Contents

Cover

Honour Among Fiends - Dylan Owen

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Honour Among Fiends

Dylan Owen

'Contact zero-thirty!'

'You sure, Scaevolla? I see nothing.'

'Trust me, Larsus!'

Scaevolla stroked the trigger of his bolter. A dozen rounds barked into the obscuring green fog, and screams wailed from the soupy atmosphere ahead. He and his men pounded towards the cries, eight hulking warriors in black power armour trimmed with gold. A blazing eye was superimposed on the eight-pronged star of Chaos emblazoned on their right shoulder pads: the heraldry of the Black Legion.

The warriors whooped feral cries of joy. It had been a long journey through the void to this barren, mist-swathed planet, but now they could let off steam against the minions of the False Emperor ahead. Scaevolla almost felt sorry for the enemy. He needed one alive, to learn where fate had directed him, and to discover the name of the man he had sought since the visions made him leave the Eye of Terror a year ago.

It was always a nightmare that would inspire Scaevolla to lead his men on another hunt. A year ago he had woken screaming from such a dream: silver, unblinking eyes penetrating his sleep. Instinct had led him to navigate his battle frigate, Talon of the Ezzelite, out of the shifting spheres of the Eye of Terror into the reality of Imperial space. A series of portents had led him to this world of lethal mists. Dozens of battleships emblazoned with symbols of the Ruinous Powers blockaded the planet, the wreckage of Imperial vessels drifting amongst them. The Talon had evaded these and landed undetected among low, mist-shrouded hills on a continent wracked by war. A kilometre away was a sprawling city under siege, towards which Scaevolla's esoteric senses tugged. Whenever he closed his eyes, the image of a crowned skull seared his mind's vision, and he knew that the man he had to kill commanded the defenders here.

Las-rounds whined past or pattered harmlessly off the warriors' armour. Scaevolla felt one brush his temple, but felt no pain. He pumped off another dozen rounds into the fog, each shot followed by a scream, closer this time. At his left, Opus, the bull of the squad, howled a tuneless battle-dirge accompanied by the roar of his autocannon.

Lines of men in grey battle uniform emerged wraithlike from the mist, their masked helmets lending them an alien appearance - wide black eyes and metal snouts. The troopers' helmets depicted a silver double-headed eagle, the insignia of the Imperial Guard. The front rank of the platoon knelt and the second rank stood upright, lasguns at the ready while the fallen curled on the floor. Ethereal green tentacles probed the living and caressed the dead. A sergeant bellowed and another volley was unleashed, but the shrill hail washed over the attackers' power armour with no effect. Scaevolla calmly loosed a bolt and watched as the sergeant's head exploded into meat and bone. He had not expected to encounter any of the planet's defenders so soon after leaving the Talon.

Perhaps this platoon of troopers was as lost in the mists as his squad was.

Scaevolla and his men smashed into the enemy lines. When a man enters combat, his experience of time slows. For Scaevolla, the first second of the skirmish froze completely. He observed the tableau of impending destruction. Opus was mouthing a song, no doubt accompanying the infernal choir that sang ceaselessly inside his skull, his eyes rolled up into the sockets of his bald head, the death spitting from his autocannon hanging in mid-air. To Opus's left was Sharn, his helmet featureless, devoid even of eye-slits, his flamer bathing the troopers with liquid fire. Further away was Ferox, head flipped back at an unnatural angle as a smooth shaft of glistening muscle with a muzzle of snapping teeth began to emerge from his mouth. Ahead was Icaris, his face contorted with anguish, tears of blood frozen on his cheeks, the air patterned crimson where his chainaxe lopped his opponents' limbs. Icaris wept for his victims, who would never know the joys of serving the true gods.

Scaevolla glanced right. Lieutenant Larsus had bisected a Guardsman with his chainsword, and was caught in mid-laughter savouring the gore splashing his face. Beyond him was Surgit, towering over his foes, power sword scabbarded, pistol holstered, his horned helm scanning the platoon for a worthy foe. Finally came Manex, emptying a stream of ammunition from his two bolt pistols into the enemy line, mouth frothing and eyes bulging from the poisons that fed into his brain from the tubes within his armour. Pride swelled in Scaevolla's chest as he regarded his squad. Countless warzones had honed their battle skills, and none had ever failed him.

The frozen scene melted, the motionless fighters slamming back to life. Bodies piled around the feet of Icaris and Larsus, both a blur of whirring chainblades, and Ferox's monstrous tongue lashed among the troopers, flensing flesh, his hands erupting into vicious, slashing claws. Manex ripped torsos apart with the ferocity of his gunfire, and Opus howled aloud an incomprehensible opera, chorused by the deadly riff of his autocannon, while Sharn burned a hole in the enemy lines. Although outnumbered, the warriors of the Black Legion were carving bloody chunks in the ranks of the Imperial Guard, whose bayonets stabbed feebly at their power armour. The troopers' attempts at swamping their attackers through sheer weight of numbers were like the ocean lashing in vain at a tidal wall.

