In the original Sabbat Worlds anthology, Nick Kyme took on the arrogant and aristocratic Bluebloods, an Imperial Guard regiment historically at odds with the ‘inferior’ Ghosts, and showed that they possessed a heroism all their own. He managed, with great skill, to deal with characters who had essentially always been villains and make convincingly honourable men out of them. 

 	Here, he returns to those characters for a powerful sequel, in which the vaunted Volpone Bluebloods find out what it’s like to be the underdogs for a change, cowed by a vastly more brutal force… and, at the same time, get caught up in a thoughtless, thankless, merciless storm of battle. 

 	In all his Warhammer 40,000 writing, Nick has managed to conjure up the bleak and nigh-on overwhelming atmosphere of the battlefield to great effect. I think he’s outdone himself here. 

 	Get ready for some serious warfare…

 	Dan Abnett

 
 
    
Tempest
Nick Kyme


 	Titus City, Lotun, 775.M41 
(the 20th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

 	In the year 774.M41 Slaydo’s crusade to reclaim the Sabbat Worlds from the grip of the Archenemy had reached as far as Lotun.

 	Little more than a dirt world, Lotun possessed sparse natural resources, provided little in the way of industrial hive production, and its tithes to the sprawling military of the Imperium were meagre.

 	Wracked by storms, monsoons resulting from its aberrant atmospherics, Lotun was a poor world for a war, and would probably have been overlooked but for the fact of its clandestine importance to the Archenemy. 

 	But despite our gathered intelligence, none of us, not even great Slaydo himself, could have predicted what we would find there. 

 	– Personal journal, 
Major Vasquez Regara, ‘Royal’ Volpone 50th

 	There are many traits that distinguish the Volpone from the regular rank and file of the Imperial Guard. Even Scions enviously regard our proud history, our discipline and lengthy honour roll. 

 	One trait stands out above all others: breeding. Our bloodlines are pure and undiluted. Lineage and heritage are everything. Legacy endures. Are there those who come from Volpone unions who could be deemed ‘imbalanced’ as a result of their shared, pure blood? Don’t be utterly ridiculous.

 	– General Noches Sturm

 	I

 	Corporal Stuber struggled for his life. The strong hands clenching around his neck were trying to crush his larynx. Slowly, incrementally, the grip of those thick fingers intensified like an iron trap overcoming the inertia of a rusted spring. One snap and it would be over.

 	He turned his head, and came face to face with the scarred visage of his enemy. Dead eyes rimed in deep arterial red glared back. Stuber had been watching for the wrong kind of threat. Too late, he had realised the Blood Pact were not the only foes to fear in the ruins of Titus.

 	A gasp, little more than a whisper of breath, escaped the flailing corporal’s lips, but drew nothing back. Stuber was no medic. Had he been, he would have known his larynx and trachea were being crushed. It took strength to do that to a man, strength and the sort of determination and stamina born from the desperation of survival or some deeper mania. Stuber’s face was ice-blue from the bitter cold, but began to purple under slow and painful asphyxiation. Hypoxic blemishes had already formed around his mouth and nasal cavities. They ringed his eyes like violet-coloured kohl, intensifying his dying stare.

 	He kicked, and in the deluge raining down upon the two men wrestling in the mud trench, the strangler lost his grip. Fenk snarled, trying to regain his dominance as Stuber flailed, but a savage punch glanced the side of his head, dislodging his officer’s cap and cutting a shallow gash that immediately started bleeding into his right eye. Stuber was a fighter, but he was starved of oxygen and therefore weak. It only took a few seconds for Fenk to reassert his iron grip around the other man’s throat.

 	Stuber thrashed one more time before he grew still, and Fenk could feel the man’s lungs spasm in instinctive panic. Stuber’s eyes bulged, trying in futile impotence to convey his shock, betrayal, anger and… ultimately, fear. Then they shrank, the pupils narrowing to pinpricks and the lids drooping as if to presage some hypnagogic state.

 	All life left Corporal Julius Stuber, and as Fenk sank back onto his haunches, exhausted and utterly spent, he shuddered, savouring the deed, fulfilling the deep, abiding need within and staving off the monster cleaved to his psyche.

 	A monster, but not a daemon, though such things had possessed men of this dark millennial age. Nor was it a foul xenos parasite Fenk harboured. It was much simpler than that, much more pervasive and inescapable. It was his bloodline, his own abnormal mind. No rites of excoriation, no invasive surgeries would excise it, for how could a man cut away something that was an integral part of himself?

 	With the retreat, the sounds of war receded on the monsoon wind: the diminishing cracks of lascarbines, the lower, more distant and plosive sounds of mortar and heavy cannon. Defeat would have stung Second Lieutenant Fenk’s Volpone pride were it not for the exhilaration of the kill to take the edge off.

 	He sagged, and allowed gravity to carry him off Stuber’s body and dump him in the mire of the trench, among the dead and the damned. A vox-unit crackled, spitting out dead air and silent curses. The 66th platoon was gone. Fenk was it.

 	Sole survivor.

 	Stab-lamps intruded on the monsoonal gloom, limning the trench spikes, the bayonets and the wire in magnesium white. Bodies were rendered into frosty monochrome, bleached of what little colour remained in them.

 	Fenk gazed up into the light as it strafed and searched the long trench ditch. He hid his eyes behind his hand, struggling to see against the bright glare of the lamps. 

 	Voices resolved; voices that became silhouettes; silhouettes that became uniformed men.

 	Royal Volpone 50th. My regiment.

 	Their urgency cut through Fenk’s pathological torpor.

 	‘This one’s alive!’

 	The speaker was dressed in mud-splattered Volpone grey and heavily dented gold carapace with an indigo aquila clasp to seal the armoured gorget. It was ornate, better suited to the parade ground than the battlefield, but the Volpone took great personal pride in their attire. With his high crimson collar and gilded brocade, this one was most certainly attached to the officer cadre. His eyes were hidden in the shadows of his regal helmet. Fenk barely noticed the face, fixating on the scratched paint instead. A lascarbine hung on a strap over his shoulder. Other men, above and outside the trench, were firing their weapons. Flashes lit the darkness.

 	‘Throne… It’s Bertram Fenk.’

 	A hand was thrust towards him.

 	‘On your feet, second lieutenant!’

 	Fenk took the proffered hand and felt the strong, certain grip of a career soldier. Then he was hoisted out of the ditch. Twenty-something men were strung across the high side of the trench. Two crouched by the vox; one the operator, the other an officer with the receiver cup pressed to his ear taking fresh orders.

 	The rest lined up with their carbines, some standing, some on one knee. A pair of troopers frantically set up a heavy cannon on a tripod. The thrum of its energy coils powering up was deeper than the carbines. Fenk flinched as a las-bolt shrieked from its barrel, tearing open a distant enemy transport. 

 	‘Must be in shock,’ said another, stepping into Fenk’s sight line to shine a light in his eye.

