The Flight of the Eisenstein

More Horus Heresy from the Black Library

HORUS RISING Dan Abnett

FALSE GODS Graham McNeill

GALAXY IN FLAMES Ben Counter

The Horus Heresy

James Swallow

The Flight

OF THE ElSENSTEIN

The heresy unfolds

With thanks to Lindsey Priestley, Marc Gascoigne,

Alan Merrett, Steve Horvath, John Cravato, Matt Farrer and

the GW Bromley crew, and especially to Dan, Graham and

Ben for lighting the way.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by

BL Publishing,

Games Workshop Ltd.,

Willow Road, Nottingham , NG7 2WS , UK .

10 98765432 1

Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.

First page illustration by Neil Roberts.

© Games Workshop Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

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The Horus Heresy

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy.

The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered

the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have

been smashed by the Emperor's elite warriors and wiped

from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs,

superheroic beings who have led the Emperor's armies of

Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable

and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor's genetic

experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest

human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of

besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor's military might, subjugator of a thousand, thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme, and his ambition knows no bounds.

The stage has been set.

~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

The Primarchs

Horus Warmaster and Commander of the Sons of Horus Legion

Rogal Dorn Primarch of the Imperial Fists

Mortarion Primarch of the Death Guard

The Death Guard

Nathaniel Garro Battle-Captain of the 7th Company

Ignatius Grulgor Commander of the 2nd Company

Calas Typhon First Captain

Ullis Temeter Captain of the 4th Company

Andus Hakur Veteran Sergeant, 7th Company

Meric Voyen Apothecary, 7th Company

Tollen Sender 7th Company

Pyr Rahl 7th Company

Solun Decius 7th Company

Kaleb Arin Housecarl to Captain Garro

Other Space Marines

Saul tarvitz First Captain of the Emperor's Children

Iacton Qruze, 'the Half-heard' Captain, 3rd Company, Sons of Horus

Sigismund First Captain, Imperial Fists

Non-Astartes Imperials

Maloghurst 'the Twisted' Equerry to the Warmaster

Amendera Kendel Oblivion Knight, Storm Dagger Witchseeker Squad

Malcador The Sigillite, Regent of Terra

Kyril Sindermann Primary iterator

Mersadie Oliton Remembrancer, documentarist

Euphrati Keeler 'The New Saint'; remembrancer

Baryk Carya Shipmaster of the frigate Eisenstein

Racel Vought Executive officer of the frigate Eisenstein

Tirin Maas Vox officer of the frigate Eisenstein

PART ONE

THE BLINDED STAR

'If the sole trait these Astartes share in common with we mere mortal masses is their bond of brotherhood, then one must dare to ask the question – if that were lost to them, what would they become?'

- attributed to the remembrancer Ignace Karkasy

"We are the voice and the clarion call; We are tyrant's ruin and rival's fall.'

- from the battle mantra of the Dusk Raiders

'As with men so it is with silk; it is difficult to change their colours once they have been set!

- attributed to the ancient Terran warlord Mo Zi

ONE

Assembly

A Fine Sword

Death Lord

Inthe void, the vessels gathered. shifting gently in the silent darkness, the crenellated hulls and great ornate shapes appeared as a congregation of Gothic edifices, cathedral-wrought in their complexity, drift­ing as if torn from the surface of worlds and carved into warships. Great sculpted bows filigreed into arrow points turned, stately and lethal, to face into the dark on a uniform heading. Torches burned on some, in apparent defiance of the airless vacuum. Plasma fires trailed white-orange streams of turbulent gas from chimneys along the kilometres of gunmetal hulls. These beacons were lit only when conflict was in the moment. The flares of wasteful, daring heat they generated were signs to the enemy.

We bring the light of illumination to you.

The craft that rode at the head of the flotilla was cut from steel the shade of a stormy sky, with a prow sheathed in dark ocean green. It moved as a

slow dagger might in the hand of a patient killer, inescapable, inexorable. It bore little in the way of ornament. The ship's only decorations were martial in nature, etchings on the plough-blade bow in let­ters the height of a man, long lines of text that recalled an age of battles fought, worlds visited, opponents lain to wreckage. Her only adornments of any note were two-fold: a golden spread eagle with two heads across the face of the flying bridge and a great icon made of heavy nickel-iron ore, a single stone skull set inside a hollow steel ring in the shape of a star, at the very lip of the spiked blade, watchful and threatening.

More ships fell into line behind her, taking up a for­mation that mirrored the spear tip battle-patterns of the warriors that were her payload. In echo of the unbreakable resolve of those fighters, the warship proudly bore a name in High Gothic script across her iron hull: Endurance.

Behind her came more of her kind, ranging in class and size both larger and smaller: the Indomitable Will, Barbarus's Sting, Lord of Hyrus, Terminus Est, Undying, Spectre of Death and others.

This was the fleet that gathered beyond the umbra of the sun Iota Horologii, in order to bring the Great Crusade and the will of the Emperor of Man to one of the gargantuan cylinder worlds of the jorgall. Carried in their thousands aboard the ships that served their Legion, the instruments of that will were to be the Astartes of the XIV Legion, the Death Guard.

Kaleb Arin moved through the corridors of the Endurance in a swift dance of motion, holding his heavy cloth-wrapped burden to his chest. Years of indentured service had bred in him a way of walking

and behaving that rendered him virtually hidden in plain sight around the towering forms of the Astartes. He was adept at remaining beneath their notice. To this day, even with so many years of duty glittering in the dull rivets fixed to his collarbone, Kaleb had not lost the keen awe at being among them that had filled him from the moment he had bent his knee to the XIV Legion. The lines on his pale face and the grey-white of his hair showed his age, but still he carried himself with the vitality of a man much younger. The strength of his conviction – and of other, more privately held ones – had carried him on in willing, unflinching servitude.

There were few men in the galaxy, he reflected, who could be as content as he was. The truth that never left him was as clear to him now as it had been decades ago, when he had stood beneath a weeping sky of toxic storm clouds and accepted his own limitations, his own failures. Those who con­tinued to strive for what they could never reach, those who punished themselves for falling short of the dizzy heights they would never reach, they were the souls who had no peace in their lives. Kaleb was not like them. Kaleb understood his place in the scheme of things. He knew where he was sup­posed to be and what it was he was supposed to be doing. His place was here, now, not to question, not to strive, only to do.

Still, he felt pride at that. What men, he wondered, could hope to walk where he walked, among demi­gods cut from the flesh of the Emperor Himself? The housecarl never ceased to marvel at them. He kept to the edges of the corridors, skirting the broad warriors as they went about their preparations for the engage­ment.

The Astartes were statues come to life, great myths in stone that had stepped off their plinths to stride about him. They walked in their marble-coloured armour with green trim and gold flashing, some in the newer, smoother models of the wargear, others in the older iterations that were adorned with spiked studs and heavy-browed helms. These were impossi­ble men, the living hands of the Imperium going to their deeds with shock and awe trailing around them like a cloak. They would never understand the man­ner in which mortal men looked upon them.

In his indenture, Kaleb knew that some among the Legion considered him with disrespect, as an irritant at best, worth no more than a drooling servitor at worst. This he accepted as his lot, with the same stoic character and dogged acceptance that was the way of the Death Guard. He would never fool himself into thinking that he was one of them – that chance had been offered to Kaleb and he had fallen short in the face of it – but he knew in his heart that he lived by the same code they did, and that his meagre, human frame would die for those ideals if it would serve the Imperium. Kaleb Arin, failed aspirant, housecarl and captain's equerry, was as satisfied with his life as any man could hope to be.

His load was awkward in its wrapping and he shifted it, cradling the object in a diagonal embrace across his chest. Not once had he dared to let it touch the deck or pass too close to an obstacle. It filled him with honour just to hold it, even through a thick cowl of forest green velvet. He found his way forward and up via the twisting and circuitous corridors, over the access ways that crossed the reeking, thunderous industry of the gun decks. He emerged on the upper tiers where the

common naval crew were not allowed to venture, into the portions of the ship that were allotted exclusively to the Astartes. Should she wish to, even Endurance's captain would need to seek the permis­sion of the ranking Death Guard to walk these halls.

Kaleb felt a ripple of satisfaction, and uncon­sciously ran a hand over his robes and the skull-shaped clasp at his collar. The device was as big as his palm and made from some kind of pewter. The mechanisms within it were as good as a certified passage paper to the machine-eyes and remote scrying systems on the ship. It was, after a fashion, his badge of office. Kaleb imagined that the sigil was as old as the warship, perhaps even as old as the Legion itself. It had been used by hun­dreds of serfs, who had died in service to the same role he now fulfilled, and he imagined it would outlast him as well.

Or perhaps not. The old ways were fading, and there were few among the senior battle-brothers of the Death Guard who deigned to keep the careworn traditions of the Legion alive. Times, and the Astartes, were changing. Kaleb had seen things alter, thanks to the juvenat treatments that had extended his life and given him a fragment of the longevity of his masters.

Forever close to the Astartes, but still held at a dis­tance from them, he had seen the slow shifting of mood. It had begun in the months following the Emperor's decision to retire from the Great Crusade, from the time that he had bestowed the honour of Warmaster upon the noble primarch Horas. It con­tinued still, all around him in silent motion, shifting slow and cold like glacial ice, and in his darker moments, Kaleb found himself wondering where the

new and emerging way of things would take him and his beloved Legion.

The housecarl's face soured and he shook off the sudden attack of melancholy with a grimace. This was not the time to dwell on ephemeral futures and anx­ious worries of what might come to pass. It was the eve of a battle that would once again enforce human­ity's right to stride the stars unfettered and unafraid.

As he approached the armoury chamber, he glanced out of a reinforced porthole and saw stars. Kaleb wondered which one was the jorgall colony world, and if the xenos had any inkling of the storm about to break upon them.

Nathaniel Garro raised Libertas to his eye line and sighted along the length of the blade. The heavy, dense metal of the sword shimmered in the chamber's blue light, a wave of rainbow reflections racing away from him along the edge as he tilted it down. There were no imperfections visible in the crystalline matrix of the monosteel. Garro didn't look back at his housecarl, where the man waited in a half bow. This is good work.' He gestured for the man to stand. 'I'm pleased.'

Kaleb gathered the velvet cloth in his hands. 'It's my understanding that the servitor who attended your weapon was a machine-smith or a blade maker in its previous life. Some elements of its original artistry must remain.'

'Just so.' Garro gave Libertas a few practice swings, moving swiftly and easily in the confines of his Mark IV power armour. He let the smallest hint of a smile creep out across his gaunt face. The nicks that the blade had suffered during the Legion's pacifica­tion of the Carinea moons had troubled him, the result of a single mis-blow on his part that cut

through an iron pillar instead of flesh. It was good to have his favourite weapon in his hands once more. The substantial mass of the broadsword com­pleted him, and the idea of venturing into combat without it had troubled Garro on some level. He would not allow himself to voice words like 'luck' and 'fate' except in mocking humour, and yet with­out Libertas in his scabbard he had to confess he felt somehow… less protected.

The Astartes caught sight of his own reflection in the polished metal: old eyes in a face that, despite its oft weary countenance, seemed too young for them; a head, hairless and patterned with pale scars. A patri­cian aspect, showing its roots from the warrior dynasties of ancient Terra, pale-skinned, but without the pallidity of his brother Death Guard who hailed from cold and lethal Barbarus. Garro brought the blade up in salute, and slid Libertas back into the scabbard on his belt.

He glanced at Kaleb. 'It predates even me, did you know that? So I have been told, some elements of the weapon were fabricated on Old Earth before the Age of Strife.'

The housecarl nodded. 'Then, master, I would say it is fitting that a Terran-born son wields it now.'

'All that matters is that it turns in the Emperor's ser­vice/ Garro replied, clasping his gauntlets together.

Kaleb opened his mouth to respond, but then a motion at the chamber door caught his eye and immediately Garro's housecarl sank again into an obeisant bow.

'Such a fine sword,' came a voice and the Astartes turned to watch the approach of a pair of his brethren. As the figures came closer, he resisted the urge to smile wryly.

'A pity;' the speaker continued, 'that it cannot be placed in the care of a younger, more vigorous warrior.'

Garro eyed the man who had spoken. In the fash­ion of many of the Death Guard's number, the new arrival's scalp was shaven, but unlike the majority he sported a tail of hair at the back of his head, in black and grey streaks that dangled to his shoulders. His face was craggy and broken, but the eyes set there had sardonic wit in them.

'The folly of youth/ Garro replied, without weight. 'Are you sure you could lift it, Temeter? Perhaps you might need old Hakur there to help you.' He gestured to the second man, a wiry figure with thin features and a single augmetic eye.

Rough humour emerged in a scattering of dry laughter. 'Forgive me, captain,' replied Temeter, 'I only thought to exchange it for something that would bet­ter suit you… say, a walking stick?'

Garro made an exaggerated show of thinking over the other man's proposal. 'Perhaps you are right, but how could I hand my sword to someone whose breath still smells of his mother's milk?'

The laughter echoed through the chamber and Temeter raised his hands in mock defeat. 'I have no recourse but to bow before our great battle-captain's age and venerable experience.'

Garro stepped forward and clasped the other man's armoured gauntlet in a firm grip. 'Ullis Temeter, you war dog. You only have a few years less than me on your clock!'

'Yes, but they make all the difference. Anyway, it's not about the years, it's the quality that counts'

At Temeter's side, the other Death Guard kept a dour face. 'Then I'd venture Captain Temeter is sadly lacking.'

'Don't give him any support, Andus/ replied Teme­ter. 'Nathaniel has enough barbs without you helping him!'

'Merely assisting the commander of my company, as any good sergeant should/ said the veteran with a nod. Someone who did not know Andus Hakur as well as his captain did might have thought the vet­eran's insulting turn against Temeter to be honest, and indeed Garro heard a sharp intake of breath from his housecarl at the words; but then Hakur's manner was dry to the point of aridity.

For his part, Captain Temeter laughed off the com­ment. Both he and Garro had served with the older warrior in the years before they had risen to lead their respective companies. It was a point of mild dispute between them that Garro had persuaded the old Astartes to join his command squad over Temeter's.

Garro returned Hakur's nod and drew Temeter aside. 'I hadn't expected to see you until after the assembly on the Terminus Est. That's why I was here.' He patted the sword's pommel. 'I didn't want to step aboard Typhon's warship without this.'

Temeter flkked a questioning glance at the house-carl, then smiled slightly. 'Aye, that's not a vessel to be unprotected aboard, is it? So, then, I take it you haven't heard the news?'

Garro gave his old comrade a sideways look. What news, Ullis? Come on, don't play to the drama of it, speak.'

Temeter lowered his voice. 'The esteemed master of the First Great Company, Captain Calas Typhon, has stepped down from command of the jorgall assault. Someone else is going to lead us.'

'Who?' Garro insisted. Typhon wouldn't stand down for any Astartes. His pride would never allow it.'

'You're not wrong/ continued Temeter, 'he wouldn't stand down for any Astartes.'

The sudden realisation hit Garro like a wash of ice. 'Then, you mean…'

'The primarch is here, Nathaniel. Mortarion himself has decided to take part in this engagement. He's brought the timetable forward.'

'The primarch?' The words slipped out of Kaleb's mouth in a whisper, trepidation and awe in every syl­lable.

Temeter gave him a look, as if he were noticing Garro's helot for the first time. 'Indeed, little man. He walks the decks of Endurance as I speak.'

Kaleb dropped to his knees and made the sign of the aquila, his hands visibly trembling.

In spite of himself, his master's throat went dry. Until Temeter's announcement, Garro, like the majority of his Legion, had believed that the gaunt leader of the Death Guard was engaged elsewhere, on a mission of some import for the Warmaster himself. This sudden and secretive arrival left him reeling. To know that Mortarion would ride at their spear tip against the jorgall, he felt a mixture of elation and disquiet. 'When are we to assemble?' he asked, find­ing his voice.

Temeter smiled broadly. He was enjoying the nor­mally stoic Garro's moment of discomfort with mild glee. 'Right now, old friend. I'm here to summon you to the conclave.' He leaned in closer, his words hushed and conspiratorial. 'And I should warn you, the primarch's brought some interesting company with him.'

The assembly hall was an unremarkable space. It was nothing more than a void in the Endurances forward

hull, rectangular in aspect, open at the far end to the stars through two oval panes of armoured glass hold­ing out the killing vacuum. There were louvred shutters half-closed across the windows, casting pat­terns of dim white light in bars where the glow from a nearby nebula reached the vessel.

The ceiling was an arch, formed from the primary spars of the warship's iron ribcage where they met and meshed in steel riveted plate. There were no chairs or places where one might rest. There was no use for them. This was not a hall in which lengthy debate and plots would be hatched, but a place where blunt orders would be given, directives made and bat­tle plans drawn in swift order. The only adornments were a few combat banners hanging down from the metal beams.

The room was littered with shadows. Alcoves formed from the spaces between the girder ribs went deep and ink-black. Illumination fell in pools, tuned to the same yellow-white of high sun on Barbarus. In the centre of the chamber, a hololithic tank turned on a lazy axis, a ghostly cube of blue drifting there. Mechanicum adepts ticked and skittered around the disc-shaped projector device below it, moving in orbits around each other, but never straying more than a hand's length away. Perhaps, Garro mused, they were afraid to venture out among the assembled warriors.

The batde-captain cast around, taking in the faces of ranking naval officers and designated representatives from all of the starships in the flotilla. Endurance's commander, a whipcord woman with a severe face, caught his eye and gave him a respectful nod. Garro returned the greeting and moved past her. At his shoul­der, Temeter whispered. Where's Gralgor?'

'There/ Garro indicated with the jut of his chin, 'with Typhon.'

'Ah/ Temeter said sagely, 'I should not be surprised/

The captains of the Death Guard's First and Second Companies were in close consultation, the murmur of their words pitched low enough so that even the acute senses of another Astartes were not enough to divine their meaning. Garro saw that Grulgor had noticed their arrival, and, as was his usual manner, he ignored it, despite the lapse in protocol a failure to greet them represented.

'He's never going to be a friend to you, is he?' ven­tured Temeter, who saw it too. 'Not even for a moment.'

Garro gave the slightest of shrugs. 'It's not some­thing I dwell on. We don't rise to our ranks because of how well-liked we are. This is a crusade we are win­ning, not a popularity contest.'

Temeter sniffed. 'Speak for yourself. I am extremely popular.'

'I have no doubt you believe that.'

Typhon and Grulgor abruptly disengaged and turned to meet their cohorts as they came closer. The First Captain of the Death Guard, master of the prime company and right hand of the primarch, was a for­midable sight in his iron-hued Terminator armour. A dark tail of hair spilled over his shoulders and the man's bearded face was framed by the heavy square hood of the wargear. His helmet nestled in the crook of his arm, a single horn protruding from the brow. Whatever emotions dwelt inside him were well masked, but not so well that the lines of annoyance around his eyes could be completely hidden.

'Temeter. Garro.' Typhon gave both men a level, measuring stare, his voice a low growl.

At once the easy air that Temeter had brought with him was gone, evaporating beneath the first captain's piercing gaze. Garro could only wonder at the anger behind those dark eyes, still smarting at the slight of being usurped from leading the jorgall attack at the eleventh hour.

'Grulgor and I were discussing the changes in the engagement plan/ Typhon continued.

'Changes?' repeated Temeter. 'I was not aware-'

'You are being made aware/ said Grulgor, with a hint of a sneer. Despite having been born on a world on the opposite side of the galaxy, Ignatius Grulgor shared a similar bearing and physicality with Garro, even down to the hairless head and a collection of trophy scars; but where Garro was stoic and metered, Grulgor was forever on the edge of arrogance, snarling instead of speaking, judgemental instead of considering. 'The Fourth Company is to be re-tasked, to conduct boarding operations among the bottle world's picket force/

Temeter bowed, hiding the irritation that Garro was sure his comrade felt at being denied a share of the mission's greater glories. 'As the primarch wills.' He looked up and met Grulgor's gaze. 'Thank you for preparing me, captain/

'Commander', Grulgor spat out the word. 'You will address me by my rank, Captain Temeter.'