A commissar in a leering skull mask rushed into the fray, power sword raised, haranguing the troopers to fight to the bitter end, cutting down those who dared take a step backwards. Surgit, ignoring the las-fire zipping around him, cackled in triumph, drew his power sword and ploughed through the troopers to meet the officer blow for blow.

A bayonet stabbed at Scaevolla, who opened a hole in its owner's skull with a shot from his boltgun. More bayonets bit into his armour. Scaevolla stepped back, firing indiscriminately, and the bayonets fell away into the fog. A single trooper stood his ground, clutching his ruined arm. Scaevolla reached out with his left hand and gently traced the leather of the man's mask with a claw of his armoured glove. He spoke softly. 'What year is this? What planet? Who leads your foes?'

The words choked weakly from behind the gas mask.

'Pl… planet? Zincali VI. We fight the Traitor-Lord H'raxor. The year? W… why…?'

'Who commands your defences?'

'Captain Demetros… of the Imperial Fists… he will cleanse your filth. The Emperor protects…'

With a flick of Scaevolla's clawed fingers, the material of the gas mask fell away, revealing a pale face, eyes dazed. The soldier took a deep breath and winced. He clamped his uninjured hand to his neck, his mouth gaping wide, throat gurgling, and as Scaevolla watched, dark green, fleshy shoots pushed their way out of the soldier's mouth, bulging his neck. The man sank to his knees, tiny vines growing from his nostrils. With a strangled groan, he toppled to his side, eyes glazed, and within seconds his corpse was wrapped in a vegetal embrace, roots snaking into the black earth, pinning the body to the ground.

Scaevolla breathed deeply, the spore-rich air bitter to the taste. He smiled at the frailty of lesser men.

The sounds of battle trailed away. The few Imperial Guard who had survived the onslaught had vanished like ghosts into the green mist. Where once had stood an ordered line of determined soldiers there now lay piles of broken corpses, green shoots sprouting from bloody wounds where the minute spores in the mist had seeded in flesh. The ground flared where Sham's flamer incinerated the bodies of the half-dead, and in the fire's glow, Icaris mumbled the Litany of Execration over the corpses. Manex snuggled in Opus's iron grip, pinned down until his frenzy subsided. Ferox was metamorphosing back, his hands already human, his eel-like appendage vomiting gobbets of half-digested meat as it shrank back into his distended mouth. For his outstanding valour, Ferox had been blessed by the gods with these mutations, which burst forth from his flesh under duress. While his comrades regarded Ferox with awe, Scaevolla did not share their admiration. He remembered the old Ferox that these gifts had consumed, who had bolstered the squad's morale with his easy manner and ready wit, now long disappeared.

There was no sign of Surgit. Scaevolla called out his name.

'Here!' The horns of the warrior's helmet lent him a daemonic appearance as he emerged from the clinging fog carrying the commissar's head. He sniffed. 'A disappointing match. His hatred made him clumsy. My blade feels sullied.'

'A fine fight you've led us to, captain.' Larsus approached, grinning through a mask of drying blood at Scaevolla. 'You never disappoint. Is our quarry here?'

'His name is Demetros. The visions were true. He commands the Corpse-Emperor's forces.' Scaevolla's voice became heavy. 'Lieutenant, do you ever tire of the chase?'

Larsus rapped the image of the Eye of Horus on Scaevolla's right shoulder pad. 'Never. So long as we fight, the legacy of the Warmaster lives on.'

It had been during the false Emperor's Great Crusade that Scaevolla and his men had learned their battlecraft, and bonded in blood and violence. In those days they had been Lunar Wolves, their armour white; innocents blind to the Emperor's weakness. Then Horus, beloved Warmaster, had cast the scales from their eyes, and they had fought as his devoted Sons to free themselves from the false Emperor's coils. At the edge of victory, the Warmaster fell, and his Legion had fled to the protective shadows of the warp, where it became known as the Black Legion. To mark the Legion's sorrow and disgrace, its warriors' power armour was lacquered black, although the edges of the armour gleamed with gold, for even the darkest night is banished by the gleam of a new dawn. Scaevolla's men believed that every minion of the Corpse-Emperor they slew brought closer a new golden age for their Legion.

Scaevolla's memory of those days was scarred by rage and betrayal. The past haunted him with the face of a murdered comrade. The pain had not dulled in… how many years? A hundred, a thousand… ten thousand? Time was exiled from the Eye of Terror, Scaevolla's life one long dream-like existence until he was spat out into reality to honour his oath.

Larsus broke Scaevolla's reverie. 'Captain, why the grim face? Is our small victory not sweet enough?'

'It's nothing,' Scaevolla shook his head to clear his mind. 'Gather the hounds, lieutenant. Let's see where the scent has led us to.'