 	The medic saw fading rapture, not shock. The second lieutenant let him draw his own conclusions. He followed the index finger as requested. He nodded when prompted with his fallen company’s name. He clasped his hands behind his back and raised his chin, just as the Volpone drill-sergeants had taught him. Stuber’s ident-tag fell into Fenk’s back pocket. He had snapped the chain when he wrenched it from the dead man’s throat.

 	The officer returned just as the cursory examination concluded. 

 	‘Full retreat,’ he told what Fenk first assumed was his aide. ‘Regara’s pulling us back to the Iron Line.’

 	‘He’s doing what? We’re almost in.’

 	No, not an aide. A fellow officer.

 	‘I think these poor swines would beg to differ.’ The first officer gestured to the dead piled inside the trench line. ‘Conditions have changed. We’re being reinforced.’

 	Overhead, the muffled explosions of landed mortar shells thundered. The fire exchange that had begun sporadically grew in intensity and purpose.

 	The second officer ducked reflexively as a fiery bloom lit the horizon into no-man’s-land. Jagged silhouettes appeared in the flare of bright, violent light. Several brigades. Hundreds of men, and that was just on this side of the wall.

 	‘Reinforced?’ he asked. ‘By whom?’

 	The first officer licked his lips.

 	‘First Sons,’ he said.

 	‘What the–’

 	‘That’s right,’ the first officer interrupted. ‘Scions.’

 	The medic clapped Fenk on the shoulder, and the second lieutenant had to suppress the urge to strike him.

 	‘Looks like you’re coming with us, sir,’ said the medic. The first officer nodded his confirmation and the 50th, which had swelled to sixty men but were probably in much greater number overall, began to withdraw from the field.

 	‘You can give your full report to Major Regara as soon as we’re back behind the Iron Line,’ added the medic. ‘He’ll want to know what happened.’

 	Fenk nodded.

 	The rain continued unabated, hammering the Volpone as they struggled through the mud, bent-backed and battle-weary. But far from being cleansing, the deluge only smeared the dirt, begriming their armour. It failed to wash the blood from Fenk’s hands.

 	II

 	Regara paced. He was good at pacing. Part stalking feline, part parade drill officer, the major had turned pacing into a form of theatre.

 	He paced in silence, with only the sound of creaking boot leather and the low whine of servos from his bionic leg to disturb the peace of the landing strip. In truth, it was little more than a square patch of flattened earth. An armoured blockhouse squatted nearby: the Volpone barracks. It was one of several iron-wrought structures that had weathered the early stages of the incursion into Titus, now dubbed the ‘Iron Line’ for ease of reference.

 	Regara was not alone on the landing strip. Five men in Volpone grey stood nearby. They also watched the skies, but didn’t prowl as the major did.

 	Like the others, he wore the colours of the Volpone, only his attire was less ragged than that of his comrades. His breastplate was wrought with filigree, and shone dully in the ambient light. Clean-shaven, Regara sported an obvious scar on his right cheek. Most notable, however, was his left leg. The entire limb was a bionic, gilt and ornate like the rest of the major’s armour.

 	‘Here they come,’ he muttered, craning his neck as the air throbbed with engine drone. The shadow of a heavy aircraft came into view. 

 	The Valkyrie was painted slate grey and had the clenched fist around barbed wire icon of the First Sons daubed on its flanks. Prow lamps strafed the gloom, leading the way as the gunship knifed through the driving rain. Hellstrike missiles jutted aggressively from both wings. A heavy bolter poking from the nose cone tracked the targets on the ground with slow, idle sweeps.

 	‘Friendly,’ remarked Lieutenant Culcis, though the sarcasm in his tone suggested he thought the First Sons were anything but. He stood to the side of the landing pad with the other four men in the major’s retinue. The man next to him was called Drado, a pug-faced corporal who was also Culcis’s aide.

 	‘They’re fegging taking over, is what they’re doing.’

 	‘Manners, Drado,’ warned Culcis, despite the fact he agreed with him. ‘Remember your breeding.’

 	Downwash from the Valkyrie’s descent thrusters blew dust and debris across the landing pad, the high-pitched whine from the assault craft’s twin engines drowning out any forthcoming apology from Drado.

 	Regara watched the Valkyrie all the way down, not moving from his chosen spot. Buffeted by the skirling katabatic draughts, he didn’t blink once or reach up to steady his cap. The major looked proud and defiant. He was determined to meet the newcomers with the proper air of imperious authority.

 	As soon as the landing stanchions met solid earth, the rear access hatch descended, but the sound of grinding servos was obscured by the engine turbines slowing to a stop. A single scion stepped out, his slate-grey greatcoat matching the hue of his transport and flapping in the fading engine wash. He wore a black beret, the same clenched fist icon rendered in silver and pinned to the fabric.

 	His armoured carapace was black too, and the high gorget that rose up around his muscular neck carried a silver chain to denote his rank. As the greatcoat parted, Regara got a look at the holstered plasma pistol and vibro-knife the scion wore on either hip.

 	When he met Regara, he gave a crisp salute, which the major reciprocated.

 	‘Ardal,’ said the scion. ‘Tempestor Prime of the First Sons.’

 	Though both dressed in grey, the two men were a contrast in styles, one functional and cold, the other intricate and gilded.

 	‘Regara, major, Volpone 50th,’ Regara replied. ‘Are you planning on taking over my command, Prime Ardal?’

 	Ardal smiled thinly. 

 	‘Bold.’ He nodded and smirked. ‘I like that. Not planning, major, am.’ The engine noise died away to nothing, so the two officers could lower their voices. It did nothing to drive away the tension. 

 	‘We have bled out here, sir,’ said Regara. ‘I’ve lost nigh-on a hundred men to this grind.’

 	‘Your orders were to breach the east wall of Titus,’ said Ardal genially. ‘Those orders have not changed. The difference is, we’re the ones who’ll be making the breach now. You just need to provide the opportunity.’

 	Regara scowled, his hands bunched into fists by his sides. He knew better than to strike a Tempestor Prime. Not because he feared disciplinary reprisals, but because he knew Ardal could probably snap his neck before Regara had thrown the first punch. The man practically sweated lethal menace.

 	The major turned to address his aide.

 	‘Corporal Speers,’ he snapped, ‘get Colonel Gilbear on the vox.’

 	‘Major,’ said Ardal, ‘I can have the colonel on the vox right now.’

 	Regara turned his angry glare back to the Prime. 

 	Ardal continued. ‘He said you wouldn’t like it. He also sanctioned this mission and gave me assurances you would do as required.’

 	Gritting his teeth, it took a supreme effort for Regara to maintain his composure. Escorting scions was a death sentence. Ardal wanted a punching bag to get the enemy’s attention while his commandoes did whatever they needed to in Titus. Moreover, the major didn’t like his authority being usurped.

 	‘And what, sir, do you require of us?’

 	‘Two things,’ said Ardal flatly. ‘Engage a full-scale assault against the east wall of the city, and escort a Militarum asset into the warzone.’

 	At the mention of the word, the ‘asset’ walked from the Valkyrie’s hold with two scion bodyguards, one at either side of him. 

