Hunter’s Snare
Josh Reynolds
 
 Chapter One


 	The tau base was not hard to spot, even through the swirling, wind-borne snows, and hidden as it was amongst the harsh-edged crags and white-capped slopes of Rime Crag. It rose out of the snowy rock like a blister, and the peaks it nestled beneath, parasite-like. It was too smooth, too serene for the wilderness it sought to dominate. 

 	In that way, the tau bastion was much like those who had built it. They sought to inflict an unnatural and ill-fitting harmony upon the universe, a universe which was not theirs, not by right of blood or battle, and to force around a manufactured aleph that which had required no centre, or, rather, had many centres to choose from. 

 	They wished to tame the storm. That alone proved them mad at best and monstrous at worst. These thoughts were uppermost in Kor’sarro Khan’s mind as his bike hurtled through the driving snow towards the tau bastion, the icy flakes melting against the bare flesh of his scarred cheeks and stinging his golden-hued eyes. He could have worn his helmet, but the thought of even that little amount of constriction upon his senses was anathema to the huntsman, protective photolenses be damned. The air of Agrellan was so toxic that it seared even his altered lungs, but the pain only added spice to the experience. He’d conquered worse worlds than this, poisonous atmosphere and all. 

 	The captain of the Third Minghan of the White Scars and the ordu’s Master of the Hunt leaned into the snow, glorying in its bite as he urged his bike to greater speed. The enemy fortress loomed up, growing larger as he drew nearer. Lights flashed across the top of the outer wall. The enemy had spotted them at last. 

 	Instinctively, he leaned to the side, and his borrowed bike responded with a growl of its engines. Wheels skidded, and the pulse burst seared the air where he’d been a half-second later. More followed, and he guided his steed through the oscillating web of weapons fire with the grace of the berkut – one of the great, golden-feathered eagles which nested in the mountains of Chogoris. To Kor’sarro’s eyes, the bursts of energy moved slowly. He did not bother to speak a warning into the subcutaneous vox implant mounted beneath his jaw. Those who travelled in his wake could see as well as he, or he would not have chosen them. 

 	Each was a warrior without parallel, even among a Chapter which was reckoned full of such, and their trophy-racks were as heavy with skulls and scalps as his own. If the Emperor had decided that the lives of some of them must be claimed as the blood-price for a successful hunt, well, so it was, and would ever be. 

 	And this hunt would be successful. He had sworn such, during the Rites of Howling, and had come to the Damocles Gulf, and the hive-world of Agrellan, to see to the keeping of that oath. He would take the head of the alien known as Shadowsun and hang it from his lodge-pole or else he would die in the attempt. Her ugly xenos skull would be added to the White Road, to sit sentry with the rest of the Chapter’s enemies. A sudden urgency gripped him. Enthusiasm flushed caution from his veins. It was always the same, when a hunt drew to a close. The feeling of anticipation, the joy of the kill-to-be, roared through him, prodding him on, like spurs in the flesh of balky horse. There was no greater pleasure than this, the culmination of months of patience and focus, the release of the killing stroke across his prey’s neck. 

 	He had tracked Shadowsun across Agrellan, from one battlezone to the next, from bunker to trench to bastion, harrying her trail. If he could take her head, the tau would waver. Without her cunning, they would be easy meat. And she was cunning; that she had avoided and outpaced him this long was proof enough of that. He had nearly had her head at Blackshale Ridge. But he had her now. She was cornered, in a trap of her own making. And he would have her head before the sun rose. 

 	 ‘Old man, rattle their paddock,’ he growled. Besides the bikes that rode at his heels, his hunting party included a quartet of heavier vehicles: two Rhinos, a Razorback and a Whirlwind, their engines adapted for greater speed so that they might keep up with Kor’sarro’s bike-mounted demi-company. Three of the four carried those hunt-brothers who were content to fight on foot, rather than from the back of an iron steed, and the fourth was there to ensure that they could do so with the blessings of the Emperor and the Great Khan. 

 	The comm-bead in his ear squawked as a familiar voice acknowledged the order, and a moment later fire lit the night from somewhere behind him. Old Shatterhand at his appointed task, and unspoken joy, the busting of bunkers and the shattering of bastions. Kor’sarro smiled as the face of his second-in-command flitted across the surface of his mind. Wrinkled, white-haired Cemakar, whom aspirants and khans of the ordu alike called Old Shatterhand, but never to his face, for even now, old as he was, he had a fist that could fell a Dreadnought and a snarl that could strip the ceremonial unguents from a suit of armour. 

 	Cemakar had refused, and quite pungently, to return with the rest of the company to reinforce Agrellan Prime in the wake of Shadowsun’s escape from Blackshale Ridge. Where his khan went, so did he, even if, in his opinion, said khan was a puling whelp of an aspirant, with fewer scars than was healthy and a decided lack of respect for the vaunted wisdom of elders such as the Stormseer Sudabeh and Cemakar himself. Despite this, Kor’sarro was gladdened to have the old man along on the hunt. Too many of those who had stepped forward at his call were like the berkut, bloodthirsty and glory-hungry. As he himself was, even after all this time as Master of the Hunt. Cemakar was a calming presence, and a bulwark against more of the same foolishness which had enabled Shadowsun to squirm out of his grip the last time they’d clashed. 

 	The wall ahead of him disintegrated into burning chunks, some of which spattered across the white-daubed ceramite plates of his power armour. Kor’sarro laughed as more fire split the snow and darkness, and the thunderous cries of the Emperor’s hunting eagles boomed across Rime Crag. Let the xenos cower in their burrow for as long as they might; the hunters had come to root them out. He tapped the firing stud for the twin-linked bolters mounted on the front of the bike as he rode through the welcoming flames, to herald his arrival. 

 	Alien weapons opened up as his bike cleared the rubble-strewn opening and slewed about. The flat, disc-shapes of a number of qarthai - their gun drones - bobbed into view descending from the walls and rising from the snow that lay like a blanket across the inner courtyard of the bastion. It was an insult that these soulless automatons should be the ones to greet them; one more insult to add to the list of Shadowsun’s crimes against the Imperium. 

 	He gunned the bike towards the largest knot of drones and tapped the firing stud again. Several burst apart, struck by the bolter shells. The remainder swooped to meet him, the pulse carbines slung beneath their flat bodies firing without pause. Kor’sarro drew the curved sword sheathed on the side of his bike, activating its powercell, and the long, wide blade was suddenly enveloped in a lethal haze of disruptive energy as he whipped it around and bisected a drone that had drifted too close. The sword was called Moonfang, and like the bike he rode, it was a relic of his Chapter, and possessed a lethal spirit all of its own. The sword had claimed the lives of a thousand of the Emperor’s enemies, but it was never sated. The hunter’s purr of energy that writhed about the length of the blade was mirrored in the growl of his steed engines and in his own soul, calling out for battle. 

 	With a roar of joy, Kor’sarro Khan gave in to the call.

 	Thursk, champion of the Dark Hunters Space Marine Chapter, leapt out into the cacophony of battle with some relief, as Torguhn’s Smile, the Rhino transport he’d been riding in, rumbled into the bastion courtyard through the breach in its outer wall. He thumbed the activator switch on the power axe in his hand and spun the brutal looking weapon in a lazy arc. He hated being inside the boxy transport. Better to trust his two legs than any rumbling, squalling machine. Though, that said, he didn’t mind having a certain thickness of armoured hull-plates between him and the guns of the enemy. 

 	One of the enemy’s qarthai raced towards him, spitting death. A number of Khorchin terms had become lodged in his vocabulary like errant kernals trapped between teeth. The language of Chogoris had a rhythm all its own, far different to the crude dialect of Gothic that he and his brothers used for their own battle-cant. It was musical, in its way, and unless your mind and ear were trained to it, it was almost impossible to unravel the full complexity. 

 	Bursts of energy struck his dark-hued power armour, but he ignored them, confident in his armour’s ability to absorb the punishment. As the qarthai drew within arm’s reach, Thursk swatted it to the ground with a casual swipe of his axe, and then stepped on it, crushing the fragile mechanism easily. 

 	‘I hate these things,’ he said, his voice becoming a harsh rasp as it was filtered through the respirator vox-grille of his helmet. ‘They’re more irritating than Phobian nettle-flies.’ He looked around, taking in the structure that rose up around him. It was somewhat disorientating, being all swooping curves and rounded edges, rather than the sharp angles he was used to in Imperial fortifications. The tau thought in curves and soft angles, he’d been told, and everything they built was like a bubble atop a trickle of water. The bastion was mostly wall, with a central command centre that was latched to the rocky slope like a splatter of ice. The latter was dotted with a profusion of antenna and receivers. 

 	‘But easily dispatched, brother,’ a similarly distorted voice said. Thursk glanced sideways at the speaker. Like himself, the warrior was a Space Marine, built for battle and armoured in the Emperor’s grace. The other Space Marine was neither khan nor captain. Instead, the blue pauldron and vambrace of his right arm and the crystalline force hood that hung over his bare head, as well as the ornate and highly stylised force staff he clutched tightly in his right hand proclaimed him a Stormseer – a Librarian of the White Scars Chapter, a zadyin arga, a master of lightning, and the spirits of land, air and prophecy. His armour was covered in line upon line of delicate Khorchin characters, so many, in fact, that the white parts were almost grey. A trio of thick, curved knives were attached to his equipment belt, their bejewelled sheaths gleaming in the light cast by the battle. The Stormseer sniffed, patted the knives, and gestured. ‘There’s another one.’ 

 	Thursk heard the whine of antigravity motors and spun, chopping the drone in half as it swooped towards them. He turned back. ‘See, Ambaghai? Nettle-flies,’ he said. 

 	‘More like Chogorian wasps,’ Ambaghai said, ‘but I gather your meaning. One stinging insect is much the same as another.’ Thursk knew that the Stormseers were unlike the Codex-trained Librarians of most other Chapters. In any other Chapter, Ambaghai would have been a Codicier – a strategist and advisor. Among the White Scars he served a similar role, his calm counsel keeping Kor’sarro Khan from making a misstep in his hunt, but he was more in the way of a shaman or holy fool. They said he ate ghosts, and spat lightning the same way his superior, Sudabeh, commanded the allegiance of the winds. Thursk had yet to experience either of those things while in Ambaghai’s company, but he looked forward to asking what a ghost tasted like. 

 	Thursk stepped aside as a squad of Space Marines trooped out of the Rhino, their bolters at the ready. They quickly went to work isolating and dispatching the swarms of drones accosting the invaders. The xenos devices weren’t much of threat without support from living troops, but they could still prove deadly in the right numbers, even to a fully armoured Space Marine. ‘And speaking of stinging insects, Jebe looks as if he’s having fun.’ 

 	Thursk glanced in the direction Ambaghai had indicated and snorted in amusement. The company champion of the White Scars Third Company did indeed look as if he were enjoying himself, surrounded as he was by an oscillating ring of gun drones. Jebe was rangy and proud-featured. Like his khan, he disdained the use of a helmet, save when absolutely necessary, and his dark top-knot whipped about him like a halo as he leapt and spun, his sword blocking the gun drones’ shots and deflecting them back at their firers. He had leapt from his bike as soon as he had entered the compound, ready to engage the enemy one-on-one. He moved swiftly, and with a dancer’s grace, though there was a feral lethality to every step of this particular dance. Jebe had fought and beaten his weight in lesser khans for the right to become company champion, a fact he rarely went long without mentioning. He whirled in place, and the last trio of gun drones swarming about him dispatched themselves with his aid. 

 	‘Nicely done,’ Thursk called out. Jebe glanced at him, sniffed, spat and turned to look for something else to kill. Thursk looked back at Ambaghai. ‘I don’t think he likes me.’ 

 	‘He doesn’t,’ the Stormseer said. Thursk didn’t bother to ask why. He knew the reason well enough. Like Jebe, he was a company champion, of his own chapter’s Fourth Company. Jebe, for whatever reason, took that as an insult to his prowess. There was a competitive streak in the warrior that grated on Thursk’s nerves. 

 	‘And what about you?’ the Dark Hunter asked, leaning his axe across his shoulder. Jebe wasn’t the only one who was unhappy with his presence. At a loss for what to do with him, Kor’sarro Khan had made him Ambaghai’s designated keshig, or bodyguard, for the duration of the hunt. Given the fierce competition among the battle-brothers of the ordu for such an honour, it hadn’t engendered any affection for Thursk amongst them. 

 	‘I find you off-putting and overly talkative, but not offensive,’ Ambaghai said. ‘I thought it was a tradition of your Chapter to fight in total silence.’

 	‘Yes, but I’m not fighting right now, am I?’ Thursk said. ‘Besides which, you White Scars are hardly silent. I’m simply trying to fit in.’ He spun his axe again and watched as the White Scars took the base with a speed that would have awed any but a Space Marine. They did not maintain the comm silence that Thursk’ own battle-brothers considered a battlefield rule. Jokes, snatches of song and laughter, altogether too much laughter for Thursk’s liking, clogged the vox channel, most of it in Khorchin. The White Scars did not care if the enemy overheard their jocularity, given that no enemy yet had managed to translate their native tongue, that they knew of. 

 	Thursk had never particularly enjoyed the quiet, but the White Scars seemed to revel in noise, be it singing, talking, or merely the cry of the wind or the growl of engines; just one more difference between the Founding Chapter and their Successor. But there were similarities as well. The Chogorian way of life wasn’t wholly alien to a Phobian. And it was those connections which the White Scars insisted on exploring, in order to ensure that their Successors kept to the proper way of things. ‘That is why I’m here, after all. It’s the Dark Hunters turn to kneel at the trophy-rack, and swear fealty to the Khan-of-Khans,’ he said. Once every cycle, the White Scars Successor Chapters met, and pitted their chosen champions against each other in the Rite of Blooding. The winner was sent to join the White Scars for a full cycle, to learn all that the Founders had to teach them.

 	‘It’s not about fealty, cousin,’ Ambaghai said. ‘It is about tradition. The traditions of Chogoris, of the steppes and wild, thunder-struck hills, of the plains wind and wild-fire that are in your blood, whether you are Chogorian or Phobian, whether you are a brother of the Storm Lords, the Marauders, or the Solar Hawks. We are all sons of Jaghatai, and it was his decree that all those who share his blood know the traditions of the world which bore him in fire, blood and glory.’ Ambaghai tapped the head of his staff against the Imperial aquila on Thursk’s chestplate. ‘We are many tribes, gathered beneath a single horse-tail banner, and we all ride the White Road together, guided by his wisdom, so that our blades may shed blood as one.’

 	‘Do you rehearse that speech, or does such poetry flow naturally from your lips?’ Thursk asked. He watched as the White Scars who’d been aboard the same Rhino as himself moved quickly towards the entryway of the xenos bastion, while their bike-mounted brethren herded and harried the remaining gundrones to a safe distance for ease of dispatch. Another squad had disembarked from the second Rhino, the Tulwar of Shiban, and moved to join the first. The Wheel and the Spoke… that was what they called it. Those mounted, the Wheel, drove the enemy back and kept them running, while those on foot, the Spoke, set up a temporary hard point which the bikes could retreat to, if necessary, or, as in this case, took an objective while the enemy was distracted. It was, as with all of the Chapter’s tactics, simple enough at first glance, but became more complex the longer you studied it, with dozens of moving parts working towards a central goal in perfect harmony. 

 	‘You see? Off-putting,’ Ambaghai said. ‘Even Vayren wasn’t so frustrating, when he was with us, and the Storm Lords have as much appreciation for poetry as they do for orks.’ Thursk watched as Jebe joined the squads at the entryway, and felt a brief flicker of envy. The champion barked an order. One of the White Scars produced the round canister shape of a melta bomb. He tossed it to Jebe, who caught it, activated the grav-clamp on the bomb’s canister and slapped it against the doors. The entryway exploded a moment later, and the two squads entered the bastion, Jebe in the lead. 

 	‘Vayren can barely speak Gothic, let alone comprehend poetry,’ Thursk said. He had fought alongside the champion of the Storm Lords Third Company during the Siege of Vhot. He’d been impressed by Vayren’s single-minded murderousness, if not his personality. ‘I once saw him head-butt an ork to death, and without his helmet.’ He settled his axe in the crook of his arm. Above and behind him, the storm bolters mounted on the cupola of the Rhino added to the cacophony, as they blew a swarm of gun drones from the air. There weren’t many drones left, and those that remained seemed confused and easy prey for the bikers. ‘Have you noticed a distinct lack of enemy presence here, or is this usual for the – what do you call them?’ 

 	‘Khamar – it means “noseless”, and no,’ Ambaghai said. 

 	‘No to which?’ Thursk said. He stepped aside as a spinning smoking gun drone struck the side of the Rhino and exploded. Fragments of metal struck his armour and fell to the ground.

 	‘Jebe has secured the bastion,’ Kor’sarro Khan said as his bike slewed to a halt before them, scattering grit and snow. ‘I would have you by my side when I pierce the beast’s heart, Stormseer.’ After a brief hesitation, he added, ‘and you as well, cousin. I would see how the Dark Hunters earned their name.’ 

 	‘It would be an honour, my khan,’ Thursk said. 

 	Kor’sarro gazed at him for a moment, and then nodded tersely. ‘Ambaghai, call the lightning and clear the air,’ he said, gesturing to the remaining gun drones, which continued to hover and fire at the White Scars. ‘I grow tired of sparring with these toys.’

 	‘I never thought you’d ask,’ Ambaghai said. He gripped his staff in both hands and held it up. The air took on a sharp, metallic odour and seemed to congeal for a moment, as if every molecule of oxygen and water had suddenly contracted. Then Ambaghai stabbed the ground with the butt of his staff, and the air was filled with azure strands of electricity, which arced from drone to drone, frying the sensitive circuitry of each one in turn. The remaining drones in the courtyard fell to the ground, their hulls charred black. 

 	‘Impressive,’ Thursk said. 

 	‘Yes. Consider that, the next time you insult my poetry,’ Ambaghai said, tapping the Dark Hunter’s shoulder plate with the tip of his staff. 

 	‘Duly noted, Stormseer,’ Thursk said. 

 	Kor’sarro led the way into the alien bastion, as was his right as Master of the Hunt. Ambaghai followed, in his shadow as ever, and off to the side, the Dark Hunter. He did not know what to make of the Phobian yet. He did not ride, nor did he seem to understand their way of war. He might as well have been a scion of Russ or Dorn, for all the kinship Kor’sarro felt with him. He reflected, not for the first time, on the Great Khan’s insistence that they welcome these strangers in all but blood into their tents and war councils. He understood the reasoning for it, but that didn’t make it any easier to take. 

