First legion 
Chris Wraight

The Nightsward's back was bleeding, torn along the spinal ridge with entire comms towers ripped from their foundations. The frigate's engines rattled arrhythmically, beating out a limp staccato that made the decks throb and shudder. Long scars ran down its outer flanks, each one the product of nightmare weapons still barely understood by the gunnery sergeants. For all that, it was still in service, still on duty, pushed out hard spinward of the main fleet deployment, just like hundreds of others. There was no alternative, this far out, and no complaints from those who had survived.
 	Captain Arnaid stood on the strategium deck, surrounded by the staff of his tactical command, assessing the options ahead of him.
 	'Not Rangdan?' he asked.
 	The question was not superfluous - the Rangdan xenos, in addition to their many other abilities, had proven able to mimic the sensor profile of many Imperial warships.
 	'No, lord,' replied Holfad, the master of signals. 'Absolute certainty.'
 	'But not one of ours either,' said Arnaid.
 	'Not this far out,' agreed Ertha, the ship's mistress. 'Unless a casualty.'
 	Arnaid smiled darkly. 'Much like ourselves, then.'
 	Ahead of the gathered officers and legionaries, over a black hololith column, spun the schematic representation of nearspace - a lattice of runes and trajectory skeletons. The image flickered from time to time, hit by the Nightsward's faltering power generators, but Arnaid could see enough to share Holfad's assessment. The ship on the scopes was Imperial, larger than they were, and heading on a corkscrewing course through the void that would eventually take it if not intercepted, under the plane of the main Dark Angels fleet. The ship did not appear to be hurrying which was unusual, for the northern fringe of the extermination zone was not a place to tarry without purpose.
 	'Still no reply to hails?' Arnaid asked again.
 	'Nothing,' confirmed Holfad.
 	Arnaid weighed up the options. Their last encounter had left them badly damaged and with heavily depleted ammunition stores. Mounting any kind of assault, particularly against a larger vessel, would be difficult. The prudent option would be to report the sighting and then shadow, hoping that a Legion ship of the line could respond before the fleet perimeter came within range. Then again, the entire complement of Legion vessels was already accounted for and fully occupied, caught up in the punishing round of tit-for-tat brutality that had marked the six-year-long xenocide campaign. They would not want to be pulled from duty unless absolutely necessary.
 	'Move to engage,' Arnaid commanded. 'Full combat order, make preparation for boarding.'
 	The Nightsward swung around onto the intercept course, shifting with commendable agility given the state of the plasma drives. Soon the frigate was boosting through the void, tracing the geometry laid in by the navigation master.
 	Arnaid reached for his helm. He was still in his armour - none of the Legion ever took it off any more - and felt the familiar suck-hiss as the atmospheric seal took. He walked down from the tactical bridge pulpit to meet the five surviving members of his command group. He could see from his helm's sensor-scatter that the remainder of his company - the 45th, of the Eighth Order, of the First Legion - were already racing to take up boarding positions. There were only a few torpedoes left, but they had Stormbirds in the hangars still, and the close-range broadside gunnery was in reasonable shape.
 	'Not Rangdan?' asked Talladan, first squad sergeant, hefting his chipped bolter sourly and checking the ammo-counter.
 	Arnaid could forgive the repeated query. They had been fighting the xenos for so long, with such sustained, attritional violence, that it had come to seem as if no other opposing force existed in the galaxy, and across the entire lifetime of the Legion there had never been an enemy that had tested them as much.
 	'Not Rangdan, sergeant,' Arnaid said, reaching for Bloodspite, his power sword. The blade was Calibanite, expertly wrought from dark metal with a long snaking dragon etched along the facing edge. 'A conundrum, but the truth will out.'
 	Proximity klaxons began to chime, and the close-range sensors began to display their quarry. Arnaid summoned a hololith cube and zoomed the focus.
 	It certainly looked like one of theirs - Imperial, with that familiar dagger-prow, hunched back and heavy shielding. A Rangdan warship was all spines and flails and trailing metal tentacles, like an iron jellyfish cast adrift in the void.
