a knot of them in the distance, he began to sprint.

Aeroth, Lentulus and Oenomaus advanced, laying down bolt-shells, las-beams and grav-blasts with every ponderous step. The warsuits were slow, but the firepower they could muster was formidable indeed.

‘This is the joy of life, Oenomaus!’ said Lentulus. ‘We are as gods of war in these suits, even more than we are with power armour and boltgun. Revel in the tally we reap of these unnatural fiends.’

The younger battle-brother grunted, his attention on piloting the Centurion suit and maintaining a punishing rate of fire. He wasn’t picking targets so much as spraying rounds across his field of vision, such as it was in the infernal murk. Aeroth’s voice sounded across his personal vox.

‘Careful, brother. You’ll exhaust your ammo reserves at that rate, and I suspect this won’t be the last fight we see on this world.’

‘Aye, sergeant,’ he replied, the words clipped and frustrated. ‘I shall endeavour to maintain fire discipline.’

‘It’s understandable, Oenomaus,’ said the sergeant. ‘Lentulus is pompous and overblown, but he’s not wrong. These warsuits are mighty indeed. As are their machine-spirits and their lust for battle – don’t let yourself be overwhelmed.’

Oenomaus thought back to the first time he had stepped into the warsuit and placed himself in its embrace, both physically and mentally. He had felt the machine-spirit as a presence in there, both reassuring and somehow malignant. He knew that the sergeant spoke the truth.

The tech-thralls who had helped him to interface with the suit had whispered of joinings that went wrong, where the machine-spirit was too warlike and too powerful, taking over the mind of the novice pilot and rampaging through arming chambers, though such events were rare and the damage limited as a first joining was never attempted with live weapons on the warsuits.

He had survived without that happening, though he fancied he had felt the spirit of the suit probing at his mind, seeing if it could push itself into him. He would have to remain wary of that happening in the field as well.

‘Thank you for your concern, sergeant,’ he said as he focused his targeting array on a group of shambling plague daemons and loosed a short burst of bolt-fire that scythed through them, tearing them apart with controlled explosions. ‘I shall remain wary.’

Sentina rammed his crozius through the distended gut of a daemon, swaying aside to avoid the strike of another and tearing the mace out of the first. It slumped to the ground, acidic blood running in rivulets across the hard-packed dirt.

This was where his strength lay, the Chaplain knew. In the heat of battle, facing the foes of mankind and bringing death with pistol and bludgeon. And yet, he knew that he fulfilled only half of his duty on the battlefield. His role was to lead, as well as to kill, to inspire his battle-brothers to feats of heroism.

That had never been his forte. One to one with a battle-brother, he could divine what troubled a soul and provide an answer, but oratory, implacable leadership… He had been able to at least make the outward appearance convincing, though he had always felt his words to be hollow, but since Varos, he had been unable to muster the strength to even pretend.

Another pair of daemons advanced ponderously towards him, their single eyes glowing malignantly. Their rusted swords were raised, ready to strike a blow. The fluids that coated the blades were virulent and corrosive. Sentina had seen warriors fall to such weapons and knew that not even the genhanced physiology of a Space Marine would be proof against the toxins and contagions that would spread through his system if he were to be so much as nicked.

He twisted, swinging his crozius in a disarming blow. It struck one of the daemons on the wrist, shattering bone and pulverising flesh. The creature’s entire hand came off, sword with it. The plaguebearer continued its relentless movement, heedless of the wound, lunging for him with its intact arm and broken teeth. His backswing crashed through its neck and as it fell, Sentina was already moving towards the second. He swung low, rewarded with a satisfying crack as the mace struck its knee. As the fiend stumbled, he pulled his pistol from its holster and fired a single round into the daemon’s skull, ending its existence. As brains and daemonic flesh splattered against the earth, the Chaplain turned, looking for more targets. There were none.

The sound of gunfire had ended. Sentina opened a vox-channel.

‘Are there any more?’ he asked.

‘Clear,’ replied Aeroth after a moment, swiftly followed by similar acknowledgements from the rest of the squad. The Chaplain ordered them to regroup on his position and pondered the attack.

‘It seems… convenient that they were so close to where we landed,’ opined Aeroth, echoing Sentina’s thoughts.

‘Our very presence may have summoned them,’ said the Chaplain. ‘They are creatures of the immaterium. If this world is in the grip of the Ruinous Powers, as it surely is, then the veil could be drawing thin.’

‘Why are there not more of them, then?’ asked Lentulus. ‘If we brought them here, why not an endless tide to overwhelm us?’

‘If there are daemons appearing across the planet, perhaps there is only so much energy that can be expended in one place,’ suggested Iova.

‘I wonder what Captain Galenus’s forces are facing on the northern continent,’ said Aeroth thoughtfully. ‘It may be that the enemy focus upon Fort Kerberos, as do our brothers. We are but a scouting party – perhaps our foes were also.’

‘It is not for mortals to try to understand the ways of Chaos,’ said Sentina sharply. ‘To do so invites madness and ruin. Let it be enough that we have defeated them. If we encounter more, we shall do so again.’

‘The Chaplain is correct,’ said Aeroth. ‘We must make for Fort Garm and secure it.’

The Ultramarines set off, the ponderous footfalls of the Centurion warsuits shaking the earth with every tread.

FOUR

The group of men, women and children – around forty, all told, made their way through the narrow streets of the small town, moving as quickly and quietly as they could manage. At their head, Andronicus strode through the churning mud, murmuring under his breath. Prayers to the Emperor, Alia assumed. She’d never had much time for worship herself. She paid lip service to the Imperial creed, of course. Everyone did. But the farmstead had contained no temple – barely anywhere on Orath did, since the Ecclesiarchy of the Imperium chose to have no permanent presence on the world. But when wandering priests passed through – men like Andronicus – they would gather the folk and hold devotions in barns or out in the fields. Alia knew that she was supposed to find these events uplifting. She always hoped for a spiritual experience, to feel the love of the Emperor fill her and move her like in the old stories, but she usually just ended up wishing that she could get back to work.

Andronicus had been no more inspirational. And for all that she liked the old man, Alia didn’t trust him. He was an outsider.

And now, no rousing speeches about the light of the Emperor could make up for the fact that the sky itself had been torn apart, an oozing, cataracted eye staring down day and night, even through the hellish green fog that swathed the world. The… thing opened and closed seemingly at random, and it had brought death with it.

Keevan pushed his way past her. He had been at the rear of the group, chivvying them along. Alia moved forward a little in his wake, eager to hear whatever he had to say to the priest. The group came to a gradual halt as the two men stopped to converse.

‘Father Andronicus,’ Keevan said. ‘We need to speed up. They’re getting closer, and I think they’re moving in from the sides as well.’

‘Yes,’ the priest replied quietly. ‘I can hear them, their infernal song, all around us now.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘All around us.’ Alia didn’t understand his point for a moment, then it hit her. The song. It was coming from in front of them as well. They were surrounded. Keevan realised it too.

‘Everyone!’ he shouted. ‘We need to get to defensible positions. Get up onto the roofs of the buildings, women and children first.’

Like many men on Orath, Keevan was… old-fashioned. He believed that women were to be protected. Well, she’d be damned if she was going to be coddled. Anarchy followed his words, as people panicked, running for the buildings and trying to find handholds to climb up. Children started to cry. Alia saw one little girl – she didn’t know her name – standing alone, bawling her eyes out, a threadbare stuffed grox in one hand and a spreading puddle of urine around her feet, soaking into the mud.

Alia ran over and scooped the girl up.

‘Shh,’ she soothed. ‘It’s okay, we’ll get you safe.’

She carried the child to one of the buildings a short way back, where several children had already been lifted up onto the roof. A pair of men were helping to lift a pregnant woman up, struggling beneath her weight, and another pair leaned over the edge of the roof to pull her up, huffing and puffing as they hauled her upwards. When the men on the ground were free of their burden, Alia shouted over to them.

‘Little girl here to go up!’

The men looked round, and relief filled the face of one.

‘Emperor’s mercy!’ he exclaimed. ‘Janae! I thought I’d lost you, sweetie.’ He ran over and Alia pushed the weeping, sodden girl into his arms. ‘Thank you,’ he said, his face expressing his thanks better than any words could. ‘She’s all I have left.’

‘Get her to safety then,’ Alia said, the words coming out harsher than she intended. The man bristled and pulled away, heading back towards the building. The child – Janae – screamed and thrust her arms towards Alia. Alia turned back to see if anyone else needed help and saw, about twenty metres away, half-immersed in the mud of the narrow street, the girl’s toy.

‘It’s just a toy,’ she muttered, but from behind her she heard the girl’s screams increasing in volume and ardency. She had a sudden flash of a family trip to the Holborn farmstead, dinner beneath the stars. Felip had been a baby, younger than Janae was now, she reckoned. He had a toy, a wooden horse that their pa had carved for him. They’d left it behind, and as he’d been asleep when they left, no one noticed. The next day, when he found he no longer had it, he screamed for seven solid hours, only stopping when he wore himself out and returned to his slumber. When he woke again, the screaming continued. Pa had ended up carving another horse for him just to shut him up.

The girl deserved her toy. Alia ran towards it, stopping and bending down to scoop it up. She straightened, and looked down the street. What she saw stopped her in her tracks and grabbed her attention entirely.

That was why Alia Blayke didn’t see the once-human flesh-eater loping from the alley behind her. She didn’t even have time to scream as it lunged towards her and its teeth closed on her neck.

‘Chaplain Sentina, there is a settlement ahead.’

Sentina snapped out of his half-sleep at Iova’s words. He had engaged his catalepsean node as the Space Marines marched, falling into a state of semi-awareness that allowed his brain to rest while keeping him moving and functioning. He would need the scant rest it afforded later, he was sure. The Centurions did the same, one staying at full alertness while the others rested, switching every hour.

‘What sort of settlement?’ he asked.

‘A village, small. Perhaps two hundred buildings.’

Sentina nodded, recalling the reports on Orath. ‘That is moderately large by the standards of this world,’ he said. ‘Most of the people live on farmsteads and agrarian collectives.’ They had passed a few such scattered dwellings on their brief journey. None had seemed inhabited. ‘What signs of life are there?’

‘Sounds, Brother-Chaplain. Sounds of battle.’

‘Then we make haste,’ ordered Sentina. ‘If there are Imperial citizens alive in that settlement, our duty is to deliver them from whatever terror assails them.’

Sentina’s armour lacked the more sophisticated augury arrays of the Centurion warsuits, but it was only a few minutes before he too heard the distinctive sounds of combat. Gunfire – he could discern the crack-whine of lasguns and the sharp bark of autoguns and shotguns – echoed through the twisting streets of the small village, along with shouts and screams, and an eerie moan, almost rhythmic. For all the world, it sounded like a song, a wordless, tuneless dirge.

He had heard its like before. It meant only one thing.

Death walked.

As they approached the source of the noise, Sentina ordered the small squad to disperse and approach from different angles. The strange green mist shrouded them from sight and dampened the sound of the Centurions’ heavy tread. Whatever unnatural horrors fought in the village wouldn’t hear the Ultramarines coming.

Despite this advantage, the Chaplain advanced slowly and cautiously. Orath was in the grip of Chaos, and anything could be lurking in the infernal fog. As he edged forward, the mist parted before him and he beheld a scene of bedlam.

People were running and screaming, climbing buildings and desperately trying to avoid the clutches of the dread creatures that assailed them. A few brave men and women waved flaming torches at the horrors, rotting corpses that lumbered towards their living counterparts. They were trying to hold the walking dead back, to stop them from getting to the knot of desperate survivors who were trying to climb to safety, but they were being driven back, step by step, as the flesh-eaters grabbed at them and snapped mouldering jaws.

Several men crouched atop houses, firing at the beasts, but it wouldn’t be enough. Poorly aimed and from weapons of minimal power, they were dropping pitifully few of their attackers, who were swarming towards the sounds from every direction.

Sentina opened a vox-channel.

‘Plague victims sighted, brothers. Attack at will. Put the afflicted out of their misery, in the Emperor’s name.’

Aeroth acknowledged the Chaplain’s order and advanced. His warsuit was slow, but still faster than the walking dead, and his reactions were far quicker. He was on them before they could turn. He wouldn’t waste grav-fire on them, but the mighty fists beneath which the cannon and grav-amp were mounted were more than capable of crushing the frail, rotted bodies of the enemies. With each step, he lashed out, shattering skulls, breaking ribs and grinding fallen bodies to dust beneath his feet. He was death incarnate in the warsuit, and he knew that the chances of any of the dead penetrating the Centurion suit or his armour with their frail, subhuman nails and teeth were practically nonexistent. This wasn’t battle. It was slaughter.

‘People of Orath!’ he bellowed from his vox-caster. ‘Fall back. Let us deal with these creatures. Get yourselves to safety.’

He saw humans scrambling to obey him, stepping backwards hastily, still waving their crude torches to ward off the enemy who had not yet turned to face the walking death that assailed them. He watched as one man fell, dropping his makeshift weapon, which was extinguished in the churning mud. The man scrambled back, but one of the beasts grabbed for him, holding on with preternatural strength. It fell upon him, and Aeroth heard the man’s screams. He hesitated for a moment, then pushed forward and stamped down, crushing both attacker and victim.

It was a mercy.

The Emperor’s mercy, he thought ruefully.

The flesh-eaters were easy prey. Sentina scythed through them like a farmer in the field, the energy-shrouded head of his crozius arcanum returning them to blessed oblivion with every heavy stroke. It was a mechanical act, the beasts unable to stand against him. He passed through a horde of them with barely a scratch to the paint of his armour and came out at the end of a wide avenue.

It was clear of the dead. At the far end, a group of humans were helping one another up to the roof of a sturdy-looking dwelling. As Sentina watched, one woman, tall and broad, handed a crying child to a relieved-looking man before looking around. Evidently, she’d spotted something in the churned-up mud of the street, because she dashed out. As she did so, one of the rotting creatures lurched from an alley. The woman didn’t see it, her head down as she reached for whatever she sought. She was on a collision course with the dead thing. If it so much as scratched her, she would be infected, doomed to die and rise again as one of the keening creatures, driven only by the desperate need for human flesh.

Sentina reacted in a heartbeat, pulling his bolt pistol from the leather holster at his hip, priming it and firing a single shot. The bark of the weapon firing rang out, and it seemed that everything and everyone on the street froze and silence fell.