 	Jebe felt the same way, and took no pains to hide it. ‘What is he doing here?’ he said, as Kor’sarro approached. If the Dark Hunter noticed the rancour in his tone, he gave no sign of it, which only fuelled Jebe’s dislike, if Kor’sarro were any judge. The Dark Hunter used silence as a weapon, deflecting and antagonising in equal measure with his obtuse refusal to speak to any but those he absolutely had to. He just watched, and listened and it was getting on everyone’s nerves. Then, given that he could barely speak Khorchin, that might have been a blessing. 

 	‘If he is not here, how will he learn?’ Kor’sarro said, stepping past the champion. He had no time for Jebe’s petulance. Not now. The explosion that had allowed them ingress had blackened the entry chamber, warping the walls and causing the floor to bubble and buckle. Ruptured power conduits dangled from the ceiling, spitting and crackling, and the strange, flat glow-panels the xenos used for illumination had cracked and gone dark. The whole place stank of tau. The sloping walls and soft curves did not offend his senses as much as they might once have, however. There was much to learn from an enemy’s architecture, as there was from their art and language. To properly stalk prey, one had to learn how said prey’s mind worked. And the best way to do that was to study how they built their lairs. Orks constructed crude but sturdy structures, where the hrud burrowed in like mites and the tau… the tau changed the landscape to suit themselves. 

 	‘Status, Toguz,’ he said, looking at one of the Space Marines who stood near the bulkhead that led into the heart of the base, their bolters held ready. The way into the command centre was open. It was all very inviting, like meat dragged beneath the nose of a beast of prey. 

 	‘No hostile contact, my khan,’ the warrior said. ‘Not even any alarms.’

 	‘The internal defences were offline as well,’ Jebe said, quietly. ‘It was as if they expected us to get in.’

 	‘Odd,’ Kor’sarro said. Unease filled him. This wasn’t the first empty base they had attacked, but this one was different. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look as if it were occupied. The others had had automatic defences, but nothing like what they’d encountered outside. Bait for the beast, he thought again. 

 	‘Unlikely is what it is,’ a new voice said. 

 	Kor’sarro didn’t turn. ‘Is that a warrior’s considered wisdom, or merely the grumblings of an unappreciated elder?’ he asked. 

 	Cemakar grunted. He stumped into the entry chamber, his helmet tucked under his arm. His top-knot and moustaches were as white as the snow outside, and his skin was the colour of leather, making the scars on his cheeks stand out all the more. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘are they here or not?’ His armour was of an older mark, and studded with rivets. The chestplate was covered in ceremonial embossment, depicting scenes from ancient victories of the ordu. The battleplate had been worn on a thousand battlefields, even before it had been gifted to Cemakar. Like the warrior who wore it, it was a relic of the ordu. 

 	Kor’sarro frowned and stepped through the interior bulkhead, one palm resting on Moonfang’s pommel. Even sheathed, the sword vibrated slightly, as if it couldn’t wait to be free once more. If he had his way, that would be soon. Though not, apparently, soon enough. The lack of resistance nagged at him. All of the intelligence they had gathered had pointed to Rime Crag as where Shadowsun would be, but here they were, and she was nowhere to be seen. Had his enemy already fled? Or had she never been here in the first place? Was this another distraction? She was good at that, he was forced to admit. She thought in layers, something a Chogorian could respect, even if she was a xenos witch. 

 	Shadowsun was more dangerous than his fellow commanders in the defence of Agrellan had wanted to admit. Patriarch Tybalt’s dismissal he understood; it offended the old Knight Commander to imagine that a mere alien could threaten his forces. Straken, the commander of the Catachan regiment deployed to Agrellan, was a different matter; he’d faced the tau before and knew better. Shadowsun was the lynchpin, the central mind of the tau strategy. That was why he had left the defence of Agrellan to Tybalt, Straken and Sudabeh, and set himself the goal of taking her head. Without her, the xenos would falter. 

 	The problem was she knew that as well as he did. And thus far, she had refused all attempts to bring her to battle, after the encounter at Blackshale Ridge. Including now, it seemed. He gave a grunt of frustration and looked around. The command centre was online, but empty of life. A holographic projection of Agrellan as seen from orbit floated over a wide, flat dais, and the circumference of the room was dominated by the computer consoles and view-screens that lined the walls. The latter had been gutted. The only light in the room came from the hologram. 

 	Kor’sarro swept a hand through the hologram of Agrellan, and the image wavered and changed, from an orbital perspective to a sub-stratospheric view. Symbols that he didn’t recognise were clustered about Rime Crag. He touched one, and the image changed again. He blinked in surprise as he recognised a pict-capture of his face. A red circle, far too much like a targeting icon for his liking, surrounded the image of him. 

 	‘We should have brought the Khwarezmian,’ Cemakar said, looking around. ‘He has a way with these xenos toys.’ Kor’sarro smiled at the thought of the commander of his reserve force. Gharchai the Khwarezmian, whose folk had not been steppe-riders as Kor’sarro’s clan had been – indeed, as most White Scars clans had been – but instead the armoured hill-men of the Khwarzm, who thundered to war not on beasts built for speed, but for strength. Of all the diverse tribes and clans of Chogoris, the Khwarzm had held out the longest against the armies united by the Khan-of-Khans, and had bought their freedom first, earning it in iron and fire. Gharchai was a true son of the Khwarzm, built like a thunderbolt and with a mind like water. He was the opposite, in many ways, of Old Shatterhand.

 	 ‘Gharchai is more useful where he is,’ Kor’sarro murmured, still examining the hologram. The Khwarezmian and his Land Speeders had been deployed to sweep the basin craters to the south and east of Rime Crag, in order to test the tau defences there. They were due to rejoin the main force in twelve hours, but could be recalled sooner, if necessary. 

 	He and his hunt-brothers had harried the tau across Agrellan, striking hard and fading away before the xenos could mount more than a token resistance. They had made great wounds in the invaders’ infrastructure, opening their lines and forcing them to regroup and delay their stratagems. But for every bunker destroyed and every communications array silenced, the enemy seemed to have three more at peak operation by the time the White Scars had returned to the hunt. The gaps they had created in the front lines of the enemy had long since closed behind them, he knew, even as he knew that they were being drawn deeper into tau-controlled territory. Shadowsun had led them on a merry chase, but this night should have seen the end of it. So where was she?

 	Kor’sarro considered ordering his men to sweep the base again, but discarded the thought before it reached his lips. He already knew that they would find nothing. The base was running on auxiliary power, and it had been stripped of everything of value. It had been abandoned, but pains had been taken to hide that fact. The alien mind was a mystery, and their tactics and strategies seemed bereft of meaning, even to one who had fought them as often as he had. But he knew enough to know that just because a thing looked one way, did not make it so. He straightened. ‘The base is empty, but it was made to look occupied, to draw us in. Why?’ 

 	‘I see only two reasons for a ploy such as this,’ Cemakar said. He looked at Kor’sarro. ‘I’m sure you do as well.’ He hiked a thumb at Jebe. ‘Even he sees them.’ 

 	‘What?’ Jebe said. 

 	‘It’s a distraction,’ Thursk said. It was the first time the Dark Hunter had spoken since they had entered the base. He tapped the hologram dais with his axe. 

 	Kor’sarro nodded. ‘Or a trap,’ he growled. As soon as he said the word, he felt it, and cursed himself for not recognising it sooner. He had been too focused, too intent on his prey not to see the trap she was leading him into. Rime Crag could simply have been a diversion, to pull the White Scars out of response range for a planned assault, and thus deprive the Imperial forces of an asset. But that was no more Shadowsun’s way than it was his own. She was not an ork; the witch could think. The tau had the advantage of mobility, an advantage he and his huntsmen negated, or at least countered. They were too dangerous to the tau to be left riding free. The conclusion was reached and the decision made in micro-seconds. ‘To your vehicles. We must ride. Cemakar, alert the Khwarezmian. We’ll need support.’ 

 	He led them out of the command centre, and hurried back towards the courtyard. Even as he stepped out into the cold night air, he knew he had been too slow. The trap had been sprung, and its jaws had already snapped closed. It happened fast. The snowy air blurred above the courtyard, and his ears caught the hum of alien technology, offensive and smooth. 

 	‘Take cover,’ he roared, but too late. A White Scar was flung backwards from his idling bike, his cuirass melted to slag, and superheated blood issuing from the grille on the front of his helmet in a burst of red-tinted steam. Kor’sarro cursed. 

 	To their credit, the others reacted in the millisecond between their brother’s death and his collapse, swinging off their bikes and pulling the heavy machines over to act as improvised cover as they fell flat upon the snowy ground. 

 	Strange, hunched shapes flickered in and out of view through the gaps in the wall, stalking towards the bastion. Kor’sarro could hear the familiar, waspish hum of tau weapons being readied to fire. Kor’sarro swung back around the edge of the ruptured bulkhead and drew his bolt pistol. ‘Ambush,’ he said, looking at the others. 

 	‘Good,’ Jebe said, drawing his blade. ‘I was getting tired of killing machines.’

 
 
 Chapter Two


 	‘Communications are jammed,’ Cemakar said, finger pressed to his ear. He looked at Kor’sarro, his features grim. ‘They’ve lured us in and wedged the door shut. We’re trapped.’

 	‘Then we’ll just have to pry it open, won’t we?’ Kor’sarro said, as Cemakar’s words sunk in. Before he could say anything further, the whine of anti-grav units pierced the air. A trio of gun drones shot over the parapet of the wall, and sped through the air over the courtyard. But these weren’t the annoyances they’d faced earlier. Instead, each of the new drones had a long, blocky rifle-shaped weapon slung beneath its disc-shaped body. 

 	As Kor’sarro watched, one of the drones rotated and fired. A White Scar went limp as the shot struck him in the head and punched through his helmet with apparent ease. The remaining White Scars hunkered down behind their bikes and began to return fire, and the drones swooped upwards and vanished into the falling snow. Another trio swooped into position as the first vanished, coming from the opposite direction. Their long-barrelled weapons fired, chewing the courtyard, and throwing dust and steam from the melted snow into the air. 

 	 ‘They’re keeping us pinned down,’ Thursk said. ‘If we go out there, we’re as good as dead.’ Kor’sarro was pleased that there was no trace of fear in the Dark Hunter’s voice. It was merely a statement of fact. He hadn’t been eager to have the newcomer in his hunt, but there were other things to consider than his own preferences. Inter-Chapter relations must be maintained. The sons of Chogoris could not be allowed to forget the ways that had made them strong, ways that had carried them to the stars and beyond, no matter how diluted their blood. Perhaps he was a true son of Chogoris after all. 

 	‘A child could see that, Phobian,’ Jebe snarled. ‘The question is what do we do about it?’ The storm bolters atop the Rhinos opened fire, but their efforts to track the swiftly moving drones were in vain. Bolt shells struck the bastion and stitched a line up the walls, pursuing the second group of drones as they too vanished into the snowy darkness. Silence fell, but only for a moment. The two groups of drones returned, flight-paths interweaving as they plummeted downwards like angry wasps. 

 	‘We do what we always do. We act,’ Kor’sarro said. He glanced at Cemakar. ‘I recognise that type of qarthai. They have controllers. Keep their heads down.’ Cemakar barked an order into the vox and in the courtyard, the Whirlwind and Razorback gave vent to furious bellows of indignation, shattering the night with contrails of fire. The weapons of both vehicles oscillated in a slow arc, firing at nothing in particular, but simply filling the air with death. 

 	The drones faltered, if only for a moment. But a moment was all that Kor’sarro required. He stepped out into the courtyard, bolt pistol levelled. Coolly, he fired, and one of the drones was knocked from the air. The remaining five focused their attentions on him, weapons rotating towards him. ‘Ambaghai,’ he said. 

 	‘Make room, brothers,’ the Stormseer said, stepping out into the open. Lightning crackled around him, curling the length of his staff and ionising the air around him. Snow melted beneath his armoured feet, becoming steam as he filled the air with snapping, writhing serpents of lightning. The drones shuddered as they were ensnared in the coils of electricity. Ambaghai’s eyes began to glow, and, face tight with strain, he said, ‘I see them.’ He pointed with his staff, and Cemakar spat an order. 

 	The Whirlwind’s missile rack rotated in the direction Ambaghai had indicated and disgorged its remaining payload at the rocky escarpment above. The darkness was washed away in a blaze of light as the Vengeance missiles hammered the ridge. Snow and rock tumbled down from the point of impact to strike the bastion, causing the structure to shudder around them. As one, the drones tumbled from the sky, striking the ground, smoke rising from them. Cemakar kicked one aside as he stomped towards the Whirlwind, shouting, ‘Reload! Castellans, by the Khan, or I’ll have your topknots for my trophy rack.’ He swung himself up onto one of the Rhinos and swatted the Space Marine in the cupola on the top of his helmet. ‘Get back down there, Ojai or I swear by the Star-Horse I’ll kick your teeth in,’ he snarled. 

 	Kor’sarro watched him, bemused, and then turned and dropped his fist on Ambaghai’s shoulder plate. ‘Good trick, Stormseer,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to fry the drones.’

 	Ambaghai ran his fingers through his wispy beard and gave it a satisfied flick. ‘The xenos were watching us through the eyes of those drones. I decided to return the favour.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘For one who can speak to the lightning, following the signal between device and controller was easy enough.’ 

 	‘Congratulate yourself later, those were just the preliminaries,’ Cemakar said. Sitting in the cupola of Tulwar of Shiban, he hammered on the top of the hull with the flat of his hand and the Rhino wedged itself hull-first into the largest gap in the wall, effectively blocking it. There was enough room for him to swivel the storm bolter and he let off a burst at something out past the wall. ‘Hostiles incoming, multiple points,’ he said. Past the Rhino, Kor’sarro caught a glimpse of flickering, indistinct shapes. They were sirguma, he realised, the ‘sneaky ones’, what some Imperial reports called ‘Stealth suits’. They raced past the gap in the outer wall, burst cannons whirring. They weren’t trying to get in, he knew. They were merely keeping the White Scars heads down. Delaying tactics, even the sniper drones. But why were they being delayed? 

 	Kor’sarro boosted himself up onto the Rhino and crouched in the gap beside Cemakar. His keen eyes picked out the flat hammer-headed shapes of several tau troop transports, gliding over the snow. They weren’t in any hurry, by the looks of them. They might as well have been out for an evening ride. Then, it wasn’t like their enemies were going anywhere, was it? He shook his head, disgusted with himself. Of course, he thought sourly, you are a cunning one, witch. Shadowsun had used their speed against them. She’d laid a bait trail, and he’d fallen for it like an over-eager aspirant. ‘Snares within snares,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve led us into a trap.’

 	‘Looks like they came ready to fight,’ Cemakar grunted, not looking at him. 

 	‘Good. I intend to give them one. If you can manage to pry yourself out of that cupola, I’d like your counsel,’ Kor’sarro said. Without waiting for a reply, he slid off the Rhino and dropped lightly to the ground. Cemakar followed him, grunting and cursing as he hauled himself out of the Rhino’s turret, likely with some assistance from the crew. Kor’sarro strode back towards the command centre, rattling off orders as he went, and the White Scars moved to obey quickly. Most took up positions around the gaps in the walls, ready to repel an assault. Others picked up the bodies of their slain brothers and carried the corpses to one of the Rhinos. Kor’sarro would leave none of their dead on this alien-defiled ridge, if he could help it. Additionally, he wanted the enemy to have as little knowledge of their remaining numbers as possible. Information was as deadly as a bolt-round, in the right circumstances. 

 	‘Ambaghai, Jebe, and…’ he trailed off, motioning to the Dark Hunter. ‘Cousin,’ he said, finally ‘we have time, and we must make use of it. Come.’ 

 	Inside the command centre, he waited for them to file in and tapped the hologram. As he’d expected, the map of Agrellan was replaced by a three-dimensional cutaway image of Rime Crag. The bastion was illuminated, as were markers representing the forces now approaching it. ‘Nice of them to leave us a picture so we could see just how badly we’re caught,’ Cemakar grumbled. 

 	‘They taunt us,’ Jebe said. Kor’sarro had come to much the same conclusion, after wondering whether it was an oversight. What he knew of the tau had never suggested a sense of humour, but then, even orks taunted their foes. Shadowsun wanted him to know she’d caught him. He could almost admire that sort of bravado, if it weren’t so infuriating and, more importantly, aimed at him. 

 	‘Wouldn’t you?’ Thursk said. ‘We’re the enemy. Would you have them fete us, and throw a feast in our honour?’

 	Jebe glared at the Dark Hunter and made to reply, but Kor’sarro gestured sharply, cutting him off. ‘Taunt or oversight, this is our situation. Suggestions,’ he said. 

 	‘Tortoise,’ Cemakar said promptly. ‘We seal this bastion and wait for the Khwarezmian to seek us out, jammed frequencies be damned. He’ll rip from the belly, and we’ll smash their snouts on our shell.’ 

 	‘Eagle,’ Jebe countered. The champion stabbed the hologram with a finger. ‘We punch through their lines before they have a chance to cut us off. We swoop out of jamming range and contact Gharchai. Then we ravage them as we move, and take them apart before they can pin us down again. That is the White Scars way. Leave shell-games to the sons of Dorn.’

 	Kor’sarro’s eyes narrowed as he studied the hologram. Silently he meditated on the advantages and repercussions of both stratagems. He knew which he preferred, but preference was not always wisdom. His eyes flickered to meet Ambaghai’s. The Stormseer met his gaze placidly. If Cemakar were a rock, and Jebe a bird of prey, then Ambaghai was a storm, implacable and impossible to predict. The Stormseer’s mouth quirked in what might have been a smile and Kor’sarro raised an eyebrow. ‘What is it?’ he said. 

 	Ambaghai reached into one of the many pouches that dangled from his equipment belt and retrieved a handful of something, which he scattered across the hologram dais. Finger-bones, Kor’sarro realised, from an ork or some unlucky heretic. Ambaghai was said to collect them himself, with one of the ceremonial knives sheathed at his waist, after every battle. He made special effort to claim the fingers of witches and psykers, for they channelled the will of the spirits more easily. Each length of bone was covered in delicately carved Khorchin characters, and each represented a symbol from the Chogorian zodiac. Ambaghai raised his hand, and the finger-bones rose like domino tiles, standing at attention. He made a circular gesture, and they rattled and fell, making a strange pattern. 

 	‘What do the spirits say?’ Cemakar asked. 

 	‘The spirits say why does it have to be one way or the other? Why not both at once?’ Ambaghai said. ‘There is no one true path, my khan. There are only potentialities, stories yet untold and horizons yet unseen. Which story we tell, and which horizon we seek is up to us, and we are free to do as we wish,’ he said and looked at Jebe. ‘We strike the enemy from as many directions as possible. We give them more targets than they can handle, and carve them up at our leisure. That is the White Scars way.’ Jebe glowered at the Stormseer but said nothing. 

 	‘What do the spirits say of Shadowsun?’ asked Kor’sarro, softly. 