 	'Still no reply to hails,' reported Holfad, calling out from behind his nest of cables and picter lenses.
 	Arnaid watched it come closer. 'Ready broadside,' he ordered. 'Athwartships, no damage-shot unless I so order.'
 	'Damned fools,' muttered Talladan. 'Don't they know this is a warzone?'
 	'I doubt they are unaware,' said Arnaid, observing the ship come into visual range. 'Sensor mimicking has cost us - they may be being cautious.'
 	The details of the ship were obvious now. It was unmarked, dark-grey like unpainted ceramite, a slab of unvarnished metal hanging in the dark. It appeared undamaged, which was a rarity in this region of the galaxy, and powered along capably with its thrusters firing clean.
 	'Ready warning shot,' ordered Arnaid. 'Maintain standard hail.'
 	The interloper moved into the danger zone. There was no sign of its own weapons being run out, nor of gunship wings being loosed.
 	Arnaid drew in the breath that would have given the order to open fire, when finally his sensor-arrays flooded with incoming data.
 	'A transmission, my liege,' said Holfad.
 	Talladan growled low in irritation, a sound that echoed darkly within his helm. 'What games are these?'
 	'Show me,' said Arnaid to Holfad, taking his hand slowly from the hilt of Bloodspite.
 	A hololith burst into half-scale instantiation, showing the ghostly outline of an Imperial Space Marine. His armour bore no insignia, and looked as blunt and unadorned as the ship he came from. The armour mark was newer than Arnaid's - Mark IV rather than the First Legion's widespread Mark II - and, like the ship he came from, showed no sign of battle damage.
 	'This the First Legion ship-of-war Nightsward,' Arnaid said, adopting the formalities. 'You are undeclared and entering the proscribed Rangdan extermination zone. Power down and prepare for inspection, or I shall be forced to engage.'
 	'There will be no need for that, captain,' came the Space Marine's voice. It was an odd voice - lighter than the average for a Legiones Astartes warrior, though with the usual supreme self-confidence. 'We had to be sure we were in the right place. These xenos have proved adept at mimicry, we understand.'
 	Arnaid's eyes narrowed. The subterfuge annoyed him. If this genuinely were an Imperial vessel, then without demonstration of a genuine cause the hide-and-seek felt pointless.
 	'Declare yourself,' Arnaid said, blink-clicking an order to the gunnery captains to remain on alert.
 	'A friend,' came the reply, with perhaps a hint of a smile audible in the helm-hidden words.
 	'There are no friends in the void,' said Arnaid, initiating the pre-firing cycle and moving his gauntlet back to his blade-hilt. 'Your final chance.'
 	The hololithic head bowed a fraction. 'Your reputation for bravery is not misplaced,' he replied. 'Even given the odds here, the condition of your ship, I believe you might actually fire. Very well. This is the strike cruiser Perseus, nine weeks out of Raf Deep-Anchor. Forgive the lack of identity - we do not as yet truly have one. The Twentieth Legion will do, if you insist on such things. And as for me, Captain Arnaid of the Forty-Fifth Company of the Eighth Order of the First Legion, you may call me Alpharius.'
 	He runs, body close to the leaf-matter, the stink of the mulch on his feet. The moonlight bars the ground faintly, for the clouds are running and the shadows are deep.
 	He is panting. His body is superlative, a gift beyond price, but he has been running a long time and even he has limits. He remembers, dimly, a time before this one, when it was all the howl of another reality, of whispered voices and the echoing cry of the infinite. He does not know how he came to leave that place and enter this one, overlooked by these iron-hard trees and their nightshade canopies. He does not know his name, nor his past, only that he is here, on a world that carries death in the sap of every twig and pain in the cry of every beast.
 	He runs harder now, letting the fatigue pull at him. It is as if he has to get used to having a body; as if, once, he was just an idea or a belief in another's mind. He is caked in dirt. He is latticed with scratches. One wrong turn, and you are up to your waist in sucking mud, or caught in briars with thorns the length of a thigh. This world wants to kill you. It wants to kill everything.