The creature’s head exploded even as its rancid jaws closed on the woman’s neck. It fell, its body jerking.

The human fell as well, crashing down into the muck. Sentina started towards her, hoping that the powerful explosive blast of the bolt-round hadn’t killed her too.

He had sixty-seven needless deaths on his conscience already. He didn’t need or want another.

Alia looked up through pain-filled eyes into a visage of death. Staring down at her was a skull-faced spectre, huge and black, adorned with bones and gold filigree. Where its face should have been was a skull, red light glowing from the eye sockets. In one enormous hand it gripped a rod of black metal with a golden eagle at the head, wings spread, both heads seeming to stare right at her. The other hand clutched what looked like an oversized pistol, boxy and smoking from the barrel.

‘Are you wounded?’ it asked, the words blaring mechanically from a grille beneath the skull.

‘Am… Am I dead? Have you come to take me?’

She knew it was a stupid question, but it was all she could think of. The red eyes bored into her and she couldn’t look away.

‘You are not dead,’ boomed the grating voice. It looked down at her. ‘You were hit by shrapnel. A superficial injury.’

‘What are you?’ she asked.

The immense figure slid the pistol it was carrying into a leather holster at its waist and reached up to its skull-head. With a long hissing sound, it twisted the skull free and lifted it. Beneath it was a broad face with skin the colour of mahogany, a face that was scarred and pitted and looked as if it had never smiled and wouldn’t know how.

‘What am I? I am a Space Marine.’

A Space Marine! One of the legendary defenders of the Imperium, the Emperor’s angels, so the tales said. For the first time in many long months, Alia allowed herself to feel emotion, because for the first time there was an emotion to feel other than terror.

‘Are you here to save us?’ she asked, relief flooding her.

‘Yes,’ said the Space Marine simply.

Sentina stared down at the girl for a moment.

‘Mortals,’ came Lentulus’s voice over the vox.

‘She was brave,’ said Sentina absently. ‘She was retrieving something. Something someone had lost.’ He bent down and picked up the mud-caked object she had dropped. It was small in his palm, some sort of child’s plaything. He dropped it again and looked up at the other people who were gaping at him, open-mouthed.

‘Take me to whomever is in command here,’ he said. The words seemed to break the mortal from her stupor. Two men, one tall and rangy and the other short and stout, ran forward to help her, but she brushed them off. Sentina nodded to them and they followed her towards the knot of civilians.

‘Let me through,’ came a voice from the crowd. It sounded old, wheezing and soft. An elderly man pushed his way out of the throng and stamped through the mud towards Sentina. He stood in front of the Space Marine and stared up at him. The man wore tattered robes the colour of Talassar’s oceans in summer, covered in long flowing parchments and icons. His hair was tonsured and greying, his ruddy face streaked with mud and blood. A chainsword was slung across his back, and around his neck a book hung on a frayed string. He was no more than half Sentina’s height, but his eyes blazed with fervour.

‘It’s about time,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting forever for reinforcements.’

‘Reinforcements?’ repeated Sentina, bemused.

‘Yes. As possibly the last remaining Imperial authority on Orath, I have been waiting for the forces to arrive that will deliver the world back into the bosom of the God-Emperor.’

‘And what Imperial authority do you represent?’ asked Sentina.

‘What are you, simple?’ said the old man. ‘Look at me. I’m a missionary of the Adeptus Ministorum, charged with bringing the God-Emperor’s light to worlds without a permanent church presence. Worlds like…’ he spread his arms wide, ‘this delightful place.’ He paused, then looked over his shoulder before lowering his voice. ‘It’s a bit of a backwater, but it’s home to them, of course. Don’t want to offend them. That would be… what’s the word? Impolitic. Might cause a nasty incident. That’s one of the tenets of the Missionaria Galaxia, you know. Keep the locals happy. Unless they’re mutants or worshipping something unsavoury.’

Sentina stared impassively down at the babbling old fool. ‘What is your name, missionary?’

‘Oh, you can call me Andronicus. And you, Brother-Chaplain?’

‘I am Sentina. You know my rank, missionary?’

‘I’ve been around,’ said the priest. ‘I’ve seen a Space Marine or two. And we’re told all about you lot in the seminary. About how you’re actually heathens, not believing that the Emperor is a god, all that. Technically, I could denounce you as a heretic, you know.’

‘That would be impolitic,’ said Sentina. ‘Especially if you want us to save this world.’

‘Yes, about that,’ said Andronicus. ‘Orath is being overrun by Chaos, Chaplain Sentina. It’s going to require a hell of a leap of faith to save it. Are you the man to make that leap?’

The priest peered up at Sentina in a way that made the Chaplain feel quite uncomfortable. He turned and looked around at the hulking shapes of the Centurions. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘But first, we need to get to Fort Garm.’

‘What a coincidence,’ said the priest. ‘Just where we were going. You can come with us if you like.’ He leaned in closer to Sentina and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Between you and me, you’ll probably be safer with us by your side.’

FIVE

Between the ponderous pace of the Centurions and the dawdling of the half-starved and terrorised civilians, the journey to Fort Garm was painfully slow. More than thirty of the humans had survived the attack in the village, and in the two days since, they had shown remarkably good spirits, despite crossing the rotting fields of their home.

The warsuit-clad Ultramarines marched in pairs on either flank of the group, keeping watch for the enemy. Twice, they saw small groups of the walking dead in the distance, but never close enough to be a threat. Of the daemons, there was no sign. And in the sky, far above the mist-shrouded plains of Orath, the great rift seemed to wink, visibly waning.

Aeroth and Lentulus travelled together, and the latter spent the journey making plain his objections to his sergeant’s actions bailing out of the Stormraven. In frustration, Aeroth left his battle-brother to walk alone and stamped to the front of the group, scared-looking civilians moving hurriedly out of his path as he clanked through their huddles.

‘Brother-Chaplain,’ he said as he pulled close to Sentina. The Chaplain walked alone at the head of the party. ‘I tire of Lentulus’s censure. Would you care for company?’

‘I’ve not long managed to get that irritating priest to leave my side and tend his flock,’ replied Sentina. ‘But your company is more welcome, Darin.’

Aeroth fell into step beside the Chaplain and the pair walked together in silence for a time.

‘What troubles Lentulus?’ asked Sentina eventually.

‘My use of the grav-cannon to cushion our fall,’ said Aeroth.

‘He would have preferred that we were killed?’

‘I think he would consider that preferable to breaking the tenets of the Codex, yes.’

Sentina shook his head. ‘He knows as well as any that the Codex is but a guideline.’

‘Not something I expect to hear from a Chaplain. Isn’t your role to enforce discipline?’

‘I am not a commissar of the Astra Militarum, Darin. My role is to ensure the spiritual wellbeing of the company. I leave decisions of doctrine to those more qualified.’

‘Such as?’ pressed the sergeant, looking down at Sentina from the cradle of his warsuit.

‘Such as the Masters of the Chapter.’

‘Men like Galenus?’ scoffed Aeroth. ‘He is a vainglorious fool, as this expedition shows. We should have a company at our backs, not a squad.’

‘That is not for us to decide, sergeant,’ cautioned Sentina, his voice hard. ‘Or have you learned nothing from your demotion?’

Aeroth was stung by the comment, but held his tongue. Riling the Chaplain would serve no purpose. ‘What do you know of my shame?’ he asked.

‘That you angered the First Captain. A fool’s move, if ever there was one.’

‘You know what I did?’

‘No,’ said Sentina. ‘What was done matters not, only what resulted from it.’

‘It should matter,’ said Aeroth thoughtfully. ‘I refused a direct order from the First Captain.’

‘Not something Agemman would take kindly,’ said the Chaplain.

‘We were fighting rebels on Alakash,’ said Aeroth, remembering the events all too vividly. ‘The First Captain wanted to lead the assault on the enemy command post.’

‘And you deemed it too great a risk?’

‘I did, as is… was my right as the sergeant of his command squad. He… disagreed.’

‘He led the attack?’

‘No. By the time he knew that I had ordered Sergeant Caeros to spearhead the attack in his stead, it was already under way. Severus was… furious.’

‘I can only imagine. His temper is legendary. What happened in the attack?’

‘Heavy casualties. Caeros died. Had Agemman been in his place, he would have fallen. I am certain of that. And without him to strategise, the war would have been lost.’

‘You don’t doubt your decision, even given what resulted?’

‘I do not. I was demoted, but I serve still. And so does the First Captain. That is all that matters.’

‘And we survived the descent onto Orath,’ said Sentina. ‘That is all that matters. It might do for Lentulus to be reminded of that.’

‘Aye,’ said Aeroth. A thought struck him. ‘You asked if I had learned anything from my demotion. You did know what happened on Alakash.’

‘Of course I did,’ said Sentina. ‘But sometimes you need to come to a realisation by yourself.’

Aeroth grunted and fell back to return to Lentulus’s side. If the battle-brother began his harping again, Aeroth would consider the Chaplain’s advice.

Another few hours brought them to the gates of Fort Garm. It was an imposing edifice, a central keep stretching into the murky sky, with a great ring of stone encircling it. There were no signs of life.

‘No enemy targets identified,’ reported Iova, who had been sent in close to get accurate augury readings.

‘And no other signs of life,’ chimed in Lentulus. ‘Wasn’t there supposed to be a garrison?’

‘Five battle-brothers of the Doom Eagles,’ said Aeroth. ‘Iova, any vox-traffic?’

‘Nothing,’ said the Centurion after a brief pause. ‘Fort Garm seems dead.’

‘That doesn’t mean what it should on this world,’ muttered Aeroth to himself.

The four Centurions approached the fort first, marching in lockstep, weapon arms raised and primed. A lack of augury readings didn’t mean a lack of foes, especially with the thrice-damned fog potentially fouling the systems.

Nothing marched out to meet them. No enemies stood upon the walls, weapons ready. And when Aeroth banged on the gate with a great ceramite fist, it opened easily.

He was almost disappointed.

Inside, Fort Garm was as empty as it appeared from the exterior. Silence blanketed its wide stone corridors, the heavy footfalls of the Centurions echoing loudly through the structure. Aeroth thought back to scant hours before when he had looked upon silences as an ideal. What he would give now for some good noisy enemies to kill.

As well as the main keep, the complex contained a large hangar, which upon inspection contained several Rhinos and Stormtalon fighters, and a smaller building, constructed on a human scale, rather than the larger, wider, more open architecture of the buildings designed for transhuman Space Marines. Chaplain Sentina had taken a party from the civilian group into that building, while the Centurions searched the keep.

Aeroth had passed several storerooms, in which were kept weapons, ammunition and ration packs, as well as replacement parts for power armour. For a distant listening post, the fort was certainly well stocked.

‘I’d estimate that there are enough supplies here to withstand about two weeks of siege,’ said Lentulus as they quickly examined yet another small, packed chamber. So far, all but one had been mostly full.

‘Whatever happened to them, the Doom Eagles left most of the supplies,’ Aeroth replied. ‘Curious.’

‘Even more curious,’ crackled Oenomaus over the vox. ‘I’ve matched the manifest to the vehicle pool. All that’s missing is a single Stormtalon.’

‘Not enough to carry a combat squad,’ said Lentulus.

‘All Rhinos accounted for,’ added Oenomaus. ‘Wherever they went, they went on foot, or hanging on the back of a gunship.’

‘And they seem to have left no records, nor set a distress beacon,’ said Iova, who was in the cramped command centre at the top of the fort, skimming through records.

‘So we have a squad of Doom Eagles who disappeared,’ said Aeroth.

‘And what about the serfs?’ asked Lentulus. ‘According to the briefing, there should have been upwards of thirty of them keeping the place in order and serving the Space Marines.’

‘Perhaps the Chaplain can shed some light on that,’ said Aeroth.

‘Quiet,’ hissed Keevan, glaring back at Bragg and Rose. He couldn’t say that he was impressed with their stealth skills, but they were handy in a fight, and the Space Marine leader had asked for a few fighters to accompany him into one of the low stone buildings around the main keep. The building was some sort of servants’ quarters, and it was deserted.

‘Not exactly luxurious,’ muttered Rose as he peered into a spartan cell, a bare cot and small desk the only furnishings. ‘But then, I suppose service is its own reward, and all that.’

‘I’ll take a warm bed and warmer embrace over service, thanks,’ said Bragg. ‘Or a world not crawling with dead men who won’t stop moving.’

Keevan glared at them again, but he couldn’t disagree. He had hoped that, somehow, the arrival of the Space Marines would presage an end to the horror, that they would turn up and fix everything. Ridiculous, he knew, but he was glad that he could still hope.

Ahead of the trio, the Space Marine Chaplain, Sentina, pulled off his grotesque skull-faced helmet and looked around.

‘I see,’ he breathed.

‘See what?’ asked Bragg, peering past the massive black-armoured figure. Keevan did the same and saw a long wall. Most of it was smooth stone, machine-cut if he was any judge. But in the centre was an area of bare bricks, haphazardly laid.

‘Something’s been blocked,’ he said.

The Space Marine turned and looked at him, his piercing eyes showing something that might have been approval.

‘Stay behind me,’ he cautioned before breaking into a run. He barrelled directly at the bricks, and burst through, showering dust into the room beyond, and onto a pile of human corpses.

The smell was tremendous, even compared to the ever-present stench of rotting plants and bodies that now permeated the air. Keevan gagged.

‘Why would they wall up the serfs?’ the Space Marine murmured. He backed up and turned to look at the humans. ‘We need to clear this out before your party can sleep in this building,’ he said. ‘Set up a detail to dispose of the corpses.’

Keevan wiped tears from his eyes and looked up at the Chaplain. Then he looked past him, at the shambling horrors that were picking themselves from the pile and advancing towards the Space Marine. He didn’t even have time to shout a warning before the huge warrior was in motion, his heavy maul spinning to take the head from one creature before disembowelling another with the backswing. Keevan looked away. Hearing it was bad enough. After a few seconds, the noise stopped. He let out a breath that he hadn’t realised he was holding and turned back to the Chaplain.

‘The others may attack as well,’ said the Space Marine, unfazed by what had just happened. ‘They must be beheaded and burned. It’s the only way to be sure. See to it.’

‘L-lord–’ Rose started to say, but Sentina cut him off.

‘Burn them,’ he repeated. ‘I want it done by nightfall.’ Pushing past them, he exited.

