Killing Ground

SIX

Visiting the Imperial palace of Salinas was an experience Daron Nisato avoided whenever he could. The building was too cold and too blatant a symbol of Imperial power to be relished any more. It served as a focal point for the people's anger, and to see its stark, uncompromising lines against the blue of the sky was to understand your insignificance in the face of the Imperium, and more especially, your insignificance in the face of Governor Leto Barbaden.

Nisato allowed the duty officer of the checkpoint to relieve him of his weapons, though it irked him that the city's chief enforcer could not be trusted with firearms in the presence of the governor.

This was the third security checkpoint he had passed through this morning, a drab, prefabricated building that smelled of damp and neglect. The first checkpoint at the main gate had halted his Rhino APC and the second, barely twenty paces later, had confirmed his identity via a series of painful, blood-sampling gene-matchers. He smiled grimly as he wondered if the gene-matchers explained the pasty, ashen complexions of the staffers that worked within the palace.

'Something funny?' asked the duty officer as he locked away Nisato's pistol.

'No,' replied Nisato, aware that these men lacked anything approaching a sense of humour, 'just happy to see you're doing such a thorough job.'

The man looked askance at Nisato, searching for signs of mockery, but Nisato was a past master at keeping his thoughts to himself. Satisfied that his solemn duty was not being made fun of, the man nodded gracelessly and waved Nisato through the door that led into the palace's courtyard precincts.

Nisato was about to pass through when the door behind him opened and the unmistakable aroma of incense, sweat and guilt wafted in. He knew who had entered the room without turning.

'Cardinal Togandis,' said Nisato.

He heard the intake of breath and turned to see the rotund figure of the Pontifex Maximus of Barbadus in all his finery.

'Enforcer Nisato,' said Togandis, his skin sheened in sweat. 'How fortuitous we should find ourselves together at this juncture.'

Shavo Togandis had never been an impressive man, even when he had served with the Falcatas as its company confessor, his manner too brusque, his appetites too unsavoury and his language too florid. Nisato had never felt the need to avail himself of the man's services, preferring to keep his confessions between the Emperor and himself in prayer.

The decade since Restoration Day had not been kind to Shavo Togandis's physique, his already doughy frame blooming to one generously proportioned in all directions.

'You are summoned also?' asked Nisato.

'Yes, yes,' said Togandis, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. 'We are all servants of our lord and master. Barbaden commands and we obey with alacrity. One does not like to keep the good governor waiting, does one?'

'No,' agreed Nisato, stepping aside to let the cardinal approach the unsmiling duty officer.

As Togandis went through the necessary formalities involved in passing through the palace's security, Nisato took a moment to study the senior cleric of Salinas.

He was not impressed.

Aside from his generously upholstered frame, Shavo Togandis had a nervous manner that, in any other man, would have seen him hauled into the interrogation cells below the enforcers' precinct and broken down for a confession.

The confessor confessing. The thought made him smile.

In addition to his shimmering chasuble of crimson and silver, Togandis wore a tall and elaborately worked mitre with long trailing cords of gold. He carried a long staff, which he was attempting to prevent the duty officer from impounding.

'Now see here, my good man,' began Togandis, 'this postprandial summons to the palace has inconvenienced me greatly and this staff is a sacred instrument of my most valued and not inconsequential status on this planet. You would be advised not to remove it from my personage.'

'No weapons or items that could be construed as weapons are allowed within the palace,' said the duty officer, as though reciting the words by rote, 'except by a member of the Falcatas.'

'Now you listen here, you pathetic little myrmidon, you must understand that there are exceptions to every rule and I refuse to truckle to your purblind devotion. Do you understand?'

'Frankly, no,' said the duty officer, holding out his hand, 'but it alters nothing. You'll need to hand over your staff.'

'I wouldn't bother arguing, Shavo,' said Nisato, adopting a tone as stuffy and self-important as the cardinal's. 'Even I, an upholder of Imperial Law, am forced to relinquish my symbols of office in the face of this panjandrum.'

Togandis looked down at Nisato's empty holster and smiled at the gesture of solidarity, oblivious to the sarcasm in Nisato's voice.

'Well, indeed, one must band together in the face of adversity, what?' he said, turning and reluctantly handing over his staff to the duty officer. 'And if there is so much as a single imperfection visible upon that staff when I return, I shall deliver the fiercest commination upon your head!'

The duty officer took the staff and wearily waved the pair of them through.

Smiling, Nisato followed the cardinal into the courtyard, emerging into bright sunlight on the cusp of the transition from morning to afternoon.

The palace towered above them, dark and threatening. Its guns and defences, though angled to the sky, remained an impressive symbol of the power of the man who commanded them. Constructed from immense blocks of dark stone, the palace reminded Nisato of the great, cliff-top castles of his home world, brooding crags carved from the rock of the coastline.

Scarlet-clad soldiers patrolled the lower skirts of the palace, their falcatas unsheathed at their sides. Their red plate gleamed in the sun and the bronze of their helmets shone like gold, but even these men were not permitted to bear firearms as a matter of course.

Unlike many soldiers who looked ceremonial, the Achaman Falcatas were men he had once been proud to fight alongside. There was no give in these soldiers and they fought with a fire in their bellies that other regiments could only envy. That fire had died since Restoration Day, but its embers still smouldered.

A trio of Chimera transports emblazoned with the insignia of the Screaming Eagles were parked up before the palace, an unusual enough occurrence that it made Nisato wonder who had travelled in them to be afforded such a rare honour.

Once again, Togandis dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief.

'So, did your summons furnish you with any clue as to the nature of this audience?' he asked.

Nisato shook his head, slowing his normally long stride to allow the waddling cardinal to keep up. 'No, it didn't, but then Leto always was a man of few words, wasn't he?'

'Indeed he was,' agreed Togandis. 'Indeed he was. No inspiring speeches before a battle, just orders, precise, never to be meddled with, orders.'

That was certainly true, remembered Nisato. As a cadet commissar when Leto Barbaden had taken command of the Achaman Falcatas, Nisato had summarily executed a number of junior officers who had seen fit to exercise their own initiative in their interpretation of Barbaden's orders.

Leto Barbaden did not like to be second-guessed and nor did he expect his orders to be carried out with anything less than total obedience. As far as Nisato knew, the years since Barbaden's relinquishing of command had not mellowed him and thus he had put aside his current investigations into Sons of Salinas activity and headed straight for the palace upon receiving his summons.

Until he had met Togandis, Nisato had assumed that it had something to do with this morning's attack on Colonel Kain's convoy as it had made its way back into the city. Seeing the Chimeras supported that, but the cardinal's presence suggested that some other business was afoot.

'Such a terrible business with Governor Barbaden's former adjutant, eh?'

'I'm sorry?' said Nisato, surprised at this sudden, unexpected, question.

'Hanno Merbal?' said Togandis. 'He shot himself right in front of you, I hear?'

'Yes,' replied Nisato, his interest piqued, 'he did.'

'He was a friend of yours, was he not?' asked Togandis and Nisato wanted to laugh at the cardinal's attempt at nonchalance.

'He was,' confirmed Nisato. Keep the answers short, he thought. Let Togandis do the talking.

'Hmmm, yes,' said Togandis. 'Have you any idea why he would do such a thing?'

'You tell me, Shavo,' said Nisato. 'You were his confessor, weren't you?'

'I was indeed, Daron,' replied Togandis, scorn dripping from the use of his first name, 'but the fact of which I am sure you are cognisant remains that the seal of the confessional is a sacred trust that cannot be broken.'

'Even in death?'

'Especially in death,' said Togandis. 'The sins of the confessed are in the hands of the Emperor. I can tell you he was having some issues with, shall we say, guilt, though.'

'Over this?' asked Nisato, pulling out the golden eagle medal that Hanno Merbal had shown him right before blowing his brains out all over the bar.

Togandis looked away from the medal and Nisato was enough of an enforcer to know guilt when he saw it. Once again Togandis dabbed at his moist forehead.

'I… I haven't thought of Khaturian in a long time,' said Togandis, and Nisato smelled a lie.

'You were there?' asked Nisato and Togandis flinched.

Nisato already knew the answer; Togandis wore an identical medal on the front of his chasuble.

'I was, yes,' agreed Togandis hurriedly, 'but I took no part in the fighting.'

'From what I gather there wasn't much fighting.'

Togandis did not reply at first and Nisato thought the cardinal was going to ignore the question, but the man whispered. 'No, there wasn't, but…'

'But?' pressed Nisato, eager to learn what he could of this most unspoken of battles.

Before Togandis had a chance to answer, a formal voice said, 'Enforcer Nisato, Cardinal Togandis, Governor Barbaden is ready to see you now. If you will follow me please.'

Nisato cursed inwardly and mustered a smile as he looked away from Togandis to the blandly smiling face of Mersk Eversham.

Eversham's face was thin and angular, but his body, beneath the elegantly cut frock coat, was solid and unbreakable. Nisato had seen Eversham in combat enough times to know that the man was a ferocious killer and he wondered how Barbaden had persuaded him to muster out of the regiment. He was an anomaly within the Falcatas, a man of culture and breeding who could have easily become an officer, but had chosen to enlist in the rank and file.

Now he served as Leto Barbaden's aide, attendant, personal secretary and bodyguard, having long ago replaced the now-deceased Hanno Merbal. Nisato had no doubt that Eversham was armed with a number of concealed firearms and blades.

'Mersk,' said Nisato, nodding. 'You're keeping well?'

'Well enough,' said Eversham. 'Now if you please.'

'Of course, of course,' fussed Togandis. 'Come on, Daron. We mustn't keep the good governor waiting, must we?'

'No,' said Nisato, 'we wouldn't want that.'

He saw the faint suggestion of a smug grin on Eversham's face and resisted the urge to wipe it off. Instead, he followed Barbaden's killer and the cardinal as a detachment of red-jacketed soldiers formed up around them, falcatas bright in the sunlight.

The symbolism was obvious and heavy handed, but Nisato paid it no mind as they were led into the palace, down twisting corridors, up cramped screw stairs and through echoing, cold chambers bereft of warming fires or laughter.

Eversham offered no more in the way of conversation and Togandis's normal extravagant garrulousness vanished in the face of the palace's austerity. They marched in silence until the soldiers halted at the end of a long, portrait-lined hallway. At the end of the corridor, Nisato saw the slight, stooped form of Mesira Bardhyl and felt a familiar protective urge towards the woman.

She had always been a nervous creature and had been treated foully when she had served as Barbaden's pet psyker.

The years since Restoration Day had been no kinder to her as far as Nisato could tell.

'This way,' said Eversham, though the route was familiar to both Nisato and Togandis.

They followed Eversham along the hallway, Togandis making a show of admiring the portraits of previous colonels of the Falcatas, and Nisato wondering what the cardinal had been about to say before Eversham had interrupted.

Mesira greeted them with a shy smile and a nod, and Nisato saw dark hollows beneath her eyes and noted how the skin seemed to sag on her sparse frame. Togandis studiously ignored Mesira as Eversham knocked tersely on the wide wooden doors at the end of the hallway. Barbaden's equerry paused just long enough to hear an imperious command to enter before sweeping into the room.

Nisato, Togandis and Mesira followed Eversham into the room, a spacious and extensive library furnished with long tables and floor to ceiling bookcases.

Governor Leto Barbaden sat, perched on the room's central table.

Tall, lean and dark-haired, Leto Barbaden's ascetic frame was dressed in an immaculately cut suit that echoed the pomp of a military uniform in its brass buttons, lined trousers and gleaming boots, but which was undeniably civilian. A line of medal ribbons decorated his left breast, but they were understated and dignified.

Barbaden's face was handsome, his dark hair and neatly trimmed beard sprinkled liberally with silver, but his eyes were those of a predator.

As commanding a presence as Barbaden was, it was the two figures standing before him that completely captured Daron Nisato's attention. It was left to Shavo Togandis's surprise to give them name.

'Astartes,' breathed the cardinal.

Both were clad in pale robes with the hoods pulled back, the clothes looking absurdly small on their enhanced physiques. Both stood head and shoulders above Verena Kain and the armed soldiers who lined the walls of the library. One of the Space Marines was lean, if such a description could be applied to a two and a half metre-tall giant, while the other was a brute of a man whose arm was missing below the elbow.

To say Daron Nisato was astonished by this strange tableau was an understatement of colossal proportions.

'Ah, Daron, Shavo,' said Barbaden, his voice mellifluous, 'so glad you could join us.'

As if there was a choice, thought Nisato.

'We have guests,' continued Barbaden, 'and they claim to have a most fantastical tale.'

With every passing moment, the sun had crept further and further into the cave, pressing the Unfleshed back into its darkened depths. Bellowing roars and threatening demonstrations of their physical power had not halted its progress and neither had begging, pleading or wails of fear.

The Lord of the Unfleshed felt the anger that had been growing in him turn to rage as the hateful light encroached on their last refuge. There was nowhere to go, no last hiding place that would protect the tribe from the killing light.

Their betrayal was complete.

They huddled behind him, pathetic and afraid, their monstrous forms and mighty strength no defence against the sunlight that would kill their skinless bodies. Even with their limited exposure to it, their bodies were changing, the lesions across their limbs spreading and turning paler as they went.

As the light grew brighter, the Lord of the Unfleshed narrowed his eyes, feeling a tightness to his body, as though his limbs were wrapped in some invisible film.

His body itched all over and he raised his arm to his face, seeing a strange milky sheen where the sunlight had touched it. His arm had changed from the mottled red and grey of exposed musculature to a shimmering, oily white.

Though the terms were unknown to him, his metabolism had reacted to the sudden and shocking presence of ultraviolet radiation by activating the gene-memory of the biological hardware pressed into the service of his construction. In Space Marines the organ was known as the melanochrome, a biological device designed to darken the warrior's skin and protect him from harmful radiation.

Accelerated and altered beyond reason by the horrific nature of his gestation within the daemon wombs of Medrengard, the disparate fragments of the melanochrome were in overdrive, crafting the only defence its mindless biological imperatives knew: skin.

The Lord of the Unfleshed watched as the milky sheen spread still further, flowing like a rippling liquid as it oozed down the length of his arm, covering his fingers and tightening across the meat and bone of his body.

Amazed, the Lord of the Unfleshed took a step forward, easing his newly sheathed arm into the light that crept like an invader into the cave. His arm tingled, the skin darkening from a soft white to a fleshy pink. He withdrew his arm as he saw the same substance crawling over the bodies of his tribe.

Were they to be whole again?

The nature of this miracle was unknown to the Lord of the Unfleshed, but he dropped to his knees to give thanks to the Emperor for it, for what else could the source of this wonder be?

Emboldened by their leader's change, the rest of the tribe edged forward, their glistening bodies following the example of the Lord of the Unfleshed.

They whooped and howled as the light touched them, for their bodies were more degenerate than their leader's and the light still burned them. They looked to him for guidance, but he had none to give them.

His body was changing, adapting, mutating. He did not know how or why, but the Emperor was giving him a chance to better himself, to become more than simply a monster. His anger, a fiery, volatile thing retreated within him, not gone, but kept in check.

The Lord of the Unfleshed turned his gaze upon his tribe. 'Wait. Changes coming. What happens to me will happen to you, not now, but soon.'

As if to prove his point, the Lord of the Unfleshed stepped into the sunlight to howls of fear and anguish. Step after step, he marched through the light until he stood at the cave mouth on the slopes of the mountain.

He felt the sunlight burning his skin, but it was a sensation to be rejoiced in, not feared. The forgotten memory of skin returned to him in all its glory: to be clad in flesh, to stand beneath the heat of a sun and know the feeling of it on his face!

Far below, he could see the ruins of the dead place, shadows criss-crossing its empty streets.

Except, now that he looked, they weren't empty were they?

Uriel stood before the governor of Salinas and knew he was in the presence of one of the most dangerous individuals he had ever met: Leto Barbaden, a man of whom he had heard only fragmentary pieces of information, a man who, until now, had been a cipher.

As a commander of a regiment and now a world, he had clearly not been a man to underestimate, but Uriel saw the truth of the matter as he looked into Barbaden's cold, pitiless eyes.

In his time as a warrior, Uriel had met all kinds of commanders, some good, some bad, but mostly just men and women trying to do their duty and keep their soldiers alive. Barbaden might be concerned with the former, but it was clear that he had no real interest in the latter.

With the wounded dealt with at the Screaming Eagles barracks, Uriel and Pasanius had once again embarked on a Chimera and been driven at speed through the city. A number of decoy Chimeras had also been despatched, but such precautions had, this time, proven unnecessary.

They had seen little of the city on the journey, simply flashes of brick and metal through the vision blocks. Uriel had tried to follow the sense of the route, but had quickly given up after yet another confusing turn. Then there had been a series of stops and starts, no doubt checkpoints of some description, before they had disembarked within a large courtyard at the foot of the Imperial palace.

Seen up close, the building was even more impressive than it had first appeared, its defences and armaments the equal of many of the outlying fortresses in Ultramar. Colonel Kain had led them into a barracks unit at the base of the palace, accompanied as always by a detachment of her red-jacketed soldiers.

A man in a long black coat had met them, a man in whom Uriel saw the fluid movements and casual grace of a natural killer. This man was introduced as Eversham, personal equerry to Governor Barbaden. Uriel had shared a glance with Pasanius and was relieved ta see that his friend had also seen through the man's facade of bland functionary.

Clean clothes were provided and Uriel had gratefully stripped out of the remainder of his broken armour. Pasanius had been less keen, and made no secret of his reluctance to be parted from it. Uriel had displayed a similar reticence when a soldier had come forward to relieve him of his golden-hilted sword.

'This was an honour gift from a captain of the Ultramarines,' warned Uriel.

'Have no fear for your battle gear,' promised Eversham. 'It will be taken to the Gallery of Antiquities. Curator Urbican is no stranger to armour and weapons such as yours.'

It was clear that the matter was not up for debate and their equipment had been taken from them and carried away by a squad of sweating soldiers. Still under armed guard, the two of them had used the ablutions block to wash the accumulated filth of their travels on Medrengard from their bodies, though Uriel doubted that a simple cascade of heated water could ever achieve such a thing.

Their bodies cleaned, fresh robes were presented to them, simple things, hastily altered to fit their overlarge frames. Now considered presentable to the good governor, Eversham and Colonel Kain (also in a fresh uniform) had escorted them through the palace, a gloomy, spartanly furnished abode of wood panelled corridors with little in the way of personal decoration or anything approaching a stamp of the incumbent owner's personality.

That in itself was revealing, for it was a trait common to most people, Uriel had come to realise, that they wished to leave their mark on the world to show that they had existed and to prove that they mattered.

Uriel saw none of that in the cheerless chambers of the palace and he wondered what that said about the mindset of the man who called this building home.

At last they had been led through a portrait-lined gallery and into a large, well-stocked library with a score of soldiers standing to attention around the perimeter of the room. Seated before a roaring, crackling fire was a tall man with dark hair lined with silver. His bearing was stiff and unpretentious and he drank a tawny liquid from a curved snifter.

Eversham had departed, to fetch other arrivals, he claimed, and Uriel and Pasanius had been left in the company of Leto Barbaden and Verena Kain.

Kain had wordlessly taken up position with the soldiers at the walls and Barbaden regarded them coolly for several moments before rising from his chair and depositing his glass on the table next to it.

'I am Leto Barbaden, Imperial Commander of Salinas,' he said. 'Now who are you?'

'I am Captain Uriel Ventris and this is Sergeant Pasanius Lysane,' said Uriel.

'The man does not speak for himself?' asked Barbaden. 'Has he lost the power of speech?'

'I can speak well enough,' said Pasanius.

'Then do so,' suggested Barbaden. 'Never let others speak for you, sergeant.'

Uriel was surprised, and not a little angered, at the governor's tone, for, like Kain, the governor displayed none of the awe or reverence that usually accompanied the presence of warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. In fact, his bearing and body language suggested downright hostility.

'You said you are a captain, Uriel Ventris,' continued Barbaden, perching on the edge of the table, 'a captain of which Chapter?'

'We are proud warriors of the Ultramarines,' said Uriel, 'the Fourth Company: the Defenders of Ultramar.'

'Please furnish me with a concise answer when I ask a question, captain. I do so detest loquaciousness,' said Barbaden.

Anger touched Uriel, but he felt Pasanius willing him to remain calm, and he fought down his rising temper. 'As you wish, governor.'

'Excellent,' smiled Barbaden. 'Salinas is a simple world and I should like to keep it like that. I keep things simple because, as systems become complex, they have more chance of going wrong. You understand?'

Believing Barbaden's question was rhetorical, Uriel said nothing.

'Also, when I ask a question, captain, I expect an answer. I do not waste my breath asking questions to which I already know the answer.'

'Yes,' hissed Uriel, 'I understand.'

'Good,' continued Barbaden, apparently oblivious to Uriel's growing anger. 'Salinas is a world not without its problems, true, but none are of sufficient magnitude to trouble me unduly. However, when two warriors of the Astartes suddenly appear on my planet without so much as a breath of notice, it strikes me as a complexity that could dangerously destabilise the workings of my world.'

'I assure you, Governor Barbaden, that is the last thing we wish to do,' said Uriel. 'All we want to do is return to Macragge.'

Barbaden nodded. 'I see, and this would be your home world?'

'Yes.'

'As I mentioned earlier, Captain Ventris, I dislike complexities. They add random variables to life that I detest. In all things, predictable outcomes are those upon which we rely to facilitate our passage through life. Known facts and predictable elements are the bedrock upon which all things are built and if we upset that, well, chaos ensues.'

'Of course, governor—' began Uriel.

'I have not finished speaking,' snapped Barbaden. 'It strikes me that your presence here is just such a random variable and that it would be better if I were simply to be rid of you.'

Barbaden snapped his fingers and the soldiers around the edges of the room suddenly lifted their rifles to their shoulders and aimed them at Uriel and Pasanius.

Uriel couldn't believe what he was hearing and seeing. Was this man simply going to gun them down? He quickly calculated the number and type of weapons pointed at him and the odds of their survival. Even the legendary physique of a Space Marine would not survive a well-aimed volley from these soldiers.

'You arrive on my world, unannounced and without permission,' hissed Barbaden. 'You trespass upon forbidden ground and you expect me to treat you as honoured guests? What manner of fool do you take me for?'

'Governor Barbaden,' said Uriel, 'I swear on the honour of my Chapter that we are servants of the Emperor. If you will allow me, I will explain how we came to be on your world.'

'Explanations are excuses,' said Barbaden. 'I'll have the truth from you. Now.'

Uriel saw anger in Barbaden's eyes, but saw that it travelled no further through his body.

The governor's anger was perfectly controlled, icy and supported by his internal logic, which made it all the more dangerous, as it was not fettered by other emotions.

With a gesture, Barbaden could destroy them without regret and Uriel found himself wondering at the irony of having survived everything the Eye of Terror could throw at them, only to be killed by a fellow servant of the Emperor.

'Of course,' said Uriel, his voice hardening at this boorish treatment. 'I will tell you the truth of our arrival, and perhaps then we can come to some arrangement whereby we can leave.'

'That remains to be seen,' said Barbaden, 'but I will consider it upon hearing your story.'

Uriel nodded, unwilling to offer anything approaching thanks to Barbaden. 'I warn you that this is a fantastical tale, governor. Some of it you may find hard to believe, but I swear on my honour that it is all true.'

Before Uriel could say more, there was a knock on the door and Barbaden said, 'Enter!'

The door opened and Eversham re-entered the room, leading three others behind him.

Two of the new arrivals were men, the other a woman. One man was tall and ruggedly handsome, his skin as dark as the heavy, black body armour he wore. Uriel decided he must be some sort of local law enforcement.

The second man was grossly fat, to the point of obesity: a corpulent mass of flesh clad head to foot in lavishly ornamented robes of scarlet and silver. Uriel took him for a senior member of the Ecclesiarchy, a cardinal perhaps. The man mopped his glistening brow with a sodden handkerchief and Uriel could smell the rankness of his gushing pores.

The third member of the new arrivals was a spare, tired-looking woman with pensive features and a nervous disposition. Uriel could smell her fear, even over the cardinal's odour.

None of the three could hide their surprise at the sight of them.

'Astartes,' breathed the obese man.

'Ah, Daron, Shavo,' said Barbaden, 'so glad you could join us. We have guests, and they claim to have a most fantastical tale.'

SEVEN

Introductions were made perfunctorily: Daron Nisato, chief enforcer of the city of Barbadus; Shavo Togandis, Cardinal of Barbadus and Pontifex Maximus of Salinas; and lastly, Mesira Bardhyl, former sanctioned psyker of the Achaman Falcatas and private citizen. Uriel could not miss the contempt for all three written across Verena Kain's face.

Leto Barbaden retrieved his snifter and sat back down. He occupied the room's only chair and everyone else was forced to stand as he reclined and crossed his legs.

Barbaden waved the snifter towards Uriel and said, 'You may begin your tale, captain.'

Uriel swallowed his anger and simply nodded.

He began with the Fourth Company's mission to Tarsis Ultra and the battles against the tyranids, a race of extra-galactic predators who sought to devour all life on the world. Uriel's voice soared with pride as he told of the many battles fought before the walls of Erebus City and the courage of the Imperial Guard regiments tasked with its defence.

As he described the desperate fighting to save Tarsis Ultra, Uriel could feel the vicarious pride that the soldiers of the Falcatas felt in the achievements of their brother Guardsmen.

The Great Devourer's hordes were defeated on Tarsis Ultra, but the cost had been high.

Many of Uriel's warriors had died, and the Masters of the Ultramarines had not looked favourably on his cavalier methods of command. No sooner had the survivors of the Fourth Company returned to Macragge than Uriel and Pasanius had been charged with breaking faith with the Codex Astartes, the mighty tome that guided the Ultramarines in all things and which had been penned by their Primarch in ages past.

'What was the nature of your punishment?' asked Barbaden.

'We were exiled from the Chapter,' replied Uriel.

'To what purpose?'

'Lord Tigurius, the chief librarian of the Ultramarines saw a vision of great evil and sent us on a mission to destroy it: a Death Oath.'

'A Death Oath?' asked Barbaden. 'So, you were not expected to return?'

'Few have ever returned from such quests,' agreed Uriel.

'But you have completed your Death Oath?'

'We have. We travelled to a world taken by the Ruinous Powers and fought our way into the fortress of an enemy warlord and saw his citadel torn down.'

'And you did this all on your own?' asked Verena Kain.

'No,' said Uriel, choosing his words carefully, 'not quite. We made allies of some of the planet's inhabitants. Together we were able to complete our mission and now seek only to return to our Chapter.'

Barbaden appeared to consider Uriel's words and said, 'An intriguing tale, Captain Ventris, but it does not answer the question that has been vexing me ever since I was informed of your arrival. How did you get here?'

'I am not sure of the exact mechanics of it, Governor Barbaden,' began Uriel, understanding that he would need to tell at least part of the truth. 'Much of what has happened to us in recent times is beyond my understanding, but we were transported within a craft that somehow travels between this world and the Empyrean. It brought us here and left us in Khaturian. Where it is now or why it chose your world, I do not know.'

Barbaden glanced over to Mesira Bardhyl, who gave a curt, nervous nod, and Uriel understood that the governor was using her as some form of psychic truth-seeker. He was grateful he had chosen not to lie to Barbaden, as he suspected that the governor would order his soldiers to open fire at the first hint of falsehood.

'So here you are,' said Barbaden, 'two heroic Space Marines beginning their odyssey home. I admit, it has the whiff of the epic to it, Captain Ventris. What is it you require of me?'

Uriel let out a soft sigh of relief. While it wasn't acceptance or an apology, it was at least a step in the right direction.

'We ask for the chance to send an astropathic message to Macragge,' said Uriel, 'a message approved by you, obviously. We have completed our Death Oath and it is time for us to return home.'

Barbaden drained the last of the tawny liquid in his glass and set it down next to him.

'And if I agree to this request?'

'Then we are at your disposal until such time as our battle-brothers can bring us home.'

Though the offer was distasteful to Uriel, the idea of having two Space Marines at Barbaden's beck and call clearly appealed to the governor and he smiled. 'It is not often we can call upon the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes.'

The governor snapped his fingers and the soldiers around the edge of the room gratefully lowered their weapons.

'Yes, perhaps your presence here is just the thing we have been looking for in our recent troubles,' said Barbaden, 'troubles that Colonel Kain tells me you have experienced first hand.'

'Indeed,' said Uriel, although he knew fine well that Barbaden would already know every detail of this morning's encounter with the Sons of Salinas.

'I am sure your assistance was most welcome,' said Barbaden.