 	Ambaghai looked at him, his face unreadable. Then he twitched his fingers, and the bones rattled. ‘She is here, my khan. Close, watching, waiting,’ he said. He met Kor’sarro’s gaze and added, ‘But you already knew that. You are the Master of the Hunt for good reason, my khan. Even the spirits defer to your tracking expertise. If you have brought us here, trap or no, here is where we should be.’ 

 	Kor’sarro stroked his moustaches with the side of his thumb, thinking. Ambaghai’s words had heartened him, but the tactic the seer had recommended would divide his forces even more than they currently already were. But if the enemy were counting on them hunkering down, it might throw them into disarray. And if they were counting on the White Scars to make a break-out attempt, leaving behind a force to hold the bastion might force the enemy to split their own forces in ways that they hadn’t planned for. 

 	He gazed at the hologram, trying to discern the nature of the ruse he faced. He was not, by nature, a strategist. There were other khans for whom the subtleties of the great game were as meat and drink, men for whom war was nothing more than a game of Go writ large. They thought in terms of ploys and feints. For Kor’sarro, however, war was an art. Every battlefield a canvas, every drop of spilled blood a brushstroke. Watching a battle unfold was like watching an image appear. The trick was to see what the image was before it was completed, and to ensure that the picture you had was the one you wanted. He touched the hologram, considering. To hesitate, either way, was to be lost. The Emperor frowned on vacillators and the over-cautious. 

 	‘Ambaghai is correct,’ he said, decision made. ‘The enemy seek to deny us our advantage, to limit our mobility by pinning us here. Those out there are merely the hand on our throat, but the blade will be descending soon enough.’ He looked around the room. ‘Wheel-and-spoke, my brothers. Cemakar, you and Jebe will be the wheel. Ambaghai, you and I shall be the spoke.’ He looked at Cemakar, who was already making as if to argue. ‘You will punch a hole through the tau lines with our armour, and half the bikes. Take Hasik. He’s our best rider, and he’s outrun the tau more than once. Don’t stop until you make contact with Gharchai.’ He looked at Ambaghai. ‘And we will hold the tau’s attention here. If that becomes untenable, we shall ride out after you.’ 

 	‘We’ve got a load of Castellans in the Whirlwind ready to fire,’ Cemakar said, begrudgingly. ‘That will buy us some time. But mark me, when they come, it’ll be with those blasted two-legged tanks of theirs.’ The others in the room growled or muttered at the mention of the enemy aburgma - the battlesuits. Such constructs were the bane of any battlefield, their destructive potential rivalled only by that of the Imperial Knights. 

 	Kor’sarro smiled. ‘I’m counting on it.’

 	‘This is the most powerful weapon in the universe,’ Thursk hefted his axe and spun it in a tight figure eight as he followed Ambaghai out of the command centre. ‘Axes can topple empires. They kill kings, daemons and monsters. On Phobian, axes are passed down from father to daughter, mother to son. This is the axe my mother used, and her father before her. She gave it to me, the day I was chosen to become a god of war. And though it has changed, as I have changed, it is still my axe.’ He glanced at Ambaghai. ‘Do you understand, Chogorian?’ 

 	‘Yes,’ Ambaghai said. He smiled. ‘However, your axe is here, and the enemy is, as yet, over there.’ He gestured at the outer wall. ‘Hence my question: would you like a bolter, cousin? Bok will not mind.’ He extended the bolter towards Thursk again. He was holding two, both claimed from the White Scars who’d fallen earlier. 

 	Thursk took the weapon. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Which one was Bok?’ He checked the clip. 

 	‘The dead one,’ Ambaghai said. He looked away. 

 	Thursk looked at him, and then back at the bolter in his hands. It was an ornate thing, lovingly edged in brass and silver, with a dragon’s head embossed on the barrel. An iron ring, heavy with the teeth of orks, had been attached to the grip, which was plated with bone, likely taken from the same orks who’d provided the teeth. ‘On Phobian, we left the bodies of the dead for the bats,’ he said. 

 	‘We did the same on Chogoris. Save we left them for the great eagles.’ Ambaghai sniffed. ‘Or we burned them.’

 	‘Fire attracted the bats,’ Thursk said. 

 	‘I can see where that would be a difficulty,’ Ambaghai said. ‘Were they big, these bats?’

 	‘Fairly,’ Thursk said. ‘They ate horses.’

 	‘I’m given to understand there are large wolves on Fenris,’ Ambaghai said, after a moment. ‘They eat men, or so the Space Wolves claim.’

 	Thursk made a rude sound. ‘Wolves,’ he said. 

 	‘The sons of Russ are quite particular about their wolves,’ Ambaghai said. But he smiled as he said it. Thursk chuckled. 

 	‘By the by, that was enlightening, back there,’ he said. The Stormseer looked at him, and the Dark Hunter held up a hand. ‘No mockery intended, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Among my brothers, command is not so fluid. One voice speaks, and all others listen.’

 	‘That has never been our way,’ Ambaghai said, somewhat chidingly, Thursk thought. ‘Even the great Jaghatai did not move without seeking council with his sub-khans. Men are not machines, cousin. They are not inclined to move in unison, or to act as one. A wise khan gives equal weight to every subordinate. He does not hesitate, but he considers, and then makes his decision accordingly, as every man must decide for himself to follow that decision. They must move as the spirit wills.’ 

 	‘By which you mean, they listen to you,’ Thursk said. 

 	‘Of course,’ Ambaghai said, ‘Wasn’t that what I said? I speak for the spirits, after all.’ He spread his arms and sucked in a lungful of the harsh, cold air. ‘This is the best time, cousin. This is the right place for us. The battle’s red edge is our tent, our battle-brothers, our kinsmen, and the haze of war is our meat and drink.’ 

 	‘Did your spirits whisper that to you?’ 

 	‘Don’t they whisper the same to you?’ Ambaghai said, tugging on his beard with a flick of his wrist. ‘Other Chapters merely wage war, cousin. The White Scars are war. We are the crash, the noise, the thunder. We are the confusion, and the madness and the inevitable end. We are the Star-Hunt. Where we ride, worlds die.’

 	‘One side, Phobian,’ Jebe said, brushing past Thursk, before the latter could reply. ‘Some of us have aliens to kill.’ The champion bounded out of the command centre, a spring in his step and a feral, childlike grin on his face. 

 	‘He looks cheerful,’ Thursk said. 

 	‘Of course he’s cheerful. He’s going to get to kill something,’ Cemakar grunted, joining Thursk and Ambaghai. Cemakar looked at the Stormseer. ‘Guard him well, Stormseer,’ he said. His face wrinkled up, as if he were uncomfortable saying the words.

 	‘Always,’ Ambaghai said. He inclined his head. Cemakar nodded tersely and stumped away. Thursk watched Cemakar follow Jebe towards the Razorback. Kor’sarro’s second in command barked orders with rapidity, gesticulating about him for emphasis. Of the two squads of White Scars that had ridden in the Rhino, one was staying behind, while the other was splitting its strength between the two Rhinos, both of which would be providing the muscle for the breakout attempt. The squad who’d come in the Razorback was staying behind as well. The transports were all but useless in the bastion, save as improvised barricades, and Kor’sarro had other plans for the defence of the place. 

 	While their commanders conferred, the White Scars had dragged rubble into position to create a series of zigzag strongpoints close to the command centre. As he watched, one of the White Scars used a meltagun to sear several sections of stone together into a crude bulwark. Thursk realised that they had no plan to block the hole in the wall, and immediately grasped the implication. The tau had a number of troops with the capability of entering the bastion by air, if they so wished, making the wall all but useless for defensive purposes. But those troops that couldn’t fly would be drawn to the gaping hole in the defences as their easiest point of ingress. The makeshift strongpoints were arranged in such a way so as to catch the inevitable assault in a killing field. It was a brutally efficient means of utilising their surroundings, and Thursk couldn’t help but be impressed. His own battle-brothers would have ignored the wall, but held the gap, leaving the courtyard empty, so as to draw in the flyers for dispatch. 

 	But that was the White Scars way, as he was coming to learn. They fought efficiently, utilising the least amount of effort for the maximum gain. It was the predator’s way, not the warrior’s. Bait and switch, induce and gut, bleed the enemy as much as possible before landing the killing blow. The tau fought in a similar manner, and he wondered whether Kor’sarro or Ambaghai had noticed. He refrained from mentioning it, for fear of giving insult. The White Scars weren’t as touchy as some of their Successors, but they could be oddly defensive when their way of war was called into question. 

 	He moved out into the courtyard, taking it all in. The Rhinos were stripped of everything that wasn’t necessary for the assault. In the field, the White Scars used their transports as mobile armouries, loading them up with anything they might require, so that they only rarely had to stop and resupply. Frag and krak grenades, replacement storm bolters, and packs of ammunition were brought into the entryway of the command centre, which had been converted into a temporary armoury. The bikes were stowed behind the strongpoints, for easy access. The courtyard was soon filled with the growl of engines, as the transports readied themselves for departure. Once a decision was made, the White Scars acted on it quickly. 

 	The white-armoured Space Marines moved briskly, and more than one sang softly to themselves as they worked. They spoke to each other, joked and laughed, and the sense of camaraderie amongst the Star-Hunt was obvious. A hand settled on his shoulder. Thursk turned, expecting to see Ambaghai. Instead, Kor’sarro Khan stood behind him. 

 	‘If you would go, now is the time, cousin,’ he said. 

 	Thursk hesitated. ‘Go?’ 

 	‘With Jebe and Cemakar,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘If I were in your place, I would not wish to be trapped here. And you are not under my command. You are here to observe, and learn, and if you would see us at our best, you must see us at the attack.’ 

 	Thursk looked at him. ‘In the Dellrond Campaign, my battle-brothers and I held the entrance to the Cathedral of the Emperor Ossified for five years against the greenskins,’ he said. He slung the bolter Ambaghai had given him over his shoulder. ‘By the end, we were using their bones as clubs.’ Kor’sarro said nothing. Thursk took that as an invitation to continue. ‘I am here to learn of your traditions, and see how you wage war, to learn the ways of Chogoris, and to show fealty to the Khan-of-Khans.’ He hefted his axe. ‘But this here, in this place, is how a Phobian wages war. Ambaghai said that the White Scars are war itself. If that is true, so too are the Dark Hunters, and I would show you that a son of Phobian can stand at the red edge as well as a son of Chogoris.’ He extended his axe. ‘And if I must fall where I stand to show you that, it is a small price to pay.’

 	Kor’sarro smiled. He laughed, grabbed Thursk’s helmeted head in both hands and brought their heads together. ‘Show me, brother. And then after, perhaps I will teach you to ride, hey?’ He released Thursk and stepped back. ‘Come, brother. We have blood to shed, for the Great Khan and the Emperor.’

 	Kor’sarro turned away from the Dark Hunter and raised his hands. The noise-level in the courtyard dimmed instantly. Outside the walls, he could hear the gathering storm. The xenos were readying themselves for their first assault. It would be artillery first, he knew. That was their way, and he did not begrudge them it. He looked around. ‘Go, and laugh while you kill,’ was all he said. The engines of the transports roared, and his men cheered. 

 	He unholstered his bolt pistol and trotted towards the wall. The Dark Hunter fell in beside him and Ambaghai as well. They, along with the remaining battle-brothers, would cover Cemakar’s assault. A Space Marine stalked past him, hefting one of the extra heavy bolters, loops of ammunition curling about him. The warrior caught his eye and patted the heavy weapon. ‘Honour of first blood, my khan,’ he asked. His tone was hopeful. 

 	‘By all means, sing them a song of death, Godi,’ Kor’sarro said, recognising the White Scar. ‘Make it loud, and tuneful, eh?’ 

 	‘I’ll make it something cheerful as well, shall I, my khan?’ Godi said. 

 	Kor’sarro laughed and gestured to the wall. The Rhino that had been blocking it revved up, and pulled back, dislodging loose bits. Godi stepped into the breach and the heavy bolter roared. Without slowing his rate of fire, the White Scar stepped sideways, out of the breach. Another White Scar, carrying the second of the two replacement heavy bolters, followed suit, stepping out into the open, and then shuffling out of the path of the vehicles behind him. Spent shells dropped steaming to the snow from the feed-boxes of the heavy bolters. 

 	Past them, Kor’sarro saw camouflaged vehicles rising over the snow, weapons glowing with pale energy. Tau fire warriors, clad in white armour, hurled themselves to the ground, seeking cover. They’d been moving into position to make an assault, as he suspected. He wondered, idly, why they were called fire warriors. He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. There would be time for such thoughts later, once the enemy was defeated. 

 	The vehicles visible behind the fire warriors were mostly transports, but there was one bunker-buster, armed with the strongest energy weapons the aliens possessed, a Hammerhead, he thought it was called. Even when they’re being sneaky, they’re predictable, Kor’sarro thought. The tau forces were as dogmatic in their way as the warriors of Ultramar. That was both their strength, and their weakness. He slapped the hull of the Razorback. ‘Ride, brothers, ride and ravage!’ 

 	As if in reply, the Razorback’s twin-linked heavy bolters roared, adding to the noise. Its driver gunned the engine and sent it rumbling forward out through the breach. Behind it, the Whirlwind fired a barrage of Castellans, littering the ground to either side of the breach with explosive mines. The Rhinos followed the Whirlwind, breaking to either side of the latter as they cleared the gap in order to cover it while it reloaded. The Rhinos’ storm bolters added their voices to the Razorback’s heavy bolters and the air was filled with scything death. Tau warriors died, torn apart by the explosive bolts. One of their transport vehicles slewed awkwardly aside and smashed up against the escarpment, exploding in a ball of fire. The flickering shapes which had sought to keep the White Scars pinned down revealed themselves as they fired at the transports. 

 	Kor’sarro gestured. ‘There, the sirguma!’ he roared. He’d been hoping they’d reveal themselves, if only long enough for the White Scars to teach them the price for doing so. Godi pivoted at his khan’s command, and the heavy bolter in his hands roared in harmony with the storm bolter from one of the Rhinos. The weird, bulky, insectile shapes of the armoured tau twitched and jerked as they were caught in the crossfire. Three of them fell, their armour sparking and hissing as it collapsed into mangled ruin. The others sped away, their forms blurring and vanishing in the still-falling snow that swirled thickly on the air. 

 	The four vehicles ploughed through the tau lines, the Razorback’s reinforced hull smashing aside a tau transport in a crash of metal. The tau were not swift to react, seemingly stunned by the sudden assault. Kor’sarro hesitated, wondering if they should press the attack, but the moment passed. The air was split by the whistle of turbines. Heavy shapes dropped down through the snow, and the ground shook with the impact. The hulking shapes of the enemy battlesuits advanced slowly through the whirling snow. At the sight of them, the tau fire warriors seemed to gather their courage, and they began to advance, their pulse rifles snapping.

 	‘Back inside, brothers,’ Kor’sarro said quietly, trusting in the vox-circuit to carry his words despite the noise of the advancing tau troops. ‘It’s time to bait the xenos into a trap of our own.’

 
 
 Chapter Three


 	‘Reload! I want incendiaries to cover our flanks. Heat disrupts the xenos targeting scanners. Set this whole blasted ridge on fire if you have to,’ Cemakar roared into his comm-unit. Around him, the air was filled with the thrum of the powerful engines of the Hunter’s Stroke. Other than the crew, he and Jebe were the only passengers aboard the Razorback. His augmented hearing could pick up every grind of the treads and every squeal of the armoured plates flexing. Even the company’s Techmarines didn’t have Old Shatterhand’s ear for ailing pistons and fraying filters. 

 	He grinned to himself, but was careful not to let it show on his face. The children thought he didn’t know about their name for him. He flexed his hand, feeling the pull of old wounds beneath the white ceramite. He had almost lost it once, pulling a screaming, puling wet thing out of the corrupted chassis of one of the nightmare engines of the Great Enemy. He had torn the chassis open and plunged his hand through the acidic bile that had filled it, even as the engine had tried to scissor him in half with its battle-claw. It had been a necessity, at the time. Now it was a story, to be passed around the fire. Such was the way of it. 

 	Jebe grunted in disgust and Cemakar dropped his hand. ‘We shouldn’t be disrupting them. We should be attacking them,’ he said. ‘I thought we were fighting, old man.’ The champion crouched awkwardly in his seat, his sword across his knees. Why he didn’t just sheath the damn thing, Cemakar didn’t know. Nor did he bother to ask. The only thing more worthless than Jebe’s opinion was… well, there wasn’t really anything more worthless than that.

 	‘We are fighting them, or did you not notice the gunfire?’ Cemakar spat. He paused to glare at the champion. Cemakar had seen a hundred warriors take up the company’s honour for their own, and of that hundred, Jebe was easily the most annoying. He was the youngest to hold that position since Kor’sarro himself, and his trophy-pole was overbalanced with skulls and scalps. He saw a mulish glint flare in the champion’s eyes. 

 	‘That’s not what I meant,’ Jebe said, ‘We left the khan. We should not have done that!’ 

 	‘No, we shouldn’t have,’ Cemakar said. ‘But he is khan. And we have our task. Let us try and accomplish it with what grace we may.’ He looked hard at the champion. ‘Withdraw, and then return. That is our way. Strike, ride and strike again.’ He turned and hammered on the reinforced turret, where the Razorback’s gunner was busy firing at the tau that had pursued them. They’d managed to pull roughly half of the tau force in their wake. Everything that could keep up with them had come after them. That lessened the pressure on the khan, but it was going to make contacting Gharchai almost impossible. ‘Keep the khamar from getting too close to Yesugei’s Teeth, Mongke, or I’ll have your topknot,’ he said, referring to the Whirlwind. They needed the battle tank in one piece and functional. He turned and made his way to the driver’s compartment. ‘What’s waiting for us,’ he said, leaning through the hatch. 

 	‘Our sensors and communications are still jammed,’ the driver said. ‘We’re charging blind.’ He paused, and then added, ‘Not that that’s anything new.’ 

 	‘So long as we keep charging,’ Cemakar grunted, dropping a hand on the Space Marine’s helmet and giving it a shake. ‘Don’t stop, Tolui. Our khan’s life depends on our speed.’ 

 	‘Speed I can give you. Just don’t ask me to get us there in one piece,’ Tolui said. Cemakar could hear the grin in his voice, even though his features were hidden beneath his helmet. He nodded, pleased. It was good that Tolui was cheerful. War was a craft, and a craftsman must take pleasure in his work, else why do it? 

 	As Cemakar slipped back into the passenger compartment, the comm-bead in his ear crackled. ‘Report,’ he said. 

 	‘We’ve – ost conta – ith Tulwar,’ a voice spat. The urgency of the words carried through the hiss of static, if not the words themselves. Cemakar cursed. The vehicles had limited contact, thanks to the tau jamming signal. There could be any number of reasons they’d lost contact. If the Rhino had drifted too far behind the others, even by just a few metres, the signal could have succumbed to the interference. 