 	He carries a weapon in his hand - a horn, discarded from the picked-clean corpse of another great beast. He has stabbed it many times into creatures that would have ended him, had he not got there first. He has plunged it into the flanks of the horrors of the wood, feeling the hot, black blood gush over his hands before it cut down into the bone. Now it is like a part of him, jabbing out from his fist, a mere extension of a body that does not belong in this place, that has been transplanted here and has to learn how to master its surroundings.
 	The beasts are everywhere. They fight one another, they fight the weak, they fight the strong. They leap through the canopy, their leathery wings pinned tight. They lurk in the undergrowth, tiny eyes burning under the thick snarl of tortured growths. There are beasts at the roots of the world, curled fast around its snaggling tendrils in the ancient soil, too massive to move, too bloated to breathe. You could never kill them all, not if you had eternity to spare. A few must always linger, poisoning the black earth.
 	He seeks higher ground, dropping to all fours to scrape his way up the bank. He is naked, but his skin has become very tough. He will have to find something to drape over himself - the flesh of another beast, a blood-flecked hide, pulled from the meat of something he kills. Until then, the wind flails him, cold as lies, dragging at his long hair.
 	It will rain soon. The moon-silvered heavens will break, dousing the earth and the spear-sharp leaves until all is a foment of bubbling slime and filth. This world is always in flux, the bark creaking, the earth sliding, the night's gales shaking the boughs.
 	He ascends with labour. He slips, and feels the catch of thorns on his calves. He staggers, and feels the cool mud well up between his toes. For a moment, he thinks that the dark and the clinging brambles will choke him at last, wrapping themselves around his neck and hauling him down, but then he breaks the rise, charging out and up, wrestling free from the clutch of the limitless forest.
 	He is exposed then, upright against a churning sky. Black rocks jag into the racing air, whipped by the wind. He can finally see a long way, thrust up onto the outcrop that juts clear of the all-smothering canopy.
 	The clouds are tearing, re-forming. The treetops shake, rustling like bags of snakes. Ahead of him is the great valley, delved like a wound in the world, twisted and gasping with its competing growths of grey, black and darkest green.
 	He must go down there. The greatest beast of all is in that place, hunting him just as it is hunted. This one is the nightmare of the deep wood, the canker that turns this world against itself, the gall that has no salve. He cannot turn aside from it, for it knows of him as surely as he knows of it. He can smell it in the leaf-mould, and see its foulness in the oily pools that linger under the arched roots.
 	He hesitates. There is a part of him that falters. He sees the cloud-barred stars again, just for a breath's intake, and knows that, once he ducks back into that light-gobbling netherworld, that he will never truly leave it. He wonders if there might be an escape, a place to hide, to wait until the storm has passed and the kills can be made by other, greater animals.
 	But there was never that choice, not really. The nightmare is calling him, beckoning him down into the valley, waiting to test him. Mastery of a world like this belongs to those who can stare into the abyss.
 	So he coils, he hunches, and then he is running again, down, down, down and into the dark.
 	The stranger was brought over to the Nightsward. He came without an escort. A counterpart team led by Talladan travelled to the Perseus. It felt like a hostage-exchange. After the transfers, the two ships lay immobile in the void, waiting for clearance to proceed.
 	Arnaid took Alpharius to his own chambers. He did not request that he remove his weapons. By the same token, he kept his own within reach.
 	On the way from the shuttle hangars, the newcomer looked around carefully, drinking in the surroundings. 'I heard you take your homeworld with you,' Alpharius said, staring at the carved stonework over the bulkhead lintels, the lanterns burning softly in their alcoves.
 	'All Legions do,' said Arnaid. 'Even yours, I imagine.'
 	Alpharius smiled. His shaven head was elegant, with a bronze-edged hue to his skin. His armour was dull and blank, though it clearly worked well enough - in comparison to Arnaid's battle-ravaged plate, he looked as if he had just stepped off the forge production-line.
 	'You have very many questions, I expect,' Alpharius said.
 	'It matters not what I wish to know,' Arnaid said, reaching the doorway to his chambers and extending a hand. 'If you are who you say you are, the Invincible Reason will have the necessary records.'
 	Alpharius hesitated on the threshold. 'You're not even slightly curious?'
