Liberator
by Jonathan Green


 	It should be noted that desertion amongst the ranks of the honoured Adeptus Astartes is extremely uncommon. However, much as it pains me to write this, neither is it entirely unheard of. Those who have studied the works of Belteshazzar D’Aubigny and Master Filius Victor will speak in hushed whispers of the dark days of the Great Heresy, but, much as I hate to put this to the record, this has not been the only occasion when brother has turned upon brother and the very architects of the glorious Imperium of Man have sought to undo the great work of past noble deeds, and tear down that which they once fought so hard to establish.


 	It has been calculated that there is one Space Marine for each of the million worlds of the Imperium, and that that number, though small, is sufficient to protect humanity from the foul schemes of the alien, heretics and the powers of the warp. But if even only one of those brothers should turn from the light of the Emperor’s Truth and fall upon his fellows like a thing run mad, how can it be enough?


 	So I say to you, whether you be a student of the ordos, a ranked interrogator or a Lord Militant of His Imperial Majesty’s Blessed Inquisition, be ever watchful of the primarchs’ get, the proud warriors of the Adeptus Astartes, for only the Emperor Himself is infallible.


 	From the treatise Quis Custodiet Ipsos Angeles Mortes? by Gideon Lorr, Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus

 
 
 REMOVE


 	He has always known this day would come, one day. 

 	The skies of Constantinium are the colour of raw meat, the clouds crimson as fresh blood or hot iron, painted by the fires raging in the old Ecclesiarchy Quarter of Cirtus city. The Great Cathedral, re-consecrated to Constantinus the Liberator – a glorious edifice to one man’s over-reaching ambition, the size of an entire city sector – is ablaze. 

 	The raw-meat sky is streaked black by the trails left by falling drop-pods, descending Thunderhawk gunships and ground-to-air heavy ordnance fire. The atmosphere is thick with the smell of the burning promethium refineries and the cloying scent of death. 

 	He turns to the Iconoclast at his side, one of his honour guard. The warrior’s gold-edged armour is scuffed and scarred from the battles he has had to endure of late. In some places the battle plate is so badly marked that faint glimmers of blue and white can be seen beneath the gold and red-black, an echo of a memory of what the warrior had once been; of whom he had once served.

 	‘Brother Maimon,’ he says, addressing the Iconoclast, ‘tell me, who is it that comes against us now with sword and flame, with hammer and bolter.’

 	The Iconoclast studies the incoming craft, the esoteric systems of his helmet visor locking on to the falling, swooping landing craft. Targeting reticules focus on the Chapter markings cast upon the vehicles’ atmospheric entry-heated hull plates, magnifying the badges and Adeptus Astartes insignia. The Iconoclast sees gunmetal-grey cross-crosslets against a black shield.

 	The Liberator himself goes bare-headed, as he has done ever since the glorious day when he earned that honorific and liberated Nova Terra, as the planet was known then; when the people gazed upon the face of their saviour and knew him for the mighty avenging angel he was – the avenging angel he still is.

 	‘Iron Knights, my lord,’ Iconoclast Maimon replies, his voice a rumbling growl.

 	‘Iron Knights?’ The Liberator laughs. ‘Well, let us see how their iron might fares against the armour of faithfulness.’ 

 	He takes in the shattered walls of the bastion behind him with a weary glance. After thirteen years of fighting the Imperium, his defiance and his contempt for the ailing Empire of Mankind is all he has left.

 	The moment he broke his vows of brotherhood and obedience, he had known, somewhere deep inside of himself, that this day would come. If he had not launched his pogrom against the other worlds of the Viridis subsector, perhaps it might not have come as soon, but it would still have come. It had been as inevitable as the wrath of the False Emperor. 

 	He turns from the breach blasted through the ferrocrete walls of the bastion – a rift one hundred metres high, its heat-fused lips like dribbled black wax – and gazes across the lower slopes of his citadel stronghold.

 	Much of Cirtus is ablaze now. The metropolis looks like it did all those years ago when he first liberated this world, only on that occasion it was he who had put its populace to the sword and set its streets alight. His gaze is slowly drawn back to the silhouette of the Great Cathedral, backlit by the firestorm engulfing that region of the city.

 	The stern features of the golden edifice that stands before the broken basilica seem to shift in the flickering light of the flames. One minute the cyclopean effigy is smiling upon the people of Cirtus, the next it is a furious deity of rage, its face a mask of hatred at the hubris of the invaders, that they should dare deny him that which was his by right, that which he had fought so long and so hard to win. That which he had finally won through great personal sacrifice – the greatest anyone on Constantinium had ever had to make.

 	Within the canyon streets of the tenement habs, within the tekannibal-haunted industrial quarter, within the shattered ruins of the grand arena, the fighting is at its most intense.

 	The battle-lust burns in his blood. He yearns for combat. The stink of fyceline and cordite has him panting for action once more. Despite the risks that such an action would bring with it, he wishes to be there in the thick of things himself. After all, it is the manner in which he has conducted his entire reign; it is how he raised a battle force that – at its height – conquered entire star systems in his name, plunging the worlds of the Viridis subsector into a new Age of Darkness.

 	In the armies of the Imperium he had been a mere sergeant. But free of the shackles of duty he had risen to become as a god. Worlds shook at the tread of his armoured feet. Entire dynasties were toppled at mere mention of his name.

 	It is then that he sees them for the first time, making for the breach, emerging from the clouds of drifting smoke, giving voice to their mewling battle-cries, declaring their subjugation to the Golden Throne: a gaggle of soldiers in black and grey fatigues and ashen flak armour, lasguns held low, bayonets fixed, not a heavy weapon between them.

 	He would laugh if it wasn’t so insulting that these insects thought they could challenge him, here on his world, coming at him like children, armed with wooden swords and shields.

 	He does not need to give the command; those who follow him know what is expected of them. It is but one thing. 

 	The Zealous who fight in his name, making the invaders pay for every metre they advance in blood. The Enlightened, who have witnessed first-hand the fate of those who would challenge this dominion. The Iconoclasts – once his brethren, now his bodyguard – who helped shape this world, and the fate of a dozen others like it. Just one thing, that is all he asks; the one thing that was denied him in a former life. 

 	Loyalty.

 	He leads the charge himself, striding down the scree of shattered walls and through the smoke, resplendent in his gold-chased, blood-black armour, the unutterable names of a thousand unspeakable things picked out in sigils and runes that seem to glow and smoke with molten heat.

 	At his back march his personal bodyguard – his Iconoclasts – Maimon and Pius, the most loyal of all his devotees, their armour red-black and gold like his, the eight-pointed star raised from the ceramite of their left shoulder pads where once was displayed an altogether different insignia.