 	The asset was male, thin-faced and clearly not a soldier. He wore a long, tan cloak and soft fatigues. He was hooded, and leaned heavily on a brass staff, adorned with an Imperial eagle as its apex.

 	‘This is Juba Klaye,’ Ardal informed the major.

 	Not bodyguards, Regara realised as soon as the man introduced as Juba Klaye removed his hood to display the sigil-warded metal collar around his neck, gaolers…

 	Juba Klaye was a battle-psyker.

 	‘Telepath,’ Ardal explained. ‘There’s a Blood Pact communications hub somewhere behind the east wall. Mister Klaye is going to help us locate precisely where. Soon as he does, you’re to hold position and let the First Sons do the rest. Simple.’

 	It was far from simple, but Regara had little option. He settled for spite.

 	‘And where are your men? Or are you going to breach the east wall with two thugs in black carapace?’

 	Prime Ardal leaned closer to intimidate Regara, who didn’t flinch, despite the scion’s obvious threat.

 	‘Already out in the field,’ he rasped, daring the major to respond.

 	The First Sons had witnessed the rout, and probably seen most of the 66th, 18th and Fifth platoons cut to ribbons by the entrenched Blood Pact.

 	‘Now,’ said Ardal, leaning back to observe Regara’s impotent rage with detached amusement, ‘show me to operational command. I think we’ve been squatting in the dirt long enough.’

 	Regara gave the order to Speers, who immediately escorted the Prime and his small entourage, including Juba Klaye.

 	‘I need a word with my lieutenant,’ Regara told Ardal, who shrugged dismissively. He didn’t care two stones. He was in charge now. Regara could do what he liked so long as he did as he was told and didn’t feg up the mission. Ardal went on without him.

 	Regara summoned Culcis with a curt gesture of the head.

 	‘Is that Fenk?’ asked the major, noticing, for the first time, the dishevelled officer wedged between Sergeant Drado and Lieutenant Coen.

 	‘Yes, sir.’

 	‘He looks like hell.’

 	‘Sole survivor of 66th platoon, sir.’

 	‘Throne of Earth,’ Regara murmured. ‘Can he fight?’

 	‘Coen gave him a clean bill. Said he seems surprisingly cogent, all things considered.’

 	Regara nodded, pleased that something was going right for the 50th. ‘Good. Find him a command, then get him cleaned up and back in the field. Our officer cadre is thin on the ground, lieutenant, and if we’re going to live through what that bastard Ardal has planned, we need cool heads and discipline.’

 	‘Yes, sir.’

 	Culcis went to his duties, taking the others with him and leaving Regara alone on the landing pad with the Valkyrie. 

 	Titus stood to the east, beyond the Iron Line. The city was a ruin, but its walls still held. The communications hub the Blood Pact was using to coordinate its efforts in the sector could be anywhere in that warren. Regara didn’t like their odds of finding where before they were all facedown and bloody in a ditch, even with a fegging psyker.

 	The rain intensified into a deluge, hammering Regara. It was like standing in a blockhouse ablutions cubicle. The major looked up into fathomless clouds, blinking as the rain got into his eyes.

 	‘Not content to merely dump these First Son bastards and their wyrd, you have to piss on us too, eh? Ave Imperator,’ he said snidely, heading off for the blockhouse.

 	III

 	Fenk would not mourn the 66th, though he had not wished destruction on his comrades either. After his ‘episode’ in the trench, he was feeling better adjusted again. He actually recognised Culcis, who had told Fenk he was being placed in command of the newly amalgamated Fifth and 18th platoons. The majority of the survivors and officers had come from the 18th, so it was actually the Fifth and 66th platoons that had gone, the latter subsumed in order for the 18th to maintain minimum military efficacy.

 	Subsumption was an all too familiar feeling for Fenk. It happened every time the ‘grey host’ took him and exerted its will. It drove the need in him, the hunger to commit murder. For now, it was dormant, but Fenk knew it would stir again, sure as anger stirs in any soldier when you put a rifle in his hands.

 	His uniform was cleaned and pressed, the dirt of the trench, if not the deeds committed in it, washed away. It felt good to be cleansed of one kind of taint at least.

 	Darkness smothered the officers’ barracks, and Fenk was alone. Everyone else was mustering for the push on the east wall. It didn’t disturb Fenk as it had others. Fear of discovery, not death, kept him awake in the cold light of dawn. 

 	A telepath, that’s what the Scion officer had said. Fenk hadn’t been close enough to hear the exchange, but he could read lips. A mind-reader in their ranks, one whom the Volpone had to escort to the wall, complicated matters. The mere thought of it sent a spike of anxiety into Fenk, whose hands shook as he opened the small wooden chest he kept hidden under his billet. 

 	Stuber’s ident-tag was in the palm of his left hand. The feel of it steadied Fenk’s nerves as he placed it reverently on the deep green velvet lining of the box’s interior. Eight other trophies shared the chest with it, some tags, others locks of hair, a rank pin, a cigar stub.

 	The tempest unleashed on Titus and, perhaps, all of Lotun was the perfect cover for Fenk’s indiscretions, but now he would have to be careful. He needed to find a way to remove the telepath. Until he did, he resolved not to get too close. He had heard they could pluck a man’s thoughts right out of his head like reading parchment.

 	Quelling a second bout of mild panic, Fenk shut the chest.

 	A sudden knock at the door disturbed the moment, making him scowl.

 	‘Sir…’ ventured a voice beyond the frosted glass.

 	‘I’m ready, private,’ answered Fenk, his voice carefully neutral.

 	Villiers was the only non-com available to act as Fenk’s aide. He seemed young, but diligent. 

 	‘Shall I wait outside for you, sir?’

 	‘Thank you, private. Yes,’ said Fenk, and secreted the chest before taking up his freshly brushed officer’s cap and heading out to join the muster.

 	IV

 	Just fewer than six hundred took to the field, marching east towards the city boundary wall of Titus. They went on foot, the terrain too rugged and befouled by trench works, wire and cruciform tank traps for vehicles.

 	The rain hadn’t let up since the landing strip, Regara noted as it poured off the command tent’s bulging awning. Spread on the table in front of him were reconnaissance maps of the region, including all known trench works, minefields, choke points, bottlenecks and geographical vantage points. None of it mattered one iota if they couldn’t breach the wall.

 	Another four hundred Volpone stood nearby, arrayed in their ranks, awaiting the order to move out. Regara intended to hold them until the scions had identified their ingress vector, then he would lead the rest out himself to reinforce whatever was left of his men and his regiment.

 	Tempestor Prime Ardal had declined the offer to oversee operations from the command tent. Instead, he roamed overhead in the Valkyrie, keeping a low profile until his men had successfully completed their mission and required extraction.

 	We are just fodder to them, Regara thought bitterly, turning his attention to the vox-unit that stood on the table, holding one corner of the maps in place. The wind had picked up in the last few hours, and Regara almost didn’t hear the unit over the din.