 	'Curiosity is not much prized, here.'
 	'Interesting. With us, the opposite is the case.'
 	They went inside. The space within was all Calibanite orthodoxy - stone walls and floors, naked flames in braziers, weaponry hung on iron racks next to battle-records and embellished lists of the dead. It had a sombre kind of beauty to it, redolent of the draughty war-keeps of the forest world, and Alpharius seemed to be observing it all carefully.
 	'Tell me of the Rangdan,' he said.
 	Arnaid sealed the door behind them. 'They are an abomination,' he said, flatly. 'The end is in sight now, thankfully.'
 	'It has been a hard campaign.'
 	'As all are.'
 	'Not like this one, I think.'
 	Arnaid found that he did not like Alpharius much. There was a distinct sense of superiority in his manner - nothing overt, but there nonetheless, as if he were young and fresh and clever while all about him was mouldering in the past, exhausted and ready to fade into obscurity.
 	'They have proved hard to wear down,' Arnaid admitted. 'We have never truly been able to neutralise their ability to foil our tactical instruments - every fight is unbalanced, fought on terms that are seldom of our choosing. At the start of this, the difference was the Emperor. Now, it is the primarch. I would swap all their subtle devices for his presence. He has been their destroyer.'
 	'Yes, that is what they are saying on Terra.'
 	'We have not had word from Terra for a long time.'
 	'It's still there. But how stands your Legion, after six years?'
 	Now it was Arnaid's turn to smile. 'You wish me to give out details of our deployment? To you, who do not even wear a company badge?'
 	'Forgive me. Curiosity, like I say. But this ship has taken serious damage.'
 	'We fought a Rangdan Harp-ship, off the Uriba Angle. Two of ours were lost, we scraped out intact. A high toll, but every one of those we end, the closer this thing comes to completion.'
 	'And you are still on patrol.'
 	'None can be spared. Not now.'
 	'Doing your duty,' said Alpharius. 'That is important to you.'
 	'Of course. As to you.'
 	'You are a serious Legion. You do not laugh, you do not boast. You are here, on the edge of the known, bleeding for the Imperium. I wonder how many of the worlds you protect know that.'
 	Arnaid shrugged. 'Few of us would care.' He moved across to a low stone altar, over which a secure comms station had been erected. He activated the link with a gesture, waiting for the coils to warm. 'I am a Terran,' he said. 'But I spent time on Caliban, and that is all you need to do, to understand this Legion. On that world, the darkness is always creeping back. You torch the forest and it comes back. You cut the trees down, and they rise to smother you again. So they ride out, again and again, striking down into the defiles, hunting for the worst beast in the worst brake. They slay it, and then they may have an hour, or a day, or a week. But something will come back again. So you are always riding. You do not expect thanks. You do not think of it as duty. It is life, and to live it is the source of all honour.'
 	'Some would call that pride.'
 	'Some?'
 	'Some.'
 	'Well, if it is pride to trust in your weapons, in your war-keep, in your liege, then I have no quarrel with that.'
 	'Could another Legion have done what you are doing, here?'
 	'I do not know.'
 	'But you doubt it.'
 	'I trust in my weapons.'
 	'And in your liege?'
 	The comms station suddenly blushed a dull red, and the lens filled up with runes.
 	'You will be able to find out for yourself,' Arnaid said, studying the incoming screed. 'Word from the flagship, and all is granted. Consider yourself fortunate - the Lion wishes to speak to you in person.'
 	As he runs, he grows stronger again. The scent of blood is in the storm-wind, splattered on the leaves and pooled in the root-curls. Even as the rain starts, he smells it among the rival smells of the deep wood - the decay, the fungus, the sweet drift of carcass-spoor.
 	The undergrowth is sodden now, shining in the wavering moonlight. The trees are like the bars of a prison, massive and unyielding.
 	All paths lead him downwards now, away from the dying light and into the troughs and sloughs of the twilight realms. Birds scream overhead, their wings snapping as they burst from their eyries. Lesser creatures cower in sets and dens, their eyes like black jewels, their claws pressed tight into the dank earth.