Temeter frowned. 'My error, commander, of course. The traditions sometimes slip my mind when my thoughts are otherwise occupied/

Garro watched Grulgor's jaw harden. Like all of the Legiones Astartes, they had quirks and customs that were unique to them. The Death Guard differed from many of their brother Legions in the manner of the command structure and ranking, for instance. Tradition

had it that the XIV would never number more than seven great companies, although those divisions held far more men than those of other Astartes cohorts like the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels; and while many Legions had the tradition of giving the honorific of'first captain' to the commander of the prime company, the Death Guard also held two more privileged titles, to be bestowed upon the leaders of the Second and Seventh Companies respectively. Thus, although they held no actual seniority over one another, Grulgor could carry the rank of 'commander' if he so wished, just as Garro was known as 'battle-captain'. It was Garro's under­standing that his particular honorific dated back to the Wars of Unification, to a moment when the mark of distinction had been handed to a XIV officer by the Emperor himself. He was proud to bear it all these cen­turies later.

'Our traditions are what make us who we are/ Garro offered quietly. 'It's right and correct that we hold to them.'

'In moderation, perhaps/ Typhon corrected. 'We should not allow ourselves to become hidebound by rules from a past that is dust to us now.'

'Indeed/ added Grulgor.

'Ah/ said Temeter. 'So, Ignatius, you hold on to tra­dition with one hand and push it away with the other?

'The old ways are right and correct so long as they serve a purpose/ Grulgor threw Garro a cold look. 'That pet helot you keep is "a tradition" and yet there is no point to it. There is a custom that has no value.'

'I beg to differ, commander/ Garro replied. 'The housecarl performs flawlessly as my equerry-'

Grulgor snorted. 'Huh. I had one of those once. I think I lost it on an ice moon somewhere. It froze to

death, weak little thing.' He looked away. 'It smacks to me of sentiment, Garro.'

'As ever, Grulgor, I will give your comments the due attention they deserve/ said Garro. He broke off as a figure in gold caught his eye moving through a shaft of light.

Temeter saw where Garro was looking and tapped twice on the shoulder plate of his armour. 'I told you Mortarion had brought company'

Kaleb busied himself with the sword cloth, folding the green velvet mantle into a neat square. In the alcove of the arming pit, Captain Garro's weapons and battle equipment were arrayed around him on hooks and wire-frame racks. Upon one wall, resting on steel spikes, lay the heavy silver ingot of his mas­ter's bolter. It was polished to a matt sheen, the brass detail glittering under the wan light of biolume glow-globes.

The housecarl replaced the cloth and wrung his hands, thinking. It was hard for him to maintain a clear focus, with the idea gnawing at his mind that the primarch was only a few tiers above him, up on the high decks. Kaleb looked up at the steel ceiling and imagined what he might see if the Endurance were made of glass. Would Mortarion radiate dark and cold as some said he did? Would it be possible for a mere man such as himself to actually look the Death Lord in the eye, and not feel his heart stop in his chest? The serf took a deep breath to steady his nerve. It was a lot for him to handle, and the distrac­tion made performing his normal tasks difficult. Mortarion was a son of the Emperor Himself, and the Emperor… the Emperor was…

'Kaleb/

He turned to face Hakur. The seasoned veteran was one of the few Astartes who called the housecad by his given name. 'Yes, lord?'

'Mind your work.' He nodded at the ceiling, at the place where Kaleb had been staring. 'Sees through steel, the primarch does.'

The serf managed a weak grin and bowed, gathering up a cleaning cloth and a tin of waxy polish. Under Hakur's neutral gaze he moved to the centre of the alcove and set to work on the heavy ceramite and brass cuirass that rested there. This was a ceremonial piece that Garro wore only in combat or upon formal occasions. In tandem with the honour-rank of battle-captain, the decorative over-sheath sported an eagle, wings spread and beak arched, sculpted from brass as if about to take flight from the chest plate. Similarly, the rear of the cuirass had a second eagle as a head-guard that emerged from the shoulders when worn over the backpack of Astartes armour.

What made this piece unique was that its eagles differed from the Emperor's aquila. While the sym­bol of the Imperium of Man had two heads, one blinded to look at the past, one sighted to see to the future, the battle-captain's eagles were singular. Kaleb fancied this meant that they only saw into the time yet to pass, that perhaps they were a kind of charm that could know the advance of a killing shot or deadly blade before it arrived. Once he had voiced that thought aloud and received derision and scorn from Garro's men. Such thoughts, Sergeant Hakur had later said, were superstitions that had no place on a ship of the Emperor's Cru­sade. 'Ours is a war to dispel fable and falsehood with the cold light of truth, not to propagate myth.' The veteran had tapped the eagles with a finger.

'These are inanimate brass and no more, just as we are all flesh and bone.'

Still, Kaleb's hand could not help but drift to a brass icon on a chain around his neck, hidden inside the folds of his tunic where none could see it.

The figure was most assuredly female, lithe and poised, clad in a shimmering snakeskin over-suit of dense chainmail and a sweep of golden armour plate that resembled a bodice. A half-mask lay open at her neck, revealing an elegant face. Garro sometimes found it hard to determine the age of non-Astartes, but he estimated she could be no more than thirty solar years. Purple-black hair rose in a topknot from a seamless scalp, bare but for a blood-red aquila tat­too. She was quite beautiful, but what locked his attention on her was the way she moved noiselessly across the iron decks of tbe chamber. Had he not seen her emerge from the shadows, the Astartes might have thought the woman to be a holo-ghost, some finely detailed image cast from the projector.

Amendera Kendel,' noted Typhon, with a hint of distaste. A witchseeker.'

Temeter nodded. 'From the Storm Dagger cadre. She is here with a deputation of the Silent Sisterhood, apparently on the orders of the Sigillite himself.'

Grulgor's lip curled. There are no psykers here. What purpose could those women serve in the com­ing battle?'

'The Regent of Terra must have his reasons,' Typhon suggested, but his tone made it clear he thought little of what they might be.

Garro watched the witchseeker orbit the room. Her tradecraft was commendable. She moved in stealth even as she was obvious to the eye, passing around

the naval officers in a way that appeared to be ran­dom, even as Garro's trained sense understood it was not.

Kendel was observing. She was cataloguing the reactions of the people in the assembly hall, filing them away for later review. It made the Astartes think of a scout, surveying the land before a battle, seeking weak points and targets. He had never encountered a Sister of Silence before, only heard of their exploits in service to the Imperium.

Their name was well deserved, he considered. Kendel was silent, like the wind across a grave, and in her passing, he noticed that some would shiver with­out being aware of it, or become distracted for a moment. It was as if the witchseeker cast an invisible aura around herself that gave mortal men pause.

Garro watched her pass by the entrance to the assembly hall and his gaze was hooked by the shine of brass and steel upon two grand figures that stood either side of the hatch. Barrel-chested in highly arti-ficed armour, taller than Typhon, the identical sentinels blocked the steel door with crossed battle-scythes, the signature weapon of the Death Guard's elite warriors. Only the few personally favoured by the primarch were permitted to carry such artefacts. They were known as manreapers, forged in echo of the common farmer's harvesting scythe that it was said Mortarion had fought with in his youth. The first captain wielded one, but Garro recognised these twin blades immediately.

'Deathshroud/ he whispered. These two Astartes were the personal honour guards of the primarch, fated never to reveal their faces to anyone but Mor­tarion, even to the end of their lives. So it was said, the warriors of the Deathshroud were chosen by the

primarch from the rank and file men of the Legion in secret, and then listed as killed in action. They were his nameless guardians, never allowed to venture more than forty-nine paces from their lord's side. Garro felt a chill when he realised that he hadn't even been aware that the Deathshroud had entered the chamber.

'If they are here, then where is our master?' asked Grulgor.

A cold smile of understanding flickered over Typhon's lips. 'He has been here all along.'

At the far end of the chamber, a towering shadow detached itself from the dimness beside the oval win­dows. Steady footsteps brought silence to the room as they crossed the deck plates. With every other footfall there came a heavy metallic report as the base of an iron shaft tapped out the distance. Garro's muscles tensed as the sound made several of the common naval officers back away from the hololith.

In the dusty Terran legends that survived from the histories of nation states like Merica, Old Ursh and Oseania there was the myth of a walker in the dark­ness who came to claim the freshly dead, a skeletal individual, an incarnation that threshed souls from flesh as keenly as wheat in the fields. These were just stories, though, the speculations of the superstitious and fearful, and yet, here and now, a billion light-years from the birthplace of that folklore, the very mirror of that figure rose into the half-light aboard Endurance, tall and gaunt beneath a cloak as grey as sea-ice.

Mortarion halted and touched the deck plates with the hilt of his manreaper, the scythe as tall as the pri­march and a head again. Only the Deathshroud stayed on their feet. Every other person in the room,

human or Astartes, was on his knees. Mortarion's cloak parted as he raised his free hand, palm upwards. 'Rise/ he said.

The primarch's voice was low and firm, at odds with the ashen, hairless face that emerged from the heavy collar surrounding his throat. Wisps of white gas curled from the neck brace of Mortarion's wargear, captured philtres of fumes from the air of Barbaras. Garro caught the scent of them and for an instant his sense memory took him back to the grim, clouded planet with its lethal skies.

The assemblage came to its feet, and still the pri-march dominated the room. Beneath the grey cloak, he was a knight in shining brass and bare steel. The ornamental skull and star device of the Death Guard grimaced out from his breastplate and at his waist, level with the chest of a file Astartes, Garro saw the drum-shaped holster that carried the Lantern, a hand­crafted energy pistol of unique Shenlongi design.

Mortarion's only other adornments were a string of globe-shaped censers in brass. These too contained elements from the poisonous high atmosphere of the primarch's adoptive home world. Garro had heard it said that Mortarion would sometimes sample them, like a connoisseur tasting fine wines, or by turns pitch them into battle as grenades to send an enemy chok­ing and dying.

The battle-captain realised he had been holding in his breath and released it as Mortarion's amber eyes took in the room. Silence fell as his lord commander began to speak.

'Xenos.' Pyr Rahl made the word into a curse with­out effort, dramming his fingers across the stubby barrel of his bolter. 'I wonder what colour these will

bleed. White? Purple? Green?' He glanced around and ran a hand through the close-cut hair on his head. 'Come, who'll make a wager with me?'

'No one will, Pyr,' answered Hakur, shaking his head. We're all tired of your trivial gambling.' He threw a glance back to the arming pit where Garro's housecarl was hard at work.

'What currency is there to wager between us, any­way?' added Voyen, joining Hakur at the blade racks. The two veterans were quite unalike in physical aspect, Voyen ample in frame where Hakur was wiry, and yet they were together on most things that affected the squad. 'We're not swabs or soldiers grab­bing over scrip and coinage!'

Rahl frowned. 'It's not a game of money, Apothe­cary, nothing as crude as that. Those things are just a way to keep score. We play for the right to be right.'

Solun Decius, the youngest member of the com­mand squad, came closer, rubbing a towel over his face to wipe away the sweat from his exertions in the sparring cages. He had a hard look to him that seemed out of place on a youth of his age. His eyes were alight with energy barely held in check, enthused by the sudden possibilities of glory that the arrival of the primarch had brought. 'I'll take your wager, if it will quiet you.' Decius glanced at Hakur and Voyen, but his elders gave him no support. 'I'll say red, like the orks.'

Rahl sniffed. White as milk, like the megarachnid.'

You are both wrong.' Prom behind Rahl, his face buried in a data-slate festooned with tactical maps, Tollen Sendek's flat monotone issued out. 'The blood of the jorgall is a dark crimson.' The warrior had a heavy brow and hooded eyes that gave him a perma­nently sleepy expression.

'And this knowledge is yours how?' demanded Decius.

Sendek waved the data-slate in the air. 'I am well-read, Solun. While you batter your chainsword's teeth blunt in the cages, I study the foe. These dissection texts of the Magos Biologis are fascinating.'

Decius snorted. 'All I need to know is how to kill them. Does your text tell you that, Tollen?'

Sendek gave a heavy nod. 'It does.'

'Well, come, come.' Voyen beckoned the dour Astartes to his feet. 'Don't keep such information to yourself

Sendek sighed and stood, his perpetually morose features lit by the glow of the data-slate's display. He tapped his chest. The jorgall favour mechanical enhancements to improve their physical form. They have some humanoid traits – a head, neck, eyes and mouth – but it appears their brains and central ner­vous systems are situated not here/ and he tapped his brow, 'but here.' Tollen's hand lay flat on his chest.

'To kill would need a heart shot, then?' Rahl noted, accepting a nod in return.

'Ah/ said Decius, 'like this?' In a flash, the Astartes had spun in place and drawn his bolter. A single round exploded from the muzzle and ripped into the torso of a dormant practice dummy less than a few metres from Garro's arming pit. The captain's house-carl flinched at the sound of the shot, drawing a tut from Hakur.

Decius turned away, amused with himself. Meric Voyen threw Hakur a look. 'Arrogant whelp. I don't understand what the captain sees in him.'

'I once said the same thing about you, Meric'

'Speed and skill are nothing without control/ the Apothecary retorted tersely. 'Displays like that are bet­ter suited to fops like the Emperor's Children.'

The other man's words drew a thin smile from Hakur. 'We're all Astartes under the skin, brothers and kindred all.'

Voyen's humour dropped away suddenly. That, my brother, is as much a lie as it is the truth.'

In the hololith cube, the shape of the jorgalli con­struct became visible. It was a fat cylinder several kilometres long, bulbous at one end with drive clusters, thinning at the other to a stubby prow. Huge petal-shaped vanes coated with shimmering panels emerged from the stern of the thing, catch­ing sunlight and bouncing it through massive windows as big as inland seas.

Mortarion gestured with a finger. 'A cylinder world. This one has twice the mass of the similar con­structs found and eliminated in orbits around the planets Tasak Beta and Fallon, but unlike those, our target is the first jorgall craft to be found under power in deep space.' One of the adepts tickled switches with his worm-like mechadendrites and the image receded, revealing a halo of teardrop-shaped ships in close formation nearby.

'A substantial picket fleet travels ahead of the craft. Captain Temeter will lead the engagement to disrupt these ships and break their lines of communication.'

The primarch accepted a salute from Temeter. 'Ele­ments of the First, Second and Seventh Great Companies will stand with me as I take the spear tip into the bottle itself. This battleground is suited to our unique talents. The jorgall breathe a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen with heavy concentrations of chlorine, a weak poison that our lungs will resist with litde effort.'

As if to underline the point, Mortarion sniffed at a puff of gas from his half-mask. 'First Captain Typhon

will be my support. Commander Grulgor will pene­trate the drive cluster and take control of the cylinder's motive power centre. Battle-Captain Garro will neutralise the constract's hatcheries.'

Garro saluted firmly mirroring Grulgor and Typhon's gestures. He held off his disappointment at his assigned target, far down the cylinder from the primarch's attack point, and instead began to con­sider the first elements of his battle plan.

Mortarion hesitated a moment, and Garro could swear he heard the hint of a smile in the primarch's voice. 'As some of you have deduced, this fight will not be the Death Guard's alone. I have, on the request of Malcador the Sigillite, brought a cadre of investigators from the Divisio Astra Telepathica here, led by the Oblivion Knight Sister Amendera.' The primarch inclined his head and Garro saw the Sister of Silence bow low in return. She gestured in sign language, quick little motions of finger and wrist.

'The honoured Sisters will join us to seek out a psyker trace that has led to this bottle-world.'

Garro stiffened. Psykers? This was the first he had heard of such a threat on the jorgalli ship, and he noted that only Typhon did not seem surprised at such news.

'I trust that the full importance of this endeavour is impressed upon each of you,' continued the Death Lord, his low tones strong. These jorgall repeatedly enter our space in their generation ships, intent on spawning over worlds that belong to the Emperor. They must not be allowed to gain a foothold.' He turned away, his face disappearing into his cloak. 'In time, the Astartes will erase these creatures from humanity's skies, and today will be a step along that path.'

Garro and his battle-brothers saluted once more as Mortarion turned his back on them and moved away towards the welcoming shadows. They did not chorus in a battle cry or mark the moment with raised pro­nouncements. The primarch had spoken, and his was voice enough.

TWO

Assault Brothers and Sisters Message in a Bottle

The thrust of the heavy assault boat's engines was a hammer to their bones, pressing the Astartes into the acceleration racks. Garro held his muscles tense against the powerful g-forces and let his gaze wander over the interior of the clamshell doors that formed the bow of the boarding ship. Intricate scrollwork spread across the inner face of the doors, charting the countless actions the craft had been involved in.

It was one of hundreds hurtling through the void at this moment, packed with men primed for war, each of them targeted on the jorgall world-ship with the unerring single-mindedness of a guided missile.

Through the pict-circuits laced into the lenses of his armour, Garro rapidly blink-clicked through the data available to him via his command level vox-net. There were feeds from the eye cameras of the squad leaders, quick scripts of telemetry from Voyen's med-icae auspex and there, for a moment, a grainy, low

resolution image from outside across the boat's ser­rated prow.

Garro dallied on that for a few seconds, watching the motion of the vast cylinder as they approached it. The hull wall of pearlescent metal grew larger. It was so huge that the curvature of it was hardly noticeable, and the only sign that they were actually closing on it was the slow crawl of detail as surface features became clearer: here, a cluster of spikes that might be antennae, there a bulbous turret spitting yellow tracer fire.

The captain felt no fear at the jorgall guns. The assault was moving at punishing speed beneath a cloak of electronic countermeasures, heat-baffle flare bursts and glittering clouds of metal chaff that would render sensors unintelligible. He was confident in Temeter's skills, certain that the captain of the Fourth had sent the picket fleet into disarray and robbed the xenos of any usable warning.

The wall was very close, the distance vanishing in moments. Garro was aware of other boats converging at the edges of the greyed-out image. Long-range sen­sors had determined that this portion of the cylinder's hull was thin, and so it would be here, some half a kilometre from the cylinder's mid-line, that the Death Guard would make their ingress. Garro let the link fade and gathered himself, switch­ing over to the general vox channel. His voice echoed in the helms of every Astartes on the boat.

'Steel in your bones, brothers. Impact is imminent. I want a clean and fast deployment. I want it so sharp the Emperor himself would applaud its perfection!' He took a breath as the standby alert began to wail. 'Today the primarch leads us, and we will make him proud to do so! For Mortarion and Terra!'

'Mortarion and Terra!' Garro heard Hakur's rough baritone through the chorus of assent.

Decius's voice cut across the channel, brimming with zeal. 'Count the Seven!' he cried, yelling out the company's call to rally. 'Count the Seven!'

Garro joined in, but his words were abruptly shaken out of him as the assault boat's thick bow rammed into the hull of the jorgall cylinder. Piercing shrieks of rendered metal and escaping atmosphere thundered around the boat's thick fuselage as it drove itself deep, clawed tracks across its flanks bit­ing and sparking to pull it through metres of chitinous armour plate. Turning and shifting, the boat's autonomic pilot brain deployed hydraulic barbs to stop the outgassing of air from blowing back into the void.

The juddering, screeching, ear-splitting ride seemed to go on forever then abruptly it stopped. The assault ship listed. Garro heard metal scrape on metal and then the trigger rune before him on the clamshell hatch flashed on. 'Ready on release!' he snapped.

The hatch blew open on explosive bolts and Garro had his bolter loose and in his hands, ready to kill anything that dared to come in, but it was a sudden flood of brackish blue water that smashed down into the boat, not an enemy defender. The liquid was icy, swirling rapidly around his legs and up to his stom­ach.

'Go!' Garro roared. The battle-captain was aware of his men moving behind him as he launched himself out of the assault craft. He plunged into the cobalt murk and burst back through the surface, turning around, getting his bearings.

It was a hundred-to-one chance. The assault had penetrated through the bottom of a shallow chemical

lake and the dark hulls of the boats protruded from the sluggish liquid like the tips of jagged armoured fingers. Already the waters were icing over and freez­ing into blue-white halos where the cold kiss of space had followed the invaders in. Through his helmet's breath screen Garro drew a rough inhalation that tasted of metallic salts. Nearby, he saw Grulgor kick angrily away from his lander and snarl out a com­mand.

There on the shore, pointing with his manreaper, was Mortarion. The sight of the primarch was enough to send Garro's blood racing, and he stormed forward through the shallows, his bolter held high. 'Count the Seven!' called the captain, and he did not need to look behind him to see the elements of his company follow in formation.