 	After the ubiquitous static, he heard Culcis’s voice.

 	‘Major, we have reached the trench line, and are proceeding.’

 	Amid the crackling audio, Regara could make out the sporadic snap of las-fire and the deeper boom of heavier, more distant cannon.

 	Taking a sip of the spice wine in the goblet to his left, the major nodded to Speers, who marked Culcis’s position on the map.

 	‘Keep an eye on their wyrd, lieutenant. Proceed with caution. Ave Imperator.’

 	‘Received, sir. Will do. Ave Imperator.’

 	Clipped and efficient, just like the man himself. Culcis would have to lead the men from beyond the trench line.

 	In the darkness, in the rising tempest, he would need to lead them well.

 	V

 	Three companies of Volpone, twelve platoons, had barely crossed the second trench line when the Blood Pact fell upon them. They came out of the shadows through the driving rain, their iron grotesques glistening as if drenched in a fever sweat. In many ways they were.

 	Jags of light stitched the gloom, so hot and numerous they ionised the air. But rather than draw the night together, they tore it apart and laid the faces of the enemy bare. 

 	Wraiths emerged from hidden trench works, gulleys and emplacements, gunnery nests, razor-wired foxholes and dirt-smeared awnings of dead flesh. Wraiths dressed in the trappings of men the colour of old blood howled in the darkness.

 	Half a Death Brigade.

 	Blood Pact.

 	After a withering hail of collimated las-fire and automatic solid-shot, the Blood Pact opened up with a volley from their heavy guns. Tripod-mounted, slung over the shoulder and braced at waist height, the din of chugging autocannon and shrieking lascannon met in an unholy chorus. 

 	The screams of the Volpone were this dark symphony’s refrain.

 	Ordnance followed, mortar teams and hand-held launchers. 

 	Men in Volpone grey were sent skywards in plumes of displaced earth, their limbs limp and ragged, torn up by the blasts.

 	It took almost six seconds for the Volpone to respond. During that time they lost nearly a quarter of their force, and their fighting efficacy was irrevocably damaged.

 	A vanguard of grenadiers roamed ahead of the Blood Pact fire-platoons. They went by the name of Jaegans.

 	Culcis, his ears still ringing from a close shell impact, caught sight of them through the mist and debris. 

 	‘Throne have mercy,’ he breathed, eyeing the knife the grenadier held in one hand and the krak charge he brandished in the other.

 	The lieutenant had already drawn his pistol, a conditioned reflex, his soldier’s instincts overcoming the inertia of fear.

 	In some, marksmanship was learned; in others, it was a gift. Culcis sat in the latter camp. He shot three grenadiers through their eye sockets. All single shots, no bursts, no profligacy. 

 	Dead men released dead men’s triggers. Three explosions ripped up the night in front of him, and shredded apart the rest of the hunter-pack that had been coming to carve open Culcis and his command squad. The resulting detonation was loud and filled the air with acrid smoke.

 	Lieutenant Culcis raised his sabre, bellowing a Volpone war cry, and led the men through the vile pall.

 	A quick glance back revealed that four men were dead. Mercifully, the telepath still lived, kept safe by the only soldier Culcis trusted with the task – Corporal Drado. The pug-faced brute was spattered with blood, but none of it was his own.

 	Return fire blazed from the Volpone platoons, growing fiercer and more intense as the line advanced.

 	‘How close?’ asked Drado, needing to shout to be heard above the fire exchange.

 	They had found cover in a shallow shell crater. After the sudden and brutal Blood Pact assault, Culcis was taking the few snatched seconds to assess the battle situation.

 	Bleak was his initial impression.

 	‘What?’ Culcis replied, searching for enemy targets in the gloom. ‘Speak up, corporal.’ He glanced over his shoulder to see Drado jabbing a thumb in the direction of his charge. No man dared touch the psyker. Even in a regiment such as the 50th with its ingrained and indoctrinated discipline, suspicion of the wyrd almost approached paranoia.

 	‘How close do we need to get to the wall?’

 	Drado couldn’t even bring himself to speak the psyker’s name, but it was the telepath who answered.

 	‘Need you to take this off,’ he slurred, the cadence of his voice that of a man under some strain. Perhaps he was afraid? He would have to be a wyrd and insane not to be, so Culcis fervently prayed that he was scared. 

 	The telepath tapped a finger against the metal clasp around his neck.

 	Unsure, Drado looked to his lieutenant.

 	After a few seconds of indecision, Culcis nodded. ‘Remove it, corporal.’

 	Hesitating, Drado turned back to the telepath. His hands were trembling slightly and he nervously licked his lips.

 	Culcis hustled Corporal Drado aside. ‘I’ll do it, damn it!’

 	He took off the clasp, but handled the null-collar as if it were an unexploded bomb.

 	The telepath suddenly appeared lighter, stronger, though he still had the appearance of a man under a tremendous burden. Culcis caught the faint flare of power behind his eyes. The lieutenant’s hand strayed instinctively to his pistol.

 	‘You still with us?’ he asked, wary.

 	The telepath nodded.

 	‘Then I’ll repeat the corporal’s question. How close?’

 	‘We need to keep going,’ replied the telepath. ‘You’ll know when we are close enough.’

 	Drado’s expression suggested he didn’t want to know what that meant, or to ever find out. 

 	Despite his officer’s breeding, Culcis couldn’t help but echo the corporal’s sentiment. He laughed. It was an empty sound, a gallows laugh. 

 	‘Then we advance, corporal,’ he said, but his eyes were on the psyker. ‘For Volpone glory, by the Throne.’

 	Scurrying from the crater, Culcis led the line.

 	The east wall of Titus loomed a short way off in the darkness. Black, rain-slick, its featureless rock reminded the lieutenant of a tombstone.

 	VI

 	Sporadic vox reports came in from the field. Regara’s scowl deepened after each one. They made for grim listening.

 	As far as he could tell, Culcis and his men had crossed the tranche of no-man’s-land between the trenches, and were entering enemy territory. Speers marked the relative positions of each platoon on the map with coins. He did so silently. Some of the coins had not moved in a while as the vox traffic from the platoons in question had died, probably along with the men.

 	There was an actinic charge in the air; Regara could feel it all the way back at the command tent. It was thick, cloying and sickly. Ever since the engagement had begun and Culcis had advanced farther away, Regara had felt it intensify.

 	He heard the throb of the Valkyrie’s engines overhead, drowning out the most recent vox report, and decided to open up a line to Ardal.

 	‘I thought the Volpone were known for their exactness and precision, major,’ the Tempestor Prime began icily, ‘and yet here I find evidence to the contrary. Your timing could not be worse.’

 	Across the vox-link, the drone of the gunship’s engines was even more pronounced.

 	Regara had lost patience with Ardal. He opted for blunt. ‘Your wyrd? What is he here to do?’

 	‘Locate the hub, just as I told you not an hour ago.’ 

 	Regara replied through gritted teeth. ‘What else?’

 	‘Nothing else.’