* * *

Scaevolla hugged the brow of the hill. Piercing the sea of green fog that roiled in the valley below were uncountable battle standards, laden with gory trophies. The valley seemed to rumble under the advance of the obscured army. The bronze turrets of assault tanks and upper hulls of troop transports, crested with spikes, resembled an innumerable fleet of sea craft ploughing through ethereal waves. A score of monstrous war machines waded among them, each clanking on six steel legs like nightmarish metal spiders. The horde swept towards the horizon where a termites' nest of cyclopean buildings rose from the mist like an island. The city's ziggurats glittered with a million dots of light, their heights vanishing into red nimbus, and a thousand chimneys belched smoke into the sky. Circling the factory-city was a wall that dwarfed even the clanking war machines. Titanic bastions guarded the circuit, their cannons spitting plasma onto the advancing horde. Among the serried grey ranks of troopers manning the defences were phalanxes of power-armoured warriors, distinct in brilliant yellow, proud standards depicting a black clenched fist on a white field; Space Marines of the Imperial Fists Chapter defended in force.

Larsus, crouched next to Scaevolla, gave a low whistle. 'A city of ten billion souls. H'raxor wants to build a mountain of skulls.'

'No,' whispered Scaevolla. 'If he only desired trophies, he would have attacked a less well-defended target.'

Blasts smacked the valley, yellow blossoms briefly parting the mists to reveal a circle of torn corpses, and a tank was hurled into the air ablaze, to land with a ripping explosion.

Scaevolla licked the air. 'These mists are rich in protein. Perhaps this planet's manufactorums process the atmosphere into food. The destruction of this world may mean famine for those Imperial outposts it feeds. This is the opening gambit of a major invasion. H'raxor has great ambition. We'll let him enjoy his petty conquest, as long as he doesn't interfere with our mission. Our quarry is in the city. I feel it. We must reach him quickly, before the defenders are overrun.'

'There.' Larsus pointed at a bronze-plated Land Raider battle tank, festooned with hooks and barbs, advancing at the foot of their hill in support of the army's reserve. 'We steal a ride.'

Scaevolla nodded. 'Get to work, lieutenant.'

While Larsus signalled orders to the squad waiting behind him, Scaevolla removed a small silver discus from his grenade belt and fingered a switch on its ornate shell. Raising the discus to his lips, he kissed it once then spun it at the vehicle below. There was a flash and the tank came to a halt with a squeal of engines, blue sparks rippling across its hull. Scaevolla and his squad pelted down the hill, penetrating the mist. The mutant soldiers hugging the vehicle for cover milled around in confusion, muffled curses escaping the crude respirators clamped around their mouths.

'Out of the way, scum!' roared Larsus, felling soldiers who failed to yield. The mutants gibbered as they pushed each other to escape.

Ferox and Icaris vaulted to the top of the vehicle, while the rest of the squad surrounded it. A crewman emerged from a hatch on the tank's upper hull, blue sparks playing across his brassy power armour. Icaris yanked him out and silenced him with a bolt. Ferox slid through the opening. There followed a muffled roar, then the portal closest to Manex slid open and another crewman toppled out, his bronze armour rent with gashes. Manex peppered him with bolts.

'Good work, brothers.' Larsus peered through the open portal. Inside the gore-splattered interior of the tank, Ferox straddled a third crewman, his head snapped back and the fleshy eel extended from his mouth, sucking at the innards of his victim.

'Inside,' urged Scaevolla. He followed his squad into the vehicle and pointed at the feeding Ferox. 'Calm him.' Larsus eased Ferox from his kill with gentle movements and a soft voice. Already, the eel was shrinking back into Ferox's throat, its recent meal sloshing onto the floor.

Icaris positioned himself at the controls, the blue sparks that danced across the console sputtering like dying flames. He caressed the array of switches as they flashed back to life. 'Power returning. Yes, here she comes. I think she likes us; she finds our antics… amusing.'

The portal and hatch clanged shut, the cabin shuddered as the engines roared, and the Land Raider lurched forward. Inside, its inner walls purred and blinked with myriad eyes at the new crew.

The Land Raider careened across the battlefield, crushing mutant soldiers beneath its treads. Fog clouded the viewports, but the intelligence fettered within the vehicle's shell guided it towards its destination, a heavily defended gate in the city wall. Halfway across, a missile rocketed into the Land Raider's hull, and the daemon-spirit keened in agony, but the damage was superficial. Soon the gateway loomed out of the mist, its portcullis buckled and scorched. A semi-circle of twisted mutant corpses defined the killing ground around the base of the gate, into which H'raxor's soldiers marched, chanting defiantly as they soaked up the defenders' precious ammunition.

As the Land Raider came into range of the gate's barbican it suffered sustained fire. Opus emerged head and shoulders from the vehicle's hatch to rake defenders off the battlements with the pintle-mounted gun, indifferent to the las-fire whining inches from his face and the explosions impacting off the hull. The Land Raider's las-cannon strobed at the weakened gate, but the portal absorbed the laser fire intact.

'Ram the gates!' ordered Scaevolla desperately. Everyone in the troop compartment tensed. Manex inhaled deeply from his tox-tubes and Ferox began coughing strings of drool. Scaevolla knew they had to evacuate before the blood lust and the Dark Gods' gift took hold.