Garro advanced from the deployment point with Hakur's veteran squad at his side, joined by Decius and Sendek for support. Around them, the chaotic crash of gunfire and blades on blades rippled over the gentle landscape of the lakeshore. Hordes of Astartes met the xenos in deadly, furious conflict.

The alien force was quickly in disarray. Even in non-humans, Garro could sense the motion and shift in the character of a battalion when they lost their nerve. Groups broke apart and reformed, milling and con­fused, instead of drawing out and away in any semblance of order. Butchering them would not take too much of the Death Guard's energy.

It was clear the jorgalli had understood too late that the objects on a course towards their world-ship were not massive munitions but actually manned craft. The near-suicidal manner of such a boarding opera­tion had shocked them and they were unprepared for the brutal fury of the Death Guard incursion. Their

mistake had been compounded by errors in the deployment of their combatant enhanciles. The jor-gall cyborgs standing on the banks of the chlorine lagoon were massacred, their keening cries echoing over the shallow, sandy dunes surrounding the land­ing zone.

In the back of his mind, the battle-captain was already thinking ahead, considering how they would secure the breach point before the companies split to attend their individual objectives. Garro led his men in a thrust through a nest of spindly, whirling dervishes, fighting past sweeps of dull steel glaives and placing double-tap bolt shots through the ribs of every jorgall they saw. The Astartes expanded outward from the lake in a ring of off-white armour, the advance rolling over the defenders.

Moving and firing, Garro's troop crested a dune of crystalline granules that crunched loudly beneath their boots and found some close combat kills. A phalanx of jorgall swept and turned to them, caught in mid-flight, daring to stop and engage the Astartes. Weapons barked on both sides of the fight, the heavy roar of bolters drowning out the hissing clatter of electrostatic arc-fire from the implanted projectors of the enemy.

Decius, who favoured the blunt trauma of a power fist, slipped into the midst of the aliens and punched one to the powdery dirt, over and over, slamming its long neck and oval head into a ruin.

'Has he forgotten what I said already? I told him to aim for the torso for a quick kill/ said Sendek.

'He hasn't forgotten/ said Hakur.

With a peculiar, ululating cry, two of the larger xenos coiled and leapt directly at Garro. In mid-jump, they came open like spreading petals on a flower,

their tri-fold legs and arms wide. He saw glitters where whole portions of limbs had been replaced with dull metal and black curves of carbon. In one swift motion, the captain let his bolter drop away on its sling and drew Libertas, a blue glow of power shimmering across the blade. In a wide, double-handed sweep Garro cut both the creatures in half, the sword whispering easily through their scaly tissue.

Hakur grunted his approval. 'Still sharp, then?'

'Aye,' Garro replied, shaking droplets of deep red from the blade. He paused momentarily to examine his work, viewing the severed limbs with the same dispassion he had the static intelligence images on Sendek's data-slate.

In their natural, fully fleshed state, a jorgalli adult was perhaps four and a half metres tall, moving on three legs with three joints that radiated from their lower torsos like the spokes on a wheel. Apart from the extensile neck, the upper body of the aliens resembled the lower, but here the three limbs ended in hands with six digits.

The egg-shaped head had deep-set, rheumy eyes and fleshy notches for a nose and mouth. They had skin like Terran lizards, all scales and tiny horns of bone. However, there seemed to be no such thing as a 'natural' jorgall. Every single example of the xenos species yet encountered and terminated by servants of the Imperium, from immature cubs to infirm elders, was modified with implanted devices or cybernetic proxy mechanisms. The slate showed oddities such as spring piston legs, feet replaced with wheels and rollers, knife claws, sheets of subdermal armour plat­ing, telecameras inside optic cavities and even ballistic needier weapons nestled within the hollows of bones.

The similarity in intent between the alien implants and the engineered organs that he possessed as an Astartes was not lost on Garro, but these were xenos, and they were invaders. They were nothing like him and as the Emperor had decreed, they were to be chastised for daring to venture into human space.

Near to the sluggish waterline, a horde of clawed jorgalli, most likely some kind of hand-to-hand vari­ant, hacked at a dreadnought from the Second Company. The venerable warrior had become bogged down in the chemical slurry at the lake's edge and Garro saw it spin on its torso axis, clubbing at them with a chainfist. A white flash fell from nowhere into the heart of the jorgall rippers and the captain heard Ignatius Gralgor bellow with wild laughter. Grulgor came to his feet surrounded by the xenos and threw back his head.

The commander of the Second had gone bare­faced; the foul air of the bottle-world did not concern him. In either hand he carried a regulation Mars-pat­tern bolter, and with delight, Grulgor unloaded them at point-blank range into the enemy.

The sheer velocity of the shots chopped the jorgall into reeking gobbets of flesh, giving the dreadnought valuable seconds in which to extract itself. In moments, Grulgor stood at the centre of a circle of alien carcasses, vapour coiling from the barrels of his guns. The commander saluted the primarch, and flashed a sly, daring grin at Garro before moving on in search of new targets.

'He's so artless, don't you think?' murmured Hakur. The esteemed Huron-Fal would have fought his own way out of that mess, but Gralgor wades in, more concerned about showing his mettle to the primarch than where best to spend his ammunition.'

We're Death Guard. We're not supposed to be artists/ Garro retorted. 'We are craftsmen in war, noth­ing more, direct and brutal. We don't seek accolades and honours, only duty.'

'Of course/ said the veteran mildly.

Decius came bounding up to Garro, kicking away the corpse parts from his kill. 'Ugh. Do you smell that, sir? These things, their blood stinks.'

The battle-captain didn't answer. He hesitated, his attention drifting, watching Mortarion in the thick of his cold fury. At the primarch's side, Typhon and the twin sentinels of the Deathshroud were whirling and culling, their manreapers moving unhindered through a milling, screaming pack of jorgall. The Death Lord himself had clearly deemed these inferior strains of xenos to be unworthy of his scythe, and instead was at work putting them to the light of his Lantern.

Hard-edged white rays keened from the stub barrel of the huge brass pistol, leaving purple after-images on Garro's retina despite the enhancements of his modified eyesight. Wherever the Lantern's punishing beam struck, jorgall defenders became charcoal sketches, twisting, then turning to smoke.

Mortarion reached into a hooting scram of aliens and ripped an injured man from their midst, batting them effortlessly away as he hauled the wounded Death Guard to safety. The primarch spared the man some unheard words and in return the bareheaded Astartes roared in assent, rejoining the fight.

'Magnificent/ breathed Decius, and Garro could sense the coiled need in the younger man, the yearn­ing to run down the dune and press into Mortarion's company, to throw away all battlefield protocol just for the chance to fight within his master's aura. It was

a difficult urge to resist. Garro felt it just as strongly, but he would not lower himself to duplicate the self-aggrandising behaviour of men like Gralgor.

Then the younger Astartes tore his gaze away and cast around. 'So this is the great creation of the xenos, eh? Not much to look at.'

'Human spacefarers once lived in cylinders such as this/ noted Sendek as he reloaded, 'in the deep past, before we mastered the force of gravity. They called them ohnyl colonies.'

Decius seemed unimpressed. 'I feel like a fly trapped in a bottle. What sort of inside-out world is this?' He gestured upward, to where the landscape curved away to meet itself kilometres over their heads. A thin bar of illuminators extended away down the axis of the cylinder, disappearing to the fore and aft in yellow clouds. Garro's eyes narrowed as he spied motes of dark green moving up there, shifting through the corridor of zero gravity at the world-ship's centre.

Hakur tensed at his side. 'I see them too, battle-captain, airborne reinforcements.'

Garro called out on the general vox channel. 'Look to the skies, Death Guard!'

On the blood-slicked sandbanks, Mortarion stabbed at the air with the blade of his scythe. 'The captain of the Seventh has keen vision! The xenos seek to distract us with easy kills, to keep our atten­tion on the ground!'

The primarch gave Garro a curt nod and strode to the top of another shallow powder dune, ignoring the scatters of enemy needle-shot that whined off his brass armour. Mortarion let his hood roll back so he could turn his face to the caged sky. We must correct them.'

For a long second, Nathaniel found himself rooted to the spot by his master's casual acknowledgement, despite his best intention to make little of it. The favour of his primarch, of an Emperor's son, even for an instant was a heady thing indeed, and he found some understanding as to why men like Grulgor would go so far to court it. Then Garro shook it off and slammed a fresh sickle magazine into his weapon. 'Seventh, to arms!' he cried, bringing the bolter to his shoulder and sighting upward along its length.

The jorgall flyers came in numbers that dwarfed the ragged packs of land-based fighters the Death Guard met at the lake. Clad in a flickering green armour that wound about them in strips, the airborne xenos had sacrificed two of their limbs to their mechanical sur­geons. In their stead were beating wings of sharp metal feathers, each edged like a razor. Feet had become balls of curved talons, and there were more of the lethal arc-throwers and needle-guns embedded in joints where they had keen fields of fire.

They came down whistling and hooting, met a wall of bolt shell and high-energy plasma and died, but this was only the first wave and more of them, green glitters in the sky, poured out of the gauzy yellow cloud.

Garro saw one of Hakur's men wreathed in hum­ming glints of artificial lightning and smelled the stench of crisping human meat as a flight of the xenos flyers shocked the life from him. Nearby the dread­nought Huron-Fal deployed his missile packs and threw explosive death into the wheeling flocks, blast­ing dozens of them out of the air with the concussion. For his part, Garro moved carefully, low

to the oxide sands, picking off the xenos in bursts of full-auto fire as they dropped in on swooping strikes. The attack pattern of the aliens was clear. They were attempting to push the Astartes back into the icy lake.

'Not today,' said the battle-captain to the air, clip­ping the wings of a large adult female. The creature spiralled headfirst into the sands and twitched.

He became aware that he had company. Garro glanced over his shoulder and frowned in mild sur­prise at the cadre of lithe golden figures coming up behind him. The Sisters of Silence moved in quick lockstep, maintaining coherent fire corridors and combat discipline with an efficiency that he had only previously seen among his brother Astartes.

It was difficult for him to tell the women apart. Their armour was polished to a glittering sheen, unadorned by any brash sigils or fluttering oath papers like the pale wargear of the Death Guard. Their faces were hidden behind hawkish gold helmets that reminded him of the barred gates to some ancient citadel, no doubt equipped with breather gear that let the unmodified Sisterhood manage the toxic air of the bottle-world. They seemed identical, as if they were forged from some mythic mould by the Emperor's hand. He wondered idly if normal men might view the Astartes in a similar way.

The Sisterhood carried swords and flamers, blades and plumes of fire licked at the jorgall flyers as they dipped into range. Some also carried bolters.

As was their vow in the Emperor's service, the women never spoke, even those speared by needle rounds or struck by arc-fire. They communicated in line of sight using a gestural language similar to Astartes battle-sign, or through a code of clicks over the vox. From the way they crossed the engagement

zone, he had no doubt in his mind that they knew exactly where they were going.

As they passed, the Sister closest to him spared Garro a look, and the battle-captain felt a peculiar chill fall across him. That the Sisterhood ranged the galaxy in search of rogue psychics to capture or expunge was widely known, but what was less under­stood was the manner in which they did it.

Garro had heard that unlike other living beings, these unspeaking women were silent not just in the material world, but also in the ephemeral realm of the mind. There were names for them: untouch­ables, pariahs, blanks.

He frowned at the irrational nature of thoughts, pushing them away. In the next second, they were for­gotten as warning runes blinked inside his visor. Garro caught the sound of shrieking air over razor wings.

He moved as a flight of jorgalli came down upon them. Fast as only an Astartes could be, he slammed his hand into the back of the Sister at his flank and sent her down and away as tenfold claws cut through the air towards them. Garro threw his arm up to deflect the blow and felt the talons slice gouges through his vambrace. The screeching jorgall ripped upwards and into his helmet, tearing it from his neck ring in a bone wrenching impact. He staggered and recovered, bringing his bolter to bear. Garro's gun barked and from the sand the Sister fired with him. None of the flight that had dared to attack them lived to take air again.

The battle-captain grimaced and patted his face, content to find he had gained no new scars from the encounter. Getting to her feet, the witchseeker walked to him and presented Garro with his helmet, ripped

back from the jorgall claws. It was badly damaged, but the symbolic gesture was an important one. The woman looked up and inclined her head. With her free hand she touched her heart and her brow. The meaning was clear. My thanks to you. Unsure of the correct protocol, Garro simply nodded in return, and that seemed enough. The women moved on, leaving him behind. It was only as he saw their backs that Garro noticed the plume of dark hair issuing from the Sister's golden helm, and the red aquila etching across her shoulder blades.

He moved down to the core of the fighting, over a dunescape littered wim jorgall dead and on rare occa­sions, fallen figures in pale grey power armour. Each brother perished here ground Garro's rage like stone on stone, for every one of them was worth a thousand of the freakish intruders.

The captain heard the slamming crack of Mortar-ion's Lantern once again, and looked up to see the primarch sweep it through the air like a searchlight, catching aliens afire, turning them into a rain of ashen fallout.

Typhon's harsh growl sounded on the general vox channel. 'If this is all we have to face, I question if our might will even be tested today!'

'My father sent me here.' Mortarion's words were mild, but heavy with intent. 'Do you think him wrong to do so, first captain?'

Another man might have baulked at the veiled threat, but not Typhon. 'I only chafe at such poor sport, lord commander. We dally here too long, sir.'

Garro caught a grunt of agreement. 'Perhaps we do, my friend.' When he spoke again, the primarch did it aloud, eschewing the vox to broadcast his voice. 'Sons

of Death! You know your objectives! Take your units and prosecute the foe! Typhon, with me; Gralgor, the drives; Garro, the hatchery. Go now!'

The elements of the Seventh Company came to him and the battle-captain was pleased to see that there had been few losses among them. The Apothecary, Voyen, looked him up and down, silently comment­ing on the state of his helmet where the headgear hung from his belt. Decius too was unhooded and his pale face was split with a murderous grin. The stain­ing of viscera on his power fist was mute testament to his kills so far.

He nodded to them, and the men of the Seventh took up their formation. They moved, letting Grul-gor's company mop up the last of the airborne jorgall. They crossed out from the crystalline dunes at a quick pace, and into groves of tall tree-like forms woven from some kind of rough fibre.

Sendek ministered to his auspex. Tactical plot shows heat sources comparable to jorgall hatchery constructs in this direction.' He pointed. 'That way The virtual compass is having difficulty assimilating the internal structure of the bottle-world.'

'How current is that data?' asked Hakur. 'The sense-servitors neglected to tell us we were landing in a chem-lake. I find myself wondering what else they may have missed.'

Sendek frowned. 'The readings are… contradictory.'

'Best we be ready for surprises, then/ noted Rahl, hefting the combi-bolter in his grip.

'Do not allow yourself to be lulled into complacency by the name of your target, captain.' Mortarion had spoken the words without looking at him, as Garro stared into the hololith in Endurance's

assembly hall. This so-called hatchery is not only the creche for the jorgalli young, but also a place of modification. You will probably find eggs filled with armed adults as well as their larvae.'

Garro recalled the primarch's words as he looked up at the towering fibrous trees. Further into the 'for­est' where the stalks were planted in dense, regular rows, the tree-things were heavy with great grey orbs that hung like monstrous fruits. Some showed signs of motion inside, things shifting about in lazy thrashes. Here and there were pools of watery fluid that Sendek immediately designated as 'yolk'. Voyen agreed with the description, pointing out dripping orbs up above that hung ragged, formless and clearly empty. 'The roots of the trees drink the liquid back in to the system/ noted Sendek. 'Quite efficient.'

Tm rapt with fascination/ Rahl said, in a tone that indicated the reverse.

Decius kept his bolter close. 'Where are the defences? Do these xenos care so little about their spawn that they leave them open to any predator that happens by?'

'Perhaps their children are the predators/ offered Hakur darkly.

One of the men from the veterans' squad halted and gestured ahead. 'Captain/ he asked, 'do you see this?'

'What is it?' asked Garro.

The Astartes bent and gathered up a shiny metallic object, roughly oval in shape. He turned it over in his hands. 'It's… sir, It's a helm, I think.' He held it up to show them, and Garro's blood chilled at the sight of a Silent Sister's wargear. Something shifted inside it and a severed head dropped from the helmet to the ground, trailing a plume of blonde hair.

'Clean cut/ noted the Astartes. Very fresh.'

Voyen's eyes narrowed. Where's the… the rest of her?'

Decius used his bolter to point towards different branches of the trees. 'Here, there and there. Over there as well, I think.' Wet rags of red and gold were visible on each.

'The Sisters came to the hatchery?' Hakur cast around, looking low. 'Why would witchseekers come here?'

Decius gave a dry chuckle. 'That, old man, would seem to be secondary to the question of what it was that killed her.'

From ahead of them where the trunks were thickest, there came a ripple of bolter fire. Garro spied the glit­ter of sporadic muzzle flashes even as a low rumble spread through the sandy dirt beneath his boots. Cracking sounds, sharp as snapping bone, reached him as trees in the middle distance shook and bent, the tops of them fluttering and falling as something large knocked them down.

'You're about to get your answer/ Rahl said, raising his bolter.

The Sisterhood came through the egg-trees, moving like dancers, harrying the jorgalli enhancile with their weapons. It was the largest of the xenos that Garro had encountered onboard the bottle-world, and of a design that had not been in Sendek's documentation. Outwardly it resembled the form of a jorgall in a basic sense, but it was perhaps ten times their mass. As high as the canopy of the trees, the thing appeared to be an agglomeration of scaled flesh and metals, a jorgall deformed by gigantism and then improved by technology to be larger still.

The battle-captain could make out fleshy matter inside a glass orb at the middle of the cyborg's mass,

perhaps, he reasoned, whatever remained of the jor-gall's original form. It had no arms. Instead there were writhing clusters of grey iron tentacles sprouting from each of its upper limb sockets. Some moved like striking serpents, snapping out at the Sisters, while others knotted around an unseen burden that the thing clasped desperately to its chest.

'Some sort of guardian?' offered Voyen.

'Some sort of target! retorted Decius and opened fire.

The Death Guard moved in to assist the Sisterhood, firing on the approach, adding their shots to the storm of bullets that haloed the cyborg. Garro had the fleeting impression that the machine-form was trying to escape, but then it turned around and threw any notion of fleeing aside. Perhaps it might have got away from the women, but with Garro's arrival it had no other choice but to stand and fight.

Metal feelers lashed out across the ground, keen-edged tips slicing furrows in the dirt. They flexed and moved, ripping up divots and roots. Hakur was caught off-guard as a tentacle lashed at him and threw the Astartes aside, rolling off the trunk of an egg-tree. Garro saw another rip the leg from one of the troopers and put him down in a welter of blood. The captain ducked away from the questing appendages as they hissed over his head.

A witchseeker, caught with her bolter breech open and magazine empty, met the tip of them through her breastbone. They stabbed through her torso and pinned her to a tree, then tore back out in a jet of spent vitae. Still trailing blood, the tentacles bent and whipped at the Emperor's warriors, clipping Rahl on the back swing and tearing the gold hood from another of Kendel's women. Without her helmet, a

severe Null Maiden with a red topknot and portcullis faceplate choked and stumbled, the rancid atmos­phere of the jorgall vessel scouring her lungs. Voyen was already moving to assist her, and Garro's face soured. The cyborg was just too fast, too wild and uncontrolled in its motions. To kill it, they would need to take a more direct approach. He thumbed the selector switch on his bolter to fully automatic fire and charged the xenos hybrid.