'We needed no help,' said Verena Kain and Barbaden smiled at her interruption. 'Pascal Blaise is no great commander and his insurgents are amateurs.'

'And yet he ambushed you and cost you several armoured fighting vehicles, Verena,' said Barbaden, 'vehicles we can scarce afford to lose.'

Colonel Kain wisely kept her mouth shut as Barbaden continued. 'Yes, I think it might prove advantageous to be seen as having the support of the Adeptus Astartes. The people of this planet need to see that they are part of the Imperium and that to resist the appointed commander will not stand.'

Barbaden stood and clasped his hands behind his back. 'I will set up a communion between you and my astropath and we shall see about getting you home. In the meantime, I insist you remain as my guests within the palace precincts. You will receive the very best hospitality, but for your own safety I shall have to ask that you do not venture beyond the palace walls without escort. As you have seen, the streets of Barbadus are not as safe as we might wish.'

Although he was surprised by Barbaden's reversal, Uriel wasn't about to reject his offer to help simply because he didn't like the man. He nodded graciously and said, 'That is acceptable to us, governor.'

'Of course,' said Barbaden, waving his arm around the room to encompass the others who had arrived before Uriel's tale had begun. 'Now that the matter is resolved, I have many other things to attend to, Captain Ventris, and I must speak with my senior advisors. Eversham here will find you suitable accommodation within the palace and I will send word when it is possible to transmit your message home.'

'Thank you, Governor Barbaden,' said Uriel, although he could see that the man had already effectively dismissed them.

Eversham appeared at Uriel's side and said, 'If you would follow me, please.'

Uriel nodded, casting his eye around the room one last time.

All through his tale telling, neither Togandis nor Nisato had said a single word and Uriel wondered why they had been summoned to hear it. Why had Barbaden gathered them here?

It was something to think of later, for Eversham was waiting expectantly at his side.

Uriel and Pasanius bowed to the Imperial Commander of Salinas and followed their escort from the room.

'Well?' asked Barbaden, the mask of civility falling from his face once the two Space Marines had been led away. 'What did you make of that?'

No one wanted to be the first to speak and Barbaden sighed. His reputation was such that no one dared to voice an opinion until they knew which way he was leaning. In no mood for games, he said, 'I believe there is more to Uriel Ventris and Pasanius Lysane than meets the eye, don't you?'

Surprisingly, it was Shavo Togandis who spoke first.

'They are Adeptus Astartes, my lord,' he said. 'What is it you suspect?'

'I was asking you that, Shavo,' said Barbaden. 'I do not like it when my questions are rephrased and asked back to me.'

'My apologies, governor,' said Togandis, clearly regretting his impetuous utterance. Barbaden paced among his subordinates, enunciating each word with deliberate clarity so that there could be no misunderstanding. His time in the administrative corps of the Achaman Falcatas, prior to his taking command, had taught him the value of clarity.

'Captain Ventris claimed to have come from a world fallen to the Ruinous Powers. Well, cardinal, might it perhaps be perspicacious to have the quarters assigned to him secured with holy scriptures, wards and the like? I would imagine that there must be some litany you could read that would discern any taint.'

'Ah, well, yes, I'm sure there would be some passage that would fit the bill,' said Togandis, 'perhaps in Sermons of Sebastian Thor or Benedictions and Blessings—'

'I don't need the specifics,' snapped Barbaden. 'Just find a suitable passage and see it done. If they have brought some taint with them, I do not want it loose on my world.'

Having dealt with Togandis, Barbaden turned his gaze on Daron Nisato, solid dependable Nisato. Barbaden could feel the man's dislike of him, but tolerated it, for he was good at what he did and had an honest soul.

That was why he had been transferred out of the Screaming Eagles.

Putting the thought from his mind, Barbaden asked, 'What of you, Daron? What did you make of Captain Ventris?'

Nisato stood a little straighten 'I don't believe he was lying.'

'No?' said Barbaden. 'Then your instincts are letting you down.'

Nisato shook his head. 'I do not believe so, my lord. While I don't think Ventris was lying, there was definitely more that he wasn't telling you. He was vague about how they arrived on Salinas and what planet they'd just come from, and when a person is being vague, it's usually because they know that the specifics will hang them out to dry.'

'So you think we should press them for details?'

'That depends on whether you want to create a fuss,' said Nisato.

'No,' agreed Barbaden, 'a fuss is something I should like to avoid, Daron. Very well, look into the ambush this morning, make some arrests, shake the tree and see what falls out. I want some heads on spikes by this evening. I don't care whose, you understand?'

Nisato nodded and turned from him. As the enforcer left he whispered something to Shavo Togandis, but Barbaden could not hear what passed between them. The governor smiled. Poor old Nisato, always trying to tie up those loose ends, but never astute enough to realise that some loose ends didn't want or need to be tied up.

With Nisato gone, Barbaden turned towards Mesira Bardhyl, noting the shabbiness of her appearance and the haggard look in her eyes. He tutted. The least the woman could have done was make herself a little more presentable before coming to the palace.

Barbaden had seen the same look on the faces of many astropaths and wondered if such hangdog expressions of misery were common to psykers throughout the Imperium. He pushed the thought from his mind as irrelevant.

'And you Mistress Bardhyl?' he asked. 'Can you shed any more light on what was said here today?'

Mesira Bardhyl shook her head, keeping her eyes studiously fixed on a point of the floor between her feet. Barbaden reached out and lifted her chin until their eyes were locked together.

'When I ask a question, I expect an answer, Mesira,' said Barbaden. 'It would be such a shame if I was to suspect that your psychic ability had allowed a sliver of the warp to enter your pretty little head and I had to have Daron put a bolt round through it, wouldn't it?'

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and Barbaden's lip curled in distaste. Tears angered him, women's tears especially, and he leaned closer as she mumbled something inaudible.

He slapped her hard across the face.

'Speak up, Mesira,' said Barbaden. 'I thought you would have sense enough to know that your hysterics this morning had irritated me to the point where you would curb such theatrics in my presence.'

'Yes, governor,' said Mesira. 'Sorry, governor.'

'There you go,' said Barbaden, wiping tears from her hollow cheeks. 'Now that you are composed, can you tell me anything of value? And, please, spare me the hyperbole you were spouting earlier.'

Mesira Bardhyl composed herself with visible effort, reaching up to rub her eyes and take a deep breath.

'It's… It's hard to describe,' she said.

'Please try,' he said, leaving her in no doubt that this was not a request.

'Enforcer Nisato was right,' said Mesira. 'Captain Ventris wasn't lying, but nor was he telling you everything. He believes his truth, that much I can tell, and I sensed no taint to his words, but whatever he and his friend travelled on…'

'What about it?' asked Barbaden.

'I don't know what it was, but it was powerful, so very powerful,' said Mesira. 'It ripped its way through to this world and then tore a hole back through the gates of the Empyrean, and a lot of energy came through as it did so.'

'What does that mean? In real terms?'

'I don't know,' said Mesira, her entire body pulling in tight at this admission. 'I think that's why they appeared in the killing… in Khaturian.'

'Explain.'

Mesira looked up at the people around her, looking for support in their faces. Finding none, she pressed on, and Barbaden could see the resignation in her eyes as she spoke. 'We all know what happened at Khaturian, what we did… The scale of it… Things like that don't just get forgotten, in this world or any other. When a person dies, his… soul, for want of a better word, is released into the warp, and it usually dissipates into the maelstrom of energy there. Sometimes, though, when a person dies, their soul has enough rage, fear, anger or some other strong emotion to remain coherent in the warp, and that exerts its own attraction.'

'Attraction to what?'

'To wherever they died,' said Mesira. 'Whatever it was that brought Captain Ventris here was something terrible, something that feeds on death and bloodshed. Khaturian was like a magnet to it.'

'You say it's gone, this thing that brought Ventris here?'

Mesira nodded. 'Yes, it was barely even here, but its power was so great that the walls that separate us from the warp were worn much thinner, and they were already thin enough.'

'Superstitious nonsense,' blurted Shavo Togandis. 'This is a pious world, Mesira. Yes, we have our troubles, but we are conscientious in our suppression of psychics.'

Barbaden chuckled at Togandis's unspoken accusation.

'Our faith keeps the warp at bay,' said Togandis, 'as it always has and always will.'

'You think so, Shavo?' cried Mesira. 'Then you are a fool. Why do you think this system is so fractious? What do you think brought us here in the first place? The warp bleeds into the nightmares of this system's people, stirs their sleep and twists their dreams with thoughts of death and war! And now it's in ours.'

Mesira was wringing her hands, as though desperate to scrape the skin from her bones or clean them of some imagined taint. Barbaden saw the light of madness in Mesira Bardhyl as fresh tears coursed down her cheeks.

'You must have felt it,' she wailed. 'We were there! Oh, Emperor save us, we were there!'

Barbaden stood before Mesira and took her shoulders in a tight grip.

Her words trailed off and she looked up into his eyes. 'I'm sorry… I'm sorry, please,' she whispered. 'I don't want to live like this, please… I can't.'

'Shhh,' he said. 'Be quiet now.'

She nodded jerkily, hugging herself tightly, and Barbaden shook his head at such a pitiful display of weakness. He returned to his seat and slid into the comfortable leather, a sure sign that the audience was at an end.

Verena Kain handed him a snifter of vintage raquir, the one thing on Salinas he had actually developed a taste for, her desire to please him as transparent as her desire to succeed him. He smiled and sipped the liquor, enjoying the biting crispness at the back of his throat.

'You are dismissed,' he said.

Chief Medicae Serj Casuaban had spent so many years in the House of Providence that he no longer noticed the smell of blood. The very walls, though scrubbed regularly by rusting and wheezing servitors were so ingrained with the vital fluid that no amount of labour could completely erase it.

How many lives had ended in this wretched place, he wondered.

The answer leapt immediately to his mind: too many.

His boots rapped harshly on the grilled walkway as he made his way through the wards that ran the length and height of the central tier of the facility. It was a daily irony to Casuaban that three Capitol Imperialis, an example of the mightiest war machines ever created by the Imperium, should be shackled together to create a medicae facility.

He snorted at such a description. True, many people did leave the House of Providence alive, but they were shadows of their former selves, most with limbs missing, their bodies covered in hideous scars or otherwise disfigured by the infernal ingenuity of mankind in wreaking harm on one another.

Ten years of conflict between the administration of Leto Barbaden and the Sons of Salinas had cost the people of Salinas dear.

Casuaban was a tall man and was forced to stoop several times as he made his way through the facility, the sounds of people dying all around him. His hair was the colour of the iron walls and his face was craggy and lined, like worn leather left out in the baking sun. He had the bulk of a former soldier, but age and ten years without weekly fitness standards to meet had added flesh to his bones.

Orderlies and nurses worked the wards, tending to the hundreds of people who filled the place. They nodded to him as he passed. In some faces he saw grudging respect, in others wordless tolerance. He knew that he could expect no less.

He made his way into a side compartment, a room that had once housed the fire control systems of the war machine's defensive weapons. Iron sprung beds were packed in tightly, each one home to a pathetic, broken shape that only superficially resembled a human being.

He nodded to the orderly fitting a drip over the nearest patient. A box bleeped erratically and trailing wires ran from the cracked display to the heartbreaking shape that lay in the bed.

'How is she?' Casuaban asked.

'How do you think?' was the answer. 'She's dying.'

Casuaban nodded and stood at the end of the bed, trying to remain dispassionate as he lifted the girl's notes and read how her condition had changed during the night.

Her name was Aniq and what was left of her stirred on the bed. He had been forced to amputate both her legs above the knee and her left arm was missing from the shoulder down. Aniq's entire body was a mass of gauze and synth-flesh, a desperate attempt to keep her from death, an attempt Casuaban knew was doomed to failure.

Aniq and her family had been caught in the middle of a firefight between the Sons of Salinas and a patrol of Achaman Falcatas that had spilled into the dwellings on the southern edge of Barbadus. Solid rounds and las-bolts had torn through the Chimera chassis that Aniq's family called home, the ricochets killing her parents and ripping into both her legs and her left arm. A volatile mixture of home-distilled fuel had exploded in the fight and had bathed her body in chemical fire.

The girl would die tonight. She should have died days ago, but she was strong and Casuaban knew it was his duty, his penance, to fight as hard to save her as she was fighting to live.

'Increase her pain medication,' Casuaban told the orderly.

'It won't matter,' said the orderly. 'The girl won't live.'

Suddenly angry, Casuaban snapped, 'She has a name. It is Aniq.'

'No, she's just another salve to your conscience, medicae,' snorted the orderly and walked away. Casuaban ignored the man and went to the drip regulator, adjusting the flow of Morphia himself. He might not be able to save her, but he could ease her suffering at least.

Casuaban had seen enough of war in his service with the Falcatas to last any man a dozen lifetimes. He had hoped that when his time with the regiment was at an end he would be able to retire somewhere warm where he could spend the last of his days trying to forget man's capacity for violence. He had never dared dream that the Falcatas would earn the right to claim a world of their own. After all, what regiment ever really got to muster out?

You heard stories about worlds settled by heroic regiments of Imperial Guard, but no one ever actually got to do it, did they?

But the Falcatas had it.

Designated an army of conquest by General Shermi Vigo, they had claimed Salinas as theirs, but instead of an end to war and the establishment of a Falcatan dynasty, the conquest of Salinas had become a poisoned chalice.

And Casuaban's vision of a peaceful retirement had vanished like mist.

He remembered the day his dreams had died.

It had been upon the Killing Ground, amid the ashen wasteland of Khaturian.

In the aftermath of the slaughter, he had walked the hellish warscape in a numbed daze, the streets and few remaining buildings filled with bodies that had cracked and twisted into foetal positions such was the infernal heat that had engulfed the city.

That had been the day his world had turned upside down, when his every belief had been shattered and his quest to atone had begun. He looked down at the small girl once more, trying to stem the tide of regret that he felt every time he saw her.

What had she done to earn the wrath of Leto Barbaden and the Achaman Falcatas?

Nothing. She'd done nothing. She had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like most of the people in the House of Providence.

'You didn't deserve this,' he whispered.

The girl's eyes flickered open at the sound of his voice and her mouth moved soundlessly, her eyes pleading for Casuaban's understanding.

He crouched beside the bed and leaned in close to her, her voice little more than breath on his cheek.

'You were there,' she whispered, and he flinched as though struck.

Casuaban rose stiffly to his feet, his heart hammering in his chest. He backed away from the bed, the girl's wasted form now unutterably dreadful to him. He turned and all but fled the chamber, moving as though in a fugue state.

Serj Casuaban made his way through the wards, adjusting drug levels, making notes on charts and burying himself in a hundred other tasks to keep his mind from dwelling on what he had heard.

Darkness was beginning to fall and exhaustion had all but claimed him by the time Casuaban finished his rounds, the little light that pierced the windows fading to twilight grey before he had noticed. Naked glow strips hung from cables screwed into the corridor roofs and the sickly glow made him feel faintly nauseous.

He made his way back through the central section of the House of Providence and climbed the stairs to the control bridge, where lord generals and warmasters had once plotted destruction on a massive scale. The almost bare room was home to a compact desk, a couple of chairs, the low cot bed where he had spent many an uncomfortable night and a wall of locked drug cabinets.

Casuaban dropped the notes he had made on his rounds onto his desk and slumped into the hard, iron chair behind it. The words he had heard from Aniq's mouth and in his darkest nightmares echoed in his skull and he knew that there was one sure method to dull the ache and pain of them. He opened the drawer and lifted out a tapered bottle without a label and a pair of shot glasses, both of which he set on the desk and filled.

'There's no point in hiding,' he said. 'So, join me for a drink.'

A shadow detached itself from the wall and Pascal Blaise took the seat opposite Casuaban.

'Hello Serj,' said Pascal. 'How did you know I was here?'

'Unlike everything else in here, you don't smell of death,' answered Casuaban.

'Ironic, don't you think?'

'Perhaps,' said Casuaban, 'if I gave it any thought. What do you want?'

'You know what I want,' said Pascal, lifting the glass of raquir and taking a sip.

'I can't spare you any more medical supplies, we're running short as it is.'

'So ask Barbaden for more.'

'He'll say no.'

'Not to you he won't.'

'You love this, don't you?'

'What?'

'The fact that the medical supplies your men use come from Leto Barbaden.'

'There's a certain poetic justice to it,' admitted Pascal, 'but that's by the by. We took some casualties today.'

'I heard,' said Casuaban. 'You hit Verena Kain's Screaming Eagles.'

Pascal grinned. 'Aye, we did. She got away, but we hurt the bastards.'

'How many wounded do you have?' asked Casuaban.

'Too many: ten dead and another sixteen wounded. My men are hurting and we need fresh bandages, morphia and counterseptic.'

'I can't spare that much,' protested Casuaban. 'Bring your wounded here.'

'Don't be foolish,' warned Pascal. 'You think that Barbaden won't have Nisato and his goons watching this place for that?'

Casuaban laughed. 'You're here aren't you? You tell me who's being foolish.'

'I know how to make my way around without being seen,' said Pascal, 'and there's only one of me. I think they might notice sixteen wounded men being brought in.'

'I can't ask Barbaden for more,' said Casuaban, though he could hear the defeat in his voice. He knew he would give Pascal what he wanted, had known it the moment he had sensed the man's presence in his office.

'I know this sits badly with you, Serj,' said Pascal, offering some conciliatory words as he saw the defeat in Casuaban's face, 'but you know you're doing the right thing, don't you?'

'The right thing?' said Casuaban. 'I don't even know what that is anymore. I thought I did when I served with the Falcatas. I'd seen too many young men and women blown apart by your bombs, listened to them scream and cry for their mothers, to do anything but hate you. I hated the Sons of Salinas and everything you stood for. I had the certainty of hate.'

'Then came the Killing Ground,' said Pascal.

'Then came the Killing Ground,' repeated Casuaban. 'After that, I was lost. I watched Leto Barbaden order the attack and I knew it was wrong, but I didn't say anything, not until it was too late.'

Pascal drained the last of his raquir and placed the glass down on the desk.

'When you and Cardinal Togandis are ministering to the needy of Junktown tomorrow, leave the supplies in the marked Leman Russ. You'll see the signs.'

An awkward silence descended. 'You haven't asked about… him,' said Casuaban.

Pascal licked his lips. 'He's still alive?'

'He is,' confirmed Casuaban. 'Did you even doubt it?'

'Sylvanus Thayer always was a tough bastard,' said Pascal, glancing nervously towards the stairs that led back down to the wards.

'Do you want to see him?'

'No,' said Pascal, 'not even a little bit.'

Casuaban watched as Pascal made the sign of the Aquila across his chest.

He laughed. 'Now that's irony,' he said bitterly.

Uriel looked out over the city as it slipped into darkness below. From this height, it looked peaceful, but the ambush this morning had given the lie to that impression. Barbadus was a city at war with itself, held by Imperial forces, but wracked by dissent and insurgents who fought their rightful rulers every step of the way.

Though Uriel did not like Leto Barbaden, he was the rightful ruler of Salinas and no amount of insurgency would change that. Salinas had been won for the Imperium by an army of conquest and the world was theirs to rule in the name of the Emperor.

Yet something nagged at the back of Uriel's mind, a suspicion that all was not as it seemed, that secrets lurked beneath the surface and would radically alter his view of this world's dynamic were he to learn them.

He turned from the shimmering, shielded window and returned to the quarters that had been assigned to them. As far as places of confinement went, it was a great deal more comfortable than some he had been forced to occupy. Two beds, large by any normal measurement, yet small in comparison to a Space Marine, occupied opposite walls and two footlockers sat empty at their ends, though neither he nor Pasanius had anything to put in them.

'You see anything interesting out there?' asked Pasanius.

His friend sat on the floor, idly rubbing the stump of his arm and watching him as he paced the length of the room. Pasanius appeared utterly calm and Uriel envied the sergeant's ability to find a place of stillness within himself, no matter what their circumstances.

'No,' he said, calmed by the very act of watching Pasanius. 'It all looks peaceful now.'

'Then sit down for the Emperor's sake, you'll wear a groove in the carpet,' suggested Pasanius, lifting a bronze ewer from the floor beside him. 'Have some wine. It's not as good as the vintages bottled on Calth, but it's eminently drinkable.'

Uriel lifted a goblet from a table beside the bed and sat on the floor opposite Pasanius. He held out the goblet and Pasanius duly filled it. He took a long drink, enjoying the taste, despite Pasanius's reservations.

'Not bad,' said Uriel.

'It'll do,' said Pasanius. 'Ah, but do you remember the Calth wines?'

'Some of them,' said Uriel. 'Why the sudden interest in my home planet's wines?'

'A wonderful dialect they spoke in the caverns,' continued Pasanius. 'I remember the first time I spoke to you. I could barely understand a word you said.'

'It had its own character,' admitted Uriel, beginning to see where Pasanius was going.

'I remember it took years for you to shake that accent,' said Pasanius. 'Do you still remember any of it?'

'Some,' said Uriel, switching to the heavily accented dialect of the deep cavern dwellers of Calth. 'It's the kind of thing that never really leaves you.'

Uriel had been six years old the last time he had spoken like this, but his enhanced memory skills allowed him to access the language centres of his brain as though it had been yesterday.

'That's it,' laughed Pasanius, also switching to the same Calthian speech patterns, a dialect that no one outside Ultramar would have any hope of understanding. Certainly any eavesdroppers on this conversation would be lost and even the most sophisticated cogitating machines would struggle with so specific an argot.

'Subtle,' said Uriel, raising his goblet in a mock toast to Pasanius.

'I have my moments,' replied Pasanius.

'I remember the last time we sat with a drink like this,' said Uriel.

Pasanius nodded. 'Aye, on the Vae Victus, in the Tarsis Ultra system. A grand victory that was.'

'I suppose,' agreed Uriel, 'but won at a cost, and look where it got us.'

'There you go, always looking for the clouds instead of the silver lining,' said Pasanius. 'Look where it got us? We saved Tarsis Ultra. We saw the daemon creatures of Honsou destroyed and we're on the way home. Think of the good we've done, that we'll go on to do.'

Uriel smiled. 'You're right, as always, my friend. You have a rare gift for cutting through to the heart of things.'

'It's a well known fact that sergeants are the real brains in any army,' said Pasanius.

'Then what's so important that we switch to Calthian dialect?'

'We have things to talk about,' said Pasanius, suddenly serious, 'things best not heard by others, things we need to have clearly stated between us.'

'Very well,' agreed Uriel. 'Things like what?'

'Like the Unfleshed. When are you planning on mentioning them to Barbaden?'

'I don't know,' admitted Uriel. 'I had thought to say something once we'd established our credentials, but having met the man, I'm not sure.'

'I know what you mean,' agreed Pasanius. 'I don't think Leto Barbaden would be too understanding.'

'He'll kill them as soon as look at them.'

'Then what do we do with them?' asked Pasanius. 'You can't just leave them out there. I know you're holding on to the hope that the blood of heroes in their veins will restrain their more animal qualities, but even if it does, it won't be forever. Sooner or later they'll become what they were on Medrengard.'

'Perhaps,' said Uriel, 'but I can't abandon them. They gave everything to help us against Honsou. Most of them died in that fight. We owe them.'

'Aye,' nodded Pasanius, 'that we do, but let's be sure we don't get them killed trying to repay that debt.'

'Perhaps we can make an approach through the cardinal?'

Pasanius looked sceptical. 'The fat man? I don't think Barbaden takes much notice of him. I don't think he takes much notice of anyone, if you know what I mean?'

'I do,' said Uriel, taking another drink. 'I've seen his kind before, commanders who divorce themselves utterly from the fact that they're commanding soldiers of flesh and blood. To men like Barbaden, notions of honour and courage are fanciful things, ephemera. To them war is about numbers, logistics and cause and effect.'

Pasanius nodded. 'Aye. Dangerous men.'

'The most dangerous. That kind of commander doesn't care how many men die to achieve his goals, so long as he gets a victory.'

'So how did a man like that get to be in charge of a planet?'

'The Falcatas were an army of conquest,' said Uriel. 'The right to settle a conquered world is the highest honour the Imperium can bestow upon a Guard regiment that's fought for decades. Barbaden was the colonel of the regiment, so the governorship would naturally be his, and I'd be surprised if the majority of the planet's hierarchy weren't ex-Guard.'

'Soldiers that fought in some of the most horrific war-zones in the galaxy year after year, and now they're in charge of a planet.'

'Exactly,' said Uriel, 'all those years of killing and suddenly it's all over.'

'Then you have to try to turn off the instincts that kept you alive all those years.'

'Except you can't,' said Uriel.

Pasanius sighed and shook his head. 'No wonder their planet's a mess.'

EIGHT

Being alone in his private library normally brought Shavo Togandis comfort and peace, but tonight he found his irritation growing with every page he leafed through. His books had always offered comfort in troubled times, but now they offered nothing beyond vague references to steeling one's soul with something an anonymous, and frustratingly incomplete, text called ''the armour of contempt''.

Quite how one girded one's loins with such armour went unsaid and Togandis pushed the manuscript away. Flickering electro-candles sent dancing shadows around the room, the air in the library stuffy and redolent with the lingering aroma of the sumptuous repast he had consumed barely an hour before, a roasted poultry dish with a spicy sauce and fragrant side plate of steamed vegetables grown in the cathedral gardens.

A hovering skull with glowing green lenses for eyes bobbed at his shoulder, drifting higher into the air as he sat back on his expansive and heavily padded chair. He waved at the skull and said, 'The Sermons of Sebastian Thor, volume thirty-seven.'

The skull scooted over to the sagging shelves, a shimmering green light bathing the gold and silver leafed spines of the books, before a set of suspensor-enabled callipers reached onto the shelf and removed a heavy tome, bound in rich red leather.

Struggling under the weight of the book, the skull deposited it before the cardinal and resumed its position at his right shoulder.

Togandis rubbed his tired eyes and leaned forward to open the book, straining to read the tightly wound, cursive script that filled the pages. The blank book in which he wrote his notes for future sermons sat next to him, and Togandis rested his arm next to it as he scanned the text in the volume that the skull had just brought him.

A delicate arrangement of wires and metal rested on his forearm, and from this sprouted a lightweight, extendable armature of brass. At the end of this armature was a mnemo-quill, its nib twitching as it awaited his commands.

Fine silver wires ran from this attachment to something that resembled a portable vox-caster sitting on the desk before the cardinal. Togandis nodded as he recited lines from the book.

'The strength of the Emperor is humanity, and the strength of Humanity is the Emperor. If one turns from the other we shall all become the Lost and the Damned.'

As the words left his mouth, the mnemo-quill twitched and copied the words onto the blank pages of the book. He had filled page upon page with such words, words which never failed to move him, but which he felt would be precious little use in warding the palace from the intrusions of any malicious entities.

He dreaded the thought of returning to the palace without something concrete to show for his efforts. Of course he could recite entire verses of scripture, but Leto Barbaden would sense the lie in him in a second. Togandis mopped his brow with the edge of his napkin at the thought of Leto Barbaden.

As colonel of the Achaman Falcatas, Barbaden had been a tyrant.

As Imperial Commander of Salinas, he was a monster.

He could still picture Barbaden riding tall in the turret hatch of the Hellhound as it rumbled through the burning streets of Khaturian. The Marauders had been thorough in their attentions and little of the city had been left standing by their bombs.

What was left was being finished off by the Screaming Eagles.

Togandis closed his eyes, remembering the feel of the pistol in his hand as he walked alongside Barbaden's vehicle. The sound of lasguns and the roar of flamers sounded impossibly loud to him, but he had not fired a shot. He remembered looking at the pistol, matt black in his pink, fleshy hand, and thinking it absurd that he of all people should be carrying a weapon at a time like this.

It was the screaming that returned to him the most, the awful, intolerable sound of another human being in agony. It seemed inconceivable that anyone could be in such pain, but these were commonplace noises in Khaturian.

As the Eagles completed the massacre, Togandis had stumbled from the carnage and voided the contents of his stomach over the brittle, tinder-dry ground. In the hours that followed, the Screaming Eagles had walked from the ruins, their cries of victory sounding hollow to the confessor.

In the weeks, months and years that followed, Togandis had seen many of those same soldiers in his cathedral, drawn by feelings that they dared not voice anywhere else, to speak of what they had seen and done on that Killing Ground.

Hanno Merbal had been one such soldier and Togandis vividly recalled the terrible things that had passed between them in the darkness of the confessional: awful sins, aching regret and unbearable guilt.

Hanno Merbal was dead, his brains plastered over the roof of a dingy bar in Junktown. Hard on the heels of Hanno Merbal came thoughts of Daron Nisato, the former commissar of the Falcatas and a man of honour and quiet nobility.