'Ram them now!'

The Land Raider rattled from a violent explosion and Opus dropped from the firing hatch, a face of burnt flesh, power armour embedded with shrapnel, his ruined lips mouthing demented lyrics.

Icaris screamed from the controls, 'The gates are not going to give!'

'Continue, Brother Icaris,' yelled Scaevolla. He braced himself. There was a crashing rip of torn metal, and every bone in his body seemed to jar from the impact. The keening of the daemon-spirit raked his eardrums. With a sharp crack, Ferox's head snapped back, his mutation probing from his throat.

'We're through!' shouted Icaris. 'Seventy per cent damage to auxiliary reactor, firing systems all down—'

'Open the hatches!'

'Impossible… locking rune overridden… she doesn't like us anymore!'

The eel snaked from Ferox's gullet. Then, with a feral roar, Manex gripped the rear hatch with both hands and wrenched it open. Green fronds of mist wisped into the cabin. With a single cry, Scaevolla and his squad bounded out of the vehicle.

Scaevolla felt the flow of time cease once again. Manex was down, a shield for his companions, his armour punctured a dozen times. Larsus and Surgit were behind him, their bolters loosing a ribbon of shots as they charged the phalanx of Imperial Fists that opposed them. Sharn was licking the enemy with flesh-melting heat, while Ferox, fully deformed, stretched towards the enemy, yellow gore spurting from a hit to his pulsing eel-muscle.

Scaevolla's sword was already in his hand, its blade long and slender, a single rune engraved at its tip. Scaevolla had been rewarded with the runeblade Fornax when he had laid the first skull before the floating Altar of the Four Gods on the daemon-world Sebaket. How long ago had that been? Now a pyramid of five hundred skulls marked his success in the hunt. He wondered what divine favour victory would win him this time?

There was only one reward which Scaevolla desired: an end to this eternal chase. The gods drove him without rest to fulfil his vow. While his men fought for the sheer joy of killing, Scaevolla could no longer share their enthusiasm. The deaths blurred into one, dulling the emotion of the kill. His swordplay failed to thrill him, no longer a display of skill but mechanistic rote. He felt hollow. He had prayed to his masters for clemency, for release from his oath, which he had fulfilled five hundred times, but they would never grant him manumission. The only way out was escape.

A bolt-round rebounded off Scaevolla's chest guard with a bang. The world slipped back into motion, and the wild charge of Scaevolla's warriors met the stoic wall of yellow power armour. Surgit rejoiced. 'At last! A foe worthy of my wrath!'

With a juddering retort, the heavy bolter atop the crippled Land Raider came to life as Icaris, who had manoeuvred himself to the gun-turret, pinned down reinforcements trying to enter the fight.

'Dreadnought!' Icaris's heavy bolter shells pattered uselessly against the walker striding powerfully towards the combat, its crushing claws poised to strike.

Scaevolla stepped in front of the war-hulk, sword pointed in challenge. For how long had the withered corpse inside this walking coffin been compelled to cheat death?

'By the four gods,' shouted Scaevolla, 'I will end your misery.'

The Dreadnought, liveried in the heraldry of the Imperial Fists, overshadowed Scaevolla, but the prayer scrolls and relic bones decorating the walker's hulk would be no ward against his runesword, which could penetrate any earthly metal.

A stray mortar exploded between them.

White light consumed Scaevolla's vision, then darkness. He was flying. He felt no pain. He panicked. It was not yet time to die! Scaevolla had chosen the manner of his death, and it was not this way.

Scaevolla landed with a crash and fought for breath. His vision cleared to reveal the Dreadnought, unscratched by the explosion, looming over him, fists crackling with energy. The fingers of Scaevolla's outstretched left hand brushed the hilt of his runesword.

With a bestial snarl, a giant lurched from the wreckage of the Land Raider. Opus, his head in tatters, pounded the Dreadnought's hull with tactical artillery from his autocannon.

Scaevolla's grip folded around the handle of his sword and he lunged at the reeling Dreadnought, its armour scorching where the glowing runesword penetrated. Scaevolla slid the blade out and leapt back. The Dreadnought's oculus flashed green then faded to black, and the metal behemoth crashed forward.

Scaevolla raised his blade in salute. Something ancient had just perished. Scaevolla swallowed his envy.

The warriors of the Black Legion had decimated the line of Imperial Fists, though a few persevered despite severed limbs and mortal wounds. One Space Marine lay prone, his legs a crimson ruin, loosing shots from his bolt pistol until silenced by Icaris's stamping boot. Another, his helmet cloven, his eyes dashed from his face, fought blind, almost decapitating Larsus with his blade until finished by the lieutenant's chainsword.

Surgit ran up to the wrecked Dreadnought, shaking his fist in Scaevolla's face. 'Whoreson! That should have been mine!'

Larsus pushed Surgit aside. 'Scaevolla, we have to go. Lord H'raxor's army has broken through.'