 	Behind them come Kabaiel, also known as the Skull-taker, and Gha’gur Nor the Slythian, once of the warband of Ghorgoth the Oppressor, now Herald of Constantinus, the most faithful of the Enlightened, Foe-smiter held reverently in his gauntleted fists. 

 	Zipping las-bolts spang from ceramite plate that has withstood the slavering attentions of ravenous daemon-blades and even the excoriating blades of a degenerate Helbrute, some years before. His honour guard do not even break stride.

 	Five demi-gods against ten times as many Guardsmen; demi-gods who made the star-realm of Man what it was, and who could tear it down and remould it just as easily. The invaders would be as wheat before the reaper’s scythe.

 	The weapon in his hand hums with unnatural life. It is an instrument of destruction, a crackling golden blade set within an ebon hilt. It is a weapon that, in his hands, has taken the heads of his enemies by the score. It is a slayer of champions, a killer of kings. It has had other names in ages past, but it answers to only one name now: Ruin.

 	The first Guardsman dies with a plaintive prayer to the God-Emperor on his bloody lips. It doesn’t stop Ruin cleaving him in twain from crown to groin.

 	Then the Iconoclasts are upon the Guardsman pack and the broken ground runs red with the blood of mortals.

 	The Liberator’s humming blade opens flak armour as readily as it cleaves flesh from bone and boils blood.

 	Something much larger than a man comes at him then, a sweating abhuman ogryn; but it falls like the rest of them, Ruin stuck in the brute’s chest, the sword’s energy field cooking the mutant’s enlarged heart with its sun-hot coruscating discharge.

 	He carries out the killings with clinical precision. No berserker battle-cries for him, no chanting to the gods of the warp. There is no need. What he achieves with his blade is his sacrament to the Powers that be, writ in the blood of those who would dare come against him.

 	Then there is no more killing to be done, the broken ground awash with the vital fluids of the Imperial Guardsmen, steaming offal declaring the Powers’ approval, intestines spilling from opened bellies to form shapes pleasing to the true masters of the universe.

 	He feels the boom of the great golden statue’s destruction as well as hearing it. His old eyes find the cathedral precinct, wherein once lay the Place of Testing, and he sees the cyclopean effigy topple from view behind the smoky ruins of the worker habs with the slow inevitably of a cliff-face sliding into the sea. The cheering tumult that comes after is almost as loud as the Shadowsword volcano cannon blast that has toppled the statue. 

 	‘They would liberate this world from me, would they?’ he purrs, his stony expression softening at last as a cruel smile curls his lips. ‘Well let them try.’

 	The personal transport of Dvar Ghorgoth, Scourge of Worlds, rumbles to a halt before the broken gates that once marked the limits of an Ecclesiarchy compound, but which now forms the entrance to the arena. 

 	The arena has no particular name, it needs none. It is enough that it is the place to which they are called by their dark gods, champions and their warbands by their dozens, to test themselves against the upstart emperor of this beleaguered backwater world.

 	Ghorgoth emerges from his transport then, heralded by the screams of slave-psykers and bound and blinded priests, as skull-faced cherubic-things goad the damned with crackling agonisers. One of the black-winged cherubs detaches itself from the rest of the flock, following the Packmaster with jerky fluttering movements.

 	The place of battle is adorned with the heraldry of scores of petty tyrants and upstart kings, whose warrior bands now swear fealty to another. 

 	Icons of blood-quenched iron loom above the packed stands of the coliseum alongside tattered banners of weathered human hide. A thousand renegades, loyal to the Powers and sworn to follow the lord of this world, in whose name it has been remade, watch Ghorgoth as he enters the arena. Some watch in cold silence, others jeering and baying like beasts for his blood, all of them the spoils of a hundred previous gladiatorial contests. 

 	The Packmaster is resplendent in his scrimshawed battle plate. Even under skies choked with the smoke of a thousand bone-fires, the bony ridges and overlapping calcified plates give him the appearance of a simulacrum of death, a golem of ancient bone. It is as if the remains of one of those funerary pyres have risen from the ash and embers to be revenged upon he who liberated the unbelievers from the shackles of their misguided dogma. In his hands the Dvar holds the chainaxe Interfector.

 	Gha’gur Nor has heard it said that Dvar Ghorgoth had once been loyal to the False Emperor, just as the lord of this world had been once; before he broke his own vows of brotherhood, along with the rest of the Calix Chapter, following the Massacre of Ravenscar.

 	Gha’gur Nor had not known Ghorgoth then, of course. He had been recruited later, after the Calix Chapter became the Screaming Skulls, taken from his tribe during a raid on the planet he later learned was called Lithos VI, and implanted with cursed seed said to have been procured from the Apothecary Errant of the Emperor’s Children himself in exchange for a thousand human slaves.

 	Gha’gur Nor marches out of the Rhino along with the rest of the Oppressor’s elite. Their battle plate bears little resemblance to the Dvar’s ornate scrimshaw. Some wear the armour of conquered victims, or that scavenged during raids on worlds where mighty battles had once taken place. Others combine plate artificed by the heretek-magi of the Auretian Schism with relics that perhaps date back even as far as the Dark Age of Technology. There are those who still wear pieces of the vulgar armour they once brought with them from their primitive home worlds. But they all wear the mark of the Dvar upon their left auto-reactive shoulder guards, in mockery of a practice that dates back to the days when the Screaming Skulls had still been the Calix Chapter. The mark they all wear now is the eight-pointed star with a halved human skull set at its centre.

 	Gha’gur Nor surveys the serried rows of cultists and vassal lords who have already sworn fealty to the Liberator of Constantinium.

 	The effigy of a golden demi-god, thirty metres high – fashioned from the melted down idols and icons of the False Faith promoted by Imperial Terra – gazes down upon them all, but its burnished gaze weighs particularly heavily upon those who come to test their mettle against the master of this world. The giant’s head is bowed, its hands resting upon the hilt of a mighty sword, ready to pass judgement on all who come before it.

 	Gha’gur Nor had heard the rumours of what happens here. Under the giant’s golden gaze, only the most worthy champions received the honour of engaging in their own trial by combat against the master of Constantinium. The prize they fight for is a worthy reward indeed. The winner claims all that the vanquished possesses – his warriors, his wargear, his battlefleets and even those worlds that pay him fealty.

 	But Gha’gur Nor also knows that the master of Constantinium has not lost a battle yet. Some said that the Liberator had been marked out by the Powers, but then which champion of the warp had not received such a boon from the true gods of the galaxy?

 	In the shadow of the great idol, a figure – a giant of a man – sits upon a throne of black metal and burnished gold, a cloak of snowtusk fur draped about the broad shoulders of his ensorcelled armour. His head is bare, the lines of a dozen duelling scars visible on a face that is an alabaster echo of the edifice staring down at everything taking place within the arena. So the Liberator himself gazes down upon the Oppressor and his retinue with invidious intent.