 	He was lying. Even with the ambient noise distortion, Regara could tell. He had received Commissariat interrogation training and knew when a man was dissembling. But Ardal was trained too, highly trained. He wasn’t about to confess, so a different approach was needed.

 	‘Where are your men?’ Regara asked.

 	‘In the field.’

 	‘So are mine. Except mine are dying, sir.’

 	Ardal didn’t answer, but the engine noise told the major the link was still open.

 	A sick feeling rose in Regara’s gut, and not just from the prospect of losing Culcis and his men.

 	‘Have you ordered my men into a trap, Ardal?’ asked Regara, increasingly angry. ‘Tell me what else your psyker is here to do… Ardal, damn you!’

 	The link went dead and would not soon be re-established.

 	‘Bastard,’ Regara murmured, gripping the table so hard his knuckles turned white. He had a bad feeling. It was Sagorrah Depot all over again.

 	Regara met Speers’s gaze. The corporal was trying to look studiedly neutral and composed, but the empathy in the man was almost palpable.

 	‘Get the men ready to move out. As soon as humanly possible, corporal,’ Regara told him, reaching for the strap of his ceremonial sword.

 	Speers nodded pugnaciously. ‘At once, sir.’

 	VII

 	Fenk was sweating, and not just from the weight of his armour and the thick layers of his uniform. The night was hot, despite the rain. Las-beams burned the air, shivering molecules that warped Fenk’s view in a shimmering haze, but the second lieutenant’s only concern was Juba Klaye. He didn’t look much, shrivelled in his cloak, a hood to mask his eyes, but to Fenk the telepath was the most dangerous man on the field.

 	‘Sir…’ It was Private Villiers. His young voice drew Fenk back from his thoughts. The ‘grey host’ was near, and he had to fight to keep that part of him quiescent.

 	Thirty-three men waited in the trench behind Villiers, heads down, crouching against the rain. They needed orders.

 	Culcis had given his. Advance.

 	The black walls of Titus looked impregnable, and Fenk saw only an invitation to oblivion in their depths.

 	‘Squads forward,’ he said, having to shout. Led by their sergeants, the men climbed from the trench and were hit by unremitting salvos of las-fire. Nearby, a dirt plume mushroomed with its carriage of Volpone bodies. ‘Villiers.’ The private had been about to go over the top when the second lieutenant’s voice stopped him. ‘Vox. We must report to Major Regara.’

 	Struggling in the wind and rain, Villiers turned the crank to charge the unit. All the while, Fenk regarded Juba Klaye down the scope detached from his rifle.

 	‘Can you feel that, private?’ asked Fenk of Villiers, the only other Volpone left in the trench.

 	‘Sir?’ Villiers didn’t look so good. He looked as if he was about to puke.

 	‘Like an ion charge, but more than just the las.’

 	‘Oh… Throne…’ Villiers nearly fell, and had to steady himself against the wall of the ditch. A nosebleed drenched his lips and chin in crimson.

 	Through a trench-dug murder hole, Fenk nodded towards the psyker. Culcis was pressing hard, and some distance fell between Fenk and his commanding officer in the field.

 	Villiers held up his bloody fingers, the torrential rain already washing them clean. His face likewise.

 	‘Him?’

 	‘Yes, private,’ said Fenk as the ‘grey host’ returned with greater insistence. ‘Tell me, son,’ he asked, just as he made vox contact, ‘how much do you trust a wyrd?’

 	VIII

 	Culcis took a glancing hit to the shoulder and staggered. Drado reached out in support but the lieutenant waved him off. He grimaced.

 	‘Just a flesh wound. Already cauterised.’

 	They had advanced maybe fifty metres, hunkered down behind a barricade of sandbags that had been long abandoned, when the telepath raised his hand.

 	Culcis didn’t catch the signal at first. He was too busy firing into the darkness, watchful for another assault by Blood Pact Jaegans. At first, he thought the psyker had just stumbled. When the man’s eyes began to spark with fulgurant energies, he realised it was something else.

 	‘Close enough,’ the telepath murmured, slurring again. Beneath the folds of his hood, his expression looked even more pained. ‘I can feel her now…’

 	Drado looked at Culcis between retaliatory bursts of las-fire.

 	‘Her?’ they asked of each other in unison.

 	IX

 	Regara was ready to move out when the vox crackled. Twice. The first message came from Second Lieutenant Fenk.

 	‘Sir, something is happening out here.’

 	Regara frowned, struggling to make out the poor audio. ‘Define what, second lieutenant.’

 	‘The wyrd, sir,’ replied Fenk. ‘He’s… affecting the men. It’s–’

 	‘What?’

 	The link broke up. Speers tried to get it back, but the storm was making communication difficult. When the vox crackled to life again a few seconds later it was Culcis on the other end of the line.

 	‘Tell Ardal the telepath has found what he was looking for.’

 	‘You’ve located the hub?’ For a moment, Regara was tempted to tell Culcis to take whatever men he had left and neutralise it before the scions could even get a look. What the lieutenant said next stole that thought and crushed it.

 	‘Yes, but it’s not what we thought. It’s something else. Another psyker.’

 	Regara masked the receiver cup with his hand.

 	‘Holy Throne of Earth,’ he breathed. 

 	What in the damned Eye had Ardal led them into?

 	X

 	A cascade of energy like arc lightning speared from the mouth of Juba Klaye in a jagged, violent parabola that struck the outer face of the east wall and split it. A ragged fissure ran down the black stone, reminiscent of a wound.

 	Culcis and Drado were thrown back, their hair standing on end and their armour scorched by the sudden flare of psychic power.

 	‘I thought he was meant to be a telepath, a mind-reader,’ yelled Drado, struggling to his feet.

 	‘He’s a primaris,’ uttered Culcis. 

 	Primaris was the name given to alpha-class psykers as described during his Militarum training. Exponents of several mental disciplines, primaris were also extremely dangerous.

 	A second bolt followed the first, as if the wizened wretch was vomiting up all of his psychic strength in a single punitive deluge in order to force a breach. A third, then a fourth crack of lightning split the night, and brought something eldritch to augment the natural storm that had grown around the Volpone and their enemies.

 	Desperate, retaliatory fire stabbed at the psyker as the Blood Pact recognised the principal threat in their midst. Both bullets and las-bolts flared, then disintegrated against an unseen shield, a kinetic ward that denatured energy, turning solid mass into an etheric mist that the barrier simply absorbed.

 	Overhead, the sound of a gunship’s turbines cycling up to attack velocity overwhelmed the percussive exchange of the battle and the shriek of arc lightning.

 	Ardal had his signal and was sweeping in to assist his already entrenched scions.

 	Another flash rendered the battlefield in grey monochrome, and caused Drado to jab a finger in the direction of a silhouette revealed in the brief illuminating flare.

 	First Sons… Culcis saw them too, the predatory scions advancing on their prey.

 	The fissure became a cleft, then a chasmal opening in the wall. Death Brigade swept out, cradling heavy-gauge ‘tritons’ – semi-automatic self-loaders. Staccato discharges ripped thunderously from the combat shotguns.