No wonder Leto Barbaden had transferred him out of the Screaming Eagles before the mission to Khaturian.

A guilty flush warmed his skin as he thought of how near he had come to telling Nisato everything about the Killing Ground earlier that day, the things Hanno Merbal had told him and the things he himself had seen.

Togandis knew he was a coward, and the thought of defying Leto Barbaden had so unmanned him that he could not unburden himself of the guilt and allow Nisato to bring the truth of the Killing Ground into the light.

He thought of Nisato's whispered words to him as the enforcer had been dismissed from Barbaden's presence: ''To whom does the confessor confess?''

They were simple words, honestly spoken, but the consequences… Oh the consequences.

Togandis closed his eyes and fought the tears of guilt that threatened to spill unchecked down his face. If he wept now, he didn't think he'd be able to stop: tears for the dead and, selfishly, tears for himself.

He took a deep breath and once again scanned the pages of the book before him, concentrating on the millennia-old words of Sebastian Thor, a man for whom Togandis had nothing but admiration and whose writings had always inspired him.

A simple man, Sebastian Thor had stood against the tyrannies of the insane High Lord of the Administratum, Goge Vandire, and had cast him down in the fiery wars known as the Age of Apostasy. Thor had become Ecclesiarch and his sermons had always been favourites for Togandis to deliver to his congregation.

He wondered what Sebastian Thor would have made of events on Salinas and shuddered as he pictured himself being cast from his cathedral as Thor had cast the preacher from his pulpit on Dimmamar in the middle of a prayer session.

Pushing that image away, Togandis spent the next few hours reading passages aloud for his mnemo-quill to transcribe, steadily filling the pages of his prayer book with inspirational verses and catechisms of watchfulness against the daemon and the impure.

The glow of the electro-candles grew stronger as the light through the high windows dimmed. Togandis heard a noise through the door behind him and blinked in surprise as he looked up and saw the darkness beyond the stained glass.

It was later than he had imagined and he still had duties to attend to. His priests and vergers would be gathering for vespers and it would be unseemly for him not to join them. His library was just off the main body of the temple, and already he could hear insistent voices from the other side of the door.

They seemed to be calling his name, the sound muted by the heavy timbers so that it sounded little louder than a whisper.

As he stood and wiped a hand across his mouth, he realised that the sounds he could hear were altogether too insistent. Shavo Togandis, a master of self-deception in many other regards, was honest enough to know that his sermons, while filled with relevance and poignancy, were hardly ones that people gathered to hear with excitement or called out to him to deliver.

Curious, Togandis slipped the mnemo-quill armature from his forearm and gathered up his prayer book. He made his way towards the door, but as he reached for the handle some unheard timbre in the voices on the other side of the door resonated with that portion of his mind that knew fear.

You were there.

With sudden, awful clarity, Shavo Togandis knew what lay on the other side of the door.

Mesira Bardhyl felt the power growing throughout the city, a malevolent vibration in the bones that grated along her nerves like nails down a blackboard. Her room was dark, yet silver threads of light, invisible to those not cursed with psychic abilities, wormed their way inside, pushing between the brickwork, oozing through the mortar and slithering beneath the doorjambs.

Ghostly frost limned the door and her breath feathered the air before her.

She closed her eyes. 'Please, go away. What did I do? I didn't do anything.'

Even as she said the words, she knew that was crime enough.

To stand by while such slaughter was enacted and do nothing about it was almost worse than pulling the trigger or slicing with the falcata. The dead were massing and whatever dreadful, terrifying thing had brought the two Space Marines to this world had forever altered the balance of power on Salinas.

Immaterial energies were part of the fabric of the world now, enmeshed in the very warp and weft of it, and things that had once been incapable of doing more than unleashing nightmares now had a very real, very dangerous wellspring of power to draw upon.

She could feel a dreadful force within the room, a solidity to the air that could only be caused by another presence.

'Please,' she wept. 'No.'

Open your eyes.

Mesira shook her head. 'No, I won't.'

Open your eyes!

Mesira cried out as her eyes were forced open and she saw him: the Mourner, his black outline a stark silhouette against the soft glow from beyond her window.

Shimmering with spectral light, his blazing eyes fixed her in place and held her pinned like a moth in a display case. The stink of smoke and seared skin filled her senses and silver flames roared into life around her, cold and unforgiving.

In the icy light surrounding the Mourner, she saw the burned flesh of his body, the meat and fat of him running in yellow runnels from his bones.

You were there.

Mesira Bardhyl screamed and screamed until her mind detached itself from her senses and spun off into the darkness.

Shavo Togandis felt the chill of the door handle before his skin made contact with it. His breath was mist before him and he could feel the sudden cold that engulfed the room through the thickness of his robes.

He could feel them on the other side of the door, willing him to come out, willing him to face them, to face his accountability.

Terror filled him, his legs feeling like they might give out at any moment.

Togandis whispered a prayer to the God-Emperor, closing his eyes and reciting verses that he had learned as a child when he had been afraid of the dark and his mother had told him that the Emperor would protect him.

In that moment, Shavo Togandis was four years old again, wrapped in blankets in the darkness as he rocked back and forth with the simple catechisms of a child spilling from his lips to hold back the monsters.

The words came easily, his terror reaching back over the decades to his youth and plucking the memories from the forgotten corners of his mind. With every word spoken, he felt the terror diminish and his hand gripped the frozen metal of the door's handle.

Togandis turned the handle and pushed, forcing his unsteady legs to carry him through the door. A wave of cold air, like a winter's breath, blew past him, questing around his body like eager hands that pulled him onwards.

He could feel the cold wind's exploration of him, but with each recitation of his childhood prayer, their ministrations grew lighter and less urgent. With his prayer book held outstretched, Shavo Togandis emerged from his library and into the temple proper.

His words faltered as he saw that the temple was full, but that none of those gathered before the magnificent golden statue of the Emperor at the end of the nave were parishioners or worshipers, or were even alive.

Little more than smudges of silver light, like candle flames viewed through misted glass, they had the semblance of human forms, but little more.

'Emperor protect me,' he whispered, unwilling steps carrying him along the transept towards the altar before the towering statue of the Emperor. The fragile courage that had bloomed briefly in the library deserted him, and cold, clammy terror seized his heart once more. His bladder loosened and he felt an almost uncontrollable urge to void his bowels.

With an effort of will, he kept control of his bodily functions, looking past the flickering lights of the intruders towards the altar, seeing his priests, vergers, confessora minoris and attendants huddled before it.

Their faces were alight with awe at the sight before them.

Could they not see that these figures of light were terribly, horribly wrong?

Did they not know that they were in the most terrible danger?

Something of the man Shavo Togandis had been before the horror of the Killing Ground stirred within his breast and he walked towards the great statue and the living people who gathered beneath it.

These were his people and he had a duty to them.

As he walked, he felt the heads of the ghostly intruders turn towards him, their stares accusing and their eyes filled with a newly awakened sense of malice.

One of his priests looked up as he approached. 'Can you see them?' cried the priest. 'Angels, your eminence! Angels of the Emperor!'

Togandis looked towards the spectral figures, horrified that such dreadful things could be mistaken for something as holy and reverent as angels. Though the meat and bone of their faces was obscured by the silver light that billowed outwards from their core, Togandis could see enough to know that these were no angels, but daemons in human form, fiends sent from the blackest pit of the abyss.

'Stay away from them!' shouted Togandis, hurrying his steps towards his priests. The sweat on his brow chilled him to the bone and his breath came in short, hot spikes in his chest. The priests looked at Togandis uncomprehendingly, not seeing what he was seeing, and he interposed himself between them and the figures of light.

Togandis was breathless with fear. He could feel their hunger and anger, knowing now that these were no daemons from the pit, but the vengeful dead, hungry and voracious souls come to take what was theirs by right of blood.

His recitation of the child's prayer seemed foolish in the face of such terrible evil and part of him knew that he should just lay down his prayer book and face the consequences of his actions. Togandis felt his grip loosening on the prayer book.

The Falcata's previous confessor, a waspish old man by the name of Thorne, had given him the book the day before he had been killed, and as Togandis looked down at it he saw the words his mnemo-quill had written there only moments before.

He saw the strength in those words, a strength that fanned the last, defiant embers of his heart.

'Oh Emperor, merciful father that watches over us, send us your light that we might carry it into the dark places,' he said. 'In times of need, send us the courage that fires the hearts of all servants of righteousness. Be our strength and shield, that we might in turn be yours!'

Togandis felt the presence of his clerics gathering behind him, and their closeness gave him strength. He flipped the pages of his prayer book, reading each passage aloud with a power and clarity he had never before displayed in the pulpit.

Though the words he spoke were simple prayers and benediction, they carried his weight of belief and thus had strength. It was a simple revelation, yet a revelation nonetheless, and such things had power.

The cold wind that had pulled him into the temple blew again, stronger this time and without the gentle inquisitiveness it had displayed earlier. A gale blew from the end of the nave, howling and fierce, and Togandis felt his robes billowing around him, the pages of his prayer book flapping and tearing with its force.

His priests cried out as the ghostly shapes of the congregation were swept up in the maelstrom of bone-chilling light. Like wind-blown mist, the spectres dispensed with individuality and became one howling mass of gibbering faces.

'The Emperor protects!' screamed Togandis as the anguished phantoms screamed and wailed. The sourceless wind pulled the glittering, ghostly mass around the interior of the temple, slicing the air and twisting in coils of glittering silver light.

They gathered beneath the rose window at the far end of the nave, above the mighty bronze portals that led to the outside world, a roiling, tumbling, churning mass of light and mist. Silver tongues of cold fire burst into life around the edges of the temple, leaping from pillar to pillar and Togandis's eyes filled with tears at the sudden stench of burning flesh.

Frost was forming on the pews before him and a skim of ice crackled in the font beside him. The priests and vergers were on their knees, hands clasped in prayer. Still their eyes were full of adoration, and Togandis knew that the terror of the visions was meant solely for him.

Only he beheld the true face of the spirits, for they had come for him and him alone.

The mass of spirits shot down the nave towards the altar and Togandis felt their hunger for him in every agonised wail. The hundreds of mouths ran together and the billowing light flared outwards like the wings of some terrible, avenging angel.

'In Your eyes we are but humble servants,' screamed Togandis, the words snatched from his mouth by the cold air. 'Turn your face towards us and banish shadows, shield Your servants and protect them from the iniquities of the warp!'

The spirits were losing cohesion, skins of light peeling back from the angel of retribution as it came towards him. Togandis closed his eyes. He clutched the holy aquila that hung around his neck and lifted his prayer book high.

A blast of silver fire swept over Togandis and he felt the glacial cold of the dead pass through him. The ache of their pain and the horror of their existence suffused every molecule of his being, from his overburdened feet to his sweat-streaked pate, but, finding no purchase, they poured from him with a wail of frustration.

His heart creaked and bulged at the strain placed upon it, the valves and arteries pushed to their limits in keeping Togandis alive. Blood vessels strained and twisted, but whatever reserves of strength the cardinal's flesh possessed were up to the task of keeping him alive for a little longer.

Togandis kept his eyes closed for long moments, knowing that were he to open them he would gaze into the face of something so terrifying it would be the death of him. Sudden, unnerving silence descended on the church, the only sound the heave of his breath and the echoes of the departed.

A hand brushed his shoulder and he cried out, feeling a knot of pain in the depths of his chest and a tingling sensation in the tips of his fingers.

'Cardinal?' said a tentative, awed voice at his ear. Togandis recognised the speaker. It was one of the evening vergers, though he did not know the man's name.

Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, Togandis opened his eyes.

The temple was as it had always been at night: cool, shadowed and dimly lit by the stuttering glow of candles. No trace remained of the silver flames or the vengeful spirits, but a rime of melting ice dripped from the lip of the font.

Togandis waited until he was sure that his voice would not betray his earlier terror.

'What?' he asked at last.

'Was that an angel?' asked the verger.

Togandis looked beyond the verger to the enraptured faces of his priests. What was he to tell them? The truth? Hardly.

The light of faith was in their eyes and he could not take that away from them.

'Yes,' nodded Togandis. 'That was an angel of the Emperor. Pray you never see another.'

Night in the mountains north of Barbadus was absolute.

With the descent of the sun, the Unfleshed had tentatively ventured from the cave, their steps hesitant and wary as though they feared that the sun might return at any moment. Through the course of the long day, the Lord of the Unfleshed had felt his tribe's sense of hurt betrayal as the sunlight hovered on the brink of destroying them.

The cave stank of fear and only when the light ventured no farther did that fear turn to relief. They would be safe, for a time at least.

The Lord of the Unfleshed could taste the tribe's terror, a rank outpouring of chemicals that had once been a scent to be savoured in others, but which only made him angry now.

He was tired of fear, tired of having it as his constant companion.

Though he was powerful and strong, fear had nestled in his heart for as long as he could remember: fear of the Iron Men, fear of the Black Sun, fear of his own monstrous nature and fear of what the Emperor would make of it when he finally stood before Him.

The Lord of the Unfleshed lifted his arm and stared at the raw, pink newness of his flesh. The slick, sheen of his body had faded over the course of the day and as he tentatively explored the surface, he felt the new skin responding to his touch.

Instead of pain, he could feel the texture of his clawed fingers and the roughness of his hands.

Perhaps this place would be a new beginning for him and the tribe.

He looked over to where the tribe feasted on yet more of the fleshy creatures that grazed on the mountains.

Their meat was rich and tender, and their limbs no match for the ferocious speed of the Unfleshed.

The Lord of the Unfleshed wanted to be away from this place, but did not yet dare lead the tribe far from the cave for fear that the sun would catch them in the open again. Most of the tribe were growing new skin across their bodies, but at wildly differing rates, and those without a thick enough covering would die if the sun found them without shelter.

Eventually they would have skin to match his, but it would take time for their more degenerate bodies to catch up to what his had already achieved. Rippling skirts of flesh took longer to cover than knotty lumps of bone, and fused craniums of meat that pulled and twisted as each mouth fed, tore and healed as their owner took wrenching bites of food.

The Lord of the Unfleshed glanced over his shoulder.

Though the night was dark, the dead city below was bathed in light.

To mortal eyes, the city was as empty and silent as ever, but to eyes fashioned with sorcerous engineering of the darkest realms and a mind grown to maturity within the womb of a creature saturated in chaos magic, the streets were alive with a cavalcade of shapes. Not the shapes of the living, but shapes of… something else.

Before now, the Lord of the Unfleshed had been aware of them as a glimmering presence on the edge of perception, but he saw they were gathering now, drawn to this place of death by the arrival of the Iron Men's machine.

Uriel and his companion had not seen these presences, or even been aware of them, but the dreadful energies washing from the terrifying machine had found common cause in the forgotten streets of the dead city, drawing back those that had once called it home and filling them with borrowed power.

He had kept the tribe away from the gathering strength of their unquenchable rage, knowing on some marrow-deep level that to disturb the pool of anger and pain would be to invite disaster.

As though his observation had given the lights notice of their presence, the Lord of the Unfleshed saw them drifting through the streets towards the metal barrier that surrounded the city. Where such a barrier would prevent creatures of flesh and blood from egress, it provided no such impediment to these beings of light and rage.

They came towards the mountains and the tribe feasting at the mouth of the cave.

The tribe felt them come, baring their fangs and unsheathing their claws.

The Lord of the Unfleshed stood and watched the approach of the light. He did not fear them, for the world of the Black Sun had vomited horrors worse than them from its smoky depths.

The tribe retreated within the cave and the Lord of the Unfleshed stood protectively before them, resplendent and magnificent in his new suit of skin. He felt the burning rage at the core of these strange beings of light, but more than that he sensed their hunger and their desire to wreak harm on those who had wronged them.

As he watched them approach, the mouth-watering flavour of burned flesh arose in the back of his mouth with the forgotten taste of human meat. He moaned and thick saliva gathered in the folds of his jaw.

He shook his head.

Uriel had forbidden them to taste the rich flesh of humans and drink their warm blood.

The Emperor did not want them to eat His subjects.

Behind him, the tribe grunted and worked their fanged mouths as the smell of cooked flesh filled the cave and they too recalled the taste of human meat. The smell was overwhelming and the Lord of the Unfleshed struggled to keep his mind on the approaching beings.

Without seeming to move, they gathered at the cave mouth, a jostling cascade of ghostly, heart-lit shapes. He saw the suggestion of human forms in their depths, men, women and children who looked upon him with expressions that ranged from pity to anticipation.

Their faces were blackened and burned, the flesh seared from bodies, and the Lord of the Unfleshed felt their pain, an eternal agony that could only be ended one way. He knew that these were no living things, but dead things that should not be.

They surged into the cave towards the Unfleshed, but instead of death they craved life.

The Lord of the Unfleshed felt the dead wash over him like a tide, a tumbling cascade of thousands of lives. The cave filled with light, burning, all-consuming light. It pressed against him, oozing into his body by some unknown process of osmosis.

A million thoughts, like a swarm of angry insects, roared in his head and his hands flew to his skull at the deafening noise. Thousands of voices echoed within him, each one clamouring to be heard over the others, each one begging, pleading and demanding to speak.

Pain filled him as he felt his body burning, the blood boiling in his veins, the meat of his body searing and his bones cracking in the fire. The walls of the cave seemed to twist and melt, as though fading away, only to be replaced by walls raised by human hands and cast down by the artifice of man's war machines.

Instead of rock above his head, he saw sky, clear skies filled with cruciform shapes shedding iron canisters that descended on vapour trails and exploded in sheets of white-hot flame. Fire surrounded him, leaping and dancing like a living thing as it consumed everything around it with gleeful abandon.

He knew he was seeing their deaths, these beings of light and anger, but could not force the images from his mind. He heard screaming: deafening, heart-rending screaming.

'No!' bellowed the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Get out of my head!'

He heard the terrified roars and cries of the tribe and surged to his feet, clawing at the new skin that clothed his face. Yellow talons tore great gouges in his cheeks and the pain was welcome for it was pain. Flaps of sliced skin hung down from his face and fresh blood pattered on the floor of the cave.

His limbs rippled with unnatural motion, convulsing and swelling with the presences that poured into him. His every muscle, fibre and cell was suffused with the energy and fury of the dead.

Only the pain remained his and he clasped his claws across his heart, tearing outwards in an upward fan, scoring a series of bloody grooves across his chest like the wings of an agonised, screaming eagle.

The Lord of the Unfleshed dropped to his knees with his clawed arms upraised as the dead of Khaturian filled him, pressing the last remnants of his pain and fear into a creaking corner of his cranium.

Instead of his own pain, he felt the entirety of theirs.

Their rage and their fury were his.

Only one thing could end it: death.

NINE

Uriel awoke from a deep slumber, surprised that he had fallen asleep with such ease and that his dreams had been untroubled by visions of blood and death. He had been so long away from the real world that he had quite forgotten what it was to sleep without fear of such things.

Pasanius slept soundly on the bed across the room, his eyes darting beneath his lids. Uriel frowned as a snatched fragment of the dream he had been having returned to him.

He had seen a cave and something bright and malevolent that had emerged from its depths. Uriel could not make out its shape or identity, but he knew that whatever it was, it had been something unutterably dreadful. He shook off the last vestiges of the dream and swung his legs from the bed.

As quietly as he was able, he poured a goblet of water and rinsed his mouth. He tasted ashes and a metallic flavour that reminded him of blood. He caught the tang of something burning nearby and wondered if the quarters they had been assigned were near a kitchen or mess hall.

Uriel rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, frowning at the sluggishness that seemed to afflict his limbs and thought processes. A Space Marine could normally go from sleep to wakefulness in the time it took to draw breath, but ever since arriving on Salinas he had felt a lethargy that seemed to leech his vitality.

Perhaps that explained the perpetually downcast faces he had seen on the streets and among the Falcatas. This was a grim world, but perhaps the melancholy he felt ran through the very fabric of the world and its inhabitants.

Pasanius stirred on his bed and sat up, reaching up to rub his scalp, a scalp that was now shaggier than it had been in a long time. Both arms came up, but only the left was able to make contact with his head.

'Damn, but I can't get used to that,' said Pasanius, looking at the red stump of his right arm. 'I hated it when I had that xeno-tainted arm and now I miss it. How's that for perverse?'

'It's only natural, I suppose,' said Uriel. 'I heard that some men who lose a limb claim they can still feel it itching, as though it's still part of them.'

'Who did you hear that from?'

'It was back on Tarsis Ultra,' explained Uriel. 'Magos Locard told me of an ancient Adept of Mars by the name of Semyon who developed a whole slew of new forms of augmetic implantation. It seemed this Semyon claimed to be able to produce electrographic images of subjects that showed their limbs still in place, even after they had been surgically removed.'

'How could he do that?' asked Pasanius, rubbing at his stump, which Uriel saw was an angry red, with patches of raw scabbing where the skin had been worn down.

'Locard didn't know,' said Uriel, rising from the bed and beginning a series of stretches to loosen the muscles in his arms. 'He said that Semyon was part of something called the Dragon Cult and that no one really knew if he existed at all. His work is like some sort of myth on Mars. The story goes that he died during the Martian schism back at the end of Old Night.'

'Emperor's teeth, that's so long ago, who knows what's true and what's not?' said Pasanius, joining Uriel in stretching.

'That's kind of what Locard said,' replied Uriel. 'He said that so much of Mars was laid waste that any kind of history was as good as legend.'

'Legend is time and rumour,' nodded Pasanius. 'Isn't that what they say?'

'With enough time, everything becomes legend,' agreed Uriel. 'One day you and I might be legends. Perhaps there will be murals in the Temple of Correction.'

'Or statues on the Avenue of Heroes,' smiled Pasanius.

The two friends passed the early hours of the morning, reminiscing over Macragge and the beauty of the world they hoped to see again soon. Within a few hours, both had come to the realisation that it had been a long time since either of them had endured a proper Astartes strength and endurance test. Without their fellow battle-brothers to measure themselves against and to drive them onwards, their powers had waned. It was an unwelcome truth to learn.

As they finished their exercises, there was a polite knock on the door and Eversham entered, looking as dangerous and catlike as ever. The man's face was unreadable, though Uriel had never found it easy to read the emotions of mortals.

'Good morning,' said Uriel.

'Indeed,' said Eversham. 'I trust you rested well?'

'Well enough,' said Pasanius.

'What can we do for you, Mister Eversham?' asked Uriel.

'Governor Barbaden sends you his greetings,' began Eversham, 'and bids me inform you that he has arranged for you to consult with the Janiceps.'

The sunlight on Serj Casuaban's skin was welcome after the cramped, claustrophobic interior of the House of Providence. Though the air in Junktown wasn't exactly fresh, it was certainly better than the stale aroma of death and desperation that saturated every breath he took within its metal corridors and wards.

Junktown was a somewhat obvious name for the largest district of Barbadus, but it was, Casuaban reflected, an apt one. Many of the original dwellings that had stood here were rubble, demolished in the original war of pacification and never rebuilt. Those that remained stood cheek by jowl with the detritus of that war.

A regimental graveyard of fighting vehicles had been abandoned here, the remains of a dozen armoured companies whose crews had mustered out of the Falcatas or which had broken down and could not be repaired. The ingenuity of the locals in rendering vehicles that had once borne their enemies into battle was little short of ingenious, and abandoned squadrons housed entire families, with engines serving as reconditioned heating units and ammo stowage as makeshift sleeping compartments.

Thousands of people lived here in cramped conditions until the work klaxons blared to summon them to work in the munitions forges or promethium refineries. A pall of ash and sullen melancholy hung over Junktown and Casuaban knew that his presence was only tolerated due to the medicines he was distributing and the treatment he was providing.

Casuaban sat behind a metal trestle table, applying a soothing bacitracin poultice to the arm of a male worker who had been burned while processing gel fuels for shipping off-world. The man had been lucky; a trained corpsman had been on hand to treat the wound at the site of the accident, yet the scarring was likely to be severe.

With the poultice applied, Casuaban sent the man on his way with a stern warning to keep his wound clean, even though he knew that such advice would be hard to follow in a place like Junktown. Behind him, an idling truck with a bored-looking orderly lounging in the driver's cab was filled with immunisation ampoules, sterilised needles, gauze, synth-bandages, vitamin supplements, water purification tablets and a host of other vital medical supplies.

Casuaban rubbed his hands over his face and took a deep breath. He stood from his trestle table and waved a hand at the people queuing to see him.

'I will be back in a few minutes,' he said, moving over to the truck and accepting a mug of lukewarm caffeine from the orderly. The drink was brackish and tepid, but welcome nonetheless.

Casuaban closed his eyes and sat back on the running board that ran the length of the engine housing of the truck. He let his tired eyes drift closed, his body exhausted despite the few hours of disturbed sleep that he had snatched on the cot bed in his office.

He had been working in Junktown since the sun had risen and it would soon be time to move on to the next temporary medicae station. His eyes flickered to the truck, knowing he would have to find some way of distracting the orderly when he saw the Leman Russ that Pascal Blaise was going to mark for the drop of supplies.

'It doesn't get any easier does it?' said a nearby voice.

Casuaban jumped, a guilty jolt of adrenaline sending a shock through his system. Caffeine spilled onto his tunic.

Angry, he looked up to see Shavo Togandis, struggling to emerge from the comfort of an Ecdesiarchal palanquin like some overlarge butterfly from a stubborn chrysalis.

'What?' he snapped, grateful the caffeine was only lukewarm. 'What's not easy?'

'Ministering to the needy,' said Shavo Togandis. 'One feels one has accepted a never-ending task does one not?'

'Correct, Shavo,' agreed Casuaban, leaning back. 'It doesn't get any easier. Nor should it.'

'Quite,' said the cardinal. Togandis was sweating profusely, which wasn't unusual given his bulk, and Casuaban was forced to smile as he saw him use his staff to help propel him from the palanquin.

Free at last, Togandis made his way to the truck and shook hands with Casuaban, who fought the urge to wipe his sweat-slick hand on his trousers.

'Good morning to you, my friend,' said Togandis. 'Another day of serving the Emperor and his people.'

'Another day of putting right the wrongs of the past, eh?' said Casuaban.

Togandis shot him a strange look and nodded, indicating to the priests and servitors that made up his retinue that they should set up his mobile shrine against the hull of a burnt out Griffon mobile artillery piece that was missing its launcher.

Serj Casuaban and Shavo Togandis were an unlikely duo, but the years following Restoration Day had seen them become, if not friends, then at least comrades in shared atonement. They had never openly spoken of what they had witnessed at the Killing Ground, but both had recognised a shared need in the other and, almost without speaking of it, they had set out to repay their debt to Salinas, one person at a time.

Every week, they would tour the worst affected slums of Barbadus, Casuaban offering medical attention and advice to those that needed it, and Togandis preaching the word of the Emperor to those who would hear it. Initially, Casuaban had the busier time on these expeditions, but as time passed and their hardships increased, more and more people turned to the word of the Emperor to see them through the years following Restoration Day.

No soldiers travelled with Casuaban, only a driver and a handful of servitors for lifting and basic security, a situation for which he had Pascal Blaise to thank. Togandis travelled with a little less austerity, riding in a palanquin of engraved wood and silver, followed by a chanting coterie of priests and lobotomised censer bearers.

'You're late getting here today,' said Casuaban without reproach.

'Yes,' said Togandis, 'my somnambulating was plagued with phantasmagoria.'

Casuaban threaded his way through the cardinal's words and nodded as he said, 'You had a bad dream?'

'That scarcely covers the details, my Hippocratic friend.'

'A nightmare?' asked Casuaban, as casually as he could.

'Indeed. Visions of such repellence to make a man believe he is going quite mad.'

'What did you dream?'

'I think you know, my dear Serj.'

'How could I possibly know, Shavo?'

Togandis leaned in close, so that no one could hear. 'I dreamed of the Killing Ground.'

'Oh.'

'An exclamation of one syllable,' said Togandis. 'Well, it will suffice.'

'What did you expect?' hissed Casuaban, taking hold of Togandis's arm and steering him away from the driver's cab of the truck. 'Keep your damn voice down. That's not a subject you should mention out loud, here of all places.'

'Are you saying you do not dream of Khaturian?' said Togandis. 'I fear you would be lying to me if you did.'

'You're not my confessor, Shavo,' said Casuaban, slipping a battered silver hip-flask from his jacket and taking a slug.

'Ah, I see now why you do not recall your dreams,' said Togandis.

'Don't you dare judge me,' snapped Casuaban, taking another drink. 'You of all people.'

'If a man of the cloth may not judge you then who can?'

'Not you,' said Casuaban. 'You don't have the right. You were there too.'