 	The Lord of Constantinium rises to his feet and a hush descends over the bloodthirsty throng without ever a word being spoken. Gha’gur Nor cannot help but be impressed.

 	The Liberator speaks then, his voice echoing from the shattered walls of the once-cathedral. ‘Who is it that comes seeking death and disgrace?’

 	The Dvar comes to a halt, his retinue forming up behind him, a wall of ceramite, steel and scrimshaw. His personal arms – the skull set within the star – displayed upon the banner-pole that rises from his own ornate armour, snaps in the wind that sends eddies of dust dancing across the amphitheatre. The cherub beats the air at Ghorgoth’s shoulder.

 	Gha’gur Nor feels the atmosphere palpably thicken about him. He has never heard a man, demi-god or otherwise, speak to the Packmaster like that and live a moment longer.

 	At a nod from the Dvar, the malformed, crow-winged servitor flies up to the balcony where the Liberator sits and clears its throat.

 	‘My lord’s name is spoken of in hushed whispers on a dozen worlds. At his behest war-fleets that rival those seen during the days of the Great Uprising strike out across the stars. Civilisations fall and worlds burn at his merest displeasure. He is the ravager of a hundred worlds, victor of a thousand battles. He is Dvar Ghorgoth the Oppressor, flayer of worlds and Packmaster of the Screaming Skulls.’

 	The Dvar thumbs the activation rune of his axe and with a shrill shriek the gore-stained fangs of tyranids and carnosaurs set within its adamantium links, eat up the air.

 	The proud words of the Dvar’s herald fade to wind-hushed echoes and are replaced by the hollow sound of clapping gauntleted hands.

 	‘Proud words,’ the giant in red-black and gold armour says. ‘But does Dvar Ghorgoth, also known as Oppressor and Packmaster, not know that a warrior is not judged here upon his rhetoric but by the strength of his sword-arm?’

 	‘Then I hereby issue my challenge!’ Ghorgoth roars, silencing his herald before the thing can even attempt a response. ‘I challenge you, Constantinus, sometimes called Liberator, sometimes Oathbreaker, to a duel.’

 	A gasp passes like a breeze through the gathered throng of cultists. Some call for the Dvar’s head whilst defending their lord’s reputation, calling down vituperative curses upon the Screaming Skulls.

 	‘Fight me, in single combat, if you dare!’

 	‘The question, Dvar,’ the giant in gold-chased power armour rumbles as he descends the steps from the balcony to the arena floor, one hand on the pommel of the sword sheathed in the ornately tooled scabbard hanging at his side, ‘is do you dare?’

 	Gha’gur Nor watches with intent interest as the giant strides across the ash and sand of the Place of Testing towards the Packmaster. He really is a giant; but it is not just his physical stature that makes him appear enormous. It is his bearing, the way he carries himself; the air of supreme self-confidence that hangs about him like his mantle of snowtusk fur.

 	‘But understand this, Oppressor,’ Constantinus the Liberator declares as he unsheathes his golden sword, the spectators within the coliseum hanging on every word of their lord’s proclamation. ‘To the victor, the spoils. The war-host of the other.’

 	Ghorgoth hefts the whirling chainaxe in both hands, revving the whirling teeth with a squeeze of a bone-encrusted gauntlet as he strides forth to meet his opponent.

 	 ‘His men, fighting machines, unholy relics, slaves, battleships and all worlds that are his dominion.’

 	‘Enough talk!’ the Packmaster roars. The duellists are almost upon each other. ‘Shut up and fight!’

 	‘So be it,’ the Liberator says, and Gha’gur Nor feels something he has not felt in a long time. He feels fear.

 	He cannot tear his eyes away. His fate, and that of the Screaming Skulls, rests upon the outcome of this one battle.

 	With that the two champions bring their weapons to bear, axe and sword clashing; the whirling teeth of one kicking sparks from the humming blade of the other.

 	Gen-hanced muscles bunch and tense, power armour servo-motors grind in protest. Face to face, eyes as hard as adamantium drill bits boring into the bone-ringed eye sockets of the Packmaster’s skull-helm, the Liberator makes one last utterance as battle is joined; ‘To the death! And pray that the denizens of the warp do not make too much of a meal of devouring your damned soul.’

 	The mass of humanity gathered before the broken steps of the Great Cathedral of Cirtus City, looks, to Brother Maimon’s mind, like a grotesque monster; some spawn of the outer darkness, one body with a thousand gurning faces. It is a beast that has grown fat and bloated and hideous, feeding, driven by its own greed, a hunger that has become insatiable.

 	The mob wants a change to the established order. The people want to take the place of those who were once their betters and who are now nothing more than burning bonfires of xenos-tainted flesh. The people want to rule where once they were ruled. They want power.

 	There is only one way to tame such a beast, that Brother Maimon knows of, and that is to break its spirit, to make it fear you. Respect takes time; it must be earned, and it can be a fickle beast too. Fear, however, is instantaneous. Fear is constant. Fear can be forever, if you want it to be.

 	The power-hungry crowd fills the plaza, the rioters gathered now within the precinct of the Great Cathedral. The city has burned at their hand. Thousands have died, innocent and guilty together, going to their deaths side by side. 

 	Constantinus stands before the beast now. He is as still as a statue, the coldly impassive expression on his face as constant as if it were cast in steel as he regards the monster. The monster he made.

 	This world’s erstwhile rulers deserved to die. They had given themselves over body and soul to the other, the unclean, the unnatural; to the alien. The sergeant had acted swiftly, cutting off the head of that gene-stealing brood before the cult’s taint could become too deeply rooted within the general populace of Nova Terra. But that same populace had not seen with the same clarity of thought as the Sons of Guilliman had.

 	Enraged by the summary execution of their leaders perpetrated by Constantinus and his battle-brothers, the masses had risen up in revolt. The Space Marines had freed the ungrateful horde from corruption, alien rule and, ultimately the insatiable appetite of the Devourer of Worlds, only for the throng to turn on their saviours in their thousands.

 	Maimon knows that was the moment when everything had changed. Sons of Guilliman had died for this world, fighting to stem the alien tide in the Emperor’s name, and every single one of those Sons had been worth more than the entire numberless, treacherous horde put together.

 	It was said that there was one Space Marine to fight for each of the million worlds that made up the Imperium, to save mankind from the forces of the alien, heretics and the corrupting powers of the warp. It was also said that one Space Marine for each world is enough for the task in hand. Yet two dozen battle-brothers of the Fourth Company of the Sons of Guilliman have sacrificed themselves for this world, this Nova Terra, only for those who had remained behind to battle the tyranid threat – unremembered and unrewarded – to now have to suffer this final dishonour.