The gateway was choked with masked mutants fighting each other to be first through the breach. The defenders in the bastions concentrated their fire on the horde, but for every abomination they felled, two more stepped over the corpse. Behind the seething, dying mass, scarlet-armoured berserk warriors wearing rictus helms chopped through the scum with chainswords, chanting paeans to their bloody god.

Scaevolla's squad stood in a wide bailey that stretched between the defensive wall and the soaring buildings of the city. From the right clanked a wall of battle tanks to plug the breach. From the left marched lines of gas-masked troopers. Ahead, across the bailey, barely discernable through the fog, yawned the entrance to a manufactorum, the heights of the complex disappearing into red clouds. There was only one way forward before the jaws of flesh and metal closed.

'Follow me, men!' Scaevolla sprinted through the obscuring mist for the huge doors.

The manufactorum was a cathedral of industry. Furnaces burned - altars of hungry flames - and huge vats steamed stinking vapours like sacred censers. Machinery hissed, impatient to be reanimated, and ducts and gantries spiralled up into echoing blackness. Holed by a single melta charge, the doors had proved no obstacle, and neither had the desultory force of factory guards; the innards of forty men decorated the floor.

Surgit spat at the corpses. 'We ran from an army to face mere factotums.'

'We did not run, brother,' retorted Larsus. 'We are on the hunt, remember. The chaff outside is not worth our while.'

'Calm,' snapped Scaevolla, and Surgit and Larsus backed away from each other. 'How is Manex?'

'Fit to shatter more skulls.' Manex had been dragged to safety by Opus. His armour was pitted with holes and half his face was fleshy pulp. 'I've suffered worse.'

'Ferox?'

Larsus shrugged. 'He'll find us when he's had his fill.'

'Sharn, Icaris, ready for battle?'

Sharn bowed, then returned to caressing the white flames of a nearby kiln. Icaris had sunk to his knees, cradling the severed head of a factory-drudge.

'Why do they fight us? We show them our might, yet they refuse to follow our path. We evangelise with sword and fire, but to what end? They perish in their millions for their faith in a dead God-Emperor. We offer the secret knowledge of the stars, yet they prefer to die ignorant. Why, my captain?' Icaris's cheeks were streaked with bloody tears.

Scaevolla softly cupped his battle-brother's chin with his armoured glove. The scars on the young face were testament to his many victories.

'The gods demand sacrifice, boy. We are the reapers who sate their eternal hunger. These men are mere animals, fit only for the holy pyre; don't weep for the fate of the weak.'

'But I must, captain. I will weep until the entire universe bends its knee to the gods.'

Scaevolla admired Icaris's devotion, but said nothing more. Let him enjoy the lie. Once Scaevolla too had believed it was his vocation to shatter the shackles of order that chained the galaxy, but he knew from bitter experience that the gods demanded war only for the sake of petty entertainment. Lord H'raxor fought in vain to win glory, for when the gods tired of him, he would be cast down and forgotten. Perhaps Horus's rebellion, too, had been nothing more than a brief diversion for the gods. Perhaps, at the brink of victory, it had delighted them to see their servant fall and watch his armies collapse into animosity. It was for their amusement that Scaevolla scoured the galaxy on an unending blood-hunt.

As he contemplated the will of his divine masters, unwelcome memories invaded his mind…

…Scaevolla cradled the dying Space Marine, whose yellow power armour was spattered with the filth of battle. Scaevolla's pale armour was similarly grimed. The surrounding storm of war felt ten thousand years away. Scaevolla looked down at his battle-brother's face: a patrician's nose, a powerful chin, the well-defined skull of a noble warrior, defiant even at the approach of death. Silver eyes dimmed as the life drained away, their glassy stare haunting Scaevolla.

'Aleph, my friend, you could have saved yourself!' Scaevolla choked on the words. 'Why did you follow the lies of the False Emperor? Your liege-lord is Horus. You know it, brother. Say it!'

Life beat weakly within the Space Marine, but Aleph's lips did not move. The silence stoked Scaevolla's anger.

'Damn you, Aleph! We swore to conquer galaxies together, unstoppable, our crusade unending. Remember how we cleansed the Haruspex of Crore? How we defended the monastery of Satrapos alone against the ork hordes of the Starbiter?'

During the Great Crusades, when Scaevolla's Legion had been called the Lunar Wolves, the Imperial Fists had fought alongside them in many battles. It was common lore that Horus, primarch of the Lunar Wolves, had, as a mark of respect, joked that a war between his Legion and the Imperial Fists would last for eternity.

At the battle of Thrael Falls on Cestus II, Scaevolla had rescued Captain Aleph of the Imperial Fists from the anak, the planet's monstrous aboriginals. The two Space Marines bonded in friendship and fought together in many battles when the paths of their Legions crossed. But when Horus declared his true colours, Scaevolla failed to convince his friend that the road to glory lay with the Warmaster. The rebellion parted them and they would not meet again until the siege of the Emperor's palace on Terra, when the Sons of Horns assaulted the Eternity Gate, guarded by the Imperial Fists. Across the carnage of the battlefield, Scaevolla had sought out his former battle-brother. They had fought, and Aleph had fallen, pierced by Scaevolla's sword.