Togandis nodded and stepped even closer to Casuaban. The medicae could smell the cardinal's last meal and the stale odour of his sweat.

'I was there, yes, and not a rotation of this world goes by that I don't regret that fact.'

'Really?' sneered Casuaban, jabbing his finger into the cardinal's chest. 'Then why do you still wear the medal? Pride?'

Togandis at least had the decency to look uncomfortable. 'No, not pride. I wear it because if I did not then what message would that send to Leto Barbaden? You think he would balk at sending Eversham for us if he thought we were plotting against him?'

Casuaban gripped Togandis's robes. 'Keep your bloody voice down!' he whispered. 'Or are you trying to get us killed?'

Togandis shook his head and reached down to prise Casuaban's hands from his chasuble with a grimace. 'I did not come here to fight with you, Serj,' said Togandis.

'Then why?'

'To warn you.'

'Warn me? Of what?'

'I saw them last night,' said Togandis, 'the dead of Khaturian.'

'In your nightmare?'

'No, in the temple.'

'What are you talking about?'

'They came for me,' said Togandis. 'They came for me, but they didn't take me, although I confess I do not know why. They have power now, Serj, real power. It is only a matter of time before they come for us all.'

Casuaban waved his hip-flask in front of the cardinal's face. 'I don't think it's me you need worry about, Shavo. Perhaps you should take a look at yourself first.'

'This is no joke, Serj,' said Togandis. 'Haven't you felt it? Something has changed, and not for the better. This world is different now. I can feel it in every breath I take.'

Serj Casuaban wanted to argue with Togandis, but the image of the small girl lying in his infirmary and the words she had said to him still haunted him. And hadn't he woken in the middle of the night with a pounding headache in the midst of a terrible dream in which a monster with burning eyes emerged from its cave to devour him?

But the dead?

'You have felt it!' said Togandis, seeing his expression.

'And if I have? What can we do about it? You and I both know what we did, what we allowed to happen. If the dead are coming for us then perhaps we should let them take us.'

'You want to die?' asked Togandis.

'No,' replied Casuaban, his shoulders slumping and looking at the hostile faces that called the wasteland of Junktown home. 'Death would be easy. It's living with what we did that's a punishment.'

'I'm not sure the dead see it that way,' said Togandis.

Uriel and Pasanius followed Eversham through the corridors of the palace, their austerity making more sense now that they had met Leto Barbaden. Red-jacketed Falcatas were stationed throughout, their breastplates gleaming and their curved blades shining like silver, though Uriel noticed that none carried a lasgun or so much as a pistol.

Eversham said little along the way, politely and concisely answering any questions put to him, but venturing no information beyond what was necessary. Of the Janiceps, he had said nothing more, simply that Uriel would understand when he saw them.

At last, they emerged on the other side of the palace from which they had entered. High buildings with saw-tooth ramparts stretched away at angles to the main structure to form a triangular courtyard area. Where the palace was constructed of dark, intimidating rock, these wings were fashioned from a smooth pink stone that shone like polished granite. Narrow windows pierced the outer walls of the plain west wing, but no doorways led within and the roofs bristled with antennae.

The eastern wing was of a different character altogether, its age obviously greater than the rest of the palace. The stonework of this wing was more ornate and a tribute to the craftsman's art: a building that celebrated the fulfilment of talent.

Where the rest of Barbaden's dwelling was clean and sharp, this wing had grown old and decrepit, the stonework cracked and weathered like the face of an elderly statesman, its windows grimy with dust and memory. Despite the disrepair, or perhaps because of it, Uriel immediately liked the building, feeling a strange sense of connection to it, or to something within it.

There was a bleak stretch of bare concrete in the space between the two wings, as large as the parade ground before the Fortress of Hera and large enough for the entire Chapter to assemble. Nothing disturbed the blunt uniformity of the space, no statues, no outbuildings and nothing to rescue the eye from the utilitarian nature of the ground save a drum tower that squatted, ugly and threatening, at the far end of the concrete.

'A parade ground?' asked Uriel, as Eversham led them straight across the middle of the open concrete space.

'Indeed,' said Eversham. 'This was the muster field where Restoration Day was declared.'

'Restoration Day?' asked Pasanius.

'When Imperial rule was officially restored to Salinas,' explained Eversham. 'A great day for the regiment.'

'Yet you felt the need to hide it away back here,' said Pasanius.

Eversham glared at Pasanius. 'The regiment died here also.'

Uriel seized upon this uncharacteristic display of emotion and said, 'Died here?'

'We were no longer an army of conquest,' said Eversham, the bitterness in his voice plain to hear. 'We were formally disbanded as a serving regiment and those that remained to bear arms were designated a Planetary Defence Force.'

'That cannot have been easy to bear,' said Uriel, knowing the disdain that most Imperial Guard forces, wrongly, held for PDF regiments. Guardsmen called them toy soldiers, but such bodies of men were often the first line of defence against invasion or uprising. Uriel had met many a courageous PDF trooper in his time, remembering Pavel Leforto of the Erebus Defence Legion on Tarsis Ultra, a man who had saved his life.

Simply because a soldier did not travel beyond the stars to make war did not lessen him in the eyes of the Emperor.

'It wasn't easy,' said Eversham, his pace quickening with remembered anger. 'To be part of something magnificent and then to be nothing; can you imagine what that's like?'

'Actually I can,' said Uriel.

Eversham looked over at him and, realising he had loosened his tongue, simply nodded and resumed his usual guarded expression.

Changing the subject, Uriel indicated the decaying east wing of the palace. 'That building? What is that?'

Eversham said, 'That is the Gallery of Antiquities.'

'A museum?'

'Of sorts,' said Eversham. 'Somewhere between a regimental museum and a repository for items that Curator Urbican believes should be kept and put on display. It's a waste of time. No one will ever see them.'

'That's where our armour is?' asked Pasanius.

'So I believe,' said Eversham.

'I think I should like to see this Gallery of Antiquities,' said Uriel and Eversham shrugged, as though the matter was of no interest to him, which it undoubtedly wasn't, thought Uriel.

There was no further conversation between the three of them and a palpable sense of unease descended upon them. The feeling grew stronger as they approached the brooding grey tower at the far end of the parade ground.

Now that they were closer, Uriel could see that a series of recessed bunkers surrounded it. The flat, featureless walls were unpunctuated by so much as a sliver of a window, though a single portal sat incongruously open at the tower's base.

This was clearly their destination, the lair of the Janiceps, whatever they were.

Uriel did not like the tower and saw that Pasanius felt exactly the same.

An air of dread hung in the air and coils of razor wire surrounded it like thorn patches grown wild around the base of a dead tree stump.

'What is this place?' asked Uriel, the words lingering like dead things long after they were spoken. 'The lair of a psychic?'

'This is the Argiletum,' said Eversham, as though that were explanation enough, 'home of the Janiceps.'

'Nice,' said Pasanius, looking at the grim edifice without enthusiasm.

As they approached, a detachment of Guardsmen emerged from the nearest bunker and ran towards the edge of the razor wire. Now that he looked closer, Uriel saw numerous sheets of metal, which the soldiers manhandled with difficulty to drop over the wire until a clear path was created.

Eversham led the way across the flattened razor wire and Pasanius leaned close to Uriel to whisper. 'I can't help but notice that these Falcatas are armed with more than just blades.'

Uriel nodded. He too had seen the barrels of lasguns poking from the firing slits of the bunkers. The soldiers who had cleared them a path across the razor wire had been equipped with firearms. Was what lurked within this gloomy tower so potentially dangerous that Governor Barbaden felt the need to relax his policy of guns within the palace grounds?

Uriel stepped from the sheet metal bridge and no sooner had they set foot within the circuit of razor wire than the soldiers behind them began to remove it, leaving them trapped at the base of the tower.

Uriel saw it was formed from dark stone blocks inscribed with tightly wound warding script that ran the length, breadth and height of the tower. The portal that led within seemed to gape like the maw of some dreadful gateway to the nether-world, and for a moment, Uriel thought he could feel the breath of something ancient and malicious from within.

'They have that effect on everyone,' said Eversham, sensing Uriel's discomfort.

'Who?'

'The Janiceps,' said Eversham, heading towards the open portal. 'Come, Governor Barbaden is waiting for you.'

Inside, the tower was scarcely any less welcoming, its structure hollow and rising into darkness. A single shaft of light descended from the centre of the floor above and a frost-limned screw-stair of dark iron rose within it.

The air was cool, like that of a meat locker, and the walls glistened with moisture. Uriel felt a strange sense of dislocation, for the curve of the walls seemed to stretch far into the distance in defiance of what the outer circumference of the tower should have been able to enclose.

Uriel could feel the bitter, metallic taste of psychic energy in the air, an unmistakable actinic tang that unsettled him to the very core of his being. It was an irony not lost on Uriel that the potential for psychic power should so unsettle humans, yet without it the very fabric of the Imperium would crumble in the face of the vastness of the galaxy's unimaginable scale.

Once again, Eversham led the way, although his stride was a good deal less purposeful as he made his way across the hard, reflective floor towards the stairs. Careful not to touch the handrail, Eversham began his ascent and Uriel followed him. The stairs were narrow and groaned under his weight, but Uriel's thoughts were focused more on what lay at their end than on any risk of them collapsing.

Onwards and upwards the stairs stretched and Uriel knew, knew for a fact, that they had climbed higher than the tower had appeared from the outside. He heard laughter, small and childish, yet old beyond words.

Whispers seemed to echo from the walls, but Uriel kept his mind on putting one foot in front of the other until, at last, there were no more stairs to climb.

Uriel found himself in a gloomy chamber, lit only by the diffuse glow of sunlight that filtered through darkened windows that had been invisible from the outside. The walls of the chamber were cloaked in shadow, although Uriel could make out indistinct forms against the chamber's circumference, hooded figures that muttered nonsensical doggerel.

Uriel's breath misted before him and the cold knifed into his bones. Once again, he wished he were clad in his Mk VII plate instead of this thin robe, which offered scant protection against the unnatural chill.

Eversham strode to the centre of the room, where Governor Leto Barbaden stood before a reclining couch upon which lay something obscured from Uriel's view.

Barbaden was speaking, his voice low and little more than a whisper. He turned at Eversham's approach and impatiently waved Uriel over.

Uriel swallowed his anger once more and marched over to where Barbaden and Eversham stood, feeling the crackling psychic potential that emanated from the centre of the room. Barbaden moved to his left as Eversham stepped behind the reclining couch, and Uriel had his first sight of the Janiceps.

His first thought was that this was some sort of cruel hoax and that he had been brought before some hideous mutant. Uriel's hand clenched as he reached for a weapon he wasn't carrying. He fought down his horror at the… thing before him and looked more closely as he saw a glimmer of a smile on one of the faces that looked up at him from the couch.

She, or rather, they lay at a disturbing angle on the couch, a shapeless knotted mass of human flesh bound together in ways that anatomy had never intended. This was no mutant creature, but something conceived and grown within the womb as twin girls and upon which aberrant nature had played a cruel joke.

Their heads were fused along the rear quarter of the cranium so that neither could look upon the other. The poor, malformed girls had two mouths and two noses; in each face an eye, well conformed and placed above the nose with a third, milky and distended eye in the middle of the forehead common to both girls.

The brain of one girl was quite visible through a thin membrane of bruised skin that glistened and heaved in time with her breath. On the right side of her head was a rudimentary external ear, from which hung a golden earring, and their small, withered bodies lay in the grip of an embrace that their accident of birth had forced them into.

They were wrapped in dark green robes of plush velveteen, and Uriel saw an eagle head badge pinned there, the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Was this the astropath who would transmit their message of return to the Ultramarines?

Uriel was horrified at the pitiful sight of the girls, seeing the light of intelligence in the single eye of each one. The milky eye in the forehead of the conjoined girls swam with patterns like droplets of coloured ink stirred into white paint.

Uriel had seen patterns like that once before, when he had looked through a crystal dome into the seething depths of the warp when the Omphalos Daemonium had seized the Calth's Pride in its grip.

'Welcome, Uriel Ventris,' said the left mouth. 'I am Kulla.'

'And I am Lalla,' said the other.

'We are the Janiceps,' they said in unison.

TEN

Lalla's voice was sweet and sounded like a carefree young girl who knew nothing of the cruelties of the world. Kulla's, on the other hand, was bitter and husky, as though she alone bore the full knowledge of what the vagaries of unthinking nature had wrought upon them.

Uriel stared in uncomfortable fascination at the conjoined girls, unsure of what to say.

Astropaths were often eccentric souls, cursed with the ability to hurl their minds across the vastness of the galaxy and communicate with others of their kind, thus allowing the Imperium to function.

Uriel had seen many astropaths, but none as physically tormented as the Janiceps, none so cursed by birth as to be better off dead than consigned to this fate. On ninety-nine worlds out of a hundred, the girls would have been killed, but whichever world had birthed them had obviously been a more tolerant place.

As much as Uriel felt sorry for them, he couldn't shake the sense that they were dangerous mutants and fought to get past that impression.

'Don't feel sorry for us, Uriel,' said Lalla. 'We like being useful.'

'Be quiet,' snapped Kulla. 'What do you know of useful? I do all the work!'

'Come now, girls,' said Barbaden, his voice unusually soft and yielding. 'You shouldn't argue. You know what happens when you argue.'

'Yes,' sulked Kulla. 'You have your damned warders tighten their noose on us.'

'And it hurts us so!' squealed Lalla.

'This is the astropath?' Uriel asked Barbaden.

'You can speak to them yourself,' said the governor, 'they're right in front of you.'

'He thinks we're mutants, Kulla,' said Lalla pleasantly.

'Well, aren't you?' asked Uriel.

'No more than you, Astartes,' sneered Kulla. 'What are you if not a freak? In fact your gene structure is more removed from humanity than ours.'

Uriel took a deep breath. From the precautions Barbaden had taken with their confinement, Kulla and Lalla were obviously powerful psykers and it would be foolish to needlessly antagonise them.

'Yes, it would,' smiled Kulla.

Uriel started and Lalla sniggered. 'She does that all the time, but don't worry, she can only read your surface thoughts, unless you want her to read more, and then we'll know all your sins.'

'I am a Space Marine of the Emperor, I have no sins,' said Uriel.

'Oh, come now,' said Lalla, laughing, 'we all have our secrets.'

'No,' said Uriel, 'we don't.'

'He's got secrets to hide,' said Kulla, laughing with a cackling screech that stretched the membrane across her brain.

'Can we get on with this?' asked Uriel, uncomfortable in the presence of the Janiceps now that he knew they could read minds as well as communicate telepathically with other astropaths.

'Of course,' said Barbaden, amused at Uriel's discomfort. 'Simply kneel before the twins and do as they tell you. It will go much quicker if you do not question everything.'

'Both of us?' asked Pasanius.

'If you'd like to,' said Lalla. 'It wouldn't make any difference.'

'Then I think I'll sit this one out,' said Pasanius, gesturing to Uriel to step up.

'And you have awards for valour,' said Uriel.

'The burden of command is that you sometimes have to lead from the front,' replied Pasanius, 'and she said it wouldn't make a difference.'

'How convenient,' said Uriel, kneeling before the twins.

'Give us your hands,' said Lalla, 'and hold on.'

Uriel nodded, wondering at the necessity of Lalla's last comment, and lifted his hands towards the girls. He took their hands hesitantly, feeling the rapid pulse of blood in their tiny, delicate fingers.

'We're not made of china,' said Kulla. 'I thought you Astartes were supposed to be strong. Grip our hands.'

Lalla giggled and Uriel blushed as he tightened his hold.

'That's better,' said Kulla. 'Now we can control your mind.'

Uriel's eyes widened, but Lalla smiled. 'She's joking. We wouldn't do that, not without asking you first.'

His hands became cold and he felt the chill spread along his arms and into his chest. How much of the twins' banter was playful and how much was truth, he didn't know, but he had the feeling that were they of a mind to do him harm, there would be nothing he could do to prevent them from killing him with a thought.

'So what do I need to do?' asked Uriel, trying not to let his unease show.

'Where are you sending this message?' asked Lalla, her eye drifting shut.

'Who are you sending it to?' demanded Kulla.

'To the Ultramarines,' said Uriel. 'To the world of Macragge.'

'Open your mind, Astartes,' ordered Kulla, her voice rasping and harsh.

Uriel nodded, though the instruction was vague, and closed his eyes, slowing his breathing and awaiting the touch of the twins' mind. He felt nothing and tried not to get impatient.

'Your mind is closed to us,' said Lalla, 'like a fortress preparing to resist an invader.'

'I don't understand,' said Uriel.

'You Astartes, your minds are as rigid and unbending as adamantium,' said Kulla, and Uriel knew that her mouth was not moving. Her voice was arriving directly in his thoughts without recourse to speech. 'You are trained, conditioned and enhanced in so many ways, but your minds are like locked doors to a place of miracles and wonder. All the potential you are trained to access: memory, language, combat analysis, and yet your masters train you to close off the one part of your mind that might actually allow you to soar. You do not feel as others do, but we can open that door for you if you let us.'

'Stop it, Kulla,' said Lalla. 'You know that's not allowed. Leave him to his blindness.'

'Oh, all right,' sulked Kulla, with a sigh that Uriel heard in his mind. 'Very well, Astartes, picture your home world: its people, its mountains and its seas. Smell the earth and taste the air. Feel the grass beneath your feet and the wind on your face. Remember all that makes it what it is.'

Pleased to have an instruction he understood, Uriel pictured his last sight of Macragge, a beautiful blue globe turning slowly in the depths of space. The vast seas that covered much of its surface shone with an azure light and spirals of storm clouds, like miniature galaxies, spun lazily in the atmosphere.

Passing through the clouds, Uriel pictured the awesome marble colossus that was the Fortress of Hera upon the great peninsula. He saw the soaring fluted columns of its majestic portico, the colonnades filled with statues of heroic warriors. His mind soared onwards, over golden roofs, silver domes and towering spires of glittering light: magnificent libraries, halls of battle honours, and gilded halls of pilgrims and worshipers come to the Temple of Correction, where the body of the mighty Roboute Guilliman was held in stasis.

Beyond the Fortress of Hera, Uriel imagined the wild, untamed glories of the Valley of Laponis, its white cliffs towering above the achingly blue river that wound its way through the mountains to the plains below. As though a bird in flight, Uriel plummeted down through the valley, speeding towards a thundering waterfall cascading from the heights above.

Billowing clouds of spray boomed into the air, filling it with bitingly cold mist and Uriel laughed aloud as he tasted the crystal clear waters of his Chapter's home world. He soared from the valley, visualising the mountains and forests of Macragge, the sweeping, rocky coastlines and vast, depthless oceans.

'Pasanius,' he breathed, 'I'm there.'

'Hold to thoughts of home,' said Kulla. 'Speak of your desire.'

'My desire?' asked Uriel.

'To return home,' said Lalla, a note of strain in her voice.

Uriel nodded in understanding. 'We have completed our Death Oath,' he said. 'It is time to return to our battle-brothers.'

'Show us,' said Kulla, 'all of it.'

Though he hated to return there, even in memory, Uriel summoned images of Medrengard, the ashen plains, the belching continents of manufactorum and the hellish, damned creatures that dwelt there. He pictured the nightmare fortress of Khalan-Ghol, the horrific daemon-wombs of the Daemonculaba and the final victory over Honsou.

Uriel felt the twins' hands shaking and opened his eyes as the awful stench of burning flesh arose in his nostrils. Ghostly flames swelled and billowed around the chamber, but its occupants appeared to be oblivious to them.

The flames bathed everything around him in light and Uriel had the distinct impression of hungry eyes watching him from the darkness.

The cold, heatless fire reflected a strange light from everyone gathered here and Uriel gasped as he saw a measure of what the twins saw.

A shadowy darkness surrounded Eversham, and a nimbus of silver, like a moonlight reflection on a stagnant lake, bathed Barbaden's features with a cold halo. Flickering arcs of golden lightning crackled around the twins' heads and a scarlet bloom like blood in the water surrounded Pasanius's outline. Uriel saw that the red glow extended past the stump of Pasanius's arm and formed the blurred outline of a hand.

Looking down at his own body, he saw that same red glow, like the embers of a smouldering fire, around his arms and torso.

'You are warriors,' said Kulla, her voice sounding as though it came from far away. 'What other colour would you expect your aura to be but that of blood?'

Pasanius said something, but Uriel could not understand the sense of it, his friend's voice sounding as though it came from an impossibly far-off distance. As the sound of Pasanius's voice faded even further, Uriel felt his gaze drawn to the swirling, milky eye in Kulla's and Lalla's cartilage-fused forehead.

Stars wheeled in the eye's depths, planets and the endless gulfs of trackless space that separated them. Uriel cried out as he was carried into that eye, a mote in the void of space. Distances so vast that the human mind simply had not the capacity to imagine them, flew past at the speed of thought. He was part of that thought, everything he had visualised and everything he had sought carried with the psychic beacon of ideas and images that were cast across space by the power of the twins' mind.

The dizzying sense of vertigo was almost unbearable and it was all he could do to hold onto the twins' hands as they passed what he had given them to the void.

Then it was over.

Uriel gasped as the twins released his hands. He blinked rapidly, his normal sight restored, and all the colours he had seen earlier vanished like the fragments of a dream.

'Is it done?' he asked, the breath heaving in his chest.

'Your call will be heard,' said Lalla.

'By any with the wit to listen,' added Kulla.

When Eversham led Uriel and Pasanius from the Argiletum, the sky was dark and painted with a scattering of stars. The sense of relief at leaving the presence of the Janiceps was total, and as Uriel took a cleansing breath, it tasted as sweet as the crisp mountain air of Macragge.

'How long were we in there?' asked Uriel, staring up at the stars.

'Too long,' answered Pasanius as the soldiers once again flattened the razor wire to allow them to cross. 'You crouched in front of those… girls for hours.'

'I did?' said Uriel. 'It felt like a few minutes at most.'

'Trust me,' said Pasanius, scratching at the raw flesh at the end of his arm. 'It wasn't. Barbaden left almost as soon as you started.'

'Is your arm hurting?' asked Uriel, following Eversham over the bridge of sheet metal.

'A little,' admitted Pasanius. 'It wasn't exactly removed with surgical precision.'

Uriel caught the anxiety in Pasanius's tone and knew that his friend was worried. Pasanius had lost his arm fighting an ancient star god beneath the surface of Pavonis, and microscopic slivers of the living metal of its blade had entered his bloodstream and incorporated its structure into the augmetic the adepts of that world had grafted to him.

The augmetic had developed regenerative powers and Pasanius had struggled with the guilt of that for long months until he had been forced to confess the truth to Uriel. The Savage Morticians, horrific torturer-surgeons of the Iron Warriors, had later amputated the arm and presented it to the Warsmith Honsou, but the guilt was still there.

'You are free of the xenos taint,' said Uriel, keeping his voice low. 'I am sure of it.'

'What if something from Medrengard got into me?'

'You'd know if it had,' said Uriel. 'If the Ruinous Powers had corrupted your flesh, you would not be speaking to me like this. You would have turned that bolt pistol on me when we were in battle yesterday.'

'Would it be that quick? Maybe I've only taken the first steps on the path to evil.'

'I don't know for sure,' replied Uriel, hearing the fear in his friend's voice, 'but I believe that to question whether you are evil tells me that you are not. Those who have fallen to evil never question, never believe they are wrong and cannot see the truth of their actions. If you were on that path, I would see it.'

'I hope you're right,' said Pasanius.

'If you want to be sure, I will ask Governor Barbaden for a medicae scan.'

'You think that would find anything?'

'It would at least show any infection,' said Uriel.

Pasanius smiled in gratitude. 'Thank you, Uriel. Your friendship means a lot to me.'

'In these times, it's all we have, my friend,' said Uriel.

Rykard Ustel was going to die, as sure as day turned to night. Pascal Blaise could see it in the boy's eyes, the look that said his body had already given up the fight to live and that it was just a matter of time before the biological machinery shut down. They had done what they could for him, but none of them were trained medics and their imperfect knowledge of how to treat battlefield injuries had been learned by seeing others die.

Serj Casuaban had delivered the medical supplies as promised and many of those who had been wounded in the attack on the Screaming Eagles would live: many, but not all.

Unfortunately for Rykard Ustel, he was not one of the lucky ones.

Cawlen Hurq sat by the boy's bed, holding his hand and speaking softly to him, the light from the two oil-burners casting a warm, healthy glow over Rykard's pale face that belied his prognosis.

Pascal rubbed the las-burn on the side of his head and took another drink of raquir, suddenly wishing that he could drain the bottle and fall into dreamless oblivion. He knew he couldn't; there were people who depended on him and he was grimly aware that the Sons of Salinas could not continue in this way.

He had known that stark fact for years, but his hatred of Leto Barbaden had blinded him to the simple reality of it. This was a war that could not be won with violence, and the futility of the fighting and killing he had taken part in sickened him. Had it all been for nothing?

Pascal heard a soft curse and looked up.

'He's gone,' said Cawlen, his face a mask of anger as he slumped into the chair opposite Pascal. 'Rykard, he's dead.'

Pascal nodded and slid the bottle over the table to Cawlen, who took a long swallow of the powerful spirit.

'What did he die for, Cawlen?' asked Pascal. 'Tell me why he died.'

'He died for Salinas,' replied Cawlen, 'to defeat the Imperium.'

Pascal shook his head. 'No, he died for nothing.'

'How can you say that?' snarled Cawlen. 'He died fighting the oppressors. How can that be for nothing?'

'Because the idea of defeating the Imperium is ludicrous,' said Pascal sadly. 'I think I always knew that, but I just wouldn't admit it to myself. I mean, what can we do? Really? We fight with stolen weapons that are so old they're probably more dangerous to us than anyone we actually point them at. They have tanks and aircraft and now they have Space Marines.'

'Only two of them,' said Cawlen, 'and one of them is missing an arm.'

'Doesn't that tell you something? That we only merit the attention of two Space Marines? It tells me plenty.'

'So we can't win? Is that what you're saying?' demanded Cawlen.

'No. Yes… Maybe. I don't know any more,' said Pascal.

'Sylvanus Thayer would never have given up!'

'Sylvanus Thayer led the Sons of Salinas into a suicidal battle without hope of victory and I won't do that, Cawlen. I won't.'

'He died a hero,' Cawlen said defiantly.

For a brief moment, Pascal wanted to tell Cawlen the truth, that Sylvanus Thayer lay burned and horribly mutilated in the House of Providence, but fate had cast the former leader of the Sons of Salinas in the role of martyr and it seemed churlish to deny him that honour.

'Yes,' said Pascal, 'he did, but I don't want any more martyrs. I want people to live their lives. I want peace.'

'That's what we're fighting for.'

Pascal laughed, but the sound was bitter and harsh. 'Fighting for peace with acts of war?'

'If that's what it takes.'

'Thinking like that will get us all killed,' promised Pascal.

Three figures were arranged in a triangular pattern in a cramped chamber of heat-resistant tiles, each facing the centre of the room. The first of the figures was a young man who lay strapped to an upright restraint couch, his limbs bound by silver chains and his head held fast with clamps that prevented it from moving so much as a millimetre.

Hissing atomisers moistened gaping, empty eye sockets, the lids of which were held permanently open by ocular speculums, and gently swaying pipes fed him nutrients while others disposed of his bodily waste. Behind him, a clicking, whirring bank of machines monitored his vital signs, the rhythmic pulse and bleep the only signs that he lived at all, so shallow was the rise and fall of his chest.

A meshed vox-capture unit was fitted over his mouth, connected to a series of golden wires that coiled and looped across the floor before arriving at the second occupant of the room.

This figure was likewise restrained, though there was precious little need for it as every limb save his right arm had been surgically removed. He sat in a mechanical cradle of brass armatures and pulsating cables, and, like his opposite number, matter was delivered and retrieved through gurgling pipes. The golden wires from the room's first occupant ran across the room's floor and up over the back of his skull before dividing and plugging into iron sockets grafted where his ears had once been. His eyes had been sewn together and tiny script had been tattooed over the withered, sunken lids.

A wooden lectern sat to one side of this individual, upon which rested a sheet of yellowing parchment dispensed from a roll that sat below a glowing pict recorder. The figure's only remaining limb lay unmoving beside the parchment, a long, feathered quill held tightly between the forefinger and thumb of its spindly hand.

The room's final occupant was also a meld of flesh and machine, but where its fellows were bound to their task through restraints and wards, he was simply obeying orders hardwired into his brain through lobotomy and instruction wafers fed to him by his masters.