Alia stood at the entrance to a room at the top of the keep. One of the huge Space Marines in the great clanking armour had told her that she could find the skull-faced Chaplain here. She was terrified. It was ridiculous. She had travelled so far from home, fought walking dead, escaped depraved men, killed… She cut that thought off. She had been through so much. Yet she was scared of entering the room. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

‘I wondered when you were going to enter,’ said the Space Marine. He stood with his back to her, working at some sort of cogitator panel.

‘You knew I was there?’ she asked nervously.

‘Amongst the many enhancements of a Space Marine is improved hearing,’ he said.

‘Enhancements?’

‘We are made… different from the humans we once were. In many ways. Physically and otherwise. We forget that at our own risk.’ He turned, and all Alia could see was the depth of his eyes and the way the light of the electro-flambeaux played off his bald pate. ‘How may I help you… I apologise. I don’t know your name.’

‘Alia,’ she said. ‘Alia Blayke. And I’m here to talk about the bodies.’

‘Is it done?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t smell burning.’

‘No, well,’ she began, ‘that’s what I’m here about. You see, we don’t burn bodies on Orath. Ever. It’s against our faith.’

‘Against your faith?’ he repeated.

‘Well, you see, the way my dad told it, which is how he was told it, it’s all about the crops. They’re so strong because of the Emperor’s blessing.’

‘What does that have to do with not burning your dead?’ Sentina asked.

‘It pleases the Emperor when we don’t waste anything, when we use everything we’ve got. That includes bodies. When they’re buried, their spirits become part of the world, so they can join Him. If they’re burned, then their spirits are burned too. Out there, they all think that if they burn the bodies, it’ll make the Emperor angry, and we’ll never get our world back.’ She was quiet for a long moment. ‘And we must have made Him angry already for Him to have done this to us.’

The Chaplain looked down at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He was both human and something very different, all at the same time.

‘What do you hope for when this is over?’ he asked, curiosity in his voice.

Alia was surprised by the question, but considered it carefully before answering with a single word. ‘Peace. To go back to our homes and farms and make everything right again.’

The Space Marine stared at her for a moment, his face impassive.

‘Peace,’ he repeated. ‘I have often wondered what that would be like.’

‘No you haven’t,’ she said, before realising that she had just contradicted a man who could kill her with a gesture. She hurriedly continued on. ‘You’ve never considered it before.’

‘Very perceptive,’ Sentina said. ‘You are quite right, I have never thought of peace. It goes against my nature. I am a tool of war, and that is well, because war is one of only two constants in this universe. Do you know what the other is?’ He gazed at Alia, his deep brown eyes boring into hers, as if he could see into the depths of her soul. She found herself unable to speak, her voice having abandoned her. Eventually, she croaked an answer.

‘Death,’ she said, trying not to remember.

‘Death,’ the Chaplain repeated. ‘Death and war. And we are at war, Alia Blayke. We will win, or we will die. To win, we do what we must. And what we – what you and your people – must do is to set aside your superstitions and burn those bodies, unless you want to risk having an enemy within this fortress, ready to rise up and attack.’

Alia shook her head. ‘I understand, but it’s a big thing to ask us. We’ve… They’ve already sacrificed too much.’ She hoped the Space Marine couldn’t see her hands shaking as she thought of all that she had sacrificed. She clutched on to the wooden aquila around her neck. Sentina’s eyes followed her hands and he went down on one knee. Gently, he moved her hands away and cradled the aquila in his black-armoured palm. It looked absurdly tiny, like a child’s. Of course, it was.

‘Is this where you found the strength to come and talk to me, Alia?’ he asked. She nodded, and he let it go and pulled himself back to his full height. ‘It was a very brave thing to do. And if that icon gave you that strength, it can give you the strength to do what must be done, and to make the other Orathians do so. I am curious though,’ he said. ‘Why did you come? Why not one of the men, or the priest?’

‘The old man doesn’t understand,’ said Alia. ‘He’s not one of us. He’s nice enough, but he’s not from Orath. He doesn’t know what it’s like to fight for your world, and to watch everything you know and…’ She swallowed awkwardly. ‘And everything you love turn to ruin.’

‘I know what it is like to watch friends – family – die, Alia. I know what it is like to suffer tragedy and loss. That it is what I am made for, and that it is expected, does not mean that I do not feel it. So I understand.’

She nodded dumbly.

‘I also understand the reality of what we face. We will save your world, Alia Blayke, but when all is done and we depart, it will not be the same world it was before. It has been touched by a darkness deeper than you can imagine.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because the universe is random and capricious, and bad things happen for no reason. No matter what you believe, that is a simple fact. And the Emperor, be He a god or simply the greatest man to have ever lived, has no power over that. Now, return to your people. Tell them that the bodies must be burned, and that the Emperor will forgive them. They will please Him by doing what they must to defend themselves and their world. Remind them that He helps those who help themselves.’

She nodded and swallowed. ‘I will. Thank you for listening.’

‘You were very brave to come here, Alia. And it will be brave of you to stand against the beliefs of your fellows. But I do not think you lack bravery or strength. And I think that you will need those again before this is over. So whatever that symbol you wear means to you, keep it with you and stay strong. Stay brave. We shall all need to be so when the storm that is gathering breaks.’

Thirteen thousand years ago

The tunnel wound down far beneath the surface of Meldaen, and Kharanath had to fight for every step. His weapon was in constant motion. Before him was a pack of bloated creatures, their pallid green flesh dripping with corruption and covered with open sores that wept pus and other vile fluids. As he lopped off an arm that carried a battered and misshapen sword, he saw the blood that oozed from the wound burn into the stone of the tunnel floor with a soft hiss.

‘Don’t touch their blood,’ he called to Althyra. ‘It is corrosive.’

‘Their very being is corrosive,’ she said, twin blades flashing as she split a pair of the plague-beasts apart, sending their bodies slumping to the ground. ‘Can you not feel the way their existence pushes at the boundaries of reality?’

It was true. The daemons didn’t belong in the material realm, and the act of pushing their way into reality warped it. The longer they stood upon Meldaen, the more it would be altered and corrupted, and Kharanath doubted that it could ever be cleansed.

He heard a noise behind him and spun around, spear sweeping low. It was met by a pitted blade that swung up impossibly fast. He reversed his strike and parried the blow then threw himself to the side, ducking beneath the slow swing of a cleaver that dripped with stinking black ooze. He punched his spear through the head of the daemon with the cleaver, the tip piercing its single rotten eye. He tore the blade back out and continued the motion, cutting clean through the neck of another creature.

‘There are too many,’ he told Althyra. ‘We need to keep moving.’

‘You go,’ she said. He looked around and saw her smiling grimly at him even as she parried blows from a group of the beasts. ‘I’ll hold them here. Get to your brother and stop these things. Preferably before they overwhelm me.’

Kharanath wanted to argue, but knew that she was right. If they both carried on, the daemons would simply follow and they would be overrun. He also heard the hollowness of her last words. She would not survive, regardless. The daemons were too many and she was just one warrior, however skilled. He nodded. ‘Khaine be with you,’ he said.

Turning, Kharanath swung his spear in a wide arc, forcing several of the daemons back against the tunnel walls. Swiftly, he ran through the gap he had created and headed deeper into the heart of the world.

Oddly, the tide of twisted, unnatural creatures lessened as he approached the small chamber where Elthaenneath was working. After the plague daemons, he had encountered only smaller groups of the creatures. Given that the chamber contained one of the openings of the great rift that ran through the heart of Meldaen, he would have expected quite the opposite. It did not bode well.

He dismissively hacked down another pair of the creatures as they stumbled towards him. ‘So slow and clumsy,’ he said. The blood-soaked warrior-beasts out on the plains seemed far more of a threat. He wondered what sort of hierarchy or structure guided the creatures, or if there even was one.

The tunnel widened and opened out into an irregular enclosure. Around the walls were banks of arcane devices tended by white-robed priests. They would maintain the wraithbone seal that was being sung into existence by…

Elthaenneath. He stood in the centre of the chamber before an orb that was composed of both darkness and colours that Kharanath could not name, colours that made his eyes itch and his soul ache.

The chamber was free of daemons. Kharanath didn’t understand why, but he wasn’t going to argue.

‘Elthaenneath,’ he said, reaching out to his twin. ‘You are safe. When you stopped talking, I–’

His brother turned, and the look of sadness on his face broke Kharanath’s heart.

‘You should not have come down here, brother,’ he said. ‘I wanted to spare you this.’

‘Spare me what? What are you talking about?’

‘The ritual, the song. It has power, but so does the darkness beyond,’ said Elthaenneath, gesturing to the orb. ‘The powers of the otherrealm have…’ He paused, as if searching for the right word. ‘…certain weaknesses,’ he finished. ‘They are reflections of reality, of emotion and thought. If done in particular ways, and with particular intentions, mortal actions can stop them from being able to manifest in our world.’

‘What sort of actions?’ asked Kharanath. ‘What are you planning, brother?’

‘Sacrifice,’ said Elthaenneath. ‘Goodbye, my brother.’

And he stepped into the orb of darkness.

Kharanath howled. It felt as though half his soul was being torn away. He doubled over as agony coursed through him, and through his grief and pain he heard another scream as well, the pain-shriek of something that lurked behind creation.

And then it was over. The dark orb was gone, and Elthaenneath with it.

Kharanath was alone.

SIX

Alia stood with her back to the wall, shivering, and watched the pyre, the flickering flames dancing and sending sparks into the night sky. Keevan and another man were throwing the last of the bodies onto the fire. The job done, Keevan came and stood next to her. They were silent for a long time.

‘It was the right thing to do,’ Keevan said at last. ‘We couldn’t risk more of them coming back.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t make it any easier though.’

‘Nope. It doesn’t. But life doesn’t always give you a choice. And when we do something that goes against our beliefs, all we can do is make our peace with the God-Emperor and carry on.’

Alia considered that. ‘Do you think this place, this fortress, has a shrine?’

‘It might. I don’t think these Space Marines worship the Emperor like we do, though.’

She looked beyond the fire, up to the walls where the Ultramarines Chaplain stood, staring down at the fire. ‘No. I’ll take a look anyway.’

She turned and entered the keep, passing through the huge, forbidding archway. A long passage stretched before her, more huge doors at regular intervals marked with stencilled script. They led to arming chambers, barracks, storage rooms. No shrine.

Alia heard a sound, like soft shoes on a hard floor. From the corner of her eye, she saw something move, disappearing round a corner.

‘Hello?’ she called, turning. ‘Is somebody there?’

There was no response, just the sound again, and something else, like the laughter of a child. ‘Hello?’ she said again. Maybe it was the little girl she had lifted to the roof back in the village, Janae. Dimly, she wondered what had become of her stuffed grox. She rounded the corner and saw a small figure running away from her. It wasn’t Janae.

It was a child, a boy with shock of dirty blond hair. His clothes looked oddly familiar, and in his hand he carried a wooden horse.

‘Felip…’ breathed Alia. ‘Oh, Emperor, no. Felip?’

She broke into a run, following the impossible form of her brother as he delved deeper into the fort.

Chaplain Sentina stood on the walls and watched as the old priest, Andronicus, passed amongst the civilians. Many of the humans stood sentinel around the immense fire, watching as their fellow Orathians burned. Despite himself, Sentina felt some sympathy for them. Going against their beliefs could not be easy, as necessary as it was. Andronicus was offering words of comfort, blessings and other such things. It was the same thing the Chaplain himself did in the quiet moments before battle began. That had always been where Sentina was at his best – one on one, giving a battle-brother some inspirational words. Until…

He made his way down to the courtyard and passed by the fire. Where he walked, humans shied away. Whether they were scared of his size and the visage of death that he wore as a badge of office, or simply angry with him for making them work against their primitive beliefs, Sentina neither knew nor cared.

He approached Andronicus. ‘Father,’ he said. ‘May we talk?’

The priest looked up at him. ‘Yes, Chaplain. When I am done ministering to these souls.’ He turned back to the woman who knelt with him, head bowed, lips pressed to a small icon of the Emperor on a chain. Sentina stood for a moment, awkwardly waiting. Andronicus sighed and looked up again. ‘Very well. I’m coming.’

The priest stood, steadying himself against Sentina’s greave as he did so. They walked away from the fire, round the keep towards the hangar. Neither of them spoke for some time. It was Andronicus who eventually broke the silence.

‘You seem troubled, Chaplain Sentina.’

‘Yes, I… Yes.’

‘Do you have sins you would like to confess in sight of the Master of Mankind?’

Sentina looked down at the priest. ‘My faith is not the same as yours, human. Do not mock me.’

‘I wasn’t mocking,’ said Andronicus earnestly. ‘We all have things to confess, Chaplain. No man can go through life without concerns weighing upon his soul, and you are so much more than a man. I can only imagine that your concerns are greater than any ordinary man’s.’

The old priest paused. ‘Even we who hear the confessions of others need someone to talk to now and again. And who better than a fellow man of the cloth?’

‘I… don’t know where to begin,’ said Sentina.

‘Tell me when it changed,’ said the priest. Sentina looked at him sharply. ‘Oh, I’ve seen it before, boy,’ Andronicus said. ‘Not in a Space Marine, right enough, but the signs are there. You’re going through the motions, but you don’t feel it, am I right?’

Sentina’s silence spoke volumes. The priest nodded.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘You can tell me.’

‘You see the skulls on my armour, human?’ he indicated to the tiny skulls that peppered his battleplate. The priest peered at him myopically.

‘Oh, are they skulls? I thought they were just studs. How… macabre.’

‘They are necessary,’ said Sentina darkly. ‘Each of these skulls is crafted from the bone of a dead Ultramarine. Each one is a constant reminder of a brother who died because I failed in my duty. There are sixty-seven of them.’

Silence fell again, only the Chaplain’s heavy footfalls breaking it.

‘Have you heard of the tyranids, Andronicus?’ asked Sentina at last.

The priest shuddered. ‘I have heard dark rumours, and they were enough. Some sort of aliens who devour entire worlds, I believe?’

‘Yes,’ said the Chaplain. ‘They are a horror unimaginable. When they fall upon a planet, it is like death given form. A seething tide of monsters, large and small, devouring all that they touch. They have been… an especial nemesis for my Chapter. It is not widely known, but they landed on Macragge itself. They brought much death. Two centuries and the wounds are still to heal.’