 	In the carnage, Culcis thought he saw a scion take a hit and fall from sight. The riposte was swift, merciless. Despite his breeding, Culcis recognised the superiority of the Tempestus soldiers. They gutted sixteen of the Death Brigade, emerging from ambush positions barely three metres from where the lieutenant had advanced and was now taking cover.

 	More Blood Pact were moving up to fill the breach. With the shadows, the rain and their iron grotesques, they had the aspect of true daemons.

 	The scions did not flinch.

 	They charged.

 	Each soldier of the Tempestus carried a hot-shot as part of his standard loadout, a considerably more powerful version of the basic las-carbine or las-lock, and wielded it with the kind of accuracy and purpose Culcis had only ever seen in Throne-sworn Angels.

 	When the vanguard squad of scions encountered their first real impediment, Culcis saw something else. She was tall and lithe, her body clad in form-fitting leather. Her iron grotesque was slighter and more angular than those of her kin and only masked the upper half of her face, leaving the mouth uncovered for incanting.

 	She performed an incantation now, inciting a formless mass to manifest before the charging scions like a pall of black cloud. It was hard to see at first, especially in the darkness, a slowly billowing essence of darker black on black.

 	Culcis did not understand warp-craft. Few men did, and even some of those wished for blissful ignorance. Sagorrah Depot, against the blood-witch, had been his first true encounter with the unnatural arsenal of the Archenemy. Although at times the Blood Pact bore the trappings and the bearings of men, when they unleashed their horrors that falsehood was ripped away and exposed as a convenient mask.

 	Several names sprung to the forefront of Culcis’s mind, those taught to him when he was a child. 

 	Wirewolf

 	Graylok 

 	Sebajinn

 	They were things drawn of darkest myth, diabolus daemonicus, names and manifestations unknown to men. For to know such things would mean knowledge of a half-world, the one that existed beyond the invisible veil, a place of never-born creatures and souls trapped in eternal torment. Here, only the deranged or the supremely pious would dare tread. Mere mortal men had no business knowing the true terror of the warp. But Culcis knew death, and saw the cloud and the half-glimpsed forms within it as the physical incarnation of that primordial fear. And it was coming straight at the scions.

 	XI

 	‘Damn it, Ardal! Answer me!’

 	Regara had marched out of the Volpone camp and into the shadow-haunted trench line with all four hundred men in the reserve. By allowing himself to be ordered around by the scions, he had failed Culcis and he had failed those men under the lieutenant’s command.

 	Never venture into battle without knowing one’s enemy.

 	It was virtually creed where the major had undergone his training. Volpone were not just the best because their drill-sergeants were tougher, because they had the finest equipment their royal houses could afford or even because their superior breeding elevated them above ordinary men. 

 	Victory was second nature to them, it was expected of them, because they left as little as possible to chance. The Volpone were a pragmatic people. Fate did not shape their destinies, they did, and their arrogance concerning that fact was wholly justified.

 	In kowtowing to Prime Ardal, Regara had not only ignored his better judgement, he had gone against his very heritage and culture. That required redress. It would be enacted now.

 	‘Ardal, you whoreson!’ Regara yelled down the vox, spitting fury. He had been at it for several minutes, his voice reduced to a grating bark. Speers stayed by his commanding officer’s side throughout, carrying the vox and maintaining lockstep with the major. So far, static was his only response, the growing sense of impotence only fuelling Regara’s deepening ire.

 	‘You lied about the hub. I know about the blood-witch, Ardal. Prove to me you’re a real soldier and–’

 	Ardal’s voice manifested on the other end of the link, interrupting Regara’s impassioned tirade.

 	‘I suggest you hold your ground, Regara. That’s a bludvayne out there in the darkness, not some Sanguinary tribal hag, but something the likes of which you will never have faced.’

 	‘You bastard, Ardal. You knew that and let me march my men in there without proper warning.’

 	‘You have Klaye,’ Ardal replied, dismissively. ‘The primaris will keep your men from dying too quickly.’

 	‘And yours won’t take a scratch.’

 	‘Oh, I doubt that, major, but they appreciate the risks. You’re not seeing the broader perspective.’

 	‘Perspective? I see perfectly well, both broad and narrow.’ 

 	Ardal scoffed.

 	‘No. You don’t. The bludvayne is a priority alpha target, and I would gladly sacrifice every First Son I have in the field to effect this mission. I have twenty-five men deployed in four strike squads. Just so we understand each other, each First Son is the equal of fifty of your Volpone. Perspective, major. Now, do your job and hold back the men you still have.’ 

 	‘With respect, sir,’ said Regara genially, ‘up yours.’

 	The major severed the link.

 	‘Corporal Speers,’ he said, removing his cap to smooth down his hair in order to affect an air of absolute command and composure, ‘bring us out, double-time if you will. I’m not leaving Volpone to die in this crap hole.’ 

 	Speers bellowed down the line. Trumpet clarions answered a moment later, and the Volpone marched with all haste.

 	XII

 	Juba Klaye unleashed his gifts, spewing arc lightning at the cloud as if a storm had somehow reversed its polarity and attracted bolts instead of expelling them.

 	The First Sons that touched the cloud convulsed. Even with their full-face rebreathers, the vapours wormed their way insidiously into their bodies and onto unprotected flesh. 

 	Seeing the effects of the dark contagion was grossly disconcerting for Culcis and his men. One scion had the misfortune to tear off his mask, revealing the acid-flayed skin beneath, tendrils of his partially dissolved flesh strung out like soft wax, clinging to the inside of the rebreather cup.

 	Juba Klaye took a step, leaning heavily on his staff. The lightning storm intensified, throwing off heat and furious incandescence. 

 	‘Bludvayne…’ Culcis heard him cry. From the psyker’s scorched black lips it resonated like a curse, and the lieutenant assumed he was referring to the other witch. She recoiled, revealing a cloak of dark flesh wrapped around her feminine form. So too did the cloud… until the rifle shot rang out, impossibly clear and loud, like a death-knell clarion against the tempest.

 	Blood fountained from Juba Klaye’s chest as he was spun hard and wrenched off his feet by the impact of a high-calibre round. He fell heavily, half smothered by mud. With his concentration brutally severed, the psyker was powerless to prevent the storm from fading.

 	 Almost lying on his back, eyes shielded against the dying lightning with one upraised hand, Culcis reached out for the vox with the other.

 	‘Major’ – he began, hoping desperately that Regara was listening.

 	XIII

 	Villiers lowered the rifle. His hands were shaking with a potent cocktail of fear and adrenaline. He had missed the kill-shot, so difficult in the scything crosswind and the rain, but at least the wyrd was down.

 	The emergence of the lightning storm had terrified him, his commanding officer enlightening him on the dangers psykers presented to good, honest soldiering men, and their propensity for summoning sorcery from beyond the veil.

 	Being here, on this battlefield; Villiers had no desire to worsen it.

 	Relief and exhaustion at a deed committed in fear and loathing made him sag. The rifle fell loose in his grasp. He felt small, weak, but at least he was alive. For now.

 	He desperately wanted to remain in the trench and not move, to bury his head until the storm had passed and the killing was done.

 	Stupidly, he wondered if Second Lieutenant Fenk would let him. Fenk seemed like a good man, someone who understood that in order to survive the horrors of war hunkering down was sometimes necessary. In those fleeting seconds between taking the shot and lowering his weapon, Villiers believed that, he believed Fenk might spare them both, until he felt the hands clamp around his neck.

 	He struggled, but by the time he realised what was happening and just how terribly wrong he had been, his already bleak world darkened further until only oblivion remained.

 	Fenk dropped the lifeless body of Private Villiers into the mud. As the ‘grey host’ faded, his appetites partially sated, he crouched to catch his breath.

 	The psyker lived, and while he did, Fenk knew he wasn’t safe. He had seen Lieutenant Culcis remove the wyrd’s shackles. Unfettered, the psyker’s mind would be free to wander. Perhaps Fenk was already too late and Culcis knew of Fenk’s deviancy. Perhaps he was, even now, voxing Major Regara to inform him of the killer cloistered within the Volpone ranks? Perhaps…

 	Fenk stopped himself, realising he had to master his paranoia. He had to assume that all was as it had been, that he remained undiscovered.

 	There was only one way to be certain of that fact, though.

 	Drawing his pistol, Fenk climbed from the trench and made for the lieutenant’s position. In the killing fields, his men were dying, gunned down by exultant Blood Pact. Fenk never even spared them a thought.

 	XIV

 	Juba Klaye was alive. Barely. Culcis and Drado supported the psyker under either arm and dragged him bodily from the east wall. The rest of the platoon, what was left of it at least, followed alongside in a ragged order.

 	It was over. Without the psyker there was nothing the Volpone could do against the bludvayne. A few had tried shooting the witch, but their ammunition was absorbed into the black cloud and reduced to ash or ions before it could do any harm. Everything that touched it or passed through it broke down, even missiles and shells. She was apparently impervious to every weapon in the Volpone arsenal. 

 	Knowing if they tried to fight on there would be nothing left of his men but their charred skeletons, Lieutenant Culcis ordered the retreat.

 	Two sharp clarion blasts echoed mournfully across the field, and platoon banners were dipped. Too many Volpone had died needlessly already.

 	 They weren’t the only ones.

 	Exposed, the scions were dying too. Caught by the bludvayne cloud, they had lost a lot of men in a matter of seconds without reply. Realising, like Culcis, that the situation was no longer tenable, several had already turned and were falling back. Some had reached as far as the Volpone vanguard and were exchanging fire with the Blood Pact alongside Lieutenant Culcis’s men. Despite their mauling and the proximity of death, they battled like lions.

 	Culcis caught the eye of one, a thickset trooper with hard eyes and the blood of his comrades splashed across his armour. He nodded to the lieutenant, and a fleeting moment of fatalistic camaraderie passed between them.

 	Taking advantage of the Imperial army’s sudden weakness, the Blood Pact advanced in force. The Death Brigade barked harsh orders to the lesser troops, taking command of blocks of men. The Jaegan grenadiers returned, roaming at the fringes of the killing fields, sowing confusion and mass death with their incendiaries before getting in close with their knives. Culcis briefly saw one grappling with one of the scions, before their struggle took them over the edge of a firing pit and both men disappeared from view. 

 	Before the Blood Pact orders had been to engage, trammel and ultimately defend the wall; now, they were bent on annihilation. 

 	Caught in the midst of extracting what was left of his strike squads, Ardal attempted to balance the scales with suppressing fire from the Valkyrie. Las bursts and the roaring muzzle flare of heavy bolters lit up the night, ploughing a bloody furrow through the swiftly massing Archenemy ranks.

 	Half running, half turning and loosing snapshots into the darkness, hoping the flesh-eating fog that was spreading across the field wouldn’t reach them, Culcis saw the gunship come in low. Screaming turbines kicked out a dense engine wash with a crushing downforce that warred against the tempest. Culcis could smell blood on it and felt katabatic winds buffet his body like fists, but saw no discernible effect on the dark cloud.

 	It was as if the essence of the bludvayne’s conjuration existed outside of natural laws. Even a psychically manifested flame would bend to the will of the elements, but the cloud simply reached. Tendrils of vapour snaked loose from the mass, uncoiling like the tentacles of some undersea leviathan, and began to wrap themselves around the Valkyrie.

 	Seeing the danger, Ardal wrenched a last man aboard and issued the signal for his pilot to climb. Quickly. Engines burning, the gunship achieved vertical loft, rising into natural darkness. The rain, wisps of smoke unfurling from where the acid-touch of the cloud had grazed it, hammered its burning fuselage. 

 	Not only the Valkyrie bore the indelible scars of its brush with primordial evil, but so did Ardal. His agonised scream at the cloud’s barest caress was the last human sound Culcis heard from the gunship as it disappeared into the night and the storm.

 	‘We have to move, sir,’ said Drado.

 	Culcis, who had been almost transfixed by the sight of the escaping Valkyrie, was slowing. The corporal’s urging brought the lieutenant’s mind back to the present task. Survival.

 	Every Volpone and Scion on the field still alive was falling back. No-man’s-land was a wretched mess of wire, pits and uneven ground. Footing was treacherous. An ankle sprain, a ligament tear or a bone fracture – all now meant death. Hauling a dead weight, even between two, carried a similar sentence.

 	‘Do you think you can carry him alone, sir?’ asked Drado.

 	Culcis nodded, realising what his aide was suggesting. He noticed some of the First Sons led by the hard-faced scion he had seen earlier had also fallen in with the corporal.

 	‘Throne preserve you, corporal,’ said Culcis, and nodded to the thickset scion, before taking the psyker’s full weight. Juba Klaye could barely stagger, and he was mumbling incoherently. His robes were stained with arterial blood, and there was no medic in sight. Order was on the verge of collapsing. If refuge could be found and the psyker stabilised then maybe… If Klaye was the only weapon they had against the bludvayne then Culcis had to try to save the man.

 	 Field surgery was beyond him, but Culcis thought he might at least be able to staunch the bleeding and bring Klaye around.

 	‘And you, sir,’ Drado replied. ‘It has been my honour.’

 	‘And mine, corporal.’

 	Drado nodded curtly, then hollered to a clutch of Volpone, who stopped running to attend to his orders. Together with the few scions, they formed a ragged battle line, turned and ran straight for the Blood Pact.

 	Culcis headed for the nearest trench line where he knew the snaking network would bring him back into friendly territory. Regara had been warned of the danger, but would be marching to link up with the remnants of Culcis’s group.