A gun-servitor, he had no mind left to call his own and was simply a living weapon-bearer with no will to perform any task other than that which was ordered. Though more humanoid in form than the other two occupants of the room, his body had been enhanced with bionics, muscle stimulants, balance compensators and targeting hardware to allow him to bear the weight of the enormous incinerator unit that replaced his left arm.

The weapon alternately tracked between the room's other occupants, the gun-servitor's brain primed for any of the warning signs that would trigger its attack response and fill this chamber with blessed fire and immolate everything in it, including itself.

The incinerator swung to aim at the figure in the restraint couch as his chest began to heave with effort. The bleeping noises from the machine behind him increased in frequency, becoming shrill and warning.

A hissing blue flame sparked to life at the mouth of the incinerator's enormous muzzle.

The first restrained figure, though bound at every portion of his body capable of movement, stiffened, as though an electric current was discharging through him. His jaw worked up and down, although the vox-capture unit prevented any of the sounds from issuing into the air.

No sooner had this begun, than the quill-bearing figure jerked to life like a machine freshly supplied with power. The quill began scratching across the page, filling it with spidery script, the wiry limb snatching back and forth across the parchment. The glow from the pict reader flickered as the words passed beneath it, carried off to yet another secure room within the facility.

The incinerator filled the room with the hot hissing of its pilot flame, but the gun-servitor's parameters of action had not been fulfilled, and so it sat immobile as the process went on before it.

At last the restrained young man with the burned out eye sockets relaxed, the tension flooding from his body and an inaudible, yet wholly felt sigh escaped him. His colleague also relaxed, the withered arm returning to its place beside the now filled section of parchment.

Silence descended upon the room as the incinerator's blue flame was extinguished and the gun-servitor returned to its monitoring repose.

A recessed door opened in the wall, invisible from the interior of the room, and a series of robed thurifers entered. Each carried a smoking incense burner and their hooded faces were blind to the room's occupants. They made a number of circuits of the chamber, guided by questing hands on the wall while gently swinging their censers of blessed oils and fragrant smoke.

Mist like a morning fog filled the room, but this did not trouble the giant, armoured figure that followed the thurifers into the room. Enormous to the point of gigantic, the burnished, blue-steel silver of his armour seemed to fill the room. The smoke would have blinded any normal man, but this warrior made his way to the lectern table without difficulty.

A huge, gauntleted hand reached down and tore the parchment from the dispenser, holding it up to his helmeted head as he read the words written there.

He had heard them recited through the mouth of a vat-grown cherub, but he needed to see the words for himself, to know them and feel their truth with his own eyes.

The signs were unmistakable.

The Great Eye had opened and the portents of the haruspex were coming to pass.

He heard heavy footfalls behind him as a figure clad in enormous plate armour, the equal of his own, entered the chamber. He clutched a heavy bladed polearm in one fist.

'Is it true?' asked the newcomer. 'A power stirs on Salinas once more?'

'It is true,' confirmed the warrior. 'Begin our deployment, Cheiron.'

'I already have.'

The warrior nodded. He had expected no less. 'Projected flight time to Salinas?'

'The planet's orbit closes with us. Five days at the most.'

'Good,' said the warrior. 'I want to get there while there is something worth saving.'

'That may not be possible,' said Cheiron.

'Then we must make it so,' said the warrior. 'I grow tired of extermination.'

Dust lay thick on hundreds of glass cabinets and the air within the Gallery of Antiquities was ripe with musty neglect and forgotten history. Of all the places he had seen on Salinas, this was the one that truly spoke to Uriel. The legacy of the past and sense of belonging to something bigger was strong and he was reminded of the many halls of ancient banners and honour trophies that filled the Fortress of Hera.

It was the day after their meeting with the Janiceps and the guilty taste of psychic contact had not yet left Uriel's mind. As dawn had spread its sour light over Salinas, Uriel sent a request to Governor Barbaden, via their ubiquitous shadow, Eversham, that they needed a trained medicae to examine Pasanius.

No reply was immediately forthcoming, and rather than simply sit and wait for a response, Uriel had decided they would use the time before their battle-brothers made contact to better acquaint themselves with this world.

The best way to do that, decided Uriel, was to learn of its past.

Having travelled through the palace corridors to the parade ground once before, the route was embedded in Uriel's memory and they found their way to the outer doors of the palace with ease.

The bare concrete esplanade and grey tower at its far end were no less depressing than they had been the day before and as he made his way towards the decrepit Gallery of Antiquities, Uriel couldn't help but feel as though he was being drawn to this place, that somehow this journey was necessary.

'Doesn't look like much,' Pasanius had said, looking at the neglected wing of the palace. Despite feeling that great things awaited in the gallery, Uriel had been forced to agree with him.

That feared disappointment was dispelled as soon as they had entered and seen the vast array of cabinets, packing cases and curios that filled the wing. Much of its depths were shrouded in darkness, and who knew what treasures awaited discovery farther in, for a planet's worth of battle honours and history filled the Gallery of Antiquities.

In charge of imposing order on this haphazardly collected memorabilia was Curator Lukas Urbican, a meticulous and proud man, who Uriel had immediately warmed to upon meeting.

'Ah,' said Urbican, looking up over his spectacles as they had pushed open the doors to the gallery. 'I was hoping you would feel compelled to visit my humble gallery, although I must apologise in advance for the somewhat… random nature of the exhibits.'

Urbican was of average height and from his bearing he had once been a soldier. Though he wore the dark robe of an adept instead of a uniform, it was clear that he kept fit and healthy. Uriel guessed he was in his early sixties, his face lined and hard, and what little remained of his hair was shorn close to his skull and as white as powdered snow.

Urbican beckoned them in and marched over with a liver-spotted hand extended in welcome. Uriel took Urbican's proffered hand, the old man's grip strong and rough textured.

'Curator Urbican I presume?' said Uriel.

'None other, my friend, none other,' said Urbican with a disarming smile, 'but call me Lukas. I'm guessing you would be Captain Uriel Ventris, which, if I'm not mistaken, would make your one-armed friend, Sergeant Pasanius.'

'You're not mistaken,' said Pasanius. 'The arm is a bit of a give-away.'

'You have heard of us?' asked Uriel.

'I shouldn't think there are many on Salinas who haven't,' said Urbican. 'News of the arrival of Adeptus Astartes travels fast, though I must confess I was afraid that Leto would keep you all to himself. Our vaunted governor doesn't have much time for me, or the dusty old relics of the past. A waste of time, he'd say.'

'Actually, Governor Barbaden appears to want little to do with us,' said Uriel, surprised at his candour.

'Well, he has a lot on his plate, I suppose,' conceded Urbican, 'what with all the trouble the Sons of Salinas are causing.'

'Exactly,' said Uriel, sensing that he could learn much from Lukas Urbican. 'Thus, we find we have time on our hands.'

'And you use that time to visit my poor gallery of antiquities? I'm honoured,' said Urbican, beaming. 'I know how rare it is for a soldier such as yourself to have time on his hands, or any man of war for that matter. Of course, it has been some time since I could call myself a soldier of the Emperor.'

'You served with the Falcatas?' asked Pasanius.

'For my sins,' said Urbican, smiling, although the smile faltered for the briefest second. He waved a dismissive hand. 'Of course, that was many years ago. I mustered out after Restoration Day, though I think Colonel Kain would have retired me had I not. War is a young man's game, eh?'

Urbican suddenly paused and raised his hand with his middle finger exposed. 'Of course! Where are my manners? I know what you've come for, how silly of me.'

Uriel smiled as the aged curator bustled off into a chamber just off the main hallway.

The interior of this wing of the palace had seen better days. The paint was peeling from the walls and spreading patches of damp rose from the floor and spread across the arched ceiling. Banners hung on the walls, red and gold guidons and rectangular standards emblazoned with a golden warrior with the head of an eagle bearing twin falcatas.

A long row of glass-topped display tables ran down the centre of the hall and the walls were stacked high with crates. Some of these were open and scrawled with illegible notations, with portions of uniform jackets and assorted pieces of battle dress hanging from them. Cracked glass cabinets stood between the packing crates and lifeless mannequins dressed in what looked like mismatched pieces of uniform and armour carried rusted lasguns that looked about ready to fall apart.

There appeared to be no order to the collection, and yet Uriel found it incredibly reassuring to know that at least one man of Salinas cared for the memory of those who had served in the regiment and who honoured the people of the planet they had claimed.

'How many years of service must be gathered here?' Uriel asked Pasanius, peering into a cabinet filled with medals and a variety of bayonets.

'Decades,' said Pasanius, lifting a falcata with a rusted blade, 'if not centuries.'

While Urbican rooted around for whatever it was he sought, Uriel wandered along one of the aisles between the display cabinets. The first cabinet he stopped at was filled with battered leather notebooks bound with rotted cord. Most were rotted to illegibility, but one was arranged proudly in the centre of the cabinet.

The gold leaf on its cover was faded, but Uriel could make out enough of the lettering to know that it was a copy of the Tactica Imperium, the mighty work by which the Imperium's armies made war. The date was worn away, but the edition number appeared to be in the low hundreds, making the book well over a thousand years old.

'Ah, I see you've found Old Serenity's copy of the Tactica,' said Urbican, his head poking from the doorway. 'Very rare piece, and said to have a personal note from Lord Solar Macharius on its inner cover, but the book's so fragile I don't dare open it.'

'Who was Old Serenity?' asked Pasanius.

'The Colonel of the Falcatas before Leto Barbaden,' shouted Urbican, 'a grand old man indeed, a gentleman. Never lost his cool in battle, even when things went awry. When we were set to be overrun at Koreda Gorge he turned to his adjutant and said, ''I shall never sound the retreat, never. Warn the men that if they hear it, it is only a ruse on the part of the enemy''. Stirring stuff, eh?'

'Is that true?'

'I have no idea,' said Urbican. 'Old Serenity was killed an hour later, but it sounds good, eh? Ah! Here we are.'

Urbican emerged from the back room, carrying a long, cloth-wrapped bundle, which he reverently laid on the table before Uriel. Even before Urbican unwrapped it, Uriel knew what it was and felt his pulse quicken as the sheathed sword of Captain Idaeus was revealed.

'Eversham brought your sword here, Captain Ventris,' said Urbican, 'and I have kept it safe for you.'

Uriel drew the golden-hilted sword from its scabbard, his fingers naturally slipping around the wire-wound hilt and the quillons fitting neatly against the top of his fist. To hold his blade once more and feel the connection to his heritage as a Space Marine was a sublime sensation, another sign that their exile from the Chapter was almost at an end.

He turned the blade in his hand, the pale light of the gallery reflecting along its gleaming, unblemished surface. 'Thank you,' he said. 'This blade means a lot to me.'

'A fine piece,' said Urbican, 'although I feel the blade is perhaps not the original.'

'You have a good eye, Lukas,' said Uriel. 'The blade was broken on the world of Pavonis. I forged a new one on Macragge.'

'Ah, that explains it. Still, it is a fine weapon,' said Urbican. 'Perhaps you could tell me of its illustrious history sometime?'

'I would be proud to,' nodded Uriel, attempting to buckle the sword around his waist, but finding that without the bulk of Astartes plate, the belt was too large. Seeing the difficulty Uriel was having, Pasanius said, 'Is my armour here also, curator?'

Urbican smiled. 'Indeed it is, sergeant, Mk VII if I'm not mistaken, Aquila pattern?'

'That it is,' confirmed Pasanius. 'You know Astartes armour?'

'Only a very little,' admitted Urbican. 'It is a passion of mine to study the battle gear of our most heroic protectors, although I confess I have only ever had the chance to study armour and weapons of a far greater age than yours.'

'You have studied Space Marine armour?' asked Uriel. 'Where?'

'Well, here of course,' replied the curator, with an expression of puzzlement, which suddenly turned to one of unalloyed joy.

'Ah, I see! Oh, you must come with me,' said Urbican, setting off down an aisle leading deeper into the gallery.

'My friends,' said Urbican, 'you are not the first Astartes to come to Salinas.'

For someone who had faithfully served Leto Barbaden in the Achaman Falcatas, Mesira Bardhyl had fared particularly poorly in the years following Restoration Day, thought Daron Nisato. Many times while the regiment had fought through some tough campaigns, Nisato had seen the shivering form of Mesira next to the colonel, her stooped form lost in the Guard-issue greatcoat, and felt a stab of sympathy for her.

He'd known it was wrong to feel like that, for, as a company commissar, it could easily have fallen to him to put a bullet through her brain in the event of her psychic powers becoming dangerous.

For all her apparent frailty, however, Mesira had served the regiment and never once faltered in her duty.

And this was her reward upon mustering out: a roughly built, brick and timber structure on the outskirts of Junktown; anti-Imperial slogans painted over the walls and crude representations of horned monsters on the door. The street was empty in both directions, but that was no surprise; the arrival of a growling Chimera in the black and steel livery of the Barbadus Enforcers had a way of emptying streets like no other.

Nisato pulled himself up from the commander's hatch of the vehicle and slid down the armoured glacis to drop to the hard-packed, sandy ground. His armour weighed heavily on him, but it would be foolish to come this close to Junktown without it. He scanned the street again, his eyes flicking from rooftops and windows to recessed doorways where an opportunistic gunman might wait.

He turned back to the growling vehicle and said, 'I'm going inside.'

'You want backup?' asked a voice in his helmet: Lieutenant Poulsen.

'No, wait here, I'll only be a few minutes.'

'We'll be ready if you need us,' said Poulsen and Nisato heard the man's eagerness. Poulsen had been a junior commissar at the outset of the Salinas campaign and took Nisato's lead in all things, following him into the Enforcers after the muster out after Restoration Day.

It hadn't offered much in the way of advancement, but at least they were not as hated as the men and women who had chosen to remain with the Falcatas. At least as keepers of the peace and upholders of the law, they could be seen to be doing some good.

At least that was what Daron Nisato told himself before he went to sleep each night.

'Stay alert,' ordered Nisato, 'and if I'm not out in ten minutes, come in and get me.'

'Understood, sir.'

A squad of five enforcers sat in the baking confines of the Chimera, armed and armoured for combat, but Nisato did not think he would need them. Mesira was a lonely, afflicted woman, but she wasn't dangerous. When he had seen her at the palace, he had seen the desperation etched into her face and although it fell somewhat beyond his remit of upholding the law to check on her like this, he felt he owed her a duty of care.

For, if not him, then who?

Nisato rapped his gauntlet against her door, hearing the empty echoes of it up the stairs and feeling the give in it that told him it wasn't locked. He pushed the door open, not liking the stale, abandoned air he felt from the dwelling. Dozens could live in a place like this, but fear of Mesira's abilities had kept her isolated, for who wanted to live with a witch?

His hand went to his bolt pistol as he slid through the door, keeping his steps as light as he was able. Inside the door was a narrow vestibule with boarded up doors and a staircase that led up to a landing. Weak light filtered down the stairs from a skylight above and dust motes spun in the air where his opening of the door had disturbed them.

'Mesira?' he called, deciding that there was no need for stealth after having knocked. 'Are you in here?'

There was no answer. Nisato drew his pistol, his instinct for trouble warning him that all was not right. Carefully, knowing that Mesira lived on the first floor, Nisato climbed the stairs, keeping his pistol trained on the space above him. Keeping his breathing even, he eased onto the landing, seeing an open door along a wooden floored corridor with flakboard laid along its length in lieu of carpet or tiles. The reek of khat leaves was strong, telling him that this was Mesira's home; many psychics turned to narcotics to allow them to sleep without dreaming.

Checking both ways along the corridor, Nisato called Mesira's name once more, again receiving no response. He swept along the corridor until he reached the door and pressed himself against the wall beside it. Reaching up, Nisato snapped his helmet's visor down and reached up to amplify the aural gain on its auto-senses.

Amid the crackling static, he listened for the tread of footsteps, the rasp of frightened breath or the sound of metal as a pistol was cocked. Nisato remained motionless for several minutes until he was sure there was no immediate threat.

Taking a deep breath, he spun around and kicked the door inwards, moving swiftly inside, twisting this way and that to cover his blind spots and check the dead zones where an assailant might be lurking.

With quick, professional skill, Nisato moved from room to room, seeing no evidence of a struggle or any sign of Mesira.

He did, however, see plenty of evidence of a lost, desperate soul in need of a friend. Rumpled, dirty sheets covered a threadbare mattress in the corner of one room. Empty bottles of raquir lay scattered everywhere and the air reeked of khat leaves. Food wrappers lay where they had been thrown and Daron Nisato felt a terrible regret at not reaching out to Mesira.

Something told him that, as was often the case, regret only came when it was too late to do something about it. The place was empty and he lowered his pistol, saddened at the waste of a life that was laid out before him.

Nisato moved into the main room and walked over to the grimy window that looked out over the city of Barbadus. Sprawling and ugly, it simmered in the heat of the day, fumes and smudges of smoke staining the sky from the distant manufactories. Enforcing Imperial Law in a place like this wasn't how Daron Nisato had imagined ending his career with the Achaman Falcatas, but then life very rarely took you down the paths you imagined when you were young.

He remembered leaving the Schola Progenium on Ophelia VII, thinking of the plum assignments that would be his and the great things he would achieve in the service of the Emperor. For a time, it had been as he'd imagined. His service in the Falcatas had been honourable and he was, if not liked, (what commissar was ever really liked?) respected.

Then Colonel Landon, Old Serenity the men called him, had been killed at Koreda Gorge along with his senior officers and Leto Barbaden had assumed command. Nisato had met Barbaden only once before then and had not been impressed. The man was a quartermaster and regimental logistician, a man who dealt with absolutes and to whom men were simply numbers in a ledger.

Nisato shook off such thoughts, not liking where they were leading, and turned to face the room, seeing scattered papers on a leaning desk, a dark pile of clothing and a rumpled greatcoat.

Even as he took in the details, his attention snapped towards the wall opposite the window, where five words had been daubed in what he knew instantly was blood.

Help me… I was there.

Below that was a gleaming medal depicting a screaming eagle.

They were beautiful.

Uriel had scarce seen anything that had filled him with such a welcome sense of return. Hidden at the back of the Gallery of Antiquities, they stood in serried ranks and gleamed in the dim light. The blue and white paint of their elongated helmet muzzles was scraped and every breastplate was dented or cracked from long ago impacts.

Under normal circumstances, they would be considered horrifically damaged or, at the very least, grossly neglected, but to Uriel's eyes, these suits of armour were the most perfect things he had ever seen.

There were nineteen of them, each painted in quartered blue and white, the left shoulder guard a studded auto-reactive plate, the right stamped with a golden ''U'' over a pair of white wings. In each fist was clutched a bolter, some damaged, some gleaming as though fresh from the armoury.

'You recognise the Chapter symbol?' asked Uriel.

Pasanius nodded. 'The Sons of Guilliman,' he whispered, 'a founding of the thirty-third millennium. Unbelievable.'

'I know,' said Uriel, reaching to run a hand over the eagle emblazoned upon the nearest suit's breastplate. 'Mk VI, Corvus-pattern power armour.'

Uriel turned to Lukas Urbican, and the curator took a step back as he saw the anger in his face. 'How did this armour come to be here? How did the Falcatas come to be in possession of Astartes power armour? These should have been returned to their Chapter!'

'Oh no!' said Urbican quickly. 'These aren't battle trophies or spoils of war. These suits of armour were here in the gallery when I took on its upkeep, I assure you.'

Uriel saw the truth in the curator's fear and raised his hands in apology. 'I am sorry, I should have thought before I spoke, but to see Astartes armour paraded by mortals like this is… unusual. No Chapter would willingly leave such a precious legacy of their history behind.'

'I understand,' said Urbican, but Uriel saw that he did not and the curator was still shaken by his earlier anger. Uriel took a deep breath and said, 'Allow me to explain, Lukas. To a Space Marine, his armour is more than just plates of ceramite and fibre-bundle muscles, more than simply what shields him from the bullets and blades of his enemies. The armour becomes part of the warrior who dons it. Heroes have fought the enemies of mankind wearing this armour and upon their death, it is repaired and given to another warrior to fight in the name of the Emperor. Each warrior strives to be worthy of the hero before him and earn his own legend to pass on.'

'I think I understand, Uriel,' said Urbican, moving forward to place his hand on the scarred vambrace. 'You're saying that it is more than just a functional piece of battle gear, that there's living history in every plate. Legends are carved in every scar upon its surface and a life of battle encapsulated in its very existence. Yes, I see that now.'

'So how did they come to be here?' asked Uriel again.

'Well, as I said, you are not the first Astartes to come to this world,' said Urbican, 'although I believe it was many centuries before the Falcatas arrived that these warriors fought here.'

'Who were they fighting?'

'Ah, well, there things tend to get a bit hazy. The record keepers of Salinas were somewhat vague on that account, although there are veiled references to great beasts without skin, red-fleshed hounds that could swallow a man whole, and armoured warriors who could bend the very nature of reality. All lurid stuff, to be sure, and no doubt magnified by the writer, but whatever they were they were serious enough to warrant the attentions of Space Marines.'

Uriel recognised warriors of the Ruinous Powers from Urbican's description and shared an uneasy glance with Pasanius at the mention of great beasts without skin as the curator continued with his tale. Uriel had not forgotten that the Unfleshed still roamed the hills around Khaturian and knew he could not afford to leave them alone for much longer.

'There was talk of a great battle near an abandoned city in the foothills of the northern mountains.'

'I think we know that city,' said Pasanius. 'Khaturian isn't it?'

'Ah, yes, I believe that was its name,' said Urbican. 'Anyway, these Sons of Guilliman, as you call them, fought the enemy, but were, unfortunately, wiped out.'

'So where are the rest of the suits of armour?' asked Uriel.

'These are the only ones we have. The texts of the time talk of other Astartes coming to Salinas in the aftermath of the battle, warriors who were able to defeat these beasts.'

'Do your texts say who these warriors were?'

'No, although they were described as ''giants in silver armour who smote the vile foe with lightning and faith''. Apparently, they defeated the enemy and left immediately after the victory was won. I have always presumed they took whatever armour the Sons of Guilliman left behind.'

'Then why did they not take these?'

'According to the archive labels, they were discovered buried in the ruins of a collapsed building in Khaturian many decades later, by servitors hauling stone to build the new temple by all accounts. I suppose these silver giants must have missed them when they left.'

'What of the bones?' asked Pasanius. 'The warriors who wore this armour.'

'I'm sorry, I don't know. There was no mention of bones, just the armour.'

Uriel turned back to the silent warriors and walked along the line of Mk VI plate, now knowing that brother Space Marines had died fighting the great enemy of mankind on this world in ages past. The dim light of the gallery seemed to shine in the depths of the eye lenses of the helmets, as though some flickering ember of the warriors who had worn this armour remained within.

'They were waiting,' said Uriel, and no sooner had he spoken the words than he felt the Tightness of them on a deep, instinctual level.

'Waiting for what?' asked Pasanius.

'For someone to find them and reawaken their glory,' said Uriel, the words leaping unbidden to his lips, as though spoken by another, 'to fight their enemies once more, and to bring them home.'

He stopped before a suit that had been punctured through the gorget by some unknown weapon, the plates, seals and inner linings of the armour buckled inwards. Dark stains striated the inner surfaces and, although centuries old, Uriel could smell the ancient hero's blood.

As he stared at the blood, Uriel felt the kinship he shared with this warrior on a level he could not articulate. This was a legacy of heroism that stretched back thousands of years, and even over the aeons of time and distance that separated them Uriel knew that this armour had not just been waiting: it had been waiting for him.

No word was forthcoming from Governor Barbaden regarding the possibility of a medicae examining Pasanius's arm, so Uriel spent the next two days working on his suit of armour, working with craftsmen from the palace forges to restore it to functionality.

Pasanius had been reunited with his own armour, and soon Uriel no longer thought of this armour as belonging to another warrior.

It was his, though he knew that it would be his for only a limited time.

The armour belonged to the Sons of Guilliman and it would dishonour their warriors to wear it for any longer than was necessary. After a thorough inspection, it was clear that the damage was largely superficial, but with broken parts replaced with components from other suits, it was not long before Uriel stood before a fully restored suit of Mk VI plate.

Palace artificers were already attempting to modify the cable heads of their generators in an attempt to recharge the internal power of the armour, and they confidently predicted that they would have the armour fully functional within the day.

In the meantime, Uriel and Pasanius explored the Gallery of Antiquities with Curator Urbican. The gallery held many fascinating treasures, although none was as magnificent as the nineteen suits of Corvus-pattern power armour they had discovered on their first visit.

Urbican was a genial host and a garrulous orator, endlessly pleased to have someone to whom he could hold forth on the history of the Falcatas and the world they had conquered.

On the eastern edge of the Paragonus sub-sector, a lynchpin of Imperial defences of the coreward approach to Segmentum Solar, the Salinas system was one of a dozen that had felt the wrath of an Imperial Crusade some thirty-five years ago. The core worlds of the sub-sector had fallen prey to agents of the Archenemy, and the forces of Warlord Crozus Regaur had begun to swallow up the outlying systems, one by one.

Before the enemy forces had gained an unbreakable hold on the sub-sector, the Imperium had retaliated, raising regiments from the oudying systems to fight the threat. Such measures held the enemy in check, but had not the strength to dislodge him from the sub-sector, and thus regiments from beyond the immediate sphere of the conflict were dragged into it.

The Falcatas had been one such regiment and had been tasked with cleansing the outer systems of taint. For the first planets of the Salinas system, it had already been too late, their governors overthrown and their populace in thrall to the enemy.

Along with a dozen other regiments and a demi-legion of titans from the Legio Destructor, the Falcatas had fought for two decades upon the blasted surfaces of these planets to drive Regaur's forces off-world. Urbican's voice choked as he told of the campaigns, and Uriel could only guess at the horrors and bloodshed he had seen in the liberation of the planets.

Salinas had been the third world in the system and when the Achaman Falcatas had made planet-fall, they had come as an army of conquest. Despite pleas of loyalty to the God-Emperor from the populace, the battle-hardened veterans of the Guard, men and women who had waded through blood and the dead for most of their adult lives, were in no mood for half measures.

The planetary governor had been executed and when his forces had taken arms in response to this, Barbaden had unleashed the full horror of the Falcatas' experiences of the last two decades.

Men and women who had desperately tried to minimise civilian casualties in their first months as soldiers, soon cared little for the collateral damage caused by their assaults and the local PDF regiments had been obliterated within months of planet-fall.

Although organised forces had been defeated, there remained a powerful core of resistance and, for many years, the Falcatas had fought a dedicated and utterly ruthless insurgent army named the Sons of Salinas that murdered Imperial soldiers and bombed their bases.

All that had come to an end with the Khaturian Massacre.

Uriel saw that Urbican was reluctant to speak of this, but gently pressed the old curator over the course of their second day of exploration of the galleries.

'It was close to the fourth year after we arrived,' said Urbican. 'I wasn't there, of course, so I have this only secondhand. Well, the insurgents were getting out of hand and not a day went by without a bomb going off or a patrol being ambushed and slaughtered. We couldn't keep the peace; we were too few and our equipment was beginning to fail. Without re-supply and a corps of trained enginseers, tanks were getting a bit thin on the ground. We were getting weaker and they seemed to be getting stronger.'

'So what did Barbaden do about it?' asked Pasanius. 'He was still colonel then wasn't he?'

'He was,' agreed Urbican. 'He said that Khaturian was a base of operations of the Sons of Salinas and led the Screaming Eagles to surround it. Apparently, Barbaden gave the city fathers two hours to hand over the leader of the insurgents, a man named Sylvanus Thayer, or else he would order his men to attack.'

'I'm guessing they didn't hand him over,' said Uriel.

'They said they couldn't,' explained Urbican. 'They said he wasn't there, that he never had been. They begged Barbaden to call off his attack, but once Leto has his mind set on something, there's nothing anyone can do to dissuade him.'

'So what happened?'

Urbican shook his head. 'You must understand, Uriel, this is hard for me. The Killing Ground Massacre is not something I am proud to have associated with my regiment. All the good we did, all our honour and our glory died that day.'

'I know this is hard for you,' said Uriel. 'You do not have to go on if you do not wish to.'

'No,' said Urbican, 'some shames need to be told.'

The curator drew a breath and smoothed down his robes before he continued. 'Well, the deadline for the people of Khaturian to hand over Thayer came and went, and for a time they thought that Barbaden's threat had been a bluff.'

'But it wasn't, was it?'

Urbican shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'it wasn't. Marauder bombers flew in over the mountains and dropped a dreadful amount of bombs. They blew the city apart. You could see the fires from Barbadus. It was as if the whole sky was aflame, a terrible sight, just terrible, and, well, after that reports are somewhat confused.'