The battle-captain unloaded an entire clip into the legs and thorax of the cyborg, gouts of oily fluid and flashing short-circuit arcs marking where each round hit home. The jorgall thing hooted and growled, turn­ing to focus its attention on the figure in grey-white armour. Steel-sheathed whips shot out, extending and buzzing with effort, and Garro threw himself into a roll, dodging the places where they stabbed into the soil. The tips of the lashing feelers clattered over his ceramite armour, and Garro felt a sting of pain as they raked the place where the flyer's claws had cut him on the lakeside, reopening the wounds there. A chance flexion of the tentacle, a second of delay on his part, and suddenly the captain's bolter was spinning away from him through the air, the strap hanging ragged as the gun was snapped from his grip-

Garro turned into the force of the impact, rolled again and came up with Libertas in his hand. Stab­bing lines of metal came at him and he batted them away with the sword blade, flares of sparks glaring orange-white in the sullen artificial daylight of the egg-tree groves. The others were pouring their fire on to the cyborg, but its attention was still split between Garro and the object it held tight, something swad­dled in thin grey muslin. The battle-captain threw

himself at the jorgall mechanoid, chopping off the tips of tentacles and slashing at others. He spun as he felt iron limbs touch his legs and hacked at them, but he was close to its torso and the cyborg's appendages were thicker here, more muscular, more resilient. Powerful coils enveloped him and Garro felt the ground drop away. The machine-hybrid shook him violently, his sword-arm flailing against his side where he could not turn Libertas in his defence. His teeth rattled inside his skull and there was blood in his mouth.

He heard the splintering of flexsteel in the joints of his armour, smelled the acidic tang of spilled coolant as leaks jetted from his backpack. The Astartes hissed through his teeth as pain bit into him, compacting his implanted carapace and ribcage. It was a struggle to keep breath in his lungs, as the pressure grew greater with every moment. Garro was aware of motion as the cyborg drew him closer, up to the glassy capsule of its meat core. Hollow, predatory eyes stared at him, brimming with alien hate. The jorgall wanted to watch him die, to savour it.

The killing stress continued to increase as Garro's three lungs ran dry, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. Darkness was closing in on him. At the edges of the captain's consciousness, he glimpsed a shimmer­ing ghost image, a figure that seemed to be his primarch, beckoning him towards oblivion.

In that moment, Garro tapped a final reserve of mad, desperate strength. By Terra's will, he told him­self, in the name of my home world and the Imperium of Man, I will not perish!

New energy flooded through him, hot and raw. Garro reached deep into himself and found a well-spring of conviction, steeling himself against the

xenos's murderous embrace. The captain felt warmth spread into his agonised muscles as he pictured Terra's majesty in his mind's eye, and there with his hand cupped beneath it, holding it safe, the Emperor. In the Emperor's name, I will not fail! I dare not fail!

He unleashed a wordless, furious snarl of defiance and fought back against the alien coils, putting every last ounce of power he could muster into Libertas. The power sword's blade met jorgall steel and parted it, screeching through artificial nerves and mechanical cabling. The cyborg faltered and stumbled as Garro cut his way free, fragments of cracked ceramite shed­ding from his armour. The captain's burning lungs drank in ragged gulps of air. He pressed forward even as the machine-form tried to shove him away, bring­ing up the glowing tip of the blade.

Garro saw emotion flutter over the trembling mouthparts of the jorgall as Libertas touched the crown of its glass pod. Unlike the xenos, the captain did not linger for the sake of cruelty. Instead, he pressed his entire weight behind the sword and shat­tered the capsule, forcing the weapon into the fleshy torso of the alien until it burst from the cyborg's back in a rain of crimson.

The jorgall collapsed with a thunderous crash, tearing down a stand of trees as it fell. Half-finished things erupted from eggs, mewling and spitting, to be met by the guns of the Death Guard and the witchseekers.

Taking back his sword, Garro dropped to the ground as the cyborg's last nerve impulses fluttered through its limbs. Its burden, the shape in grey muslin, was released and rolled to his feet. The cap­tain knelt and unwrapped it with the tip of his blade.

Inside there was an immature jorgall. What sur­prised him was not that the xenos hatchling was

completely free of any mechanical augmentation, but the freakish mutation of the tripedal being. It was conjoined, a malformation of two aliens that had somehow become merged during growth. Its skull was enormous, a bloated thing with four distinct chambers, quite unlike the ovoid heads typical of its species. Legs and arms twitched towards him, milky eyes swivelled and narrowed in Garro's direction.

Without warning, the air around him changed. The atmosphere became greasy and slick on his skin, sud­denly scratchy with the sharp stench of ozone. He had felt such things before, on other battlefields, in other wars for the good of humanity. Garro's mind screamed a single word, and he understood exactly why the Sisters of Silence had come to this place.

'Psyker!' He drew up the sword in an arc, ready to take the creature's head from its shoulders.

Wait.

The word struck him like a cold flood, making his arm go rigid. The ozone stink enveloped him, cloud­ing his thoughts and tightening on his mind just as the cyborg had coiled around his body. It reached into Garro, searching through him as easily as he might have leafed through a book.

Death Guard, it whispered, amusement in its words, 50 confident of your tightness, so afraid to see the crack in your spirit.

Garro tried to complete the killing blow, but he was locked tight, trapped in amber.

Soon the end comes. We see tomorrow. So shall you. All you worship will wither. All will-

The mutant's torso burst in a welter of blood and bone fragments as a single bolter round tore a hole through it as big as a fist. Suddenly the haze was gone and Garro blinked it away, as if waking from a deep

sleep. He turned and found Sister Amendera Kendel at his shoulder, smoke curling from the muzzle of her gun. Her dark eyes studied him from the vision slits of her helmet. The captain stood carefully and dupli­cated her gesture from the lakeside, touching his armoured fingertips to his heart and his brow.

He became aware of a sound reaching through the wooded ranks of the hatchery, a whistling, a keening that was quickly growing in volume. The sound was atonal and harsh on his ears. It was a lament, a cry from the unhatched.

'Look!' shouted Hakur. 'In the trees! Movement, everywhere!'

Every egg-orb that Garro could see was trembling as the jorgalli things inside thrashed and tore at their confinement, frantic in their need to escape. He flicked a look to Kendel, as the Sister directed her cohorts to gather the dead mutant into a chainmail sack. She glanced up at him and nodded. Perhaps Voyen had been correct, perhaps the cyborg had been some kind of guardian protecting the psyker child, and now it was dead, its siblings were enraged.

Spatters of yolk rained down from the trunks. Kendel flicked out harsh gestures to her Sisters and the women moved off, turning their flamers on the foliage. Garro saw the merit in her action and called into his vox-link. 'Deploy grenades and explosives. Follow the Sisterhood's example. Destroy the trees.'

The fibrous matter of the egg-trees was dry and made excellent tinder. In moments, the alien woodland was burning, the grey sacs popping and boiling. Many of the enhanciles made it to the ground, mad with fury, and they were put down with detached precision.

Garro watched the blue-tinged flames sear and dance as they spread, murdering the world-ship's

dormant and newborn. All across the bottle, the jorgall were perishing beneath the hand of the Death Guard, making a lie of the mutant child's final words. 'A lie,' said Garro aloud, watching the poisonous smoke turn above his head.

THREE

Aeria Gloris A Poisoned Chalice Put to the Question

In the ruins of their enemy, the Death Guard task force regrouped and surveyed the breadth of the destruction they had wrought. The wreckage of the jorgalli picket fleet was a cloud of crystallised breath­ing gasses, hull fragments and the dead. Some of the teardrop-shaped xenos vessels were still relatively intact. One by one, these were being scuttled with atomic charges, reduced to sun-hot balls of radioac­tive plasma. In less than a standard Terran day, there would be nothing recognisable left to show the face of an enemy that the Death Guard had obliterated so utterly.

Out there in the shoal of destruction, Stormbirds on funerary details scoured the engagement area for Astartes who had been blown into the dark during boarding operations. Those found would be interred as heroes, once the progenoid glands in their corpses had been harvested. The precious flesh-matter from

the dead would serve the Legion in their stead, pass­ing on to strengthen new initiates when the next round of recruitment began. Once in a while, a lucky find would bring the recovery crews a live battle-brother, dormant inside his armour beneath the lulling pressure of his sus-an membranes, but that happened very rarely.

Beyond the zone where the Death Guard fleet gath­ered like carrion birds around a corpse, the jorgall bottle was executing a slow, wounded turn to sight down into the ecliptic plane of the Iota Horologii sys­tem. Drifts of wreckage and broken panels from the construct's vast solar panels floated behind it in a faint cometary tail. The main drives blinked out of sequence as the fusion motors worked the colossal mass of the world-ship about. Dissenting voices from the Mechanicum contingent aboard the warship Spec­tre of Death had petitioned Mortarion for a few days in which to loot the alien craft of technology. The pri-march, as was his prerogative, refused the request. The letter of Lord Malcador's orders – and therefore, by extension, those of the Emperor himself – was that the jorgall incursion into the sector was to be extermi­nated. The master of the Death Guard clearly saw no point of confusion in those orders. There was to be nothing left of the aliens.

And yet…

Nathaniel Garro watched the play and turn of the fleet from the gallery above the Endurance's main launch bay, above him a span of thick armoured glass and space beyond it, below, through skeletal brass frames and grid-cut decking, the expanse of the flight platform. Gradually, his gaze dropped.

Down among the sleek Stormbirds and heavy Thunderhawks was a single swan-like shuttlecraft, the

spread wings of the ship detailed in gold and black. It stood out among the white and grey Astartes craft, a single bright game fowl nestled in a flock of pale rap­tors.

Aboard that vessel, a sole tangible remnant of the assault would remain after all the works of the jorgall were erased from this sector of space. He found him­self wondering what other orders the Sisters of Silence had, orders that were unbound even in the face of a primarch's countermand. It was not defiance on their part to go against Mortarion's wishes if it was the Emperor's will to do otherwise, surely? This was not disobedience. This was a trivial issue, a small thing of little consequence. Garro had never known of and could barely envisage an instance when the commands of primarch and Emperor would not be in harmony.

An oiled hiss signalled the opening of the gallery's hatch and Garro looked to see who had come to interrupt his customary moment of solitude after the battle. A small smile curled at his lips as two figures entered the echoing, empty colonnade. He gave a shallow bow as Amendera Kendel approached him, a younger woman in a less ornate version of a witch-seeker's robes walking at her heels.

Kendel looked to Garro as he assumed he must have looked to her: fresh from the battlefield, fatigued, but content that the fight had gone well. 'Sister,' said Garro, 'I trust the outcome this day was satisfactory to you.'

The woman signed a few words and the girl at her side spoke. 'Battle-Captain Garro, well met. The goals of the Imperium have been ably served.'

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow and looked directly at the girl. He saw her more clearly now, noting that she

had no armour or visible weapons as Kendel did. 'Forgive me, but it was my understanding that the Sis­ters of Silence are never to speak.'

The girl nodded, her manner changing slightly as she answered. 'That is indeed so, lord. No Sister may utter a word, unto death, once she gives the Oath of Tranquillity. I am a novice, captain. I have yet to take the vow and so I may speak to you. Sisters-in-waiting such as I serve our order when communication is needed with outsiders'

'Indeed,' Garro nodded. 'Then may I ask your mis­tress what she wishes of me?'

Kendel gestured again, and the novice translated, her voice taking on a formal tone once more. '1 wished to speak with you before we departed the Endurance, on the matters to which you and your men were party aboard the jorgall cylinder. It is the Emperor's wish that they not be spoken of.'

The captain absorbed this. Of course, why else had Kendel killed the alien psyker with a shot to the chest instead of a round through the skull? To preserve whatever secrets it held inside that misshapen head. He nodded to himself. The Lord of Man's great works into the understanding of the ethereal realms were beyond his grasp as a mere captain, and if the Emperor required the corpse of a dead xenos mutant to further that understanding, then Nathaniel Garro had no place to contradict it. 'I shall make it so. The Emperor has his tasks and we have ours. My men would never question that.'

The Silent Sister came a little closer and watched him carefully. She signed something to the novice and the girl hesitated, questioning her mistress in return before relaying the words. 'Sister Amendera asks… She wishes to know if the child spoke to you.'

'It had no mouth/ Garro answered, quicker than he intended to.

Kendel placed a finger on her lips and shook her head. Then she moved the finger to her temple.

Nathaniel looked at his hands. There were still flecks of alien blood on them. 'I am clean of any taint,' he insisted. 'The thing did not contaminate me.'

'Did it speak to you?' repeated the novice.

The moment became long before he spoke. 'It knew what I was. It said it could see tomorrow. It told me all I worship would die.' Garro sneered. 'But I am an Astartes. I worship nothing. I honour no false god, only the reality of Imperial truth.'

His answer seemed to appease Sister Amendera, and she inclined her head in a bow. 'Your fealty, like that of all Death Guard, has never been in doubt, cap­tain. Thank you for your honesty,' relayed the novice. 'It is clear the creature was attempting to cloud your intention. You did well to resist it.' The Oblivion Knight made the sign of the aquila and bowed.

The girl mirrored Kendel's gesture. 'My mistress wishes you and your company to accept the com­mendation and gratitude of the Sisters of Silence. Your names will be presented to the Sigillite in recog­nition of your service to Terra.'

You honour us,' Garro replied. 'If I might ask, what was the fate of your comrade, the Null Maiden who was unhooded in the fighting?'

The novice nodded. 'Ah, Sister Thessaly, yes. Her injuries were serious, but she will recover. Our med-icae aboard the Aeria Gloris will heal her in due course. I understand your Brother Voyen saved her life.'

'Aeria Gloris! repeated Garro. 'I do not know of that vessel. Is it part of our flotilla?'

A smile crossed Kendel's lips and she signed to the novice. 'No, captain. It is part of mine. See for your­self.' The woman pointed out through the glass dome and Garro followed her direction.

A piece of the void moved slowly across the prow of Endurance, passing between the bow of the warship and the distant glow of the Iotan sun. Whereas con­ventional vessels of the Imperial fleets ran with pennants and signal lamps to illuminate the lengths of their hulls, this new arrival, this Aeria Gloris, came in darkness, arriving out of the interstellar deeps as an ocean predator might slip to the surface of a night time sea.

Garro had never laid eyes on a Black Ship before. These were the mothercraft of the Silent Sisterhood, carrying them back and forth across the galactic disc on the Emperor's witch hunting missions. It was hard to make out anything more than the most basic details of the ship's design. Framed against the solar glow of Iota Horologii, the battle cruiser was at least a match in size for the Death Guard capital ship Indomitable Will. It lacked the traditional plough blade prow of most Imperial vessels, ending instead in a blunt bow. A single, knife-edge sail hung below the stern and on it was an aquila cut from shimmer­ing volcanic glass. Where Endurance and the ships of the Astartes flotilla were swords against the enemies of Terra, Aeria Gloris was a hammer of witches.

'Impressive,' rumbled Garro. There was little else he could say. He found himself wondering what it would be like to wander the decks of the vessel, at once attracted and repelled by the idea of what secrets the craft must hide.

Sister Amendera bowed again and nodded to her novice. 4

said the girl. 'We are to make space for Luna by day's end, and the warp grows turbulent.'

'Safe journey, sisters,' he offered, unable to tear his gaze from the dark starship.

Kaleb guided the cart across the length of the armoury chamber, taking care to stay to the outer walkway around die edges of the long hall. His mas­ter's bolter lay across the trolley, the weapon's usually flawless finish marred by lines of damage from the engagement on the jorgall world-ship. As Garro's housecarl, it was Kaleb's duty to see the gun to the arming servitors and ensure that the weapon was returned to its full glory as quickly as possible. He intended not to disappoint his captain.

He passed knots of Deadi Guard as they debriefed and disarmed, men from Temeter's company in ani­mated conversation about a diorny moment during the boarding of a xenos destroyer, and Astartes of Typhon's First in bellicose humour. Across the cham­ber he spied Hakur talking with Decius, as the younger man relayed a moment from the battle with an enthu­siasm mat die dour veteran clearly did not share.

The men of the XIV Legion were not given to rau­cous celebration in their victories – such displays, Kaleb had heard it said, were more in the character of the Space Wolves or the World Eaters – but they did, in their own fashion, salute their successes and give honour to those who fell along the way.

The Death Guard cultivated an image that other Legions were only too quick to accept: that they were brutal, ruthless and hard-hearted, but the reality had more shades to it than that. That these Astartes rarely made sport of their warfare was true, but they were not so bleak and stern as some would have believed.

Compared to the stories Kaleb had heard of stoic and dispassionate Legions like the Ultramarines or the Imperial Fists, the Death Guard could almost be con­sidered wilful and disorderly.

Rounding a stanchion, the housecarl's train of thought stalled at the sound of harsh laughter from a figure before him. He hesitated. Commander Grulgor stood in his path, speaking in muted, amused tones to an Astartes from his Second Company. The two men clasped gauntlets in a firm, serious handshake and in spite of the dimness of the ill-lit walkway Kaleb was still able to make out the shape of a disc­shaped brass token held in Grulgor's fingers before he passed it into the other man's grip.

He understood immediately that he had intruded on a private moment, something only Astartes should share, something that a mere serf like him was not to be privy to, but there was nowhere Kaleb could hide, and if he turned around, the clatter of the cart's wheels would reveal him. In spite of himself, he coughed. It was a very small sound, but it brought with it a sudden silence as the commander broke off and noticed the housecarl for the first time.

Kaleb was looking directly at the decking, and did not see the expression of complete contempt Grulgor turned upon him

'Garro's little helot/ said the commander. 'Are you listening where you should not?' He took a step towards the housecarl and against his will, Kaleb shrank back. Grulgor's voice took on the tone of a teacher lecturing a student, making a lesson of him. 'Do you know what this is, Brother Mokyr?'

The other Astartes examined Kaleb coldly. 'It's not a servitor, commander, not enough steel and pistons for that. It resembles a man.'

Grulgor shook his head. 'No, not a man, but a housecarl! The emphasis he put on the title was scorn­ful. 'A sad bit of trivia, a dusty practice from the ancient days' The commander spread his hands. 'Look on, Mokyr. Look at a failure.'

Kaleb found his voice. 'Lord, if it pleases you, I have duties to perform-'

He was ignored. 'Before our primarch brought new, strong blood to our Legion, there were many rituals and habits that knotted around the Astartes. Most have been cut away' Grulgor's face soured. 'Some still remain, thanks to the dogged adherence of men who should know better.'

Mokyr nodded. 'Captain Garro.'

'Yes, Garro.' Grulgor was dismissive. 'He allows sen­timent to cloud his judgement. Oh, he's a fine warrior, I will give him that, but our brother, Nathaniel, is old in his ways, too bound by his Terran roots' The Astartes leaned closer to Kaleb, his voice dropping. 'Or, am I incorrect in my judgement? Per­haps Garro keeps you around him, not out of some misplaced sense of tradition, but as a reminder? A liv­ing example of what it means to fail the Legion?'

'Please,' said the serf, his knuckles white around the handles of the cart.

'I do not understand,' said Mokyr, genuinely con­founded. 'How is this helot a failure?'

'Ah,' Grulgor said, looking away, but for a turn of fate, this wastrel might have walked among the Legiones Astartes. He could have stood where you do now, brother, wearing the white, bearing arms for the Imperium. Our friend here was once an aspirant to the XIV Legion, as were we all. Only he fell short of greatness during the trials of acceptance, damned by his own weakness.' The commander tapped his chin thoughtfully.

Tell me, serf, where did your will break? Crossing the black plains? Was it in the tunnel of the venoms?'

Kaleb's voice was a whisper. The thorn garden, lord.' The hateful old memory emerged, fresh and undimmed despite the span of years since the event. The housecarl winced as he recalled the stabbing, poi­sonous barbs on his bare skin, his blood running in streaks all across his body. He remembered the pain and worse, the shame as his legs turned to water beneath him. He remembered falling into the thick, drab mud, lying there, weeping, knowing that he had lost forever the chance to become a Death Guard.

The thorn garden, of course.' Grulgor tapped his fingers on his vambrace. 'So many have bled out their last in that ordeal. You did well to survive that far.'

Mokyr raised an eyebrow. 'Sir, do you mean to say that this… man was an aspirant? But those who fail the trials perish!'

'Most do/ corrected the commander. 'Most of them die of the wounds they suffer or the poisons they can­not resist during the seven days of trial, but there are some few who fail but live on still, and even they will largely choose the Emperor's Peace over a return in dishonour to their clans.' He gave Kaleb a cool stare. 'But not all. Some lack the strength of will even for that honour.' Grulgor looked back at Mokyr and sniffed archly. 'Some Legions make use of their throwbacks, but it is not the Death Guard way. Still, Garro chose to invoke an aged right, to save this wretch from the pit of his own inadequacy. He res­cued him.' Grulgor snorted. 'How noble.'