 	‘Get that damn hatch open,’ he shouted back at the crew compartment. 

 	‘Which one?’ Tolui called back. 

 	‘Which one, he says. The one I’m staring at, you horse’s knuckle,’ Cemakar snarled. He snatched up his bolter and stomped towards the Razorback’s rear hatch. Jebe was on his feet and a half pace behind. Cemakar thrust a finger at him without stopping. ‘You, stay.’ 

 	‘But– ’ Jebe began. 

 	‘My Razorback, my rules,’ Cemakar snapped. ‘Is everyone going to argue with me today?’ He didn’t bother waiting for a reply. Instead he hurried to the rear hatch. He checked the bolter’s clip as he moved. The pneumatics that controlled the hatch hissed as it opened wide, letting in the cold and snow. Cemakar grabbed a dangling equipment strap and stepped to the edge, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the moonlight on the snow. 

 	They had reached the narrowest point of Rime Crag, where the rocky ground thinned to a barely passable lip, just above a snow-encrusted slope. The slope itself was an undulating ribbon of rock that stretched down into one of the many basin valleys that now dotted the poisonous surface of the hive world. The basins were in actuality immense, kilometres-across impact craters, souvenirs of an Inquisition sanctioned Exterminatus at some point in Agrellan’s history. Cemakar inhaled the poisonous air, snorted and spat a gobbet of acidic spittle. The planet was a death-trap. The tau would have ignored it, and rightly, if it hadn’t occupied the sector of space it did. It was a key world. To take the Damocles Gulf the xenos had to take Agrellan. 

 	Yesugei’s Teeth was just behind them, its missile pods swivelling as it sought out targets. Bikes roared past, jinking in and out of the line. Behind the Whirlwind, one of the Rhinos trundled along, a White Scar in the cupola, his hands on the grips of the storm bolter. Overhead, the roar of the Razorback’s heavy bolters had faded, leaving behind only the grinding grumble of the treads rolling over rock and snow. The tau vehicles which had been harrying them had fallen back. Cemakar grunted. He hadn’t expected that. He craned his neck, trying to spot the second Rhino. Had they fallen behind, or…? Dark thoughts flickered across the surface of his mind, stirring from cynical recesses of a mind hardened in the ways of war. 

 	The explosion, when it came, was not a surprise so much as an unwelcome confirmation of his suspicions. He saw a flaming chunk of wreckage slide down the slope far behind them. He knew instantly that the warriors aboard Tulwar were as good as dead, whether they had been in the Rhino or not. He cursed. The tau had been prepared for a breakout. No wonder they didn’t put up much in the way of resistance, he thought. He considered ordering the bikes to check for survivors, and then dismissed the thought. They had their task, and he’d be damned if he’d let a few filthy khamar prevent them from accomplishing it. He tapped the bead in his ear. ‘Hasik,’ he growled. Static hissed in his ear as he tried to make contact with the leader of the bikes. He cursed and pushed on, on the off chance Hasik was receiving him, ‘Hasik, keep going, whatever happens to us. Make contact with Gharchai. That is your only duty.’

 	He began to order the Whirlwind to collapse the ridge shelf behind them, in order to stall whatever the tau had unleashed, when flickering shapes landed onto the battle tank from above. The Stealth suits crawled over the top of the tank, and they fired at him. Cemakar bellowed in fury as projectiles ricocheted throughout the Razorback’s interior. He let loose a burst with his bolter and slammed a fist repeatedly against the top of the hatch. ‘Mongke, you blind bovid-brained…’ he began. He faltered as a white-armoured body tumbled down onto the lowered lip of the hatch, and splashed blood across his feet. Mongke, he realised, as the kroot swung down into the Razorback. There were five of the alien mercenaries. They were covered in patchy white fur over their rubbery hide and their skull spines rattled as they came for him with raucous shrieks. 

 	The kroot wore heavy harnesses – rappelling gear, he thought – and carried thick, serrated blades. They had likely been lurking on the crags above and pounced as soon as the Razorback passed beneath. ‘Jebe!’ he roared, smashing the first of them aside with his bolter. The kroot spun away and out of the open hatch, but the others paid it no heed. They slammed into him, knocking him off his feet. Ugly, veined air sacs decorated their wattle throats, and pulsed wetly as the creatures’ breath rasped in their lungs. The xenos cannibals had the ability to adapt to their surroundings, he knew. These had obviously figured out a way to survive in Agrellan’s virus bomb-ravaged environment. 

 	Their blades scored his armour as he wrestled with them. He was heavier and stronger, but they had the advantage of numbers and a raw ferocity that would have put an ork to shame. He’d lost his bolter in the fall, and he clawed for the combat knife sheathed on his hip as he grabbed a snapping beak that had darted for his face. Three of the kroot scrambled off him and started towards the front of the Razorback. Cemakar had no time to shout another warning. His attacker’s blade slid between his shoulder plate and gorget, tearing through the carapace to dig into the tough flesh beneath. He left off trying to grab his knife and instead grabbed the kroot’s avian skull in both hands and jerked it towards him. Their skulls connected with an audible thump and the kroot reared back in surprise and pain. 

 	Cemakar grappled with it, and they rolled down the lowered hatch, bumping over Mongke’s limp body. He drove a fist into its side, and was rewarded by the snap of bones. The kroot shrilled and slashed at him. He caught its wrist and drove his palm up into an oddly-jointed elbow, shattering the joint. Then, with a jerk, he drove the creature’s own blade into its throat. He booted the body off the ramp, and it was swiftly ground under the Whirlwind’s treads. 

 	He grunted in satisfaction and looked up. The Stealth suits were too busy to notice him. They were preoccupied firing at the Rhino’s gunner, who was trying to draw a bead on the creatures with his storm bolter without damaging the Whirlwind. He turned to reclaim his bolter, and he nearly slammed face-to-beak with a kroot. Startled, he nearly toppled from the ramp, but regained his balance. The kroot tumbled past him, trailing blood. 

 	‘Is that all of them?’ Jebe asked. The champion was covered in blood, none of it his. Cemakar wondered how he’d managed to employ his sword in the close confines of the Razorback. He gestured back towards the Whirlwind.

 	‘Stowaways,’ he rasped, grabbing hold of Mongke and dragging him up the ramp and back into the Razorback. Jebe reached out a hand and helped him. ‘Tulwar is gone. Orchai is going to need some help. Grab my – what in the nine hells are you doing?’ 

 	‘Helping,’ Jebe said, stalking out onto the ramp, sword in hand. Without a backwards glance, he gathered himself and leapt, clearing the distance between the Razorback’s ramp and the Whirlwind’s front hull. He slammed into the latter and scrambled up. As he reached the top, his blade seemed to spin in his hands and a Stealth suit exploded and tumbled away in a cloud of smoke and snow, cloven from hip to shoulder. The remaining two turned, and Jebe charged towards them. His blade licked out, peeling an armour-plate from one, and the force of the blow sent the tau spinning from the Whirlwind. The tau tried to activate its jetpack, but too late as it struck a rocky outcropping and vanished. 

 	The remaining xenos fired, and Jebe leapt from the top of the Whirlwind. He caught hold of the side hatch, and dangled for a moment, trying to right himself. The remaining sirguma crouched on the edge of the roof and took aim, but before it could fire, the storm bolter on the Rhino roared and the tau vanished in a burst of blood, smoke and mangled armour. Jebe laughed as it fell past him and vanished down the slope.

 	Before Cemakar could do more than shake his head in disbelief, the face of the ridge behind the Rhino bulged outward suddenly. Cemakar’s eyes widened as the massive battlesuit tore its way out of the concealed alcove that had been carved into the curve of the ridge and ploughed through the snow behind the Rhino. It was bigger than any other battlesuit he’d had the bad fortune to encounter, at least twice the height of the others, and roughly the same size as the Imperial Knights. He watched as the massive construct hurled the camouflaged tarpaulin that had hidden its alcove aside and raced for the Rhino, snow billowing in its wake. It was fast, too fast for its size. ‘To your rear,’ he roared, ‘look to your rear!’ 

 	The Space Marine in the Rhino’s cupola tensed, and began to turn, but too late. The battlesuit was on the transport a moment later, grabbing its rear. The engine stuttered as the Rhino’s treads lost their grip on the ground. Cemakar could only gape as the Rhino was upended and sent crashing down on top of the Whirlwind. The latter’s missile pod exploded in gouts of flame, as missiles exploded or fired automatically and the force of it flung Cemakar backwards into the Razorback. Flames filled the loading bay, obscuring the fate of the battle tank and Jebe both. He coughed and groped his way to his feet, half-blind and mostly deaf. He staggered towards the crew compartment. 

 	‘Tolui, have you made contact with the Khwarezmian yet?’ he croaked. He peered out through the view-slit. He could see the shapes of the bikes, or what he hoped were the bikes, hurtling far ahead. Hasik had got his message – or he was seizing the initiative. Either way, the message would get through.

 	‘No,’ the driver said tersely. ‘Mongke?’ he asked. 

 	‘Dead,’ Cemakar said. ‘We’re the last, besides Hasik and his riders. Keep us moving. Don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop…’ he trailed off as the ridge face in front of them bulged, and a second battlesuit burst into view, blocking their path. He leaned forward. ‘Ram it!’

 	Tolui complied, but Cemakar knew that it was too little, too late. The battlesuit levelled its weapon, and fired.

 	‘Here they come,’ Kor’sarro said. He stood amidst the improvised strongpoints, in full view of the gap. Moonfang was planted in the ground before him, his palms resting on the pommel. Godi and the other designated heavy bolter gunner had retreated behind cover as soon as they’d re-entered the bastion at his command. He was Master of the Hunt, and the honour of drawing their prey in fell to him. 

 	Kor’sarro watched the white-armoured forms of the fire warriors creep forward in silence. They moved with inhuman precision, more like a flock of birds or a herd of horses than men. Snow crunched beneath their feet as they came, and he could smell the odd, briney tang of their blood on the air. The mines the barrage of Castellans had laid had done their work. The only path of assault that remained to the tau was through the breach in the wall. 

 	The assault had begun as the snow had slackened. He recalled from the briefings he’d only half-listened to that inclement weather played havoc with the tau sensors, and camouflage technology. They’d fired at the walls and the rocky escarpment that rose over it, dropping snow and rock on the bastion. All of it was intended to drive the White Scars back from the walls, to force them to seek cover in smaller and smaller holes. It was a simple enough plan and cunning, for all that it ignored that speed was not simply a matter of space. 

 	Behind the fire warriors, the Hammerhead had ceased its barrage. He could hear the whine of the approaching battlesuits, and smell the searing stink of the energies used by the tau weapons. The fire warriors would seek to push them back, and keep them pinned in one spot, easy meat for the battlesuits. On top of the walls, hazy shapes flickered and moved, their presence revealed by the drifting snow. Red dots suddenly appeared on his chest, bobbing across the aquila before veering off to seek out other prey. ‘Ambaghai,’ he sub-vocalised. 

 	‘I see them, my khan,’ the Stormseer said. The Stealth suits were there only to keep them boxed in, Kor’sarro thought. He could have been wrong, but he doubted it. They likely had orders not to engage, unless absolutely necessary. 

 	‘Can you call the storm?’ he asked. The tau had reached the gap in the wall. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a fierce smile. Come on, just a few steps farther, he thought. 

 	‘The spirits of this world are dull-witted and the winds stubborn, but I think I can convince the snows to fall,’ Ambaghai said. Kor’sarro could hear the strain in the Stormseer’s voice, even through the fuzz of the static that afflicted the vox-channel thanks to the tau jamming frequencies. He was asking much of Ambaghai, but they needed any advantage they could get. When the assault failed, the tau would likely move straight to trying to tear the bastion apart around them. When that happened, they might have to move, Khwarezmian or no, and the snow would be as good a distraction as they could hope for. 

 	‘Take your time,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘They owe us for Bok and Jochi. I would have them pay their debt soonest, and at once.’ The fire warriors had cleared the breach. If they noticed the way the rubble had been cleared, and situated, they gave no sign. Perhaps they saw but did not understand. Perhaps they understood, but came on regardless. Kor’sarro thought it was the latter, and bowed his head. Brave prey was the best prey. Then, he clasped Moonfang by its hilt and jerked the softly humming blade from the ground in a spray of snow and stone. 

 	He glided forward, palm flat on Moonfang’s pommel, the tip of the blade angled down. The tau had stopped, unprepared for an assault by a single warrior. Kor’sarro gave a bark of laughter. As if in slow motion, the pulse rifles swung towards him, and he heard the rough sibilants of the tau language crackle through the air. His laugh grew, spearing out ahead of him, like the shadow of a swooping eagle. 

 	Alien fingers twitched on triggers, but slow, too slow. Moonfang’s pommel rolled beneath his palm and the blade arced up. His grip loosened and the blade scythed out. A fire warrior lost its head, and blood sprayed across the front of its comrades’ helmets. Kor’sarro was among them a moment later. Moonfang spun in his grip, and the machine-spirit within the power sword pulsed fiercely as it tasted xenos blood. He lopped off limbs and heads, shattered weapons and cracked armour. 

 	Waste no movement, Kor’sarro thought. His elbow caught a fire warrior in the chest, crushing the delicate bones beneath the armour, as he pulled Moonfang across a throat. He whirled and chopped through the barrel of a pulse rifle. Do not bother with flourish or flair, concentrate on the principle, complete the canvas in as many strokes as it takes, no more, no less, he thought, leaning back as a short barrelled pulse carbine cracked. He felt the heat of the shot as it passed past him and the world sped up as he hunched forward, pivoted and drove Moonfang through the shooter’s chest hard enough to lift the tau off its feet and nail it to the wall. He jerked the blade free and stepped back, arms spread, xenos blood dripping from his armour and sword. 

 	He gazed at the fire warrior teams that had stopped just before the wall. Their advance had faltered in the face of his attack on the first team through the breach. Arms still spread he stepped back, as if inviting them in to his tent. The snow had begun to fall more heavily, and the wind stirred what had already fallen, rousing it into undulating flurries. Kor’sarro smiled and lowered his arms. Ambaghai had done as promised. He planted Moonfang into the ground in front of him. He made a beckoning gesture and said, ‘Well, who’s next?’

 	Thursk shook his head as he watched Kor’sarro trot back behind cover, his path peppered with a fusillade from the advancing fire warriors. The khan had his sword resting on his shoulder, and paid no attention to the shots that sizzled through the air about him. A White Scar handed him a bolter and he nodded agreeably, sheathing his blade. 

 	‘He’s mad,’ Thursk said, as he returned fire. 

 	‘No, he is an artist,’ Ambaghai said. The Stormseer sat on the ground, beside Thursk, his hands on his staff and his head bowed. His voice was tight with strain, and his eyes glowed with an eerie blue light. ‘A sculptor, who shapes violence the way the men of Qo-Chin shaped clay to make the fluted tea-bowls so prized by that folk.’ As he spoke, the snow flurries grew more savage, and the wind whipped through the courtyard with a shriek.

 	Thursk did not reply. He utilised the bolter with the precision that had been drilled into him during the stand at the Cathedral of the Emperor Ossified, one shot, one kill. Any more was waste, and in a situation like this, waste was as much an enemy as the one in front of you. The fire warriors moved swiftly, but they had nowhere to go. The White Scars had created a killing ground, and convinced the tau to walk obligingly into it. Nonetheless, the xenos seemed determined to make a fight of it. 

 	Orks would have simply charged, and died in waves. But the tau warriors were smarter than that. The fire warrior teams leap-frogged past one another, first one team moving, and then the next, each one covering the other as best they could. More drones buzzed over them, absorbing some of the punishment meant for the fire warriors in a splash of crackling energy. Shield drones, Thursk realised. 

 	Pulse bursts scarred the improvised barricade he crouched behind, but he ignored the dust and flinders of stone which spattered across his helmet. One of the White Scars was singing. Others took the song up, and the sound of it seemed to affect the tau as badly as the bolter shells that tore the life from their fellows. The fire warriors began to fall back, some attempting to drag their wounded with them. Thursk saw something out of the corner of his eye and slid around.

 	Burst cannon roared and the White Scar nearest him staggered. Thursk lunged to his feet, grabbed the wounded Space Marine and flung him to the ground behind him. Through the eddying snow, he saw the shape of a Stealth suit crouched on the strongpoint, cannon whirring, with smoke rising from the barrel. Two more suits raced across the tops of the strongpoints, seeking to cover the fire warriors’ retreat. They attacked and hopped away, seeking to divert rather than kill. 

 	He swung his bolter up towards the one closest to him, and a gun drone smashed into him, knocking the weapon from his hand. Thursk’s other hand snapped out, snagging the drone. He yanked it in front of him as the burst cannon spat. The storm of projectiles chewed the drone to pieces and drew sparks from his armour, staggering him. He saw the other Stealth suits closing in. He’d made himself a target. He hurled the smoking, spitting drone at the closest and leapt for his axe, where he’d left it leaning against the strongpoint. He snatched it up as the burst cannon chewed the ground around him. 

 	The wounded White Scar fired at the Stealth suit, drawing its attention. Thursk launched himself at it while it was distracted, and his axe sheared through the barrel of its weapon. It slashed at him with the ruined gun, and he ducked. As it made to leap out of range, he lunged and hooked it with his axe, hauling it forward. The tau inside squalled as he wrapped his arm around the suit’s shoulders and drove it headfirst into the wall of the command centre as hard as he could. Metal buckled and the alien voice was stilled. He shoved the dead weight aside and rose, axe ready. The dead alien’s comrades had retreated, their jetpacks carrying them back to the wall and then over it. They had accomplished their task, however. The fire warriors had retreated back through the breach. 

 	Thursk hauled the wounded White Scar to his feet and helped him walk to the command centre. The warrior grunted his thanks. Thursk set him down and rejoined the others outside. 

 	‘They’ve tried the blade, now they’ll use the hammer,’ Kor’sarro said, his voice carrying clearly through the vox-channel. ‘Dig in, and ready yourselves for the storm. They’ll send in their assault troops as soon as the dust has cleared.’ The khan saw Thursk and gestured to him. ‘The Phobian is in command.’ He strode towards Thursk and knocked a knuckle against his aquila. ‘We’ve got some time. They’ll need to regroup, and Ambaghai’s snows will keep them at bay for a little while. I’m going to see if Old Shatterhand has done as he promised. Hold the line, brother.’

 	‘My khan,’ Thursk said. Kor’sarro nodded and entered the command centre. Thursk looked around at the watching White Scars, and took a steadying breath. ‘Well, you heard him. Dig in. It’s still a long way yet until morning.’

 	Kor’sarro moved through the darkened base. The comm-bead in his ear sparked and spluttered, and he winced and tapped at it. The local frequencies were still being jammed. He needed to be in amongst his warriors for the vox to work. He’d left a Space Marine named Cholk in the command centre, in an attempt to boost the signal using a spare vox-unit. The White Scars had learned over the centuries of incessant warfare that specialisation was the enemy of effective battlefield operations. Or, so it was, at least, for their sort of operations. Every White Scar had to be an army in and of himself, capable of fixing his own bike, or seeing to his own hurts on the move. The Star-Hunt would not be slowed.