'Confused how?' asked Pasanius, scratching at his arm.

'No one I've spoken to seems to be able to agree on exactly what happened next or even how it happened, but Colonel Barbaden ordered the Falcatas into the ruins of Khaturian and when they came out six hours later, there wasn't a single soul left alive in the city.'

'He killed the entire city?'

'Yes,' nodded Urbican, 'seventeen thousand people in six hours.'

'What happened after the attack?' asked Uriel. The sheer scale of the dead was staggering.

'The Sons of Salinas, what was left of them, came down from the mountains,' said Urbican, shaking his head. 'Supposedly Sylvanus Thayer and many of his followers' families lived in Khaturian and, mad with grief and rage, he led them in one last glorious charge.'

'And they were destroyed,' said Uriel, guessing the outcome of that charge.

'They were, but what a magnificent, if futile, way to die: fighting the enemy with the green and gold of their cloaks flying out behind them as they charged,' said Urbican. 'But what chance did they have? They were guerrillas, not an army. Thayer and his men were pounded to ruin by artillery and then shot to pieces before noon. And that was the end of the resistance of Salinas. By the end of the week, we'd had Restoration Day over on the esplanade and that was that.'

'Except that wasn't the end of the resistance, was it?' asked Uriel, remembering the graffiti he had seen that said the Sons of Salinas would rise again.

'No, would that it had been,' said Urbican. 'The brutality of the Falcatas subjugation of Salinas is a matter of great shame to many of its former soldiers and the scars of that war are far from healed, Uriel. Thayer's second-in-command, a man named Pascal Blaise, took up where his friend had left off, although he doesn't have the weapons or training to be anything like as dangerous as Sylvanus Thayer.'

'Pascal Blaise?' asked Uriel. 'What does he look like?'

Urbican shrugged. 'I don't know, I've never seen him, but I'm told he's a shaven-headed man with a forked beard. Why do you ask?'

'I think I saw him during the attack on Colonel Kain's force when we arrived.'

'That wouldn't surprise me. The Sons of Salinas have an especial hatred for Verena Kain.'

'Why?'

'Well, she led the Falcatas into Khaturian,' said Urbican. 'Barbaden gave the order, but I believe it was her that went into the flames and carried it out.'

The bar was busy tonight. Cawlen Hurq had made sure of it. The buzz of conversation filled it and the smell of sweat and stale alcohol was powerful. Almost a hundred people filled the bar with noise, their conversations blurred into a raucous babble. Cawlen had six men with guns among the patrons and, as far as any place in Barbadus could be called safe, this place was safe. Pascal Blaise sat in a booth at the back, nursing a glass of raquir and wondering what had made him think this was a good idea.

'He won't come,' said Cawlen, 'not if he's got an ounce of sense.'

'He'll come,' replied Pascal. 'We have something he wants.'

'What makes you think he has any interest in her?'

'He was at her house,' said Pascal, taking a drink. 'He was looking for her.'

'So? That doesn't mean anything.'

Pascal knew Cawlen was right. There was no reason to think that Daron Nisato would come to the bar, except Pascal knew that he would. Daron Nisato, out all the men and women who had mustered out of the Falcatas, was the one person he credited with a shred of honour. He knew for a fact that Nisato had not been present at the Killing Ground massacre and had done all he could to learn the truth behind it.

Pascal scanned the faces that filled the bar, remembering the last time he had come here and the soldier of the Achaman Falcatas who had eaten the barrel of his pistol. The bloodstains had been cleaned from the roof, but Pascal could still see the impact the bullet had made on the roof beam.

'Guilt can be a great motivator,' he whispered.

'What?' asked Cawlen. 'Did you say something?'

'No, just thinking aloud,' replied Pascal.

Cawlen looked around the bar, his nerves jangling on the surface of his skin. 'I don't like it. What if Nisato comes here with a dozen enforcers? Everything we've done over the last ten years would be for nothing.'

'He won't.'

'You don't know that,' said Cawlen. 'It's too much of a risk.'

Cawlen was right, this was risky. He was exposed here. There was an undercurrent of fear and resentment in the bar; he could hear it in the too boisterous conversation and ever so slightly forced laughter. He could feel the peoples' fear and knew that part of that fear was thanks to him.

They were afraid of what might happen because of him being there.

Time was, these people would have done anything for him: helped his freedom fighters, provided them with food, shelter and information, but times had changed and ten years of misery and hardship had hardened a lot of hearts and eroded a lot of the goodwill he'd inherited from Sylvanus Thayer.

People were tired of war and he didn't blame them.

He was tired of it too.

The ironic thing was that he didn't hate the Imperium. For most of his adult life he had faithfully served the Golden Throne, making his own small contribution to the welfare of mankind. Then the Falcatas had come with anger in their hearts and blood on their blades and cut themselves into the flesh of the world.

A decade later, Pascal Blaise had lost the best years of his life fighting soldiers of an Emperor he had sworn to serve, but he was fighting them, not what they represented.

Pascal was not naive enough to think he could win, but he had come to realise that his fight had nothing to do with winning, and everything to do with justice. The guilty had to pay. It was as simple as that. The guilty had to pay and the natural order of justice had to be restored. He realised that none of the killing had been about anything other than that.

Yes, Cawlen was right, this was risky, but he was tired of killing and if this gesture could be the beginnings of an end to it, then it was worth a little risk.

'There he is,' said Cawlen, stiffening in his seat, his hand sliding to the pistol concealed beneath his storm cape.

'Ease up, soldier,' warned Pascal. 'We're not here for violence, and by the looks of it, neither is he.'

Daron Nisato had just entered the bar, his expression guarded and wary. The conversation dipped in volume as he ducked under the iron girder that served as a lintel and approached the bar. Pascal watched as the enforcer's eyes scanned the patrons with a lawman's gaze, sorting the threats from the chaff.

The enforcer could not know for sure what Pascal looked like, but his eyes settled on him and stayed there.

'He's good,' said Pascal as Nisato began to thread his way through the bar towards the booth. 'You've got to give him that.'

Cawlen grunted and rose from the booth as Nisato approached. The enforcer stopped at the table and said, 'I'm presuming it was you that sent the message to me.'

'It was,' confirmed Pascal. 'Sit down.'

Nisato glanced at Cawlen. 'Maybe I will, if you send your goon away. He's making me itchy and if his hand moves any closer to the weapon he's got under his cloak, I'll break it off.'

'You can try,' growled Cawlen.

'Just give me a reason,' responded Nisato, squaring off against the big man.

Pascal clinked his glass against the bottle on the table. 'Can we just assume that we've passed through the pointless threats stage of this conversation please? Cawlen, back off. Mister Nisato, sit.'

Reluctantly, Cawlen Hurq backed away from the booth and Nisato slid onto the bench seat opposite Pascal. The enforcer stared at him and Pascal couldn't decide which emotion was uppermost in the man's features. Nisato was a handsome man, dark-skinned and with a prominent nose. His eyes were old, decided Pascal, but who on Salinas could say otherwise?

'Finished your inspection?' asked Nisato and Pascal smiled.

'My apologies,' said Pascal. 'It's not often I sit this close to a man who'd like nothing better than to put a bullet in me.'

'Is that what you think?'

'Don't you?'

'Not at the moment, but the night is young.' Pascal poured a glass of raquir for Nisato and slid it across the beaten metal table. 'I wasn't sure if you'd come,' said Pascal. 'I didn't think I would.'

'So why did you?'

'Because…' began Nisato and Pascal saw that he was struggling to rationalise to himself why he had come. 'Because someone had to. Mesira's got no one else.'

'Mesira? Is that her name?'

'Yes. You didn't know?'

'No,' said Pascal. 'She hasn't said much that's made sense since we found her.'

'Found her? You didn't take her from her house?'

'No, she was wandering the streets of Junktown, screaming and tearing at her body.'

Nisato frowned, clearly not having considered the possibility that the woman had wandered off by herself. His first thoughts had been of kidnap.

'Her mind's gone if you ask me,' offered Pascal.

'If you've hurt her…'

Pascal waved a placatory hand. 'Of course we didn't hurt her. Any hurt that's been done, she did to herself.'

'What do you mean?'

'Just what I say,' replied Pascal. 'She was in a pretty bad way when we found her.'

Nisato leaned back and took a drink of his raquir. 'How did you know I was looking for her? Your message was pretty specific.'

'Come on, this was my city before it was yours. People tell me things. The head of the enforcers going to visit the witch woman doesn't go unnoticed. Why were you looking for her?'

'None of your business.'

'Is she your woman?' asked Pascal. 'Does the chief enforcer like getting his ya-yas from dangerous women?'

Nisato sneered. 'I told you, it's none of your business.'

'Fair enough,' said Pascal, holding up his hands.

The enforcer was visibly struggling to hold onto his cool and Pascal decided it was time to end this period of baiting. He took a deep breath and said, 'You want the truth? The woman means nothing to me. On any other day, I'd have left her in the street to die, but I knew she meant something to you.'

'So you want a favour, is that it? Blackmail?'

'No, nothing like that,' said Pascal.

'Then what?'

Pascal leaned over the table and placed his hand on Nisato's arm. The enforcer looked down at his hand as though it was a poisonous viper.

'I want the killing to end,' Pascal said. 'I want to end this grubby, dirty war with honour and if helping you out buys me a little goodwill, then it's a trade I'm willing to make.'

Nisato tried and failed to hide his surprise. 'This is a gesture of goodwill?'

'Exactly,' said Pascal, leaning back.

Nisato took a moment to consider what he had heard and Pascal could see that the idea was appealing to him. He remained silent, sensing that to intrude on the enforcer's thought processes would be a mistake.

At last Nisato leaned forward and said, 'Take me to her.'

'I don't like this,' said Verena Kain. 'Not one bit.'

'Governor Barbaden does not share your misgivings,' said Uriel.

'Governor Barbaden,' she said, placing undue emphasis on his tide, 'no longer commands the Achaman Falcatas. The regiment is mine to command and it is my right to decide what is acceptable and what is not.'

'It was my understanding that the Achaman Falcatas were no longer a serving regiment, that they were now designated a Planetary Defence Force,' said Uriel, unable to resist the barbed comment. 'As such, they are Governor Barbaden's to command.'

Kain glared at him and Uriel felt a guilty satisfaction at her anger. Beside him, he could feel Pasanius's grim amusement at Colonel Kain's discomfort.

'It is my understanding that you were exiled from your Chapter.'

'Ah, but we are going home,' said Pasanius. 'The Falcatas will always be PDF.'

Uriel tried, unsuccessfully, to hide a smile as Kain angrily turned on her heel and stalked away to join her adjutant, a put-upon looking man named Bascome. Ever since Uriel had met Verena Kain, she had been bitter and spiteful, as though he somehow wronged her by his very existence. Since hearing of the slaughter that had taken place at Khaturian, the Killing Ground as it was known, he had little time for Kain or her ill-temper.

Uriel put Kain from his mind as he watched a number of servitors and the few remaining enginseers of the Falcatas prepare the coupling heads of the generators.

The air in the Screaming Eagles' vehicle hangar was cool and stank of metal and electricity. A pair of parked Leman Russ battle tanks sweated oil and fumes, with coiled and ribbed cables snaking from beneath their hulls to a coughing generator.

Uriel paid no heed to the powerful war machines, his attention firmly fixed on the suit of armour that stood in the centre of the hangar. Its surfaces had been cleansed and returned to their former glory by Leto Barbaden's craftsmen and, like the last warrior standing after a battle, the armour stood immobile, its joints locked and its strength existing only as potential.

The armour's backpack was bereft of power and no solution the palace adepts could devise would restore it. Pasanius had suggested that perhaps the military grade generators and couplings might have a better chance, and, after a petition to Governor Barbaden, a convoy of vehicles had traversed the city to the Screaming Eagles' barrack compound.

The enginseers there had jumped at the chance to work on the problem and their solution had been elegantly ingenious. The chargers for the onboard electrics of a Leman Russ had been adapted to run a powerful generator's output through a manually calibrated transformer, which would allow an enginseer to adjust the power supply to a level that the armour's backpack could use.

At least that was the theory. Whether or not it would work, was another matter entirely.

Uriel forced himself to be calm as he watched the enginseers work, taking solace in their apparent relish for the task. He could only hope that their competence matched their enthusiasm.

Pasanius stood beside him, resplendent and towering in his cleaned and polished armour, a bolter held tightly in his gauntlets like a talisman. The palace artificers had done a magnificent job in undoing the damage that had been done on Medrengard and Uriel felt a surge of pride as he looked at the gleaming plates of his friend's armour.

His left shoulder guard had been repainted with the symbol of the Ultramarines and a laurel wreath. He looked every inch the Ultramarines hero he was.

The armour in the centre of the hangar had also been repainted in the colours of the Ultramarines, although Uriel had been careful to leave the helmet in the original colours of the Sons of Guilliman. To do otherwise would insult the heritage of the warriors who had worn it before him and Uriel had no wish for the armour to fail him in battle through any lack of respect done to it.

'You think this will work?' asked Pasanius.

Uriel considered the question before answering. 'It will,' he said.

'You sound awfully sure.'

'I know, but I can't believe the armour would have drawn us to it if this wasn't going to work.'

Pasanius simply nodded and Uriel could tell that his friend had felt a similar pull towards the armour in the Gallery of Antiquities. Some things were just felt in the bones and although it went against Uriel's training to believe in things he could not see and touch and know were real, he felt sure that he was meant to wear this armour.

'We are ready to begin,' called Imerian, one of the enginseers, a hybrid being of flesh and metal who was swathed in red robes and whose arms were partially augmetic. Uriel felt his muscles tense and walked over to the armour, placing his hand in the centre of the golden eagle upon the breastplate.

'You will live again,' he said.

'Captain Ventris,' said Imerian, 'you might want to step away from the armour. If we are unable to calibrate the energy flows correctly then it would be advisable to be some distance from the backpack. Ceramite makes for deadly shrapnel.'

Uriel nodded and stepped away from the armour, moving to join the rest of the personnel within the vehicle hangar behind a hastily erected bulwark of sandbags. Imerian unspooled a length of cable from a heavy, brass-rimmed wooden box carried by a serious-faced servitor and made a number of complex, last minute adjustments to the dials on the front of the box.

At last he appeared to be satisfied with the arrangements and his finger hovered over a chunky black dial in the centre of the transformer.

'Colonel Kain?' asked Imerian. 'We are ready.'

Kain shot Uriel a bitter look of resignation and nodded curtly, saying, 'Proceed.'

The enginseer waved his hand at a crewman who sat upon the upper hull of one of the Leman Russ tanks and its engine roared to life with a thumping bass note that shook the dust from the roof of the hangar.

A crackling, electric sensation danced on the air and a rising hum, like the throbbing beat that filled the heart of a starship built from the box carried by the servitor.

Imerian furiously worked the dials as needles jumped, snapping into the red sections on the far right of the displays.

Arcs of lightning sparked from the transformer and Imerian flinched. The hum from the box became a whine and Uriel felt a moment's fear as he wondered if something had gone horribly wrong with the process.

He looked around the edge of the sandbag barrier, seeing the red lenses of the helmet glowing brightly with power.

'It's working!' he cried.

A subtle vibration was passing through the armour, a miraculous sense of reawakening that made Uriel's heart sing. He stepped from behind the sandbags and marched across the hangar over the warning shouts of Imerian.

Uriel knew he had nothing to fear from this armour's rebirth, for it mirrored his own.

In the time he had spent away from the Ultramarines, he had been less than whole, a shadow of his former self, but as the armour was reborn to its sacred purpose, so too was he.

Uriel smiled, and the glow in the helmet's lenses was mirrored in his own.

Daron Nisato followed Pascal Blaise up a set of metal stairs towards the bar's upper rooms. His footsteps echoed loudly on the metal and he found himself wondering at the strangeness of fate that found him breathing the same air as Pascal Blaise and not hauling him back to the enforcer's precinct house.

If Blaise was serious about opening a dialogue between the Sons of Salinas and the Imperial authorities, it could signal an end to the bloodshed that plagued the streets of Barbadus and a new beginning for Salinas.

Blaise pushed open a rusting iron door and beckoned Nisato into a long room with a handful of beds along one wall and a desk on the other. A single window looked out over the city of Barbadus. Mesira Bardhyl was sitting on one of the beds, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms hugged around her shins. She wore a shapeless, white robe and her arms were bound with bandages.

Nisato took a seat next to Mesira on the bed and lifted her chin, seeing that her eyes were glassy and far away.

'Emperor's blood, what happened to her?' he asked.

'That's pretty much how we found her,' said Pascal Blaise, 'except that she was naked.'

'Naked?'

'Like I said, I think her mind's gone.'

Nisato had seen the same blank look in many a soldier's face, the shattered mind behind the eyes no longer capable of dealing with whatever trauma had broken it open, and was forced to agree.

'Mesira?' he said. 'Can you hear me? It's Daron Nisato. I'm here to take you home.'

She rocked back and forth, shaking her head. 'No,' she said. 'Can't go home. No home to go back to. We burned it. We burned it all. He's coming for us. Won't let us go. Must punish us for what we did.'

'Mesira, what are you talking about?'

'The Mourner… He's coming for us,' sobbed Mesira, tears spilling down her cheeks, 'for all of us who were there.'

Nisato looked helplessly at Pascal Blaise. The man was pale and his eyes were wide.

'Do you know what she's talking about?' demanded Nisato. 'Who's this Mourner?'

'The Mourner,' said Mesira. 'I see him all the time… He's burnt, black and dead. His eyes though… His eyes are fire and he burns. No! Not with fire, no, not with fire, but with rage.'

'Damn you, Blaise,' snapped Nisato, rising from the bed and moving towards the leader of the Sons of Salinas. 'Tell me what you know. Who is the Mourner?'

Pascal Blaise swallowed heavily, looking over at Cawlen Hurq who stood at the doorway.

'It's what we used to call the old man,' said Blaise, 'Sylvanus Thayer.'

'The leader of the Sons of Salinas before you?'

'Yes,' said Blaise, nodding.

'But he's dead isn't he?' said Nisato. 'He was killed after the Khaturian massacre.'

Blaise didn't answer immediately and Nisato said, 'Wasn't he?'

'No,' said Pascal, 'he wasn't.'

Sergeant Tremain paced the walls of the Screaming Eagles' compound, nodding and passing a word with the sentries as he went. His rifle hung loosely over his shoulder and his falcata was a reassuring presence at his hip, the sheath slapping against his thigh with every long stride he took. It felt good to be armed like an ordinary soldier, the familiar weight of the weapon he had first been issued with back on the old home world of Achaman. The old home world…

Tremain could barely remember the world of his birth, save that it was more temperate, more beautiful and more interesting than this ugly rock. His memories were rose-tinted, he knew. Every soldier's memory of home was, but even allowing for that, he still missed the spiced hint in the air and the golden sunsets in the russet skies.

He smiled at his unusually poetic turn of thought and paused beside a corner turret, a boxy construction of reinforced concrete, further protected by a layer of steel mesh to defeat shaped warheads. The turret scanned across the dead ground before the compound, twin autocannon protruding from the firing slit to cover the roadway that led from the urban sprawl of Barbadus.

The night was quiet, although the rumble of engines and a teeth-numbing hum of electrics coming from one of the vehicle hangars against the far wall was an unaccustomed disturbance. The two Space Marines they had found, Tremain didn't like to use the word detained, were in there with Colonel Kain. There was something about recharging a suit of armour, although he didn't really understand what was going on.

All he knew was that he didn't like it. Sergeant Tremain didn't like anything that upset the status quo-and he'd suspected those two warriors were trouble the moment he laid eyes on them within the fenced off area of the Killing Ground.

He'd known for certain when Uriel Ventris lied to him in the back of the Chimera.

Tremain shifted the rifle's weight on his shoulder and leaned out over the parapet to look at the smoky outline of Barbadus, squatting like a diseased tumour on the landscape. Of all the worlds they had been given to conquer, why did it have to be this one?

It was foolish to expose himself like this, but it enhanced his reputation amongst the men as a man who didn't care overmuch for the threat posed by the Sons of Salinas.

'Better watch out, sergeant,' said one of the wall sentries. 'You don't want to get your head shot off by a sniper.'

Tremain shook his head. 'Don't you worry about me, lad,' he said. 'The Sons of Salinas might be hard fighters, but they're not soldiers and they don't have a marksman worthy of the name to worry about.'

The sentry smiled and continued on his rounds, and once Tremain was satisfied that he had waited long enough, he leaned back. It was all very well being blase about the Sons of Salinas, but fate had a strange sense of humour when it came to hubris, and it would be just his luck to make a crack like that and have a sniper blow his head off.

Tremain continued his rounds, finding that his gaze was continually drawn to the mountains that were little more than a jagged dark line on the horizon. He remembered the same mountains lit by the flames of Khaturian and shivered. He hadn't thought of the Killing Ground in many years. He tried to keep his thoughts away from that day as far as possible, but there was a strange sense of unease in the air tonight, an unease that made him think of past shames and which had driven him from the warmth of the barracks to wander the walls of the compound.

Perhaps it was simply the presence of the Space Marines that was unnerving him, for there could be no doubt that Sons of Salinas informers would have passed word of their arrival to enemy combatants, but something told him that whatever he was feeling had more to do with the past than what was transpiring here tonight.

Tremain paused on his rounds, looking up at the flag that billowed and snapped high above the walls, the golden screaming eagle, resplendent against a crimson field. The sight of the fiery eagle used to fill Tremain with pride, but every time he looked at it now, he felt a curious mix of sadness and regret.

The turret at the north corner of the compound wheezed as its hydraulics moved it around and Tremain slung his rifle about and quickly checked the charge. He set off at a casual pace, not wanting to seem too concerned, but anxious to know what had alerted the gunners.

The back of the turret was supposed to be sealed, but parts had been cannibalised to repair a damaged Leman Russ and thus Tremain was able to lean inside. Two gunners sat in uncomfortable metal seats before a chunky fire-control console and flickering pict screen. Waves of static rippled over the screen, intermittently spiking with a juddering image of the weapons' killing zone.

'What have you got?' he asked. 'Something moving?'

One gunner remained hunched over the screen, while the other turned to face him, a look of confusion plastered across his features.

'We're not sure, sergeant,' said the gunner. 'It looked like there was a crowd gathering at the edge of our range, but then…'

The man's words trailed off and when he didn't continue Tremain said, 'But then what?'

'Then they vanished,' said the gunner helplessly. 'One minute they seemed to be there, the next they were gone, and then the targeters went to hell.'

That was certainly true. The pict screen was a hash of grainy nonsense, the speakers buzzing with static howls that sounded like a wounded animal.

'Probably a surveyor malfunction,' said the other gunner. 'They're getting worse every day.'

The soldier's sense for danger that had kept Tremain alive all these years was yelling in his ear that this was not some equipment malfunction, but something far, far worse.

'Keep at it,' he said, 'and sing out the moment you get a solid return.'

The gunner nodded and Tremain ducked back out of the turret and waved over a number of wall sentries. He toyed with ordering an alert, but Colonel Kain would have his balls in a sling if he took such drastic action without proof that something was really wrong.

Half a dozen soldiers joined him, their weapons at the ready, and bolstered by their presence, Tremain leaned over the wall again, sliding down his helmet's visor and allowing the optical augmetics to adjust to the darkness.

The lurid green of the night vision made everything blurry and ghost-like, and at first he wasn't sure what he was seeing, for it seemed too ridiculous to be true.

The ground before the walls was filled with people, thousands of shining, glowing people that drifted like wisps of wind-blown cloud. They fled in and out of focus, as though they weren't really there, but were simply impressions on the surface of the world.

There were things moving amongst them, though, horribly fast things that used the shifting, glowing mass as a shroud by which to approach. Tremain blinked as he caught a glimpse of one of the things moving below him, the breath catching in his throat at the horror of it.

He reeled back from the wall, tripping and falling on his backside as it leapt upwards.

Something slashed past Tremain. He heard a muffled grunt and his visor suddenly flared with brightness as something hot and wet splashed his face. Blinded, he staggered against the wall and wrenched the visor up in time to see a hulking monster squatting on the wall. It held the head of one his soldiers in its hands. The body this trophy had once belonged to was on its knees, jetting a vigourous fountain of arterial blood into the air.

The killer glistened in the reflected light of the compound, its flesh the hideous, slick blue and pink of a stillborn child. Its head was an elongated, twisted mass of molten flesh and bone, the eyes like hot coals placed in two wounds gouged in the meat of its face. Chisellike teeth unsheathed from its jaws and Tremain scrambled back on his rump, desperate to be away from this abomination.

More were joining it, half a dozen and more, their elastic limbs hauling their vile bulks easily onto the walls. Tremain's terror soared and threatened to unman him as he saw their unnatural bodies, the nightmarish creations of a demented anatomist, all knotted masses of bone, flesh and muscle combined in unreasoning, lethal forms.

Shots were fired, bright in the half-light, and screams soon followed them.

Claws and teeth flashed. Blood squirted and men died.

Tremain scrambled for his rifle, but it was already too late.

The Lord of the Unfleshed reached down and tore him in two before his finger even slid through the trigger guard.

The armour was coming alive before him. Uriel could feel the power coursing around its ancient machinery as surely as he could feel the blood in his veins. The subtle vibration of life was returning to the armour and the sense of approbation he felt from this rebirth was palpable.

Uriel could almost see the lighting running through the armour, strength returning to the long-dormant muscles that would give the wearer the power to smite his enemies and the protection to suffer their violence. To wear such armour was an honour few were worthy of and one Uriel knew he would have to earn.

Pasanius had joined him standing before the armour, and Uriel was again thankful for the loyalty and friendship his comrade offered him.

'How long now, Enginseer Imerian?' called Uriel, raising his voice to be heard over the threatening roar of the Leman Russ's engines and the throb of power.

Imerian risked sticking his head out from behind the sandbag barrier. 'I have the correct frequency, Captain Ventris, so it should only take another few hours for the backpack to become fully charged.'

Uriel did not reply, for he had seen the mask of battle drop over Pasanius's face. A second later, he knew why. Over the rumble of tank engines, his enhanced hearing picked out the sounds of gunfire.

'Colonel Kain!' he shouted, pinpointing the sound. 'Weapons fire! At your perimeter.'

Verena Kain emerged from the sandbagged barrier and placed her hand to the side of her head. Uriel saw her expression transform from one of irritation to one of cold, hard anger.

'Shut this down,' she ordered Imerian, before turning to draw her pistol and falcata, which she pointed at the Leman Russ, 'and fire up those tanks.'

'Let's go,' said Uriel, drawing his sword from its sheath.

Pasanius followed him, the borrowed boltgun clutched in his left fist, as a detachment of soldiers formed up on Colonel Kain. The commander of the Falcatas jogged over to the main doors of the hangar as they began to rumble open.

Uriel reached the doors at the same time and Kain favoured him with a withering expression of scorn.

'If this has something to do with you…' She left the threat unfinished.

'Then you can berate me for it later,' said Uriel.

The doors opened wide enough to allow egress from the hangar and Colonel Kain slipped through, her soldiers swiftly following her outside. Uriel let her go first; this was her command after all, but he made sure he caught up to her quickly.

No sooner had he emerged onto the open ground in the centre of the compound than a screaming siren split the night open. With a snap and an actinic clash of circuits, blinding arc lights flared to life, dispelling the night's darkness and bathing everything in bleaching brightness.

'Oh no,' said Uriel as he saw the carnage at the walls.

Monsters were loose in the compound.

The Unfleshed ran rampant through the soldiers of the Screaming Eagles, tearing limbs from torsos and undoing human forms with crushing blows or snapping bites. Their forms were huge and swollen, their previously exposed organs and meat now sheathed in slimy layers of new skin.

The Lord of the Unfleshed roared as the lights came on, towering, magnificent and unspeakable, as though his veins ran with light instead of blood. His tribe poured into the compound like an army, although less than a dozen of them remained alive. Men fled before them, only to be plucked into the air and casually dismembered. Las-bolts flashed and burned the air, but the flesh of these monsters was impervious to such inconsequential energies.

'What are they doing?' hissed Uriel.

'Killing,' replied Pasanius, reproach heavy in his voice.

Colonel Kain and the Falcatas that surrounded her watched in dumbfounded horror at the bloodshed being unleashed within their sanctum. Soldiers were beginning to emerge from one of the barracks, but a grotesque beast with reverse jointed legs and a hideously curved spine of knotted cartilage, hacked them down as they emerged. A sandbagged gun position opened up on the walls, the gunners knowing that killing their own men would be a kindness. Heavy calibre rounds hammered the inner face of the concrete walls, tore through the bloodied flesh of the dead soldiers and smacked wetly into the bodies of the Unfleshed.