 	That had been the final disgrace, the final injurious slight that had pushed Sergeant Constantinus beyond the brink. It was more than any mortal man, or immortal Adeptus Astartes, should ever have to endure. If the scum of Cirtus city wanted rebellion, to see their world burn, Squad Constantinus would light the fire for them.

 	But the revolt that spawned the beast, and the sergeant’s actions that followed, could only ever have led to one outcome. That was why Constantinus and his battle-brothers stand before the mob now, Sons of Guilliman no longer, ready to break the beast. The sergeant will demonstrate to the mob who is the mightier, who is possessed of the stronger will, who it is that will dominate whom.

 	There are those who had already sworn themselves to the sergeant, having seen what Constantinus and his brethren have wrought within the city sectors – Guardsmen who have seen their fellow soldiers die to save Nova Terra from the tyranids, looters, rioters, the dispossessed, former servants of the Ecclesiarchy, members of the Adeptus Arbites stationed on this world. They appreciate what the sergeant and his men have done, what they have been forced to do and why. They follow Constantinus now, and even go so far as to call him Liberator.

 	Those faithful to him are gathered about his feet, upon the broken steps of the cathedral, their weapons – guns, knives, and anything else they have been able to lay their hands on – displayed in a crude show of might. Behind Constantinus stands Maimon and his brothers, Pius and Hector, who came to this world with the sergeant and who have helped shape it beyond all recognition. They sweep the throng of humanity before them – the panting beast – with boltgun and flamer, armoured incarnations of war and wrath, vengeance and retribution.

 	Constantinus appears regal in his quartered power armour and snowtusk cloak. In his right hand he grips the ebon hilt of his power sword, the tip of the blade resting against the fractured rockcrete at his feet. For the time being he keeps his left hand behind his back, the trophy he hides there held just as tightly in its gauntleted grasp.

 	Then Constantinus speaks and the beast learns of the sacrifices its new master has made, how what they have lost cannot compare to what he has given up, in their name; how he has forsworn all he once held true and noble and honourable having seen the Imperial Truth for the lie it really is.

 	In his very next breath he decries the Emperor and his minions, Constantinus’s loyal brethren echoing his words like a mantra, Maimon feeling a part of himself die forever as he does so. 

 	The crowd chant and cheer in response to the sergeant’s rhetoric. They are Sons of the false prophet Guilliman no longer, he tells the frenzied mob, for they have been betrayed by those they once called ‘brother’. He has gazed upon the true face of the false God-Emperor of Mankind, he tells them, and fathomed the true nature of the universe. He has torn down the false idols raised within the Great Cathedral, he and his fellow Iconoclasts, and just as he has freed his battle-brothers from the shackles of their misguided faith, so shall he liberate all the peoples of this forsaken world.

 	It is then, and only then, that he reveals his trophy, holding it high so that the gathered masses may see that what he has told them is the truth and nothing less.

 	Brother Maimon regards Antenor’s severed head with cold detachment. Antenor had been disloyal. He had paid the price for that disloyalty, and rightly so, as had the rest. For that was all Constantinus the Iconoclast, Constantinus the Liberator asked of any of them. All he desired was their devotion. Their trust. Their loyalty.

 	The city of Cirtus burns, its fine avenues awash with blood and thick with rioting mobs. In the outlying districts of the industrial quarter a firestorm consumes the templum-manufactories where certain cult elements made a futile last stand in a vain attempt to resist the wrath of the Emperor, meted out by his finest warriors in violent fashion. 

 	The labyrinth of the mercantile district has been purged with bolter and flamer, and tactically detonated thermic charges. Every metre has been won in hard-fought battle, but now not a single hybrid or purestrain ’stealer remains alive.

 	The purging of Cirtus city has not been without its cost. Where ten quit Nova Terra’s volcanic plateau regions – having cleansed the basalt caverns that lie there with flamer, sword and boltgun – eight now reconvene within a shattered plaza in the skeletal charcoal shadows of the palaces of the nobility.

 	It was the city’s ruling aristocracy who were the first to face the full force of the Emperor’s divine retribution, for it was they who had broken faith with Him, giving themselves over to the xenos contagion. The taint riddled the families of the planet’s ruling classes. But, driven by their sergeant’s righteous fervour, Squad Constantinus had acted swiftly, hunting down the infected, rooting out the evil and eradicating any sign of the cult’s bloodline. Now they are dead, all of them, and the threat the insidious alien infection posed is no more.

 	That is where the purging of Cirtus city should have ended.

 	If only that had been the case, Brother Antenor thinks as Squad Constantinus reunites at the centre of the rubble-strewn plaza, the weapons in their hands still hot from the battles they have fought, befouled with blood and viscera and in serious need of holy cleansing and reconsecration.

 	Antenor, with Brother Cain at his side, climbs the slope of broken rubble on the northern side of the plaza. Brother Maimon enters from the east, via a shattered colonnade, Brother Hector sweeping the ruined alcoves with his flamer. Brothers Diomed and Palamedes join them, emerging from the shadows that have collected beneath a cracked Imperial eagle. It turns out the sergeant has been waiting for them all along, hidden in plain sight beneath an ornamental archway, its stuccoed plaster facade riddled with bullet holes. A bowed and bloodied Brother Pius skulks behind him.

 	Antenor hears the crackle of flames in the distance, as entire city sectors are consumed, along with the cries of looters and madmen running riot through the mercantile zones and once proud avenues of Cirtus city.

 	The eight stand together, reunited once more. But as the sergeant scrutinises his battle-brothers, Antenor feels uneasy – as if there has been a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure, or some unknowable sleeping psyker-sense is trying to pass on a warning, a traitorous thought worming its way into his subconscious and worrying at his surface thoughts. Antenor cannot help thinking that they have never been less united, as if their bonds of brotherhood have never been less certain. Less binding.

 	Using his free hand, the sergeant deactivates the mag-locks securing his helmet to the neck-ring of his power armour, removes it, and clamps it instead to his side. In the other, he still grips his power sword tightly. 

 	Constantinus fixes each of them in turn then with his granite-hard gaze. But when the stare, as unrelenting as an orbital bombardment, lingers on him, Antenor sees something else in the sergeant’s eyes: a fire he has not seen before. The sergeant has always been possessed of an ardent righteousness, a proud desire to see that no wrong-doer goes unpunished, but this is something else. Antenor’s throat feels suddenly dry. 

 	The sergeant’s blood is up, that is clear, but his spirit is no longer fired by a righteous desire to see the will of the Emperor done but by the hungry fires of untrammelled rage and thirsty blood-lust.