 	As such, the warriors under his command had picked up their fair share of skills. Cholk knew almost as much about long-range communication as one of the ordu’s own vox-specialists. He hadn’t been happy at being left out of the fight, but sacrifices had to be made for the successful prosecution of a hunt. 

 	Kor’sarro smiled at the thought, but it faded as his nose caught the sharp tang of blood. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword as he stepped into the central chamber of the command centre. Cholk was dead, his armour ripped and torn, the black carapace visible, and the contact nodes exposed and bloody, as if he’d been caught in an explosion, his hand only bare centimetres from his bolter. The vox-unit was smashed. The hologram spun around and around, showing Rime Crag from every angle. He saw markers indicating what he thought were Cemakar and the others, moving along the ridge. More markers, ones he didn’t recognise, closed in, boxing the convoy in. The markers flared and faded. 

 	‘Traps within traps,’ he muttered. It was an artful strategy, taken at a remove. He’d been baited in, and his fangs, claws and scales plucked from him piecemeal, shearing him of his weapons. And it was only part of a greater whole, he knew. That was what made it all so galling. 

 	He’d come to Agrellan, convinced he was the hunter. Instead, he’d become the hunted, and Shadowsun was on his trail, chivvying him along to a point of her choosing. He looked around, senses strained to their utmost. He looked at the hologram again, and saw two markers that were similar. Something about them, about the colour and the crude slashes that designated them, prodded his memory. One marker was on the ridge, and involved in the affray around the convoy. The other was inside the bastion. 

 	His thoughts crystallised. The base hadn’t been defended because it was a trap that much was obvious. But there were obvious traps, and more subtle ones. The tau had expected them to hold, or to run, and had planned for either contingency. They knew that it would be difficult to pry the White Scars out, once they’d dug in, and difficult to slow down, once they’d begun to move, but why bother when your goal is the death of one, rather than many?

 	Metal creaked. Whatever had killed Cholk hadn’t been a tau. Too quiet, too vicious… he caught a whiff of an acrid, avian odour and grunted. Shadowsun wanted to bring him to heel, so she’d dispatched the best hunting dogs at her disposal to set their teeth in his legs. While the tau harried, distracted and disorientated, the true hunters struck out at their prey. 

 	‘I hear you,’ he said, softly. ‘I smell you.’ He drew his blade slowly. They were all around him, though he hadn’t noticed them when he’d entered. They’d masked their odour, somehow, or else had been hiding elsewhere in the bastion. He frowned. He should have ordered a search of the bastion after all. 

 	The first of the kroot came at him from the side. He caught sight of leathery muscles and rattling spines as it sprang for him from out of nowhere, seemingly appearing out of thin air. The kroot squalled as it chopped down at him. He intercepted the blow with Moonfang, and the alien’s crude weapon shattered. Before the creature could react, Kor’sarro brought the tip of the blade across its throat as he drew his bolt pistol. As the first kroot fell, he was already firing at the second, which slithered across the wall at him with reptilian speed. The second alien tumbled down, its skull burst by his first shot. But there were more. Blades scissored down, carving gouges in his armour as he whirled. The rubbery hides of the kroot swam with the colours of the command centre as they bled into view, coming at him from all directions, quills rattling. They carried only blades, likely hoping to avoid the attention of the bastion’s defenders. They crouched on the hologram dais, clung to the walls and stalked across the floor, croaking and clicking to one another in their debased beast-tongue. Kor’sarro smiled and stepped back, arms spread. ‘Come then, beasts. Come to the huntsman.’

 	The kroot swarmed forward. Kor’sarro backhanded one with his pistol, and fangs broke and flew as the beast’s avian head snapped backwards. He blocked a knife that dug for his gut, and chopped through an exposed neck with Moonfang. Alien blood splashed across the consoles as he pivoted, slashed and spun. His attackers did not retreat, leaping on him with harsh cries. They seemed eager to claim the gift of death, and Kor’sarro could not bring himself to deny them. 

 	As he fought, he marvelled at the complexity of the snare that he had found himself in. Shadowsun had laid traps within traps within traps, paring his forces down, peeling away his weapons and defences, like a hunter isolating a lone bovid from its herd. But there was something he was still missing. So he fought, and in the fighting, found understanding. The answer, when it crystallised, made him laugh out loud. He brought Moonfang down on the skull of the last of the kroot, killing the alien warrior instantly. Then, without a spare glance for the bloody wreckage he left behind him, he strode out of the command centre. 

 	Shadowsun was here. For all her cunning, for all her skill, she was still a huntress. And no hunter, however skilled or canny, could resist being in at the kill. Kor’sarro smiled. The night was not yet done, and he had an oath to fulfil. 

 	‘I hear you huntress, I hear the sound of your horn. And Kor’sarro Khan is coming!’

 
 
 Chapter Four


 	Jebe rolled onto his face and pushed himself to his knees. His armour was covered in scorch marks and dull grey patches where the colour had been stripped from it by his fall down the slope. He had held onto his sword, despite everything. That was some comfort, though not as much as he’d hoped. The explosion that had consumed the Whirlwind had hurled him down the slope, and he felt ever metre of that journey in his limbs and skull.

 	Snow spun in lazy circles about him, and smoke boiled down off Rime Crag. He used his sword to lever himself to his feet. His power armour had absorbed the brunt of the Whirlwind’s demise, but the flesh of his face felt raw, and there was blood on his gorget. The air tasted foul as well, and for a moment, he found himself wishing that he’d worn his helmet. 

 	Angrily, he pushed the thought aside. His khan did not wear one, so the champion would not. That was the way of it. He was the khan’s will, the company’s will, made manifest. Above him, he heard the whine of servos and pistons, and saw the massive outline of the alien battlesuit move through the smoke and the flames. He could hear the dull boom of bolter fire. Someone was still alive up there, and fighting. 

 	Somewhere below him, snow crunched. Jebe turned. Lightly armoured tau warriors were moving up the slope towards him. Pathfinders, was what the Imperial briefing had called them. He hadn’t been listening closely. Jebe didn’t see much point in naming something that had been as good as dead the moment it set foot on an Imperial world. The red beams of several markerlights played across his battered armour, and he grimaced. His hand darted for the bolt pistol holstered on his hip, only to find the holster empty, and tattered from the explosion. He didn’t waste his breath on a curse. Instead, he whirled and sprinted up the slope. Behind him, the night was lit up with pulse bursts. They struck the slope all around him as he pushed his battered body to its limits. If he could reach the ridge, the smoke and flame would guard him from being shot down like a dog. 

 	And he’d get to fight something worthy of his blade. His eyes locked on the bulk of the alien battlesuit as it stalked through the smoke and snow. That was prey worthy of the champion of the Third. The smoke enfolded him like a mother’s arms. 

 	The ridge was covered in debris. Flames rippled through the air, streaking the night. He could smell spilled blood and oil. Broad shapes flickered eerily through the smoke, like hunting beasts following a scent. They were moving in pursuit of three of his brothers, one of whom was being dragged or carried between them. They fired at their pursuers, but between the snow, the smoke and the shimmering camouflage of the latter, their shots went wild. Jebe lifted his blade to his lips and kissed it lightly. Then he began to hunt the hunters. 

 	They had no idea he was there. They were too intent on the limping, straggling figures ahead of them. When he struck them, it was without warning, and with every ounce of speed he could muster. His sword chopped into metal, as his boot snapped out and up, catching a second xenos in the chest. Armour buckled as the alien fell, and Jebe tore his sword free and sent it slashing out to catch a third hunter in the shoulder. He ducked under the latter’s burst cannon as it flailed out at him, and grabbed it as he bobbed to his feet. He reversed his sword and slid it into the hunter’s chest as the burst cannon began to fire. He jerked the body around, so that the fusillade caught the remaining hunters. 

 	As the last of them sank down, wreathed in smoke, he ripped his sword free and let the body fall. He looked at his brothers. There were three of them, one supported between the other two. ‘Running like whipped curs, brothers? Is that how the warriors of the Star-Hunt act?’

 	‘It is when we’re the ones being hunted,’ one of the Space Marines said matter-of-factly. ‘We were regrouping, with haste.’ He had lost his helmet, and the scars on his face stood out against his soot-blackened flesh, as did the gleaming metal campaign studs that lined the side of his skull. He carried a power glaive loosely in his free hand, and by its condition, it had seen much use. 

 	‘We do not need to regroup,’ Jebe said. ‘The Khagan once said, “Be the centre of every engagement, and victory will come on wings of smoke and wind.”’

 	‘We were being the centre,’ the other White Scar said. He jerked his head in the direction they’d been going. He carried a battered bolter, its sling wrapped tight around his forearm. Polished bones and golden bells dangled from cords threaded through holes punched in his gorget. ‘We were just going to be it over there, behind cover.’ 

 	Jebe made to argue the point, when an energy burst skidded across his shoulder plate. He whirled about and saw the pathfinders approaching through the flames and smoke. The heavy shape of a large, cylindrical drone floated above them, its weapons oscillating. He looked back at the others. ‘Over there, you say?’

 	Cemakar bit back a groan as Tolui pried the fang of burnt metal out of his belly. Blood pumped around the wound and then quickly began to coagulate. Cemakar resisted the urge to touch it and said, ‘How bad, boy?’ 

 	‘Remember when that genestealer bit you?’ 

 	‘Vividly,’ Cemakar said. They were hunkered behind a section of wreckage from the Razorback. Tolui had managed to angle the vehicle at the last moment so that the blast had struck its side, rather than its front, sparing them the worst of it. Even so, the blast had been strong enough to tear the Razorback apart and knock what was left off the ridge and down the slope. Flames crackled nearby, and the falling snow turned to steam before it reached the ground thanks to the heat radiating from the wreckage.

 	‘Worse than that,’ Tolui said. ‘Do you feel like you’re dying?’

 	‘I wouldn’t know,’ Cemakar said. He levered himself up onto his elbows. ‘How many survived?’ He could hear bolter fire above them, and the comm-bead in his ear crackled. Someone was still fighting. That meant they had a chance, however slight. 

 	‘Enough to make them wish they’d killed us all, first pass,’ Tolui said. His helm was dented and scorched free of paint, and one of his eye-lenses was cracked. From the smell, Cemakar suspected that the helmet had been melted to his driver’s face. Tolui gave no sign that he was in pain, and Cemakar decided not to ask. Tolui had never been what one could call attractive anyway. ‘I salvaged the portable vox-unit.’ He hefted the boxy communications pack.

 	‘Good. Keep at it,’ Cemakar grunted, as he grabbed hold of the smouldering wreckage and began to pull himself to his feet. Pain rippled through him, but he pushed it down. Pain was just a reminder that he still had a job to do. When it stopped, well, that was when it stopped mattering. ‘I’ll buy you what grace I can.’

 	Tolui grabbed him. ‘Given that my legs still work, what say I lead the dance old man?’

 	‘My legs still work,’ Cemakar spat. ‘Besides, I hate those things. I can never get them to work.’ He gestured plaintively. ‘Give me a bolter, or a knife or… something. Anything,’ he said. He tasted blood and hawked a gobbet of something dark onto the ground. Tolui handed him the vox-unit. Cemakar sighed and slid back down. ‘Fine,’ he grunted. He glared at Tolui. ‘If I survive this, I’ll have your skull mounted on my bike.’

 	‘That’s the spirit,’ Tolui said. He rose into a crouch. ‘I’ll be back directly.’

 	‘Take your time,’ Cemakar said. ‘I’ll just beat any enemies who come along to death with this hunk of uselessness.’ He patted the vox-unit. 

 	He watched Tolui creep through the smoke and then looked at the vox-unit. It squawked at him and he grimaced. ‘Where are you Khwarezmian? Never around when your brothers need you,’ he growled. He fumbled with the device, trying to pick up a frequency. They were still being jammed. The tau had done a good job. He leaned his head back, his mind suddenly awash with pain. Space Marines were built to die slowly, by increments, rather than all at once. It was unseemly to go too quickly into the howling dark. 

 	After all, if you died too quickly, the tech-brothers couldn’t cram you into one of their boxes. He shuddered slightly, thinking of the Ghost Warriors. Being interred in the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought was at once a high honour, reserved for only the mightiest warriors, and a fate that no White Scar would wish on a brother of the ordu. To never feel the wind or the thrum of engines again was a horrifying thing. 

 	He looked around him, taking in the wreckage. A wave of sadness washed over him. As an aspirant, he had hoped to be called to the harness and hydraulics of the tech-brothers, to commune with the machine-spirits. Instead, he had taken another path. But in his twilight, he had been allowed to move as he wished, and he had become a master of tanks. The purr of the great engines had been his balm and as welcome as the voices of old friends. He had ridden with them into battle after battle; they were as close to him as any hunt-brother. He touched a chunk of twisted metal. 

 	‘I am sorry, my friend,’ he muttered. He closed his eyes. 

 	When he opened them, a shadow had fallen over him. He looked up. The battlesuit loomed over him, like death incarnate, stinking of spilled fuel and burning metal. How had it got so close without him hearing it? The lens in the centre of its square head whirred and clicked as it focused on him. Cemakar eyed it, and hefted the vox-unit in a considering fashion. Then, with a grunt, he tossed the device aside. He looked up at the battlesuit. ‘Well? I haven’t got all day,’ he said. 

 	The battlesuit raised the cannon-like weapon that occupied its left arm, and he heard the sound of it cycling up to fire. He spat again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He waited. The construct hesitated, as if listening to some voice only it could hear. It began to lower its weapon. A chill coursed through Cemakar’s heart as he caught sight of the slowly advancing tau warriors, moving towards him from below, weapons at the ready. Not death, then, but captivity. ‘Oh that won’t do,’ he muttered, marshalling what remained of his strength. For a White Scar, captivity might as well have been death. If you couldn’t get free, you died in the attempt. He began to push himself to his feet. The tau paused, startled by his sudden movement. 

 	‘Yes, that’s right, I can stand,’ he said, conversationally. His words carried easily through the cold air. ‘No weapons to speak of, and I can taste death, at the back of my throat, but I still stand. I still live.’ He flexed his hands. Beneath his gauntlets, his knuckles popped. He looked up at the battlesuit. ‘There’s a saying, on Chogoris… keep a dying tiger at lance’s length.’ He grinned. ‘You got too close.’ Cemakar leapt, hands outstretched. The battlesuit reacted predictably. It swept out one massive arm, and swatted him from the air, as he’d expected. He was sent tumbling down the slope. Things ground together within him. He caught hold of the ground, digging his fingers in deep, and halted his slide. Everything hurt. But better a quick pain than the long agony of captivity. 

 	He shoved himself up. ‘Once… or twice more… I think,’ he coughed, blood speckling his beard and moustaches. ‘No more than that. I’m an old man, after all.’ He staggered towards the tau, balling his hands into fists. He chuckled, as targeting lights squirmed across his torso. ‘Call the tune, fishbellies. I haven’t got all day.’ Snow swirled around him, momentarily obscuring the enemy. His wounds had opened again, and he could feel blood filling the crannies and crevices of his armour. This is a good death, he thought. He had always suspected he would die amongst the burning ruins of his beloved battle tanks. 

 	He had always hoped to die thus.

 	The snow cleared. 

 	The enemy had not moved. But a new element had been added to the tableau. Jebe crouched on the wreckage, a bandolier of grenades dangling from one hand, and his sword in the other. The champion leapt onto the battlesuit, and swung the bandolier about its head, activating the grenades as he sprang to the ground. He was in amongst the tau a moment later, his first blow shearing through the large drone, and his next dispatching a tau. Jebe moved with the wind, and the edge of his blade was the curve of a crimson whirlwind. 

 	The grenades exploded and the battlesuit teetered, smoke boiling from its orifices. Jebe ignored it, concentrating on the tau. His sword swept out. There was a brutal poetry to Jebe’s war-dance, a sinuous music that was made known in the rasp of steel on flesh, in the crackle of the sword’s powercell, in the dull thunder of explosions, and the screams of the dying. In the moment between sword-strokes, Jebe was the truest heir to the legacy of the Great Khan, and the Star-Hunt personified. No movement was wasted, no wrong step taken. Every gesture was lethal. The air was filled with the foul blood of the xenos, and they died one by one, barely able to register the strikes which punctured their chests or removed limbs. 

 	Jebe ceased his dance abruptly. Tau fell all around him, dead or dying. He moved towards Cemakar, as the latter sank to his knees, one hand on his side. ‘Easy, old man,’ Jebe said. ‘You will not die this day.’

 	‘Oh, will I not?’ Cemakar croaked, ‘What a shame. I was looking forward to the rest.’ He gestured. ‘The big one is still on its feet.’

 	A missile snarled out of the snow and struck the reeling battlesuit. It toppled backwards with all the grace of a felled tree. The slope shook beneath the impact. Jebe sniffed. ‘No it’s not.’ He hooked Cemakar’s arm and guided him to his feet. 

 	Behind him, Cemakar saw Tolui and two others loping forward, cradling weapons scavenged from the wreckage. One of the newcomers had an obviously wounded battle-brother slung over his shoulder. Tolui cradled a missile launcher that had seen better centuries. ‘Found them,’ he said. He held up the missile launcher. ‘And this,’ he added. 

 	‘So I see,’ Cemakar grunted. He looked at Tolui. ‘Hasik,’ he said. 

 	‘No sign of him or his riders,’ Tolui said. ‘They must have got through.’

 	‘Or they’re dead,’ Jebe said. 

 	An ear-splitting whine pierced the air, interrupting any reply Cemakar might have made. A second battlesuit crashed to the ground, near the wreck of the first, and unleashed a burst of fire from its cannon. Cemakar shoved Jebe aside and the barrage struck the section of wreckage behind them, sending it pin-wheeling. The White Scars scrambled for cover, firing their weapons. Bolters roared, and the battlesuit advanced towards them through the storm of explosive shells, as if they were no more substantial than the falling snow. The shield on its left arm sparked and shimmered as it absorbed the incoming fire. 

 	It pursued them up the slope, driving them before it. Its burst cannon became a blur of death, filling the air with lethal hornets of explosive energy. Jebe’s sword sparked and rang as he blocked several of the shots, and was knocked back several steps for his pains. Cemakar coughed and clawed his way up the slope. 

 	Things were no better on higher ground. Tolui and the others had taken cover amongst the burning wreckage on the ridge. The gutted hulk of the Yesugei’s Teeth and the Rhino that had been the object of its demise formed a makeshift bulwark. Jebe was the last up the slope. The battlesuit followed them slowly, apparently content to herd them back. Another battlesuit appeared at the other side of the ridge. 