‘Was that when…?’

Sentina shook his head. ‘No. I was not yet born when the Battle of Macragge took place. My shame came only a few years ago. A splinter from one of the aliens’ hive fleets fell upon Varos, a world that is protected by the Ultramarines. We responded. Many mighty deeds were performed that day, and we were ultimately victorious, but I made… a mistake. It was my first command, a task force assigned to hold a crossing. If it were to be lost, the aliens would have had easy access to the planetary capital. It was a glorious duty, and I performed it with zeal and pride.’

‘Ah, pride,’ said Andronicus. ‘Many a wise man has fallen victim to that foe.’ Sentina felt that comment like a stab wound. It must have showed on his face, because the priest waved for him to continue, looking abashed.

‘I was given discretion to abandon the crossing if necessary. We had other forces moving into place to stop the advance. But I was sure that my warriors could stop the xenos filth there. We would be the saviours of Varos.’

‘What happened?’

‘The aliens attacked in waves, each more powerful than the last, as if they were testing us. Perhaps they were. They have some great and evil intelligence behind them. In any case, I didn’t listen to those beneath me who had fought the tyranids before. I let my pride and my arrogance blind me to the truth that we could not hold out against the sheer volume of the foe.’

Sentina stopped moving. His voice was low and sepulchral, laced with the pain he felt. Talking about Varos was akin to reliving it.

‘We weathered many attacks. After each, the sergeants advised me to fall back. And then came the last assault. Monsters the size of buildings, priest. You cannot imagine them, masses of flesh and chitin and claw that could face a Warlord Titan and have a fighting chance of victory. And their weapons… I will spare you the horror. Suffice to say that we were overwhelmed. I watched the warriors under my command die, Andronicus. They fought to the last, every one of them. They fought and died as Ultramarines, humanity’s finest. But they didn’t need to die.’

‘How did you survive?’ the priest asked.

Sentina laughed hollowly. ‘That is the worst shame. I was the only survivor. The last I remember, I was locked in combat with an immense warrior-beast. I fell, and awoke in the apothecarion. I was alive. No one else from my force was. Sixty-seven Space Marines dead. And worse, their genetic legacy lost.’

He didn’t elaborate on that, and the priest didn’t ask.

‘And since then…’ Andronicus prompted.

‘I was absolved of blame,’ Sentina said bitterly. ‘The Masters of the Chapter judged that I had performed my duty. We held the foe for long enough that reinforcements arrived from the Astra Militarum, tens of thousands of soldiers who turned the tide. By the sacrifice of my brothers was Varos saved.’

‘It sounds like you did the right thing, Chaplain,’ said the priest gently.

‘For the wrong reasons.’

‘Is it not the result that matters?’

Sentina looked at him. ‘You know as well as I that it is weakness of spirit that opens a man up to the lures of the Dark Gods,’ he said.

‘Is that what you think has happened?’

‘No. I remain pure. But my faith has waned, priest. I speak to my brothers, advise them, counsel them, and the words turn to ashes in my mouth. I am diminished. I am weak.’

‘Your doubts are normal, Chaplain,’ countered Andronicus. ‘We all have them.’

‘I am a Space Marine. I know no fear, no doubt, no dismay.’

‘You are a man. Far removed from the common herd, perhaps. Altered and changed in body and mind, absolutely. But a man, nonetheless, and no man is free of doubt, no matter what they tell you. Take your lord Marneus Calgar, for example.’

‘What of him?’ The Chapter Master of the Ultramarines was a paragon, a shining beacon of duty and glory for all Ultramarines.

‘If you were to ask him, and if he were to be honest, he would tell you that he has suffered the same doubts and fears about himself as you, Sentina.’

‘Impossible.’

‘It is the human condition. Space Marine or no, doubt is universal. You have survivor’s guilt. Well let me tell you something: survival is no sin. In fact, in this misbegotten galaxy, it’s more or less the only real victory we can have.’

The priest paused, as if to collect his thoughts.

‘Sometimes the path of light is obscured by darkness. Darkness of the soul. The only person who doubts you is yourself, Chaplain. If your commanders did, you would have been removed from duty. If your brothers did, they wouldn’t follow you. What happened on that battlefield was not your fault. It was the tyranids that killed your warriors, not you. Don’t blame yourself. Blame the universe that spawned such horrors. And don’t punish yourself. Take revenge. Turn the pain you feel outwards. Make the enemies of the God-Emperor pay.’

Another silence.

‘You speak sense, priest. I shall think on it.’

‘Of course I speak sense. I have some experience, you know.’

‘You have suffered a crisis of faith?’

‘Of course I have,’ said the priest with a smile. ‘I’m only human, aren’t I?’

Alia passed around corners and along passages, but the little boy remained frustratingly out of reach. Finally, she passed through a tall archway. Before her was an immense stone aquila, its wings spread and merging into patterns that continued across the walls and down onto the floor, where they flowed into a spiral design that went to the centre of the chamber.

Her brother was gone.

‘Felip?’ she said. Her voice sounded weak and childish in the huge room. ‘Felip?’ She knew she was being foolish. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. And yet, hope had flared in her heart. Maybe the Emperor had delivered a miracle. Maybe…

She heard a noise behind her, a rustling and what might have been an echo of a child’s laughter. She spun, and saw him running towards her. It was definitely Felip. His smile widened as he saw her. He dropped the horse, which hit the ground with an echoing thud, far louder than should have been possible for a carved wooden toy. The boy ran towards her, arms outstretched. She crouched, tears filling her eyes and spilling down her face. This was impossible. He couldn’t be real, he couldn’t, but…

He wasn’t. As he reached her and she leaned in to embrace him, he passed right through her, sending a chill up her spine. She turned and watched in horror as he crossed the immense chamber and stood before the great stone eagle. He reached up, standing on tiptoes, stretching as far as his tiny body would allow, and touched the great eagle on its wing. Then again, above one huge claw, and once more on the other wing. Then he turned, smiled, waved… and was gone.

Where he had touched, bloody handprints marked the marble of the aquila.

Aeroth was in the command centre of the fort, searching cogitator records, hoping in vain to find some sign of the vanished Doom Eagles. He knew it was a fool’s errand, but until they had some idea of what had happened to the garrison, Fort Garm would remain a mystery.

And Darin Aeroth hated mysteries.

‘Is all well, brother?’

Aeroth turned slowly to see Sentina striding towards him. The Chaplain looked absurdly tiny from the perspective of the mighty Centurion warsuit, particularly given the size of the corridors and chambers of the fort, based upon an STC design large enough to drive Rhinos through the passages or accommodate the bulk of a Dreadnought chassis.

‘It is, Brother-Chaplain. There is still no sign of what happened to the sons of Gathis.’

‘Most perplexing,’ said Sentina. ‘They cannot have vanished. And yet…’

‘Indeed,’ replied Aeroth. ‘Iova reports that the stores have been emptied of certain ammunition.’

‘Of what type?’ asked the Chaplain, leaning forward, his face a mask of interest.

‘Bolt-rounds, in the main. Power cells for chainswords as well, and flamer fuel.’

‘Did they leave, then?’

‘No vehicles are missing from the hangar, other than a single Stormtalon gunship. Enough for one person, no more. If the others departed, they did so on foot.’

Sentina shook his head. ‘There is more here than we understand. Something we are missing.’ He paused and looked at Aeroth. ‘Darin, may I ask you something?’

‘Of course, Manet,’ said Aeroth, intrigued.

The Chaplain slumped into a chair before one of the cogitator consoles. ‘Do you ever doubt yourself? Your command abilities?’

Aeroth raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course I do. Why do you ask? Is this about what happened with Agemman?’

‘No. I–’

Whatever the Chaplain had been going to say was cut off as the girl Alia burst into the room. She was in tears, babbling incoherently. Sentina pulled himself up and strode to her. Kneeling, he grabbed her arms and stared into her face.

‘Alia,’ he said gently. ‘What is wrong? What has happened?’

She tried to answer, but her words were cut off by huge wracking sobs. Sentina leaned in and whispered something to her that the sergeant couldn’t hear. Gradually, she calmed, the tears subsided and her breathing returned to normal.

‘It’s my brother. I… I saw him and he ran through me and left bloody handprints on the eagle and–’

Sentina spoke over her. ‘I don’t understand, girl. What does your brother have to do with anything?’

The woman looked up, staring at the Chaplain through tear-streaked eyes. ‘He was here. But he can’t be.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s been dead for months.’

Alia hurried to follow the Space Marine through the twisting corridors of the towering fortress, struggling to keep up as she told her story.

‘It was my dad that got sick first,’ she said. ‘He fell over in the fields. We brought him in and put him to bed. He had a fever and got pale. And then my mam got it too. And the farmhands, and then… Felip.’

‘Felip,’ repeated the Chaplain. ‘Your brother?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get sick. I don’t know why. I looked after them all, but they just got worse and then they died, one by one. And I was alone. And then…’

‘And then they got up,’ said Sentina grimly.

She nodded, then realised that he was focused on the route to the shrine and couldn’t see the motion. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was so happy for a moment, until Dad went for me. He was trying to bite me.’

‘You fought him off?’

‘Yes. I’m strong, you see, from working the fields, and he’d been sick and was weaker. I pushed him away and ran out. Got to the barn where he kept his rifle. And…’

She didn’t want to tell him the rest.

‘You did the right thing,’ said the Chaplain, stopping and looking down at her. ‘You were in danger and you ended it. Like burning the bodies of the dead serfs here.’

She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t kill him. Felip. I had one bullet left after… after the rest. But I couldn’t. I got out and ran. Just ran.’ She paused for a moment and then confessed the last. ‘I still have the bullet. Just… Just in case.’

‘You survived. You continue to survive. That is the first and greatest thing that the Emperor demands of us, Alia. Our lives. Our service.’

They continued moving, and Alia fell silent as she struggled to keep up. They came to the shrine chamber, with the great spiral on the floor and the aquila on the wall.

‘You see?’ she said. ‘I followed him in here, and he touched the eagle in those three places and vanished. See the blood?’

‘I see only a stone eagle,’ said Sentina. ‘Nothing more. No blood. No handprints.’ He turned to leave. ‘This was a fool’s errand.’

‘Was it?’ came a voice from the doorway. The priest, Andronicus.

‘There is nothing here, priest. Alia is overtired and hallucinating.’

‘I’m not,’ she protested. ‘I saw him. I saw my brother.’

The priest shuffled over and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I believe you, child. The Emperor works in mysterious ways.’ He guided her over to the eagle. ‘Show us where the handprints are, Alia. Show us where your brother touched.’

Alia slowly reached out to the bloody smear on the left wing. Wincing slightly and closing her eyes, she touched it. It was cold and dry, just stone. When she opened her eyes again, the blood was gone, though the other two remained. She heard a noise, like stones scraping together.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

Sentina looked around, then down. ‘It came from below,’ he said. He looked at her, and at the priest. ‘Touch the next handprint,’ he said. She did so, and it vanished before her eyes, receding to nothing. Again, she heard the noise, sounding louder and closer. Taking a deep breath, she reached out and put her palm against the third tiny handprint.

‘Goodbye, Felip. I’m sorry,’ she said. The blood disappeared, and she heard a loud rumbling behind her. Turning, she saw the pattern on the floor falling away, each intricately carved section becoming one step in a gigantic spiral staircase. She stepped over and looked down. The steps stretched away into darkness. Astonished, she looked up at the Space Marine.

‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘I do not know,’ replied the Chaplain. ‘It’s not on the schematics for the fortress and not mentioned in any of the logs or reports.’

‘The Emperor works in mysterious ways,’ piped up the priest. ‘I think you’re about to find out what happened to your Doom Eagles friends, Chaplain Sentina.’

The Space Marine was silent for a time, though Alia thought she heard a clicking and low speech from within his helmet.

‘My brothers are coming,’ he said at last. ‘You two return to the serfs’ quarters. Get some rest. I’m going to find out what secrets Fort Garm is hiding.’

The priest took Alia by the elbow and guided her carefully around the great staircase. As they left the room, she looked back and saw Chaplain Sentina beginning to descend into the darkness.

SEVEN

Akal Netesh ground his heavy boot down on the chest of the silver-armoured Space Marine.

‘Your brothers are dead,’ he gurgled gleefully. ‘Your duty is over. You have failed. You have a choice. Join me and help me to bring this world to ruin… Or die.’

He looked down, and saw himself reflected in the lenses of the Doom Eagle’s helmet. He saw armour that was pitted and cracked. Where once, a long time ago, it had been the colour of polished bone, bearing the proud heraldry of the Death Guard Legion, it now looked like rotten flesh. It was bloated and swollen where the body within had expanded and the majestic powers of Chaos had warped the battleplate to fit the glory of his new form. Vile liquids oozed from the various cracks, and a great hole torn in the side – the result of a bolter shell from this pathetic Space Marine’s now-dead comrade – revealed flesh the colour of marble and bloody sores that dripped pus.

Truly, he was blessed by Nurgle.

He saw the great manreaper scythe that he gripped in one fist, its long ceramite haft adorned with arcane sigils and its blade enhanced with a power field generator. Once, long ago, he had carried another weapon, a relic of the office he had once held within the Death Guard Legion, but no more. The other symbol of that long-forgotten role though, that he still had, and it stared back up at him from his reflection – a helmet in the shape of a skull.

It wasn’t the one he had been granted ten millennia ago, after the Council of Nikaea and the Chaplain edict. That had begun to decay and corrode like his armour after that dreadful period when the Lord of Plagues had stalked the Death Guard through their becalmed ships. No, that mask he had abandoned, unable to stand seeing it so corrupted. On Terra, he had hunted through the corridors of the Imperial Palace until he had found another Chaplain, of the VII Legion. He had killed him, and taken his mask. Pristine. Perfect.

It hadn’t lasted long. It had been months, maybe, before the perfection of the helmet’s form had been marred in the same way as the first. Blood. Thin trickles of blood running from the lenses down the face of the skull. He couldn’t stand it. When he took the helmet off and hung it from the armour racks in his chamber, as the ships of the Legion fled the wrath of the Emperor’s forces, as they fled to the Eye, he couldn’t look at it. Yet when he closed his eyes, it was there, haunting him. He had to get another.