Kaleb found a spark of defiance. 'It is my privilege to serve,' he said.

'Is it?' growled the Astartes. "You dare to parade your own deficiencies around us, the chosen men of

Mortarion? You are an insult. You ape us, hang upon the tails of our cloaks while we fight for the future of our species, polishing guns and pretending you are worthy to be in our company?' He pressed Kaleb's cart towards the wall. You skulk in the shadows. You are Garro's petty spy. You are nothing]' Grulgor's annoyance flared in his eyes. 'If I were captain of the First, the pointless ritual that granted your existence would be ended in a second.'

'So, then,' said another voice, 'is the commander of the Second dissatisfied with his honoured role?'

'Apothecary Voyen.' Grulgor greeted the new arrival with a wary nod. 'Sadly there are many things that I find myself dissatisfied with.' He stepped away from the trembling housecarl.

'Life is always a challenge in that regard,' Voyen said with forced lightness, throwing Kaleb a sideways look.

'Indeed/ said the commander. 'Is there something you wanted, brother?'

'Only an explanation as to why you saw fit to way­lay my captain's equerry during the course of his duties. The battle-captain will be returning shortly and he will wish to know why his orders have not been carried out.'

Kaleb clearly saw a nerve twitch in Grulgor's jaw in reaction to the temerity of Voyen's reply, and for a moment he expected the senior Astartes to bark out an angry retort to the junior Apothecary, but then the instant was gone as some moment of understanding he was not a party to passed between them.

With exaggerated care, Grulgor stepped out of Kaleb's path. The helot may go about his business/ he said, and with that, the commander dismissed them both and strode away with Mokyr at his side.

Kaleb watched them go and once again saw the glitter of the strange brass token as the Astartes tucked the coin-like object into an ammunition pouch on his belt.

He sucked in a shaky breath and bowed to Voyen. Thank you, lord. I must confess, I do not understand why the commander detests me so.'

Voyen walked with him as the housecarl continued on his way. 'Ignatius Gralgor hates everything with equal measure, Kaleb. You shouldn't take it person­ally.'

'And yet, the things he says… sometimes those thoughts are mine as well.'

'Really? Answer me this, then. Do you think that Captain Garro, the leader of the Seventh Great Com­pany, considers you an insult? Would a man of honour like him even contemplate such a thing?'

Kaleb shook his head.

Voyen placed his huge hand on the housecarl's shoulder. 'You will never be one of us, that is true, but you still serve the Legion despite that.'

'But Grulgor was right,' Kaleb mumbled. At times, I am a spy. I go about the ship, invisible in plain sight, and I see and hear. I keep my lord captain conversant with the mood of the Legion.'

The Apothecary's expression remained neutral. A good commander should always be well informed. This is not plotting and scheming of which we speak. It is merely the report of talk and temper. You should feel no conflict in this.'

They arrived at the arsenal dais where the arma­ment-servitors were waiting, and the housecarl presented them with the captain's bolter. Kaleb felt a churn of tension coming loose inside him, the need to speak pressing on his lips. Voyen seemed to sense

it too, and guided him to an isolated corner near a viewport.

'It is more than that. I have seen things' Kaleb's words were hushed and secretive. 'Sometimes in quarters of the ships, where the crewmen do not often venture. Hooded gatherings, lord. Clandestine meetings of what can only be your battle-brothers'

Voyen was very still. You speak of the lodges, yes?'

Kaleb was taken aback to hear the Apothecary talk openly to him of such things. The quiet orders of men inside the Legiones Astartes were not something that was common knowledge to the outside world, and certainly they were things that a man such as Kaleb should not have been aware of. 'I have heard that name whispered.' The housecarl rubbed his hands together. The palms were sweaty. Something in the back of his mind urged him to say no more, but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to get the words out, to be free of them. 'Just now, I saw the comman­der give a medallion to Brother Mokyr. I have seen one before, among the personal effects of the late Sergeant Raphim after his death at the Carinea Moons' Kaleb licked his lips. A brass disc embossed with the skull and star of our Legion, lord.'

'And what do you think it is?'

A badge, sir? A token of membership for these sur­reptitious groupings?'

The Astartes gave him a level, unmoving stare. You are afraid that these meetings might threaten the Death Guard's unity, is that it? That sedition may be at their core?'

'How could they not?' hissed Kaleb. 'Secrecy is the enemy of truth. Truth is what the Emperor and his warriors stand for! If men must gather in shadows-' He broke off, blinking.

Voyen managed a small smile. 'Kaleb, you respect Captain Garro. We all comprehend the might of our primarch. Do you think such great men would stand idly by and let subversion take root in their midst?' The Apothecary put his hand on the housecarl's shoulder again and Kaleb felt the smallest amount of pressure there. He became aware of the mass and strength of the warrior's ceramite glove, enveloping his flesh and bone. 'What you have seen in sideways glances and overheard rumours is nothing that should concern you, and it is certainly not a matter with which to distract the battle-captain. Trust me when I tell you this.'

'But…' Kaleb said, his throat becoming dry, 'but how can you know that?'

The smile faded from Voyen's lips. 'I can't say'

In his informal robes, Nathaniel Garro still cut an impressive figure, even among his own men who had yet to divest themselves of their battle armour. At the far end of the wide armoury chamber, in the section of the long iron hall that was the province of the Sev­enth Company, he moved through the Astartes and spoke with each one, sharing a nod or a grin with those in good humour, sparing a solemn commisera­tion for those who had lost a close comrade in the engagement with the jorgall. He singled out Decius for mild chastisement where the younger Astartes sat at work on his power fist, cleaning the oversized gauntlet with a thick cloth.

'Our tactical approach at the bottle-world was not meant to be one of close combat, Solun/ he noted, 'you carry a bolter for good reason.'

'If it pleases my captain, I have heard this lecture already today from Brother Sendek. He informed me,

at great length and in intricate detail, of exactly how I had failed to adhere to the rules of engagement.'

'I see.' Garro took a seat on the bench next to Decius. And what was your response?'

The young warrior smiled. 'I told him that we were both still alive, rules or no, and that victory is the only true measure of success.'

'Indeed?'

'Of course!' Decius worked at the power fist with great care. 'What matters in war above all other things is the final result. If there is no victory…' He broke off, finding his words. 'Then there is no point.'

From nearby, Andus Hakur rubbed a hand over his stubbly grey chin. 'Such tactical genius from the mouth of a whelp. I fear I may become giddy with surprise.'

Decius's eyes flashed at the old veteran's jibe, but Garro caught the moment and laughed softly, defus­ing it. 'You must forgive Andus, Solun. At his age, his sharp tongue is the only blade he can wield with skill any more.'

Hakur clutched at his chest in mock pain. 'Oh. An arrow to my heart, from my own captain. Such tragedy'

Garro maintained an even smile, but in truth he could detect the weariness, the pain in his old friend's forced jocularity. Hakur had lost men from his squad on the world-ship, and the pain of it was just below the surface. 'We all fought well this day,' said the cap­tain, the words coming of their own accord. 'Once more the Death Guard have been the tools that carve the Emperor's will into the galaxy.'

None of the other Astartes spoke. Each of them had fallen silent, faces turned over Garro's shoulder. As he cast around to learn why, as one, the men of the Sev­enth Company came to their knees.

'My battle-captain.'

It perturbed Garro to realise that he had not even heard the approach of his primarch. As in the assem­bly hall before the assault, Mortarion made issue of his presence only when it suited him to do so.

Garro bowed low to the master of the Death Guard, dimly aware of Typhon at his lord's side, and a servi­tor lurking behind the first captain's cloak.

'My lord,' he replied.

Mortarion's face shifted in a cool smile, visible even behind the breath collar around his throat and lips. The Sisterhood has taken leave of us. They spoke highly of the Seventh.'

Garro dared to raise his gaze a little. Like him, the primarch was no longer clad in his brass and steel power armour, but instead in common duty robes over a set of more utilitarian gear. Still, even in such simple garb, there was no mistaking his presence. High and gaunt, a man spun from whipcord steel muscle, he was as tall in his deck boots as Typhon was in the First Company's Terminator armour.

And of course, there was the manreaper. Sheathed across his back, the arc of the heavy black blade curved behind his head in a lightless sweep. 'Stand, Nathaniel, please. It becomes tiresome to look down upon my men.'

Garro drew himself up to his full height, looking into the primarch's deep amber eyes and steeling himself not to draw back. In turn, Mortarion's gaze burned deep into him, and the captain felt as if his heart were held in the primarch's long, slender fin­gers, being weighed and considered.

'You ought to watch your step, Typhon/ said the Death Lord. This one, he'll have your job one day'

Typhon, ever sullen, only grimaced. Before the first captain, the primarch, and at the edges of his sight,

the twin guards of the Deathshroud, Garro felt as if he was at the bottom of a well. The nerve of a com­mon man would probably have broken beneath such scrutiny.

'Lord,' he asked, 'what service may the Seventh Company do for you?'

Mortarion beckoned him. 'Their captain may step forward, Garro. He has earned a reward.'

Nathaniel did as he was told, darting a quick look towards Hakur. His words at the lakeside echoed in his mind. We don't seek accolades and honours. Garro had no doubt that the veteran was keenly amused by this turn of events. 'Sir,' he began, 'I deserve no special-'

That is not a refusal forming upon your lips, is it, captain?' warned Typhon. 'Such false modesty is unwelcome.'

'I am merely a servant of the Emperor/ Garro man­aged. That is honour enough.'

Mortarion gestured the servitor forward, and the captain saw that it carried a tray of goblets and bowls. Then instead, Nathaniel, might you honour me by sharing my drink?'

He stiffened, recognising the ornate cups and the liquid in them. 'Of… of course, lord.'

It was said that there was no toxin too strong, no poison so powerful and no contagion of such lethal­ity that a Death Guard could not resist it. From their inception, the XIV Legion had always been the Emperor's warriors in the most hostile of environ­ments, fighting through chem-clouds or acidic atmospheres that no normal human could survive in. Barbarus, the Legion's base, the adoptive home planet of Mortarion himself, moulded this characteristic. As with their primarch, so with his Astartes: the Death Guard were a resilient, invincible breed.

They hardened themselves through stringent train­ing regimens as neophyte Astartes, willingly exposing themselves to,chemical agents, contaminants, mortal viral strains and venoms of a thousand different shades. They could resist them all. It was how they had found victory amid the blight-fungus of Urssa, how they had weathered the hornet swarms on Ogre IV, the reason why they had been sent to fight the chlorine-breathing jorgall.

The servitor deftly mixed and poured dark liquids into the cups, and Garro's nostrils sensed the odour of chemicals: a distillate of the agent magenta nerve bane, some variety of sword beetle venom, and other, less identifiable compounds. No Astartes in Mortar-ion's service would ever have dared to call this practice a ritual. The word conjured up thoughts of primitive idolatry, anathema to the clean, impious logic of Imperial truth. This was simply their way, a Death Guard tradition that survived despite the intentions of men like Ignatius Grulgor. The cups were Mortarion's, and in each battle where the Death Lord took the field in person, he would select a war­rior in the aftermath and share with that man a draught of poison. They would drink and they would live, cementing the unbreakable strength of the Legion they embodied.

The servitor presented the tray to the primarch and he took a cup for himself, then handed one to Garro and a third to Typhon. Mortarion raised his goblet in salute. Against death.' With a smooth tip of his wrist, the primarch drained the cup to its dregs. Typhon showed a feral half-smile and did the same, complet­ing the toast and drinking deep.

Garro saw a flush of crimson on the first captain's face, but Typhon gave no other outward sign of

distress. He sniffed at the liquid before him and his senses resisted, his implanted neuroglottis and preomnor organs rebelling at the mere smell of the poisonous brew; but to refuse the cup would be seen as weakness, and Nathaniel Garro would never allow himself to be accused of such a thing.

Against death/ he said.

With a steady motion, the captain drank it all and placed the upturned goblet back on the tray. A ripple of approval drifted through the men of the Seventh Company, but Garro barely heard it. His blood was rumbling in his ears as punishing heat seared his throat and gullet, the powerful engines of his Astartes physiology racing to fight down the toxins he had ingested. Decius was watching him in awe, without doubt dreaming of a day when it might be his hand, not Garro's, holding the goblet.

Mortarion's chill smile grew wider. 'A rare and fine vintage, would you not agree?'

His chest on fire, Garro couldn't speak, so he nod­ded. The primarch laughed in a low chug of amusement. Mortarion's cup could have contained water for all the apparent effect it had upon him. He placed his hand on the battle-captain's back. 'Come, Nathaniel. Let's walk it off.'

As they came to the ramp that led to the balcony above the grand armoury chamber, Typhon bowed to his liege lord and made his excuses, walking away towards the alcoves where Commander Grulgor and the Second Company made their station. Garro cast back to see the Deathshroud following them in lockstep, moving with such flawless precision that they appeared to be automata and not actually men.

'Don't worry, Nathaniel/ said Mortarion, 'I have no plans to replace my guardians just yet. I am not about to recruit you into the secret dead.'

'As you wish, lord,' Garro replied, getting the use of his throat back.

'I know you frown on such things as the cups, but you must understand that honours and citations are sometimes necessary.' He nodded to himself. "War­riors must know that they are valued. Praise… praise from one's peers must be given when the moment is right. Without it, even the most steadfast man will eventually feel unvalued.' There was an edge of melancholy that flickered through the primarch's voice so quickly that Garro decided he had imagined it.

Mortarion brought them to the edge of the balcony and they looked down at the large assemblage of men. Although Endurance was not large enough to hold the entire Legion, many of the Death Guard's seven companies were represented below, in whole or in part. Garro caught sight of Ullis Temeter and his comrade threw him a salute. Garro nodded back.

'You are a respected man, Nathaniel/ said the pri-march. 'There's not a captain in the whole of the Legion who would not acknowledge your combat prowess.' He smiled slightly again. 'Even Commander Grulgor, although he may hate to admit it.'

'Thank you, lord.'

And the men. The men trust you. They look to you for strength of character, for leadership, and you give it.'

'I do only what the Emperor commands of me, sir.' Garro shifted uncomfortably. As honoured as he was to have a private moment with his master, it troubled him in equal measure. This was not the direct, clear

arena of warfare where Garro understood what was expected of him. He was in rarefied air here, loitering with a son of the Emperor himself.

If Mortarion sensed this, he gave no sign. 'It is important to me to have unity of purpose within my Legion. Just as it is important for my brother, Horus, to have unity across the entirety of the Astartes.'

The Warmaster/ breathed Garro. There had been rumours aboard the Endurance for some time that ele­ments of the Death Guard's flotilla would be sent on a new task after the jorgall interception. At the fore­front of this talk was the possibility that they would join the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Cru­sade, commanded by none other than the chosen son of the Emperor himself, Horus the Warmaster. It was clearly more than rumour, he now realised. Garro had fought side by side with the warriors of Horus's XVI Legion in the past, and had only admiration for men like Maloghurst, Garviel Loken and Tarik Tor-gaddon. 'I have served with the Luna Wolves in the past, lord/

They are the Sons of Horus now/ Mortarion cor­rected gently, 'just as the Death Guard were once the Dusk Raiders. My brother expects great things of our Legion, captain. A battle is coming that will test all of us, from the Warmaster to your lowly housecarl.'

'I will be ready'

The primarch nodded. 'I have no doubt of that, but it is not enough to be ready, Nathaniel.' His fingers knitted together over the iron balustrade. 'The Death Guard must be of one mind. We must have singular purpose or we will falter.'

Garro's discomfort deepened and he wondered if the after-effects of the cup's contents were not still upon him. 'I… I am not sure I understand you, lord.'

'Our men find solace in the lines of command with their superiors and inferiors, but it is important that they also have a place in which the barriers created by rank can be ignored. They must have freedom to speak and think unfettered.'

All at once, the insight Garro had been lacking came to him in a cold rush. 'My lord refers to the lodges'

'I have been told that you have always eschewed membership. Why, Nathaniel?'

Garro stared at the deck plates. 'Am I being ordered to join, lord?'

'I can no more command the workings of the lodge than I can the motion of the stars,' Mortarion said eas­ily. 'No, captain, I do not order you. I only ask why. Illuminate me.'

It was a long moment before he spoke again. 'We are Astartes, sir, set on our path by the Master of Mankind, tasked to regather the lost fragments of humanity to the fold of the Imperium, to illuminate the lost, casti­gate the fallen and the invader. We can only do so if we have truth on our side. If we do it in the open, under the harsh light of the universe, then I have no doubt that we will eventually expunge the fallacies of gods and deities… but we cannot bring the secular truth to bear if any of it is hidden, even the smallest part. Only the Emperor can show the way forward.' He took a shuddering breath, intently aware of the primarch's unblinking stare upon him. 'These lodges, though they have their worth, are predicated on the act of conceal­ment, and I will have no part of that.'

Mortarion accepted this with a careful nod. 'What of your battle-brothers who feel differently?'

'That is their choice, lord. I have no right to make it for them.'

The primarch drew himself up once more. 'Thank you for your candour, battle-captain. I expected noth­ing less –' He paused. 'I have one more request of you, Nathaniel, and this, I'm afraid, is indeed an order.'

'Sir?' Garro felt an odd flutter in his chest.

'Once we are done here, this fleet will make space for the Isstvan system to rendezvous with the War-master's command ship, the Vengeful Spirit. Horns will be holding a war council with representatives of the World Eaters and the Emperor's Children, and I will have need of an equerry to join me there. First Captain Typhon will be engaged in other duties, so I have chosen you to accompany my party.'

Garro was speechless. To extend such a privilege to a battle-captain was unprecedented, and the thought of it made his chest tighten. To stand in Mortarion's presence was heady enough, but to be close at hand before an assembly of the Emperor's sons led by the Warmaster…

It would be glorious.

FOUR

Two Faces

A Scream in the Darkness

Gathering of Legends

The pict screen was a flexible thing, like cloth, and it hung from the eaves of the armoury chamber alcove in the manner of a tapestry. Cables trailed away to shining brass sockets in the walls, streams of data feeding images from the ship-to-ship vox network. The view was a live signal, attenuated by interference from the Horologii star, and although it appeared to be instantaneous, it was actually a few minutes behind the real events, the transmission slowed by relativistic physics, not that such a fact seemed to con­cern the Astartes gathered to watch.

The display came from remote scrying picters on the bow plane of Barbarus's Sting, a light frigate that had been tasked to follow the jorgall world-ship on its last journey. The images were being recorded for posterity. The better views would doubtless be worked into stirring newsreels for distribution across Imperial space.

The world ship's drives flashed red and tongues of fusion flame erupted from their nozzles, each one as long as the Sting. At the edges of the picture, it was possible to see the glints of smaller craft – shuttles and Thunderhawks – escaping the world-ship with the last of the Imperial forces on board. The picters rotated to follow the monolithic craft and smoked fil­ters faded in as the Iotan sun hove into view.

The world-ship was accelerating away, gaining speed with every passing moment. The controls for the propulsion system captured by the Death Guard of the Second Company had been locked open by the adepts of the Mechanicum. Barbarus's Sting kept a respectful distance, drifting after the bottle-world, framing its descent towards the sun. Great loops of crackling electromagnetic energy shimmered around the pearlescent cylinder as it cut into the star's invisi­ble chromosphere, destroying the solar panels at the aft. They crisped and burned, folding in on them­selves like insect wings touched by candle flames. The world-ship fell faster and faster, dipping into the rag­ing superheated plasma of the photospheric layer. Hull metal peeled away in curls a kilometre long, revealing ribs of metal that melted and ran. Finally, the alien vessel sank through a glowing coronal prominence and disappeared forever into the stellar furnace.

'Gone/ murmured Brother Mokyr, 'ashes and dust, as are all the enemies of the Death Guard. A fitting end for such xenos hubris.' A swell of self-congratulatory mood passed through the assembled men of the Second Company.

It was they who had made the sun dive possible, after spending their blood and fire to take the heavily defended engineering domes from the jorgall. It was

fitting that they were witnesses to the alien vessel's final moments.

'I wonder how many survivors were aboard,' said a sergeant, watching the star's rippling surface.

Mokyr grunted. 'None.' He turned and grinned at his company captain. A fine victory, eh, commander?'