 	‘Form up, brothers,’ Jebe said. ‘Stockade formation, prepare to repel assault,’ he added. He took a bolt pistol from one of the others and shoved it into Cemakar’s hands. ‘You as well, old man,’ he said. 

 	 Cemakar checked the clip and looked around. The broad shapes of more hunters, armour shimmering and fading out of sight, trudged forward through the snow. The two battlesuits waited, watching the White Scars with the patience of well-fed predators. They’d beaten the other by catching it off guard. These two were ready, and surrounded by more shield drones. And advancing up the slope were more pathfinders, more drones, and more vehicles. The swiftest forces the xenos had at their disposal, pitted against the riders of Chogoris. 

 	‘Keep the army together, I said,’ he said. ‘Don’t go haring off after ghosts, I said. But do they listen? Ha! Do they? Of course they don’t. Who listens to the old man? Nobody, that’s who,’ he growled.

 	‘What are you gnashing your teeth about, old man?’ Jebe muttered, not taking his eyes off the enemy. 

 	‘The lack of wisdom amongst my peers,’ Cemakar grunted. 

 	‘What?’

 	‘I said, I wonder what they’re waiting for,’ he said. ‘We’re outnumbered, exposed, and bloodied. Why haven’t they killed us?’ 

 	Jebe glanced at him. The champion made to reply, when the sudden roar of a jet pack washed over them, and a white-armoured form, slimmer and smaller than the other battlesuits, landed on the ridge with a thump. Two shield drones swept around it, and it bore two fusion blasters, one in each hand. Cemakar grunted. He recognised the battlesuit easily enough from the briefings they’d been given before making planet-fall. It was Shadowsun herself, come to watch her enemies die in person. 

 	‘Offhand, old man, I’d say that’s why,’ Jebe said grimly.

 	The bastion shook, down to its foundations. The ridge trembled with the thunder of alien weaponry. Superheated plasma seared through the cold air, and tore great, smoking craters in the crumbling outer wall. Snow and shale from the upper reaches of the ridge crashed down, filling the courtyard with an icy mist. Ambaghai’s snow had proven effective for a few minutes, giving the White Scars a moment’s respite, but the tau gunners had compensated more quickly than the White Scars had anticipated. 

 	The White Scars hunkered behind their improvised barricades as the pounding went on and on. One or two of the Space Marines had been hurt, but the barrage wasn’t meant to kill them, so much as it was meant to keep them from attacking the tau as they readied themselves for their next assault. Thursk crouched, ready to rise as soon as the thunder ceased. Through the ceramite of his gauntlet, he could feel the ground shiver beneath a heavy tread. ‘Here they come,’ he said. He looked over at Ambaghai, where the Stormseer sat, head bowed. Manipulating the winds and snows had taken more out of him than he’d admitted. 

 	‘Are you ready, Stormseer?’ Thursk said, softly. 

 	‘Is anyone ever ready? To wait for readiness is to never move. One can only prepare and seize the moment, when it presents itself,’ Ambaghai said, with a tired smile. 

 	‘Is that a yes?’ Thursk said. 

 	‘It’s as close as you’re getting, cousin,’ Ambaghai said.

 	‘Good enough,’ Thursk murmured. A moment later, the outer wall shattered like dropped porcelain. Through the smoke and dust of the explosion, heavy shapes plunged into the courtyard, weapons screaming. 

 	A White Scar near Thursk was erased from sight by a blast that eradicated the section of rubble he crouched behind. ‘Take them,’ he roared, rising to his feet. He grabbed the top of the strongpoint and threw himself over, axe in hand. Fully half of the remaining White Scars followed him, blades in hand. Some wielded power glaives, or swords, but all were armed with hand weapons, rather than bolters. They had ammunition to spare, but the shield drones that accompanied the newcomers would simply soak it up. 

 	Behind them, the rest of the White Scars opened up with everything they had, distracting the drones, as he’d hoped they would. The enemy constructs were annoying, but dumb. They moved to block the incoming fire, and their shield snapped and sparked, lighting up the gloom of the early morning hours. That left only the trio of battlesuits. They were forming the spear-point of a second assault. The xenos were counting on the suits to tear through the Space Marines with the same ease they’d displayed in ripping apart the wall. And, under different circumstances, they might have done so. 

 	But Thursk had fought orks and their war machines, and he knew that the power of such a spear was easily blunted and diverted, if you kept your head and didn’t let the size, speed or likelihood of your impending messy demise distract you from it. Admittedly, this was harder than it sounded, but if there was one area where the Dark Hunters excelled, it was in killing things that were bigger, louder, and stronger than them. 

 	On Phobian, the Sahrmatae people who roamed the moonlit plains of the night-world fought in silence, for to cry out, even in pain, was to attract the attention of the great bats which hunted the skies on silent wings. Normally, the Nokyros preyed on the herds of pale, cannibal horses which roamed the basin plains, but they’d eat a man just as happily, so hunting parties were often formed, to clean out those roosts that were too close to human habitation. The Dark Hunters took their name from the beasts, and their tactics, swift, silent, and merciless, from the people who hunted them. 

 	Thursk had only ever seen the bats up close once, and that was when he’d been an aspirant, and sent into the black caverns below Phobian’s surface with his squad to baptise their axes in the blood of one of the great, savage beasts. That bat, monstrous as it had been, had not worried him as much as the alien battlesuit now loping smoothly towards him. The ground shuddered beneath his feet as it drew close. He set himself, and waited. Breathe, wait, strike, he thought. The words had been drilled into his head as an aspirant. Haste is the enemy of the axe-man. Strike sure, strike hard, strike again, he thought. The battlesuit closed in, blade snapping out. The air sizzled as it drove towards him. He lunged beneath the blow, augmented muscle propelling him forward smoothly and swiftly. His axe flashed, chopping through piston and cabling. 

 	The battlesuit lumbered past, wheezing and hissing. Smoke boiled out from the point he’d caught with his blow. The battlesuit swung about, eyepiece oscillating and whirring. Its gun swung up, humming. Thursk sprinted towards the wall. Blasts pursued him, ripping up the ground beneath his feet. He leapt. The soles of his boots struck the wall, and he pushed himself off. He flew over the top of the battlesuit as it tried to track him, still firing. His hand snapped out, caught hold of one of the armoured plates that protected the top of the construct. He twisted himself around, driving his boots into the back of the battlesuit. Then, rearing up over the top of it, he let his axe fall, shearing off the square head of the suit. 

 	The head fell to the ground in a flurry of sparks, and he looked down into the pilot-pod, where a blue face, twisted in an alien approximation of surprise, stared up at him. Flipping his axe around, he smashed the haft down on the upraised face, pulping it like rotten fruit. He leapt to the ground as a second suit exploded. The force of the explosion nearly knocked him from his feet, and it was only that half-second without balance that saved him from the energy burst that would have taken his head off. The third suit fought on, with a relentlessness that Thursk could have admired, had it not been trying to kill him. 

 	The battlesuit shrugged off the White Scars who sought to bring it down, trampling one. Its three-toed foot came down with a crunch on the unfortunate warrior’s head, bursting it like a dropped melon, helmet and all. A power glaive sizzled as it left a scar on the battlesuit’s hull. The battlesuit spun, backhanding the White Scar hard enough to flip him head over heels into the air. The tau swung around, the fusion blaster boiling the air as it fired. Thursk threw himself out of the path of the deadly weapon. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet. Axe in both hands, he launched himself at the xenos, charging towards it. 

 	The pilot of the battlesuit was quicker to react than his comrades. He stepped aside as he swatted Thursk in the back. The blow drove the latter headfirst into a strongpoint. Head pounding, the Dark Hunter tried to stand. His vision blurred. The air hummed as more battlesuits dropped down into the courtyard. The first three had been the tip. The rest were there to make sure it struck home. Thursk groped for his axe. 

 	‘Ambaghai, I need you ready,’ he croaked, pushing himself to his feet. The battlesuit that had struck him loomed over him, weapon glowing. It fired as he dove between its legs. Smoke and heat washed over him. His power armour felt as if it were responding sluggishly. Something in it might have been damaged. Or maybe it was him. He scrambled to his feet. The battlesuit grabbed his head in a grip that would have crushed his skull, had he not been wearing his helmet. It hefted him, and he pounded at its arm helplessly. The metal of his helm began to buckle, and metal cut into his scalp. His eye-lenses burst, peppering his face with photosensitive plastics. The world went red at the edges, and then dark. 

 	Metal shrieked and he fell to the ground. He tore the limp fingers of the severed claw from his head and saw Kor’sarro Khan spring past him. The Master of the Hunt looked as if he had swum through an ocean of alien blood, but he was laughing as he cut the battlesuit’s leg out from under it with one swipe of his powersword, and spun with the blow so that he was facing Thursk. ‘Well done, cousin,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘But the time for the Dark Hunters way has passed, I think. Now, now it is time for the Star-Hunt to ride.’ 

 	Behind Kor’sarro, the battlesuit toppled over. His White Scars lunged forward, like hounds at the kill. The Dark Hunter tore off his damaged helmet, revealing the pale features and dark scalplock of his people. Scars marked his cheeks. Not the ritualistic slashes of the White Scars, but the crude marks of close-fighting. ‘I think the tau would argue that point, my khan,’ Thursk said. 

 	Kor’sarro turned. The newly arrived battlesuits moved forward, weapons flaring and roaring, sending White Scars scrambling for cover. He moved, still smiling, to face them. They had held their position long enough. He knew his enemy’s mind now, and that alone was worth the inconvenience and indignity of the trap he’d been led into. ‘Stormseer,’ he said, not loudly. His words carried regardless, and he knew Ambaghai had heard him. 

 	‘My khan,’ Ambaghai said. He stepped out from behind the strongpoint, his staff hugged to his chest. He took a deep breath, and the air was suddenly charged with electricity. ‘Command me, my khan.’ Kor’sarro could hear the faint hint of exhaustion playing about the edge of the Stormseer’s words. 

 	‘Shake the heavens and scour the earth,’ Kor’sarro said. He swept Moonfang through the air. ‘Show them the power of our storm.’

 	‘Gladly,’ Ambaghai growled. He raised his staff, and the air contracted about the ancient relic. It was said that the staves gifted to those brothers who showed an affinity for the ghost-road were first set into the high plateaus of Chogoris, and kissed by the storms, which imparted to them some of their elemental strength. He could feel that strength now, surging around them, coalescing at Ambaghai’s silent call. Every White Scar left felt it as well. It quickened the pulse of their blood and awoke in them the ancient fury which had carried their ancestors from one side of Chogoris to the other, carrying fire and steel to every corner of that wide world. Theirs had always been the way of the storm, the sudden darkness, the crash of thunder, the slash of lightning, the crush of wild snows and heavy rains. 

 	Ambaghai’s necklace of teeth and bells and storm-stones rattled as the air grew wet and thick about him. Lightning crawled across the ruined bastion, and crept across what was left of the wall in crackling rivulets. It sparked and coiled about the battlesuits, which had ceased their advance. Kor’sarro knew that the pilots of the large constructs were likely beginning to panic as the storm interfered with their suits’ systems, and prevented them from attacking or retreating. The tau outside would be seeing the same interference. More than once, he had used Ambaghai’s affinity for the lightning to befuddle their enemy on Agrellan. It wouldn’t last long, but the White Scars would make good use of the time the Stormseer bought them. 

 	Ambaghai was wreathed in lightning. It caressed his power armour like a lover, and clutched at his staff. It was only by dint of their long comradeship that Kor’sarro could detect the faint tremble in the Stormseer’s arms. Calling the storm was no conjurer’s trick. It required an iron will, and a mind sheathed in steel. Ambaghai sucked in a deeper breath, and he seemed to swell for a moment. Then, with a roar like one of the ancient stone-barrelled cannons of Quan-Jo, he slammed the butt of his staff down, and released the gathered lightning. 

 	One by one, each of the battlesuits was caught in the storm’s talons, and began to twitch and shudder, as small explosions coursed through them. The lightning swept over them and pulsed out into their enemies beyond the walls, burning the drifts of snow to steam in its passing. The battlesuits, scorched black and gutted, had slumped, and were already being covered by the snow which had been stirred by Ambaghai’s wrath. 

 	The Stormseer sank down the length of his staff, sweat dripping from his features. Kor’sarro sheathed his blade and caught Ambaghai as he slumped. ‘Easy, seer, summon your strength, for we have a hard ride ahead of us, and no time for rest.’ He propelled the Stormseer towards Thursk. ‘Catch him, cousin,’ Kor’sarro said. He turned towards the others. ‘What are you staring for? The wind calls us. To your bikes, brothers. Our enemy thinks us trapped. She thinks us beaten and broken on the anvil of her cunning. But you cannot hammer smoke, and you cannot trap the lightning.’ He flung out a hand. ‘To your bikes! We shall show our foe the true way of war, our way!’ 

 	Thus invigorated, the White Scars raced to their bikes. Thursk hesitated. Kor’sarro met his gaze. ‘You know how to ride?’

 	‘The White Scars are not the only Chapter who use bikes, my khan,’ the Dark Hunter said. ‘What of those who cannot ride?’ he asked. 

 	Kor’sarro hesitated, his eagerness dimming. There were more white armoured bodies lying in the snow than he’d wanted to admit. Not all of them were dead. He was saved from having to reply by Godi. The battle-brother still carried his heavy bolter, despite the wound which marked him. A blast from one of the battlesuits had ripped one of the shoulder plates from his power armour, and torn the latter open, so that sharp protrusions of metal jutted from his blistered and burnt torso and arm. His breathing was ragged, and the difficulty he was having just speaking was obvious. ‘We die, Dark Hunter,’ Godi croaked. ‘Aye and gladly, for what good are we, if we cannot ride,’ he said. It wasn’t a question. 

 	‘We will return,’ Kor’sarro said, laying a hand on Godi’s unwounded arm. ‘Dead or alive, I will come back for you, hunt-brother, with the full might of the Third Minghan at my back.’ 

 	‘As you say, my khan,’ Godi said. ‘Hopefully, it’ll be the latter. Your swiftness would be appreciated.’ He patted the heavy bolter. ‘I’m almost out of ammunition.’

 	Kor’sarro had meant what he said. He would come back, if only to collect the gene-seed of the fallen. Joking aside, Godi knew as well as he that the likelihood of survival for those staying behind was slim to none. Wounded, low on ammunition and too far behind enemy lines for easy extraction. They would be forgotten, until the war was won or lost. 

 	Of the wounded, there were only a few who couldn’t ride, or otherwise had volunteered to stay behind. Godi and another hefted the heavy bolters, and the others who could walk were ready to cover their fellows. Those who couldn’t move were carried to the gaps in the wall, with as much ammunition as could be spared. 

 	The bikes that had no riders were stripped and laid to rest as if they were dead warriors. It pained the White Scars to do so, for each was, if not a relic, then as much a brother of the ordu as their fellow Space Marines. But even as their ancestors had slaughtered horses which could not be ridden, so would they disable what they could not take with them. Nothing of the Chapter could fall into the hands of the enemy. That included the weapons they had stored in the bastion. As he mounted his bike, Kor’sarro clasped Godi’s hand. ‘You know what to do?’ he said.

 	‘If I live long enough, I’m to blow this cursed place off the ridge,’ Godi grunted. Blood ran freely down his armour, plopping onto the ground. ‘Deny the enemy our dead.’ 

 	Kor’sarro nodded shallowly. ‘Only if it becomes necessary,’ he said. 

 	‘Don’t worry, my khan. Self-immolation isn’t high on my list of preferred activities, even in good cause,’ Godi rasped. ‘Besides, it’s entirely likely that they’ll kill us before we get the chance.’

 	Kor’sarro sat back as his steed growled beneath him. The bike had been still for too long. It yearned to ride, to hurtle forward. He didn’t look at Godi. ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ he said, softly. ‘I led you into death.’

 	Godi shrugged. ‘And so,’ he said. ‘At least it wasn’t boring.’ 

 	Kor’sarro nodded and smiled. ‘No, never that,’ he said. Then, with a shout, he gunned the bike’s engine. Wheels skidded and he shot forward, towards the largest gap in the wall. His riders fell in behind him, filling the air with noise. The bolters mounted on the chassis of each bike snarled a hymn of war as they followed him beyond the wall.

 	Only a few minutes had passed since Ambaghai had set the lightning on their enemy. The tau troops were unprepared for the sudden attack. Fire warriors tried to form up around the lightning-addled vehicles, and their impromptu phalanxes were shattered by the hurtling bikes. Kor’sarro didn’t even bother to draw his sword. He extended an arm as he raced past, catching a tau in the neck, and flipping the alien into the air. Godi had followed them out through the wall, and the roar of his heavy bolter, as well as the weapons of the others, followed them as they raced through the ring of xenos steel that had surrounded the bastion. 

 	The ridge trail was blocked by one of the smooth-bodied transports. Kor’sarro urged his steed up and the bike’s wheels bit into the mottled plates of the vehicle as he rode up over it. His riders followed, shooting and shouting. He steadfastly resisted the urge to look back. ‘Onward,’ he roared, ‘for the glory of the ordu, and for the khan and the Khan-of-Khans!’ 

 
 
 Chapter Five


 	A burst of gibberish erupted from the newcomer, but smoothed out into a stream of heavily accented Gothic. ‘Surrender, Khan Kor’sarro, and you shall be spared,’ the tau said. There was no trace of a sneer in the demand, which only made it worse. 

 	Cemakar blinked. Then he laughed. Jebe looked at him. ‘It thinks you’re the khan, boy,’ Cemakar said, in Khorchin. A faint look of satisfaction passed fleetingly across the champion’s face. Then he spat a curse and tossed his blade from hand-to-hand. 

 	‘It insults us,’ he said. 

 	‘We probably all look alike to them,’ Cemakar said. He chuckled weakly. ‘He was right, though. Eagles pick his bones, he was right. She was here, waiting for him. She thought he’d make a break for it, once he realised it was a trap.’ Jebe stared at him, comprehension slowly dawning on his burnt features. Cemakar waved his hand. ‘Well go on boy, reply to her. Don’t let her realise she’s made a mistake, whatever you do. She wants the khan. Give her the khan.’ 

 	Jebe nodded sharply, his eye alight with understanding. In that moment, Cemakar was proud of him. Jebe was headstrong, and as dumb as hammer-addled auroch, but no one could fault his courage. He’d have walked backwards into the Eye of Terror if Kor’sarro had asked it of him. 

 	Shadowsun repeated her question. ‘Captivity is not the same as mercy,’ Jebe said, barking out his reply in stilted Gothic.

 	The tau cocked her head, as if trying to parse his accent. Then she said, ‘If you do not surrender, your men will die.’

 	‘All men die,’ Jebe said. 

 	‘Yes, but preferably somewhere else,’ Tolui muttered. Cemakar laughed, though it hurt him to do so. He pushed himself up and looked around. They were surrounded. ‘This song sounds familiar,’ Tolui said. 

 	Cemakar nodded. ‘I’m growing tired of the tune myself,’ he said. Ever since they had left Agrellan Prime, it had been one trap after another. The khamar were too tricky by half. ‘On the whole, I’d rather be fighting orks. I – oh nine devils take him!’ he coughed as Jebe, provoked beyond all reason by Shadowsun’s insistence on surrender, had made his final thoughts on the matter known as, with a roar, he flung himself at her, his sword slicing towards her neck. ‘When I said give her the khan I didn’t mean attack.’

 	The white-armoured warrior moved with a sinuous grace that contrasted with the bulky battlesuit she wore. Jebe was hard-pressed to keep up, and his blade bit only air as he attacked. The tau’s form flickered and blinked in and out of sight. He spun and whirled, trying to catch his opponent as she circled him. Every time his blade came close, one of the drones that accompanied her intercepted the blow. 

 	Jebe snarled in fury as his sword rebounded off a drone’s shimmering shield for the fifth time in as many moments. As he readjusted, his opponent smashed into him from the side, staggering him. Cemakar winced. He glanced over and saw Tolui taking aim with his bolter. ‘Don’t even think it. It’s a waste of a shot and he won’t thank you. Keep your eyes on the others,’ he said. He levered himself up. ‘That goes for all of you. When they’ve had their fun, that’ll be the end of it, so you’d have best made your peace.’ 

 	Jebe whipped around, blade singing a deadly song. Shadowsun leapt straight up and skimmed back across the unsettled snows. She levelled the twin fusion blasters she carried and fired. Jebe flung himself aside. Even so, he only just managed to avoid the scalding blasts. He rolled through the snow, smoke rising from the patch of slagged ceramite on his side and hip. His power armour’s inner working was untouched, but the outer plates had been melted and warped. Cemakar knew that a single direct hit would end the other’s career as company champion, regardless of how tough he was.

 	Jebe recovered quickly enough, and shot forward. Shadowsun slid away, instinctively avoiding a slash that never came. Instead, Jebe stabbed at her. The point of his blade struck her armour again and again, carving deep ruts in the previously untouched surface. Shadowsun staggered with every blow, but she didn’t fall. Her fusion blasters slammed together, pinning Jebe’s blade between them. Shadowsun jerked him forward, and smashed an armoured boot into the champion’s midsection. Jebe staggered back, without his weapon. 

 	Shadowsun tossed it aside. She took aim at him, and he tensed, ready to dive at her regardless. Then she raised her arm. One of the Riptides lunged forward and swatted Jebe to the ground with bone-rattling finality. Cemakar sighed. At least the khan wouldn’t have to suffer the ignominy of being captured. Maybe he escaped, he thought. The thought cheered him somewhat. In the end, glory and honour were as nothing to freedom. Chains by any other name, they meant little to sons of Jaghatai. If by trick and by blood, they could buy an extra moment for their khan, that was the way of it. ‘Laugh while you kill, brothers. And laugh loud, so our brothers can hear us, and know what fun they’re missing,’ he said. He rose unsteadily to his feet. The world swam about him. 

 	‘I don’t think we need to laugh all that loud,’ Tolui said, ‘listen!’ 

 	Cemakar turned. He’d heard the sound for some time, but had assumed it was coming from the tau. But now that he focused on it, he knew that no khamar engine had ever sounded so boisterous. His seamed face split in a smile. ‘I guess he survived after all.’ He pivoted and snapped off a shot at Shadowsun. ‘Well brothers – lets light their way for them, shall we?’ 

 	Tolui gave a bark of laughter and began to fire as well. Soon, the entire knot of survivors was blazing away in all directions. The tau seemed taken aback by the apparent madness of their enemy, and it was long moments before they began to return fire. 

 	Cemakar cackled happily as he fired. That would have been a good death, he thought, but this one will be much better.

 	Bikes roared through the snow, shoving aside the curtains of smoke with the force of their passage. The shattered remnants of Cemakar’s forces littered Rime Crag, but the bark of bolter fire said that there were survivors yet. Kor’sarro hunched forward over his bike’s handlebars, as if to wring more speed from its shrieking engines by sheer will. Thursk rode at his side, snow stinging his pale features. He could see Ambaghai riding on the other side of the khan. The Stormseer’s face was twisted in a grimace of concentration, as he wrapped the column of riders in a swirl of snow in order to hide them from prying eyes and muffle the noise of their passage. Every time Thursk thought Ambaghai had reached the limits of his mental strength, the Stormseer dug deeper into himself, summoning up psychic might from untold depths. 

 	The White Scars did not slow as they swept through the wreckage. Thursk could see enemy vehicles moving below, at the base of the ridge, keeping on a parallel course. They were troop transports, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure, just as he couldn’t say whether they were in pursuit, or heading somewhere else. 

 	Cemakar’s group hadn’t got far before they were hit. He was surprised they hadn’t seen smoke, but then, with the way Ambaghai had stirred up the winds, and the way the snow was falling, he was more surprised that they could see anything at all. Kor’sarro’s voice snarled through the vox, barking orders. ‘Ambaghai – fill the air with lightning. See if you can disrupt their communications the way they’ve done to ours,’ he said. ‘The rest of you – do as you must. Laugh and slay. Today, we teach the enemy what it means to grab hold of the tiger’s tail.’ 

 	The White Scars roared in reply, waving weapons and firing their guns. Thursk ducked his head as the column of bikers ripped through a cloud of oily smoke. As they exited the smoke, he saw where the tau had been heading. A tiny knot of White Scars were firing at their approaching enemy from the lip of the ridge. Two of the larger tau battlesuits were menacing them, as several squads of fire warriors climbed the slope, pausing only to return the Space Marine’s fire sporadically. 

 	The trap, when taken at a remove, was brilliant in its simplicity. Once the tanks had been rendered immobile, the White Scars were at the mercy of the faster moving tau. And tenacity was no substitute for firepower. If the battlesuits didn’t get them, the tau battle tanks would. And if neither of those did the job, then the fire warriors would almost certainly wear the remaining Space Marines down. 

 	Kor’sarro roared out a command and chopped the air with his hand. Ambaghai weaved around behind Thursk and, accompanied by two other riders, shot towards the enemy warriors climbing the slope. Thursk saw the Stormseer whip the end of his staff through the air, and it was as if an invisible scythe cut through the unprepared xenos. The trio buzzed across the line of fire warriors, disassembling the formerly precise formation into bloody wreckage. It was a stalling tactic, Thursk knew, and nothing more. Ambaghai might have been able to do more but he would have to stop, and if he didn’t kill them all, the tau would swarm him under. There were simply too many of them, and too few of the White Scars. 

 	‘There she is,’ Kor’sarro snarled. Thursk saw that his attention had been drawn to a strange, white armoured shape standing near the knot of survivors. It was a tau battlesuit, but like none Thursk had ever seen. As they neared, the slim battlesuit rose into the air and shot backwards. 

 	‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Kor’sarro said, aiming his bike in pursuit. Following Kor’sarro, Thursk shot past the closest of the towering battlesuits, he saw a familiar form lying before it in the snow. The battlesuit lifted its foot over Jebe’s sprawled form. Thursk recalled vividly what the result of that would be and he swung his bike around in a tight skid. He didn’t like the champion much, but he wasn’t going to allow the White Scar to be pulped. Even Jebe deserved a better death than that. As the machine toppled, the Dark Hunter threw himself from the seat and, with the impetus of the bike’s slide behind him he interposed himself between the fallen champion and the battlesuit. His palms slammed against the bottom of the battlesuit’s foot, and the servos in his power armour whined in protest as he tried to stop the crushing descent. 

 	The weight of it was incredible, more even than he’d imagined. He sank slowly to one knee, both arms bending back. ‘Up, Jebe, get up,’ he said. The White Scar groaned, and looked up blearily. ‘Up, you stupid fool,’ Thursk roared, kicking the White Scar in the side. The battlesuit redoubled its efforts and he felt a servo blow somewhere in his armour, and the hiss of a pierced cooling hose. Jebe scrabbled weakly at the snow. Thursk saw his fingers brush up against the eagle-headed pommel of his sword. 

 	Jebe caught up the blade and rolled over, piercing the bottom of the suit’s foot and jamming the pommel against the ground. Thursk let go, grabbed him and rolled them both aside as the battlesuit jerked and flailed, trying to right itself. 

 	‘You saved me,’ Jebe spat. 

 	‘You’re welcome,’ Thursk said, pushing himself to his feet. 

 	‘I was not thanking you!’

 	‘I apologise. The subtleties of Khorchin escape me,’ Thursk said, recovering his axe and his bolter from the fallen bike. He flipped the axe around and proffered the haft to Jebe. ‘Go get your sword, champion,’ he said, as he extended the bolter and fired off a burst at the enemy swarming around them. ‘I’ll cover you.’ 

 	Jebe made a face, then snorted, spat and ran a thumb along the edge of the axe. ‘I suppose this will have to do.’ He turned, a feral grin rippling across his burned and blistered features. He bounded towards the still off-balance battlesuit. Thursk turned and began to fire at the approaching fire warriors, intending to leave Jebe to his fun. 

 	The battlesuit had torn itself free of the blade and it retreated several steps. Jebe pursued it with all the tenacity of a man for whom size differentials were merely a matter of opinion. He jumped, and used the battlesuit’s bent knee-joint as a springboard to propel him up its chest. The shield drones hummed about him, and he swiped at them irritably. The drones were less of an obstacle than an annoyance, if you got in close. He lunged for the battlesuit’s square head. The battlesuit moved quickly, snatching him out of the air with its empty hand. Jebe cursed as the construct’s grip began to tighten. Rivets popped and plates buckled. He hefted Thursk’s axe and threw it directly into the battlesuit’s optic sensor. The power axe buried itself in the boxy head, and the battlesuit staggered, blinded. The burst cannon on its other arm roared as it fired wildly, and it destroyed one of the drones by accident. 

 	Its hand spasmed and Jebe tumbled to the ground. Thursk raced towards him, palming a krak grenade from his belt. ‘Catch,’ he said, tossing it to the champion. Jebe caught it, as he ducked beneath the whirring burst cannon. Thursk circled the battlesuit, firing at the other sensor nodes that stuck out from the hulking battlesuit. The operator was likely already trying to reroute the sensor feed and regain his view of the battlefield. If that happened, he didn’t put great odds on their survival. As he got behind it, he pulled a second grenade from his belt, activated it and rolled it beneath the battlesuit’s damaged foot. 

 	The battlesuit twitched as it stepped on the frag grenade, barely registering the explosion as the ground disintegrated beneath its foot. It reeled forward, sinking to one knee. The bolter clicked, empty, and Thursk dropped it and drew his knife as he leapt for its back. He caught hold of a shattered sensor node and swung up. ‘Draw its fire,’ he shouted, trying to hold on as the battlesuit began to struggle to its feet. The remaining shield drone buzzed towards him, and he caught it with his fist, knocking it aside.

 	Jebe didn’t argue. He’d reclaimed his sword, and with a slash, he opened a hole in the side of the burst cannon mount. As the battlesuit spun, firing, Jebe tossed the krak grenade into the hole, and brought his sword down on the spinning barrels of the cannon, hacking through them. The grenade exploded a moment later, and subsequent internal explosions ripped up the battlesuit’s arm. It reared back with a groan of abused metal. 

 	Thursk had climbed to the top, and with his knife, pried open several of the hull plates. He stuffed grenades into each of the openings, activating them. Then he grabbed hold of his axe and dropped from the battlesuit. ‘Move,’ he roared, scrambling away. Jebe followed suit as the battlesuit was consumed in fire. 

 	They watched as it crumbled, shuddering in its death throes. They turned together as they heard the crunch of boots on snow. Fire warriors moved towards them, rifles extended. If they were disconcerted by the destruction of the battlesuit, they didn’t show it. ‘Brave,’ Thursk said, spinning his axe. 

 	‘Good. Cowards make poor prey,’ Jebe said. 

 	‘You’re welcome, by the way,’ Thursk said. 

 	‘I still have not thanked you. I did not require your aid,’ Jebe said. 

 	‘No, I’m sure you didn’t,’ Thursk said. He gestured with his axe. ‘After you, Chogorian,’ he said. Jebe grunted and raised his sword. 

 	‘Stay close, Phobian. I’ll keep you safe.’ 

 	Then, with a roar, Jebe sprang towards the advancing tau. Thursk followed. 

 	Kor’sarro brought the bike to a halt in a cloud of smoke and superheated snow. His bolt pistol was in his hand, and he swivelled in his saddle, firing once, twice, three times, each shot dropping one of the advancing fire warriors. The rest of the group retreated with all due haste, falling back to regroup. Cemakar looked up at him. ‘Tanks broke down,’ he grunted. 

 	‘So I see,’ Kor’sarro said. He holstered his pistol. ‘You seem to have things under control.’ Cemakar made a face. Kor’sarro’s eyes were drawn to the blood still seeping from the wound in Cemakar’s side and he shared a glance with one of the White Scars nearby – Tolui, he thought. It should have sealed over by now. Doubtless, if the old man simply sat down, it would have, but that wasn’t Old Shatterhand’s way. He wouldn’t rest until he was dead. And perhaps not even then, he mused. He was pleased to see that the old man had survived. He had feared that they would arrive in time only to avenge Cemakar and the others. Cemakar might still die, come to that. He pushed the thought aside. ‘It’s been almost twelve hours – the Khwarezmian should be nearby. Ambaghai’s lightning will have interfered with their jamming frequencies,’ Kor’sarro said, looking at Cemakar. ‘Hook him, old man. We’ve got the jaws pried open, but we still need someone to pull us out. We need Gharchai and his men, and we need them now.’ 

 	Cemakar hefted the vox and shoved it towards Tolui. ‘You heard him. Summon the Khwarezmian.’ He looked at Kor’sarro and said, ‘Thought you’d decided to sit this one out, boy.’

 	‘What, and leave all the fun to you? Perish the thought, old man,’ Kor’sarro said. He laughed and gunned his bike’s engine, scattering snow and sliding past the wreckage and on into battle. The enemy was disorganised, reeling in shock from the sudden appearance of a mobile force of eager warriors. He had seen it again and again since arriving on Agrellan – if the White Scars weakness was that they reacted too swiftly, then the tau were guilty of the opposite. They built strategies like spider-webs, intricate and surprisingly strong, but infinitely vulnerable to a gust of wind or a careless motion. 

 	There were many ways to wage war from the saddle. Wheel-and-spoke was one, the way of the rabbit another. But the best way, the way that his chosen excelled at, was the way of old, the way of the storm. Every warrior was the eye of their own storm, requiring neither aid nor the command of a khan to isolate and destroy the enemy. That was the method they used now, each rider using what skills they possessed and what weapons they had to hand, to distract, harass and butcher the enemy. 

 	Ambaghai had made himself over into a boiling storm of furious lightning. Where he rode, the storm followed, disrupting electronics and burning flesh and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The Dark Hunter and Jebe fought back-to-back, both afoot, but neither at a disadvantage because of it. Both warriors slashed and spun, tearing through the enemy like dervishes. Kor’sarro whipped past them without slowing. They did not require his aid, and he had his own prey to chase. 

 	Shadowsun was here somewhere. He could smell her scent, and see her hand at work. She was a hunter, like him, and she would not miss the kill. Not for anything. He just had to find her. As he tore through the battle, he saw a rider, whirling a bandolier of krak grenades over his head like a lariat, swept past a hovering battle tank and hurled the grenades, hooking the main cannon. As he thundered on, the grenades exploded and the tank dipped as if in shock, its anti-gravity engines whining in protest as the force of the explosion caused its hull to scrape the ground. Out of control, it skidded through the battle, sending fire warriors scrambling to get out of its path as it crashed into the slope and was ripped apart by internal explosions. 

 	Other riders wielded powerlances or fired bolters as they zipped through the lines of the fire warriors, piercing the alien phalanxes as they tried to form and make a stand. Kor’sarro saw a rider burst through a group of tau and ride his back up into the rear bay of a Hammerhead, the bolters mounted on the front of his bike blazing away. The rider slewed the bike around and rode back the way he’d come before the fire warriors could even register what he’d done. The explosions that followed his departure attested to the grenades he’d left behind. 

 	But the White Scars didn’t have it all their own way. There weren’t enough of them to do more than cause confusion. Speed was no substitute for raw numbers, and here and there, Space Marines had become bogged down in the sheer number of troops that Shadowsun had brought. Alien rifles fired and a bike flipped end over end, and its rider crashed down. He rolled to his feet, bolt pistol in hand, only to catch a burst from a fusion blaster directly in the chest. The White Scar was plucked from his feet and sent sailing backwards as his armour cracked and split open like the shell of a boiled crustacean. Smoke wreathed his falling shape as he crashed down. Kor’sarro arrowed towards the fallen Space Marine; he’d seen where the blast that had killed him had come from. Shadowsun was nearby. He caught sight of her distinctive armour, wreathed in the excess of Ambaghai’s lightning, its cloaking field crackling and bleeding away as the supreme commander of the enemy forces now besieging Agrellan and the Damocles Gulf as a whole, stood exposed before him. 

 	She stood before the wreckage of Cemakar’s Razorback, firing at the riders who sped past her. Kor’sarro had given orders that she was not to be engaged, save on his command, and his men were attempting to stay out of her way. Even from a distance, he could tell that she was growing frustrated. He smiled and leaned low in his saddle to whisper encouragement to his steed as the bike shot towards his prey. 

 
 
 Chapter Six


 	Kor’sarro took the moment with a hunter’s daring. Engines growled in pleasure as he rode the bike up the burning hull of the wrecked Razorback, passed through the flames, and caught the wind. Wheels spinning, the bike shot towards the hovering form of Shadowsun. Kor’sarro tore Moonfang from its sheath as his proximity registered with the tau commander. Like a rabbit caught in the shadow of an eagle, Shadowsun turned and brought up one of her fusion blasters, but too slowly. 

 	The bike’s front wheel smashed into her chest and head and they fell in a tangle, slamming down onto Rime Crag in an explosion of snow and with a snarl of metal on metal. The impact dislodged Kor’sarro from his saddle, but he was on his feet in a moment. Moonfang licked out, chopping through a shield drone and cutting it into two sparking halves. Shadowsun was up a moment later, batting the bike aside with a whirr of unseen pistons even as the fusion blaster on her other arm came up and fired. 

 	Kor’sarro stepped aside. Heat from the blast washed over him, crisping the tips of his moustaches. He recovered quickly, snatching his bolt pistol from its holster. He snapped off a shot from the hip, and was rewarded by Shadowsun staggering. He fired again, but the second shield drone interfered. Shadowsun recovered. She cocked her head. ‘Khan Kor’sarro, I presume,’ she said in Gothic, her voice amplified by her armour’s vox-casters. 