 	Barely breathing, Klaye was a leaden weight when Culcis dumped him into the trench. He risked further injury to the psyker, but the fire exchange above would probably kill them both where they stood if he delayed. Culcis leapt down after him. Pausing only to check the man’s vitals, which were weak, he heaved Klaye back onto his shoulder, got his bearings and began to trudge through the mud. It was thick and sucked at his boots, but at least it was an obstacle he could face and overcome.

 	Reaching an intersection that had partly collapsed from a mortar burst, Culcis pulled up sharply. Blood Pact had overrun their position. He could hear them somewhere above, distant but still close enough for him to be able to discern their debased language. He knew a few words and phrases, but was far from fluent. Words, someone had told him once, were dangerous. Even those that seem innocuous bring damnation upon the ignorant or the reckless.

 	The Blood Pact was hunting.

 	Drado and the others could be dead, captured or worse. Klaye was flitting in and out of consciousness. Culcis was on his own.

 	Setting the psyker down, Culcis went ahead to check the junction. 

 	The grunting cadence of Sanguinary tribesmen grew louder.

 	Culcis drew his pistol.

 	XV

 	Something moved through the fog, silhouetted against the fiery radiance of a distant explosion. A veil of heat lay upon the battlefield that turned the incessant rain into mist and transformed the earth underfoot into a mire.

 	Silently, a shadow slid in through the vapour and the blood-drenched mud. 

 	At first it had the aspect of a wraith, an incorporeal revenant possessed of vague anthropomorphism. It drifted against the hot breeze.

 	As it drew closer, its maw widened and opened, revealing alabaster white teeth that curved into a grin. Its projected malice was as palpable as a gunshot, the many lives it had ended resonating in a stir of psychic echoes from the chasmal black pits of its eyes.

 	Unable to satiate its hunger, it would kill again.

 	Its latest victim cowered before it, and as the shadow of its stultifying presence exerted itself, every last light faded and Juba Klaye knew his own light was about to be snuffed out.

 	At the faintest disturbance, Culcis turned, expecting to be faced with the grim aspect of an iron grotesque. Instead, he saw a Volpone officer crouching beside Klaye’s body. A second lieutenant. His hand was over the psyker’s face, gently closing his staring eyes.

 	Bertram Fenk. Culcis recalled the man he had dragged from the trench earlier, and lowered his pistol.

 	Fenk slowly shook his head, but Culcis had already guessed the psyker was dead. He tried to shake off another impression, something just beyond his reach. It was the reason he had turned around, a sense of something, a threat. 

 	Above the two Volpone, the Blood Pact roaming near the trench line grew louder still, and Culcis threw his body against the inner wall as he realised what he must have reacted to.

 	Fenk followed his example, though neither spoke. 

 	Their uniforms begrimed with filth, the two Volpone tried to blend into their surroundings. 

 	Rain beat down.

 	Guttural laughter cut the breeze with dagger sharpness as the Blood Pact caught sight of Klaye’s dead form slumped in the ditch. Neither cultist knew Klaye’s true nature; all they saw was a slain enemy soldier, slowly sinking into the earth.

 	Culcis remained still, his eyes on Fenk. His fingers tightened around the grip of his pistol. 

 	Three distinct voices, three men. Higher ground gave them a second advantage. Culcis willed Fenk to be still, but he need not have concerned himself. The second lieutenant was like a statue, a bayonet clenched in his right hand.

 	If the Blood Pact chose to enter the trench, they would have to kill them and risk others hearing.

 	Culcis caught Fenk’s gaze and tapped the sheath of his own knife with his left index finger.

 	Make it quick, he mouthed.

 	Fenk gave a near imperceptible nod, and looked to follow the Blood Pact.

 	More guttural exchanges filtered down to them through the storm. There was a moment of silence, charged by the tension in the air.

 	Culcis dared not move further. He could smell the stink of wet copper, hot and heady on the breeze. It would take two seconds to draw his knife, another two to throw it. He had to trust Fenk to kill the second man, which left the third between them. If they could bear him down into the trench, drown him in the mud before he could shout a warning…

 	After a few more seconds, the Blood Pact moved on, drawn by distant gunfire.

 	Culcis remained rigid for a minute afterwards before finally letting himself breathe again. His heart was hammering. He approached Fenk, who had also begun to move, the bayonet held low and easy in his grasp. 

 	As they closed, Culcis looked into the other man’s eyes, and for a fleeting moment he saw a cold and pitiless void, a serpent, not a man, staring back at him.

 	The errant flash of light against Fenk’s blade brought an image Culcis had dismissed as mild, psychological trauma back to the forefront of his mind. He was still trudging towards Fenk. They were no more than a few metres apart.

 	‘Second lieutenant,’ Culcis began, proffering his open hand.

 	For a second, it looked like Fenk still had his knife.

 	A heavy burst of las-fire interrupted the reunion, as Culcis arched his neck at the sudden actinic flash above them.

 	Voices, Imperial voices speaking Gothic, resolved on the air.

 	Harsh, magnesium stab-lights penetrated the gloom.

 	Regara’s bellowed orders rose above the storm. Volpone war cries rang out as the Imperium reclaimed the line. Something dark and formidable sped across the clouds, lighting up the edge of the battlefield Culcis could see with thunderous lascannon bursts.

 	‘Seems we live to fight another day, Second Lieutenant Fenk.’ 

 	Culcis and Fenk were scarcely a stride apart.

 	He noticed the knife was sheathed again, and Fenk had lost his viper’s gaze and smiled warmly instead.

 	‘To serve Emperor and Throne,’ he replied, ‘for Volpone glory.’

 	‘For Volpone glory,’ uttered Culcis, his thoughts suddenly pellucid. 

 	The image in his mind, the one that had made him turn with its sudden potency and insistence, was an indigo aquila, spattered with blood. A common enough sight, he supposed, except it perfectly matched the clasp around Fenk’s neck. Culcis saw something else, too: first a wooden box, its contents a closely guarded secret, and second the look in Fenk’s eyes as if he had just shared the same revelation.

 	In the darkness and the driving rain before the trench was filled with light and the sound of allied voices, Culcis could not be certain that Fenk’s eyes did not narrow.

 	In the end, the Volpone 50th did not contest the ruins of Titus beyond the night when Tempestor Prime Ardal and the First Sons arrived through the storm.

 	We were to leave Lotun and its bitter memories behind. Although Titus will live on in Volpone history as an infamous defeat, the intelligence gathered during the conflict concerning the so-called ‘bludvayne’, and the potential threat this cabal presented to the Crusade, garnered the attention of Warmaster Macaroth.

 	Records describe how a contingent of Throne-sworn Angels, the vaunted Silver Guard, made landfall and razed Titus to ash.

 	The part Tempestor Prime Ardal played in the needless and profligate death of three hundred and sixteen Volpone soldiers, as well as the clandestine deployment of an alpha-class psyker, remains a matter of quiet conjecture.

 	Needless to say, I personally, as well as the Volpone officers who survived the conflict, have a different view and know too well what is owed to us by the First Sons. It is an account we intend to collect in full.

 	 – Personal journal, Major Vasquez Regara, 
‘Royal’ Volpone 50th