In the Eye, as the Legions fought one another, none willing to take the blame for the loss, for the Warmaster’s fall, he had abandoned his brothers and hunted other fallen Chaplains across the impossible, insane vistas of the worlds they now called home. He became a dark legend, the Skull Hunter. And every time he took one, eventually, it would weep blood. Sometimes it took mere days, sometimes years. Sometimes he couldn’t tell, because time was different in the Eye.

Eventually, he heeded Mortarion’s call and returned to the bosom of the Legion, what remained of it. They became bold, venturing back into the decaying Imperium. To Netesh’s delight, where once there had been just twenty Legions – eighteen by the end – there were now an infinite array of Space Marine Chapters, all with Chaplains. For millennia, he had sought them out wherever the Death Guard waged war and killed them, taking from each their skull masks.

The last had been on Kulos, some whelp of Rogal Dorn’s bloodline, from a Chapter who called themselves Invaders. Netesh had taken great delight in stalking their Chaplain through the ruined streets of the city, picking off his comrades one by one until he alone remained. Then he had taken him, broken his limbs and tortured him. He liked to break them before he took their helmets. He liked them to see the power of Chaos. This one hadn’t broken, but he had died bloodily and messily, little resembling the warrior he had once been.

His helmet adorned Netesh’s head now. And gazing down into the lenses of the Doom Eagle, he saw the thin trickles of blood running down the bone cheeks.

He needed another.

‘You will not bring this world anything other than your death, traitor.’ The voice boomed through the chamber, echoing off the strange alien instruments that lined the walls. Netesh looked up and almost cried out with joy.

The Ruinous Powers had brought him a Chaplain.

The descent had been long, the spiralling stairs opening onto a cramped corridor that wound its way down deep beneath Orath’s surface. Sentina knew that whatever he faced down here, he would face alone. His brothers in their Centurion warsuits would not fit down the passageway, and once they left the cocoons of the suits, they would be unable to get back in them without the attentions of Techmarines and Chapter-serfs. With the growing threat, their firepower would be sorely needed.

Eventually, the corridor opened out into a wide chamber. The first thing Sentina saw was a rough barricade made from pieces of power armour and ammo crates, crudely welded together. Next were the corpses. Three bodies, clad in the silver armour of the Doom Eagles, were arrayed behind the barricade. Sentina swore quietly to himself.

Finally, his attention was drawn to the light. It was emanating from the other side of the barricade. He pulled himself over the makeshift fortification and stared into the half-orb of energy that emerged from a great circular depression. He could feel it as much as see it, a baleful aura of menace that gnawed at his soul, whispering to him of death, blood and carnage, offering him all the glories he could imagine. It would only cost his soul. Shaking it off, he looked around. Arrayed around the walls were alien devices, arcane and ancient looking, crafted from something that looked like bone and looking more grown than built. Sentina had seen their like before, artefacts of the xenos race called eldar.

Then he heard a noise from the other side of the energy sphere. A voice, low and broken, gurgling as if coming from a throat filled with phlegm and other, fouler, things. Cautiously, pistol and maul in his hands, Sentina pulled himself into the shadows that shrouded the cavern walls and edged slowly along. He wanted to see what he was facing. As he came around the sphere, which was rippling with immaterial force, he saw the bloated, corrupted figure of a Chaos Space Marine standing over the broken form of a warrior in the colours of the Doom Eagles.

‘Your brothers are dead,’ said the standing figure. ‘Your duty is over. You have failed. You have a choice. Join me and help me to bring this world to ruin… Or die.’

Sentina stepped out of the shadows and activated his crozius arcanum. ‘You will not bring this world anything other than your death, traitor,’ he said. As the figure looked up, Sentina saw that he wore a skull mask like his own. Had this accursed Chaos Space Marine once been a Chaplain? Blood dripped from the lenses of the skull mask, as if the helm wept at being worn by one so corrupt. Anger flooded Sentina and he leapt to the attack.

For all that the traitor’s armour was swollen and cracked and broken, he was fast. He kicked the Doom Eagle away, the Space Marine hitting the stone wall of the cavern with a resounding crack, and pulled his great scythe around to deflect Sentina’s blow.

‘A new toy, a new mask,’ the Chaos Space Marine gurgled. ‘How the Grandfather rewards me for my service. And soon the rifts will meet and a new eye will open in the sky.’

Sentina ducked beneath a lazy swing of the scythe and lashed out with his crozius, smashing it into the traitor’s knee. The power field melted armour and flesh alike where it hit, but the Chaos Space Marine barely seemed to notice. Pressing his attack, Sentina swung upwards, catching the traitor a glancing blow on his helm. The skull on the mask cracked, a great fissure splitting it from jaw to forehead. Sentina’s foe reeled back.

‘You break this one, that’s fine, Ultramarine. I’ll have yours soon enough.’

Sentina said nothing, continuing to press forward, blow after furious blow deflected by the Chaos Space Marine’s scythe or tearing into tainted battleplate and abused flesh that seemed to be one and the same. He was forcing the corrupted warrior back towards the great sphere of energy.

‘Lord Nurgle,’ screeched the enemy Chaplain, and at the sound of the infernal name, Sentina reeled, shaken as though he had been hit by a thunder hammer. The echo of the word crashed through his brain, bringing images of horror and decay. He felt his nose begin to bleed, and for a moment he lost control of his body as it shuddered in instinctive horror at the unnatural syllables and he fell to the floor. ‘Aid me!’ the traitor finished.

Sentina coughed, tasting the iron tang of blood in his mouth. ‘You will receive no aid, traitor, only dea…’ He trailed off as he saw shapes begin to emerge from the sphere of energy. They began as motes of power, crackling and breaking off from the sphere. Hanging in mid-air, they expanded, and took on a form that resembled humans in the basest aspect, but a broken, degraded form. Long, withered arms and legs jutted at awkward angles from bloated and swollen bodies, and large heads crowned with horns sprouted above the torsos. ‘Emperor’s mercy,’ Sentina breathed as he recognised the forms of the plague daemons he had fought on the plains far above. Seven of them were created from the immaterial sphere.

‘Death, yes,’ gurgled the Plague Marine as the daemons advanced on Sentina. ‘But not mine, son of Macragge.’ He took a step towards Sentina, scythe raised. Each of the daemons raised their rusted, pitted blades in juddering, unsynchronised movements, ready to bring them down and end the prone and motionless Sentina, who was pinned to the spot in horror at his impending fate.

A barking roar rang out and one of the daemons fell, a smoking hole where its single baleful eye had been. Whatever infernal spell had affected Sentina was broken, and he leapt to his feet, bolt pistol spitting shells into the daemons. He glanced around and saw the Doom Eagle on the ground, bolter held in shaking hands, providing further support.

The daemons fell, but more were emerging from the portal to take their place. The Traitor Chaplain moved forwards and bolter shells impacted against his armour, their detonations blowing chunks of ceramite from the plate. He crossed the chamber in a few slow strides and lifted the Doom Eagle bodily from the floor, batting the bolter aside with his scythe.

‘Think you can stop me, little bird?’ he screeched. ‘See how you fly in the Eye!’ He turned and hurled the silver-armoured Space Marine directly at the sphere – the warp rift.

‘No!’ shouted the Chaplain, rushing forward, but he was too late. The Doom Eagle vanished into the sphere of unlight, silhouetted for a moment against it like a bird against the sun. Then he was gone.

The Death Guard laughed, and the daemons made a demented, otherworldly sound.

‘I will kill you, traitor,’ Sentina vowed.

‘You may try, Ultramarine,’ said the Plague Marine, insanity gurgling from every word. ‘Bring it–’

He was interrupted by an indescribable sound from the warp rift. It was like nothing Sentina had ever heard, nothing that could exist in nature. Behind the Chaos Space Marine, the rift was expanding and changing, the colours shifting and warping, hues that defied the human eye to see breaking up and joining together to form patterns that sickened Sentina to the bottom of his soul.

He tore his eyes away from the infernal sight and ran. If the rift was growing larger, he had to escape it. Behind him, he heard the Plague Marine’s rotten voice, squealing about revenge. He leapt the makeshift barricade and ducked behind it. Looking over, he saw that the sphere of immaterial energy had expanded to almost fill the chamber. Then, with a thunderclap, it shrank, going in an instant from dangerously close to Sentina’s position to a tiny sphere floating in the centre of the chamber, above a large hole edged by the broken remains of what looked like bone.

Where the rift had expanded, the chamber was warped and changed. The alien devices had melted, strange materials running like water across the cavern floor.

And the Death Guard Chaplain was gone.

‘Brother-Chaplain? Sentina, do you read me?’

Aeroth’s voice crackled across the vox. ‘I hear you, sergeant,’ he responded. ‘Things have taken a turn for the strange here. There is more to the situation than we realised.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Aeroth. ‘The rift in the sky has shrunk to almost nothing and we received a brief communication from Captain Galenus’s force. They encountered heavy resistance from Traitor Space Marines in Fort Kerberos, including a daemonically altered warrior of the Death Guard. He was defeated, but Galenus was wounded. And whatever was happening at Fort Kerberos, it seems that the enemy were denied what they wanted. They may try again here.’

‘I just fought a warrior of the Death Guard here,’ said Sentina. ‘And there is a warp rift beneath the fort to match the one in the sky. And I think I know what they want.’

‘What?’

Sentina’s voice was grim. ‘To expand the rifts, to join them and create a new Eye of Terror in the heart of Ultima Segmentum.’

EIGHT

Within an hour, the rift in the underground chamber began to grow again, matched by the one in the dawn sky. It was obvious to the Ultramarines that the enemy would return, and likely in greater numbers, intent upon drowning the pitifully few defenders of Fort Garm beneath a tide of Chaos.

‘The plan is simple,’ said Aeroth. ‘We remain up here and stop anything from entering the fort. Chaplain Sentina stays down there and stops anything from getting out.’ He and his squad stood in the courtyard, the ashes of the fire still smouldering and the smell of burning flesh on the air. The civilians had been sent to the old serfs’ quarters, there to remain in safety, as long as the Ultramarines could keep the enemy away from that building. Not that it was likely to be a target as long as the Space Marines and the fort remained.

‘Simple indeed,’ complained Lentulus. ‘Also suicide.’

‘Do you have a better plan, brother?’ asked Iova, his voice the model of reason and moderation.

‘We leave. Abandon this place, abandon this world and bombard it from orbit.’

‘That won’t stop the rifts from expanding,’ said Aeroth.

‘I don’t see that anything will stop that,’ retorted Lentulus. ‘So if our mission is to fail, let us at least survive it, and we can face whatever comes with our brothers behind us.’

‘He who expects defeat will engineer it.’ They turned to see the Chaplain emerging from the fort’s cavernous entrance. ‘We shall prevail, Lentulus. And when we return to the Fortress of Hera, you will face censure for your doubt. Have you not faith in your brothers, and in yourself?’

Lentulus eyed the Chaplain for a moment, and Aeroth wondered if the battle-brother would be fool enough to challenge the skull-faced warrior. The moment passed, and Lentulus nodded. ‘As you say, Brother-Chaplain.’

Sentina returned the nod. ‘Sergeant, prepare yourself. The taint of the warp is in the air. It won’t be long now. I shall be below, awaiting whatever comes.’ Aeroth’s vox crackled as the Chaplain opened a private channel. ‘Lentulus was not wrong, Darin. We stand a strong chance of failure.’

‘Then we fight to the end, Manet. Don’t doubt this decision. You do your duty. We all do.’

‘Thank you, brother. Fight well.’

‘Courage and honour, Brother-Chaplain.’

With a nod, Sentina turned and strode back into the fort, heading to meet his doom. Aeroth primed his weapons and prepared to do the same. And within the hour, the Chaplain’s prediction was proved correct, and the final assault began.

It started with a ripple in the great suppurating eye in the sky, and a sound like reality itself tearing asunder. The noise ground at Aeroth’s soul as he ushered the humans into the serfs’ quarters. Some of them wanted to stay and fight, but the scale of what was coming would be beyond them. Aeroth had seen mortals trying to fight the creatures of Chaos before. At best, they would be driven insane by the abominations they would witness. At worst, they might be corrupted and turn on the Ultramarines. They would be little threat, but killing them would be an added complication the embattled Centurions simply didn’t need.

As the rift waxed, daemons started to appear, singly and in small groups. The Centurions fought back to back in the centre of the courtyard, covering every angle, trusting in their augmented battleplate and heavy weapons to protect them. Grav-blasts, explosive shells and lascannon bursts hammered into the materialising horrors, but it was as a drop in the ocean. For every daemon that fell, its body blown apart by mass-reactive rounds, pulped by gravitic force or disintegrated by high-yield lasers, another half dozen appeared to take its place.

They were more than just the plague daemons that had attacked the Ultramarines the day before. Aeroth knew a little of the Ruinous Powers, enough to know that their deluded followers believed in a pantheon of gods, each with their own orders of immaterial servants, greater and lesser. It seemed that all of them had come to Orath, intent upon wiping the defenders from the face of the planet and claiming it, and more, for their masters.

There was no rhyme or reason to their ranks, no ordered procession or blocks of like infantry. Red-skinned beasts, their heads long crests adorned with twisted horns, marched on backwards-jointed legs. Each of them clutched a long, brass blade in their talons, and vile crimson hounds loped alongside them, beside lithe, athletic figures, feminine in form, but grotesque in aspect. A tide of gibbering horror came in their wake. Many-limbed pink creatures cavorted across the courtyard, an ethereal fire burning around them. And of course, the plague daemons came on in their droves, from the sky and on the ground. The ones in the air were accompanied by great manta-like predators with long, lashing tails and fanged maws crowned by horns.

The whole cavalcade was accompanied by the smell of blood, as though they were soaked in it. Certainly, as they were mown down rank by rank, those behind were splattered in the gore that flew from their fellows. Warping flesh and terrible corruption assailed the Space Marines as much as magical flame and long claws. Whispered temptations and snarled imprecations surrounded them, but they stood firm, untempted by the soft, yielding flesh of the daemonettes and unperturbed by the blood-soaked fiends and gibbering, flesh-spitting horrors.

The Ultramarines were eventually forced to split up to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer number of the foe. Lentulus and young Oenomaus stamped their way through the tide of seething flesh, crushing daemons underfoot as they fought their way onto the battlements to rain fire down upon their foes from above.

‘This is like fighting an ocean,’ grunted Oenomaus across the vox.

‘It is an ocean, brother,’ said Aeroth as he lashed out, punching a temptress-daemon from her sinuous, long-bodied steed and stamping on her head, crushing it. ‘An ocean of otherworldly malice.’

‘No, not an ocean,’ chimed in Iova as he fired a burst of bolter rounds over Aeroth’s shoulder, tearing apart a trio of shifting horrors that had been about to engulf the sergeant in flames. ‘The Chaplain had the right of it. This is a storm.’

‘Then we weather it,’ replied Aeroth, sighting on a cluster of blood-soaked daemons and crushing them with a bubble of high gravity.

‘For Macragge and the Emperor,’ roared Lentulus as he rained las-fire and missiles into the swarm. Every shot was a kill, for so tightly packed were the foe that it was impossible to miss.

It was the very embodiment of Chaos, or so it seemed, until something else appeared that made Aeroth revise that estimation.

There was an almighty crack, like thunder, only magnified a thousand fold. For a split-second, Aeroth could have sworn that he saw in negative, light and dark switching places. And then it was there. A towering figure, hovering above the daemonic hordes, held aloft by immense fly-wings. It wore what looked like an immense and broken suit of power armour, in a sickly shade of green. The armour was swollen and cracked, and the flesh that extruded from it was pale and clammy-looking.

The daemon prince looked down at the carnage being wrought, and it laughed.

‘More sons of Macragge to kill,’ it said, and though its mouth didn’t open, Aeroth heard the words echoing inside his head. ‘And not a tank in sight this time. This will be fun.’

It swept down, a great blade in hand, and a burst of lascannon fire smashed into its flank. Aeroth looked up in amazement to see the form of a Stormraven gunship flashing overhead to the other side of the fort. As he watched, four bulky shapes dropped from it, beyond the wall, out in the fields that seethed with daemons and dead men.

‘Combat Squad Beta reporting for duty, sergeant,’ crackled a voice through the vox. Aeroth smiled, feeling the first genuine happiness he had experienced for days. ‘Carolus!’ he voxed. ‘It is good to hear your voice, brother.’

Whatever reply came was drowned out by a titanic angry bellow. A shadow fell over Aeroth and he turned to gaze up at the immense, bloated bulk of the daemon prince.

‘You cannot stop the designs of the Plaguefather,’ it boomed, its voice slow and thick with corruption. ‘I have turned this world to the service of my dark master, and soon I will rule it in His name. So says Naracoth!’

‘Not today, daemon,’ growled Aeroth, firing his grav-cannon. The daemon rocked back as the blast of gravitic energy washed over it, but then took a step forward, shaking the ground.

‘Die now, servant of the Corpse God,’ it intoned.

‘Sergeant Aeroth, step to your right.’ The voice in his ear was that of Techmarine Kaelus, pilot of the Aeonid’s Lament. Aeroth didn’t question, throwing himself to the side as hard as he could within the Centurion warsuit. He felt the machine-spirit protest and a line of red warning lights lit up in his display. He looked back towards the daemon. Behind it, hovering in midair was the Stormraven. The daemon turned slowly, in time to see the two stormstrike missiles that were speeding towards it. Then the world was shaken by an almighty explosion that whited out Aeroth’s vision. When he could see again, the daemon was gone. The Stormraven roared upwards and sped away again.

‘What was that?’ voxed Oenomaus.

‘The daemon mentioned in the report from Fort Kerberos, I’d venture,’ said Lentulus.

‘Indeed,’ replied Aeroth. ‘And it will return. Good shooting, Kaelus, but keep your eyes open for it coming back.’

‘I think we’ll notice,’ said Iova. ‘Hard to miss.’

With that, the Centurions returned to their bloody work, and Aeroth dearly hoped that whatever was happening below, Chaplain Sentina would be able to engineer a victory. If not, it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed and Orath doomed.

Alia almost cheered when she saw the huge, boxy flying machine fire missiles at the… the horror. It was impossible to describe, something that made her very soul sick, and she dearly wished that she had never seen it. She knew it would haunt her nightmares, if she survived long enough to sleep again. She shouldn’t be out here, she knew. She had slipped out of the serfs’ quarters. If this was going to be the end of her world, she wanted to fight. She gripped her autogun and made her way towards the entrance of the keep. Chaplain Sentina would be in there, and that’s where she wanted to be as well.

Netesh emerged once more from the rift into the cavern below the Space Marine fortress. He could feel his master’s presence above, warping the very ground on which Fort Garm stood. Change was in the air. Change, and Chaos.

To the Plague Marine’s delight, the Ultramarines Chaplain stood before him, his eagle-headed weapon held loosely in one hand. The eyes on the Space Marine’s skull mask blazed with fury. Killing this one and taking his helm was going to be a joy.

‘Hello again,’ he said, gripping his scythe in both hands and stepping forward. ‘Have you been waiting for me to come and kill you, little Ultramarine?’

The Chaplain said nothing. Instead he activated the power field on his weapon and took up a defensive stance.

‘You shall not pass while I live,’ said the Ultramarine quietly, his voice like stones scraping together.

‘Brave. Foolish. Just what I would expect of Guilliman’s sons.’

The Chaplain inclined his head. ‘Brave and foolish of you to come alone, traitor,’ he said.

‘I knew you would be waiting. And I so want to kill you myself and take that delightful mask of yours.’

He leapt forward, and his manreaper fell to take the Space Marine’s head.

Sentina pulled his crozius up and blocked the blade of the scythe. The weapons sparked and hissed as their energy fields duelled, then they broke apart with a crack of discharge. The Plague Marine took a step back and began to circle. Sentina echoed him, crozius raised in a guard position, watching for a tell that the diseased warrior was about to attack. It came without warning, a low sweep of the weapon that the Chaplain jumped over, striking down with his maul. The Plague Marine twisted away and went back to circling.

‘Are you going to defend, or attack, Ultramarine? No war was ever won by sitting back and doing nothing.’

Sentina said nothing. He wouldn’t be distracted. He continued to move, eyes on the Plague Marine, gauging his stance, his movements, the way he gripped the haft of his scythe. All of it was information he could use to find a weakness. Frustratingly, he couldn’t see one. Yet.

The Chaos Space Marine feinted forward, trying to draw Sentina out, but he didn’t take the bait. The corrupted warrior laughed, a sickening gurgle that brought bile up in Sentina’s throat.

‘You have some skill, I’ll give you that. But I have fought the Long War for ten thousand years. Do you really think you can defeat me?’

‘I have killed greater than you, traitor.’

More laughter, and with it another attack, a slow roundhouse that would have split the Chaplain in twain had it connected. He jinked back, then forward again, swinging his crozius around to strike a blow to the Plague Marine’s arm. His vambrace split, filth oozing out from the rent. They circled again. This time, the Chaos Space Marine was silent.

Sentina took the initiative now. He had scored a hit and had the advantage. He pushed left, darting the maul out at the Plague Marine’s leg. The traitor reacted, the scythe blocking the blow, but Sentina had been ready for that. He continued on, placing one armoured boot on the haft of his enemy’s scythe and pushing down. The reinforced length of the weapon strained against the force, and for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, warp-forged alloys fought against the power of gene-forged muscle and holy ceramite.

And held.

The Plague Marine pulled the scythe up with all his strength, and suddenly Sentina was airborne. His crozius flew from his grip and clattered against the Doom Eagles’ makeshift barricade. He landed on his back, and then the Chaos Space Marine was upon him, one rusted and corroded boot pressing down on Sentina’s chest. He heard the crack of ceramite and felt pressure on the fused bones of his rib cage. His hearts raced and adrenaline flooded him, but he knew that it was too late.

The Chaos Space Marine reached up to his helm and pulled it free, throwing it away to lie next to Sentina’s crozius. Beneath, his face was a mask of rotten flesh. Worms and maggots crawled over the ruined visage, and a twisted and misshapen skull, yellowed like rotting teeth, could be seen through suppurating wounds.

‘A new helmet. A new skull,’ he rasped, his voice strangely high and tremulous without the vox-filters of his helm. He knelt, putting more weight on Sentina’s chest, and reached down to remove the Chaplain’s helmet.

A gunshot cracked, the Plague Marine wailed, and the paralysing force was gone. Sentina was moving in an instant, pulling his gladius from its sheath at his hip, vaguely registering that as the corrupted warrior fell, the rift itself recoiled, shrinking and waning. He rolled and, without pause, drove the weapon through one of the traitor’s wide, staring eyes and into his brain. The Chaos Space Marine thrashed in agony, and Sentina pulled himself away.

He stood up and looked round. In front of the barricade stood Alia, rifle in her shaking hands. She looked up at the Chaplain.

‘I used my bullet. He was going to kill you,’ she said simply. ‘You’ll save us. I know it. So I–’

Her remaining words died as an explosive round blasted her chest apart in a shower of viscera. Sentina twisted and saw the Plague Marine lying in a pool of blood and less savoury fluids, pistol in his hand.

‘No one… will be saving… her,’ he gurgled. In one move, the Chaplain surged forward and kicked the traitor, pulverising what remained of his misshapen skull.

He knelt by Alia, but it was too late. She was gone.

Fury blazed through Manet Sentina. He took his crozius from the ground and activated it, smashing it down on the cracked and corrupted skull mask of the Chaos Space Marine again and again.

Aeroth fired a volley of missiles from his chest launchers, turning before he saw if they reached their target, a towering insectile fusion of metalwork and twisted daemonic flesh. He aimed his grav-cannon at a knot of plague daemons and fired a salvo at them, then blocked a blow from an ornate blade wielded by a blood-soaked, horned monstrosity that fought from the back of a hulking brass steed. The weapon bit into the ceramite of his battlesuit and Aeroth wrenched his arm back, pulling the sword from the daemon’s grasp. It bellowed in rage and leapt from its steed, landing on the sergeant’s shoulder plate and grabbing for the handle of the blade.

‘Sergeant,’ shouted Iova from a few metres away, ‘remain still!’

The battle-brother lumbered forward, pushing his warsuit to its limits, and grabbed the daemon from atop Aeroth, squeezing it until it burst in his gigantic fist.

‘Really, sergeant, you should be more caref–’

The sentence was cut off as a great blade, dark as night, emerged from the Centurion’s chest. Behind him rose the hulking figure of the daemon prince. It pulled the sword free and extended its other hand, wrapping fingers the size of human torsos around the power-armoured body of Iova and tearing him from the warsuit. Iova screamed, physical pain and the psychic trauma of being forcibly removed from the link with the machine-spirit of the Centurion suit combining.

‘You get what you give, Ultramarine,’ the daemon rumbled, and it squeezed. Even the ceramite battleplate was not proof against its warp-enhanced strength. The armour crumpled, the soft seals between plates splitting and a vile flesh soup spilling out. Aeroth turned ponderously and stomped towards the daemon.

‘I will destroy you for that, fiend,’ he shouted.

‘You? No. Not you,’ it said. ‘I am Naracoth, and my destiny lies elsewhere.’ It gestured lazily and a great cloud of flies materialised from the air and swarmed towards Aeroth. There were thousands of them, crowding around him. He loosed more missiles and fired salvo after salvo from his grav-cannon. By the time he cleared enough of the flies to see, the daemon was gone.

‘Where did it go?’ he voxed. ‘Did you see?’

‘Into the fortress,’ said Lentulus. ‘It’s going for the rift down there.’

Aeroth considered going after it, even as he blocked the swing of a plague-encrusted sword and punched through the stomach of its wielder. He opened a vox-link to Sentina. The Chaplain needed to know what was coming.

‘Manet, something is coming. Something big. A daemon prince. It killed Iova without breaking a sweat.’

‘I will be ready for it,’ growled Sentina, looking down at Alia’s broken body. ‘We have lost enough this day. It is time for a victory.’

‘I will join you, brother. Between us, we can deal with the beast.’

‘No, Aeroth,’ said Sentina. ‘Lead your squad. Keep the daemons at bay above. What happens down here is for me.’

‘It is too powerful for any one man to fight. You will be destroyed.’

‘I have faith, Brother Aeroth,’ Sentina said, and to his surprise, he realised that he meant it. ‘I will prevail. And I think that if I kill this fiend, the architect of the horror we face, it will close the rift.’

‘How did you come to this conclusion?’ asked the sergeant, disbelief tingeing his voice. ‘I don’t see–’

‘It had something to do with the other rift, at Fort Kerberos. That seems clear, as it was there. And killing the servants of the Dark Gods seems to affect the waxing and waning. It may be a long shot, but it’s the only one we have. And so I will prevail, because I must.’

Aeroth was silent for a time, and Sentina knew what he was thinking. ‘Don’t come down here, Darin,’ he cautioned. ‘Don’t make the same mistake again. Follow orders, do your duty. For the Emperor.’

‘…for the Emperor,’ echoed Aeroth. ‘Good hunting, Manet. Or goodbye.’

The vox clicked off. Sentina took a deep breath and pressed the activation stud on his crozius. He heard a rumble of stone cracking and breaking. It came closer, and he realised that whatever the daemon was that was approaching, it was big. So big, and so strong, that it was warping the structure of the narrow tunnel to heave its bulk through. He gripped his weapon tightly, and in moments, he saw his opponent.

The daemon prince entered the chamber and pulled itself up to its full height. It towered over the Chaplain, its great bloated form fully thrice his height and many times his mass.

‘Is this it?’ it thundered, its words worming their way directly into Sentina’s brain. ‘Are you all that stands in my way?’

‘I am enough,’ said Sentina. He took a step forward. ‘I am a warrior of the Emperor.’ Another step. ‘I am His force in this universe.’ Another. He stood directly before the daemon now. ‘I am His weapon, and His shield, and I will be your doom, creature of the abyss.’ He raised his crozius arcanum and pulled it back, preparing to strike. The daemon did nothing.

‘For the Emperor!’ Sentina roared, and swung one-handed, putting all his strength, all his anger and all his hatred into the blow. The eagle head of the mace smashed into the daemon’s armour above its knee and pulped flesh, passing straight through. Almost immediately, the wound began to knit.

‘Is that your best shot, Ultramarine?’ the daemon hissed.

‘No,’ replied Sentina, revealing the krak grenade he had been priming with his other hand as he struck. ‘That was just creating somewhere to put this.’ He punched the grenade into the healing wound and threw himself back as it detonated. The daemon’s leg exploded and it toppled. Sentina rolled to avoid being crushed beneath its bulk. The daemon swung out with its blade and caught him a glancing blow. He was thrown back against the wall. The daemon pulled itself up on one massive arm and looked down at its leg. A combination of blood, pus and dark, immaterial energy flowed from the wound, but it was already healing.

‘Nothing you do can kill Naracoth, mortal,’ it said. ‘I have been blessed by my master for my faithful service. I am forever.’

‘You are a tool of darkness,’ said Sentina. ‘And I am the Emperor’s light.’

The sword lashed out again, and Sentina stepped into the strike. The dark energy of the blade met the rosarius that the Chaplain wore on his chest, and the conversion field inside the arcane device activated, turning the force of the attack into a great blast of light. The dark sword shattered as the light hit it, a thousand pieces melting into thin air as if it had never existed.

‘Impossible,’ Naracoth screamed, and the word was like snakes writhing in Sentina’s head. He felt his nose bleed again and struggled to stay upright as the creature’s corruption assailed him.

‘Nothing is impossible for men of faith,’ said Sentina. ‘And you do not have faith, fiend.’

‘What need have I of faith?’ spat the daemon. ‘My gods are real. Yours is a cripple on a world half the galaxy away.’

‘The Emperor is no god, fool. My faith is in myself. And that is why I.’ Sentina swung his crozius again, and the daemon was thrown back. ‘Have.’ Another swing, another few metres. ‘Won,’ he finished, and with one final titanic blow, he pushed the daemon prince into the rift. It screamed – the universe screamed – and Sentina was thrown from his feet. He heard the daemon inside his head again and knew without a doubt that its soul, what remained of it, was being devoured by its master for its failure.

Then it was gone, and all was silence. He picked himself up, aching all over, and looked at the rift.

It was growing. In moments, it was the biggest he had seen it. And it kept getting bigger. Sentina backed away, and horror filled him.

‘Thank you…’ He heard the daemon’s voice, weak and distant, echoing in his head. ‘My first death broke the first seal and opened the rift. My second death opened the other and ensured my master’s victory. Victory…’ It faded away to nothingness, and Sentina’s world turned upside down. He had done what the daemon wanted. He had not defeated it. He had aided it.

He had failed. Orath was doomed.

NINE

The rift was expanding.

Sentina lifted Alia’s body from the ground and stepped backwards, away from the growing unlight. He could see things forming in the event horizon of the portal, the impossible forms of daemons, in infinite variety. All the forces of Chaos waited behind there, ready to unleash themselves not only on Orath, but on the entire sector. He looked down at the dead girl in his arms and felt the shame of failure, and grief. Pure grief, such as he had not felt since the deaths of his brothers at the talons of the tyranids. Alia had been brave and strong. She had saved his life, and it would be for naught. Her faith in him had been misplaced. He couldn’t save her world.

‘Emperor save me,’ he breathed. ‘I have failed. I killed the beast, and still I have failed.’

‘Have you?’

The Chaplain turned. Andronicus stood beneath the immense archway that formed the entrance to the chamber. The priest looked calm.

Sentina flung out his arm. ‘Look, priest. The daemon is destroyed, yet the darkness remains. It grows. It will consume us all, and much more besides. I have failed again, and more will die by my failure.’

‘No, Manet. You haven’t. Not yet. One last test stands before you. Fail that, and we will all be lost. But for now, there is still a chance.’

‘You speak in riddles, old man. Come, we must leave here before we are consumed.’ Sentina picked up the priest. Holding him under one arm and Alia’s corpse under the other, he ran up the stairs.

The pause was over. Whatever had stopped the daemonic hordes in their tracks for an instant had ended, and their fury was redoubled. Aeroth fired volley after volley from his grav-cannon, each wave of gravitic force tearing unnatural bodies asunder or smashing rockcrete and blasting them from their feet. It was to no avail. They were endless, and the Centurions were few.

‘On me,’ he ordered, his voice booming across the charnel ground that the courtyard had become. Oenomaus blipped an acknowledgement, as did Lentulus a second later. He heard the chatter of heavy bolters and the thunder of the titanic footsteps, and the young battle-brother came into view, his explosive rounds chewing up daemonic flesh with every step. Behind him was Lentulus. He wasn’t firing, instead using his lascannons as melee weapons, battering aberrant monstrosities aside with each blow. The pair fought their way over to their sergeant.

‘You have a plan?’ asked Lentulus.

Aeroth laughed hollowly. ‘No plan but to die as brothers, fighting side by side.’

Lentulus grunted. ‘Not your best effort, sergeant. But it’ll do.’

‘For Ultramar!’ shouted Aeroth, his words blasting from his vox-emitters across the din of battle. ‘Courage and honour!’ His brothers took up the cry as they opened fire on the daemons.

‘Courage and honour!’

‘Brother-sergeant.’ Sentina’s voice crackled across the vox.

‘Manet. You yet live?’ Aeroth couldn’t keep the joy from his tone. He turned towards the keep, searching for Sentina, crushing a pack of daemonic hounds with a gravitational blast as he did so, and firing a volley from his chest-mounted hurricane bolters. The mass-reactive shells tore apart a trio of sinister and sinuous daemons with features that were horrific and long claws in place of hands.

By contrast, the Chaplain’s words were tinged with darkness. ‘Not for long, brother. The rift expands. It will consume us all. Fall back, get as far from here as possible.’

‘There is no falling back, brother.’ He swung and fired another grav-blast. ‘The enemy is everywhere. All we can do is go down fighting.’

By his side, the other two Centurions poured las-fire and explosive bolts into the teeming hordes of warp creatures. ‘Is there nothing that can be done?’ asked Oenomaus through gritted teeth. ‘No way that we can close this portal and end this infernal invasion?’

‘There is always a way,’ replied Lentulus, launching a volley of frag missiles from his chest-launcher, sending shards of hot metal scything through a dozen twisted bodies. ‘But we can’t always see what it is.’

‘“Fight always with one eye on your objective and one on the reality around you. That way you can see when the path twists.” The wisdom of Thiel.’ Sentina’s voice was thoughtful. ‘Sometimes the path of light is obscured by darkness.’

‘I don’t recognise that second quotation,’ said Aeroth. ‘What are you talking about, Manet?’

‘Something the priest said.’

‘That old fool,’ spat Lentulus. ‘He’s senile.’

‘He may be wiser than any of us realise, brother. I have an idea.’

‘Is it a good idea?’ asked Aeroth.

‘No better than any of yours, Darin.’

‘I was afraid you were going to say that. What do you need us to do?’

‘Keep fighting. And if this works, don’t let Orath be abandoned. Don’t let our sacrifices be in vain. Keep this world alive, brothers. In Guilliman’s name.’

‘In Guilliman’s name,’ echoed Aeroth, instinct taking over. By the time he realised that Sentina had spoken of sacrifices, the Chaplain had cut the vox-link.

‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Oenomaus.

‘Something foolish and heroic,’ said Aeroth. ‘Let’s go and help.’ Turning slowly, the sergeant backhanded a blade-wielding, blood-soaked daemon so hard that its skull burst, and began to trudge through the press of bodies towards the keep.

‘One last chance,’ said Sentina. ‘What did you mean, priest?’

They stood above the entrance to the tunnel, before the immense stone aquila. Andronicus rested against the sigil, leaning almost nonchalantly. He patted his robes and pulled out a battered canteen. Pulling the stopper out, he took a long swig before offering it to the Chaplain.

‘I don’t want a drink. I want answers. What did you mean? Is there still a way to stop this?’

‘You seem different, Manet. Why is that?’

Sentina turned, frustrated, and punched the wall. Rockcrete cracked and dust billowed. ‘Answers, old man,’ he growled.

‘I don’t have answers. I only have the questions you need. Why are you different?’

The Chaplain pointed to Alia’s body, small and frail-looking on the cold stone floor. ‘She died saving my life. She sacrificed herself for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she believed I could save her world. Because she…’ He trailed off.

‘Because she had faith,’ finished Andronicus.

‘Yes.’

‘And what of your faith, Manet?’

‘What does that matter? Nothing has changed, and this is irrelevant. I need to close that rift. I need a… a weapon, or…’

‘Or armour?’ said the priest.

‘Armour I have. It is of no use.’

‘There is more than one kind of armour, Manet Sentina. What does your Codex Astartes have to say on the subject?’

‘Armour… You are babbling, old man. This is pointless.’ Sentina turned and strode from the chamber.

Andronicus watched him go. ‘I have taken you as far as I can. The last step must be yours. Make the leap.’ Then he followed the Chaplain out.

Sentina pulled his crozius arcanum from his belt as he stepped through the great archway into the carnage. Daemons were everywhere. The courtyard was simply a tide of them, as far as could be seen.

‘Servants of the Ruinous Powers,’ he bellowed, his vox-emitters magnifying his voice to deafening levels. ‘Come and face thy doom.’

A trio of crimson-skinned warrior-beasts were the first to turn to him. They loped forward, hellblades gripped tight in taloned hands. They attacked as one, swinging the serrated swords to cleave Sentina apart. He blocked the first, ducked beneath the second and took the third on his chest. There was a flash as the conversion field in his rosarius turned the kinetic energy into a blinding glare.

‘By the Emperor’s light shall you know me, fiends. And by His wrath shall you fall!’

He activated the crozius and swung it two-handed, relishing the shudder that went down his arms as it tore through the chest of one blood-soaked daemon and took the head from the shoulders of the second. He faced the third and smiled beneath his skull-faced helm. ‘I am His hand and I will be your doom. For the Emperor!’

He swung again, sending the daemon flying backwards. It collided with a group of vaguely feminine creatures with claws, who were knocked sprawling. Before they could stand, they were torn apart by a volley of explosive rounds.

‘For the Emperor,’ echoed the voice of Sergeant Aeroth, swiftly followed by those of Oenomaus and Lentulus.

‘Brothers,’ said Sentina. ‘If we are to die this day, let us die as heroes.’ He walked forward, and with each step, his maul swung, and with each swing daemonic flesh was rent, bones broken, corrupt blood spilled. Manet Sentina dealt death to the enemy as surely as the ancient myth his visage evoked. He fought his way to the Centurions, smashing through daemons great and small. When he reached them, Aeroth laid a huge hand on the Chaplain’s shoulder plate.

‘We may not save this world, or the sector, Manet. But we have done our duty.’

‘And only in death does duty end,’ replied Sentina.

‘And here comes the end,’ chimed in Lentulus, pointing. Sentina turned and followed his gesture. The archway entrance to the keep glowed with infernal energy. Balefire poured from it and the stone of the structure was warping and changing under the influence of the immaterial force. The rift was expanding up and out. Sentina felt a brief pang of shame. Alia’s body had been in there and he had left it. But then, it would be consumed regardless, as would they all soon enough.

‘Yes,’ said Sentina. ‘It ends here. But we have shown faith in the words of the primarch, brothers. We have fought to the end, and we shall fight on until death claims us.’

‘Manet,’ laughed Aeroth. ‘It’s been years since I’ve seen you so… fired up.’

‘I am a warrior of faith, Darin. I always was. I just didn’t always realise it until… until…’

And then he understood.

‘Until? Brother, what changed?’

Sentina didn’t answer. He was remembering the old priest’s words.

There is more than one kind of armour, Manet Sentina. What does your Codex Astartes have to say on the subject?

‘I didn’t tell him my first name,’ he said quietly.

‘Who?’ asked Oenomaus, swinging his heavy fists at a mass of flesh with too many heads and legs that was trying to stab long, pincer-like fingers into his armour.

‘Armour…’ said Sentina. ‘Armour of faith.’

‘The Armour of Faith?’ grunted Lentulus as he loosed a lascannon round at a hulking bronze beast with a howling warrior-daemon on its back. It fell, a smoking hole through its middle. ‘I haven’t heard that passage from the Codex in decades. Allegory, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ said Sentina. ‘It’s salvation.’ He turned back to the three Centurions. ‘I can do it. It’s all about faith, Darin. Alia’s faith saved me. Now mine can save her world. I just have to make a leap of faith. Goodbye, brothers.’

He turned and strode slowly towards the expanding mass of the portal. Daemons flocked to him, as if drawn by what he was about to do. He wrenched his helm from his head and mag-locked it to his belt. He wanted to look his fate in the eye. He swung his crozius, again and again, and began to chant.

‘Clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, that you might take your stand against the foe.’

A gaggle of ever-shifting beasts in all the hues of the rainbow, and many never seen in nature, loped at him, witchfire burning around them. As they reached for him, as they touched his armour, they burned brighter for a moment and exploded. Faith was his shield now.

‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the Ruinous Powers of the benighted warp and against the spiritual forces of evil in that infernal realm.’

A huge plague daemon lumbered towards him, foul fluids dripping from its horns, rotten innards dragging along the ground behind it. The cruel blade clenched in its broken-fingered grasp hissed and bubbled with corruption, and tiny daemonlings capered around, on and even inside it. It meant to kill him before he could reach his goal. It would fail. Sentina ducked beneath its slow and clumsy swing and pushed forward, ramming the winged head of his mace into its stinking body and pulling upwards. The daemon burst apart in a shower of foul-smelling gore. Where it fell, it burned like acid, on stone and daemon alike. None of it touched Sentina, dissolving into vapour millimetres from his body. He strode on.

‘Therefore, clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything, to stand.’

He stopped before the rift. It was immense now, stretching into the sky. The one above was huge too, reaching down to connect with the other, to form a greater portal into the realm of the Ruinous Powers. Sentina turned briefly and sketched a salute to his battle-brothers.

‘This is my stand,’ he shouted. ‘This is where the path of my faith has led.’ He turned back and stepped forward to be consumed by the rift, quietly mouthing his last words.

‘For Macragge. For the Emperor. For–’

As the Chaplain disappeared into the roiling vortex of dark energy, the universe itself seemed to scream. A collective wail went up from the daemons, every one of them, a million otherworldly voices crying out. Aeroth felt it rather than heard it. And in that moment, he knew that Sentina had done the right thing.

‘Brothers,’ he growled. ‘In the name of Manet Sentina, let’s destroy them.’ He turned the gain on his grav-amp to maximum and began to fire. Each blast of his cannon tore daemons apart by the dozen. They seemed diminished, weaker, easier to destroy. He exulted in the carnage, in the catharsis it provided.

Oenomaus followed his sergeant’s example. He checked the ammo counts for his weapons. Low, but enough to destroy a few more of the hellspawn. He stretched out his arms and began to fire, twisting left and right, pouring explosive rounds into the foe. He opened up with his hurricane bolters as well, the smaller shells proving no less destructive. He closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him. Victory or death. This was what being a Space Marine was all about.

Lentulus shook his head at his young battle-brother’s actions and crouched down to avoid taking a bolt-round meant for a daemon. He picked his targets carefully, aiming at larger daemons, allowing the high-energy las-blasts to hit vital organs and vaporise heads. He looked around at the other two Space Marines. For all that he had derided them both, they were his brothers, and nothing could stand against the three of them together.

The daemons were no exception. The bubble of seething Chaos that had been emerging from the keep was shrinking, falling back, and as it lessened, so too did the daemons lessen. They began to disappear, fizzling from existence like ice in the sun. When the rift vanished into the keep entirely, Lentulus turned his attention to the one in the sky. It was shrinking too. Smaller and smaller it became, until Lentulus could no longer see it with the naked eye. He looked around. The daemons were gone, or vanishing, their immaterial forms receding into nothingness as the energies keeping them in the real world dissipated. He ceased firing, cutting the power to his lascannons.

His brothers put up their weapons as well.

‘Well,’ said Lentulus, relief flooding him, along with the joy of victory. ‘I think we won.’

Aeroth passed warily through the corridors of the keep, alert for any sign of further threat. There came none, and with each step, he relaxed a little more. There was no sign of the corruption and twisting that the expansion of the rift had wrought upon the structure. All of the effects seemed to have been reversed. Almost all, anyway. Sentina was still gone.

Reaching the aquila chamber, he saw a body on the floor. Stepping over, he looked down at it. It was the girl, Alia. Her chest had been torn apart.

‘She died saving your Chaplain’s life,’ came a voice from behind. He turned, grav-cannon arm raised, but it was only the old priest, Andronicus, standing in the doorway.

‘She sacrificed herself for him?’ Aeroth asked.

‘Indeed. And that simple act gave him the strength he needed to make a much larger sacrifice. Funny how something as simple as faith can change the fate of worlds, is it not?’

‘There is much in this universe that is “funny”, as you put it, old man. Death is rarely one of those things.’

‘It is also necessary, sergeant. We don’t want to go living forever, after all. Let’s leave that to Him on Terra.’

‘What will happen now?’ asked Aeroth.

‘The Administratum will send adepts to survey Orath and see if it’s worth reclaiming. If so, I expect the Ecclesiarchy will descend in force. Can’t let a world that nearly fell to Chaos be without a Ministorum presence any more, eh?’

Aeroth didn’t reply.

‘I think it’s likely that life on Orath will go on, Sergeant Aeroth. Heh, Orath, Aeroth. Perhaps it was your destiny to be here. But I digress. Life will go on, but it will never be the same. And that’s good. Change is good. Time for a change for us all, I think.’

The old man stretched his arms out with an audible crack.

‘It’s been quite a day, sergeant. I’m going to check on my flock and then go to bed. I shall see you again before you leave, I trust.’

‘Yes,’ said Aeroth, looking around. ‘I think we’ll be here for a while.’

Two hundred years ago

It was a strange thing, to stand again in the spot where his soul had been torn asunder so many thousands of years before.

Kharanath looked around. The chamber was much as he remembered it – small, irregular, with a wraithbone seal in the ground. The sight of it sent a twinge of pain through him as he thought of his loss.

Well, today would see that rectified. It was time.

He had never really forgotten Elthaenneath, though Khaine knew he had spent thousands of years trying.

His brother’s sacrifice had saved Meldaen, but it had never been the same. Living there without his twin, feeling the void where once he had been, was impossible. And so he had left. He had considered the core worlds, but the increasing omens of doom had driven him away – luckily, considering what had happened just a few hundred years later – and into the depths of the webway. He was flotsam on the tides of fate, and like all things drifting in the great transit system that crisscrossed behind reality, he had ended up in the port of Commorragh.

He didn’t really remember much of the next few thousand years, but he had ended up a slave, and fallen in with a rabble-rouser called Vect. Another good move, all things considered. When Vect had risen up to overthrow the noble houses and claim Commorragh as his own, Kharanath had stood with him, and a result he had ended up one of the lords of the Dark City, as secure as it was possible to be in that nest of vipers.

Building a kabal and ruling it with an iron fist, he inflicted torture after torture on any other living being who happened to cross his path. In part, he did this to stave off the embrace of She Who Thirsts, the warp god that the eldar had created in their fall from grace, but he also did it because it stopped him remembering.

Sometimes.

When he did remember, he sent out raiding parties to Meldaen, or Orath as it was now known by the human filth who infested it. He never led them himself, and he never told those he sent their true purpose. They were content to slaughter and ravage their way across the sparsely populated world, never questioning why their master sent them there, simply enjoying that he did. And when they returned, he would question them, always furtively hoping that there would be evidence of the rift reopening. That there would be a chance of retrieving Elthaenneath from the prison he had cast himself into.

Now was that chance. The latest party had returned earlier than expected, reporting that earthquakes had opened up underground tunnels, and that the humans had explored them, finding ancient eldar technology and removing it. That would have destabilised the makeshift barrier Elthaenneath had sacrificed his freedom to erect. The rift would open again.

And Kharanath would be there to enact the plan he had perfected over millennia. And now, so he was. He could taste the warp taint in the air. It was delicious, like the promise of glory untold.

‘Soon we will be together again, Elthaenneath,’ he said. ‘And we can rule this world, as we were always meant to. Humans and eldar alike will bow before us, and we shall live as kings. Together,’ he repeated, enjoying the taste of the word on his tongue. ‘Together.’

Far above, the warriors of his kabal fought against the human elite soldiers, the blue-armoured nuisances who seemed to be everywhere in this area of their Imperium. It was of no consequence. All his warriors could die fighting them. All that mattered was retrieving Elthaenneath.

He knelt on the cold stone floor and carefully placed the bundle he was carrying atop the wraithbone seal. It was wrapped in the finest silks, and he slowly, with careful ceremony, unwrapped it one layer at a time. Inside sat a box, sealed with a word of power. Held within, carefully preserved in wards of anti-time, was a crystal vial, made from a piece of a farseer of the starfaring eldar kindreds.

When they reached a great age, the wise diviners of the future turned slowly into crystal, becoming living statues. It was said that they remained conscious in their crystal form, perhaps for eternity. Kharanath didn’t know if that was true. He only knew that he needed something of such power to hold what the vial contained. And so he had obtained it. It hadn’t been easy. He had visited a dozen craftworlds and asked them for a shard from a seer. Some had simply refused, Some, such as Ulthwé, Cait-Badd and cursed Iyanden, had become openly hostile. Eventually, he had been able to bargain with the shadow-slipping Mandrakes, who had retrieved what he sought. He hadn’t asked them how, and he didn’t yet know what the price would be, though it would doubtless be great.

Inside the vial was something that he had worked for millennia to perfect: a single drop of a substance that, when poured onto the wraithbone seal, would not only melt it away like snow in rain, but would reverse the act that had sealed it so many millennia before. It would reverse Elthaenneath’s sacrifice and restore him to reality.

The liquid was an insane fusion of high technology and the basest of warpcraft. Magic, by any other name. It was possibly the most dangerous thing Kharanath had ever held in his hands, and its cost had been exorbitant.

And well worth it.

He unsealed the box and lifted the vial, marvelling at the way it caught the play of light and the colours in the chamber: the grey of stone, the crimson and black of his glossy armour, the off-white of the wraithbone, the cobalt blue of…

Cobalt blue?

He turned slowly, the vial clutched in one talon-like hand. At the entrance to the chamber stood a blue-armoured Space Marine, a high collar raised above his head, psychic energy playing about him like a halo.

‘No–’ Kharanath managed before the human raised the bulky weapon in his hand and fired at the archon. He felt pain, and he was falling, and he watched as the vial fell and shattered, and the precious liquid spilled out… onto plain rock.

And then he heard a voice. A voice he knew.

‘Brother. At last. It has been such a long time, but I knew you would join me in the end…’

‘Elthaenneath,’ whispered Kharanath. They would be together after all, he thought as consciousness slipped away. That was something. That was something indeed.

EPILOGUE

Four Months Later

Sergeant Aeroth stood in the courtyard of Fort Garm and watched as the Stormraven gunship came in to land. He was unarmoured, clad in a simple white surplice with the ultima stitched on the chest in gold. He stood in the shadow of the central keep as the downdraft from the flyer’s powerful engines washed over him.

Oenomaus stood to his left and Lentulus to his right, both silent and grim-faced, and clad in the same manner as their sergeant. They were eager to leave Orath, he knew. Eager to return to Macragge and rejoin their brothers, and from there to take the Emperor’s wrath to a new battlefield. Lentulus had said so often enough in the four months since the rift had closed. Aeroth felt the same. He didn’t envy whoever was in that gunship.

As the cobalt-hued craft, casting an immense shadow over the golden glow of the afternoon sun, came to a halt and the engines powered down, the forward ramp slowly tipped open. Out came a squad of Ultramarines, their armour trimmed in the blazing orange of the Sixth Company. They marched in step, bolters held to their chests, before forming two columns, facing one another. All were helmeted and silent.

‘Pompous arses,’ muttered Lentulus.

Despite himself, Aeroth smiled. Captain Epathus’s company were known for their love of precision drilling. ‘They’ll have lots of time to practise,’ he replied.

He returned his attention to the Stormraven. A final figure was disembarking, also clad in blue battleplate, though of a different hue than the other battle-brothers. The armour was engraved with arcane sigils, marked with badges of office – books and scrolls – and crowned with a tall, curved hood that wreathed the Space Marine’s head and crackled with ethereal energies that were reflected in the warrior’s dark, deep-set eyes. He carried a tall staff, wound with wire and topped with a horned skull.

Aeroth stepped forward and bowed. ‘Brother-Librarian. Welcome to Orath.’

‘What remains of it,’ added Lentulus from behind him. Aeroth turned and glared at the warrior, who shrugged. He looked back at the Librarian.

‘Thank you, Sergeant Aeroth,’ replied the psyker. ‘I am Koloth Lerys. I shall be the new castellan of this fortress.’

‘A great honour, brother,’ said Aeroth gravely.

The Librarian smiled. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps a great waste of time. I have read your report, Darin. I know that our brother’s noble sacrifice sealed the rifts and stemmed the tide.’

‘For now,’ said Oenomaus, stepping forward. ‘You must remain vigilant, lest the enemy return.’

Lerys turned his gaze to the young battle-brother. ‘Yes, brother. Chief Librarian Tigurius agrees with that assessment. He has divined that this rift has existed for longer than the Imperium, and believes that it might be reopened some day. And so, I shall remain here, and brothers of our Chapter and our successors shall join me, and when I am recalled, or when I am no longer able to stand vigil, another member of the Librarius shall take my place. And so it shall be until the daemons return, or until the stars turn cold.’

There was silence for a time as Lerys looked up at the fort that would be his home.

‘I understand that Fort Kerberos has been destroyed?’

‘Aye,’ said Aeroth. ‘And as far as we can tell, the seal beneath it was destroyed also. If the rift is ever to reopen, it will be here, or up there.’ He gestured to the ugly scar that split the sky. No longer an open sore, it now resembled a closed, puckered wound.

The Librarian nodded slowly.

‘And the people?’

‘Few survivors, but they are determined to rebuild. The Adeptus Mechanicus arrived two months ago. The Magos Biologis seem to believe that the contagion that blighted the crops didn’t penetrate far into the soil. They think that within a decade, the land will be arable again. People will return and Orath will reclaim its status as the sector’s breadbasket.’

‘I look forward to seeing that,’ said Lerys thoughtfully. ‘My family were farmers.’

Aeroth looked round at his battle-brothers. ‘If you will excuse us, Brother-Librarian, I would like to say goodbye to some of the civilians before we embark.’

‘Of course, Darin. May you walk in the primarch’s footsteps.’

Both Space Marines gave the warrior’s salute, thumping their chests with a clenched fist, and Aeroth turned and headed towards the serfs’ quarters. The survivors of the vicious fighting in the fort had all elected to remain, to help with the rebuilding and await the adepts of the Imperium who would decide the fate of their world. Over the months, Aeroth had grown quite fond of them.

He wandered through the courtyard, nodding to the humans. He had said most of his goodbyes already, all but one.

‘Have you seen the priest?’ he asked a woman who was chivvying a group of children past. She shook her head and carried on. He passed through the serfs’ quarters, empty and quiet at this time of day, and came to the cell that Andronicus had made home. The priest’s few possessions were there, neatly arrayed on the small desk – a torn and tattered copy of his holy book, a few items of clothing and a battered canteen.

Aeroth frowned. He had never seen the priest without the canteen. He lifted it. It felt half-full and sloshed with liquid. The sergeant set it back down and walked back outside. He knew that he would never see the old man again, and some part of him, deep down, said that no one ever would.

Some mysteries, he thought, simply weren’t meant to be solved.

Lerys watched the Stormraven take off and speed away into orbit. He looked around, taking in the crumbling rockcrete walls of the keep and the surrounding battlements.

‘Fort Garm,’ he said. ‘Home.’ He turned and walked inside, heading towards the command chamber. Inside were banks of cogitators and communicators, a desk and, on one wall, a carved stone memorial with a list of names. He reached out and touched them as he read the names aloud. ‘Vabion, Melkan, Hura…’

He recited each in turn, until he came to the end. ‘Iova. Sentina…’ He paused. There was another name after the late Chaplain’s. Where Sentina’s and the others were laser-carved, precise and rounded, this last looked as though it had been scratched into the stone with a crude tool. It was little more than a series of shaky lines, but it formed a name. He wondered who the person was, what their story was. He wondered why they belonged on this wall of heroes.

He supposed he would never know. He read the name aloud.

‘Alia.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graeme Lyon is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘The Carnac Campaign: Sky Hunter’, ‘From the Flames’ and ‘Kor’sarro Khan: Huntmaster’, along with the Warhammer tale ‘The Hunter’. He hails from Scotland, but now splits his time between Nottingham and Dublin. It is well documented that Graeme has a deep loathing of cheese, but makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.

For Sarah Anne, without whom I could never have made my own leap of faith.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

© Games Workshop Limited, 2014. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration by Kai Lim of Imaginary Friends Studios.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-495-4

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