A fine victory,' repeated Grulgor in a rancorous tone, 'but not fine enough.' He shot a hard look up at the gallery, where Garro stood in conversation with his primarch.

'Curb your choler, Ignatius. For once, try not to wear it like a badge upon your chest.' Typhon drew near, the rank-and-file Astartes parting before his approach.

'Forgive me, first captain/ Grulgor retorted, 'it is just that my choler, as you put it, is apt to suffer when I am forced to witness the unworthy rewarded.'

Typhon raised an eyebrow. 'You are questioning the primarch's decisions? Careful, commander, there is sedition in such thoughts/

He drew close to the other man so that their con­versation would be less public.

'Garro rescues women and kills newborns, and for that he is given a draught from the cup? Have the standards of the Legion fallen so low that we reward such behaviour?'

The first captain ignored the question and answered with one of his own. 'Tell me, why do you object to Nathaniel Garro with such vehemence? He is a Death Guard, is he not? He is your battle-brother, a kinsman Astartes.'

'Straight-arrow Garro!' Anger bubbled up through Grulgor's mocking reply. 'He's not fit to be a Death Guard! He is high-handed and superior, always look­ing down his nose! He thinks himself so much better

than the rest of the Legion, too proud and too good for the rest of us!'

'Us?' asked Typhon, pushing the commander to say what he knew was there just beneath the surface.

'The sons of Barbarus, Calas. You and I, men like Ujioj and Holgoarg! The Death Guard who were born upon our blighted home world! Garro is a Terran, an Earthborn. He wears it like some sacred brand, always reminding us that he is our better because he fought for the Legion before it was given to Mortarion!' Grulgor shook his head. 'He pours scorn on my com­pany, upon our brotherhood and comradeship of our lodge, too haughty to mix with the rest of us outside of rank and rule, and do you know why? Because his precious birthright is all he has! If he wasn't favoured by the Emperor with that damned eagle cuirass he wears, he wouldn't be allowed to ride the hem of my cloak!'

'Temeter is a Terran-born, and so is Huron-Fal, and Sorrak and countless others within our ranks,' said the captain levelly 'Do you detest them as well, Ignatius?'

'None of them drag the old ways around like rat­tling chains. None of them think themselves a cut above the rest because of their birthplace!' His eyes narrowed. 'Garro acts as if he has the right to judge me. I will not tolerate such condescension from a man who grew up watered and well-fed, while my clan fought for every breath of clean air!'

'But is not Mortarion himself a Terran?' Typhon asked with a wicked smile, daring Grulgor to go fur­ther still.

'The primarch's place of birth was Barbarus/ insisted the commander, rising to the bait. 'He is, and always will be, one of us. This Legion belongs to the Death Lord first and the Emperor second. Garro

should be reminded of that, not given praise he does not deserve.'

'Bold words,' noted Typhon, 'but I'm afraid you may be further disappointed. Our lord commander has not only granted Captain Garro the cups today, but will also take him as equerry to the war council at our next port of call.'

Grulgor's pale face flushed crimson. 'Did you come to mock, Typhon? Does it amuse you to parade Garro's favours in front of me?'

The line of Typhon's jaw hardened. "Watch your tone, commander. Remember to whom you speak.' He looked away. 'You are a true Death Guard, Grul­gor, a blunt instrument, lethal and relentless, and you are loyal to the primarch.'

'Never question that/ growled the Astartes, 'or I will take your head, first captain or not.'

The threat amused the other man. 'I would never dare to do such a thing, but I would ask you this –how far would your loyalty to Mortarion take you?'

To the gates of hell and beyond, if he commanded it.' Grulgor's reply was immediate and absolute.

Typhon watched him carefully. 'Even if it was against the will of a higher authority?'

'Like the Sigillite?' snapped Grulgor, 'or those wastrels filling the Council of Terra?'

'Or higher still/

The commander snorted with bitter laughter. The Death Lord first, the Emperor second. I said it and I meant it. If that makes me of lesser worth than men like Garro, then perhaps I am.'

'On the contrary/ nodded Typhon, 'it makes you all the more valuable. There are great powers soon to bloom, Ignatius, and men of your calibre will be needed when those moments come.'

He threw a dismissive glance up at the gallery. 'And what about him?'

Typhon shrugged, a peculiar gesture in the heavy plate of his armour. 'Nathaniel Garro is a good sol­dier and a leader of men, with the respect of many Astartes in this and other Legions. To have him at the primarch's side – as you say, a man so staunch a Ter-ran – when a time of decision came to pass… that would carry much weight.'

Gralgor sneered. 'Garro has a steel rod up his back­side. He would break before he would bend his knee to anything but the rule of Terra.'

'All the more reason for the primarch to keep a close eye on him.' Typhon's gruff voice became a rough whisper. 'I, however, see the reality in your viewpoint, Ignatius, and when the moment of choice comes and Garro does not fall in to line-'

'You might require the services of a blunt instru­ment, yes?'

A nod. 'Just so.'

The commander showed his teeth in a feral smile. Thank you, first captain,' he said, in a louder voice. 'Your counsel has been most soothing to my ill-humour.'

Endurance tore itself from the mad fury of the warp and crashed into corporeal reality once more, leading the Death Guard flotilla into the wide-open diamond formation of the 63rd Expedition fleet. Garro, once again in his full battle armour and honour kit, stood behind and off to the side of his primarch as Mortar-ion observed the Warmaster's forces from the assembly hall. Flanked by the Deathshroud, Garro's commander stood with one hand pressed to the thick armourglass window that formed the right eye socket of the giant stone skull on the ship's bow.

'My brother seeks to impress us,' Mortarion said to the air. The Sons of Horns have indeed assembled a mighty force in this place.'

Garro had to admit that he had rarely seen the like, not since the days when the Emperor himself led the Great Crusade. The darkness was thick with ships of every type and tonnage, and the space between them swarmed with auxiliary craft, shuttles and fighters on perimeter patrols. The arrowhead arrangement of the green and grey liveried Death Guard ships slipped carefully into a pattern cleared for just that purpose. To the far starboard, across the bow of Typhon's flag­ship, the Terminus Est, he spied the ornate purple and gold filigree of a cruiser from the III Legion, the Emperor's Children, and high above at a different anchor, blue and red trimmed craft from the XII Legion, the World Eaters.

But what caught his attention and held it firmly was the single great battleship that orbited ahead of them all, isolated in its own halo of open space and screened by a wall of sleek Raven-class interceptors. A heavy ingot of fashioned iron, the Warmaster's Venge­ful Spirit radiated quiet power. Even from this distance, Garro could see hundreds of gun turrets and the slender rods of massive accelerator cannons that were twice the length of the Endurance. Where the Death Guard ship displayed a skull and star sigil, Horus's flagship had a massive golden ring bisected by a slim ellipse. The eye of the Warmaster himself, unblinking and open to see all that transpired. Soon, Garro was to set foot aboard that vessel, carrying the honour of his company with him.

Repeater lights set into a control panel beneath the windows clicked and changed, signalling that the Endurance had come to her station. Garro looked up at

his primarch. 'My lord, a Stormbird has been prepared in die launch bay for your egress. We are ready to answer die Warmaster's summons at your discretion.'

Mortarion nodded and remained where he was, observing silently.

After a moment, Garro felt compelled to speak again. 'Lord, are we not ordered to attend the War-master the moment we arrive?'

The primarch grinned in a flash of rictus. 'Ah, cap­tain, we move from the battlefield to the arena of politics. It would be impolite of us to arrive too soon. We are the XIV Legion, and so we must respect the numbering of our brethren. The Emperor's Children and the World Eaters must be allowed to arrive first, or else I would earn the ire of my brothers'

'We are Death Guard/ Garro blurted. 'We are second to none!'

Mortarion's smile widened. 'Of course,' he agreed, 'but you must understand that it is sometimes tactful to let our comrades think that is not so.'

'I… I do not see the merit in it, lord/ Garro admit­ted.

The primarch turned away from the viewport. 'Then watch and learn, Nathaniel.'

In the confines of the Stormbird's spartan crew com­partment, Garro once again felt dwarfed by his commander. Mortarion sat across the gangway from him, hunched forward so that his head was only a hand's span from the battle-captain's. The Death Lord spoke in a fatherly tone. Garro listened intently, absorbing every word as the small ship crossed the void between the Endurance and the Vengeful Spirit.

'Our role at this war council is an important one/ Mortarion said. 'The data you hold in your hand is

the lit taper for the inferno that is about to engulf the Isstvan system.' At this, Garro opened his palm and studied the thick spool of memory-wire there. We bear the responsibility of bringing the news of this perfidy to the Warmaster's ears, as it was our battle-brothers who came across the warning that Isstvan has turned from the Emperor.'

Garro examined the coil. It was so innocuous an object to contain so volatile a potential. The little device hardly seemed capable of representing the death warrant of entire worlds. Before they had departed the Endurance, the primarch had shown Nathaniel the pict record contained on the spool, and the images left him with a chill that he found difficult to shake off.

He saw it again, the recall fresh and close to the sur­face. Garro had watched the terrified face of a woman loom in the assembly hall's hololithic tank, a shape of haze and shade like some mythical spirit bent on haunting the living. She was a minor officer of the army, a major. At least, she was somebody wearing the uniform of one. Garro saw glimpses of a stone stockade's walls among the jumping shadows, the dance of orange light from a chemical candle. Perspi­ration made her sallow face gleam, and the slender tongue of flame reflected from her anxious green eyes. When she spoke, it was with the voice of a person broken by horrors that no mortal should ever have lived to witness.

'It's revolution/ she began, pushing the words from her lips like a desperate curse. She rambled on, speak­ing of'rejection' and of'superstition', of things a line soldier like her had never believed could be real. 'Praal has gone mad/ she growled, 'and the Warsingers are with him.'

Garro's brow furrowed at the names and his master halted the replay, providing an explanation. The noble Baron Vardus Praal is the Emperor's Designate Imperi-alis on the capital world of the system, Isstvan III.'

'He… She means to say the governor of an entire world broke with the rale of Terra to throw in with some pagan idolaters?' Nathaniel blinked, the idea unconscionable from a man of such significant rank within the Imperium. 'Why? What madness could compel such a thing?'

'That is what my brother, Horas, will have us learn,' intoned the primarch.

The Astartes studied the woman's face, blurred in mid-motion as she turned to look at something out of view of her picter's lens. 'The other word, "Warsinger", my lord, I am unfamiliar with it' He wondered if it were some kind of colloquial name, perhaps some sort of honorific.

'They were a local myth, according to the records of the 27th Expedition that enforced compliance here over a decade ago, a cadre of fantastical shaman war­riors. Nothing but anecdotal evidence of their existence was ever found.' Garro's master was circum­spect, and he tapped the hololith controls with a slender finger, letting the recording ran on.

With abrupt violence, the woman drew a heavy stub pistol, and shot and killed something indistinct at the margins of the image pick-up. She hove back into view, filling the screen, her unchained panic leaching out through the hologram. 'Send someone, anyone/ she pleaded. 'Just make this stop-'

Then there was the scream.

The sheer wrongness of the noise, the utterly alien nature of it made Garro's gut knot, and his fingers tightened reflexively around a bolter trigger that was

not there. The impact of the sound beat the woman down and shredded the picter's image control, shift­ing the replay into a stuttering series of blink fast flash frames. Nathaniel saw blood, stone, torn skin, and then silent darkness.

'No word from the Isstvan system followed this/ said Mortarion quietly, allowing Garro to measure and understand what he had just viewed. 'No vox transmissions, no picter relays, no astropathic broad­casts'

The battle-captain gave a stiff nod. The scream had cut though him like a knife-edge, the echo of it a weapon turning to pierce his heart. Garro shook off the eerie sensation and turned back to his liege lord. Mortarion explained that by pure chance, the distress signal had been picked up by the crew of the Valley of Haloes, a supply hauler in service to the XIV Legion. Suffering a dangerous Geller Field fluctuation while in transit to the Death Guard's Sixth Company flotilla at Arcturan, the Valley had emerged from the imma-terium to effect emergency repairs.

There, as the ship drifted in space at the edge of the Isstvanian ecliptic plane, the desperate message had found purchase. Data addressing the rate of energy decay, pattern attenuation and the like were scruti­nised by tech-adepts, revealing that the transmission had been flung into the ether more than two years previously. Garro considered the frightened officer he had seen on the hololith and wondered about her fate. Her last, awful moments of life were frozen and preserved forever while her bones lay out there some­where, forgotten and decaying.

'Did the crewmen of the Valley detect anything else of import, master?' he asked. 'Perhaps if the men aboard the transport were fully debriefed-'

Mortarion glanced away, then back. 'The Valley of Haloes was a casualty at the Arcturan engagement. It was lost with all hands. Fortunately, this recording of the Isstvan signal was conveyed to the Terminus Est before that regrettable event.' The primarch spoke with a leaden finality on the matter that Garro felt compelled to accept.

The Death Lord placed the spool in the battle-captain's hand. 'Carry this burden for me, Nathaniel. And remember, watch and learn.'

Inside, the Vengeful Spirit was no less impressive than it had been from a distance, the vast open space of the landing bay so wide and long that Garro imag­ined it would be possible to dock a starship the size of a small cutter in here with room to spare. An hon­our guard slammed their fists to attention in the old martial manner, saluting with hand to breast instead of the usual crossed palms of the aquila.

The battle-captain kept pace behind the Deathshroud and Mortarion, while Garro in turn was followed by a contingent of warriors from Typhon's First Company, their lockstep footfalls pulsing like ready thunder as the XIV Legion's contingent marched on to the Warmaster's flagship. Garro could not help but glance around, taking in as much as he could of Horus's vessel, committing everything he saw to memory. He noticed other Stormbirds on landing cradles in the process of refuelling for return flights, one adorned with the snarling fanged mouth of the World Eaters and another trimmed in regal purple with the golden wings of the Emperor's Chil­dren.

'My brother, Fulgrim, has not graced us with his presence/ murmured Mortarion, casually dismissing

the purple Stormbird with thinly veiled sarcasm. 'How like him.' Garro peered closer and saw that the ship did not fly the pennants associated with the car­riage of a primarch. Indeed, he recalled that there had been no sign of the Firebird, Fulgrim's assault ship, among the war fleet.

He found himself wondering if this was some ele­ment of the politics that his master had spoken of before. Garro frowned. He had always fancied that the primarchs were an inviolate fraternity, comrades of such exalted status that they were beyond any petty emotions like rivalry or contention, but suddenly such thoughts seemed naive. Astartes warriors like Garro and Grulgor were raised above normal men, and yet they still disagreed in their manners, more often than Nathaniel would have liked. Would it be surprising then to learn that the primarchs, who stood above the Astartes as much as the Astartes stood above mortal men, were also prey to the same differences?

Perhaps it was a good thing, Garro decided. If the primarchs were elevated too far towards godhood, they might lose sight of the fact that this was the Imperium of Man, and it was for the good of the common people of the galaxy that they served the Emperor.

With a silent member of the Sons of Horns leading their party, the Death Guard contingent moved across the cavernous bay to where a pneu-train carriage awaited to speed Mortarion to the bow decks of the Vengeful Spirit and the Lupercal's Court. Garro let his gaze turn upward, to the maze of skeletal gantries and walkways overhead, some heavy with cranes and weapons pallets, others ringed with catwalks for servi­tors and crewmen. It seemed oddly static up there for

a working starship in preparation for a major combat operation. The battle-captain had expected dozens of figures clustering in the metal galleries to observe the arrival of the primarchs. Even aboard so illustrious a ship as the Warmaster's personal barge, it would have been a rare occurrence for parties from not two, but three other Legions to be aboard at one time. He looked hard, expecting to see men from Horus's Legion watching the proceedings, but saw only a handful, a scattering of deckhands and nothing else. Garro shook his head. Had the circumstances been reversed and the war council been taking place on Endurance, he would warrant that every Astartes on the ship would have come to see. It seemed as if something were missing.

'What troubles you, Nathaniel?' The primarch had halted at the pneu-train and was studying him.

Garro took a breath and the nagging thoughts in his mind abruptly crystallised. 'I had been told, lord, that the 63rd Fleet carried a substantial contingent of remembrancers with it. Considering the import of this day's meeting, it seems strange to me that I see not a single one of them hereabouts to record it.' He cast around with open hands.

Mortarion raised a pale eyebrow. 'Are you con­cerned that your heroic profile will be rendered incorrectly in some poet's doggerel, captain? That your name might be misspelled, or some other indig­nity?'

'No, my lord, but I had expected that they might mark such an uncommon moment as this gathering. Is that not their function?'

The primarch frowned. The Emperor's edict to introduce the army of artists, sculptors, composers, poets, authors and other sundry creatives to the fleets

of the Great Crusade had not met with positive response from his sons, and despite the insistence from Terra that the endeavours of the Astartes were to be documented for posterity there were only a few in the Legions that were willing to tolerate the presence of civilians. Garro himself was largely indifferent to the idea, but he understood in an abstract way the value that future generations of humanity might gain from true accounts of their mission. For his part, the master of the Death Guard had been careful to ensure that the ships of the XIV were always engaged else­where, somewhere beyond the reach of the remembrancer delegations that were part of the larger expeditionary fleets.

Mortarion's character, like that of his Legion, was inward-looking, private and guarded in the face of those he did not regard. The Death Lord considered the remembrancers to be little more than unwanted intruders.

'Garro,' he replied, 'those gangs of ink-fingered scribblers and salon intelligentsia are here, but they do not have the run of the fleet. The Warmaster informed me that there was… an incident in recent days. Some remembrancers lost their lives because they ventured into areas that were unsafe for them. As such, tighter controls have been placed on their movements, for their own safety, of course.'

'I see,' replied the captain. 'For the best, then.'

'Indeed.' Mortarion entered the carriage. After all, what we discuss today will be its own record. There will be no need for scribes or stonecutters to immor­talise it. History will do that for us.'

Garro took one last look around the bay as he ascended the boarding ramp, and from the corner of his eye a swift movement drew his attention. He

glimpsed the figure only for a moment, but his occu-lobe optic implant allowed Nathaniel's brain to process every facet of the moment with pin-sharp clarity. It was an elderly man in the robes of an itera­tor of some senior rank, quite out of place in among the steel stanchions and rail tracks of the landing bay. He was quick and furtive in motion, keeping to the shadowed places, intent on some destination that he seemed fearful of ever reaching. In one of the itera­tor's hands was a fold of paper, perhaps a certificate or a permission of some kind. The old man was puffing with effort, and almost as soon as Garro registered him, he was gone, ducking into a companionway that disappeared within the depths of the warship.

The Death Guard grimaced and boarded the tram, the curious moment adding more definition to the sense of ill-ease he had felt from the moment he had arrived on the Spirit.

What should one think of a place that was named the Lupercal's Court? The title had great vanity to it. It seemed to come with a sneer on the lips of the Sons of Horus, as if the chamber were in some manner a pretender to the grand court of the Emperor on dis­tant Terra. Garro marched in at his rightful place, his chest stiff inside his ornamental cuirass from expec­tant tension. He did not know what to anticipate before him. The battle-captain had seen the Warmas-ter in the flesh only once and that was in passing, as he led the Seventh Company in review by the stands during the great parade after Ullanor.

But there he was, seated on a black throne upon a raised dais, beneath gales of sullen, uncommon ban­ners. There were other people in the room, he was sure of it, but they were dim reflections of light and

colour off the blaze of presence that was Horus. Garro felt a curious twinge in his legs, as if almost by mus­cle memory he felt the urge to kneel.

The Warmaster. He was indeed every iota of that, a perfect sculpture of the Astartes ideal on the stone chair, handsome and potent, radiating chained power. Robes laced with cords of white gold and cop­per pooled around him, cascading over the basalt frame of the throne. He wore armour of a kind Garro had only seen before in artworks, intricately worked plates of emerald-tinted flexsteel with vambraces made of black carbon.

Pieces of Horas's battle gear resembled elements of the older Mark HI Iron Armour and the current Mark IV Maximus type, while some parts were more advanced than anything used by the Death Guard. An exotic pistol that appeared to be fashioned from glass nestled at the Warmaster's hip in the folds of an animal-skin holster. If anything, Horus seemed barely restrained by the bonds of ceramite and metal he wore, as if one mighty flex of his shoulders might split and throw them off.