The Lord of the Unfleshed leapt from the wall, his strength and power carrying him through the air to land on the roof of the second barracks building. His enormous weight smashed through the corrugated tin roof and he vanished from view, although his bellows of rage could still be heard.

Uriel ran towards the violated building, Pasanius hot on his heels as Colonel Kain fought to impose some kind of order upon her command. Screams and roars filled the air, the Unfleshed bludgeoning their way through the Screaming Eagles without mercy.

A beast with two fused heads and elongated arms that ended in stump-like claws sawed its way through the red-armoured soldiers, its flesh peppered with bullets and scorched by las-bolts.

One with a monstrous twin bulging from its flesh, slaughtered men and women and fed them to the ravenous growth, its lunatic hunger uncaring whether the meat was alive or dead.

Uriel tried to ignore the horrors around him, vaulting a metal girder fallen from the roof of the barracks. Inside, he could hear frantic screams, random bursts of las-fire and a terrible roar of pure hatred. He kicked aside the buckled door and pushed his way inside.

The interior of the barracks was an abattoir, worse than anything Uriel had dreamed while in the depths of the Omphalos Daemonium. Blood sprays coated every wall, broken bodies and shredded limbs lay scattered like debris from an explosion in a mortuary, and it seemed impossible that so many men could have died in so short a time.

'Emperor's blood!' he swore as he saw the Lord of the Unfleshed bend a man in half until his spine snapped and jagged bone erupted from his belly. Blood sprayed the giant creature and Uriel felt an almost physical hurt at this betrayal.

'Stop!' he shouted, raising his sword before him. He knew the weapon was scant defence against so colossal a creature. Had this weapon not been wrested from his hands in the belly of a lesser member of the tribe than its master?

'What in the Emperor's name are you doing?' demanded Uriel.

The Lord of the Unfleshed's head swung towards him, ponderous and dripping with blood. Scraps of meat and cloth hung from his jaws and Uriel saw a dull light in his eyes, a light that spoke of a thousand minds behind it.

'These men deserve to die,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'They were there.'

Uriel knew something of the history of the world and of the regiment that had claimed it, but how could the Lord of the Unfleshed?

'That is not for you to decide,' he yelled. 'Why are you doing this?'

'Because someone must,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'The dead must be avenged.'

Screams and the rattling bark of gunfire sounded from beyond the walls of the barracks, although a curious peace reigned within.

'Put that man down,' ordered Uriel. 'The Emperor will be angry if you hurt him.'

The Lord of the Unfleshed threw his head back and let loose a terrifying roar that encompassed a lifetime's worth of anger, hurt and self-loathing.

'The Emperor does not care for him,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed, displaying an eloquence that belied his previous utterances. 'He forsook this vessel a long time ago, just as he forsook us.'

The words were spoken with a human mind, but a monster's mouth, and they came out sopping and malformed, cruel and bitter. Uriel heard the ache of loss in every mangled syllable and felt the pain behind the words, but whoever he spoke to was not the being whose flesh he addressed. Whatever intelligence-dwelled behind those burning eyes was not the creature that had set foot on Salinas with him.

'Enough,' said Uriel, turning and nodding to Pasanius, who aimed his bolter towards the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'You have to stop this, now!'

Seeing the weapon raised, the Lord of the Unfleshed lifted the weeping soldier high and plunged him, head first, into his enormous maw.

'Imperator, no!' cried Uriel. 'Pasanius, shoot!'

The air was filled with the distinctive bangs of bolter fire and mass-reactive shells stitched a path across the Lord of the Unfleshed, each one detonating within his body. New skin and old meat erupted from him, but not before the soldier was bitten in two. Uriel leapt forward, but the lower half of the dead man was hurled into him and he crashed to the ground.

More bolter shots ripped out, but the Lord of the Unfleshed was on the move once again. Uriel rolled to his feet as he saw the Lord of the Unfleshed crash through the outer wall of the barracks, smashing the cinderblock walls to powder as he went Pasanius was already outside, following the creature with barks of bolter fire, and Uriel clambered over the rubble to reach the inner compound.

Uriel saw that Pasanius was as accurate as ever, but that his bolts were having little effect on the Lord of the Unfleshed beyond the cosmetic. Blood and light streamed from the Lord of the Unfleshed, but what, if any, harm these wounds were causing was hard to tell.

Soldiers fought in tight groups, overlapping fields of fire spraying the Unfleshed with controlled volleys. Heavy weapon teams were setting up their guns to support their quicker comrades. As she had when the Sons of Salinas had ambushed her forces, Verena Kain was rallying her soldiers quickly and effectively.

It wasn't nearly enough.

Against other men, even other soldiers, her masterful leadership and the courage of the Screaming Eagles would easily have won the day, but they were fighting a foe beyond any they had fought before. Explosions burst among the Unfleshed, but neither fire nor shrapnel nor bullets could bring them low.

They shrugged off wounds that would have killed even the largest tyrannic beast thrice over, smashing through entire platoons and killing every soldier in the time it took to scream. Wounded light flowed from them as they were hit, the glow knitting solid over the wound like a bandage.

The monsters were unstoppable, killing with a demented frenzy of rage.

Uriel's heart turned to ice as he saw the savage joy in the faces of the Unfleshed.

Whatever hopes he had held of their redemption, or for a new life, were being dashed before his eyes. There could be no atonement or forgiveness for relish taken in wanton slaughter.

Even as he ran to join the battle, a missile skewed in flight as its firer was disembowelled by a hooking punch from a clawed fist. It slashed through the air in a wild, spiral pattern before impacting on the compound's main generator building.

Uriel dived forward as the warhead punched through the lightly armoured door of the building and exploded, destroying the generator in a mighty blast that lifted the roof hundreds of feet into the air on a column of fire and demolished a portion of the outer wall.

The compound was plunged into darkness.

'What do you mean, Sylvanus Thayer's still alive?' demanded Cawlen Hurq.

'Just what I said, Cawlen,' said Pascal. 'Although he might as well be dead.'

Daron Nisato was as shocked as Hurq at the revelation that the old leader of the Sons of Salinas was alive, but the anger in Pascal's bodyguard was raw and in need of venting.

'You told us he was dead!' said Hurq, and Mesira put her hands over her ears at the noise. Nisato put an arm around her, but she flinched at his touch, moaning in anguish.

'And he was, to all intents and purposes,' said Pascal, trying to defuse Cawlen's anger. 'I found him on the battlefield the day after the fighting. There was almost nothing left of him, Cawlen, just scraps of flesh and blood. I don't know how he was still alive, but he was. I couldn't help him, so I took him to Serj Casuaban at the House of Providence.'

'To Casuaban?' said Cawlen. 'He's a Falcata!'

Pascal shook his head. 'No, he's been helping us since the Killing Ground Massacre.'

'He's been helping us? How?'

'Where did you think our medical supplies were coming from?'

Daron Nisato tried to concentrate on what the two men were saying, but Mesira was rocking back and forth with ever greater urgency.

'Why didn't you tell us?' asked Cawlen. 'We could have let the people know?'

'What good would it have done? Sylvanus was already a martyr. He had done more for us by dying than he ever could again,' said Pascal. 'Besides… He's… He's not the same man he was before.'

Nisato caught the strangeness of Pascal's tone and looked up from the weeping Mesira Bardhyl. 'What do you mean? How is he different?'

Cawlen Hurq glanced around at him and said, 'Stay out of this, enforcer. This doesn't concern you.'

Nisato stood and spun Hurq around. The big man looked set to go for his gun, but Nisato deftly plucked the weapon from the man's holster. He jammed the barrel in Hurq's belly and said, 'Sit down and shut up.'

Reluctantly, Hurq did as he was ordered and Nisato turned to Pascal Blaise. 'What did you mean he's not the same man? I've had to shoot men who woke from comas or serious injuries with latent abilities that they did not possess before. Is that what you mean?'

'Something like that,' agreed Pascal. 'He couldn't speak or move. There wasn't enough left of him to do either, but… you could feel it when you were around him.'

'Feel what?'

'His anger,' said Pascal, 'his unquenchable anger.'

A scream made both men flinch and Nisato turned to see Mesira Bardhyl standing by the window, looking out into the night's darkness with her arm extended. Her face was lit by the soft glow of the city beyond, but as they watched a brighter glow from beyond the glass illuminated her face with hot, orange light.

Nisato rushed to her side. 'What is it?' he asked.

'The Mourner,' hissed Mesira.

Daron Nisato and Pascal Blaise watched as a blooming pillar of fire lifted from beyond the edges of the city. Seconds later, the rumble of the explosion rolled over them, accompanied by the popping crack of small-arms fire.

'That's the Screaming Eagles' compound,' said Nisato. 'Your handiwork, Blaise?'

'No,' said Pascal, and Nisato believed him, 'not mine, I swear.'

'It's the Mourner,' said Mesira Bardhyl. 'He's found one. He's killing them all to get to her.'

She turned to face him and Nisato saw that she was smiling with calm serenity.

'He's coming for me next.'

Uriel had no weapon but his sword, and this he put to good use as he fought his way into the mass of struggling bodies. The Unfleshed were stronger than ever, their bodies filled with a power they had not possessed before, and they had been horrifically powerful then.

A towering shape rose up before him, a monster with lumpy stumps for legs and a frill of flesh that hung from its chest and rippled with life. Unnatural bone structures beneath the skin lashed out at Uriel, but he parried desperately as taloned hooks sought the soft meat of his throat.

He rolled beneath a lashing bone hook and slashed his sword through the beast's flesh. The blade cleaved through its body, but no sooner had it torn clear than the strange light that filled the beast restored the flesh whole.

The creature howled, despite the healing effect of the light, and it backed away from him, seeking easier prey among the Screaming Eagles. Uriel let it go as he sought out Colonel Kain in the confusion of the battle.

With the generator destroyed, the conflict was being fought in the strobing darkness of muzzle flashes, las-bolts and the diffuse glow of reflected starlight. Struggling knots of soldiers ran from cover to cover as the Unfleshed tore through the compound, demolishing barricades, gun emplacements and buildings as they went.

The fuel store erupted in a great mushroom-cloud of fire as a stray round punctured its skin and the reek of promethium filled the air. Burning clouds billowed upwards and burning streams of promethium spilled through the compound.

Uriel ran through the chaos of the battle to join Pasanius, his friend firing the last of his bolt rounds at a monster with swollen arms that pounded its way through the medicae building and butchered the wounded with great, clubbing sweeps of its iron-hard fists.

'How many rounds do you have?' shouted Uriel over the din of battle.

'One magazine left,' said Pasanius, 'but it's tricky to reload.'

Uriel swapped his sword for the bolter, ducking behind the cover of an avalanche of sandbags as he quickly and expertly reloaded the weapon.

'Thanks,' said Pasanius, as Uriel returned the weapon and took his sword back. 'Now what? What in the name of the Emperor is going on? Why are they doing this?'

'They're not,' said Uriel, finally catching sight of Colonel Kain.

The bark of heavy weapons joined the fight as soldiers clambered up to the hatches of parked Chimeras and unleashed torrents of las-fire from muld-lasers or hails of shells from heavy bolters.

'What do you mean?' demanded Pasanius, firing over the sandbags into the monster attacking the medicae building. 'I'd say they are.'

'This isn't them,' persisted Uriel. 'I don't know what, but there's something controlling them, I'm sure of it.'

Pasanius shrugged, and Uriel realised that, at this moment, it didn't matter why the Unfleshed were attacking the Screaming Eagles, just that they were. The Lord of the Unfleshed was killing men by the dozen with every roar and swing of his massive fists, his flesh an impregnable fortress and proof against all weapons.

'Then I hope you have a plan,' said Pasanius. 'Otherwise they're going to kill everyone here, including us.'

Uriel had no answer for Pasanius, but then the roar of engines sounded from the hangars as a trio of Leman Russ battle tanks rumbled from within. The main guns would be useless within the compound, but each vehicle carried a host of support weapons and their bulk alone could turn the tide of the battle.

A great cheer went up from the Screaming Eagles as the tanks emerged, and Colonel Kain lifted her sword high for all to see. A soldier unfurled a banner and the sight of the crimson emblem of the Achaman Falcatas gave the soldiers heart.

Uriel watched the lead tank, the vehicle that had begun to power his armour, split the night with an incandescent spear of light from the lascannon mounted on its hull. A beast with scything limbs fell, sheared in two by the beam, its entrails cooked and its blood boiled to steam. The other tanks sawed the bullets of their sponson weapons across the Unfleshed, the creatures driven back from the fight by the sheer weight of fire.

The great metal beasts did not cow the Lord of the Unfleshed, however. He cast aside the body of the soldier he had just killed and charged the tank with his head lowered and his fists balled at his side.

Just as it seemed he would run headlong into the vehicle, the Lord of the Unfleshed leapt into the air and landed on the tank's frontal section. Bullets ripped across his body, but slowed him not at all. Monstrously powerful hands closed on the foreshortened barrel of the tank's main gun and inhumanly strong arms ripped upwards.

With a screech of tortured metal and a fountain of sparks the entire turret was wrenched clear. The turret gunner fell from the ruin of the main gun's housing, only to be crushed by the treads of his tank. The Lord of the Unfleshed slammed the twisted wreckage into the side of the tank, crushing the side guns and buckling the hull inwards with tremendous booms of metal.

The tank's engine howled in protest, jetting filthy blue oil-smoke as it seized and died. Flames erupted across its rear quarter and with his foe defeated, the Lord of the Unfleshed hurled the buckled and twisted mass of the turret across the compound and vaulted to the ground.

With a rousing battle cry, Colonel Kain led the charge of the Screaming Eagles.

Uriel rose from cover as they charged, admiring their courage while cursing the futility of the gesture. These men could not triumph against the Unfleshed, not while some dark power worked their bodies like marionettes and healed killing wounds.

'Come on!' he shouted, and Pasanius rose with him.

He charged through the blazing compound, the reek of burning promethium filling his senses and the thick pall of black smoke making his eyes water and his throat burn. The heat was incredible, leaping flames devouring the compound with a furious appetite.

The Unfleshed and the Screaming Eagles clashed in the centre of the compound, a battle fought in the bright heat of the fires. It was a battle that could only end one way, but the Screaming Eagles fought with a fatalistic fervour that spoke volumes of their involvement in the Killing Ground Massacre.

Uriel swept his sword out as a beast with arms like pistons and a hunched spine loped towards him through the smoke and flames. Its mouth was a lopsided horror of broken teeth and rotted gums, its eyes a gelatinous mess of run-together pupils and milky irises. Its flesh was glistening and new, but rotten and slick, as though grown from diseased cultures.

It spat a mouthful of obscenities, its fist thundering towards him as it screamed. Uriel turned the blow aside and spun around the creature, driving his sword down into its back. The blade grated on a malformed spine and Uriel twisted the sword as he thrust it deep into the monster's body.

It shrieked and dropped to its knees as Pasanius ran up and hammered his armoured boot into its face. Fangs snapped and bloody phlegm sprayed the air.

Uriel wrenched his sword free in a wash of light and frothing blood. Pasanius jammed his bolter into the beast's mouth and pulled the trigger. Light exploded in its skull and the back of its head mushroomed outwards.

The monster collapsed, steaming brain matter leaking from the opened lid of its skull, and Uriel saw a mist of light follow it into the air. He cried out as he felt the enraged frustration within the light and dropped to his knees as the force of it threatened to overwhelm him.

Uriel dropped his sword as his vision blurred and he saw the compound and the walls surrounding it thronged with observers, spectral figures who watched the carnage enacted in their name dispassionately. Hundreds of figures jostled for position on the walls and Uriel shook his head as he fought to free his thoughts from their desire for vengeance.

'Uriel!' cried Pasanius, and the spell was broken.

The creature they had fought was dead, the healing light having fled at its demise, but Uriel saw that this was the only triumph in the battle so far.

Flames had claimed those the Unfleshed had not. Men of fire screamed as they were consumed and Uriel felt a horrible sense of vindication from the invisible voyeurs who had set this slaughter in motion.

'We have to get out of here,' said Pasanius. 'We can't win this.'

Uriel nodded, sweeping up his sword. 'I'll try to reach Kain.'

He rose to his feet and sought the banner of the Screaming Eagles, catching sight of it through the flames as Colonel Kain fought a losing battle against the monsters butchering her soldiers.

'Over there!' said Uriel. 'Come on.'

They set off through the flames towards the beleaguered warriors, and Uriel could feel his skin blistering from the heat. He could only imagine the pain the mortal soldiers must be feeling.

Uriel saw Verena Kain fall, bleeding from a deep wound to her shoulder. The creature closed on her for the kill, but her men valiantly formed a line before her, guns rippling with fire and curved swords ready to defend their colonel.

In the face of their firepower, the beast fell back and Uriel skidded to a halt beside Kain.

The woman was tough, Uriel had to give her that. Her left arm hung uselessly at her side and her face was a fire-lit mask of blood. She looked up at Uriel and her face was wretched with anger.

'My men are dying because of you!' she shouted over the gunfire and roar of flames. 'I don't know how, but I know this has something to do with you.'

'Colonel Kain,' began Uriel, 'you're right, but deal with it later. We have to get out of here, now. This isn't a fight we can win.'

'Never!' said Kain. 'The Screaming Eagles never sound the retreat.'

'I know,' snapped Uriel. 'I heard Old Serenity's saying, but he died, and so will you if we stay here.'

He thought she was going to refuse, but saw the spark of anger fade from her eyes to be replaced by the weary resignation of acceptance. Uriel nodded and turned to Pasanius as an enormous shadow blotted out the light of the fires. The bearer of the Screaming Eagles' banner was killed as his head was ripped from his shoulders and a steaming pillar of blood erupted from his shorn neck.

Uriel spun around as the banner fell. The Lord of the Unfleshed towered over him, his form impossibly massive and swollen since Uriel had last laid eyes upon him. Light shone beneath his skin, too bright to look upon where it oozed from his wounds, and his muscles were aflame with borrowed power.

A fist like a boulder slammed into Uriel, hurling him through the air to land in an ungainly heap against the hull of the wrecked Leman Russ. Bright lights danced before his eyes and he fought for breath, hearing the bark of bolter fire as Pasanius opened fire.

The Lord of the Unfleshed smote Pasanius with a terrible blow that crushed him to the ground, and then reached for Verena Kain. The colonel of the Screaming Eagles had lifted her regiment's banner from the earth and the rippling silk of the flag was on fire. Uriel cried out and pushed himself to his feet, swaying as he lurched towards the Lord of the Unfleshed.

Colonel Kain hacked at the Lord of the Unfleshed with her falcata as she was lifted from the ground in his enormous fist. Blood and light seeped from the wounds, but she could not break the hold the enormous creature had on her.

Uriel saw the anger on the Lord of the Unfleshed's face, an anger that was so distilled and overwhelming that it halted him in its tracks, so singular was it. This was no anger the Unfleshed possessed, this was the anger of those without voice, the anger of those who had only this last revenge left to them.

The Lord of the Unfleshed carried the struggling colonel over to the blazing plume of promethium that was all that remained of the fuel store. Uriel tried to keep up, but his limbs were leaden and the breath burned in his lungs.

'No,' he hissed through gritted teeth as he realised what must come next.

The Lord of the Unfleshed paused, as though to relish what he was about to do. He leaned in close to Verena Kain and though he whispered the words, they echoed in the skulls of everyone within the compound.

'You were there.'

Then he hurled her into the white heat of the flames.

Uriel cried out, a wordless exclamation at the horror of this murder, and the Lord of the Unfleshed tipped back his head to let loose a terrible, roaring howl of desperation. The creature turned his wounded, blistered, face to Uriel and the look that passed between them was intimate, a moment of shared repulsion.

The Lord of the Unfleshed dropped its face and the moment of connection was over as the multitude of minds that had taken over the workings of the Unfleshed tightened their grip.

There was no gunfire anymore. The compound was silent, but for the anguished cries of dying soldiers. The Lord of the Unfleshed roared and called his tribe to him as Uriel staggered through the bloody debris of the battle.

'Why?' he shouted. 'Why did you need to do this?'

The Lord of the Unfleshed looked up and the white light of vengeance burned there like fiery comets in his eyes.

'Because they were there,' he said. 'All must be punished.'

With that dreadful pronouncement, he turned away, leaping through the gap in the wall blown by the explosion of the generator building. The remaining Unfleshed swiftly followed him, and Uriel saw that they were moving towards the simmering city of Barbadus.

With awful certainty, Uriel knew that this night's bloodshed was not over.

Leto Barbaden watched the fires raging to the north of his city from the highest garret of his private library. He knew the source was the Screaming Eagles' compound, but he felt nothing for the men and women he knew must be dying beneath the pall of smoke, a dark smudge against the night sky.

He knew the reasons for the attack, but cared little for them. The people of Barbadus were venting their aggression against their conquerors. It was the only reaction the corpse of a beaten populace could make against their rulers, the last, spastic, gasps of a body that did not yet know it was dead.

That it was only natural was no excuse, however, and he had already ordered more units onto the streets to keep the peace, with force if need be. He would have order, even though blood would be spilt and lives lost to enforce it.

Barbaden turned away from the shielded window and laced his hands behind his back as he descended the iron screw-stair to the main floor of the library. He had known that the early years of his governorship would be difficult; it was the lot of great men to deal with difficult times, but it was a measure of their greatness how they dealt with them.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the marble floor of the library, taking a deep breath of the musty odour of his books, papers and manuscripts. He had painstakingly assembled the books over decades of war, transporting them from campaign to campaign. The solid, reassuring feel of the facts and figures bound to their pages were a constant comfort to him and he slid a gold-spined volume from the shelf, a biography of Solar Macharius, as he made his way to his drinks cabinet.

He had always admired the great Lord Solar, a man of singular vision and determination who was only undone by the cowardice of lesser men. It was the curse of genius that, so often, their greatness was thwarted by the shortcomings of their contemporaries. Lord Solar Macharius had reached the edge of known space, had stood at the very edge of the galaxy, and had dared to meet the gaze of the halo stars.

Only tremulous men who laughingly called themselves warriors had prevented him from conquering those stars for the Emperor. Only the weakness of spirit of his followers had prevented Macharius from achieving his true potential. Leto Barbaden had long ago decided that no such weakness, in him or others, would hold him back from achieving his greatness.

He poured a generous measure of raquir before sitting in the room's only chair and opening the smooth, vellum pages of the book. His beloved words stared out at him, their beauty containing immutable facts and the course of history in every cursive line and illuminated letter.

Leto Barbaden loved to read volumes of history, the more detailed the better, for he was a man to whom the minutiae of history were the choicest sweetmeats. History was written by the victors, an aphorism as old as time, and thus Leto Barbaden knew that his position in history was assured, at least on this world.

Where others might see cruelty, he saw strength of will.

Where others saw coldness and lack of emotion, he saw resolve.

Leto Barbaden knew he was humanity without the drag of conscience or emotion.

He embodied reason and logic uncluttered by emotion, for emotion was a failing of those without the courage of their convictions.

Some might call him a monster, but they were fools.

This was a harsh, grim galaxy and only those who could detach themselves from the ballast of emotion could rise above such petty concerns as morality or right and wrong to do what needed to be done.

He had known that since Colonel Landon had been killed at Koreda Gorge along with his senior officers. The men had called him Old Serenity, a name Barbaden found absurd. How could a name like that be suitable for a man who made war his profession?

Landon would not have had the stomach for the conquest of Salinas. His passions were too close to the surface and he cared too deeply for his men to have succeeded. To Landon, bringing his men back alive in the face of the steel teeth of war was all important, but Leto Barbaden knew that if there was one resource the Imperium was not short of, it was manpower. Machines and weapons were precious commodities, but soldiers could always be replaced, and so too could populations.

It was a truth Barbaden had come to early in the war against the Sons of Salinas, realising that no matter how many people he killed, there would always be more. People were ugly, brutish confections of meat, bone and desires, living sordid little lives and breeding like flies as they went about their pointless lives.

It seemed inconceivable that no one else was able to see this, that life was nothing to be valued so highly.

He alone had understood this stark fact when he had ordered the destruction of Khaturian, knowing that the scale of such killing would so inflame his enemy's passions that they would have no choice but to meet him in battle.

Sylvanus Thayer, who had proved to be a worthy adversary until the death of his family, had led his warriors into an unwinnable battle, and Barbaden smiled as he remembered the sight of the scorched battlefield that had seen the Sons of Salinas destroyed.

Once again, emotion had destroyed a potentially great general.

He read for another hour, sipping his raquir and flipping to quotes from Solar Macharius that he had long ago memorised. His finger trailed down the page until he found his favourite.

'There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival,' he read aloud. 'Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.'

Barbaden smiled as he read the quote, recognising the genius inherent in those few words.

Brevity and clarity were traits he admired and attempted to emulate.

A knock came at the door and he said, 'Enter.'

The doors opened and the frock-coated Eversham entered, his face pale and his steps hurried. Barbaden lifted his head from his book, seeing that his equerry carried an encrypted data-slate and noting his unkempt appearance.

'Your formal attire is somewhat dishevelled, Eversham,' said Barbaden. 'Smarten up before I have you broken down to kitchen scrubber.'

Eversham looked set to speak without smartening up, but had the sense to pause and fasten his collar and straighten his coat first. As the man opened his mouth to speak, Barbaden cut him off.

'Are you familiar with the works of Lord Solar Macharius?' he asked.

Eversham shook his head, and Barbaden saw that it was taking all his iron control not to speak out of turn. 'No, my lord. I regret I am not.'

'This is one of my favourite quotes, ''The meaning of victory is not to defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his every achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory''. Rather inspiring isn't it?'

'Yes, my lord,' said Eversham, 'very.'

'You are sweating, Eversham,' noted Barbaden. 'Are you unwell?'

'No, governor,' replied his equerry, holding out the data-slate, as though anxious to be rid of it.

'Tell me,' began Barbaden, ignoring the slate, 'what is the nature of the trouble at the Screaming Eagles' barracks?'

'We don't know yet, my lord. There are reports of gunfire and several explosions, but we have been unable to make contact with Colonel Kain or any of her staff.'

'Very well, order two companies of palace guard to find out what is happening and to secure the site.'

'Of course,' said Eversham, once more offering him the data-slate.

'What is this?' asked Barbaden.

'An astropathic communication,' said Eversham. 'The Janiceps received it earlier this evening and the Diviner Primaris has just finished his interpretation.'

'A communication from whom?'

'I don't know, my lord,' replied Eversham. 'It came in with the highest priority prefix. It is evidently for your eyes only. No sooner did the diviner transcribe the words than a telepathic mnemo-virus implanted within the message erased his mind, completely.'

Curious, Barbaden took the proffered slate and slid his finger into the reader, wincing at the pinprick of the gene-sampler. With his identity confirmed, the slate flickered into life and the words of the brain-dead diviner scrolled down the screen in silver letters.

He read the body of the message and his eyes widened in surprise.

Slowly, and with deliberate care, Barbaden handed the slate back to Eversham. He closed his book and laid it on the table next to the chair. He rose to his feet and smoothed the front of his tunic, struggling to control a rising panic that stirred in his breast.

'Prepare my private embarkation deck on the upper spires,' he said. 'We are about to receive some important visitors.'

The trail of the Unfleshed was not difficult to follow, for they had not been careful in their passage. Their tracks were easy to see, but even had they moved without leaving imprints on the ground, the debris of their course would have been easy to recognise.

Uriel rode in the commander's hatch of a Chimera, its width only barely able to accommodate his genhanced girth. He had been forced to leave his armour in the care of Enginseer Imerian back at the compound, for there was no time to encase himself within it and no telling how long the charge in the backpack would last. If he survived the night, he would return for it in the morning.

Beneath him, Pasanius and five soldiers rode in the Chimera's troop compartment, bloody and in shock at the ease with which their fastness had been breached and their colonel slain.

Two more Chimeras, laden with those soldiers still fit enough to fight, followed behind Uriel's, racing through the dim light of the city's outskirts as they followed the trail of destruction unleashed by their quarry.

In truth, Uriel didn't know exactly what he hoped to achieve by following the Unfleshed. If the entire company of Screaming Eagles could not defeat them, what chance did this ragtag assembly of force have?

He only knew that he had to catch them, if for no other reason than to salve his own conscience. The destruction wrought at the Screaming Eagles' compound was his fault, and the guilt of what his foolish trust had allowed to happen weighed heavily on his soul.

How could he have been so blind to the bestial core of the Unfleshed? Yes, their outward appearance was that of monsters, but Uriel had seen past that to what he had believed was the human nobility at their heart.