 	The sickle-curve horn is in his hand, dripping with rainwater. He grips it so tight he thinks now that he shall never let it go. The further in he travels, the more the stink of his enemy grows in strength. Everything is stained by it, here. The heartwood reeks of it, the mires reflect it.
 	He shoves his way through a tangle of thorns, and they rake at his back. He skids on the loose mud, and nearly loses his footing. There is no place for stealth - all scents are out in the open. He must be like a shadow of the storm, leaping through the flickering half-light, using his speed and his power to overwhelm the nightmare that waits for him.
 	He has heard tales of the creature from many mouths. The beasts sing of it, and they cower; the birds crow of it, and they shudder. Perhaps that is why he has come to this world. Perhaps only he could ever have had the strength to wrestle such a creature to the blood-rich earth, to throttle it and stamp its entrails into the sucking mulch.
 	The smell becomes overwhelming, an equine musk, a tang of iron. He is close, he is very close. The sky splits with a flare of lightning, serrating the lashing heavens, and he sees the stark black spine of the wind-bent trees.
 	It is there, pawing at the ground, holding court within its narrow clearing, its nostrils wide and steaming.
 	He does not hesitate. He leaps, bursting from cover with the tendrils of the grasping wood trailing from his shoulders. The nightmare charges him, thundering right back at him, making the earth hammer under churning hooves. For a second, he is in the air, suspended, blade high, staring at it. The storm growls again, flooding the clearing with a second flash of silver fire.
 	It is enormous, clad in a shell of black iron, its eyes hidden, its shoulders curved under armour. It carries a long straight blade that glints dully against the storm's cold fire. Too late, he sees that it is not one beast there, but two - a rider and its mount, each armoured, each colossal, glossed and slicked in the streaming rain.
 	He strikes out with the horn, and drives the tip against the creature's armour. The horn shivers in his grip and shatters. The nightmare lashes out, swinging its great blade two-handed. The blow is impeccable, too fast to evade, too strong to survive. He feels the dark iron bite deep, rending his own flesh as he once rent the flesh of other beasts.
 	He howls, and the world spins. The nightmare thrusts again, point-first now, aimed at the heart with unerring precision. He tries to scrabble away, but is pinned, and this time the agony is all-consuming. He can feel the howl of the netherworld coming for him again, the dissolution from which he came, and knows the price of failure.
 	The nightmare is looming over him now, drenched with both storm-rain and thrown blood. It looks haggard and grotesque, a foul parody of old nobility.
 	'First Son,' he snarls, summoning speech from the bowels of his rapidly dissipating body.
 	It twists the blade, and comes so close that its eyes are almost visible between the narrow slit of an iron helm.
 	'You are the death of this world,' he spits.
 	The nightmare crunches its spurred boot onto his neck, choking the last vigour from his corporeal husk.
 	'Call me by my name,' it tells him, in a voice of such studied, arch contempt that it burns his peeling flesh away. 'The hunter. The slayer of beasts.'
 	Arnaid was given the honour of accompanying Alpharius. The Nightsward made its way from the fringes of the engagement zone towards the heart of the grand fleet. As they travelled, Arnaid saw the state of the ships - hacked and marred and gouged, all of them, like herd animals bearing the claw-scars of predators. The numbers were down on what they had been, and even some of the big battle cruisers appeared to be missing.
 	They passed through a number of challenge-stages, each one overseen by a larger warship, until they were heading into the congested centre where the true leviathans stood at void-anchor. There was no mistaking the flagship - the Invincible Reason was long, lean, dark and spare, like a spear of obsidian against the void. Its gothic turrets still reared proudly from its back, though many were blackened from xenos particle flayers and some whole sections had been stripped from the adamantium superstructure.
 	The final approaches were shadowed by Legion Stormbirds bearing the hexagrammatic sigils of the Ravenwing. Despite giving the correct pass-ciphers at every stage, primed guns overwatched them the whole time. That was standard procedure in the extermination zone, but Arnaid couldn't help but wonder if it had more to do, on this occasion, with the passenger he carried with him.