Even at rest, the Lord of all Legions was a supernova made flesh, ready to detonate into action in an instant. The gleam of the slit-pupil Eye of Horus glared from his chest, catching the brooding glow from drifting glow-globes. With a near-physical effort, Nathaniel tore his gaze away from the being before him and pressed down the churn of emotion he felt. Now was not the time to be awestruck and unfo­cused, addled like some neophyte noviciate. Watch and learn, Mortarion had ordered. Garro would do just that.

His eye line crossed that of another Astartes on the dais in the new green livery of Horus's renamed

Legion, and he nodded in brief greeting to Garviel Loken. Garro had once shared a bunker with Loken and some of his men, during the prosecution of the ork invasion of Krypt. The Death Guard and the Luna Wolves had fought together for a week across the frozen plains, turning the blue ice dark with xenos blood.

Loken gave him a tight smile and the simple gesture served to ease Nathaniel's tension a little. Nearby he saw the other members of Horus's inner circle, the Mournival – the warriors Torgaddon, Aximand and Abbadon – and an odd thought struck him. The body language of the four captains was subtle, but not so understated that Garro could not read it. There were lines of stress drawn here, Loken and Torgaddon on one side, Aximand and Abbadon on the other. He could see it in the way that they did not meet each other's eyes, the lack of the easy camaraderie that Garro had come to think of as a key characteristic of the Warmaster's Legion. Was there some concealed enmity at large within the Sons of Horus? The Astartes filed the information away for later consider­ation.

His primarch had correctly surmised that the lord of the Emperor's Children was not at the gathering. In his stead was a ranking officer whom Garro knew of through first-hand experiences, from crossings in bat­tle that underlined the man's less than complimentary reputation. Lord Commander Eidolon and his troops were clad in wargear so ele­gant it made the Death Guard in their grey and green trim seem utterly featureless in comparison. The Legion had a reputation as dandies, preening over their armour and decorating themselves when other warriors looked to battle, and yet the wicked hammer

carried by Eidolon and the swords of his men spoke to obvious martial skill on their part. Still, Garro could not help but think that the Emperor's Children were overdressed for the occasion.

The other presence in the room was almost as imposing as Horus, and the battle-captain found himself measuring the primarch of the World Eaters against his own liege lord as the two leaders exchanged a neutral look. Where Mortarion was tall and wolf-lean, the primarch Angron was thickset and heavy. The Death Lord's pale aspect was at the far end of the spectrum from the Red Angel's clenched fist of a face, eyes deep-set among an orchard of scars. Angron's mere presence leaked the coiled potential for feral violence into the chamber.

As Mortarion embodied the dogged, silent promise of death, so his brother primarch was the personifica­tion of raw and murderous aggression. The Lord of the World Eaters stood broad and deadly in bronze armour and a heaped cloak of tarnished chainmail that trailed the smell of old blood in the air. A cadre of his chosen men were at his side, led by an Astartes that Garro knew by reputation alone, Kharn, master of the Eighth Company. Unlike Eidolon, who was known for braggadocio, Kharn's name was synony­mous with brutality in battle. There were rumours of slaughters Kharn had caused that even the most ruth­less of the Death Guard found difficult to stomach.

Garro halted as Horus spoke, the voice command­ing his total attention. 'With our brother, Mortarion, we are complete.' The Warmaster stood and once again Garro fought off the urge to kneel. From a shad­owed niche near where Nathaniel stood, a lipless servitor operated a control and the court's lamps dimmed as a hololith bloomed before them. He

recognised Isstvan III from the pict slates he had seen at Mortarion's hands, orbital shots taken by long range imagers, some hazed by the bright shape of the planet's largest satellite, the White Moon. This, then, was the world where the vile seed of Vardus Praal's treachery had taken root.

Horus spoke with keen urgency, each word sound­ing across the chamber as he repeated the details that Mortarion had given to Garro on the Stormbird, describing how years earlier the Primarch Corax and his Raven Guard had left Isstvan in good order to be turned to the Imperial way.

'Are we to assume that the truth didn't take?' Eidolon interrupted, his tone arch and sardonic, and Garro shot him a disdainful look. It seemed the lord commander's poor manners had not improved since last he had seen him. Horus ignored the outspoken Astartes and instead gestured to Mortarion, who took up the thread of the briefing, moving on to the mat­ter of the distress signal. Nathaniel knew his cue and proffered the memory spool to the waiting servitor, which dutifully loaded it into the hololith console.

The message unwound and played to the assembled warriors. Instead of watching the recording again, Garro slowly let his gaze cross over the faces of his brother Astartes, searching for some measure of their reaction to the dead woman's panic and terror. Kharn mirrored his master Angron in his impassive mien, the very faintest twitch of a sneer pulling at the corner of his lips. Eidolon's haughty expression remained in place, apparently dismissive of the dishevelled and unkempt condition of the messenger. Horus was unreadable, his face as calm as that of a statue.

Garro looked away and found the men of the Mournival. Only Torgaddon and Loken seemed

affected, and of them Garviel looked to feel it the most. When the horrific killing scream came, Garro had steeled himself against it but still felt a churn of revulsion. He was watching Loken at that moment and saw the Son of Horus flinch, just as he himself had aboard the Endurance. Garro openly shared his comrade's discomfort. The dark message the distress signal carried was not just a call for help, a cry for the Astartes to leap to the defence of innocents. It was something much deeper, much more sinister than that. The Isstvan recording spoke of duplicity of the most base and foul kind, where men of the Imperium had turned back to the black path of ignorance, and done it willingly.

The mere thought of such a thing made the Death Guard feel sick with revulsion. At Isstvan, it would not be xenos or criminals, or foolish men blind to the Imperial truth that they were to face in combat. This foe had once been their comrades in the Emperor's service. They would be fighting tainted men, turn­coats and deserters: traitors. The disgust churning in him turned hot and became ready anger.

Garro's mind snapped back to the moment, as the Warmaster showed them the Choral City, the seat of government on the third planet of the system and the source of the signal. The attack was to be huge, with elements of all four Legions, platoons of common soldiery and Titan war machines converging on Var­dus Praal's base of operations in the Precentor's Palace. Nathaniel absorbed every detail, committing each element to his memory. The mention of his pri-march's name caught his attention once more.

'Your objective will be to engage the main force of the Choral City's army,' said Horus, directing his words to Mortarion.

The battle-captain could not help but feel a swell of pride when his master spoke up after the supreme commander had laid out his orders. 'I welcome this challenge, Warmaster. This is my Legion's natural bat­tlefield.'

There would be one objective to complete before the assault on the Choral City began, and that was a raid to silence the monitors on Isstvan Extremis, the outermost world of the system and home to the nexus of its sensor web network. Once blinded, the defenders of Isstvan III would only know that retri­bution was on its way. They would not know where or when it would strike.

'Aye,' whispered Garro to himself, staring into the depths of the hololith and the sprawl of urban com­plexity it presented. The Choral City would make a demanding theatre of combat, but it was one that Nathaniel was already eager to explore.

The rest of the order of battle was swiftly laid down. The Emperor's Children and the World Eaters would target the Palace and the Warmaster's own Legion would attack an important religious shrine to the east, a vast cathedral complex called the Sirenhold. The name resonated in his mind and once again Garro turned the strange words over and over in his thoughts,

Sirenhold… Warsinger…

Unbidden, the alien phrases brought back the creeping sense of unease, and a cold foreboding that would not release him.

FIVE

Choices Made

Omens

In Extremis

Over the rumble and clatter of docking gear, Nathaniel heard a voice call his name and turned in place to see an Astartes in shining purple armour throw a salute. Garro hesitated, glancing back to see if he hadn't broken some minor protocol by stepping out of the formation. Beneath the spread wings of the Stormbird launch cradles, he saw his primarch and the master of the World Eaters leaning close together, speaking in a careful and measured fashion. He con­cluded that he had a moment or two before his lord commander would require him.

The warrior of the Emperor's Children was approaching and Garro's eyes narrowed. During the briefing neither Commander Eidolon nor the men of his honour guard had even deigned to acknowledge the battle-captain's presence, yet here was one of them calling out for his attention. He didn't recognise the pennants on the man's armour, but he was sure

that this Astartes hadn't been present in the Lupercal's Court.

'Ho, Death Guard/ said a wry voice from behind the blunt-snouted breath mask of the helmet. 'Are you so slow-witted that you ignore your betters?' The figure reached up and removed his headgear, and Garro felt a warm grin cross his lips for what felt like the first time in days.

'Blood's oath! Saul Tarvitz, aren't you dead yet? I hardly recognised you underneath all that finery.'

The other man gave a slight nod, shoulder-length hair falling across a patrician face marred only by a brass plate across his brow. 'First Captain Tarvitz, I'll have you note, Nathaniel. I've moved up in the world since last we spoke.' The two Astartes clasped each others wrists and their vambraces clattered together. Each had a small eagle carved there by knifepoint, a sign of the battle debt they owed one another.

'So I see.' Garro saw it now, the etching and the filigree on the shoulder plates that designated Tarvitz's new rank. 'You deserve it, brother.'

There were few men outside the Death Guard that Garro would ever have given the distinction of that address, but Tarvitz was one of them. He had earned Nathaniel's amity during the Preaixor Campaign and proven to him that for all the reputation of Fulgrim's Astartes as overconfident peacocks, there were men among the ranks of the Emperor's Children that embodied the ideals of the Imperium. 'I had won­dered if we might cross paths here.'

Tarvitz nodded. 'We'll do more than that, my friend. Our companies are to form part of the spear tip to silence the monitor station.'

'Yes, of course.' Garro was aware that the First Com­pany of the III Legion would be fighting alongside his

Seventh Company, but now that he knew Saul Tarvitz would be there, he felt a greater confidence. 'Eidolon has given you this one, then?'

Tarvitz hid a grin. 'No, he'll be there at my shoulder. He's not one to miss even a sniff of glory. I imagine he will goad me on to ensure the Death Guard don't take the lion's share of the kills.'

Garro's smile turned brittle. 'It cheers me to see you, honour brother,' he said, his emotions suddenly raw, there and then gone.

Tarvitz caught the moment too. 'I know that look, Nathaniel. What's troubling you?'

He shook his head. 'Nothing. It's nothing. I am fatigued, that is all, and perhaps a bit overawed by all… all this.' He gestured around.

The other officer glanced at the primarchs, still intent on their conversation. 'Aye, I share that with you.' He smirked. 'Is it true what they say? That the Warmaster can stop your heart as soon as look at you?'

'He's impressive, of that you can have no doubt/ agreed Garro, 'but then would you expect any less of an Emperor's chosen?' He hesitated. 'I'm surprised you weren't part of the honour guard. Doesn't your rank entitle you to that?'

'Eidolon has favour over me/ Tarvitz replied, 'and he would never share his moment in Horus's spot­light with another officer.'

Garro grunted. 'If he preens about the moment too much, you might ask him to recount how Angron shouted him down for his impudence and the War-master gave his approval to it.'

Tarvitz laughed. 'I doubt that part of the story will ever be told!'

'No.' Garro looked back at Mortarion and saw the Death Lord give a shallow bow to the World Eater. 'I

think we'll be leaving now. Until the battlefield then, Saul?'

'Until the battlefield, Nathaniel.'

'Tell Eidolon we'll try to leave a little glory for him. If he asks us politely.' The battle-captain saluted and followed his master aboard the Stormbird.

'Do you really think you can take him?' asked Rahl, tapping a quizzical finger on his chin.

Decius did not look up. 'This is a battle, like any other, and I intend to win it.'

Rahl glanced at Sendek, who waited, poised and ready. 'He's going to beat you to a standstill.' The Astartes leaned in closer, over the arena of combat. 'Look here, your magister is under threat from his castellan. Your dragonar is pinned by his cannonades, and-'

'If you want a game, you can wait until after I have dispatched Sendek/ snapped Decius. 'Until then, if you must watch, be silent. I need to think.'

'That's why you'll lose,' Rahl retorted.

'Let them play, Pyr,' said Hakur, the veteran pulling Rahl away from the regicide board as ill-temper flared in the younger Astartes's eyes. 'Stop distracting him.'

Rahl allowed the older warrior to draw him back. 'Care to make a bet on the outcome?'

'I'd hate to embarrass you, again.'

He smiled. 'Solun's going to lose, Andus, that's as plain as your face.'

Hakur returned the smile. 'Really? Well, although I may not be as handsome as you, I have the benefit of wisdom, and I'll tell you this. Solun Decius isn't the fool you think he is.'

'I never said he was a fool.' Rahl was defensive. 'But Sendek is the thinker, and regicide is a game of

the mind. I've seen the mess Solun makes of the practice cages. That's where the lad's strength lies, in his fists.'

Andus smirked. 'You shouldn't underestimate him. He wouldn't be part of the battle-captain's cadre if he was a dim candle.'

The veteran cast a look over at the table, where Decius had just moved a soldat to take one of Sendek's iterators. 'He's young, that's true, but he has a lot of potential. I've seen his kind before. Let him grow unguided, he'll turn down the wrong path and wind up a corpse. But mould a man like him with care and intention, and at the end you'll have a brother fit to be a captain himself one day.'

Rahl blinked. 'I thought you didn't like him.'

"Why, because I make sport of the lad? I do that to everyone. It's part of my charm.' Andus leaned closer and lowered his voice. 'Of course, if you tell him I said any of those things, I'll deny it to the hilt, and then I'll break your legs'

There was a decisive clack of wood on wood, and Rahl glanced around to see Sendek pressing his empress to the board, surrendering the game to Decius with a grudging smile on his face. 'Well played, brother. You are a singular opponent.'

'You see?' prodded Hakur.

'Ah, he must have let him win,' Rahl said lamely, 'as a small mercy.'

'Mercy is for the irresolute/ broke in Voyen as he entered the exercise enclosure, intoning the battle axiom with insincere solemnity. Who asks for it?' He shrugged back the hood of his off-duty robes.

Andus nodded to the other Astartes. 'Brother Rahl does. He has once again been proven wrong and it no doubt chafes upon him.'

Rahl finally bared his teeth in mild annoyance. 'Don't make me hurt you, old man.'

Hakur rolled his eyes. 'And what of you, Meric? Where have you been?'

The question was a mild one, but Rahl saw a frac­tional flicker of tension in the Apothecary's eyes. At my business, Andus, little more than that.' Voyen quickly turned the conversation away from him. 'So, Pyr, I trust you are ready for the coming fight? I think the score is in my favour still, yes?'

He nodded. Rahl and Voyen had a casual competi­tion between them as to which man would take a kill first on any given mission. 'Only combatants count, remember? That last one was only a servitor.'

'Gun-servitor/ corrected Voyen. 'It would have killed me if I had let it.' He looked around. '1 believe we will have ample chance to test the mettle of these defec­tors on Isstvan. There's to be a multi-stage offensive, first a landing to deny the monitor stations on the outermost world. Then on to the inner planets for an assault in full.'

Hakur's lip curled. 'You're very well informed. Cap­tain Garro has not returned from the Warmaster's barge and yet already you know the details of the mis­sion.'

Voyen hesitated. 'It's common enough knowledge.' His tone shifted, becoming more guarded.

'Is it?' Rahl sensed something amiss. 'Who told you, brother?'

'Does it matter?' the Apothecary said defensively. 'The information came to me. I thought you would wish to know, but if you would rather remain unap­prised-'

That is not what he said/ Andus noted. 'Come, Meric, where did you learn these things? Someone in

the infirmary babbling under the influence of pain nullifiers, perhaps, or a talkative astropath?'

Rahl became aware that the rest of the men in the room had fallen silent and were watching the exchange. Even Garro's housecarl was there, observ­ing. Voyen saw Kaleb too and shot him a frosty glare.

'I asked you a question, brother/ said Hakur, and this time it was in the tone of voice he used on the battlefield, one accustomed to giving orders and hav­ing them obeyed.

Voyen's jaw hardened. 'I can't say' He stepped around the veteran and took a few paces towards his arming alcove.

Hakur caught his arm and stopped him. 'What is it you have in your hand?'

'Nothing of your concern, sergeant.'

The elder Astartes was easily twice the Apothecary's age, yet for all those decades Hakur's martial skills were deft and undimmed. He easily took Voyen's wrist and applied pressure to a nerve cluster, trapping his hand. Meric's fingers uncurled of their own accord and there in his palm was a mottled brass coin.

'What is this?' Hakur demanded in a low voice.

'You know what it is!' Voyen snapped back. 'Don't play me for a fool.'

The dull disc bore the imprint of the Legion's sigil. A lodge medal/ breathed Rahl. You're in the lodges? Since when?'

'I can't say!' Voyen retorted, shaking off Hakur's grip and walking to the alcove where his sparse collection of personal effects were kept. 'Don't ask me anything else.'

You know the battle-captain's feelings on this mat­ter/ said Andus. 'He refutes any clandestine gatherings-'

'He refutes/ Meric interrupted. 'He does, not I. If Captain Garro wishes to stay beyond the fraternity of the lodges, then that is his choice, and yours too if you wish to follow him. But I do not. I am a member.' He blew out a breath. 'There. It is said.'

Decius was on his feet. We are all part of the Sev­enth,' he growled, 'and the company's command cadre at that! Garro sets the example we should fol­low, without question!'

'If he would take the time to listen, he would understand.' Meric shook his head and gestured with the medal. 'You would understand that this is not some kind of secret society, it's just a place where men can meet and talk freely'

'That seems so/ noted Sendek. 'From what you have implied, in this lodge it appears that even the most sensitive of military information is bandied about without restraint'

Voyen shook his head angrily. 'It's not like that at all. Don't twist my meaning!'

'You must end your membership, Meric/ said Hakur. 'Swear it now and we'll speak no more of this conversation.'

'I won't.' He gripped the coin tightly. 'You all know me. We are battle-brothers! I've healed every one of you, saved the lives of some, even! I am Meric Voyen, your friend and comrade in arms. Do you really think that I would take part in something seditious?' He snorted. 'Trust me, if you saw the faces of the men who were there, you'd understand that it's you and Garro who are in the minority!'

'What Grulgor and Typhon do with their compa­nies is their own lookout/ added Decius.

'And the rest!' Voyen replied. 'I am far from the only soldier of the Seventh in the association!'

'No/ insisted Hakur.

'I would never lie to you, and if holding this token makes you think any less of me, then…' After a long moment he bowed his head, deflated. 'Then perhaps you are not the kinsmen I thought you were.'

When Voyen looked up again someone else had joined the other men in the chamber.

Rahl heard a razor-edge of anger in Captain Garro's voice as he spoke a single command. 'Give me the room.'

When they were alone and Kaleb sealed the door behind him, Garro turned a hard stare on his subor­dinate. His mailed fingers tensed into fists.

'I never heard you enter/ Voyen muttered. 'How much did you hear?'

'You do not refute/ he replied. 'I stood outside in the corridor a while before I entered.'

'Huh/ the Apothecary gave a dry laugh. 'I thought your housecarl was the spy'

What Kaleb speaks of to me is guided only by his conscience. I do not task him.'

'Then he and I are alike.'

Garro looked away. *You say then that it is your principles that made you join the lodge, is that it?'

'Aye. I am the senior healer for the Seventh Com­pany. It's my duty to know the true feelings of the men who are part of it. Sometimes there are things a man will tell his lodge-mate that he would not tell his Apothecary.' Voyen stared down at the deck. 'Am I to assume that you will have me posted to another com­pany in light of this disclosure?'

Some part of Garro expected himself to explode with fury, but all he felt now was disappointment. 'I eschew the lodge and then I learn a most trusted

friend within my inner circle is a part of it. Such a thing might make me seem weak or short-sighted to others.'

'No,' insisted the Astartes, 'Lord, please know, I did not choose this in order to undermine you! It was only… the right choice for Meric Voyen.'

Garro was silent for a few moments. 'We have been brothers in warfare for decades, over thousands of battlefields. You are a fine warrior, and a better healer. I would not have had you join my cadre otherwise. But this… you kept this from us all, and made our comradeship cheap. If you stay under my command, Meric, you will not find it easy to earn back the trust that you have lost today' He met the other man's gaze. 'Go or stay. Make the choice that is right for Meric Voyen.'

'If I wish to remain, will my departure from the lodge be a condition of that, lord?'

The captain shook his head. 'I won't force you to disassociate yourself. You're still my battle-brother, even if your decisions are sometimes not in line with mine.' Garro stepped forward and offered Voyen his hand. 'But I will have a pledge from you. Promise me, here and now, that if the lodge ever compels you to turn from the face of the Emperor of Man, you will destroy that medal and reject them.'

The Apothecary took Garro's hand. 'I swear it, lord. On Terra itself, I swear it.'

The matter dealt with for the moment, Garro gath­ered his men back together and briefed them on the battle plans the Warmaster had outlined. By his example, not a single harsh word was said to Voyen, but the Apothecary kept silent and to the edge of things. No voice was raised in question as to why

Voyen still stood with them, but Garro saw reserva­tions in the eyes of Decius, Rahl and the others.

When it was done, Garro left his dress wargear to Kaleb's attention and took his own council. So many things had come and gone in so short a time. It seemed like only moments ago that he had been looking over attack simulations for the raid on the jorgall world-ship, now the Legiones Astartes massed for the first hammer-blow strike on Isstvan Extremis, and Garro saw conflict in the heart of his own com­pany.

Had he made the wrong choice in letting Voyen remain? His mind moved back to the conversation with Mortarion before the war council, where ques­tions of the lodges had risen as well. It troubled the captain that he could not determine an easy path through these thoughts. At times he wondered if he were at fault, holding firmly to a conservative course, keeping the tradition and heart of the Legion alive while time moved on and things changed.

Yes, things were changing. The shift of mood here on Endurance was slight, but visible to his trained senses, and aboard the Warmaster's ship, it was more obvious still. Bleak emotions gathered at the edges of his thoughts like distant storm clouds. He could not shake the sensation that something malign was wait­ing out there, gathering strength and biding its time.

And so Garro did what he had made into a quiet personal habit, in order to clear his mind and find focus for the coming battle. High up atop the Endurance's dorsal hull lay the oval dome of the ship's observatorium, a space put aside so that naval crew might be able to take emergency star fix sightings should the vessel's cogitators become inoperative. It also served a purely ornamental function, although

there were few among the Death Guard who ever used it for so trivial a purpose.

Garro dimmed all the glow-globes in the chamber and seated himself at the control console. The opera­tor chair shifted back and reclined on quiet hydraulics. Presently, the battle-captain was tilted so he could take in the unfettered sweep of the starscape.

Isstvan's blue-white sun was a bright glow off in the lower quadrant, attenuated by a localised polar­isation in the augmented armourglass. He looked away from it and let the blackness surround him. Gradually, tension eased from the knots in his mus­cles. Garro felt adrift in the ocean of stars, cupped in the bubble of atmosphere. He saw past the silver flashes of ship hulls, out into the deep void, and not for the first time, he looked and wondered where home was.

Officially, the home world of the XIV Legion was Barbarus, a cloud-wreathed sphere near the edge of the Gothic Sector. It was from that troubled world that most of the Death Guard's number originated, men like Grulgor and Typhon, Decius and Sendek, even Kaleb. Garro had learned to have deference and respect for the planet and its testing nature, but it would never be home to him.

Garro had been born on Terra and drawn up into the Legiones Astartes before men had even known the name of Barbarus. In those years the XIV Legion had gone by a different title, and they had no pri-march but the Emperor himself. Garro swelled with pride to remember that time. They had been the Dusk Raiders, so known because of their signature tactic of attacking a foe at nightfall. Then, they had worn armour without the green trim of the current Legion. The wargear of the Dusk Raiders was the

dull white of old marble, but with their right arm and shoulders coloured in a deep, glistening crim­son. The symbology of the armour showed their foes what they truly were – the Emperor's red right hand, the relentless and unstoppable. Many ene­mies had thrown down their weapons the moment the sun dipped beneath the horizon, rather than dare to fight them.

But that too had changed. When the Emperor's done-sons, the great primarchs, had been sundered from his side and scattered across the galaxy, the Dusk Raiders joined their brother Legions and their master in the Great Crusade that began the Age of the Imperium. Garro had been there, centuries past.

It did not seem so long ago, and yet there were countless years of time measured by Terran clocks that he had lost in the confusion of the warp, in cryogenic stasis and through the strange physics of near-light speed travel. Garro had been there as the Emperor crossed the galaxy in search of his star-lost children – Sanguinius, Ferrus, Guilliman, Magnus and the rest. With each reuniting, the Lord of Mankind had gifted his sons with command of the forces that had been created in their image. When at last the Emperor came to Barbarus and discov­ered the gaunt warrior foundling leading its oppressed people, he had located the avatar of the XIV Legion.

On Barbarus, where Mortarion had come to rest after falling through the chaotic turmoil of a warp storm, the boy-primarch found a planet where the human colonists were ground beneath the heel of a clan of mutant warlords. He grew up to fight them and liberate the commoners, creating his own army of steadfast warriors to lead the way into the

poisonous heights where the warlords hid. These men Mortarion named the Death Guard.

So it was written, that when at last the Emperor and Mortarion met and defeated the dark master of the warlords, Barbarus was free and the primarch accepted a place in his father's Crusade at the head of the XIV Legion. Mortarion's first words to his army were carved in a granite arch over the airlock gate of the battle barge Reaper's Scythe in memory of the moment. He had come at the Emperor's bidding with the elite of his Barbarun cohort at his side and hun­dreds more on the way. Garro had been there, as nothing more than a line Astartes, when he heard his new primarch speak.

'You are my unbroken blades,' he told them. 'You are the Death Guard.' And with those words the Dusk Raiders were no more. Things changed.

On the day of Mortarion's coronation as primarch, a good majority of the XIV Legion had been of Garro's stock, men born on Terra or within the con­fines of the Sol system, but slowly that number had dwindled, and as new recruits joined the Death Guard fold they came only from Barbarus. Now, as the Thirty-First Millennium turned about its axis, there was only a comparative handful of Terrans in the Legion. In his blackest moments Nathaniel imag­ined a time when there would be none of his kinsmen left among the XIV, and with their deaths the traditions of the old Dusk Raiders would finally fade away. He feared that moment, for when it came to pass something of the Legion's noble character would die as well.

Memory was a curious companion. In some instances, Garro's fragmentary reminiscences of his deep past were clearer than those of battles some

months old, by a peculiarity of the Astartes implants in his cerebrum. He recalled a moment as a boy growing up in Albia, in front of a memorial to warriors that dated back beyond the Tenth Millennium, a great arch of white stone and figures made of black metal, the surfaces worn smooth but protected by a layer of synthetic diamond. And he remembered a night on Barbarus, atop one of the highest crags, peering into the sky. The clouds parted for the rarest of moments and Nathaniel's eyes had found, as they did now beneath the glass dome, a lone dot of light in the great darkness.

Now, as then, he looked to the distant star and wondered again if it were home. Could the Emperor, in his matchless capacity, be turning some small scrap of his towering mind towards him? Or was it vanity on Garro's part to think he would even merit the notice of the Lord of Mankind?

With the next heartbeat the captain's breath caught in his throat as the light he watched glittered brightly, and then faded to nothing, dying before him. The blinded star vanished, leaving a dark pall over Nathaniel's spirit.

Decius turned his hand over and held up his palm to the air, catching some of the fat, lazy flakes of snow drifting down around him. In the low gravity of Isstvan Extremis, the powdered shavings of nitrogen ice floated in slow motion towards the monochrome grey of the mottled surface. He smiled at the moment in self-amusement and turned the open palm into a ball. It was the match of his right hand, but nowhere near as large as the monstrous power fist lined with green enamel and

patient little ticks of lightning. He flexed the heavy fingers experimentally. Decius's control over the glove was so deft that he could pick a flower or crush a skull with equal ease.

Not that there was flora of any kind on this dead ball of ice and stone. But there were plenty of heads to break. That was certain. The thought made Decius's smile widen into a cocky grin. He glanced back over his shoulder, across the rippling, crater-pocked plain of the western approaches. Death Guard waited in every shadowed lee, behind every rock and outcropping, silent and ready. The dull colour of their armour was nearly a match for the grey landscape, and it was only the lines of jade trim around their shoulders and breast plates that broke up the camouflage.

They were quiet, like their namesake, and prepared for the moment. Decius saw a glint of gold. Captain Garro was speaking into the helmet of Sergeant Hakur. In turn old Hakur moved and passed the order on to Rahl, then to another man, on and on, the com­mand spreading in a whispering ripple.

The Seventh Company had observed vox discipline since the Thunderhawks had set them down over the horizon of the planetoid, out of sight of the monitor station's sensor towers. They communicated by hushed words or by battle-sign, advancing with stealth towards the shield wall protecting the west face of the enemy dome complex. This had been done to ensure that all the attention of the Isstvanians would be turned elsewhere, out to where the brightly armoured and very visible Emperor's Children advanced. Now they were close, and all the waiting –hours, so it seemed to Decius – was done. The attack was at hand.

Sendek leaned close and spoke into Decius's audio pick-up. 'Be ready for the word.'

He nodded in acknowledgement and passed the command on to the Astartes at his side, a warrior with the cobra-head shape of a missile launcher on his shoulder. The thin atmosphere of Isstvan Extremis did not carry sound well, but such was the cacophony coming from the far side of the rebel complex that it still reached them. Decius could pick out the strained rattle of combi-bolters, the smack-thud of krak grenade detonations. The noise made his palms itch with anticipation.

Then, over the general vox-channel, he heard Garro break radio silence. 'Seventh. In position.'

The battle-captain's voice was grim and heavy. Decius's commander had not been himself since he returned from the Vengeful Spirit, and once more Solun found himself thinking about what might have gone on aboard the Warmaster's barge. And then this busi­ness with Voyen… He shuttered the thoughts away.

Decius watched the battlements of the west wall through the magnifiers of his optics, studying the motion of the black figures patrolling up there. They were milling around, unsure of where they were meant to be. The attack by the Emperor's Children was doing its job, drawing the concentration of the defenders. 'They're good for something, at least,' he murmured to himself. Decius had always thought the III Legion to be more self-indulgent than the rest of the Astartes.

A voice came back over the general channel, a sin­gle word loaded with the ready glee of battle. 'Execute!' shouted Eidolon, and as one the Death Guard surged up from their concealment in a heavy wave of storm-grey armour.

'Count the Seven!' cried a voice, and Decius repeated the call, hearing it over and over down the line of advance. The men of the XIV Legion were done being quiet.

The guards on the battlements were already red ruins, falling from their perches to shatter on the rock floor, cored by bolt shells sniped from the middle distance. Small-gauge missiles from man-portable launchers lanced out in a wave over Decius's head, converging on points in the wall where auspex scans had discovered weaknesses. The Astartes saw motion at the foot of the barrier. There were self-contained bunker pods strung out there, each equipped with pintle-mounted lasers. Thread-thin lines of crimson blinked, joining the ovoid pods to running men. Burns scored across ceramite and a few unlucky ones caught a charge in the face, blinded by the beams.

The defence did nothing to slow the Death Guard advance. Once their blood was up, it was simply impossible to halt them, the crushing infantry charge boiling over stone and broken sheets of gas-ice, guns crashing out into the thin air. Decius gave a full clip of bolter rounds to the closest pod and reloaded on the run, his pace never faltering. He heard a strangled cry issue out from the gun slit.

The battle-brother with the missile launcher was still with him, sporting the ugly singe mark from a glancing shot on his torso, but otherwise untouched. He saw the Astartes drop to one knee, and then with the ammunition carousel chattering, the missileer released a four-shot salvo at the bunker. The rockets hit in a perfect cluster and tore the pod open, the roof peeling back as a fireball forced its way out. Incredi­bly, figures in black stumbled from the smoking ruin,

some of them on fire, all of them brandishing weapons.

Decius fired from the hip, killing a handful, and stormed in to take the last survivor by hand. Decius punched the Isstvanian squarely in the chest and the power fist cannoned him back into the bricks of the shield wall. The enemy soldier fell from a ragged impact crater and dropped at Decius's feet, a boneless rag-doll.

A hissing sound reached his ears and the Astartes crouched to investigate. The man had lost a vox head­set in the impact and it lay on the dirt next to him. Decius gathered it up and listened. Suident noise came from it, a disharmony of raw screeching tones that clawed up and down the chords. He tossed it away and stood up again.

Decius glanced around, seeing the other bunker pods all burning or shattered, then nudged the corpse with his boot. A face bloated with new death looked back up at him, one eye peering through the shat­tered red lens of an aiming reticule. 'You won't be my last today/ he told the dead man.

'Fall back to a safe distance/ Garro's voice shouted. 'Charges to detonate!'

The Astartes with the launcher tapped him on the shoulder. 'Brother, come. They're going to blow the wall.'

Decius sprinted back a few hundred metres to where the Death Guard was massing in good order. He saw Tollen Sendek at his heels, a sapper-command signum unit in his grip. 'Ready!' snapped Sendek.

Garro's helmet bobbed. 'Do it.'

Sendek stabbed at a glowing key and Decius heard a sharp, fizzing report from the stone fortification. Then, in the next second, tortured air molecules

screamed aloud and a great length of the stone wall became rubble and powder.

Take the dome!' Garro drew his power sword and cut the air with it. 'For Terra and Mortarion!'

Decius ran at the battle-captain's flank and plunged into the roiling clouds of rock dust, his helmet optics automatically rendering the terrain before him in grainy wire-frames over the standard visual spectrum display. Sendek had, in defiance of conventional bat­tlefield doctrine, used powerful hull-cutter charges designed for starship boarding actions instead of standard krak munitions. The resultant overpressure from detonation in an atmosphere – even one as thin as that of Isstvan Extremis – had blown down a large part of the west wall and gone on to cut a bite from the central dome beyond it. Decius didn't need to look up to remember the form of the target facility. He had committed it to memory on the journey from the Endurance, fixing in his subconscious the shape of the oblate hemisphere and its forest of odd, pipe-like towers.

His boots crunched on the bodies of dead men pulped by the breaching charges. Lines of twisted metal rebar crowded in around the Astartes, with bits of dangling ferrocrete strung along them like dusty pearls. Garro drew back his sword arm to cut through them, but Decius stepped in before him. 'No, lord, allow me.' Decius struck out with the power fist and hammered it four times against the stone, the final blow clearing the last of the block­age before them. He grinned to himself. It wasn't every battle where a man would find himself punching a building.

The Death Guard spilled through the breach and into the dome proper, figures in off-white armour

filling up the space inside. Decius saw hooded fig­ures in black swarming like maddened ants through the smoke and dust, and beyond them… He blinked, drinking in the sight of the peculiar structure that dominated the dome. The briefing had told the Astartes to expect a standard Imperial sensor platform, perhaps with some recent modifi­cations, but nothing more. Decius imagined they would penetrate the dome and find banks of cogi-tators, wave-monitors and the like. He could not have been more wrong.

Every tier of the dome's inner levels had been removed, making the entire space wide open. In the middle of the smoke-wreathed chamber there was a construct that seemed to be made of stone, but not the local variety of grey rock shot with mica. It was a rough-sided ziggurat hewn from dif­ferent slabs of minerals in a panoply of colours. The stones could only have come from other worlds, that was obvious, but why? What possible reason could there have been for something like this, in a place this remote, where no one but a few hundred traitors would ever see it?

On the inside face of the dome there were pat­terns of lines and discs that seemed to go on forever, baffling the eye with illusions of depth and movement where there was none. Then there was the light and the sound, the same discordant noise he had heard on the headset. It was coming from the apex of the construction, rolling down the steep sides of the pyramid in slow, punishing waves. There was a figure up there, floating-Red lasers stitched the air around Decius's head, tearing his attention away from the ziggurat and back to the battle at hand. The Death Guard force

was large, but they had underestimated the number of turncoats clustering inside the main dome. He heard Rahl's voice on the vox, furious with tension. 'Encountering heavy resistance at objective!'

Decius slammed an enemy trooper to death, the blow sending the dead man into a ring of his com­rades and in turn taking them off their feet. Captain Garro sliced through the Isstvanian lines with Libertas shining with gore, the bolter in his other hand banging with each kill-shot it released. Solun kept pace with his commander, gathering Rahl and Sendek to him. Hakur and his squad had the flanks as they pushed in towards the foot of the arcane construction. Decius laughed, the rush of the battle coursing through him, making a dozen more close-range kills with his bolter, blood flick­ing off his wargear. They were at the base of the ziggurat when a dull concussion rumbled through the dome and a set of blast doors caved in with an agonised creak. Muscled giants in purple and gold punched through the entrance and laid into the black hoods.

'Fulgrim's boys have decided to grace us with their presence/ said Garro, baring his teeth. 'Let's not let Eidolon say he made the peak before the Death Guard!' The moment of confusion in the defenders caused by the new arrivals was enough to give the men of the Seventh the opening they needed, and swiftly the battle-captain led the squad up the rough-hewn face of the pyramid.

Decius's gaze ranged up the steep, peculiar little mountain and found the apex again. Yes, he saw it clearly now. A woman was up there, and by some means she hovered, suspended in a cowl of glitter. Light popped and writhed around her shimmering

form, each tiny sun-bright flash accompanied by more sound, more shrieking, lethal noise that pounded into his eardrums.

'Blood's oath!' he shouted, barely loud enough for his words to carry over the horrific dissonance. 'What in the name of Terra is she?'

Garro threw a look over his shoulder and spat out a name. 'Warsinger.'

SIX

To the Brink

Triad of Skulls

New Orders

Garro stole a glance down the sheer slope of the zig-gurat and saw the wild play of the battle spread out beneath him. All around the interior of the dome there was a churning sea of men engaged in the busi­ness of killing one another. Figures in black hoods swarmed at the white and purple shapes of the Astartes, laser fire flashing in chains of red lightning among the flares of yellow flame from bolter muz­zles. Emperor's Children were scaling the pyramid beneath them, following the path his men were forg­ing with every heavy boot step. Dust and stone fragments crackled with each footfall, the peculiar patchwork construct resonating with each tortured stanza of the Warsinger's song.

Garro pressed on, using the thick fingers of his gauntlets to dig handholds from the stonework and haul himself upward. He saw red granite, crumbly limestone and strange chunks of bifurcated statuary

as he climbed. The mess of bricks seemed to have no regularity in its design or purpose. They were close to the woman now, and the Astartes could vaguely sense voices on his vox, but the deafening operatic screams of the enemy champion flattened them under an indecipherable roar. The Warsinger was steady and unmoving, and strange etches of colour and light drifted around her, just as the lazy snowflakes had drifted out on the plains. She had her hands to her chest, her head back, throwing a keening dirge to the roof. The song was endless, without pause for breath or meter, each note locking to the next, cutting through Garro's attempts to think clearly. It was unearthly. No human throat should have been able to voice it, no human lungs able to give it breath. Some force about the razored melody was ripping and pick­ing at the very air, cutting into the flesh of the real. The top of the dome rippled like water, warping.

Indolently, as if it were something done out of boredom rather than directed cruelty, the woman flicked her wrist and sent coils of shimmering aural force humming away down the lines of the pyramid. The waveforms caught around Pyr Rahl and hoisted him off the stone, flipping him over in mid-air. Ash came off him in wreaths, his armour puckering and bending in the wrong places. He released a strangled cry that ended in a crackle of bone as he imploded. The Death Guard's crushed remnants bounced away into the melee below. Garro snarled in anger at the casual manner of his battle-brother's death, charging upward.

Then, almost unexpectedly, he made the top, letting his bolter fall away around his hip on its sling. The battle-captain brought up Libertas in a firm, two-handed grip, and laid into the Warsinger. At his flank,

he was aware of Decius giving him covering fire, gri­macing as the bolt rounds whined away in ricochets from the sheer energy of the wall of music.

The Warsinger turned her notice to Garro, resent­ment forming on her face as his attacks invaded her sensorium. He saw her shift and turn, the long stream­ers of her hair drifting past her screaming face. Holding on to the fury from the cold murder of his subordinate, his sword swept across and connected with her song-shield, the noise of the impact like a knife point drawn down a sheet of glass. Effortlessly, the enemy cham­pion drew the sound in and threaded it into her cacophony, weaving it into the mad chorus.