Though he felt sure that some darker power was at work within them, he knew it would have found no purchase in souls that were pure. Some rotten canker must have lurked at the heart of the Unfleshed for this power to latch onto, and Uriel cursed himself for a fool for not seeing it.

The deaths of these soldiers were on his conscience, no matter what they might have done in the past to be deserving of retribution. Uriel pushed such thoughts from his mind, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

The Chimeras rumbled through the streets of the city, the buildings around them tall and metallic, squat and brick-built. The variegated architecture of Barbadus sped past them, flickering faces at shuttered, window-, less openings watching them fearfully as they passed. That death was abroad on the streets of Barbadus was common knowledge, the breath of its passing emptying the streets of all but the most curious. Even those few lingering pedestrians quickly abandoned whatever task they were about to be clear of the streets as Uriel's desperate procession sped past.

Death was hunting tonight and it would take whoever called its name.

Though it was too far away and too dark to make out any details, it was clear that a tremendous battle was underway at the Screaming Eagles' compound. Flames licked the sky and the rattle of gunfire had ceased.

'Whatever was going on over there's over now,' observed Pascal.

Nisato did not reply, staring into the distant flames as if to discern some answer from the darkness. Pascal Blaise claimed not to have any knowledge of what had happened, and, much as Nisato wanted to disbelieve him, he knew in his gut that the man was telling the truth.

This had nothing to do with the Sons of Salinas, but if not them, then who?

'We should get out of here,' said Pascal Blaise. 'If she's right and whatever hit the Screaming Eagles is coming here…'

Nisato nodded and turned back to Mesira. She had resumed her earlier position on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest and arms wrapped around them.

'Mesira?' he said. She looked up, her tear-streaked face no longer drawn into the scrunched expression of fear and guilt it perpetually wore. 'What happened out there tonight? Do you know?'

'It's the Mourner,' she replied. 'He's killed her and now it's my turn.'

'Killed who?'

'Colonel Kain. I felt her die. It was painful.'

'For you?' asked Nisato.

'For both of us.'

Pascal Blaise joined him at Mesira's side. 'Kain's dead? You're sure?'

Mesira nodded and Nisato saw the hollow satisfaction in Blaise's eyes.

The leader of the Sons of Salinas looked up and met his gaze. 'Don't expect me to shed any tears for that bitch,' he said. 'Kain led the Screaming Eagles into Khaturian. She had the blood of thousands on her hands. She got what she deserved.'

'And what do you deserve, Pascal?' said Nisato. 'What do any of us deserve? Haven't we all got blood on our hands? Do we all deserve to die?'

'Maybe,' shrugged Blaise. 'Maybe we do. I've killed men, yes. I've shot them and blown them up, but I don't feel any remorse. The men I killed came as invaders to my homeland. What else could I have done? If soldiers with guns attack the people you love, you'd fight them, wouldn't you?'

'I suppose,' said Nisato, 'but—'

'But nothing,' snapped Pascal. 'This was our world. We were loyal to the Golden Throne, but Barbaden wouldn't listen to us. He killed our leaders and butchered our soldiers. What kind of people would we have been if we hadn't resisted? And don't pretend you're better than me, enforcer. I can't imagine that your hands are any less bloody than mine. How many terrified soldiers have knelt before you, begging for their lives before you shot them in the name of the Emperor? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands even?'

Nisato rounded on Pascal Blaise, his anger rising with every accusation hurled in his face.

'Yes, I've killed men too,' he snarled, 'and every one of them deserved his fate. They had faltered in their service to the Emperor.'

'Then perhaps we are not so different after all,' said Pascal. 'Perhaps right and wrong are just matters of perspective.'

Nisato sighed, the anger draining from him as the truth of Pascal Blaise's words sank in. He sighed and sat next to Mesira, running a protective hand through her hair.

'There is no right or wrong in our professions,' said Nisato. 'The present changes the past from moment to moment. We can only pray for the future to vindicate our actions.'

Mesira looked up at him, smiling. 'I'm not afraid any more,' she said.

'No?'

She shook her head. 'No. All these years I've lived with what I saw, what I allowed to happen. Now it's over. He's coming for me and I'll be at peace.'

'I won't let anyone harm you,' said Nisato, 'I promise.'

Mesira smiled and Daron Nisato had never seen her more beautiful. The cares and troubles she had worn like a second skin fell away, leaving her luminous, as though a gentle light shone within her bones.

'You don't have to worry about me, Daron,' said Mesira. 'It's going to be all right.'

'I hope so.'

She leaned over and kissed his cheek, the touch of her lips on his skin electric, sending a pleasurable, warm sense of peace through him. 'You are a good man, Daron, better than you know.'

Mesira Bardhyl stood, taking his hand, and he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. She reached out to take the hand of Pascal Blaise and said, 'If this world is to survive, then it will be men like you that will save it. You have both done terrible things in your lives, but they are in the past. All that matters now is the future. Old hatreds must be put aside and new bonds forged between the people of this world. Do you understand?'

Nisato looked from Mesira to Pascal. Her words were like a cool stream that washed him from his decaying suit of skin to the very core of his marrow. Was this some psyker magic? Had whatever madness possessed her to wander naked from her home unlocked yet more powers within her?

Whatever flowed from Mesira, he could feel no evil within it and let its healing light bathe him with its restorative powers.

'I understand,' he said, seeing the same illumination within Pascal Blaise. Without knowing how, he knew that they would both be changed forever by this contact.

Mesira released their hands and Nisato felt a sting of disappointment at the withdrawal of her touch.

The door opened behind her and Cawlen Hurq reentered the room, a rifle slung over his shoulder, and the pistol, which Nisato had returned to him before he'd left, clutched in his fist. Nisato felt nothing for Hurq; not hate, not fear, nothing. It was as if all the rancour and posturing that had passed between them had been erased.

'Cawlen,' said Pascal, taking a moment to recover from the contact with Mesira. 'How many men have we got here?'

'Including us, eight,' said Hurq, 'but I've sent the word out and there'll be others arriving soon. What are we expecting? Falcatas?' The man's tone was eager and Nisato felt pity for him, so caught up in his hatred was he.

'No, I don't think so,' said Pascal. 'I'm not sure exactly, but stay alert.'

Nisato took Mesira's hand and followed Pascal Blaise as he made his way towards the door. She took his hand willingly and together they descended the stairs he had climbed earlier that evening.

Cawlen Hurq pushed open the door to the bar and they entered the smoky, sweat-pit of the common area. The heat and stench of the place took Nisato's breath away, despite him only having left it recently.

Heads rose from drinks as they entered the room, and Nisato felt acutely vulnerable, more than he had when he'd first arrived. Then he only had his own safety to worry about, but now he had to keep Mesira safe from whatever force she believed was coming to claim her. Beyond that, he now felt responsible for Pascal Blaise's safety, which was stupid, for he had armed men in the bar and, if Hurq was to be believed, there were more on the way.

The armed men he had spotted on his arrival made their way through the bar towards them, and the crowded drinkers made way for them without complaint. Nisato caught snatches of conversation as they made their way through the throng.

News of the attack on the Screaming Eagles' compound had reached the bar and Nisato was surprised to see fearful looks being cast towards Pascal Blaise.

'What's going on?' he said, drawing level with Blaise. 'Why do I get the feeling these people would as soon lynch you as look at you?'

'They're afraid,' said Pascal over his shoulder.

'Of what?'

'Reprisals,' replied Pascal. 'They think we hit the Screaming Eagles and they're afraid of what Barbaden will do in response. I told you I was tired of the killing. Well, I'm not the only one.'

Nisato saw it now, the fear and tiredness in every face. It was a tiredness he could understand. He looked back into Mesira's face and smiled. She moved gracefully through the crowded bar and all who looked upon her seemed touched by the same balm that had eased their troubled souls upstairs.

She was a calming ripple in a pond, the soothing wind that cools the day.

Nisato reluctantly tore his gaze from her as Pascal Blaise placed a hand on his shoulder.

'Wait. Let Cawlen's men check outside first.'

Nisato nodded and pulled Mesira close. Over the hushed babble of conversation, he could hear strange sounds from beyond the steel door of the bar, a mingled din of distant rumbling engines and heavy thuds.

He started as he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire and an awful, blood-chilling roar of animal hunger. The sound echoed inside the bar and every head turned towards them.

'What the hell was that?' said Cawlen Hurq. More gunfire sounded, followed by shrieks: horrible, agonising shrieks and bellowing roars, and wet sounds like tearing cloth and snapping wood.

Hurq backed away from the door, his face fearful. That fear was contagious. People began to shout and, as yet another monstrous roar echoed within the bar, panic took hold. Men and women pushed one another aside in their haste to escape the bar, heading for back doors or windows that led away from the source of the terrible roars.

Nisato drew his pistol as another roar sounded, this time from right on the other side of the door. The noise was deafening and a sickening, rotten meat smell was forced inside the bar by a heaving, noxious breath.

'Let's find another way out of here,' hissed Pascal.

'Yes,' agreed Nisato, pulling Mesira with him.

Cawlen Hurq followed them and as Nisato risked a glance over his shoulder, the front of the bar was ripped upwards. Corrugated sheets of metal flew off into the night and the door crumpled inwards under a terrifyingly powerful impact. Metal screamed and buckled, and the iron girder that served as a lintel was ripped upward and tossed away as easily as a dog would discard a chewed bone.

Hot air blasted into the bar and the animal reek of spoiled meat became unbearable.

Nisato looked up into the face of a nightmare.

It was a monster, a bloodied, burnt and fanged nightmare with sick coals for eyes. Its monstrous proportions were beyond any measure of sanity or belief, its appearance that of a malformed giant that had suffered unimaginable torments.

'Emperor save us!' cried Pascal Blaise, his face slack with horror as he saw that the beast had not come alone, but with a pack of equally horrific monsters at its heels. The panic that had seized the crowds exploded in a stampede of utter terror. Bodies slammed into Nisato and he fought to hold onto Mesira as the tide of screaming people sought to part them.

Cawlen Hurq raised his rifle and Nisato wanted to laugh at the absurdity of fighting beasts of such terrible appearance with so paltry a weapon. The man screamed an oath as he opened fire, bright bolts of energy spitting from the barrel to explode harmlessly on the creature's chest.

Casually, as though swatting an irritant, the beast batted Cawlen Hurq across the room. The man slammed head first into the beaten iron bar top and even over the sound of tearing metal and screaming crowds, Daron Nisato heard his neck snap with an awful, brittle crack.

Nisato tried to drag Mesira away from the ripped open entrance to the bar, but she released his hand and he was carried away from her, watching helplessly as the monsters tore their way inside the bar.

'It is time,' she said, her voice sounding like a clear bell in his head, 'time to die.'

Uriel heard the screams and the sound of tearing metal. The rumble of the trio of Chimeras echoed from the ramshackle walls of the street and curious onlookers were beginning to spill from their homes to see what drama was being played out on their doorstep.

From his vantage point in the commander's hatch, Uriel could see light spilling into the sky and could hear screams that were issued in terror of the monstrous. Whatever bloody task the Unfleshed were about was in full swing by the sounds of it.

A smashed building on the corner of the street provided another sign as to the passing of the Unfleshed and the Chimera's driver expertly guided the heavy vehicle around the cascaded tumble of timber, stone and steel.

Beyond the corner, the street widened out into a stone-paved square, and the few onlookers that had been driven into the street by the noise, sensibly retreated into their homes at the sight that greeted them.

'Guilliman's oath!' swore Uriel as he saw the spectacle before him.

It looked like a brightly lit pyramid of wrecked tanks, their innards hollowed out and reshaped by hammer and welding torch to form a structure with internal spaces, rooms, corridors and low-ceilinged chambers. Light and people spilled from the shuddering building, its structure and fabric under siege by the Unfleshed.

The Lord of the Unfleshed led the attack, his massively muscled arms peeling back steel as he forced his way into the structure. Myriad neon lights spat fat sparks and bathed the square before the building, surely some kind of drinking den, as well as the monsters in lurid greens, shocking pinks and deathly blues. They capered and howled as the leader of their tribe smashed a path through steel and timber like an animal breaking open a nest to devour the prey within. If the Lord of the Unfleshed was aware of their arrival, he gave no sign, but continued with his destruction of the building's frontage.

Fleeing people were snatched up by the Unfleshed and snapped and twisted until they broke, and their agonised screams ceased. Uriel heard gunfire from inside the building and wondered what the Lord of the Unfleshed could want in a place like this.

The Chimeras slowed as they entered the square, but Uriel yelled down to the driver. 'No! More speed. Use the vehicle!'

Understanding Uriel's order, the driver opened up the throttle and the Chimera roared as its speed increased. Uriel braced himself as one of the Unfleshed turned at the sound of the madly revving engine, its face seeming to split in two, such was the width of its fanged jaws.

Its skeleton was visible through the sickly, pallid skin that draped it, yet this new covering could only hope to cover a portion of its malformed anatomy. Long limbs, spidery and clawed, dragged on the ground and short, muscular legs drove it forwards with an ape-like gait.

Beast and machine charged towards one another until they met in a howl of flesh and machinery. The Chimera ploughed into the creature, its understanding of the power and momentum of the tank existing only for the fraction of a second before it was crushed beneath the tracks. Liquid light spurted from its pulverised carcass, blood, meat and bone ground to a paste on the paved square.

The vehicle skidded on the square as the driver instinctively feathered the throttle and applied the brakes. The engine revved one last time and died, mushrooming clouds of stinking, acrid smoke belching from the exhausts as the driver fought to restart the engine.

'Pasanius! With me!' shouted Uriel, pulling himself up from the commander's hatch. He vaulted to the hard ground as the assault door on the back of the vehicle opened and Pasanius led the warriors out onto the strangely lit battlefield.

Uriel's other two Chimeras screamed to a halt on either side of his and the warriors disembarked with practiced efficiency. No matter the losses they had taken and no matter what they may have done in the past, these men and women were soldiers first and foremost, and had learned their lessons well.

They formed up in squads and Uriel felt a forgotten sense of pride at the idea of leading men into battle once more. No matter that these soldiers were not Ultramarines of the Fourth Company, they were warriors of the Emperor and that made them mighty.

'Together! We finish this together! Are you with me?' yelled Uriel, holding his golden-hilted sword up for all to see.

The soldiers unsheathed their falcatas and roared their affirmation as Uriel turned and charged towards the devastated bar.

The monster's thick, veined arm reached into the bar, questing for Mesira. She seemed to welcome the creature's attentions, for she ignored Daron Nisato's shouted pleas to flee from it and make her way through the mob towards him.

Blinded by panic, many of the bar's patrons stumbled into the path of the enormous creature. The lucky ones blundered past it into the night and safety, the less fortunate were torn to fleshy rags or bitten in two.

The press of the crowd was preventing Mesira from approaching the monster any closer, for it seemed that such was her goal. The terrifying creature was utterly fixated upon her, only prevented from reaching her by what strength remained in the collapsed frontage of the bar. For once, Nisato had cause to be thankful that this part of Junktown was comprised of the debris of his old regiment, for it was all that was preventing the creature from gaining access.

Had the bar been constructed from traditional building materials, the beast would even now be feasting on Mesira's bones and wrapping her entrails around its neck. Only the steel girders and beams looted from abandoned tanks had thus far prevented it from simply bludgeoning its way inside and devouring her and everyone else inside.

The structure of the bar groaned and heaved as load bearing members were smashed asunder. Metal ground on metal as lintels were compressed and weight was redistributed to portions of the structure never meant to carry such loads.

The gunmen that the late Cawlen Hurq had placed in the bar fired on the monster with their pistols, emptying magazines' worth of rounds to little or no effect. Where punctured by a bullet, the beast dribbled light and a syrupy ichor, but such wounds troubled it not at all.

The monster howled in frustration, a searing, hungry light roasting in the gouges of its eye sockets. Daron Nisato was paralysed by his fear of it, seeing a primal hunger and anger such as he could barely contemplate existing in any sane universe.

'What in the name of the warp is it?' cried Pascal Blaise, shouting to be heard over the din of the creature's assault on the building.

'I have no idea,' said Nisato. 'We have to reach Mesira and get out of here!'

'You think?' snapped Pascal Blaise, looking in every direction for a means of escape. The press of bodies was too tight and the settling of the structure had wedged many of the doors fast in their frames. Grunting men heaved their shoulders against them, but no amount of human force could overcome the incredible weight keeping the doors shut.

Nisato saw the girder trapping the beast's shoulder twist and buckle until the weld holding it fixed to the upturned chassis of a Chimera finally gave in to the pressure and snapped. The monster roared in triumph and hauled a portion of its vast bulk into the bar.

Its roar galvanised Nisato, and his limbs found strength.

'I've got to get Mesira!' he shouted.

Blaise nodded and said, 'I'm right behind you. Go!'

Nisato lowered his shoulder and began pushing his way through the trapped, terrified crowd, using skills honed in a dozen riots to force himself a path with fist, foot and gun butt.

His progress was slow, but steady, and he could distinguish Mesira easily enough from the grimy, unwashed faces of the factory workers. Her face was serene amongst a sea of panic, beatific and calming those nearest her.

Nisato finally reached Mesira, his powerful grip closing on her thin upper arm.

'Mesira!' he yelled. 'We have to get out of here!'

She turned to face him at his touch.

'No, Daron,' she cried in alarm, 'you have to get out of here.'

Then the frontage of the bar finally gave way with a tortured scream of metal.

Uriel heard the bar front collapse and thumbed the activation stud on the hilt of his sword. The blade leapt to life with crackling energies and he felt the power of the weapon travel up his arm. The Unfleshed had turned to face them and six of the enormous creatures stood between him and the bar.

Pasanius stood next to him, his bolter held at his side.

'So what's the plan?' asked Pasanius.

'I need you to lead the soldiers,' said Uriel. 'Protect the innocent.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going inside,' said Uriel. 'I've got a feeling there are answers within.'

'There you go again,' groaned Pasanius as a beast with elongated jaws and a distended belly that glistened with writhing motion broke from the pack of beasts towards them. 'You and your damn feelings.'

A volley of las-fire peppered the creature and it screeched in pain. Hissing, steaming light erupted from its swollen limbs and gut.

'Go,' said Uriel, slapping a palm on Pasanius's shoulder guard. 'Lead them.'

Pasanius nodded and marched to join the red-jacketed soldiers, who advanced with their rifles blazing. Individually, lasguns were a poor man's weapon, but gathered en masse, they were formidable and only a fool would underestimate the effect of a massed volley of fire.

The Unfleshed roused themselves from the wanton slaughter of the bar's patrons at these attacks, their howls of anguish at odds with the purposeful light that surrounded them. The creatures writhed in the glow that spilled from their wounds, as though their own ambitions were at odds with the purpose to which they were being driven.

The Lord of the Unfleshed pushed his way inside the bar and Uriel ran towards him, leaving Pasanius to lead the Falcatas in battle. His friend could inspire warriors of the Astartes to undreamed of valour and these soldiers had the honour of being commanded by one of the Ultramarines' finest.

If they survived this night, they would be feted for the rest of their lives.

Uriel quickly made his way around the fighting, heading for the frenzied fury of the Lord of the Unfleshed. The creature had torn its way into the bar. Screams and the bark of pistols sounded from within.

Portions of the structure were beginning to buckle and groan, and it wouldn't take much for the whole thing to come crashing down. Whatever he could do here, he would have to do fast.

The Lord of the Unfleshed pushed his way fully into the bar and Uriel vaulted a fallen piece of masonry as he found an open section of wall where iron panelling had come away from the structure.

Even without his armour, his physique was almost too broad to fit and he felt the metal tear at his tunic. He ducked his head and the smell of the bar hit him. It stank of sweat, raw meat and strong liquor, but most of all it stank of fear.

The Lord of the Unfleshed towered at one end of the bar, his form monstrous and swollen. Whatever had happened to him in the mountains had seen him become more terrible than Uriel could ever have imagined, for mixed with the terrifying power that surged through him, Uriel saw the humanity of him, the skin, the anger and the fear.

All the things that made a person human were distilled and magnified within his breast, but whatever daemons drove the Lord of the Unfleshed to this killing rage were of an order of magnitude greater than any human could ever aspire to.

A woman in a pale robe stood before the Lord of the Unfleshed, her expression serene, in complete contrast to the horror on every other face in the bar. Uriel's memory quickly cast up her name: Mesira Bardhyl, Governor Barbaden's psychic truth-seeker.

In the space of a heartbeat, Uriel also saw the enforcer, Daron Nisato and a man who must surely be Pascal Blaise. Both men fought to reach Mesira, but he could see they would be too late.

'Over here!' he shouted, his voice easily cutting through the din of the bar's collapse. Glass smashed, timber cracked and metal groaned, but every head in the bar turned towards him.

The Lord of the Unfleshed looked up and its eyes burned with a mixture of anger and loathing. The light that bathed him spilled from its mouth like droplets of molten gold and Uriel felt a wave of pity for him. The core of the Lord of the Unfleshed remained his own, but was goaded to slaughter by some outside presence.

Uriel dropped into the bar, its terrified patrons backing away from him as much as they did the Lord of the Unfleshed. The creature seemed momentarily confused, as though it was fighting a battle within itself.

Its confusion gave Daron Nisato the time he needed, and he wrapped his hand around Mesira Bardhyl's arm, pulling her away from the hulking monster. Her cry broke the deadlock within the Lord of the Unfleshed's body and it reached towards her with a clawed hand extended.

Pascal Blaise fired his pistol at the Lord of the Unfleshed, one bullet finding its mark in the creature's eye. Viscous fluid spurted and the Lord of the Unfleshed howled, not even the healing light that filled him able to blot out the pain of the wound.

The Lord of the Unfleshed snatched for Mesira again and Uriel leapt to intercept him. Knowing he had no choice, he swung his sword down on the Lord of the Unfleshed's arm. The blade's energies bit through the meat of the arm, but juddered to a halt and slid clear on the creature's bone.

The Lord of the Unfleshed roared and snatched the arm back, lashing out with his other. Uriel ducked and another portion of the bar was destroyed, bottles and mirrored glass crashing to the floor.

Uriel rose to his feet and the Lord of the Unfleshed followed him as he backed away to the tear in the wall through which he had entered the bar.

'Go!' he shouted. 'Nisato, get these people out of here!'

The enforcer nodded, still holding Mesira to him. Her face was twisted in anguish, but in the brief moment Uriel had before the Lord of the Unfleshed came at him, it seemed as though it was due to her rescue rather than the danger.

As the Lord of the Unfleshed followed Uriel, the panicked crowds pressed into the back wall of the bar broke for freedom, fleeing through the enormous hole the monster had torn in the bar's outer wall.

Uriel continued backing away from the Lord of the Unfleshed, giving Nisato enough time to get the people clear. The enforcer handed off Mesira Bardhyl to Pascal Blaise just as the Lord of the Unfleshed grew tired of his prey backing away and charged.

The Lord of the Unfleshed's bulk was too enormous to dodge, so Uriel leapt towards him. His sword slashed at his foe's chest, the blade easily parting skin and flesh, but unable to work deeper into the meat of the body. A thunderous fist slammed into Uriel's side and he was hurled backwards.

He slammed into a steel column, his body flaring in pain at the impact. Uriel fought for breath and staggered upright as he saw the Lord of the Unfleshed turn from him and haul his bulk across the bar with horrifying speed.

Once again the creature was fixated on Mesira Bardhyl and Uriel watched as Pascal Blaise attempted to protect her. He fired his pistol, but it was wasted effort and the Lord of the Unfleshed hurled the leader of the Sons of Salinas aside with contemptuous ease.

Uriel pushed himself across the wrecked bar and Daron Nisato cried out as he saw what was happening. Once again, Mesira stood before the Lord of the Unfleshed and this time there was no one to save her.

The mighty creature reached down and his hand closed on her skull.

'No!' screamed Daron Nisato, but the Lord of the Unfleshed cared nothing for his plea.

One quick squeeze and Mesira Bardhyl was dead, her corpse flopping to the floor as the Lord of the Unfleshed released her limp body.

With his murder done, the Lord of the Unfleshed turned from the carnage in the bar and made his way quickly to the hole torn in the structure's frontage. Uriel limped after the towering engine of flesh and blood, horrified at the casual ease with which the Lord of the Unfleshed had snuffed out Mesira Bardhyl's life.

'That was not punishment!' shouted Uriel. 'That was murder!'

Daron Nisato rushed to Mesira's body, weeping as he cradled her lifeless form. Pascal Blaise fought to stand as he saw what had been done to his charge, but the Lord of the Unfleshed ignored them all as he clambered over the rubble of the bar's destruction and fled the scene of the crime.

From outside, Uriel could hear gunfire: the hard, heavy bangs of bolters and the snap of lasguns. Roaring jets and the scream of powerful down-draughts billowed choking clouds of dust into the air, and Uriel could see stabbing beams of light from the skies.

Had Pasanius managed to call in air support?

He heard more gunfire and bellowing roars, but beyond that, he could hear the screech of buckling steel and the groans of a structure no longer able to support the weight settling upon it. Uriel looked up as a snaking line of cracks burst across the ceiling, ripping their way from left to right and back to front.

'Run!' he shouted.

Pascal Blaise dragged the protesting Daron Nisato from the bar and Uriel struggled to reach the front of the collapsing building. Lumps of plaster and splintered timber crashed down around him and long spars of metal clanged together as portions of the roof caved in.

Uriel fell as a roof beam crashed into his shoulder and he sprawled onto his front as the rear portion of the bar collapsed entirely. More metal broke and twisted, and he scrambled forwards as the building started to collapse in earnest.

Choking clouds of dust and ash obscured Uriel's vision, but he was guided by the blinding beams of light that came from outside. Half running, half crawling, Uriel forced his way onwards. Torn chunks of concrete struck him and he staggered as an enormous, final groan shook the structure of abandoned tanks.

Uriel dived clear of the bar as the entire assembly of tanks, plaster and timber slammed down, the lowest regions of the structure crushed beneath thousands of tonnes of iron. He rolled as enormous pieces of tanks fell from the building: turrets, doors, iron wheels and lengths of track.

A girder the length of his body slammed down next to him and he scrambled away as it toppled onto its side. Debris and rubble fell in an avalanche of metal and Uriel cried out as more and more of it struck him.

He was forced to his knees by the impact of something heavy and metal. A twirling shard of glass sliced his cheek and a panel of sheet metal slammed into his side, driving the breath from him and pinning him to the ground with its weight.

Dust blinded him and the roar of the building's collapse was deafening.

Uriel struggled against the weight of the metal as yet more debris spilled down from the building's demise. The metal was groaning and heaving and Uriel coughed as he felt the weight pinning him to the ground grow heavier.

He tried to bend his legs beneath the metal to gain some leverage, but his body was wedged solid. The strength of the Adeptus Astartes, normally so prodigious and able to meet any challenge, was powerless to prevent the weight of iron from crushing him to death.

With his armour, he could have escaped, but without it…

Suddenly the weight lessened and through the swirling clouds of blinding dust, Uriel saw huge shapes around him, silver light reflecting from their outlines.

Uriel heard the click of vox-units and the tread of heavy feet around him.

He smelled the distinct and wholly welcome scent of oils and lapping powder that could mean only one thing: Astartes armour.

He saw gauntleted hands heave the sheet metal, and the debris that held him pinned to the ground was lifted clear as though it weighed nothing at all. Hands dragged him from the ground and he heard chanting behind the warriors who had saved him. Amongst the smells he associated with Space Marines, he smelled strong, choking smoke, cloying and reeking of the interior of temples.

'Who—' was all he managed before a heavy silver gauntlet fastened around his throat with a grip of unbreakable iron. Uriel was hauled from the ground, his feet dangling in the air as he was brought before an oversized silver helmet with an angular visor and blazing red lenses.

A high gorget protected the warrior's neck and the plates of his armour were massively exaggerated, thick and awesome in their intricacy. A heraldic shield was fitted in the crease between the warrior's enormous shoulder guard and carved breastplate, half in crimson and half in white. The colours were divided down the middle with the image of a black sword, its tip pointing downward.

Uriel knew that this was no ordinary warrior, this was a Terminator, one of the elite, a veteran. No finer warriors than those deemed skilful enough to wear such armour existed in a Chapter.

The Chapter symbol on the warrior's left shoulder guard was a mighty tome, its pages pierced by a sword and set among golden scrollwork. Uriel's eyes widened at the sight of the symbol, for it was an ancient device worn only by humanity's greatest protectors, greater even than the Adeptus Astartes.

The giant who held him helpless leaned in close.

'I am Leodegarius of the Grey Knights,' he said, 'and you are my prisoner.'