 	They passed under the shadow of the Invincible Reason's main hangar and entered its cavernous, echoing embrace. Once disembarked, they were met by an honour guard of paladins, each draped in ivory cloaks over nightshade-black armour. They were escorted courteously, but firmly, to the turbo-lifts and grav-lines, after which they swept through the many halls and armouries towards their destination.
 	On the way, Arnaid stole occasional glances at Alpharius. He liked to think that the newcomer would be impressed - the Invincible Reason was by a distance the most famous ship in the Imperium. It had been the first of the Gloriana class, and in its subsequent service a vindication of the Emperor's ambition to create something so vast, so powerful and so fast that nothing in the galaxy would ever rival it. For a long time it had been the only such vessel in the entire crusade, and the very rumour of its presence was sufficient to quell warzones and hasten compliances. Now a number of other Glorianas had been put into service with other Legions, but the old lustre from this one was still not quite gone. Every hammerbeam roof and vaulted alcove spoke of sombre, patient craftsmanship, the melding of the mechanical genius of Mars with the dark, lethal majesty of Caliban.
 	Eventually they reached the primarch's private chambers, and Arnaid prepared to withdraw. As he did so, one of the paladin escort prevented him.
 	'He wants you too, captain.'
 	And so Arnaid went in. He walked alongside Alpharius up the long nave, his boots treading into the rush mats laid over cold granite. He passed the banners of the Legion's many companies and battalions, all hanging stiffly in those mournful, candlelit shadows.
 	The Lion was waiting for them on a throne of white alabaster, a long, ermine-trimmed cloak hanging from his shoulder in a heavy cataract of velvet. A battery of hololith projectors had been set about the throne, and all were active, showing schematics of more than a dozen active void-engagements. As ever, the primarch's silent presence proved quietly dominating like the cold pressure of night air before the onset of a storm. Perhaps, though, as one got closer, it was possible to detect a degree of strain in those chilly eyes, a faint weariness hanging over those great shoulders. So many had died here, slain by an enemy that had nowhere to run and so fought with all the desperation of a cornered beast. Many more would die before the end, whatever tactical genius was brought to bear on the remaining engagements, and so every planned deployment was scrutinised, checked and revised, over and over again.
 	It was said by some that the Lion cared not for his warriors, and would sacrifice any number of them to achieve a strategic advantage. That rumour, though widespread, could hardly have been further from the truth. This primarch had been raised amid the Order, for whom fealty and feudal obligation were everything and so every death of those sworn to his service weighed heavy on his austere soul. If he chose not to show that emotion, thus giving rise to whispers from lesser men, that did nothing to reduce the burden. He was a closed book, the Lion, though one whose secret pages were etched with the blood of those he led.
 	'Captain Arnaid,' he said as the two of them approached the dais. 'I was appraised of your recent service at Uriba. You give honour to your Order.'
 	Arnaid bowed. 'The honour is mine, lord primarch,' he said.
 	The Lion turned to Alpharius. Arnaid stole a sideways glance too, and was satisfied at the erasure of smugness on the Space Marine's face. There could be no gentle air of superiority here, not in the presence of a true son of the Emperor.
 	'And you,' said the Lion, resting a great gauntlet on one armoured knee. 'What am I to make of you?'
 	Alpharius bowed. 'Whatever you wish, my lord. I am here to answer your questions.'
 	'You come from a Legion that does not exist, and give a name that has no correspondence in any record,' the Lion said. 'You show no badge and give no assurance, and yet demand an audience here, in the heart of my fleet and on the eve of coming battle.'
 	'The Twentieth is real, lord, as you can plainly see,' Alpharius said. 'And, if I may say so, I do not think its existence could ever truly have been a secret to you.'
 	'I had heard rumours. A Legion of ghosts, they said, coming and going without leaving a thread to ravel. But a Legion needs a primarch, and you have none, so by what right do you give your warband the title?'
 	'Legions existed before their primarchs, even this one. We are the last, but our master will be discovered in time. Perhaps then we shall become more than ghosts.'
 	'Or perhaps you won't.'
 	'The choice will be made for us, that is certain.'
 	Arnaid watched and listened. Though superficially different, there was something disconcertingly similar about the way the two of them spoke. It was as if the words were only surface-deep, and that the true import of what they said was still unspoken, locked in hidden caskets of meaning.
 	'Tell me why you are here,' said the Lion.
 	'I bring a ship, containing a company of our finest warriors. There are others coming, all apt to be placed under your command. They will serve faithfully and without question. We have studied your war against the Rangdan, admiring it from afar. The xenos will not prove a surprise to us. Take the offer, and this will be over far more swiftly.'
 	'A generous gift. It comes from my father, does it?'
 	'It comes from ourselves. We have a certain… licence, in this, at any rate.'
 	'There are many Legions fighting in this crusade. No others have offered us help. Why should you?'
 	'We wish to see the crusade completed.'
 	'So do all my brothers.'
 	'We wish to see the Rangdan destroyed.'
 	The Lion's visage hardened. 'Let me advise you a little, ghost,' he said. 'There are those of my esteemed brotherhood who possess warm hearts and ready humours. They are tolerant men, who will listen to the tales of travellers with indulgence, enjoying such discourse just as they enjoy their plays at combat. I am not like them. My heart is not warm, my humours are sour. I have seen my Legion bled to the marrow by this war, and now spend every waking hour striving to preserve what is left. We have killed so many in these charnel-systems that our hands may never be free of the stain of it, so if you value your neck then start speaking the truth - I do not keep this sword at my belt for idle show.'
 	Alpharius' eyelid twitched, just a little. The serene visage frayed at the edges, just a little. But he held his ground, and he held the primarch's gaze.
 	'You must be Warmaster, my lord,' he said.
 	The word lingered in the shadows, an unfamiliar echo in those grey and sombre halls.
 	'What do you mean?' the Lion asked, warily.
 	'The day will come,' said Alpharius. 'The last primarch - ours - will be found, and then this pretence at equality must end. An emperor does not lead his armies once his generals are in the field, and this one will be no different. Do not feign ignorance, my lord, for you cannot be unaware of what has long been talked of among your brothers.'
 	'You bring danger on yourself, with these words.'
 	'I merely state what must take place,' Alpharius said. 'You were the first. Your Legion was the greatest and the most numerous. You should be preeminent still, the first choice for the station that must come in time. In conception it was you. It still can be.'
 	'You speak as if the decision has been made.'
 	'You are destroying yourself in this war. The Thirteenth Legion is now more numerous for the first time, though its master is a pale shadow of you. If you continue to absorb this rate of attrition, you will never overtake them again. Others have risen in favour, too - the Tenth, the Sixteenth. There is a crown ordained for you, lord, but it is slipping from your fingers.'
 	'And you can restore it to my brow.'
 	'Yes, if you withdraw your strength now. Let us complete what remains of this task, while you recover your numbers. None could doubt your valour for what has already been done. Return to Caliban and build anew, and none will also doubt your right to rule.'
 	The Lion thought on that. His steep brow furrowed for a moment, and armoured fingers drummed across his knee.
 	'And you would be kingmaker,' he said.
 	'No obligation would be placed on you.'
 	'Then why make the offer?'
 	Alpharius smiled, in what seemed like almost embarrassment. 'Because we have been created the same way, your people and ours. You know what it is to keep both a promise and a secret. You know what it is to carry the blade on your belt and the one under your cloak. If Guilliman is made master, none of this will survive. That is why.'
 	The Lion smiled for the first time then, as chilly and hard-edged as any of his gestures. 'One day, if the fates allow, your own primarch will be found. Why not place your hopes in him?'
 	'We are not what you are.'
 	'And what are we?'
 	'The First.'
 	The Lion did not respond for a moment. He seemed to withdraw into himself, as if those two words were as much a curse as an honour.
 	'Go, now,' he said, grimly, pulling the cloak a little closer about himself. 'Return to your grey ship and your empty flags. You will have my answer within the hour.'
 	After Alpharius had left, the Lion turned to Arnaid.
 	'What did you make of that?' he asked.
 	'A strange offer.'
 	'Very. Do you agree with his assessment of the war?'
 	Arnaid hesitated. 'It is not my place to—'
 	'Your honest view, captain.'
 	'He's right.' Arnaid lifted his gaze to meet his primarch's. 'We will win here, but we will also leave much of our strength in these stars.'
 	The Lion nodded. His eyes flickered briefly across the various tactical hololiths, all buzzing with runes and deployment vectors.
 	'I had a dream last night, Captain Arnaid,' he said, thoughtfully. 'I dreamed that I was back on Caliban, before my father had come, when the deep woods were still alive with horror. I was in the mind of a beast, come to slay me. Or perhaps the beast was in my mind, and it was the hunter. I do not recall ever meeting such a creature in life. As I ended it, it spoke to me. Did that ever happen, truly? I do not know.'
 	Arnaid listened, a little awkwardly, unsettled by the glimpse, however slight, into his primarch's inner life.
 	'It, too, called me the First,' the Lion said. 'I cannot have known what it meant, then. Ever since, though, the title has been both honour and burden, hung around our necks like lead weight. Now we have more ghosts emerging from the void to tempt us with future visions of a greater politics to come. Always, at every turn, such ghosts have been there, believing they know what I must wish for, or must do, or must be.'
 	The Lion smiled a second time, a little less coldly.
 	'A Warmaster,' he said, musingly. 'A first among equals. The ghost is no doubt right - something like that will surely come. And, if we persist in fulfilling our oaths here, we damage our chances of taking it. Every creature of temptation, it seems to me, comes out of the shadows bearing words of truth. That is why they are dangerous - we are used to lies, on a world made of them. Only truth imperils the soul.'
 	'Then, should we…' Arnaid ventured.
 	The Lion looked back towards him, a flicker of dry amusement lingering on his face. 'Should we what, captain?'
 	'Should we accept the offer?'
 	The Lion sat back in the throne.
 	'The offers change,' he said. 'The answer never does.'
 	He comes out of the trees on foot as the sun rises, his armour bearing the mark of many claws. The rain has long ended, but the air is still grey and heavy with moisture, the land is sunk into mire, the tracks waterlogged and the fields lumped with sod and clay.
 	Ahead, on the horizon, his war-keep rises into a grey sky, its black walls crowned with pennants. It is enormous, built to subdue the land around it, but even so, set against those trackless forests beyond, it seems like a fragile dominion. Men and women are moving in long cavalcades through the mud, tramping their weary way towards the gates. All are watched over by the warriors in dark armour, standing sentinel on their heavy barded destriers.
 	He is met on the road by knights of the Order, themselves fresh from sallies into the shadows. One takes off his helm, revealing a close-shorn scalp, a noble visage, a battle-toughened skin.
 	'Son of the forest!' the knight hails, saluting him. 'Another victory?'
 	He looks up. He is weary beyond imagining, and the words of that last creature, the one that had the form of a man and spoke with the speech of mortals, still echoes in his ears.
 	'The day will come,' he says, shaking the filth from his gauntlet.
 	The knight dismounts, comes closer. He leans in, like a conspirator. 'Yes, eventually,' he says, softly. 'But while we purge these forests, the other Orders grow more powerful. You know my counsel. Turn aside from the hunt, my liege, just for a season.'
 	He does not look at the knight. He looks at the people making their way towards the safety of the war-keep. They give no thanks for what is done on their behalf. They were not party to the oaths that bind their protectors, even though their future depends on them.
 	'We made a promise, brother,' he says.
 	'You think the others will keep theirs?'
 	'What does that matter to me?'
 	'Because this world will one day have a single master. It must be you.'
 	He starts to walk again, his boots sinking up to the spurs in mud. Every movement is ponderous, freighted with ingrained fatigue.
 	'Have a care for destiny!' the knight calls out after him. 'An oath can be forgotten. Power cannot.'
 	He keeps walking.
 	'Then what do you wish to be known for, my liege?' the knight asks, a final plea. 'When the annals are written, what do you wish them to say of you?'
 	He keeps walking. He never looks back.
 	'That I was ever, and only, thus,' he says, tasting the raw, frigid air of another Caliban dawn. 'The hunter. The slayer of beasts.'