 	‘Well met, my Sons,’ the sergeant says, a cruel smile on his lips. His argent and azure quartered battle plate has become a uniform black and red, scorched by the fires he has marched through in order to see the city purged of those he has declared heretics, and doused in the blood and bodily fluids of the same, which even now steam from the energised blade of his active power sword. ‘How goes our campaign?’

 	‘It goes well, brother-sergeant,’ Brother Maimon replies, with rather too much gusto for Antenor’s liking. ‘These ungrateful heretic scum will not forget the toll their transgressions against us have exacted. Those that still live.’

 	‘Excellent, excellent. I myself have purged half a dozen city sectors with fire, bolter and sword, with Brother Pius at my side,’ the sergeant announces proudly.

 	‘Such is the price of treachery,’ exalts Pius, sounding like some pontiff quoting scripture from his mobile pulpit.

 	‘And what of the rest of you? What do you have to report, Brother Antenor? Brother Palamedes? How goes your holy work?’

 	‘It grieves me to hear you call what we have done here holy work, brother-sergeant,’ Antenor says with a heavy heart, knowing that such words, once said, can never be unspoken.

 	‘How so?’ Constantinus’s voice is a guttural growl, the sound made by a cornered carnodon or an angry grox.

 	‘Because what you have decreed is against all the teachings of the holy Codex and flies in the face of the oaths we swore when we became Sons of Guilliman.’

 	‘We all swore oaths of moment when we first arrived on this Emperor-forsaken world,’ Constantinus declares, his own words coming louder now, and venom-edged, ‘and that moment lasted for three long years. I swore to liberate this world from the grip of the Great Devourer, as did you, Brother Antenor, as did we all. Have you forgotten that?’

 	‘No, brother-sergeant, I have not forgotten, and thanks to our tireless upholding of those oaths the tyranid menace has been expunged from Nova Terra.’

 	‘Yes, but only to be replaced by the taint of heresy!’ Constantinus roars. ‘The people of this world are no better than the worms that even now feast upon the flesh of our dead brethren, noble Sons like Brother Ignatius and Brother Lucian. These whoreson wretches have no appreciation of who has saved them from a fate beyond damnation. We are the guardians of mankind and yet mankind does not deserve us. The people of Nova Terra owe us a debt that can never be repaid. But worse than that, we free them from the threat of alien tyranny and they rebel. So it is up to us to educate them, so that they understand fully the error of their ways.’

 	‘We are done here, Constantinus. The cult is vanquished, the last of the tyranid broods eradicated. We should leave Nova Terra and set out upon a penitent crusade, in acknowledgement of our own transgressions, and seek the Emperor’s absolution for the crimes we have committed here in His name.’

 	‘Absolution? I am absolved every time I bathe in the blood of heretics and traitors,’ the sergeant snarls, not once breaking eye contact with Brother Antenor. 

 	The implication is shocking. ‘And would you include me, one of your battle-brothers, under that banner?’

 	‘That depends on what you decide to do next. Brother.’ Never has the word ‘brother’ seemed so lacking in implied brotherhood. ‘After all, as the holy Codex teaches, actions speak louder than words.’

 	‘So be it,’ Antenor says, inhaling deeply. ‘I am a loyal son of the primarch, and Roboute Guilliman would surely turn his face from the atrocities we have committed against the people of this world. I ask our father-primarch and the Emperor Himself for forgiveness. And, as a consequence, I must renounce my place within Squad Constantinus.’

 	‘What?’ the sergeant laughs. ‘You cannot! The only way you will leave my command is when our masters see fit to promote you – if our masters ever see fit to call us back to the Cyclades at all – or when one of us dies.’

 	It is with an even heavier heart that Antenor utters the next three doom-laden words: ‘So be it.’

 	‘So be it?’ The expression on Constantinus’s face says more than words ever could. ‘And do you speak for you alone or are there others here who feel as you do?’ The sergeant challenges the others with his granite gaze.

 	‘Never!’ Maimon declares. ‘I would follow you into the Eye of Terror itself, my lord!’

 	‘And you might yet,’ Antenor warns the other.

 	‘How dare you?’ Maimon roars, his boltgun finding a new target.

 	‘No! Brother Antenor is right,’ Diomed says, his tone as hard and as cold as marble. ‘We have broken our vows to the Chapter. We must repent and atone for our sins.’

 	‘And we live or die in brotherhood,’ Pius announces, quoting scripture himself now. ‘Brother-sergeant, I pledge my bolter to your service, always.’

 	‘What say you, Brother Hector?’ Constantinus growls. ‘Where do you stand?’

 	‘I stand with you, of course, brother-sergeant. The bond of brotherhood is what makes us what we are. Without our fellow battle-brothers we are nothing.’

 	‘Well said, brother!’ Pius proclaims.

 	‘What of you, Brother Palamedes? We fought together at the walls of Burranax and against the upstart tau on Numenor Six. Where do your loyalties lie?’

 	‘First and foremost I am loyal to the Golden Throne, then to the greatest of all his sons, Roboute Guilliman, and then to my Chapter. When my sergeant’s commands are contrary to the credos of the greater authority, then he is my commander no longer.’

 	Palamedes, ever the orator, has put the case as clearly as any of them.

 	‘Fine words,’ Constantinus retorts, ‘but what are your fine words worth when your Chapter abandons you, and through no wrongdoing on your part?’

 	‘We do not know that that is the case,’ Palamedes states plainly.

 	‘I fought long and hard to save this world from the Great Devourer and then for another three years – unrewarded and unremembered – at my Chapter’s behest to save it again. I do not ask for reward, only to be remembered. I ask for no more. I deserve nothing less.’

 	‘You?’ The sergeant’s choice of words bothers Antenor. Words have power. Such power can be all too easily abused. ‘We have all shed our life’s blood for Nova Terra.’

 	‘Nova Terra?’ the sergeant snarls. ‘I have shed so much blood for this world, seen so many battle-brothers under my command die for this world, it would be better if it were called Constantinium.’

 	‘You jest, surely?’

 	‘Constantinium, Antenor! In honour of the fallen brothers of Squad Constantinus!’

 	Antenor scans the plaza again. The brothers have grouped together, as the debate has raged, each according to the troths they have made or the vows they have broken. Only Brother Cain, the newest recruit to join Tactical Squad Constantinus, stands apart from the rest.

 	‘Brother Cain, it is time you revealed to us your heart and mind,’ the sergeant says, pointing a ceramite-armoured finger at the young Space Marine. ‘Come, join me.’

 	‘Much as it pains me to say so,’ Cain replies with a faltering voice, ‘I cannot.’

 	‘You cannot?’

 	‘I walked with Brother Antenor through the streets of the city as it burned and saw the evils we have perpetrated – not in the Emperor’s name but in the name of vengeance and bloody-minded obstinacy.’