 	Kor’sarro restrained a growl of disgust. The language of Terra was not, by any stretch, his favourite tongue, but the Emperor had decreed that it was Imperator Lingua – the voice of humanity. To hear an alien debasing it so revolted him. ‘I am Kor’sarro Khan, Master of the Hunt and Sword of the Khan. And you are Shadowsun,’ he said. 

 	‘My fame precedes me,’ she said. Though it was difficult to tell, given her accent and the distortion of the vox-caster, he thought that that had been a joke. He shook his head. 

 	‘A hunter knows his prey,’ he said. He extended Moonfang and circled her with a duellist’s grace. Her armour was heavier than his, but not as battle-tested. She was hesitant, where a more confident warrior would be aggressive, as if she were as yet uncertain of her battlesuit’s limits. Or perhaps she was holding back for fear of killing him. The thought grated, but he shoved the insult aside. That was his advantage, not hers. 

 	‘And a huntress knows hers,’ Shadowsun said. 

 	‘I almost had you at Blackshale Ridge,’ Kor’sarro said.

 	‘Indeed. We were surprised. We are not used to being on the back-foot.’ She had begun to circle him, even as he circled her, matching his movements, if not his grace. Her armour was scorched and scored, but it didn’t appear damaged. Nonetheless, his keen eyes picked out a number of possible weak points, where a thrust from Moonfang might pierce the armour and possibly reach the meat within the shell. ‘Do you understand my meaning?’

 	‘I take it well enough,’ he said. He lowered Moonfang slightly. She would not take it as an invitation to attack, he knew. Her armour was kitted out for distance, and power, not personal duels. She was trying to keep him occupied while her warriors picked off his. That had been her plan all along. A slow whittling, a gradual blooding, to weaken, but not kill him, like a hunter prodding a wild auroch until the beast collapsed at last, its fury spent. They were still fighting, but with words now, rather than blades. They were feeling each other out, so that the final blow could be delivered as effectively as possible. ‘It is our way,’ he said. ‘But you know that now, no?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘You have been studying us. We have fought before, but only in isolated engagements. This was your chance to see how we waged war and you took it. You lead us in, and took us apart to see how we functioned. You gave us too much room, and then too little, stretched us and squeezed us and baited us into ever more narrow burrows. You were clever.’ 

 	‘Not clever enough, clearly,’ she said. ‘You are here.’

 	He smiled, despite himself. ‘But that is what you expected, eh? That is why you are here, rather than back there. You thought I would lead the charge. So you came to capture me personally. Was that what your hunting eagles were for, to wear me out?’ She said nothing and he continued, ‘The kroot. They were fighting to disable, not kill. I’d wager there was more than one pack of them, just in case.’ 

 	A sound slithered from her. It took him a moment to realise that it was laughter. ‘I have fought your kind before. Few have proven themselves so quick,’ she said. ‘You fight and think fast. That is why you had to be chained. If you fight so differently, you must think differently. If you think differently, then you can be reasoned with.’ The bolt pistol in his hand twitched, and the shield drone reacted with predictable speed, responding to the micro-gesture. He wondered if her battlesuit was analysing him, gauging his heart rate and breathing, recording, cataloguing everything about him, for her masters to pore over once this campaign was done. 

 	They wish to tame the storm, he thought. They wanted to chain and compel that which should not be chained, and force a false order over the natural. It was their way. As it was the way of the White Scars to defy such. You are the centre, he thought, eyeing her. You are the spoke, and your warriors the wheel. Where you go, the true war is fought. ‘Reasoned with,’ he said. He must know more. Every word, every gesture was its own tale. What war was he fighting? Was this for Agrellan or something greater? 

 	‘You do not think like the others,’ Shadowsun said. ‘Your thoughts are more fluid. More like ours,’ she continued, switching to a crude dialect of Khorchin. ‘My folk grew strong on the plains, like yours. We broke cities then and we have broken worlds since, just as you have done.’ His lips peeled back from his teeth, but not in a smile. Not now. ‘Set your sword aside, and we will speak at length, over glasses of chinyua wine and a game of Go, Khan Kor’sarro. We will speak of Chogoris, and the ways of plains folk, and warriors. We will speak of the Greater Good.’

 	If he had been any other man, Kor’sarro knew that the temptation would have been overwhelming. There were too many layers of meaning in her words, implicit threats and promises that would take days to decode. The hunter in him longed to follow all of the tracks and trails she was laying before him. But he was not simply a hunter – he was the Master of the Hunt, and he had his duty.

 	He sighed and looked up at the stars, fading into the dull iron sky of an Agrellan dawn. This world was poisoned, and worth nothing but the lives that would be spent in its defence, including those of him and his men, if that was the way of it. ‘I would like some wine,’ he said and his lips quirked in a smile, as he looked at her. ‘But we have already been playing, huntress, and the time has come to draw our game to an end.’ 

 	Kor’sarro slid forward, barely stirring the snow. The shield drone hummed between them as he raised his bolt pistol. He fired rapidly, but not at either the drone or its mistress. Instead, he fired at the ground. His shots tore steam from the slushy ground as each of the explosive bolts super-heated the snow into a white fog which cascaded upwards, enveloping him and his enemy both. The shield drone hovered, blinded, and he took it first, catching it from below with Moonfang. Piercing the drone, he slung it towards Shadowsun, who fired instinctively, erasing her own drone from existence. He was on her a moment later, his sword chopping down through the barrel of one of her weapons, rendering it useless. 

 	She flung the shattered weapon aside as she brought up its twin and fired. Her jetpack roared and she slid backwards, away from him, still firing. He pursued her, narrowly avoiding the blasts. The world narrowed to just him and her. He held Moonfang in both hands, arms cocked, ready for the killing thrust. If he could just reach her, even if she killed him, it would be over. She knew it as well as he did. It had been a calculated risk on her part, as it had been on his. Victory was never the sweeter than when it was balanced by death. 

 	Cat-quick, Kor’sarro leapt. She fired, and he felt heat brush past him, scouring his shoulderplate of its white and red markings, and leaving only the grey of bare ceramite as he crashed down on her, driving his sword down with all of his weight behind it. She twisted, desperate now, and the blade caressed her side, tearing through the white armour like paper. He grabbed for her helm, digging talon-like fingers into it, trying to destroy her optic sensors, to blind her for the kill. 

 	A blade, a primitive looking knife, flashed, suddenly appearing in her hand. It kissed his neck, drawing a thin weal of blood. They hit the ground in a tangle, and her feet caught him in the belly, propelling him away. He lost his grip on Moonfang and slid across the ground. She tossed aside her remaining blaster and tore her crushed and mangled helmet from her head. A topknot of hair as crimson as a Chogorian sunset unspooled and snapped out as a slate-blue face, with large, dark eyes glared at him. He recognised the look in those eyes, alien as they were. ‘Maybe we are alike,’ he said, drawing his combat knife. ‘Come then, huntress. Come and take my scalp.’

 	With a cry, she lunged for him, knife in hand. They reeled back and forth through the snow, blocking and slashing. Her blade bit into his vambraces, driven deep into the ceramite by the powered exoskeleton of her armour. His own knife gouged great scars in her armour, driven as much by his own muscle as his power armour. They whirled about one another in a deadly dance, and he laughed deep and loud and long for the pleasure of it. 

 	They crashed together, blade to blade, and he leaned towards her, smiling widely. In her eyes he saw reflected the joy that he knew danced in his own. We are not so different, Shadowsun, and in other circumstances, I would dance with you again. You are a worthy challenge, he thought. ‘And you would tame us?’ he said, ‘for shame. There is no taming the storm and there is no chaining the hunters of the stars. There is only the hunt, and death. Duty, honour, empire, these are but shadows in this moment, in all moments,’ he said. They strained against one another, heads so close that he could smell her sweat, and see his face reflected in her eyes. ‘You know that, as well as I, huntress. You feel it as well, and that is why you are doomed to fail,’ he said, stabbing to the core of her with each word. There was something indefinable in her gaze – determination, perhaps, tinged with what might have been sadness. The joy had faded. She had lost herself, but only for a moment. He felt a surge of satisfaction that he had been able to give her that much, even if it had only been a single moment of freedom.

 	Their knives grated against one another. She longed to kill him, to cut his heart out with her blade and her hands. But that was not the way of it, not today. She shoved him back and withdrew, her armour carrying her speedily away from him. He stumbled momentarily off balance. She scooped up her fusion blaster and spun, levelling it at him before he could reach her. He felt a moment of sadness, both for her sake and his own. She was a cunning creature, locked in chains that she didn’t even see. She deserved a clean death, a warrior’s death, if nothing else. Instead, he would die here, and his men would die, and it would all be for nothing. 

 	‘He’s here,’ Tolui said, ‘he’s coming.’ He looked up from the vox. ‘The Khwarezmian rides, my khan.’ The vox in his hands crackled, and Khorchin curses spattered the air in erratic fashion. That was Gharchai all right, Cemakar thought. No one else in the ordu had as wide or as sulphurous a vocabulary as the Khwarezmian. 

 	Cemakar backhanded a fire warrior that got too close and stomped on the downed xenos’s chest. He fired his bolt pistol, emptying the clip. Shadowsun had brought more troops than he’d thought. The tau had unpleasantly accurate fire, and his armour was scorched and marked by the evidence of that accuracy, as well as his position as Tolui’s breathing shield. ‘Well, it’s about time,’ he growled. He tossed aside the empty pistol and scooped up a chunk of still-smouldering wreckage, to block the firepower coming his way. 

 	They were in a stand-off. There weren’t enough White Scars to break the enemy, but the enemy weren’t determined enough to push through. The tau were squeamish, for which he was thankful. They spared concern for their wounded, and refused to commit suicide. It made them harder to kill in bulk, but kept them from mounting an effective assault. ‘Contact the others. We need to regroup and hit them as one, so that the Khwarezmian can sweep them from the ridge. Where is the Stormseer?’ Lightning crackled, and tau screamed as something exploded. Cemakar shook his head. ‘Never mind, there he is. Leave him to it. But contact Jebe and that dark armoured nitwit with the axe. Get them back here.’

 	Tolui bent to obey. Cemakar scanned the battlefield. It was as disorganised a mess as any warrior of the ordu could hope for, and he took a certain pride in the general air of confusion which lingered over things. This was how war should be waged, a riot of colour and noise, eventually subsumed in silence. Shots struck the chunk of wreckage he was using as a shield. Every vibration that shook the twisted metal in his hands shook a bit more blood from the wound in his side. He was dying. The fact did not frighten him. He had come close many times over his long life, and when he met it, it would be as a friend. 

 	That said he didn’t intend to make it easy on whoever killed him. The fire warriors were getting closer, trying to pound him flat with sheer volume of fire. He lunged forward and crashed into the group, treading them under or sending them flying. He used the chunk of wreckage like a club, swatting them from their feet. When it became too unwieldy, he tossed it aside and hefted a dazed tau over his head and sent him flying into his fellows with bone shattering force. Pain tore through him, as one of the alien soldiers rammed a knife into his open wound. Cemakar caught his opponent’s arm and jerked the fire warrior forward, dropping his elbow on top of the smooth curve of the alien’s helmet. Metal buckled, and the tau dropped insensate. ‘Where is the khan?’ he shouted to Tolui, plucking the knife from his side. He upended the blade and sent it spinning into the barrel of a tau rifle. The weapon exploded as its owner tried to fire. ‘If he knows that Gharchai is on the way, maybe he won’t do anything stupid.’ 

 	‘I saw him head that way, in pursuit of the xenos witch,’ Tolui said. He cracked a tau in the head with the vox. ‘Go find him, old man, we’ll hold here.’

 	Cemakar hesitated and then nodded. Stiffly, one hand pressed to his side, he moved across the ridge. Bikes roared past, guns blazing. The tau were trying to regroup, but seemed confused, as if their commander was otherwise occupied. Cemakar grunted. He had a feeling that he knew why that might be. Something cold clutched at his hearts, as if a shadow had passed over him. Maybe Ambaghai wasn’t the only one the spirits spoke to. He began to run, despite the pain, despite the ache in his side and the red fog that nearly blinded him. Wherever Shadowsun was, that was where Kor’sarro would be. 

 	He caught sight of the familiar flash of Moonfang, in the light of the nearing dawn. Something in him tore and he coughed blood. He saw them strain against one another, his khan and the alien commander, saw them break apart, saw the weapon rising in her hand, and he knew what was coming next and without a second thought, he leapt. 

 	Kor’sarro tensed, ready to make his final lunge. Her finger tightened on the trigger. 

 	Cemakar crashed into him as the fusion blaster roared. Kor’sarro scrambled to his feet. He looked down into the old man’s upturned face. ‘They’re… here,’ he wheezed, smoke rising from between his lips. ‘The Khwarezmian has come.’

 	Kor’sarro turned and saw shadows sweeping across Rime Crag, as the Stormbringer Squadron entered the fray. Land Speeders and Land Speeder Storms raced through the air, weapons firing as they weaved over and between the tau transports. The remaining battlesuit turned about and fired, plucking one of the Land Speeders from the air, but it was forced to hunker behind its shields as more swarmed it, circling it and firing at it from every angle. The battlesuit was fast, but the Land Speeders were faster. 

 	A Land Speeder Typhoon turned sharply, its lethal payload erupting from the twin pods mounted on its upper hull. Missiles streaked towards the battlesuit, consuming its shield-drones and rocking the heavy battlesuit. It refused to fall or retreat however, and it raised its weapon, pursuing the Typhoon with a barrage of its own. More Land Speeders circled it, cutting tight turns and engaging in a dazzling display of aeronautic acrobatics such as only the White Scars could conceive of. Multi-meltas seared the air, and heavy bolters bellowed. The battlesuit reeled as smoke erupted from the craters that now pockmarked its frame. 

 	With the battlesuit thus occupied, the rest of the squadron peeled off, homing in on the transponders carried by every White Scar biker. Missiles streaked from the Typhoons, corkscrewing into the open compartments of the tau transports as the fire warriors began to retreat. Land Speeders hunted the xenos, chewing up the ground around them with heavy bolter fire in an effort to herd them away from the surviving White Scars.

 	Other Land Speeders hurtled down the line of the ridge, assault cannons roaring a red greeting. Shadowsun turned, her smooth features wrinkling in consternation. She lifted her fusion blaster, and then lowered it with a shake of her head. 

 	Kor’sarro still knelt beside Cemakar. Old Shatterhand was dying, red bubbles forming at the corners of his mouth as he tried to speak, to breathe. He’d been cut in two by the blast, and Kor’sarro shifted slightly, so that Cemakar couldn’t see his own legs lying some distance away. ‘T-told you so,’ the old man hissed. His fist tapped weakly against Kor’sarro’s leg. ‘Stupid,’ he gurgled. 

 	‘Easy old man, the Khwarezmian is here. You’ll be fine. You’ve survived worse,’ Kor’sarro said, knowing it was a lie even as he said it. ‘You’ll survive this.’ He looked up. The sound of engines shook the ridge. Hasik and his bikers had made it through and come back. The khamar were making a fighting withdrawal. Their ambush had been ambushed, and they knew when they were beaten. They wouldn’t stay gone long, however. He knew that they would have a long, hard ride ahead of them, back to their own lines. The old man gripped his wrist, and Kor’sarro looked down. 

 	‘My tanks are dead,’ Cemakar said, staring up at the lightening sky. ‘Now so am I.’ His gaze sharpened, just for a moment. ‘They’ll make me a Ghost Warrior, boy,’ he rasped, and there was real fear in his words. For the first time, in his final moments, Old Shatterhand was frightened. The thought of being interred within the armoured sarcophagus of a Dreadnought caused even the staunchest warrior of the ordu to quail. To be made one of the Ghost Warriors meant an eternity of sterile slaughter, never to feel the wind or taste the blood of the enemy. Bloody fingers dug into Kor’sarro’s arm. ‘Don’t let them.’ He coughed. His eyes were wide. Blood spattered into his beard. Then with a querulous sigh, his face went slack, and his hands flopped limply to the snow. 

 	Kor’sarro hesitated. There was an Apothecary with Gharchai, he knew. Cemakar would be stabilised, kept hovering between the land of blood and the land of ghosts until such time as he could be encased in an adamantine bio-coffin and join the ranks of the living dead. He was too valuable to lose to such a shallow death. Old Shatterhand was a legend – a god-killer and a master of war. The seers would oversee his return and they would awaken him to fight anew. 

 	Unless there was nothing left to awaken. 

 	He looked up at Shadowsun, who was shouting orders to her troops. She met his eyes as he rose to his feet. ‘He was my commander, once,’ he said, softly. He knew she could hear him. ‘He was never my friend, for he had none. But he was my brother, and my teacher and he did not deserve this death. And he does not deserve what will happen next.’ 

 	They stared at one another, as the battle swept on around them. She had faced Dreadnoughts before, he knew. Even as she likely knew, after all this time studying the warriors of the ordu what such a fate meant to them. Then, just as he began to fear that he’d misjudged her, Shadowsun inclined her head slightly and he stepped back. Her fusion blaster vomited plasma and Cemakar’s body was enveloped in a pyrrhic shroud. Kor’sarro expelled a breath and looked at her. ‘Your days are numbered. Count them one by one, and cherish them. You have earned this one, but our dance is not yet finished, huntress. Wherever you go, wherever you wage war, I will pursue you, and when the appointed day dawns, your head will join the others on the White Road.’

 	Shadowsun held his gaze for a moment. ‘We could have been great friends, huntsman,’ she said, finally. Her armour wavered and a moment later, she was gone, lost to his sight. The sounds of bolterfire trickled off as the tau retreated, leaving Rime Crag to the battered remnants of the Third Company. 

 	Kor’sarro looked down at the char-stain that marked Cemakar’s passing and nodded to himself. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I rather think we could have.’ He sheathed Moonfang and trudged up towards the summit of the ridge. The survivors had fallen back to join the new arrivals. 

 	He could see the Khwarezmian among them, his armour wreathed in silks and furs, and his beaked helmet painted to resemble a wolf’s skull. Gharchai clasped forearms with him when Kor’sarro reached them a few moments later. ‘My khan, I’m glad to see that you haven’t killed them all. I was worried when we couldn’t find them on our sweep,’ the Khwarezmian said, one hand resting on the pommel of the heavy-blade tulwar sheathed on his hip. He cocked his head. ‘The old man,’ he asked. 

 	Kor’sarro gestured to the sky. ‘His spirit rides with the storms. As do those of our brothers who enabled us to escape the trap we were led into. As all of ours may do, before this day is done.’ He slapped a hand against Gharchai’s arm. ‘But we’re not dead yet. Mount up, brothers. We must be quick. The enemy will regroup and seek to harry us,’ he said, as he looked around. ‘A new day is upon us, and we still have a war to wage.’ He paused. ‘Our hunt is over. We ride for Agrellan Prime.’