Scaevolla remembered his final words to the dying Space Marine. 'All the glory we fought for, my brother, gone to dust.'

It was only then that Aleph's lips moved. 'It was not our glory, brother,' he spat out the word with a phlegm of blood. 'The glory was the Emperor's.'

Scaevolla sneered. 'Your Emperor fights to defend dishonourable men, weaklings, slaves, who cower while we, men of virtue, spill our sacred blood on their behalf. Your Emperor could have been a god, and we his angels, but instead he chose servitude to protect his bleating flock.' Urgency touched Scaevolla's words. 'Look into your heart. You know I am right.'

Aleph shook his head.

Hot tears coursed Scaevolla's cheeks. 'I offer you freedom, brother, and you choose death.'

A hundred wounds Scaevolla had suffered, but none had bitten as deep as this. Aleph had rebuked the Warmaster, and had forced Scaevolla's hand to fratricide. Aleph had betrayed his battle-brother.

'Fool!' snarled Scaevolla. 'I rescued you. You owe me your life. Listen to me. I can save you again: disown the false Emperor and join me.'

Aleph chuckled hoarsely. 'Had the Emperor granted me foresight, I would have preferred to have been torn alive by the anak than rescued by the whelp of an insane blackguard.'

Rage conquered Scaevolla. His bitter agony turned to anger, sweet to taste.

'You dare mock the Warmaster? I swear, with the four gods as my witness, I shall avenge your insults a thousandfold.'

Laughter echoed madly in Scaevolla's head.

'I shall hunt down and kill your progeny, to the end of time. Your sons will suffer by my blade for your devotion to your weakling Emperor.'

Scaevolla tore Aleph's armour from his chest and dug deep into the flesh. With a sickening squelch, he removed a gland from the mess, his armoured gloves wet and red. As the light in Aleph's eyes vanished, Scaevolla taunted him with the bloody trophy. 'I shall replay this moment of victory over you again and again.'

With reverence, he nestled the organ in Aleph's dead hands. The progenoid gland contained the gene-seed necessary to cultivate Aleph's successor. Apothecaries scoured the battlefield under fire, collecting the precious material. When they recovered Aleph's progenoid gland, his essence would live on in a new recruit implanted with his gene-seed. Scaevolla would pursue each of Aleph's genetic heirs and make them suffer the same fate as their progenitor. In invoking the four gods, he had bound himself to this oath.

Scaevolla stood and addressed the corpse. 'I shall build a monument to the gods you spurned with the skulls of your descendants. Yours shall be the foundation stone.'

With a swift swipe of his blade he decapitated his former battle-brother. As he stooped to pick up the fallen head, Larsus appeared, stumbling on the wreckage of the battlefield, panic on his bloodied face. Scaevolla paled as he heard his words.

'Captain, all hope is lost. The Warmaster is dead! We must go!'

'What did you say?'

Larsus repeated himself, louder…

…The past faded. Scaevolla gathered his wits back to the present. Larsus was shaking his shoulder.

'Captain, we must go. H'raxor's army has broken the outer defences.'

Outside, the triumphant battle cries of the invading horde were drowning out the defenders' screams. Scaevolla paused, inhaling deeply. His quarry was close. His senses were drawn to the factory's heights.

'We go up.'

* * *

Scaevolla watched the trooper pirouette towards a gaping vat far below and vanish with a splash into the volcanic brew, the last of those who had engaged his squad as they clambered up ladders and along gantries to the higher levels of the factory, led by their leader's instinct.

The squad stood before a set of sturdy doors. Scaevolla could almost taste his quarry's presence beyond them. Quietly, he took Larsus to one side. 'Lieutenant, whatever happens, do not intervene to save me. If I should fall, it is the will of the gods. Bear my head to Sebaket and top the altar with my skull as a mark of my failure.'

Larsus looked stunned. 'What do you mean, captain? There is no soul in this galaxy who could best you.'

Scaevolla turned away from his lieutenant. He pointed at the doors. 'Opus?'

The bull ran at the doors and shouldered them open. Daylight spilled from the breach. Scaevolla followed, the rest of his men close behind.

Outside was a wide plaza, open to the gusting wind, with a view across the mist-wreathed killing fields far below. Low clouds, an angry red, obscured the sky. A platoon of Imperial Fists ranged across the plaza. The tallest was cloaked in sweeping blue, crowned with the golden laurels of an officer. An ornate sword hissed with energy in his hands.

Scaevolla thrilled. Aleph's features were etched on Captain Demetros's noble face. He barked his orders. 'The captain is mine. Destroy the others.'

The screech of bolters greeted the warriors' charge, their black armour soaking up the deadly hail. Scaevolla watched his squad advance.

'Farewell,' he whispered sadly, then muttered a pledge to the gods. 'Now it's time to end your sport. I will lay no more skulls before your altar.'

Scaevolla walked forward, singling out the captain with his runesword. Five hundred times he had re-enacted this scene. Five hundred times he had vanquished his silver-eyed opponent, heir of Aleph, and removed his head as a trophy. His rage had been satisfied long ago. He'd had to endure the pain of murdering his comrade over and over again, but he could endure it no longer.

Scaevolla circled, a black wolf stalking its prey. His rival adopted a duelling posture, power sword balanced to parry or bite. As he closed, Scaevolla saw Demetros's silver eyes narrow with faint recognition. That silver stare pinned Scaevolla's gaze, transporting him to another time, another place…

…The sounds of battle roared, explosions and gunfire and the screams of the dying. The ground shuddered to the tread of a Titan's foot, scattering squads of Imperial Fists before it. The magnificent Eternity Gate, glowering over the battlefield, shook to the fiery kiss of a hundred missiles. A gunship screeched overhead, spitting death, and a dozen advancing pale-armoured Sons of Horus fell in a shower of flame. Mud from the explosions spattered Scaevolla's pale armour, but he did not flinch. The cacophony of battle was a mere murmur to him as he circled his opponent, the surrounding blur of violence an illusion.

'Brother Scaevolla.' Scaevolla's silver-eyed adversary broke the silence. 'I have missed you.'

'And I you, Brother Aleph.' Scaevolla smiled ruefully. 'Surrender your sword. You've laid low many of the Warmaster's servants but I will vouch for you before him. He will forgive.'

'Why should I give my heart to a traitor?' spat Aleph. His eyes steeled. 'His madness has destroyed everything the Emperor has fought for. Your Warmaster has stolen your reason, Scaevolla. You may live your lie for ten millennia, but your heart will weary of your lusts, and you'll be left an empty husk.' Aleph breathed deeply, his features pulled with sorrow. 'Let me end it here, my friend. On the point of my blade. I cannot save you from your past, but I can save you from the future.'

Their eyes continued to lock.

Aleph nodded slowly. 'So be it. We fight…'

…Scaevolla was jolted back into the present as Demetros's blade sprang from nowhere. He blocked with a rapid parry, his runesword sparking as it slid down his rival's power weapon. With a flick of his blade, Demetros tried to disarm him, but Scaevolla was too nimble and returned with a counter-blow. Demetros inclined his head slightly, and the runesword's sweep skimmed his cheek.

A hideous ululation broke the duellist's concentration. Fury burst from the plaza doors, clad in baroque armour slick with gore. Odes to the Blood God howled from rictus battle-helms as the berserkers fell on the Imperial Fists, chainaxes chopping. One of the crazed attackers sliced apart a Space Marine, but was in turn disembowelled by Surgit, whose kill he had stolen. Soon the plaza was a confused melee: black, yellow and crimson power armour battling each other.

Five berserkers converged on Captain Demetros.

'No!' screamed Scaevolla, decapitating one with a swing of his blade.

The headless corpse tottered forward, flailing past the startled Space Marine. Scaevolla turned to engage two of the surviving berserkers. Demetros was forced to defend against the other pair. Together they stood almost side by side, blocking every frenzied attack. Though their assailants' blows were everywhere, their defences blurred in reply. A chainaxe buzzed past Demetros's head, who ducked and rammed his blade deep into its wielder's chest. Another berserker lunged enthusiastically at Scaevolla, who cut his legs from under him, the severed stumps smoking where the runesword had bitten.

With a crunch, a chainaxe penetrated Demetros's shoulder guard. He shrugged off the wound, but tottered back, unbalanced. Howling, the devotee of the Blood God raised his weapon to deal the death blow, but the axe stopped centimetres from Demetros's skull, met by Scaevolla's sword. Scaevolla raked his blade down the weapon's shaft, slicing through its guard and ruining the fingers clutching the hilt, before decapitating its wielder with a whirling blow. Demetros rolled to a kneeling position to gut the final attacker. Scaevolla spun to face the Imperial Fist, who rose to his feet, the berserker's corpse slipping from his blade.

Scaevolla gave a slight bow. 'Just like old times.'

Demetros frowned. 'I have seen you fight before.'

'We have never met,' Scaevolla smiled slyly. 'But I have spilled your blood many, many times.'

Demetros shook his head slowly. 'You are insane.'

Around the duellists, Scaevolla's warriors had formed a defensive ring. Berserkers and Space Marines lay in a crimson circle at their feet.

'Shield the captain!' yelled Larsus as a howling tide of berserkers and mutants flowed into the plaza.

'Fresh meat!' cried Surgit with satisfaction, swinging his power sword above his head.

The fighting was chaotic, Imperial Fists and berserkers hacking at each other, and mutants caught in the melee, chopped into a crimson spray. Amidst this tumult, Scaevolla's warriors cut down any that attempted to breach their circle. As they fought, Opus sang, Icaris wept, Manex roared and Sham slew silently.

Scaevolla and Demetros stood undisturbed in their arena.

Demetros frowned. 'You defend me against your own kind. You are jealous for my death. Why?'

'For the sins of your father,' replied Scaevolla. 'He did my liege lord a great disservice once. But fortune smiles on you, Demetros. You are the one who will win back your father's honour. Let us finish this. My men are strong, but they cannot hold out against two armies.'

Scaevolla tipped his runesword to his forehead in salute. Demetros stood motionless. Blades blurred, then the two were statues. Neither betrayed exertion. A feint from the Space Marine, a retort from Scaevolla, swift attack and counterattack blocked and blocked again. Scaevolla twisted his blade and his opponent's sword flew from his grasp, to land with a clatter between them. Scaevolla's runesword glowed, as though excited by the impending kill, but Scaevolla dipped his blade and flipped the fallen power sword back at Demetros, who deftly caught it.

'A hero should never be defenceless,' said Scaevolla.

Demetros replied with a lightning thrust, but Scaevolla parried. Then Demetros executed a brilliant side step, and his sword was beyond Scaevolla's guard.

The world stilled around Scaevolla, the blade hovering a second away from his heart. At this, the final moment, he felt alive; fear and elation mingled in one delicious cocktail. His vow was broken; at last he would sleep.

But if Scaevolla shifted his torso a fraction to the right, the blade would slide parallel to his armour, cutting a flesh wound, deep but not mortal.

Scaevolla remained still.

Reality surged back with a sucking roar, and the blade plunged through black power armour. Scaevolla smiled. The power sword had punctured his heart and split the back of his armour. When the blade slid free, Scaevolla was still standing.

'A fine blow, my friend. A blow worthy of my death.'

Scaevolla wondered how a dead man could speak. There was no pain. The tumult of the surrounding battle did not ebb away.

Demetros backed off, enraged. 'How can this be? Daemon!'

Scaevolla looked down at the gash in his chest. Where there should have been spilling gore, there was instead a hole. As though torn through the fabric of space, a thousand stars swirled like gloating eyes within the wound. Laughter echoed madly in Scaevolla's head: four terrible voices. He opened his mouth, but it was their voice which spoke.

'You think a scratch can fell a champion of the Dark Gods? It will take more than a cur of the Dog-Emperor to cut this puppet's strings!'

Scaevolla struggled to control his tongue. 'You cannot kill me. Run, brother. Save yourself!'

Demetros scoffed. 'Run? I am a Space Marine of the Imperial Fists. I do not run.'

Scaevolla's runesword glowed hungrily. He cried out to the sky. 'I will not slay him! There is no honour in this fight!'

As Demetros closed in for the kill again, Scaevolla tried to bare his neck to the oncoming blade, but his runesword wrestled his will, and it blocked the strike with a clash. Scaevolla swiped again, his limbs not his own, and Demetros shuffled backwards, a thread of scorched flesh lining his throat. The Space Marine fell to his knees, expressionless, his power sword clattering to the ground.

Over the noise of the Imperial Fists' battle hymns, the wild canticles of the berserkers and screams of dying mutants, Larsus cried out to his captain. 'It is finished. We must leave - now!'

Scaevolla gazed at the corpse of Demetros. He would order Sharn to incinerate the body, destroying the progenoid glands, ending the hunt here.

Suddenly, onto the plaza tore a mass of pulsing muscle straining within a black carapace fused to flesh. A voracious eel-like member gnashed and swallowed. Ferox had been rewarded with the warp's ultimate boon: the gift of spawnhood. He would slaughter mindlessly for the pleasure of the gods.

Scaevolla's order died on his lips. Watching what once had been Ferox whine and gibber as it slew, Scaevolla realised what fate awaited him should he attempt to renege on his oath. He chilled. The gods would never allow the chase to end. Sullenly, he bowed to his dead foe. It was better to embrace enslavement than have the remnants of his humanity eaten away. 'Until next we meet, my friend.' The words left a bitter taste.

With his sword, he sheared off Demetros's head and picked up the trophy by the hair: one more skull for the floating altar.

Larsus yelled an order. 'Squad, converge! We return to the Talon!'

The defensive circle tightened to a knot around Scaevolla, who flicked a device on his belt, and the squad shimmered and disappeared, the maelstrom of battle flooding into the space they left.

The apothecary darted among the corpses of his fallen battle-brothers, ignoring the violence swirling around him as he harvested their precious gene-seed. He knelt over the body of Captain Demetros.

'Emperor's tears,' he exclaimed. 'They've taken his head!' With a heavy heart, he muttered the orison of passing and extracted the vital fluid from the progenoid gland in the corpse's chest with his reductor. 'Your line will live on to avenge this atrocity, my captain.'

Somewhere in the ether, laughter rippled. The game would continue.

About the Author

Dylan Owen is one of Black Library’s newest authors, and the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘Honour Among Fiends’ is his first. He is freelance graphic designer, writer, proof-reader & project manager. He lives and works in Nottingham.

Heroes of the Space Marines is an anthology of stories about these brave champions and their dark counterparts, the Chaos Space Marines.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2009, in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology.

This eBook edition published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Hardy Fowler.

Honour Among Fiends © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2011. Honour Among Fiends, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84416-731-9

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.