 	The last eight Sons of Guilliman upon this strife-torn world face each other across the fragmented square, the smoking ruins of the palaces of the nobility rising like blackened fingers pointing to the skies in silent accusation behind the wild-eyed sergeant.

 	‘Then we have reached an impasse. Brothers,’ Constantinus says, addressing only those who stand with him still. ‘The traitors have revealed their true colours. Once again we find ourselves confronted by treachery upon this hell-world, treachery that must be excised like a suppurating canker.’

 	‘Do not do this,’ Antenor warns, as Palamedes, Cain and Diomed line up alongside him. ‘If you cross this line there will be no going back.’

 	‘There has been no going back since the moment you broke faith with your sergeant!’ Pius rages.

 	‘You crossed that line long ago,’ Constantinus growls. ‘Traitor.’

 	In that moment, the universe turns and nothing will ever be the same again.

 	‘Brothers!’ Constantinus booms. ‘The enemy has revealed itself. The traitors have broken faith with those of us dedicated to the work that is still to be completed here. So I say to you, brothers, suffer not a traitor to live!’

 	Boltguns are primed, Brother Hector’s flamer blazes, and Constantinus’s blade hums with lethal power.

 	‘Sons of Guilliman!’ Antenor shouts, his unwavering gaze locked upon the errant sergeant, his finger tightening about the trigger of his own thrice-blessed boltgun. ‘Remember, Cirtus city! Remember Nova Terra!’

 	With that battle is joined.

 	The caverns thrum with the cacophonous clamour of battle, the rattle of bolter-fire, the sharp crack of frag grenades and the alien screams of the tyranids. Even the earth and rock cry out, shifting beneath them, protrusions cracking and crashing to the ground such is the savagery of the close quarters fighting now consuming the lava tunnels.

 	‘Brood-nest clear!’ Brother Ignatius’s voice crackles over the vox. It is only through their helm-comms that any Space Marine of Squad Constantinus can hear any other speak. The distortion is the result of geomagnetic interference, according to Hector’s auspex scans, but it doesn’t stop them doing their job.

 	‘In the Emperor’s name, fire in the hole!’ comes Brother Pius’s voice.

 	At his battle-brother’s warning, Brother Lucian drops into a crouch, one gauntleted hand upon the winged U raised from his breastplate, closing his eyes momentarily and offering up a prayer to Father Guilliman, once again asking the primarch to watch over their endeavours as they pursue their holy mission on Nova Terra.

 	Another seismic boom rocks the caves, shaking the crust of the planet. The torrent of flame comes moments later, licking at the grieves and shoulder guards of his blue and white battle plate, while Lucian intones the Prayer of Protection over and over.

 	The fires recede and Lucian rises to his feet again, his prayer-inscribed boltgun in hand, the vituperative words of his furious prayer still on his lips and an undying anger in his heart.

 	Something is burning within the extinct volcanic vent. Something that screams in pain and fury. Dancing shadows leap and caper across the walls, backlit by the flickering flames.

 	Pius has shaken another nest of the hibernating xenos from their bio-stasis slumber. They are angry, like fire-wasps – their hive disturbed by a dozy grox – and they are coming.

 	But Lucian and his brothers are ready for them.

 	Ridged, elongated skulls and fiercely taloned forelimbs throw leaping shades across the pitted walls of the lava tube tunnels. The retreating fires reflect from obsidian scales and in the lidless black pearl orbs of their alien eyes. 

 	Chittering and screeching, the genestealers come at them. The four Space Marines form into a line of unyielding armour across the width of the magma-carved passageway: Brother Cain, like Lucian, with boltgun in hand; Brother Pius, his bolter loose in one hand, fingering the trigger-pin of a frag grenade in the other; Ignatius, the snout of his charging plasma cannon aimed at the core of the approaching brood.

 	‘In Guilliman’s name, fire at will!’ Lucian bellows over the screeching cries of the xenos. 

 	The clatter of bolter-fire ricochets from the basalt walls, accompanied by the crack of carapace exoskeletons being smashed open and the concussive boom of the detonating mass-reactive shells.

 	Lucian’s marksmanship is remarkable even among the Adeptus Astartes. No shot is wasted – bolter-rounds entering through eye sockets, exploding alien hearts and severing spinal columns; every hit a kill shot. 

 	Pius is more measured and restrained, loosing off very deliberate shots into the throng. The genestealers fall, lower limbs fracturing, tumbling into the path of others. Those creatures behind that don’t react in time are sent sprawling. 

 	Brother Cain, the newest member of the squad and not long out of the Chapter’s Scout Company, is nonetheless the veteran of countless battles since elements of the Fourth Company came to the aid of Nova Terra. Happenstance and necessity have made him an accomplished tyranid hunter.

 	Then there is Brother Ignatius. He and Lucian were promoted to Squad Constantinus together, on the eve of the Laskarr Landings. While the others might look up to Lucian – seeing him as Constantinus’s natural successor, should the unthinkable happen – just as Lucian himself holds his sergeant in high esteem, it is Ignatius who has been afforded the honour of carrying a revered relic of the Chapter into battle.

 	With xenos bodies creating a bottleneck within the lava tunnel, Brother Pius hurls his frag grenade into the seething, shrieking mass. In the time it takes Lucian to whisper ‘the Emperor protects’, the grenade detonates.

 	A wave of concussive force flings ’stealer body parts at the Space Marines, hooves, skull ridges and limb pieces clattering against their besmirched battle plate.

 	Ignatius gasps. 

 	Lucian looks. 

 	A razor-sharp shard of chitin is embedded in his right thigh.

 	‘Guilliman’s bones!’ Ignatius curses, checking the plasma cannon’s charge. It is not yet ready. He curses again.

 	As the smoke and dust clear, and once his helm’s HUD has recovered from the shock-flash of the grenade’s detonation, Lucian sees the second wave of ’stealers advancing along the tunnel into the kill zone.

 	A purestrain leaps its fallen brood-kin, its powerful spring carrying it clear of their guns. It lands on top of Brother Cain, its claws scoring marks in his battle plate. His boltgun useless at close quarters, Cain lets the weapon fall to the ground, at the same time taking his combat knife from its sheath with his right hand as his left closes around the creature’s snout.

 	Cain puts the edge of the knife to the creature’s throat as the genestealer writhes within his grasp. The first cut takes off the end of the creature’s muzzle and its darting purple-black tongue. It gives a hideous wail as Cain repositions the blade and tries again. Space Marine and genestealer fall to the floor.

 	Brother Cain kicks the bucking monster from him, as violent, convulsive death throes take control of its body, his knife buried up to its hilt in the knot of ganglia and cerebral tissue that passes for the ’stealer’s brain.

 	Lucian observes all this at the periphery of his vision as he looses off a shot that blasts out the back of another purestrain’s skull.

 	‘Suffer not the unclean to live,’ Pius intones, ‘and uphold the honour of the Emperor!’ 

 	It has been regularly remarked upon by the brothers of Squad Constantinus that it can surely only be a matter of time before Pius is called to join the elite echelons of the Chapter’s Chaplains. He punctuates his vituperative mantra now with bursts of fire from his boltgun.

 	‘Thank the primarch!’ Ignatius’s voice booms over the comm-net. Lucian recognises the high-pitched hum emanating from the relic weapon in his battle-brother’s hands.

 	The plasma cannon fires and the melee is bathed in light as intense as that at the heart of a star. Tyranids die in their droves. Armoured carapaces crack, soft tissue sizzles and alien ichor boils in the heat blast.

 	The glow suffusing the cannon’s power coils fade to a dull ultramarine, the weapon’s energised plasma reserves expended again.

 	‘Good shooting, Brother Ignatius,’ Lucian says, picking off the surviving ’stealers with controlled bursts of bolter-fire.

 	‘The primarch is beneficent.’

 	‘None can resist the ardent fires of the Emperor’s holy wrath,’ Brother Pius chips in.

 	‘Nor the blast from a fully energised plasma cannon,’ adds Brother Cain.

 	The burning thing comes at them then. It is huge, its chitinous carapace the same glossy black as the ’stealers, its underbelly the same anaemic white.

 	Lucian is unsure whether this particular specimen is a ’stealer, like the others – mutated to gigantic size by the unknowable workings of alien hyper-evolution, to fill a void left by the departure of the tyranid splinter fleet three years before – or whether it is some other, as yet unidentified xeno-form. But what is clear is that it is on fire and it is coming straight for them.

 	It is so vast it practically fills the lava tunnel. It pounds towards them on crushing hooves, huge scything talon-arms slicing the air before it. It gives voice to a hideous shriek, a sound that seems horribly high-pitched for something so large, so monstrous.

 	Ignatius prepares to face the monster’s barrelling charge with his plasma cannon, but it is still recharging after the last sun-burst blast that took out the bulk of the genestealer brood.

 	‘Guilliman’s oath!’ Lucian hears Ignatius cry before a burning bladed limb – more razor-sharp chitinous sword than organic appendage – descends with startling speed, leaving a smoking trail in the air behind it as it slices open the battle-brother’s power armour from shoulder guard to tasset. 

 	Ignatius falls, his body bifurcated. The plasma cannon hits the floor of the cavern-tunnel with a dull thud. Rage boils within Brother Lucian.

 	‘As one! As all!’ Lucian screams, turning his boltgun on the beast. 

 	With any other ’stealer every discharged bolter round would have been a kill-shot. Against this brute beast the mass-reactive shells detonate against chitinous hide leaving nothing more than lunar crater pock-marks on the surface of its obsidian armour.

 	‘Guilliman’s teeth!’ Pius rails against the hideous truth they are all confronted with now.

 	Another malformed limb lashes out, this one like some lumpen, chitinous wrecking ball, trailing smoke and plasma flames. The force of the impact launches Lucian back down the passageway, his head hitting the curved basalt wall hard.

 	His helmet absorbs the worst of the blow, but his vision blurs for a moment nonetheless. In that moment he sees a figure in blue and white, its gleaming armour under-lit a ruddy orange, bound up the monster’s back. The coruscating power sword in its hand flashing once as the armoured figure vaults over the tyranid’s head, the humming blade singing as it slices through chitin, ligaments, bone and oesophageal tubes.

 	The somersaulting figure, a cloak of snowtusk spread out behind it, lands on the floor of the tunnel, the basalt cracking under the avenging angel’s ceramite boots. A moment later, the tyranid’s head hits the floor in a welter of oozing ichor.

 	The over-grown brood-beast continues to claw the air, one spasming strike dealing Pius a grievous wound even through his chestplate. Then the carcass topples to the ground as well, the yellow-white pus that passes for the creature’s blood pumping from its severed neck, the persistent plasma fires fading at last, the decapitated body still twitching with muscle-spasms for several seconds afterwards.

 	Sergeant Constantinus rises to his full impressive height, the cloak settling behind him. He regards Brothers Lucian, Pius, Cain and the savagely slaughtered Ignatius, the faceplate of his helm betraying no emotion.

 	‘Brother-sergeant!’ Lucian exclaims in unalloyed delight, shaking his head clear and getting to his feet again. ‘Thank the primarch!’

 	‘Well met, Brother Lucian.’ The survivors of the assault gather round their sergeant like delighted children at the arrival of a favourite uncle. ‘Brother Pius. Brother Cain.’

 	‘Brother Ignatius–’ Lucian begins.

 	‘Will be remembered, and his name added to the roll of the honoured dead who have given their lives for this world, for a great many of the hated xenos met their end at his hands, unable to match his might or vengeful wrath.’

 	The remainder of Squad Constantinus join them then, following Constantinus up from the deeper tunnels.

 	‘Brother Hector,’ the sergeant says, addressing another of the warriors joining them now, and who is holding his left hand with care – Lucian can see savage bite marks in the ceramite gauntlet – ‘what says your auspex’s machine-spirit?’

 	The Space Marine consults the scanner held in his other hand. It is a moment before he answers.

 	‘The caves are clear, Sergeant Constantinus.’

 	‘You are sure?’

 	‘Yes, brother-sergeant, I have recalibrated and rescanned twice to be certain.’

 	‘Then the Emperor be praised. Our work here is done.’

 	The sense of relief and joy is palpable. 

 	‘Let us take up the body of our fallen battle-brother and return to the Ardent Fire, that we may preserve his gene-seed and signal our Chapter that Nova Terra is free of the xenos at last.’

 	 ‘Brother-sergeant,’ Brother Palamedes interrupts. ‘I have been monitoring a number of Adeptus Arbites transmissions over the Imperial vox-net. The signal is degraded but the implication I believe is clear.’

 	‘What is it, brother?’ asks the sergeant. ‘What are you trying to tell us?’

 	‘The nests in these volcanic plateaus were not the only place where ’stealer broods went to ground after the splinter fleet was repelled from the shores of Nova Terra.’

 	The atmosphere of joy in the air evaporates in an instant. 

 	‘Brother,’ Constantinus says, his voice a sinister guttural growl, ‘be clear. What are you trying to tell us? Do you speak of’ – he hesitates – ‘cult activity?’

 	‘I fear so, brother-sergeant,’ Palamedes confirms, his remorseful tone giving the impression that he is confessing to some terrible transgression of his own.

 	‘Then this world is not yet free of its xenos taint,’ Sergeant Constantinus says darkly, ‘and our work here is not yet done.’

 	Suddenly raising his power sword high, he makes a new oath of moment in a voice that booms like an orbital assault.

 	‘I shall not rest until this world is free!’

 	Twisting his wrist, Fauchard brings the chainsword back around, the jagged adamantium teeth quickly chewing through the neck of another maniacal cultist. But where one blasphemer falls, beneath the shattered vault of the Great Cathedral of Cirtus city, there are a dozen more ready to take its place.

 	Many of the deranged devotees come at them armed with nothing more than dull-edged knives and the insane belief that somehow they have a hope of prevailing against the Iron Knights. 

 	The cultists possess little in the way of armour either, or even clothing of any sort. Their filthy robes hang like rags about them, what little flesh that clothes their near skeletal frames is covered with all manner of blasphemous symbols. Some have been tattooed on, some are unhealed scars cut with the point of a knife or a ragged fingernail. The glyphs make even Fauchard sick to the pit of his stomach if he looks upon them for too long. 

 	The flagellants scream blasphemies to their unspeakable masters as they come at the Space Marines – wave after rushing wave of them – but the armour of their unshakeable, unholy faith does nothing to save them from Fauchard’s blade or the Emperor-inspired wrath of his brother knights.

 	From out of the pack emerges a bald man, flayed skin peeled back from the top of his head to expose the glistening skull beneath, the blood-wet bone incised with the star-rune of the arch-enemy.

 	Fauchard plunges his sword into the man’s stomach. The cultist gasps, the foul invocation that was on his lips cut off in that instant. But the wildness in the man’s stare remains, while a delighted, shark-like smile twists his face into a grotesque grimace.

 	The cultist grabs hold of the chainsword and gives a sharp tug. Dark blood gushes from his mouth as the man convulses and pulls himself up the blade. Now with only the hilt protruding from his belly, the fanatic reaches up to claw at Fauchard’s helmet with broken, bloodied fingernails, the same insane smile still etched on his face.

 	The Iron Knight raises his bolt pistol and explodes the lunatic’s skull with a single round. Shaking the limp corpse from his chainblade, he turns to meet the charge of the next insane idiot desirous of a hasty death.

 	Not five metres away, Brother Adnot takes a cultist’s head in his hands and wrenches it from the woman’s shoulders, the arterial spray of blood that follows send a shower of red mist down upon their gunmetal-grey battle plate, the blasphemer’s unholy blood baptising them all.

 	There is a flash of steel to Fauchard’s right and Brother Nihel takes down a mewling, conjoined thing with one stroke of his treasured relic blade.

 	Brother Urs gives a bestial bellow and barrels past, the huge Space Marine crashing into the cultist pack, sending the suicidal servants of the Ruinous Powers tumbling to the ground, crushing their skulls under his armoured feet. 

 	Another burst of bolter-fire and another body performs its own danse macabre before falling to the ground, suddenly eerily still. Then there is no more killing to be done, and the broken ground is awash with the blood of the blasphemers.

 	Sergeant Fauchard regards the twisted, pulverised and bludgeoned bodies for a moment, finding himself wondering once again how anyone could choose such a life – and such a death: bodies daubed with unholy sigils, flesh already rotting, minds and souls sick with corruption – over a life of service to the Emperor and the Imperium.

 	He doesn’t know what’s worse: that such weak-minded mortals can sink to such levels of depravity, or that the thing they revere as lord of this world was once like the sergeant and those battle-brothers under his command – one of the Emperor’s finest, an inheritor of the genetic legacy of the highly revered Primarch Guilliman. A loyal Space Marine.

 	The so-called Liberator must have known, as soon as he broke faith with his vows of brotherhood, turned his back on his devotion to the Emperor, and renounced the sacred trust that had been placed in him by his Chapter Master, that this day would come.

 	‘Brothers,’ Fauchard announces, the squad gathering together again, forming a ring around their sergeant. ‘Let us swear an oath of moment, to reaffirm the vows we made on coming to this hell-world, that we shall not rest until the traitor’s head adorns the battlements of his own citadel. Swear it now!’

 	‘We so swear!’ the Iron Knights bellow in furious affirmation of their sergeant’s words.

 	‘The Iconoclast’s blasphemous idol has been toppled, and after thirteen long years of fighting his forces are in rout. Now this once great cathedral has been purged of his profane acolytes too. It is now only a matter of time before the Emperor guides us to the place where we shall meet with the arch-traitor himself in battle. With his death, we shall reclaim this world for the Emperor. This I so swear!’

 	The knights’ antiphonal response reverberates from the broken pillars of the once mighty edifice like the roar of a Thunderhawk’s engines. ‘So we all swear!’

 	‘Vigilance! Valour! Vengeance!’ Fauchard roars, his brethren quick to echo the battle-cry of their Chapter. ‘Let us be ever watchful for signs of treachery and be ruthless in our prosecution of those who would willingly turn from the Emperor’s light, as we exact His divine retribution upon them.’

 	Fauchard thrusts his chainsword high into the sky then, its tip appearing to scrape the hell-storm clouds of blood and smoke that shroud the ruined city.

 	‘For I shall not rest until this world is liberated from the traitor’s tyrannical rule. This I swear!’

QUOTE


 	A case in point is the dark tale of Constantinus – sometimes called the Oathbreaker, sometimes called the Iconoclast – renegade battle-brother of the noble Sons of Guilliman…


 	Having renamed the world Constantinium, the renegade sergeant plunged his newly conquered domain into an age of anarchy, darkness and blood sacrifice. Not content with having consecrated one world to the Ruinous Powers, the traitor embarked upon a campaign of savage slaughter, a terrifying pogrom that engulfed planet after planet, system after system, until within the space of ten short years, the entire Viridis Sector owed him fealty.


 	It took a unified force of three Space Marine Chapters, twelve Imperial Guard foundings, an entire battlefleet and agents of both the Officio Assassinorum and the mighty Ordos Hereticus to finally recapture the planet. Even then the bloodshed only ended with the death of the traitor Constantinus himself.


 	Even now, some three hundred years after the end of his tyrannical reign, it is said that cult-gangs of rebels still hold out in the volcanic plateaus, having made their lair within the labyrinthine lava tunnels found in that region. It is from these hidden cave systems that the rebels carry out guerrilla raids against the Emperor-fearing folk of Nova Terra. It is within those haunted caverns that they continue to make sacrifices to their blasphemous gods in the name of Constantinus the Liberator – a name that will forever be a stain upon the reputation of the noble Sons of Guilliman.


 	From the treatise Quis Custodiet Ipsos Angeles Mortes? by Gideon Lorr, Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus