OceanofPDF - Com Helbrecht Knight of The Throne - Marc Collins [PDF] - VDOC.TIPS (2024)

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By the same author

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CONTENTS Cover Backlist Warhammer 40,000 Helbrecht: Knight of the Throne Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Epilogue Acknowledgements About the Author An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’ A Black Library Publication eBook license OceanofPDF.com

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark. Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods. This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion. There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

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PROLOGUE A DEMIGOD’S DISPLEASURE Then The knight knelt in the heart of sanctity. The vast ship was a sacred place– a fragment of a bygone age given leave to sail the stars, crafted in a time of wonders when mankind had still borne out its primal ambition. Such immense engines of war were known as Gloriana. Where other vessels of humanity’s conquest of the stars had been brief candles, these were infernos. Potent beyond reckoning, they would burn and fight and die until the ending of time. They were few now. Precious. Holy in their rarity. Of those that remained, there were none that could rival the Eternal Crusader’s forthright mastery of the void. High Marshal Helbrecht bowed his head in prayer. He meditated upon the holy space that he occupied. He dwelt upon the injuries sustained by his plate. His armour bore the scars of dozens of battles, so relentless and allconsuming that it would have taken an entire team of armourers weeks to return it to full functionality. Time he did not have to spare. He stank of blood and smoke, of sacred oils and the machine-reek of constant movement in powered plate. His face was streaked with soot and an ashen cross had been daubed upon his forehead, just above the brazen circlet that graced his brow. His armour was heavy now, a weight of which he was intimately aware. Muscle-fibre bundles bunched with his subtle agitation, rippling with the exaggerated movements of his breathing. But he did not feel soiled in the heart of the great war vessel. If anything he felt deserving of his presence there. A right he had earned in fire and blood. His hands clenched involuntarily and he drove his armoured knuckles into the perfect marble of the floor. Banners swayed at the edges of his vision, speaking of thousands upon thousands of crusades waged down the long

years of their unending struggle. The Eternal Crusade. The undertaking of Dorn. ‘That is why I fight,’ he whispered, the words rendered into a prayer by his surroundings. ‘In your name. In the name of all those who have gone before me. In the God-Emperor’s light.’ He raised his head and examined the plinth before him. Across the stone lay the sword. The blade was a thing of glory. It, like the ship it occupied, had been forged in a lost age. Risen from the fires of grief and shame to be borne again with duty and faith behind it. A sword of heroes. The sword of Sigismund. The Sword of the High Marshals. Even now, so long in the keeping of the blade, he found he almost could not look upon it without weeping. It was a mighty thing. Too long and heavy for a mortal man to wield – perhaps too much of a burden for many of the Astartes brotherhoods who roamed the stars. His weapon. His burden. In this sword was embodied the many facets of command within the Chapter. To wield it was to stand as first amongst equals. Master of the Eternal Crusade. He allowed his fingers to close around the hilt as he rose to his feet and drew it up from its plinth. The blade caught thelight of the stasis fields that surrounded it, dancing withthe refracted radiance of other plinths holding other relics. The blade was keen and well tended where his own appearance was still ramshackle. He had cleaned and oiled it himself, with reverence and due faith. ‘With faith and fidelity I wield the weapon of Sigismund, instrument of the past and key to the future. I hold the Chapter’s legacy as I direct its course. I do this in your name, O beloved Emperor, that you might see my deeds and judge them by your holy metric. On the day of judgement, when death finally claims me, I shall stand before you and let the worth of my soul be weighed. That I might dwell at the right hand of the Throne, to serve and fight forever.’ He bowed his head again. His lips continued to move as he prayed before the blade. In his ruin he had never been more glorious, nor truer in his faith. A chime echoed from behind him. It sounded once and rang through the open, empty space of the temple. He ignored it. He continued his recitations

and kept his eyes locked upon the blade. The chime came again. And again. It grew more insistent until he finally rose to his feet. He sighed. Helbrecht had dismissed even the Chaplain brotherhood from their attendance within the temple. He had wished to undertake his obeisance in private, that only the God-Emperor might perceive and judge him. ‘Come,’ he said at last, and turned towards the vast doors of the chamber. The doors opened, casting the low crimson of candlelight and the dull glow of lumens into the temple. Centule, a Chapter-serf, bowed low. ‘My lord,’ he said softly, his voice quaking, ‘He is here. The primarch is come.’ Helbrecht looked at Centule for a long moment, then sheathed the great weapon and bowed one last time before he went to face down destiny. He received the primarch in his sanctum, the Galleria Astra, still rimed with the detritus of war. He had turned the arming servitors, serfs and Neophytes – all eager to attend upon him and see to his armour – away, preferring to meet the primarch as a commander fresh from war. By will alone he stilled the tremble in his flesh and allowed himself to exhale. This was a singular moment. One he had yearned for and dreaded in equal measure. To see a fragment of the exalted past walk the stars anew; beholding a son of the God-Emperor Himself as he strode the galaxy. The bringer of wrath and flame. The fury of the heavens kindled. It is the Emperor’s will that he return to us now. As the galaxy splits and evil walks abroad, so too must the glories of the Great Crusade stir anew. Would that it had been our own gene-sire. To see Rogal Dorn once again at the galaxy’s helm… Yet it was not him. Not the great Praetorian who had raised Terra’s ramparts in ages gone past. It was Guilliman. The statesman. The Avenging Son. A being whom many now called regent, and viewed as the Emperor’s incarnate will. Helbrecht wondered what it would be like to look upon the primarch. Would he be as the statues were? He wondered if he might pick out the familial resemblance between Guilliman and the renditions of his own primogenitor. Would he be a thing of flesh or something rendered numinous? He had never journeyed to Macragge, in pilgrimage to their

shrine as his cousins might. He had knelt in the sight of Dorn’s skeletal hand upon the Phalanx– as was the right of all those of the gene-line of the Imperial Fists– and thought it a holy thing, transcendent. Divine. The doors slid open with a hiss and Helbrecht allowed himself to look up. To know. To gaze upon the primarch was truly a thing of wonder. He was not a numinous thing of light and fire but neither was he stolidly material. He was a storm of cold blue and gold, bound into the shape of a man. It almost hurt to look at him. It was not simply the superlative craft of his armour, but the skill worked into his very flesh. This was a being who had been sculpted by the Emperor’s own hand. The primarch had fought and bled with the Master of Mankind Himself; upholding His truth, enforcing His laws, and shaping what the Imperium had become down the long marches of darkness. He was a fragment of the very soul of the human species, carved out and presented as an exemplar. Helbrecht looked up at his face, the stern patrician features, and beneath that gaze he stood taller, as surely as any initiate upon the battlefield spurred to zealous action by the attention of a marshal. The primarch spoke in a rumble, in a voice as different from Helbrecht’s as a Space Marine’s was from a mortal man. ‘You are the one they call Helbrecht? The High Marshal of the Black Templars?’ ‘I have that honour,’ Helbrecht said as he went to one knee. ‘I was there when your brotherhood was founded,’ Guilliman said. ‘When my brother eventually yielded and allowed his Legion to be broken.’ A smile flickered across his lips. As he strode forward he seemed more at home in the great chamber than Helbrecht– occupying a space which had been intended for his brother and slowly repurposed for his heirs. ‘Your forebear, Sigismund, I fear he would have fought the edicts of the Codex forever had circ*mstances not intervened as they had.’ ‘You honour me, my lord. It is as the God-Emperor wills that you return to us now.’ Helbrecht looked up, just quickly enough to catch the wrinkle of distaste which graced the demigod’s face. He had heard the rumours– that the divinity of the Emperor and His primarchs sat ill with the Avenging Son. A test, perhaps. A sign of the strange mechanisms by which the galaxy turned. Most other brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes shunned the

Imperial Creed, true enough, but the primarch had walked in the age of the Emperor’s glory and gazed upon His eternal entombment. ‘Rise,’ Guilliman said, to dispel the fleeting moment of awkwardness. ‘It is enough that bureaucrats and functionaries greet me upon their knees– it is no place for a warrior.’ Helbrecht stood. ‘Forgive my appearance. The days since the opening of the Rift have been unkind. We have fought and we have bled. Against the greenskins whom we pursued and against those worlds which have proven unworthy of His light. They turned, and for those sins they were burned clean. Now we are again upon the path. The fleets of the crusades gather and they will hunt the Beast of Armageddon until death finally claims it.’ ‘The Beast of Armageddon…’ Guilliman tilted his head as he considered the words. For a being such as him even a minor gesture was loaded with potency and meaning. ‘You mean to pursue this course?’ ‘I am set upon it,’ Helbrecht admitted. ‘There has been too much blood spilled by the alien. These are nights of blood and fire. Madness walks abroad, but I know my duty. The crusades we have launched… those that have been fought and for which brothers have died… Ash Wastes. Void. Helsreach. The Beast must answer. I would see its head taken and mounted upon a pike that all might see the ruin which befalls those who challenge the Throne. There can be no compromise. No peace. Only judgement and death. That is what the enemies of mankind deserve.’ ‘And I do not doubt that you are well suited to delivering it, but I would urge caution. I have absorbed the tactical circ*mstances of every warzone, across every segmentum, known to us before the Rift opened. The Beast is not alone amidst the pantheon of horrors set against us. Each tears wounds in our galaxy, gouting the Imperium’s blood into the void. I would ask for your aid.’ Helbrecht was silent. He could sense the challenge in the primarch’s words but would not rise to it. ‘Then ask it,’ he said. ‘Ask and I shall consider your request in my capacity as High Marshal and by the will of the Emperor.’ ‘You speak of the battles that have been fought. Helsreach, the Void and Ash Wastes crusades. I have studied the history of many Chapters and many wars as I seek to heal my father’s beleaguered empire. I would give you new objectives in place of the old. Service in lieu of vengeance. Aurilla,

Ophelia VII, Dachsus, Orteg III. They, along with dozens of other shrine worlds, are within reach of your gathering forces. A hammer blow against those who would strike against the Imperium’s morale.’ O, Emperor, how you test me. How you offer me an easier path and tempt me with what seems to be the very voice of righteousness. ‘You speak with wisdom, yet the opening of the Rift is opportunity for the Beast to escape. Even now it flees from our justice, to burrow into whichever crevice will hide it. It will spawn in the darkness until its hordes come again. And again. And again. No more. We have its scent and we will fight to burn it from the galaxy.’ ‘You would choose vengeance over duty?’ Helbrecht slammed his bionic fist against the chamber’s desk. Primarch or no, none questioned his honour without reproach. ‘I would choose duty and honour. My warriors gather – numbers enough for our task but far from enough to minister to every world that cries for succour. The defenders of such worlds bear their own aegis of faith. Sisters of Battle, Militarum regiments, other Chapters who are closer. The Emperor has set this task before me– as His servant, should I not do His will?’ ‘There are many amongst the Ecclesiarchy,’ Guilliman said, and Helbrecht could see the ripple of bemused frustration play across his features, ‘who would insist that I am the very instrument of His will. If not in the manner of my perceived divinity then certainly in my capacity as Imperial Regent.’ ‘We are not the lay preachers of the Imperial Creed to be awed by signs and wonders. We are Templars, my lord Guilliman. We stand, black against the darkness, bearing the righteous fire of the Emperor’s wrath. We cast down false idols, break the backs of recalcitrant civilisations, and sear the alien from the flesh of the Emperor’s galaxy. That is our duty. Our honour. Our lives.’ ‘It is strange to find you so.’ The primarch shook his head. Such a peculiar gesture to observe, to note, as though a mountain were shaking its head. ‘In you I see so much of the Great Crusade as it was, yet changed beyond recognition. Your creed is in opposition to everything intended by that era. We wrought enlightenment, not superstition. We were the light that they required to lead them out of the darkness of Old Night.’ He sighed. ‘I fear that you are the very same chains that would bind them.’

Helbrecht stood taller. ‘There are few other forces that have fought for as long or as hard as our sacred brotherhood. We follow the example laid down by Sigismund as he fought before the walls of the Palace. He was the exemplar of our bloodline. We take not a single step backwards. We fight on. Across the galaxy with faith and fury, we fight. Only His word will stay our wrath.’ ‘There is much in you, High Marshal, that reminds me of First Captain Sigismund– as I knew him.’ ‘You do me an honour, lord.’ ‘That was not my intent,’ Guilliman said. ‘To you he is a legend, perhaps even an idol. I knew him as a man. Impetuous and flawed, as all men are.’ Helbrecht’s jaw tightened but he said nothing in response. ‘A fine soldier. A great leader of men. Yet despite all that, he was guided, at times, by his own will and wants. He erred in that, perhaps.’ ‘As you think that I err now.’ ‘I do,’ Guilliman said plainly. ‘I bring you reinforcements. Men and materiel that will enable you to rise to answer the challenges laid before us. Now, more than ever, I require people of vision and insight. Those who can think on their feet but who can appreciate the grander threats we face. Who can look at the galaxy and take stock of what must be done.’ ‘I do that every single day, lord regent,’ Helbrecht said, with no small amount of pride. ‘Where I command it, hosts move to answer. There are none more numerous nor more dedicated amongst all the brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes. You bring many warriors, like the Legions of old, so they claim, yet what are they next to the oathsworn knights of the Black Templars? When these reinforcements you speak of are inducted into our ranks they shall be trained as befits warriors of the Eternal Crusade. They shall burn with the light of the Emperor and carry it back to the dark places. Whether that is where you suggest, or whether it lies in claiming the Imperium’s due from the Beast.’ ‘There will be no convincing you,’ Guilliman rumbled. It was no easy thing to bear the weight of a demigod’s displeasure. Helbrecht could feel the scrutiny upon his skin like ball lightning. He leant into the discomfort of it. He braced himself with the judgement of the divine. ‘There will not.’

The primarch said nothing. Instead he strode past Helbrecht to stand before the graven glass of the observation cupola. He stared out at the tormented void, at the ships as they milled about their formations– filling the rendezvous point with constant motion. Jostling for primacy as they sought proximity to their liege lord. He turned and regarded Helbrecht with sad, all-too-human eyes. ‘Do you know the provenance of the blade that you carry, High Marshal?’ ‘Of course I do–’ Helbrecht began to say, but the primarch ignored him and continued on. ‘It was forged from the shards of my brother’s own blade. When he found our father’s broken body, when he saw what Horus had done to Him, he knew despair. He knew what it meant to fail the very reason for your existence. Everything in him understood the stakes which we had faced, and the price of defeat.’ He shook his head. ‘And there was defeat, even in victory. My brother, Rogal Dorn, a man of stone, broke his sword over his knee. He felt unworthy of wielding his weapon, knowing it had never had the chance to be raised in defence of our father – not when it truly mattered.’ Helbrecht swallowed. ‘I know this, my lord. It is as holy writ. I could recite it myself.’ ‘Yet you did not live it, High Marshal. You did not see a brother broken by loss and self-castigated by despair. Nor did you have to watch a son try, in vain, to elevate his father’s mood. It was your founder, First Captain Sigismund, who gathered up those shards and allowed them to be forged into the blade which you carry. To transmute base mourning into golden promise, like the alchymists of Old Terra. Because duty bears more weight than any scrap of personal glory or desire.’ There was a quaver in the demigod’s voice, rife with mortal emotion, though amplified– exalted– to a truly post-human level. ‘Remember that, High Marshal. Remember what can be gained by choosing duty over the base whims of an ego bruised by failure after failure.’ He looked at Helbrecht, nodded once, and then walked past him and out of the doors. Helbrecht did not speak for many minutes. He drew his blade again and went down upon his knees, the tip of it pressed to the stone of the floor. His lips moved in constant prayer and his hands tightened about the hilt.

‘My lord?’ asked a wavering voice. Centule stood there, wide-eyed and staring. Helbrecht stood reluctantly and stalked forward. For a moment the serf almost flinched from his lord’s path, so wrathful had it become– like a wounded storm. ‘Gather my marshals,’ Helbrecht growled. ‘They will have crusade assignments.’ Centule hesitated. ‘The muster is over, lord?’ ‘The muster is over,’ Helbrecht agreed. ‘The Imperium calls for aid and we shall answer.’ He did not look back as he strode from the chamber, still clinging to his blade. ‘We shall not be found wanting in our duty.’

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CHAPTER ONE THE FIRE OF TRANSFORMATION Now Though fleets had amassed at his order a hundred times before, this was the first time he had seen it through new eyes. Much had changed since he had stood before the primarch. Wars had been fought and won since that chastisem*nt. Since he had remembered his duty. Entire legions of the damned pushed back. The Shrine Worlds Crusades were over, and now only the uncertainty of the future beckoned. High Marshal Helbrecht stood upon one of the many embarkation decks of the Eternal Crusader and gazed out at the gathering warriors. Black armoured and zealous, they moved with a surety of purpose which spoke of their skill and determination. The air was fogged with incense as the warriors assembled and trained, swearing oaths to the God-Emperor and reaffirming their commitment to His unbreakable will. To look upon them was to know pride. To stand with them was an honour. Helbrecht’s eye drifted across their ranks and noted as many differences as he saw similarities. The Firstborn and the Primaris, not divided by the variances of biology but bound together by their love of the Emperor and the hatred of His foes. Helbrecht understood both of them. He had served and risen through the ranks as an Adeptus Astartes of the old pattern… and he had braved the Rubicon Primaris to be reborn. Not in ascension. Not in a false state of grace, nor through grievous mortal wounds. He had chosen his fate, embraced it as the Emperor’s will, and now stood taller. Though his wounds yet ached and his body continued to adapt, he felt new strength blossom through his limbs. He had been transmuted. Forged anew from fire and faith. He had hoped that the Emperor would speak to him in the close darkness between life and death– but there had been no dreams, no visions, and no

revelations. Only the cloying black, hot with the scent of sickness and the spice of pain. The ache had passed, but the emptiness had not. It had dogged his steps. As pernicious as doubt. He remembered so much of the near-ritual of the surgeries. The drawn-out procedure itself. The Eternal Crusader had detoured and stopped for the undertaking, that their lord might be remade surrounded by the stolid trappings of the materium, not the hellish miasma of the warp. They had drifted at the edges of the system as he prepared himself for the transition. He had given a recounting of his deeds for the Chapter archives, that his knowledge and his undertakings might survive him should the worst transpire, and then submitted himself. In the dim light cast by the star, Helbrecht had closed his eyes and braced for the knife. It was only fitting that a knight of the Throne such as he should be born again beneath the starlight of Sol itself. He had passed through darkness and light, and he had emerged stronger for it. Resurgent as the great Imperium was surely resurgent. The Indomitus Crusade raged, but that was nothing new to him. What is one more crusade to those who fight them endlessly? A matter of scale alone. If anything, now the Imperium marches in lockstep with us. The Great Crusade is come again only for those for whom it never ended. Now they had gathered at the muster point of Varjek, upon the road to Octarius, to wage war once again. To honour their oaths. ‘It is a curse to be the most faithful sons of a complacent empire,’ he muttered, ‘where even angels have lost their way.’ He shook his head as he gazed down from the raised platform. ‘They must be reminded why we fight and why we are allowed to exist.’ ‘At least we can be confident that your ascension has not altered you enough that you might be mistaken for an optimist, my lord.’ Helbrecht turned at the voice and his mouth creased into a smile. Nivelo bowed his head in greeting and then moved to stand beside the High Marshal. He was an old warrior, a veteran of countless campaigns. His bare scalp was criss-crossed with old scars and his beard was iron grey, wiry against his cheeks and chin. They had risen through the ranks together – though Nivelo had found his place amidst the Sword Brethren. Now he was a source of close protection and even counsel.

There were few others whom Helbrecht would take so close into his trust. Merek Grimaldus, perhaps, now that the choler between them was tempered. A few favoured serfs and confessors. Finally, Helbrecht answered. ‘Some things the Emperor has set in stone, brother. It will be time’s ending before ever they change.’ ‘I should hope so. Tell me though, truly, how does it feel?’ ‘I am mostly healed, so the Apothecaries say. I am to submit to their scrutiny but a few more nights and then I shall be whole. Beyond that?’ Helbrecht paused and looked down at the ranks of warriors. The Primaris Marines were easy to spot, taller in their Mark X plate. He understood now what had escaped him when they had first entered the Chapter. The differences between them and the Firstborn, and the unity which held them together. ‘There is greater steel in my body and my soul. I feel… whole. Not as though I have satisfied a lack, or that this is as I was intended to be. More that I have been gifted something precious. I am the same man as I was before I crossed the Rubicon. I burn with the same fire that carried me through the Shrine Worlds Crusades. Only keener.’ ‘You speak,’ Nivelo began cautiously, ‘as though they are truly our superiors. Many fear replacement. That we will be swept aside in a wave of Mechanicus-forged flesh. You were there when we first welcomed them into our ranks from Guilliman’s vault ships. How plain-minded they were then– relics cast out of time, clinging to old truths and machine learning. There was no fire to them.’ He drummed his fist against his breastplate. ‘No soul.’ ‘We taught them that,’ Helbrecht said. He paused as gunships swept into the embarkation deck and landed in a rough line along the docking platforms. Superheated air buffeted the gathered warriors but none stirred or broke formation. They stood, poised sentinels, in the shadows of the Thunderhawks and Overlords. Underslung weapons glinted and crackled, eager to unleash wrath against mankind’s enemies. They had been baptised in the fires of war, Helbrecht had seen to that. There would be many more wars to come, of that he had no doubt. ‘We taught them zeal and faith,’ Helbrecht continued. ‘We stripped them of their suppositions and made them as Neophytes before the altar. They learned by example, as we all must. At the very tip of the blade. The

guidance of the Chaplaincy ever in their ears. Now they preach with our words and back them with their own fervency. That is strength. It is triumph to take the unforged and to make converts of them.’ Further into the vast space of the embarkation deck, as though to prove his point, warriors were sparring. Some bore full plate and blunted blades while others fought in mere training bodygloves hand to hand. The clatter of steel against ceramite and the rhythmical slapping of flesh against flesh was evocative. Electric. Grunts of pain echoed about the cathedral-like spars of the great chamber, war cries were bellowed, and chanted encouragement and jeers chased the warriors as they paced like hounds. They fought in mixed groupings: Firstborn and Primaris. There were varying levels of experience and physical prowess on both sides, with no guarantee of victory for either generation of Astartes. It was good to see. The slow annealing together of warriors into brothers. To guide them and shape them was the duty of the Chaplains and all who rose to prominence within the Chapter’s holy precepts. Every marshal was the guardian of their crusade’s soul, just as Helbrecht himself was the shepherd of their endeavours. ‘There is something to be said for them,’ Nivelo said with a nod. He leant on the railing before them, his armoured forearms dangling across it. Helbrecht heard the metal groaning under Nivelo’s weight. ‘We have suffered losses in the Shrine Worlds Crusades. There are gaps in deployment that it would be good to see mended. I take it that is part of the reason for the muster?’ ‘Partly,’ Helbrecht said. Nivelo’s brow furrowed at the ambiguity in his lord’s statement. He looked to Helbrecht for clarity and the High Marshal sighed. ‘We muster again in pursuit of the Beast. I have bided my time. I have answered the lord primarch’s call and protected those holy worlds he bade us to reinforce. How many servants of the Imperium yet draw breath because of our exertions? How many brothers fell in their defence? Or now stand sentinel over the sacred places? Our numbers swell, our crusades cry out for word of their next undertaking. Now that service shall be repaid in blood. The blood of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.’

‘Blood long owed,’ Nivelo agreed, perhaps too eagerly. ‘The heart of every battle-brother burns to avenge the slights of Armageddon, whether they were there to receive them or not. It is a just thing to bring the Beast to account.’ ‘There are rumours that our cousins in the Crimson Fists have launched a new Crusade of Vengeance. One to burn the greenskins from the very stars. Can you imagine?’ Helbrecht gazed out at the warriors. From the lowliest Neophyte to the greatest marshal, they would all fight and die at his word. ‘Ever has the ork been a tenacious foe of mankind. The legends spoke of how the Emperor and His sons smote them at ancient Ullanor. How the blood of Dorn repulsed them again when the Great Beast arose. They are our most enduring foe. Man and ork have been at war since first we came to the stars. The aeldari claim that this was their galaxy before the Imperium clawed it back, but that is a lie they comfort themselves with in their craftworlds. The galaxy has forever belonged to the ork.’ ‘I look forward to seeing your plans for the undertaking, brother,’ Nivelo said with genuine mirth. ‘No doubt you shall fashion our ships into spears and cast them across the void till they find flesh.’ ‘Have you known me to fight differently?’ ‘Never, brother. Not when you ascended to replace Daidin nor Kordhel. A stubborn soul of stone and fire. No blade more righteous.’ Helbrecht chuckled at the words and his bionic hand reached for the hilt of his sword. ‘No blade more righteous indeed… Yet it is a fleeting honour. I am the bearer of its legacy. By its grace I lead men into war. One day it shall pass to someone else, as it came to me after Kordhel fell to the Archenemy. I am ready for that time to come. Our blood is strong, as strong as the lessons of Sigismund, and from our gene-line shall emerge another hero who holds that mantle.’ ‘I pray that day never comes, my friend.’ ‘All men die, Nivelo,’ said Helbrecht. ‘What matters is the deeds that justify the lives they live. Done in faith and truth, before the Emperor’s light.’ ‘Praise be unto He who lays the path before us.’ ‘Praise be unto Him,’ Helbrecht echoed. A chime emitted from his armour and he sighed. ‘I have to go for a time– more observed convalescence.’ He nodded back towards the landing grounds, where more drop-ships were

landing and more warriors were spilling out in their thronging crowds. Prayers rose higher and more fervent, scattering cherubs into the upper reaches of the hangar amidst clouds of incense. ‘Keep an eye on the proceedings. If there is any alteration then summon me at once.’ ‘As you will, High Marshal.’ Nivelo bowed low, realising that the time for camaraderie had passed. ‘I shall guard their lives as surely as I guard yours.’ ‘See that you do,’ Helbrecht said. ‘The soul of one is as precious as the soul of all.’

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CHAPTER TWO OF GOLD AND IRON The world was on fire. It burned along the line of the horizon, and the flames climbed the dome of the sky. Everything was ablaze, kindling caught in the clash of immense opposing forces. Helbrecht had tasted conflict before. He had seen worlds die. This was different, riven through with the intensity of dreams and the weight of history. Furnace winds buffeted him with murderous heat. He raised his hands and realised that he yet carried his sword. The great blade was an anchor, gleaming silver against the golden flames, and he brandished it against fate. He felt as though he could cut his way free of the delusion, spill the blood of the false reality, and force himself back to true wakefulness. ‘Forward! Into them! For the glory of the Emperor! For the vengeance of Terra! Forward!’ a voice cried out through the tumult and ceaseless calamity of war. A voice rendered vast and glorious by genetic mastery and divine craftsmanship. The source of the voice surged past him in a wave; a magma flow come to life, bursting with all the volcanic strength of molten rock. Not the broken, bleeding stone of ruined citadels and homes. Nor the gold which wept from the eyes of statues lying shattered in the gutters. It moved with a strength and a purpose that was almost entirely lost from the dismal present age that wakefulness would return him to. Rogal Dorn. Helbrecht’s thoughts raced at the sight, the impression, of the symbolism that fought as a man fights. Dorn was rendered in burning, flowing gold, light trailing his movements as he drove forward, vaulting over fallen columns and turning aside flaming debris as it rained from the heavens. Helbrecht looked down and realised, far too late, that he too was clad in gold. A warrior of another age, when demigods had warred amongst themselves and the galaxy had been aflame in rebellion and war.

This was not Holy Terra, though. Not the sacred defiance of the Siege. Here Dorn was not the Praetorian. He was the Emperor’s wrath. The world shuddered at his passage. It burned. It blazed. Reality itself recoiled at the imposition of a rage so white-hot that it had turned cold. Helbrecht’s voice, someone else’s voice, rose in his own throat as he bellowed oaths. Hell answered him. Black stars streaked across the golden canvas of the sky, fell, and detonated in their midst. Infernal artillery, cast from the distant mouths of cannons that could only be daemonic. The stink of the warp, pit-spawned and unholy, was everywhere about them. Battle-brothers reeled from the impacts in horror and the light that animated them went out. They fell away in an ashen pall. Helbrecht fought through the ranks even as ash and muck smeared him and tarnished the purity of his armour. No longer sacred black but still sworn to his gene-sire. He took comfort in that, fighting through the unfamiliar weight of the pattern as he shouldered his way forward to stand with the image of his primarch. Even in dreams, they were bound by the power of that ancient blood, shaped by gene-legacies older than entire cultures, drawn into the potent gravity of those near-divine souls. He understood, caught in that moment of beautiful wonder, the sheer rapture that the diverse bloodlines of the ancient XIII Legion must surely have felt at the news that their primarch walked again amongst men. Will we ever know such joy? I pray that we do. That Dorn endures and fights forever in service to the Throne. As we all must. The thought was stolen away by the sudden advance of the enemy. Moving as only dreams could move, the stuttering flicker of failing holos, broken picts blinking in and out of focus. Black against the gold, tainted almost beyond recognition. As they drew nearer, though, he was able to pick out the details upon their armour. The brutal angles of the Iron mark, the hateful suggestion of hazard striping, the tattered papers of the oaths they had betrayed. The oldest enmity. The most ancient foe. For all that he had espoused the hatred of the ork, Helbrecht knew in his very soul that the Archenemy was mankind’s primal foe, the ur-enemy he forever struggled to surmount. A

man could conquer a thousand degenerate xenos-breeds and still never master a single daemon born of the human soul. Of all those servants of ruin, there were none more hated than these dark reflections. The sons of Perturabo, of dead Olympia. ‘Iron Warriors,’ he snarled through gritted teeth. They were a study in contrasts between what he knew and what the dream presented. They were abstractions, crafted from smoke and ash, animated by black tarlike blood. Unlight shone from their eye-lenses even as the false metal around them flowed and shifted into new shapes and configurations. They were, for a moment, every traitor who had stood against the Imperium down the long marches of its history. Banners raised in defiance of the righteous. They blazed with sigils, which coiled and writhed against the darkness of their armour. War cries reverberated across the plains as they moved with the suddenness of dreams. Helbrecht’s blade came up and bisected a gurning iron skull, driving the warrior back into the rubble. It snarled and spat even as the blade cleaved apart its helm and head, before bursting apart in a rain of stinking charnel ashes. A storm of bolter fire broke around them, detonating alternately in miniature sunbursts of golden light and pulses of oily black flame. Spectral brothers fell, their spark deadened by the warfare breaking all around them. Others bore down the iron monsters that assaulted them, their shadowy forms breaking apart in the cleansing light. Blades cut through their black bulk like sunbeams, dispelling their ancient taint and reducing them to mere ashes on the winds. The heat of the air shifted with every cut and parry, enflamed by every weapon’s discharge, and the artificial currents of it drew him on as surely as any ebb and flow in the order of battle. The pull of dream logic. The relentless potency of the vision. And it was, he realised, a vision. A gift from the Emperor on high; mankind’s master, who cast down revelations from the height of His Golden Throne to lead the faithful. Forever were the Chaplains sifting the Chapter’s unconscious in search of signs and portents that would mark a brother out as the Emperor’s Champion. Was this that blessing? He hewed apart another horrific vision, taking an arm first then bisecting it at the waist. He drove the tip of the blade through its breastplate,

impaling it upon the shattered flagstones. ‘Bring them ruin!’ Dorn’s voice roared as it overwhelmed all other sounds, killing the thunder with its fury and its pain. ‘Leave them nothing to rebuild! Not a single stone shall be left atop another!’ Helbrecht paused. He stopped in his tracks, and the other warriors, the ghosts of a forgotten age, shades of the Scouring, passed by him. He recognised those words. Remembered and understood the weight and purpose behind them. He knew where he was. The sky darkened with a sudden storm. Displaced air rushed down as something plunged through the squalling clouds. Vast tendrils of black fire and smoke coiled about the condensed supernova of light and energy that was the primarch. Helbrecht threw out his hand, roaring his defiance, and pushed off his vanquished foe. He threw himself into the battle, knocking aside allies even as he battered every enemy which dared to approach. The thing shuddered and spasmed. Jaws like deep-sea predators rippled along its length, splitting to gnaw and scrape against plate. The representation of Dorn seemed to blaze brighter and burn hotter as it wrestled with the shadow beast. The world rocked in sympathetic pain. Tectonic spasms of agony made the vision shake, the ground tremble, the skies crack open. Helbrecht watched the impossible jaws as they rent at the armour and a great fragment of blazing light tumbled away from the glorious assailed figure. The sweep of a gauntleted fist drove it back. Then another. And another. Each blow was a thunderclap. Each impact like the airburst of an artillery shell. Here, in the Akashic memory of dreams, the ur-combat played out. Man against monster. Hero against beast. The righteous against the infernal. He was every man who had ever taken up spear against drakes, down through history, and the savage pride it kindled in Helbrecht’s breast burned even after the primarch had fought on and away. He was left in the dust and the muck, gazing down at the shattered shard of armour which had fallen. Still burning with the auramite shimmer and inner flame which had animated it. Poised. Waiting. Someone thudded into him, as though they hadn’t noticed him. Helbrecht spun and his blade came up to block the enemy’s strike. The blade hissed as its power field sparked against its like. His eyes widened within his helm. He did not recognise the warrior opposite him but he knew the blade he

bore. Like his own, it had once answered to a different master. It too had been carried by the First Captain of the Imperial Fists, the first High Marshal of the Black Templars. It too was a sword of Sigismund. The Black Sword crackled with its own power field and refracted the fire and sunset of the dying world. It seemed more real, more concretely material, than anything else about them. The proximity of the two blades to the armour finally brought the vision to its crescendo. Light spilled up from the ground in great spiral arcs, sweeping away the world and the two warriors in their unstoppable tide. The golden light died, and there was only darkness.

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CHAPTER THREE THE WINGS OF REVELATION He threw himself up from the apothecarion bench on which he had been reclining, but the gauntlets of white-armoured Apothecaries forced him back down. Machines which had previously been droning monotonously were suddenly alive in a riot of alarums and chirrups. Helbrecht’s hearts pounded in his chest and he could feel the searing pressure where the Belisarian Furnace now nestled. His whole body was tensed, poised for combat which never came, borne out on the winds of a battle which had never truly existed. Helbrecht gasped, and his bionic hand clenched against the bench hard enough to dent it. Metal squealed until he finally fell prone. Finally, He had spoken. ‘Peace, brother,’ a voice whispered from the shadows at the edges of the chamber. Helbrecht was caught beneath the precise light of a post lumen, like an insect pinned in a collection, and had barely noticed the other figure, so lost was he in his fugue. His breathing shallowed. ‘I was–’ Helbrecht gasped. He pushed himself up from the bench and stood to his full height. He was clad in a supplicant’s smock as befit one who had submitted himself to the mercies of the apothecarion. The figure who had spoken, who now moved from the darkness, wore full plate. Blacker than black. He did not show his face but instead wore the silver death mask of a Chaplain. It had once been the mask of Mordred, but now Helbrecht could only associate it with the warrior who bore it into sacred battle. Who had been his friend and his advisor, and who stood now as Reclusiarch of the Eternal Crusade. ‘Grimaldus,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Indeed, brother,’ Grimaldus said simply. He laid a gauntleted hand against Helbrecht’s shoulder, easing him down to sit. Even the Apothecaries had taken a step back, so unused to the presence of one of the Chapter’s worthies in their domain. ‘Be at peace.’

‘Never an easy proposition for our breed,’ Helbrecht said. He heard the muted click from behind the impassive skull as the Reclusiarch laughed. ‘I…’ Helbrecht hesitated. ‘I have been at war. I have dreamed of the battles long since gone by. The Emperor. He spoke to me in the thunder and the tumult. He has finally shown me where I shall make my penance.’ ‘You are not alone in that,’ Grimaldus intoned. Helbrecht inclined his head. ‘Walk with me,’ the Reclusiarch said. Together they walked the decks of the Eternal Crusader, past gathered Chapter-serfs and waiting servitors, across the stone and iron of the Chapter’s history. Banners and votive parchments trailed in the recycled air stirred up by their passing. The atmosphere here lacked the incense spice of other contemplative areas of the ship, giving it a refreshingly clean and cool aspect. ‘And so you walked amidst the sacred past?’ Grimaldus asked. ‘As surely as I stand with you now, brother,’ Helbrecht whispered. His voice was a rush of hushed awe as his body struggled to parse the divine vision which had animated him. ‘A world burned in the old Legion’s wrath. And…’ He paused. ‘I saw him. I saw Dorn.’ He should not have feared. Grimaldus understood. He nodded patiently, holding his own rapture in check. The skull remained as impassive as it had during Mordred’s tenure. ‘What was he like, brother?’ Grimaldus asked. ‘What was it like to gaze upon the primarch at war?’ ‘Like an avalanche of movement,’ Helbrecht breathed. ‘Like a force of nature unleashed upon a galaxy too small for it.’ Grimaldus simply nodded. ‘We would expect nothing less from the primarch. He was ever stone. Stubbornly unyielding. A monolithic force.’ They continued to walk through the ship’s winding corridors. A vessel as immense as the Crusader was a world unto itself. Entire sections of the ship remained unmapped. There was a peace in losing oneself within the confines of the great vessel; in surrendering to the will of the Emperor and allowing Him to guide your path. ‘Even in the embrace of the dream, even with the Emperor’s guidance, I felt a gulf between myself and the sacred past.’ Helbrecht paused, uncertain

of his own admission. ‘It is a feeling I have carried since Guilliman bade me to remember my duty.’ ‘You do not believe you are worthy of His grace?’ Grimaldus spoke without judgement. The death mask tilted in scrutiny. ‘I feel as though I must atone. I have been marked. I have seen the price of failure and the consequences of broken oaths. That is what He wishes to impart to me. That is why I have beheld a world of ashes. Whatever this penance is, I shall walk it alone.’ Now they turned from the directionless surrender to a more determined course, guided by Grimaldus’ wisdom. ‘You are not alone in this,’ he said. Helbrecht frowned but the Reclusiarch continued. ‘I do not mean in the metaphorical. You walked in the Emperor’s light, drank in the blessed visions, and returned to us. In normal circ*mstances, on the eve of an undertaking, you know what that would symbolise.’ ‘That the Emperor had singled me out to be His Champion,’ Helbrecht said with a shake of his head. ‘But that is not so. It is not the place of a High Marshal to bear the Black Sword, not when he already bears the sword of Sigismund. The worthy are chosen, aye, but from amongst the ranks and multitudes.’ ‘And it is yet so.’ Helbrecht looked to Grimaldus as they walked, as the man intoned the words with solemn certainty. Grimaldus’ death mask turned and regarded Helbrecht in turn. ‘You experienced the vision, yes, but you only shared in it. Another bore its true wrath and fire.’ ‘You are certain?’ ‘The Chaplaincy have already attended to him,’ Grimaldus said. ‘He has passed their tests and been anointed. A new Emperor’s Champion has been called. Here. Now. In the very bosom of the Chapter, as its High Marshal rallies it to war. A fine omen for the battles to come.’ ‘Hmm,’ Helbrecht demurred. ‘And yet it rings hollow. I did not see the blessed future, the Emperor’s divine path, nor where His wrath should fall. I saw only what I have described to you. The sacred past. Wars already fought and done, consigned to record. I heard the primarch speak the words, and I understood what battle we relived. I knew where I was.’

‘“Leave them nothing to rebuild! Not a single stone shall be left atop another.”’ Grimaldus nodded. ‘From the Third Canticle of Retribution, of the Remembrances of the Scouring. A world condemned to endure as a monument to their failings. They turned from the Emperor’s light and embraced the perfidy of the enemy. They sided with the Iron Warriors over the righteous sons of Dorn. For those sins they were cast down and their descendants forced to live with their shame. Faces forever in the ashes of their world. A world of penance.’ ‘Hevaran.’ In the time of the Scouring, when the galaxy had burned with the Emperor’s vengeance and the traitors had been driven back from Terra, there had been many battles between the forces of Rogal Dorn and those loyal to his treacherous opposite, Perturabo. While the most famous had been the humbling at the Iron Cage, there had been other conflicts which had chased the erstwhile Lord of Iron across the Imperium, inexorably towards Sebastus IV. Hevaran had been amongst those worlds. Part of a clutch of systems which had known Dorn’s kindled wrath. The Imperial Fists– Dorn and Sigismund at their head – had gouged a path through the stars. The worlds they fell upon knew suffering and retribution as few others had. Fire had rained down upon them from the heavens, ships had punished the citadels of the traitors, and the warriors of the VII Legion had fallen like the very hand of the God-Emperor upon the heathens. When Hevaran had burned, the primarch had demanded that it never be rebuilt. It had endured only as a ruinworld, a world rendered sacred in its cataclysm. Those few who remained upon it were sworn to toil in the broken fields, dedicating their lives to penitent iconoclasm even as pilgrims walked the ways of the past. Each generation, within and without, looked to the world as a symbol– of the price that awaited laxity of faith. ‘Hevaran, brother.’ Grimaldus sounded almost pleased at the revelation. ‘Of all the worlds that burn in the firmament, it is a cold ember that our eye is drawn to. Too long ignored and denied the presence of a son of Dorn.’ ‘And for good reason!’ Helbrecht growled. ‘We are poised upon the brink of a new crusade. We stand ready to bring the Emperor’s wrath again to the deserving. Yet every time we do, it is pulled away from me. Does the Emperor intend for us to avenge the slights laid before us? Our losses will

only moulder with time while our foes stalk on to yet greater infamy! I am not called to Hevaran for glory, but as punishment, for crusades lost and worlds abandoned.’ ‘When you went before the Avenging Son, you were tempted to place wrath before duty.’ Grimaldus fell silent as they rounded another corner and advanced into the heart of the ship. The sealed doors around them were monastic cells for meditation and contemplation of the Emperor’s great designs. Each door was etched with ancient oaths of loyalty and declarations of faith. Helbrecht felt naked under their pronouncements, stripped of his dignity as readily by their surroundings as by Grimaldus’ chastisem*nt. ‘There is no true shame in that. You had set yourself upon a righteous course. Holy war beckoned to you from across the stars. Before the stars were eclipsed by ruin.’ The opening of the Rift had been a blow to body and spirit. He had raged in the aftermath, watching through the armaglass of the Galleria Astra as the graven images of ancient heroes had been transmuted by the light of horror. He had cursed whatever blasphemous powers had allowed such a transgression into the mortal realm. Even before the primarch’s summons, he had sworn, atop all the oaths of Sigismund and the rites of the Chapter, that he would avenge mankind’s wounded dominions. He would fight to slay every last foe of the human species. He would, by force of arms and surety of faith, make war until the Imperium was once again whole. ‘I knew my duty then, as I know it now. It is to the Imperium and the Emperor’s will. This vision is my opportunity to reaffirm that.’ Helbrecht sighed. ‘This new Champion. Who is he?’ ‘He is known to you,’ Grimaldus said. ‘Of all those who could have been called to the Emperor’s light, it was this warrior. Knowing this now it is no wonder that you felt the pull of the vision. You are bound together, as the Emperor commands.’ ‘Who?’ Helbrecht insisted again. They came to a stop and Grimaldus drew a ring of keys from where they had been mag-locked to his armour. He slid one key into the lock of the door that they faced. Its script was inlaid with gold and edged in marble. A gilded cage for a chosen warrior. ‘Bolheim,’ Grimaldus said at last. ‘Brother-Apothecary Bolheim.’

‘There is a divine symmetry when the hands of the healer are turned entirely to war,’ Helbrecht said and nodded approvingly. His brow furrowed. ‘Bolheim, though… he was–’ ‘Indeed,’ Grimaldus said. ‘The Apothecary who oversaw your crossing of the Rubicon Primaris. Who laboured as no other when you suffered and bled. He stabilised you. Cauterised the bleeding. Performed micro-surgeries that helped the new implants to root. The Emperor works in many ways– He chooses many vessels for His blessings. We worship Him as a warbringer, a forgefather, the light-incarnate which guides ships and speaks through the astropaths. Yet He is also a genius beyond compare, who crafted the Astartes and their primarchs through His own mastery of ancient knowledge. Those who watched over you are convinced that the Emperor’s will exuded through Bolheim and allowed you to survive. Indeed, to thrive.’ ‘A guardian of the flesh and now a guardian of the Chapter’s very soul. Praise be, for the wisdom of the Emperor is absolute and fitting. Let us see this Champion. Let me look upon him and end the consecration of our purpose.’ The chamber they stepped into was austere, its walls carved of finely veined marble but bearing no ostentatious furnishings. The floor was likewise bare. Upon the white stone knelt a single warrior. Like Helbrecht, he wore a supplicant’s robes. His face was pressed to the stone, revealing only the dark stubble of his scalp and the broadly muscled span of his back. He remained silent, not responding to the presence of the two officers, merely allowing his measured breathing to pulse from him. Slowly. Gently. In and out as he sought some measure of meditative peace. ‘Brother-Apothecary Bolheim,’ Grimaldus intoned. The warrior rose and turned, bowing curtly first to the Reclusiarch and then to the High Marshal. ‘My lords,’ he began, but Helbrecht gestured sharply with his bionic hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We are not your lords. We are brothers, and now we are as equals. The Emperor has chosen you, just as it was His will that I take up the mantle of High Marshal. You are a knight of the Inner Circle now, a leader of our most hallowed Chapter. You bear the Emperor’s light within your soul.’ ‘And so do you, High Marshal.’ Bolheim spoke in a rush. ‘Upon the shattered plains I beheld you, a fellow brother when all was fire and death.

Fighting in the shadow of the primarch. I saw his armour hewn from his body and left to corrode in the dust. I heard a voice cry out, like the thunder itself. It said, “Bring together anew that which was sundered. Bring forth glory from the ruins and light unto the dark places.” I knew it to be a commandment, a divine mandate from the Emperor Himself.’ His body trembled as he spoke, still coming to terms with the blessing that had been laid upon him and the new conviction which now inhabited him. Where the mantle of a High Marshal was the weight of responsibility, a brazen burden, the title of Champion seemed a golden cloak– invigorating whoever rested beneath it. Helbrecht had seen it before, with Bayard. The Emperor’s blessing enhanced every aspect of a warrior, as surely as ascension to the ranks of the Astartes did, but the effect on even the most seasoned of warriors was heady. ‘Then you already know where we must go and what must be done?’ Helbrecht asked. ‘Hevaran,’ Bolheim said. Helbrecht’s eyes widened. ‘That is our assessment,’ Grimaldus said. He leant forward as he scrutinised the Champion. ‘Though what we have ascertained through knowledge and recitation, you know in your heart. Is that not so?’ ‘It…’ Bolheim swallowed and then returned Grimaldus’ gaze. ‘It is so. I knew the world as surely as I knew the Emperor’s intentions for me.’ He looked to Helbrecht. ‘I am to be your guide, as I was before. I watched over you as the surgeries transmuted you. I shall do so again. You are changed, as the galaxy is changed, but there is more that must come to pass. We must be swift. What is at stake brooks no laxity in our step. We walk with fate, High Marshal.’ Helbrecht laughed. ‘The hubris of this one, Grimaldus! Newly minted, aglow with the Emperor’s touch, and he thinks to talk to me of destiny! You are yet young in the role, Bolheim. You have spirit, I give you that, but despite your station you overstep.’ ‘That was never my intention, High Marshal! Forgive me. The Emperor’s will… it is a heavy burden.’ ‘It is the impertinence of euphoria,’ Grimaldus said. ‘Those seized by the spirit of the Emperor burn with a brighter flame. The world is so much smaller for them in those moments. Yet He provides a confirmed course.’

‘To what end?’ Helbrecht asked. His stump itched and the bionic gnarled into a fist. The air in the room was heavy, cloying, and he could feel lambent static building within the small chamber. The proximity of Grimaldus’ plate did not help matters. ‘What must be made whole again?’ ‘The armour shard, of course,’ Bolheim said. He knelt before Helbrecht, uncaring as the High Marshal gestured for him to rise. ‘The galaxy is broken. How many systems are lost to Nihilus? How many crusades?’ He did not see Helbrecht’s jaw clench. ‘What is needed in such times are symbols of hope and relics of provenance. That is His gift. That is our purpose.’ ‘So we turn all of our endeavours to the pursuit of a fragment of the primarch’s armour?’ ‘It need not be the whole fleet,’ Grimaldus interjected. ‘A task force. A sacred quest. Only those sanctified to its pursuit. A single ship could bear you to the Hevaran System and you could begin your pursuit. A subtle venture. Not of force, but of faith.’ Helbrecht was silent. He looked from his Reclusiarch to the Emperor’s Champion and it was as though he knew neither of them. The world, once again, seemed to have changed about him. ‘I must dwell upon this. I must seek His guidance in waking as it has been bestowed upon me in sleep.’ ‘As you will, brother,’ Grimaldus said, bowing. ‘May He grant you the clarity which you desire.’

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CHAPTER FOUR THE SWIFTNESS OF SAINTS Of all the chambers in his sanctum it was the Strategium Occultis which brought Helbrecht the most peace. Here, beneath the hololithic representation of the galaxy, he could bask in the knowledge that he alone commanded the crusades of the Black Templars. The great hololithic generator crackled and spat, shuddering with static feedback until an image of a galaxy divided finally resolved. The Great Rift. The Cicatrix Maledictum. It was a literal wound in the Emperor’s dominion, a dividing line between Sanctus and Nihilus. Insurmountable, save for remote points of egress, so it was said. ‘Of all that the Dark Gods have cast against us, this is the most hateful. To see the work of ten thousand years cast to ashes. All that He built. We must mourn for Cadia and for a thousand worlds and more. For all that the Great Crusade laid down, the hands of ruin have torn them asunder. And I curse them, O my Emperor. I curse them with every fibre of my being. With every facet of my soul.’ He spat. No matter that it sullied the floor of his chambers or the history that it contained. These had been Sigismund’s chambers once. How many wars had he surveyed from this vantage point? Standing sentinel over the very marches of history. Dorn himself had surely made use of it. He remembered how it had felt to behold the demigod at war. The vision was fresh in his memory, ingrained upon his very soul. Helbrecht could understand the febrile zeal of Bolheim. They had shared the vision and all the energy of its passing had earthed into them. He was used to walking in the circles of grace, blessed by his position. Helbrecht felt the lightning of his calling burn within him every time he took up his blade. Bolheim had no such experience. The fire of revelation would burn him to ashes if he allowed it. ‘Grimaldus will not allow it, though,’ Helbrecht said to the empty air. ‘He will guide him, as he has guided me. As Mordred offered counsel before

him. The Chapter’s soul will survive. It will prosper.’ He missed the surety of his sword. It seemed too long since he had anointed himself in the liberating fury of battle. At the tip of a blade, all problems seemed surmountable. He could carve reality into a shape that fit his vision, as surely as he could cleave through the enemy. He had fought the shapeless horror of the warp with little more than a combat blade. Slain aliens beyond count. As his inaugural crusade as High Marshal he had attempted the impossible, and chased the Cythor Fiends to their lairs. And then there had been Armageddon, and a foe worthy of his ire. More than even Imotekh the Stormlord, it was Ghazghkull who deserved his hatred. Yet it was not the Beast who cleaved the galaxy in twain, nor who sought to break mankind’s spirit by destroying her temples. The enemies of humanity are legion and hope hangs by the barest of threads. ‘That is what I must defend,’ he whispered. ‘The soul and body of humanity.’ His gaze drifted across the tormented hololith. The crosses which marked active crusades were black lodestones amidst the blazing light of the Imperium Sanctus, but had faded to ragged suggestions in the uncertainty of Nihilus. There was only the after-echo of those crusades which were beyond their reach, lost from communication, stolen by the ravages of the Rift. Edioch. Helicos. How many others laboured yet in the galactic north? How many were lost? As the most numerous of the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes they were likewise burdened with greater losses. The burden of every death, every failure, every mortally wounded crusade, lay with him alone. Is this the weight of penance? Are these deaths what I must atone for? I have not sold their lives cheaply, nor ill. ‘Never once have I shirked from the weight of responsibility, nor ever shall I,’ Helbrecht growled, and dismissed the hololith with a wave of his hand. He turned from the dying of the light and embraced the shadows. He had allowed his serfs to armour him before dismissing them, and the lack of light rendered even the brazen plate as black as any other brother’s. Helbrecht trailed the shadows and the ashes of lost endeavours behind him like a shroud, out of the strategium and into his sanctum. The tower atop the

Eternal Crusader should have been entirely empty, yet as he emerged he was confronted by a familiar figure. ‘Grimaldus.’ Helbrecht sighed. ‘Brother,’ the Reclusiarch said with a nod. ‘The fire of youth burns brightly in our young Champion. He has all the eagerness of the chosen, a mind ablaze with the swiftness of saints. Quick to judgement, quick to wrath.’ ‘So I have seen. He should mind himself. Such courses often lead quickly to the grave. I would not see him entombed merely because he could not master the passions which his visions have turned loose. I saw what he saw and I have not been reduced as he has.’ ‘You are too quick, in your own way, to condemn him. The Emperor does not choose the weak or the unfit. The same will that elevated you to High Marshal speaks through him. He is young, yes, and his passions are yet greater than his grasp, but he will learn, as we all learn. At the point of the blade and through the embrace of faith.’ ‘The muster is–’ ‘The muster is in hand, brother. The Emperor tests us at every turn, and this is merely another. He sets forth the challenges for the faithful and we rise to them, time and again. Armageddon was a test for all of us. Just as was the prosecution of the Fiends. We are tested in those we lose and those we must replace. Mordred, Kordhel, Daidin. We are the sum of all who have gone before us. Successors and inheritors, yes, but we also bear the light that they carried. Our titles and our deeds live on long after we have been entombed within the Sepulcrum Ultima.’ ‘And then there is another Champion,’ said Helbrecht. ‘Another High Marshal, another Reclusiarch– on and on until time’s ending. Mere names and shades in the light cast by the Eternal Crusade. Mankind’s sacred dominion of the stars is dependent upon only one being. One man. Beyond Him we are all expendable and will, in our turn, be replaced.’ ‘You do not fear being replaced or forgotten,’ Grimaldus said, and Helbrecht knew he was right. ‘You have pride, but not vainglory. You wish only for your duty to be done.’ ‘It is all I have ever wanted. I have made my decision.’ ‘I am listening.’

‘Bolheim and I shall head out into the darkness alone, to walk this world as penitent pilgrims. I will not have the crusade weakened to escort me to my place of punishment, nor will I see resources denied to the true war so that they might salve my ego.’ ‘So few have the hand of fate single them out as you have,’ Grimaldus hissed. ‘You are called to a sacred world. A shard of the lord Dorn’s own armour. An honour, waiting to be claimed. This is more than punishment, Helbrecht. This is a quest. A sacred and profound thing for you to seize, with a coterie of sworn brothers at your back.’ ‘And you would bless that undertaking?’ Helbrecht shook his head as he stalked past Grimaldus and poured water into a goblet. He sipped it and swirled the vessel thoughtfully. ‘You would see me draw our brothers away from war, away from their duty, to attend to my needs? No. I refuse.’ Grimaldus’ skull-faced helm was silver and impassive, barely even tilting as he regarded his liege lord. ‘This is not as personal as you believe, brother,’ he said. The room suddenly seemed very small, despite the sprawl of his quarters. ‘I have only ever sought to offer you clear and honest guidance. The muster is in hand. You must tend to the Chapter’s soul as you gather its might. There is time enough. So be it, then. Walk in His light and be judged for the glory you return to us. A single ship. Yourself and the Champion, if you insist. A show of faith and fidelity to His will. “Though they be few in number, the faithful shall not walk alone.”’ ‘Reflections, Sigismund, Second, Verse Five. I know my scripture, Grimaldus.’ ‘I do not doubt it, brother. Now though, now you must prove that you can live it.’ Grimaldus was quiet before he spoke again. ‘You have changed, brother. Your flesh bears new strength and your spirit new determination.’ ‘Yet I am the same man.’ ‘A blade reforged might be of the same steel, but its edge is sharper. Truer. You have passed through a challenge of blood and pain. Now is the time to prove your mettle. To stride forth again as a leader of men and a disciple of faith.’ They emerged together, the High Marshal and the Reclusiarch, out into the arming bays where so many of their brothers had gathered.

Standard bearers stood at the front of the ranks of warriors, holding their banners aloft with martial pride. Each spoke of a crusade launched in the Emperor’s name, of a hated foe consigned to the ashes of history and of the Chapter’s unwavering commitment in the face of impossible odds. Ironweave fabric inlaid with glittering metals and vibrant swathes of colour was stirred up by the heaving machine-breath of the great ship. The warriors bore their heraldry and their achievements proudly, displaying them so that their brothers might know them by their deeds and their undertaking. Soon these banners would hang in the Temple of Dorn alongside other worthy declarations of martial victory. Clasped once again to the bosom of the Chapter and shared with all those who cleaved to the most sacred bloodline of Dorn. At the sight of them a cheer went up. Each warrior raised his voice even as he sank to his knees. Helbrecht advanced up the dais that had been prepared and looked out at the gleaming ranks. Already oiled in preparation of the coming conflict, their armour glimmered with the void’s sleekness. They were an army that could overturn systems, upend worlds and shatter civilisations. Looking upon them he knew pride as a father knows pride. The air was filled with servitor-generated hymnals, sung with the voice of a captive choir, and the recycled atmosphere was alive with the scent of incense billowing from auto-censers and the fragrant plumes of burning braziers. The great iron ribs of the chamber rang with the sacred song and glimmered with the light cast by the distant fires. Cherubs nestled along the rafters, heads tilting like curious corvids as they observed the proceedings. Parchment hung from their gnarled feet and below the stubby protrusions of their wings and anti-grav generators. All eyes were locked upon Helbrecht. He drew his sword and held it out before him, letting the firelight and the light of lumens catch upon its edge. He dwelt upon Grimaldus’ words and considered just how similar he and the blade were. Both forged from disparate elements, remade into something greater, weighed down by history and legacy. Shaped by shame. ‘Brothers!’ he called. He scanned the crowd as he spoke, spotting Nivelo amongst their ranks. The Sword Brother nodded to him and Helbrecht continued. ‘Hear me! We stand now upon the precipice of our undertaking! The galaxy burns, yet we have seen off myriad threats against the

Imperium. Shrine worlds still bear His light because we fought in their defence. Brothers gave their lives to ensure that the tyranny of Chaos found no purchase in the hearts of men.’ Cheers arose at his pronouncement. Fists drummed against breastplates. Blades and other weapons joined them. He raised a hand to still them. ‘I stand before you as your High Marshal. Instrument of the Emperor’s will. Yet I am not alone in this sacred duty.’ Helbrecht threw out his arm and indicated Grimaldus. ‘The Reclusiarch and the others of the Chaplain brotherhood have read the signs and portents. They have raised up a warrior from amongst your ranks to bear the title of Emperor’s Champion. Brother Bolheim, once an Apothecary, now stands as an inheritor of the Chapter’s great legacy. He is a true heir to Sigismund, a bearer of the Black Sword, and together we shall forge through the darkness and punish the impure and the unclean!’ Their voices were raised in chants and praises again. Helbrecht basked in it, their zealous adoration washing over him in a tide of sound and fury. He gestured behind him and Bolheim stepped up onto the dais. He bowed solemnly and then went down on one knee. His skin was ruddy, sheened with sweat beneath the hangar’s lights and the attention of his fellows. He raised his head and addressed the crowd. ‘Brothers, the High Marshal speaks with wisdom and with the Emperor’s blessing. We stand prepared to carry the will of the Master of Mankind out into the stars in glorious crusade. Yet now we are presented with a new sign. I have been graced with a vision from the Throne itself. A relic of our sacred primarch waits for us and I shall accompany the High Marshal to return it to the Chapter.’ A hush fell over the gathered warriors, held rapt by the revelation. Helbrecht kept his peace. His hand tightened about the hilt of his sword, lowered now with its tip to the metal of the dais. Every warrior watched. Serfs paraded through the ranks, their eyes downcast, unwilling to look up at the gathered glory and might of the Chapter as they adhered purity seals to armour or anointed them with sacred oils. ‘Praise be!’ someone cried from the crowd. Every other voice joined it. Helbrecht looked out across the gathering and felt the pang of pride once again. They were, all of them, true sons of Dorn. Where the Imperial Fists exemplified their gene-father’s commitment to flawless defence, so the

Black Templars were his fury. They bore in their very souls the same directed savagery which had scarred the galaxy during the Scouring. Worlds such as Hevaran were their dominion. Where wrathful angels walk, mortals quail. ‘No pity! No remorse! No fear!’ Every voice in the chamber echoed the Chapter’s mantra. Their way of war knew none of these failings. Such things were beyond the transhuman warriors of the Black Templars – purged from them down the long millennia of brutal warfare. The neverending crusade forged hardy fighters, claimed from whatever worlds were found in the path of their righteous advance. Every last brother of the Black Templars had been recruited thus, for they hewed to no home world. From the worthy they claimed the Emperor’s due, the tithe of flesh and spirit necessary to fuel their sacred undertaking. ‘Be about your business,’ Helbrecht intoned. ‘The crusade demands your all. When we return, sanctified by the relic’s provenance, then we shall wage war across the stars once again!’ Helbrecht turned to regard Grimaldus and Bolheim. The stolid dark might of the Reclusiarch and the newly forged white-clad Champion. Contrasts. Not opposites, but merely two sides of the same coin of devotion. ‘Are we ready?’ Helbrecht asked. ‘First there is one thing that must be done, High Marshal,’ Grimaldus said solemnly. ‘Our Champion must be armed and armoured for the trial to come.’

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CHAPTER FIVE THE BLESSED FEW The three of them passed under row after row of iron arches, each one carved with different scenes from the lives of Dorn and Sigismund. The Great Fortification of the Palace. The Siege. Sigismund, Sentinel Before the Walls. The Breaking of Dorn’s Sword. The Iron Cage. The Vigil at the Gates of Hell. Every time Helbrecht passed under the great arches he contemplated the long path which had brought him to this moment. Each High Marshal, one after the other, laying down their lives and dying for the dream that was the Imperium. Just as Dorn and Sigismund had been willing to sacrifice all in turn. More times than he could count, Helbrecht had gone on his knees before the Tomb of Sigismund and prayed for guidance. To know that he served that same design. That he was worthy of the faith others placed in him. That faith engendered the faith of others. His decisions changed lives. Grimaldus had risen by his hand, and the direction of every crusade still fighting in the galaxy was dependent upon his choices. To serve was the greatest honour any of them could bear, and as such it was its own reward. But as they advanced into the chapel, Helbrecht beheld again one of the greatest gifts the Chapter could bestow. Crimson-clad Techmarines had already prepared the armour, altered for the dimensions of the Apothecary. They huddled close to it, anointing the plates with unguents and whispering the binharic cants of reverence to the machine-spirit. Their deference came from the Cult of Mars, where they had trained in the ways of the Emperor-Omnissiah, offered up for the sacred relic they attended.

The Armour of Faith was a thing of beauty. Master-wrought and artificer crafted. Each plate of it was flawlessly maintained and presented, its black surface devoid of scar or marking. Atop the helm rested a laurel wreath: a symbol of the Emperor’s favour for as long as there had been an Imperium. Time and again the armour had been forged, reforged, remade for necessity or from catastrophe. The plate was always exemplary, the work beyond criticism. To look upon it made Helbrecht’s breath catch, even before his gaze came to rest upon the Black Sword itself. The armour was sublime, yet the blade was somehow more vital, more potent in its ancestral might. It was the mirror to Helbrecht’s own blade, though the Sword of the High Marshals was a longer weapon– less able to be wielded flexibly as the Black Sword was. The unscabbarded black metal seemed to drink the light, drawing attention inexorably to the words engraved in its skin. Imperator Rex. In other ages there would have been pomp and ceremony to accompany such an ascension, but Helbrecht’s shared vision had muddied the protocol. Grimaldus had arranged for a more subdued assessment of the Champion and his choosing. Great deeds must often be done in the shadows. ‘Praise be unto you, Bolheim, who bears the Emperor’s favour and shall stand as His Champion in the prosecutions to come. You stand in the presence of the Armour of Faith and the Black Sword of Sigismund. You are witnessed by myself, High Marshal Helbrecht, and Reclusiarch Grimaldus.’ Helbrecht drew his sword and laid it against Bolheim’s shoulder. The Champion held his gaze, his eyes wide and clear. His breathing was even, chest rising and falling beneath the robes. ‘Do you accept the blessing of the Emperor and the trust of your Chapter? Will you serve the Throne in glory and spread the light of holy truth?’ ‘I shall,’ Bolheim said. He moved into the blade’s embrace, feeling it pressed plainly against his skin, demonstrating no fear. The slightest shift of the edge against his skin would bleed him if he dared to profane the sacred office of the Emperor’s Champion. It was an impossibility, though. None had dared. None would ever. ‘I embrace His glorious vision, which has led me to this moment. I serve until death, as all Black Templars must.’ ‘Then we accept you as His Champion,’ Helbrecht said, and withdrew the blade.

Bolheim turned from him and advanced into the centre of the chamber, towards where the armour was being sanctified. Behind the gathered Techmarines and the armour itself rose a vast golden statue of the Emperor, armoured as befit a warrior, but with His arms outstretched and hands empty. A welcoming presence which spoke of a wary and wrathful benevolence. As the Emperor’s Champion stood before the Armour of Faith, a gaggle of serfs peeled away from the edges of the circular chamber – moving from behind pillars and curtains, and through billowing clouds of smoke. They began to solemnly pick the pieces of armour up and slot them into place upon the Champion’s body. There were muted clicks as the plates met the interface ports of the black carapace. Bolheim did not flinch or wince at the intrusion. He simply moved as was required, until all the armour was in place. He knelt with a clatter of ceramite and the soft burr of active plate as the serfs hefted the helmet up and over his head. The seals hissed as they finally locked and the light kindled in the helm’s eye-lenses. His gauntleted hands opened and closed and a placid sigh echoed from the vox-grille of his helm. ‘Glory be to the Emperor, who arms and armours me for the war eternal.’ ‘Glory be,’ Grimaldus echoed and turned to face Helbrecht once more. ‘Now you are two. Your ship awaits.’ They emerged into one of the secondary hangar bays which served the massive flagship, smaller than the primary hangars yet just as impressive. The sacred melded with the functional, as it did throughout the ship, with the higher reaches rimmed with banners and encrusted with the gothic accretions of ages past. The skulls of favoured serfs and docking technicians stared down with empty sockets, purity seals unspooled from their jawless mouths. The sacred dead watched over the hangar bay and offered their silent blessings upon all who sailed forth from it. Under their benevolent gaze waited an Overlord assault transport. Its cannons sat idle, silently threatening, while its engines cycled slowly – casting a thin, blue pall of light into the grand darkness. Where the main embarkation decks had been crowded, bustling with the warriors of many crusades, this one sat almost empty.

Helbrecht turned to regard Grimaldus again. ‘What ship did you have in mind to bear us forth, pilgrims as we are?’ ‘The Faith Adamant awaits you. A Nova-class frigate of some speed and prowess. A swift spear to bear you to the relic and back again. And with the blessing of Dorn himself our crusade shall commence across the stars. We shall gather as much force as we are able, bring death to the Beast, and push back even the Rift itself.’ ‘Such is the Emperor’s will and His glory, so too is our purpose.’ Helbrecht hammered his bionic fist against his breastplate. Grimaldus bowed his head. ‘Go with the blessing of the God-Emperor, and may His light shine even in the darkness of the void, that you might find what you seek and be led home once more.’ Helbrecht stepped to one side and allowed the other warrior of his coterie to speak with the Reclusiarch. Bolheim spoke with Grimaldus at length – with all the conspiratorial guile of the metaphysical. There were spiritual precepts to be laid down, no doubt, and concerns from the Reclusiarch. That he should defend their High Marshal with every fibre of his body, until the last drop of blood, until death claimed him. Bolheim broke from the communion and walked to stand with Helbrecht, his face now set as he examined the Overlord gunship. ‘My first time in one of these,’ he admitted. ‘No different from a Thunderhawk, I imagine. Only perhaps a little bigger?’ Helbrecht laughed. ‘So I am led to believe.’ They walked together around the great war machine. It was indeed larger than a Thunderhawk and more heavily armed and armoured. The great fourfold engines whined and shuddered, making the entire heavy flyer judder like a living thing. ‘It has been made in the light of the Emperor-Omnissiah and ordained by the primarch reborn. Beyond both of those things it is also utterly lethal. It shall bear us true.’ ‘Does it have a name?’ Bolheim asked. He brushed one gauntleted hand along the outside of the black-armoured vehicle. ‘The machine-spirits are often appeased by knowing and honouring the name of the vessel they inhabit.’ The Champion smiled. He was, as was proper, a superstitious soul. He knew his catechism and, over time, this had blossomed into an

understanding of, and respect for, the minutiae of belief. He was still adapting himself to circ*mstance, ever seeking whatever advantage could be gleaned by honouring the divine. Helbrecht was about to check the Overlord to see what was plated to its exterior or etched in gilded Gothic script into its metal skin, when Grimaldus’ vox-rasp echoed from behind them. The pronouncement was almost funereal in its certainty. ‘Flame of Terra,’ Grimaldus said. ‘It is called the Flame of Terra.’

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CHAPTER SIX FAITH ADAMANT The Nova-class was a fine escort, but a poor warship, and the disparity was enhanced by its proximity to the immense splendour of a vessel such as the Eternal Crusader. A mere shadow of the immense and ancient battleship, like a parasitic feeder next to the ocean-going leviathan it fed upon, the Faith Adamant was eclipsed, outmatched and reduced to timid servility in its presence. Helbrecht stood upon the bridge, Bolheim at his side, and appraised the ship’s captain stonily. The man was already droning through his preprepared recitation of his manifest, only now revealing– ‘A month’s warp transit, Throne willing and with clement tides,’ Shipmaster Saul Ygaz stated plainly. He was a thin man, of clear voidfaring stock, yet bristling with energy so intense it seemed as though his enthusiasm might break him. His hair was halfway between sandy blond and stark silver. One eye had been replaced by a constantly whirring augmetic, which burred in time with the ship’s machine heart and the clicking of its cogitators. The starched grey collar of a Navy uniform peeked out at the neck of his robes, suggesting that the latter were a hasty affectation upon his learning that Helbrecht himself would be aboard the vessel. ‘I trust this is to your satisfaction, my lord? We are doing everything we can to ensure swift passage.’ ‘And we have enough provisions and supplies for the undertaking?’ Helbrecht asked. The shipmaster stiffened at that but held his nerve. He cast his eye around the squat circular chamber that formed the Faith’s bridge– made deeper by the darkly recessed pits which contained its specialised functions. They stood in the centre of the chamber, arrayed in a loose semicircle around the command throne: the shipmaster, the High Marshal and his retinue. ‘Supplies have been secured upon delivery from the Crusader, lord. Including personal armouries for your warriors.’ Saul forced a smile as he

wheeled on the ball of his foot to attend to a chirruping cogitator. ‘My warriors?’ Helbrecht allowed. ‘There are but two of us. The Champion and myself.’ ‘Forgive me, lord,’ Ygaz said, bowing his head. ‘The Reclusiarch sent an honour guard of warriors. Soul-wards, he called them. For your undertaking.’ If the shipmaster noticed the tightening at the corner of Helbrecht’s mouth he gave no indication. Grimaldus had ignored his decision, and decided he needed minders to trail along with him. Anger blossomed in his chest, and he tamped it down. ‘It is an honour to stand amidst your number and to be party to this holy quest,’ the shipmaster continued, unaware. ‘As the God-Emperor demands, so shall we rise to the challenge.’ Saul looked to the command throne, which he had, very deliberately, chosen not to occupy. ‘If it pleases my lord, I would surrender command of the vessel to you.’ Ah, there it is. For though I am many things to many men, above all else I am the commander of ships. A captain of surpassing skill. A hero of Armageddon’s void war. As though that is all I am, or all I am capable of. ‘I commend you for your foresight, shipmaster, but I would have you remain in command. This is your ship and we are but guests upon it. I would not take from you what the Emperor has bestowed.’ Surprise flitted across the shipmaster’s face before fading into a placidly warm acceptance. He had expected to lose his command and so Helbrecht’s actions seemed of unusual benevolence, in contrast with his rising choler. ‘I will have other duties to attend to during our transit. Matters of flesh and spirit unique to the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes. You are a captain of one of our ships. You understand.’ ‘Indeed, High Marshal,’ Saul said. ‘We have set aside chambers for you and your warriors. Should you require anything further, please do not hesitate to request it. We are at your disposal.’ ‘My thanks, shipmaster,’ Helbrecht said with an approving nod. ‘Keep me apprised of any developments. Until then we shall be in communion with the Emperor.’ ‘May He watch over you, High Marshal.’ ‘And you, shipmaster,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Now… show me to these warriors.’

The nest of cells and arming chambers along the vessel’s starboard flank was well appointed and almost sinfully spacious for line battle-brothers. They would be inhabited regardless, and cherished for the spartan barewalled chambers that they were. Not the dull iron of the ship, but grey stone. Almost sepulchral. The warriors had gathered outside their chambers, backs straight against the chill stone. Nivelo was there and Helbrecht smiled to see him, despite the circ*mstances. They clasped arms and the grizzled Sword Brother bowed his head to the High Marshal. ‘The Reclusiarch reckoned you would need someone to steady your arm in this,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I cannot imagine why he thinks I shall be of any assistance.’ Helbrecht shook his head ruefully and turned to the other Space Marines. They were known to him, a testament to Grimaldus’ judgement, if not his ability to follow orders. They were each on the ascent through the ranks of the Chapter. Intended for great things. Such an undertaking as this was a fine crucible through which to test them, to sharpen them and prepare them for what was to come, be they leaders of men or mere line warriors. Throne damn you, Merek, he thought. Idid not want this, but what’s done is done. Raimbert wore the deep black of a Chaplain, yet his armour was that of a Primaris Marine. The skull face, like a pale echo of Grimaldus’ own, stared at him with equal impassiveness. Helbrecht had the measure of him in moments. His stance was subtly uncertain. How he held himself, how he turned his crozius over and over again in his hand– as though overeager to put it to use. He bowed his head as Helbrecht approached. ‘High Marshal,’ he breathed, ‘it is an honour to serve in this endeavour as the representative of the Chaplaincy and as the Reclusiarch’s proxy. I will not fail you in this.’ So much to prove, Helbrecht thought. So uncertain of the legitimacy of his position. Yet he would have been judged, the same as any, and progressed at the will of the Chaplains. Such a strange thing, to be gifted with such power and trust yet burdened with so much doubt. It is good that he has been chosen for this. A chance to observe his ways of war and practice of faith. ‘I have no reservations as to your ability, Raimbert. Grimaldus’ sense of character has ever been sound. You are a fine choice to tend to spiritual matters, alongside the Champion.’

Raimbert brought his empty hand up to his breastplate in salute and bowed his head again as Helbrecht moved on. ‘Brother Theodwin,’ Helbrecht said and nodded to the next warrior, who was clad in the white armour of an Apothecary just as Bolheim had once been. Theodwin had a healer’s surety. He had kept apart from the others, checking and rechecking his narthecium and supplies. He retracted his reductor with a snap before turning to face the High Marshal. Theodwin’s helmet was mag-locked to his hip, revealing his sharp features and stern grey eyes. ‘High Marshal,’ Theodwin said. He leant forward as he spoke and appraised Helbrecht critically. Even in this moment of solemn undertaking he was constantly at work, assessing and considering his lord’s health. Helbrecht could feel the almost vulgar fascination radiating from the young warrior. It was one thing to study the Primaris as they passed through the apothecarion, and to know the principles of crossing the Rubicon Primaris, but it was undoubtedly another matter entirely to see the effects on a warrior as august as Helbrecht. I am changed. All who look upon me know this. They see the alterations to my form, the new strength kindled within me, and each reacts in a different manner. Fascination. Fear. I am a symbol in so many more ways than I once was. Not merely a leader of men but an exemplar of what can be. I have passed through the fire of transformation, and by His will, I have survived. That judgement does not fade easily. Helbrecht inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘I take it that the Reclusiarch has chosen you to see to my physical health as he has clearly chosen others to see to my spiritual wellbeing.’ ‘I believe so, my lord,’ Theodwin said. All business. Pure practicality. Helbrecht liked him. Duty was a fine commendation amongst their ranks. ‘I have provisions enough for what little parameters have been provided to me. Though we expect the compliance and cooperation of Hevaran, it is prudent that we are prepared for any eventuality.’ ‘As it should be,’ Helbrecht said and nodded approvingly. ‘For the warrior who is prepared for all ends shall conquer all trials.’ He moved on and addressed the final member of their cadre. The battlebrother had gone to his knees as soon as Helbrecht and Bolheim had entered, and had yet to rise again. His hands were locked around the pole of

Helbrecht’s personal standard, holding the banner aloft in a flutter of crimson and black. Helbrecht. The stylised depiction was of the Chapter Master himself, grasping his sword and casting forth a lantern, brandishing the Emperor’s wrath and His light. The pale youth’s eyes were downcast, and he could not bring himself to look up at the High Marshal. Helbrecht chuckled dryly. ‘Rise, boy. You have been deemed worthy by the Reclusiarch. You will be of no use to me if you cannot even look upon me.’ ‘Forgive me, lord,’ the Neophyte said and stood, finally meeting Helbrecht’s eyes. ‘It is an honour beyond words. One I am not sure I can fully appreciate. To have been chosen from so many other brothers, each more worthy than I. I shall not fail you, lord. I shall fight and serve as the Chapter demands. I shall learn at the sword’s edge and bring honour to the legacy of Rogal Dorn.’ ‘He’s keen, at least,’ Nivelo said with a snort. ‘That’ll serve us well.’ ‘Indeed,’ Helbrecht said, though with none of Nivelo’s gentle mockery. He placed his bionic hand upon the Neophyte’s shoulder. ‘You have been chosen because the Chapter has placed its faith in you. To be my standard bearer and to fulfil the rank of sworn Neophyte within Squad Helbrecht. Tell me your name now, and we shall be as brothers. Peers in the Eternal Crusade, not divided by rank or rent asunder by envy.’ ‘Andronicus, lord.’ ‘Then be welcome, Brother Andronicus. You will have time to learn from your fellows when we are properly underway.’ Alone within his cell, Helbrecht found that heat did not conduct well through the chambers and so they were oppressively cold– an omen which Raimbert praised as a sign that the Emperor would tolerate no laxity from His servants. ‘When you are cold, let your faith be your warmth,’ the Chaplain had declared. Hardship was only ever the spur to greater deeds and truer words. Where many other brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes, or more isolated facets of the Imperial Creed, were content to dwell within their own moribund thoughts and to cleave to suffering, for the Black Templars it was

used to push them further. To fight harder. To live up to the standards which the Emperor had laid down for them. Helbrecht placed his hand against the smooth, cold wall of the cell as he contemplated the thought. Of all of the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, only the Black Templars truly embraced the Imperial cult as the absolute truth that it was. Too many others prevaricated and hewed to caveats. That the Emperor had been a man– the greatest of men, but still just a man. That He had denied His own divinity. That the brothers of the Adeptus Astartes should cleave to a purer code than the pilgrim masses of base humanity. Helbrecht did not agree. For ten thousand years they had kept the flame of faith burning. It had not diminished when the traitors had returned from the Eye, nor when the Great Beast had first arisen. It had survived calumny and civil strife beyond count. Apostasy. Nova Terra Interregnum. The War of the False Primarch. The Imperium had survived, and so had the faith of the Black Templars. They had been tried by the fire and had not been found wanting. Helbrecht drew back from the wall of his cell and stepped out of the door, along the metal-floored corridor and in the direction of the chapel. When he reached the chapel’s door, he opened it. Bolheim stood before the effigy of the Emperor-starfarer, surrounded by the tools of void and warp navigation. In its upraised hands the statue bore a three-eyed talisman that symbolised the Navigator Houses, and a voidsextant which spoke to the skill of mortal captains. It was a fine chapel, carved of the same grey stone, with its altar lined with precious metals. Gold and platinum glimmered faintly in the light of the electro-candles, just as it played over the sheen of Bolheim’s holy plate. ‘I would have preferred something with a more martial bearing,’ Bolheim said, ‘but it will suffice for our needs. The captain has been most generous in his support.’ He inclined his head past Helbrecht. ‘There is a training chamber towards the starboard gunnery decks. We would do well to put it to use.’ ‘A fine suggestion,’ Helbrecht agreed. ‘You must take the time to master your new gifts. Beneath the aegis of Champion you will find your prowess only grows. It amplifies, His favour, and it perfects. Have you had time to dwell upon your visions? The vision we shared?’

‘I…’ Bolheim trailed off. ‘When I meditate, High Marshal, it is as though I am there again. I burn with His wrath, to cast down the tyranny of iron and the dominion of false idols. I know things that I could never have known as an Apothecary.’ ‘Such as?’ ‘Hevaran was a stronghold of the Archenemy. Surrendered to ruin as the Great Heresy raged. They chose dark compliance over righteous defiance and, for a time, they prospered with the support of the traitors. In the Great Scouring, though, they knew reckoning. Rogal Dorn pronounced that every last bulwark of the traitors would be torn down and shattered. Hevaran was a lynchpin. Their walls had grown mighty and their garrison haughty. Pride burned within them as they embedded themselves in the flesh of the Imperium and dared the loyal sons to pull them free.’ ‘The researches of the Chaplaincy, and my own recollections, confirm much of this. Dorn, in his fury and his brilliance, gouged them from the very stars.’ ‘He did. You saw what I saw. The war for Hevaran was total and unyielding. The Legion fought one of its greatest battles. It punished the foe with fire and wrath, with precise and orderly destruction, until not a single structure remained standing upon the world.’ ‘And Dorn, in his infinite wisdom, declared that for their transgressions it would never be rebuilt. It would stand as a testament to its crimes and its populace would grub in the dust of their treason until once again earning their redemption. I am led to understand that it has become quite the focus for pilgrims to pass through. The ruinworld. Sacred and unyielding in its destruction. A testament to the perfidy of traitors and the mercy of our lord Dorn.’ ‘And where a holy shard of his armour has come to rest. Untroubled and undiscovered down all these millennia.’ ‘Revealed unto you now by the Emperor’s blessing.’ Helbrecht considered the Champion. Bolheim stood perfectly still. He was tensed for a conflict only he could see coming, prepared by the hand of the God-Emperor to be His instrument. Just as Sigismund had once been, in the very age that Helbrecht and Bolheim had experienced in visions. The dream was electric, burning within the Champion’s nervous system while it lay upon Helbrecht like a shroud.

He could feel the Emperor’s guidance upon him, in every movement he made, more keenly than he had at any other time in his life. From Neophyte to initiate, from Sword Brother to marshal, and then on to High Marshal. The hand of providence had shaped him. Even unto the Rubicon. He clenched his fists and exhaled. ‘When we arrive will you know where the relic lies?’ ‘I will. When you have been chosen, you see with more than mere eyes. The flesh is but the vessel for the Emperor, and He sets His signs in the firmament to lead us to our end. I see the golden traceries as they flit about the world. Did you see it, when Hevaran burned? The golden light?’ ‘I saw it,’ Helbrecht said. He had watched the world burning and thought it merely the fires of its destruction, yet Dorn and his warriors had been ablaze with golden light. A righteous flame corralled by black iron and hate. ‘Then you know that His guidance will never mislead us. When I stand upon its soil then I will know where fate intends us to go. When we return to the crusade it shall be as heroes.’

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CHAPTER SEVEN TESTS OF FAITH In the absence of other duties, and with the sick pressure of warp transit heavy in the air, Helbrecht tested the warriors’ mettle. For those of the bloodlines of Dorn there was a sacred bond in ritual combat, whether it was the rarefied gathering of the Feast of Blades or simply honour duels amongst brothers. Sigismund, it was said, had been a master duellist. One of the most accomplished of the old Legions. The urge to face down their rivals and to honour their brothers burned hot in the gene-line of the Black Templars. Nivelo, brash and bold, had been the first to offer challenge– almost for sport – just two weeks into their transit. They had been surprised when it was the reserved and taciturn Theodwin who answered. Both had stripped to the waist and chosen dulled training blades. Short weapons, almost akin to the gladii of the Ultramarines, but fitting their purposes. They were not equals. The fight had been skewed in favour of the elder, Nivelo, who had set about Theodwin at an almost leisurely pace, driving him this way and that along the open rectangular space of the training chamber, like a dog worrying at a piece of meat. Eventually, when he had had his fun, he dropped the warrior with a few swift jabs of the training sword, bruising his back and ribs. Theodwin had glared at Nivelo for a moment before the veteran offered him his hand and pulled him up. ‘Not bad, lad,’ Nivelo had said, encouragingly. ‘For a healer, you have a good bit of fight in you.’ Andronicus had been the opposite. A week later his impetuousness had surpassed his awe and he had chosen Raimbert as the subject of his own martial proclamation. The alternatives, Helbrecht had realised with a smile, would have been to challenge either himself or Bolheim, both of whom were a world away from the young Neophyte in terms of ability. In Raimbert, though, the younger warrior had found another who shared his youthful exuberance. Raimbert had refused to remove his helm– doing so

only amongst Helbrecht and Bolheim– or his armour, and so they had met in full plate. As expected the clash was more energetic and less one-sided than the combat which preceded it. They fought with their all, almost animalistic as their blades clashed or rang against armour. Eventually the bout ended with Andronicus pinned, training blade to his throat, against one of the pillars which stood at the edges of the chamber. Andronicus brought his hand up and gestured his submission. Raimbert drew back and nodded. Whatever else had come to pass, the Neophyte had earned the respect of at least one warrior. It was almost inevitable that Helbrecht and Bolheim should be the next to fight, inexorably drawn together by their shared bond. There was no formal challenge, merely the muted acceptance that this was something that must be done. Like Nivelo and Theodwin, they had stripped to the waist and were armed with dulled training weapons. Where the others had favoured shorter blades for the ritual combat, the High Marshal and the Emperor’s Champion had chosen long blades. Helbrecht tested the weight of his sword; it lacked the heavy surety of the Sword of the High Marshals, but it would suffice. He watched Bolheim do the same, testing his blade with one-and two-handed grips. His lips were moving as he prayed, though Helbrecht could not tell whether it was for victory or merely guidance. Outside the chamber, outside the ship, all was Chaos. The warp spat and seethed against their tiny, fragile bubble of reality, frothing and pooling in an infinity of non-colours and never-shades, oil-on-water smears ready to catch fire or already burning with impossible flame. The blade of the ship cut through oceans of lust and hewed apart glaciers of distrust and suspicion. A beacon and a bastion of the enduring against the ephemeral, yet all too capable of being swept away itself. Helbrecht envied the ship that surety. It knew what it was. Time and again its worth was tested. He could not remember the last time he had truly been tested. Above Armageddon? Or when the Stormlord had taken his hand? Perhaps the Rubicon had been his last great trial. He tightened his hand about the sword’s hilt and slid forward, bringing the blade up in a sweeping strike that sought to score Bolheim’s chest. The Champion was already in motion, stepping effortlessly to the side,

following the flow of Helbrecht’s opening gambit. They both moved with the ease and grace of experienced swordsmen: not the dull hacking actions of a butcher, not the methodical and well-drilled undertakings of a soldier. They were both warriors. Shaped by the Eternal Crusade, moved by the God-Emperor to be exemplars. Their enhanced Primaris physiology sang with the effort as they each pushed themselves to their limit. Bolheim’s own attack swept low and Helbrecht had to turn his blade in his hand to counter it. The contact was bone-jarring, despite the lighter material of the swords. Helbrecht gritted his teeth and pushed outwards, pulling his sword up and then spinning about. It made contact with Bolheim’s shoulder, a slap echoing about the chamber as the flat of the blade impacted against skin. Bolheim grunted and then turned and hurled himself forward. He took hold of the sword with both hands and drew it up above his head before sweeping it down. Helbrecht pivoted his body away and they gusted past each other. Their chests heaved with the exertion. Sweat sheened them. They lunged at almost the same moment. Blades clattered as they caught against one another, dancing as they locked. They were pulled in close by the swords, by the struggle, trying to get free and to maintain advantage. Helbrecht was older, stronger, yet Bolheim was aglow with captive energy. Like caged starlight, trapped and amplified by mirrors. He burned as surely as any of the warriors of the vision. This was no dream, though. This was as close as they would come to battle. The blades unlocked and Helbrecht pushed onwards, seeking the initiative. The blades clashed again. He battered the Champion back until the younger warrior finally managed to match Helbrecht’s strikes, pushing back with equal and then greater strength. They moved around the chamber as they fought, never standing still. For all its savage intensity there was beauty in it. The absence of doubt or fear in the surrender to battle’s clarion call. The other warriors of their band had fallen silent. They did not cheer encouragement but watched in hushed awe, as though it were a sacred and profound thing unfolding before them. Other, lesser Chapters would have whooped and jeered, or placed vulgar wagers. There was none of that here. They stood and watched with the same sombre wonder reserved for prayer

or temple services, transfixed as they watched the Emperor honoured in combat. Their blades clashed together again and again with enough force to generate sparks. At some points it was Helbrecht who held the advantage and drove the Champion back, until Bolheim reversed the initiative and lashed out with his own impassioned blows. He caught Helbrecht across the chest and his blade glanced against the High Marshal’s collarbone, eliciting a snarl of frustrated pain. ‘You…’ Bolheim hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You do not weary. Indefatigable, just as you were upon the slab. Too stubborn to wound, too blessed to die.’ He tried to weave away from Helbrecht’s reach but the edge caught him along the cheek. A trickle of blood stained Bolheim’s face, already flushed red with exertion, and he hurled himself at Helbrecht. The High Marshal sidestepped the goaded warrior and slammed the training steel against Bolheim’s spine. He buckled, stumbled, and then tried desperately to pivot round. His blade skirted mere inches from Helbrecht’s eyes and then drew back. Both warriors looked at each other with wary, weary respect. ‘A tie, then?’ Nivelo called from the sidelines, laughter dancing in his voice. ‘It seems some questions are beyond answering even for us. Who would win?’ ‘It is a wager that should never be tested,’ Helbrecht said firmly. ‘We are brothers. He is the bearer of the Emperor’s favour and I am the High Marshal of the Black Templars. We each serve the Emperor in our own way, and dark would be the day we were ever pitted against one another.’ He shook his head at Nivelo’s folly and turned back to regard Bolheim. The Champion was smiling despite his heaving chest and the tang of blood and sweat which clung to him. ‘You did well, Champion. You are a credit to the Chapter and to those who have gone before you.’ ‘And yet I could not best you,’ Bolheim said. The Champion’s smile seemed forced now, false. ‘Surely that bodes ill for whatever else we may face.’ Helbrecht laid his hand upon Bolheim’s shoulder. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘It is the finest blade that strikes only where it must. That judgement is the soul of a knight.’

He looked around at his watchful brothers, each poised to learn whatever lesson he could impart. Some were youthful, uncertain, craving new certainty: Andronicus, Raimbert, even Bolheim himself. Nivelo and Theodwin watched with the glint of past experience in their eyes – the knowledge that there was always something new to learn and incorporate into their personal warcraft. ‘You are all worthy of this undertaking. We are sworn to each other in this duty. When we return it shall be as heroes and champions, blessed in the light of the Emperor and Dorn. We shall commend our find to the Temple and we shall know that we have served our lord with all our hearts and soul.’ ‘Praise be,’ they echoed as one. Helbrecht was about to speak again when sirens cut across the momentary silence. The gentle tremoring of the ship shifted once more beneath their feet as the alarms set the decking beating like a heart. The tinny warbling died and was replaced by a mechanical vox-amplified voice. ‘Prepare for immaterial translation to realspace. Glory to the sacred machine. Praise be unto the guidance of the Navigator. Bright burns the light of the Astronomican.’ ‘We have arrived,’ Helbrecht declared. He nodded to the others in the training chamber. ‘Go. Arm and armour yourselves. When we walk upon Hevaran we will represent not only our Chapter but the bloodline of Dorn entire.’ They each bowed and exited the room. Helbrecht stood in the centre of the chamber, muscles aching from the exertion of the sparring. As he turned towards the door he realised Raimbert had not yet left. The Chaplain stood, a mute shadow, arms folded across his black-armoured chest. The skull-helm stared at him, unreadable. Despite his relative inexperience he seemed quite fitted to acting as Grimaldus’ proxy. ‘Are you certain of this, High Marshal?’ ‘Certain?’ Helbrecht asked. Raimbert was fully armoured and loomed over Helbrecht, yet the High Marshal still commanded the room. As he moved towards Raimbert the Chaplain drew back, till the powered plate of his armour scraped against the white walls.

‘We have been led to this eventuality by the visions of the Emperor Himself. You have studied the Chapter’s mysteries, have you not? You know the litanies. You shall not doubt.’ ‘I have no doubts, my lord,’ Raimbert said. Helbrecht fancied he could see the chestplate of the Chaplain’s armour flex as he bristled at the chastisem*nt. ‘I merely ask, are you certain of this course, now that we are here? I am with you, to whatever end, but it is my duty to ask you questions that others dare not.’ ‘When we are upon Hevaran, all will become clear. The Champion shall guide us. The armour shall be found. This is beyond doubt, above reproach. It is the will of the Emperor. When we do His work we are doing what is best for humanity. We stand as its defenders and as the wrathful sword that drives back the darkness.’ Raimbert bowed his helmed head. So close to the wall the gesture was incongruous, making him seem more like a decorative suit of armour or a hunched gargoyle on a cathedral’s ledge. ‘You speak with wisdom, High Marshal. Forgive me. Before we departed, the Reclusiarch instructed me to watch over you. To minister to your spirit in this undertaking. You are hale in body but it is your very soul to which I must turn my attention. The flame which burns brightest, burns brief, and I would not see you undermined by the intensity of your transformation.’ Yet I have never felt stronger, nor more righteous in cause. I have never been as exalted as I am now. I understand the transformative power laid upon the Champion. To burn with the holy light and not be consumed, as the warriors in my vision burned. The fire that cannot be quenched. Helbrecht shook away his thoughts and pushed past the Chaplain. ‘Look to your own soul, Chaplain, lest you find it wanting. Come and see the certainty of my step.’

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CHAPTER EIGHT RUINWORLD The Faith Adamant tore back into reality trailing the burning, vomited detritus of the warp, the crawling afterbirth of the unreal, from its Geller envelope before they evaporated into screaming, yearning faces. The human crew collectively seemed to sigh and sag, as though a single held breath had finally been let free. Sluggish movements metastasised swiftly into an orderly parade of duties. Systems were checked and double-checked. Cogitators were audited and servitor data-banks interrogated. Every last facet of the ship was subjected to exacting attention to make sure that all was in order and ready for duty. Helbrecht, fully armoured in black, gold and bronze, strode into the heart of the bridge like a martial statue come to life. His bionic hand rested upon the pommel of his sword, scabbarded at his hip, and his combi-melta bolt rifle was slung across his back. His crimson cloak billowed behind him in the recycled air, tugged by sudden zephyrs. ‘Report,’ he snarled. All eyes turned to him, from every station upon the bridge. The shipmaster stood uneasily, winced, and looked at the High Marshal. ‘We have just made warp translation into the Hevaran System, High Marshal.’ ‘You have confirmation of that?’ ‘The Navigator has scryed it so, my lord.’ The man turned and gestured to the opening shutters along the bridge’s primary viewports. ‘Look for yourself.’ The outermost reaches of the Hevaran System were cold and dead, a graveyard of desiccated ship carcasses and slowly drifting rock. Time and the ravages of the void had slowly scoured every last vessel of their insignia, scraped clean by micro-meteorite impacts and the crawling colonisation of ice. Imperial, certainly, though of such ancient classes and patterns that it could only have occurred millennia ago. Without large outer-

system planets, the remnants of that long-ago conflict had congealed near the system’s Mandeville point, forming a morbid barricade that the Faith had already begun to skirt around. Shipmaster Ygaz gestured. ‘There it is.’ Still far distant, Hevaran was a gnarled grey lump of a world. Sparse cloud cover drifted across its expanse, girdling it in meagre purity, but even that could not hide the scars which still troubled it. ‘No signals beyond localised vox-links, no major infrastructure or prominent power sources.’ Ygaz tapped a finger against his lip. ‘If I had to make an assessment from the outside then I would consider that it had undergone complete societal collapse.’ ‘An orchestrated collapse,’ Helbrecht said with all the finality of a death sentence. Ygaz looked at him quizzically and the High Marshal continued. ‘Hevaran is a ruinworld. This is both its punishment and its gift. To be the ashes from which others shall rise. The pit which inspires obedience in others.’ ‘So this is intentional?’ Ygaz asked. He leant closer to the viewports, eyes wide and staring. He could see the entirety of Hevaran and yet, in all the ways which mattered, he could not truly conceive of it. ‘A world left to moulder as a tribute?’ ‘As a warning,’ Helbrecht stated. ‘Rogal Dorn beheld their perfidy and their weakness and decreed that they would never rise again from that state. They would suffer and they would grovel. The world that was their tomb would remain their home. It would bear no mourning halls or great works. Only the ruins of what had been. They would subsist on what they could find or what was provided for them, and they would open the great warfields of their world to the pilgrims who came to gawk– as nobles wonder at their menageries.’ Helbrecht allowed himself a rare smile. ‘And all done with the authority of a primarch, to last until time’s ending.’ Ygaz bowed his head. ‘Far be it for me to question the will of a primarch,’ he said and turned back to looking at the world. ‘We should attain orbit within two days. Do you wish me to attempt to communicate with the natives, lord?’ ‘Only when we gain orbit,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Give them as little time to react as possible. Expediency is our greatest weapon here. We sweep in,

find the relic, and withdraw before they are even truly aware of our intent. The more unbalanced they remain, the greater our chances of success.’ ‘You…’ Ygaz paused, swallowed hard, and then continued. ‘You are High Marshal of the Black Templars, my lord. Surely you could simply demand whatever you wanted from them?’ ‘No doubt I could, and perhaps in time I will. I wish to look upon them without prevarication. I want the truth from them. The truth of themselves and of their world. They may not know me, but they know the sons of Dorn. I must look them in the eye, and let them see the legacy of my blood. Only then shall I be satisfied that all can proceed. I want the ship primed to leave as soon as we are ready. Send word to the muster that we have arrived and commend them for their preparations.’ ‘Aye, lord. I shall have the Master of Vox prepare general missives, unless you would prefer to direct a more personal statement?’ ‘Not at this moment. Should we find what we require then I will send word personally, but for the moment notice of our arrival shall suffice.’ ‘As you will,’ the shipmaster said with a bow of his head. ‘We are continuing our progress into the inner system, lord. I will contact you should there be any developments.’ He paused and scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘I take it you will be spending the remaining time before we achieve orbit in preparation for the undertaking?’ ‘We shall. There are prayers which must be observed before setting foot upon a world of such sacred history. The bloodline of Dorn must be honoured by his truest sons, and the will of ages carried forth once more.’ Helbrecht’s scarred visage caught the light shed by the open viewports, rendered as an echo of the ancient and cracked surface of Hevaran. He seemed, in that moment, impossibly aged and yet utterly vital. He reminded Ygaz of the sculptures which aped the martial bearing of the living Astartes. Sometimes the High Marshal stood so still that he might as well have been a statue. A gothic extravagance befitting a chapel or the bridge of a more ostentatious vessel. Helbrecht turned away from the viewports at last and stalked out of the bridge’s hushed bustle. Ygaz watched the High Marshal go and shook his head. ‘Throne go with you, High Marshal,’ he said finally.

They spent the days before the final approach in near-constant preparation and prayer. Helbrecht went armed and armoured at all times. Whether kneeling before the chapel’s altar and the wayfarer-Emperor, or practising bladework alone in the training chamber, he was an avatar of righteous battle. Over and over the powered blade cut through the air as he moved through his stances. Each movement was fluid, precise, lethal. At either end of the chamber the culmination of his practice drove wounds into the smooth stone of the pillars, marking them in a rough ladder of executed strikes. The incisions extended roughly the height of an average human. Each mark was a kill-strike, perfectly considered as a method of ending a human life. Helbrecht looked upon it with satisfaction. The moment of truth approaches, he thought, and I strive as ever to do His will. I have served. I have tested myself. I have come through the fire. Is this to be my reward, lord? He pushed himself harder. He turned back and began his methodical advance across the chamber as his blade rose and fell. He pivoted, ducked, swung and thrust. Eventually he felt the physical contact of blade against stone. The reverberation travelled along his arm. He felt it, even though the plate of his armour stole most of the kinetic energy. The ghost of sensation whispered through the muscle-fibres within and then faded. He let out a long sigh and drew the blade back. Do not let my blade lie idle, for I am eager to put it to use in your name. All I do is for the glory of the Imperium. My life, my duty, is service. Battle and victory are the spoils I lay before your altar. I shall atone for my failings and for the laxity perceived by the Avenging Son. I shall renew myself and reconsecrate my purpose. Alone with his thoughts, there was peace and there was torment. He tensed and lowered his blade before he turned to the chamber’s door. Nivelo was standing and watching him. The Sword Brother was fully armoured and had a sword scabbarded at his hip. In his right hand he carried the solid weight of a storm shield. On the opposite side of his belt hung a bolt pistol and melta bomb. He was as ready as Helbrecht himself for what was to come. ‘If you keep this up there may not be much of a chamber for the rest of us to train in,’ Nivelo said chidingly as he nodded at the columns. ‘You’ll have

brought it down around our ears. The shipmaster, no doubt, will be most displeased.’ ‘Enough of your games, Nivelo,’ Helbrecht said sternly. ‘I have not the patience for them.’ ‘As you will, High Marshal,’ he said with a shrug. The gesture, amplified by his armour, seemed almost comical. The sort of movement that a sworn brother of the Black Templars should be incapable of. The interruption irked Helbrecht, broke him from his reverie, and he would not suffer it any longer than was necessary. ‘Are the others prepared?’ ‘Bolheim has been prepared for as long as you have, if not longer. Raimbert much the same. Theodwin has seen to his provisions and given us all a cursory medical check. He’s concerned about you, that one. I think the Reclusiarch has set himself the task of safeguarding your spirit and body in this endeavour. A Chaplain to tend to your soul and an Apothecary to ensure that your crossing of the Rubicon has no ill effects.’ ‘Yet here I am,’ Helbrecht said and threw wide his arms. ‘I stand, hale and healthy, sound in body and mind. Sure in soul and spirit. If others have concerns then let them be voiced. The Emperor favours the bold who will speak their mind rather than the coward who hides their thoughts.’ ‘A fine sentiment,’ Nivelo said, nodding. ‘Perhaps we should pass it on to our brothers.’ ‘Enough,’ Helbrecht growled. ‘You are my brother and we have served together for many years and in many campaigns, but even my patience has limits.’ ‘Forgive me, brother,’ Nivelo said. ‘It has been a long journey and I am eager to see the meat of it. I do not do well at confinement without purpose. If I am to be in the void then it should be upon a ship which is on its way to war, or in a drop-ship or drop pod. This inaction galls me.’ ‘I know your pain, Nivelo,’ Helbrecht said, and finally sheathed the blade. The light in the chamber shifted as the holy blade was hidden, as though the world were rendered more profane in its absence. ‘The sooner we fulfil our duty, the sooner we shall be back amongst the crusade proper. The galaxy will not be idle in our absence, nor will it stop turning. There will always be wars for us to face. Foes for us to strike down…’ Helbrecht paused. ‘If we are worthy.’

Nivelo was silent for a moment. ‘You doubt too readily, brother. The Reclusiarch has faith in you. As do all those selected to stand at your side.’ ‘I should have come alone. I ought to be clad in the rags of a penitent, with a whip in my hand. Send me out to the breaking plains and let me shatter idols to powder, like any of this world’s other sons. I ought to be anointed in my suffering. And my shame.’ ‘Though Sigismund was Champion and High Marshal, he was never truly alone. His strength lay in the brothers who stood with him. Why, then, should you be any different?’ Nivelo sniffed and drew his own blade, swiping at the air experimentally, in great cleaving motions. ‘We are your strength, as surely as you are ours.’ Helbrecht nodded. ‘If I am to face down this fate, then I am grateful it is with such warriors as you.’ He laid his hand upon Nivelo’s shoulder and then moved towards the door. ‘Come, brother,’ the High Marshal said. ‘The ruinworld awaits.’ The Flame of Terra cut through the anaemic scabbing that passed for atmosphere and down towards the sweep of Hevaran’s northern continent, skirting around the corpse-plains of long-dead oceans. Things that had once been buildings sprawled along the edges of the dusty craters, their fallen and broken bodies a testament to the utter carnage which had been unleashed here. They could see the great mountain ridges which had held fortresses and bunkers, now reduced to the ruins men called Vestige. Hevaran was a dead world pretending at life, existing out of stubborn defiance and devotion to an ancient promise more than any innate vitality. It was a world staggering and stumbling out of legend into a present that, increasingly, had no use for it. Everything, as far as the eye could see, was grey dust and shattered stone. The entire world had been reduced to a dead pyre, devoid of vegetation or obvious signs of life. Lichen clung doggedly to stonework and caught the weak sun, rendering swathes of it into subtly coloured swells and eddies– like algal blooms upon the seas. It was only as they wheeled about and neared the makeshift landing pad around the settlement of Faith’s Gift that the industry of the world became clearer. Figures in grey robes and fatigues swarmed about over the rocks, so similarly coloured as to be almost invisible from the air. For all the

pretension of the vast cities of other worlds, Hevaran had the true feel of an insect’s hive. The workers milled about like drones, in long trains of activity. Some stopped and looked up as the Overlord swept low, shielding their eyes as they watched the craft make its preparations to land. Terse clicks of vox-communication guided the pilot down to the landing plot identified as Receival Five. It was a surprisingly spacious landing pad, more suited to pilgrim-swollen bulk landers or old Militarum troop transports than the gleaming profile of a Space Marine gunship. It had been cleared of debris in ages past and lined with the fine-powdered remains of crushed rock and salted earth. The engines whined hot and cycled down, before the rear ramps fell, and the warrior cargo could finally disembark. Andronicus and Nivelo went first. The Sword Brother marched proudly, back straight, and the Neophyte followed his example by his side. Helbrecht’s personal standard snapped in the low coasting wind as Andronicus moved off to one side and Nivelo moved in the opposite direction. They were followed by Theodwin and Raimbert, who moved in uneasy lockstep, before separating in turn. Last came Helbrecht and Bolheim. Shoulder to shoulder, the High Marshal and the Emperor’s Champion seemed invincible, glorious, like a propaganda relief come to life. The two warriors walked in silence and beheld their welcoming committee for the first time. The six warriors were greeted by a dozen soldiers in storm-grey greatcoats, lasguns held tightly as they stood at attention. Not storm grey, Helbrecht thought as he surveyed them, stone grey. Dust grey. As one the soldiers knelt in a single fluid motion, the butts of their guns resting against the smooth rockcrete of the landing pad. From behind them came a sound that Helbrecht did not instantly recognise. It took a moment for him to realise it was applause. An old man in the simple slate robes of an administrator advanced unsteadily through the kneeling line of soldiers, cane slung into one elbow as he clapped. His thin, birdlike features creased into a smile equal parts awestruck and bemused as he beheld the six warriors. All but Helbrecht wore their helms. The High Marshal had no need of his. He had nothing to hide. He wanted Hevaran to see the face of its salvation. The bloodline of Dorn which had given so much to secure it for humanity. He wanted them to see who they owed their gratitude to.

‘Be welcome, sons of Dorn,’ said the old man. ‘Be welcome again to Hevaran. Ruinworld.’ He bowed low at the waist. ‘I am Clerk Primary Augustus Klath. I have the honour of being the highest-ranking official upon our humble world, and the direct liaison with pilgrim affairs.’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘Suffice to say we were surprised to receive word of your arrival. In these ill days even the pilgrims have stopped coming…’ The old man seemed to shrink further into the grey vastness of his robes and studiously stopped himself from looking up. ‘Since the Rift,’ he almost whispered. Then the shadow passed from him and he forced a smile. ‘To be graced by warriors of the Adeptus Astartes, though, is a rare gift in such times. And of Rogal Dorn’s own gene-line, as well. Though few others would have reason to come here, either as penitents or as pilgrims. As warriors of the vaunted Black Templars I dare say your motivations are beyond either.’ ‘I am Helbrecht. High Marshal of the Black Templars.’ Helbrecht spoke the words with a simple, direct authority. The power of it was enough to make the guards sway backwards, as though struck by his mere presence. ‘I thank you for your welcome and commend you for honouring the Emperor’s servants in this way.’ He nodded to the honour guard and then gestured to his own retinue. ‘With me stand Bolheim, Emperor’s Champion, Sword Brother Nivelo, Chaplain Raimbert, Apothecary Theodwin and Neophyte Andronicus. We are come upon a holy mission, following a divine vision from the God-Emperor Himself.’ There was a moment of human silence as the clerk processed the information. Helbrecht could hear the pounding of the man’s heart, as clearly as he could hear the distant hammers of ceaseless iconoclasm where the natives toiled to destroy their past. He could smell the faded echomemory stink of fyceline and promethium, the world still swaddled in its shroud of memories. Just as his vision still clung to him. Impossible as it seemed, the cold and pallid world still burned with the remnants of its past wars. Above the hot reek of burning rubbish and the scent of cooking meat and boiling broth there was a tang of blood. The corpse-stink of old murder swirled about the planet, as intrinsic to it as gravity. Helbrecht looked at the men and women who lived and died here, and could feel the pressure that the planet had exerted upon them. Worn down by their own history and the sins of long-dead ancestors.

‘Then you are most welcome, High Marshal Helbrecht,’ Clerk Klath said. There was a new firmness in his voice. The obedience born of awe at being confronted not only with a Space Marine, but also one of such rank and position. Every muscle in the old man’s body had tensed as he stared up at the towering figures of the warriors. Helbrecht wondered if the differences between them were obvious to these mortals. He had become so used to the divisions, whether attempting to smooth them over or by overcoming them personally. To a mortal’s eyes the Templars would merely seem different in height or build, in the mark of armour, and they would remain ignorant of the profound deviations beneath. It was enough for them to consider that the Astartes were a breed apart from humanity, transmuted by genetic science and surgery, profoundly altered by additional organs. The idea of an entirely other strata of being would be unthinkable to all but the most learned of Imperial personnel. ‘Will you require anything?’ Klath asked. ‘Our resources are… well, meagre.’ He shook his head and chewed at his lip piteously. Helbrecht felt disgust curdle inside of him. Mortal weakness was one thing but this simpering was almost offensive. He placed his hand upon the pommel of his sword and stilled his intemperance. ‘We will require only a guide once our course is set,’ Helbrecht said. He turned and nodded to Bolheim. The Champion seemed distracted, looking around in every direction as he sought to reconcile the burning world from his visions with the ember of the present. Helbrecht leaned closer to Bolheim, his attention fixed upon him. The scrutiny seemed to bring Bolheim back to the present and his eye-lenses focused upon the High Marshal. Helbrecht spoke again. ‘What do you see, brother?’ ‘This world sings,’ Bolheim breathed. ‘The light of ages past is bound within it, as much as the air…’ He shook himself. ‘When the Emperor confers His gifts I see light. The Chaplains tell that the Champion can see the will of the Emperor in that light. Drawing His wrath to those who deserve it most. This whole planet burns with the memory of what was done here. The justice meted out so long ago lingers. I can see the light when I close my eyes, but it refuses to coalesce. I need time. I need to walk the fields we saw in our vision. I have to know this world.’ The words left him in an urgent hiss, as though they were not truly his words. Once again he was merely a conduit for something greater.

The Emperor speaks and we listen. That is all that we can do. Ours is not to question, merely to obey. To fight. That is all that we are. Helbrecht nodded and turned back to face the clerk. The man seemed impassive and untroubled by their hushed conference. He looked up at Helbrecht with that same stunned expression, poised on the brink of speech. ‘We will require a guide,’ Helbrecht said once more. ‘But of course, my lord. It is our pleasure to serve. I shall dispatch someone as swiftly as we are able. I remain, as ever, your devoted servant. We shall guide you along the oldest of the pilgrim roads. Others have found enlightenment upon those paths.’ The old man bowed and hobbled off. The honour guard of soldiers stood, watching and waiting, and finally let their weapons hang idle. Clerk Primary Augustus Klath hurried as fast as he was able, away from the landing site and into the warren of shanty town structures, tents and the piles of rubble which divided them. Not walls, for that would violate the sacred agreement, but instead piled with the intent of being dealt with at some point in the near future. Hevaran was a world founded upon half measures and loopholes, where the spirit of the law spoke far louder than the letter. He tried to keep the tremble from his step, from his hand, from his eye, and failed resoundingly. Other workers stopped and stared at him as he hobbled past, his pace drawing attention rather than dismissing it. He cursed under his breath. How can I be so rattled by them? These demigods from beyond the sky? The punishers of our ancestors… ‘The wrathful hand of God,’ he muttered under his breath and spat into the dust. ‘Come to remind us of our sins.’ He turned a corner, past the covered entrance of a food hut. A gaggle of children spilled out from under the rough plastek tarpaulin, chattering and laughing as they played with model work tools. A scrawny matron ducked out after them and nodded apologetically. He smiled benignly and pushed onwards. Past the habitation tents and the latrine trenches, and down the worn stone steps set into the alcove. The stink of lichen was strong here. It clung to the stone in wet fleshy fronds, as though the stone itself were coming to life. He had seen a shattered statue as a boy, half consumed by it.

Tendrils had been pushing through the broken faceplate, further erasing whomever it had represented. As a boy Augustus had often wondered about that. It was heresy to dwell on such things, of course. Those who had raised the statues and structures of the past, he had been told, had been traitors to the Throne. They were monsters. Daemons. Things not to be remembered. Merely annihilated. He had raised his sledgehammer without question, then, and he had reduced the squirming visage to powder and rot. Augustus shook away the stink of the mouldering stonework and opened the hatch. Inside, the air was purer, forced through ailing filters and airscrubbers to remove the worst of the dirt and grit. He breathed deeply. There were perks to being one of the only remaining authority figures upon the planet. There was no true luxury left, but access to the ancient tunnels and facilities was as near as it came. On any other world these tunnels and his meagre spartan quarters would barely have been worthy of a low-born serf. I rule a world, and yet I have nothing. What design set that in motion? He scowled. The warriors from the sky had no concept of want or need. They were weapons and little more. For all their piety and weaponry, they were just instruments. Going where instructed. Chasing dreams and portents and calling it divine will. ‘Madness,’ he muttered. ‘Utter madness.’ Augustus stood before the door to his quarters and opened it. A small room, as cramped and quaint as any surface hab-tent. Dominated by his bed, by the table with its carved regicide board… And the figure who sat, hunched over the table, considering his move. His opponent’s bulk clicked and whirred as it moved. Gauntleted fingers closed around one piece, lifted it, and moved it across the board. He hesitated, moved it back, and sighed with a sepulchral exhalation. ‘I did not expect you back so quickly, clerk primary. I am still considering my move. There are many options in any game, as I hope you have learned.’ ‘I have,’ Augustus said with a weary sigh of his own. He sat down opposite the looming shadow. ‘No man has a single fate. It is not a shadow upon the wall but a spectrum of potential, as light through a prism.’

‘Very good, Augustus,’ the figure said, and laughed. It was a grating sound completely at odds with his immense armoured bulk. A forced sound. Artificial. Hollow. Perhaps before, at some time in his past, Augustus would have read more into that and worried what sort of being he was conversing with. The ancients had always warned about making deals with daemons and treating with monsters. He had thought them simply stories from the wastes. Yet here they were. ‘There has been a complication,’ Augustus said suddenly. ‘There are–’ ‘Sons of Dorn,’ his opponent said patiently. ‘I am aware. They are not as subtle as they might think themselves to be. Nor are you, my friend. There is little left that you can hide from me.’ The metal fingers found the piece again, weighed it, and then completed his move. ‘What do you want me to do?’ Augustus asked. ‘That should be obvious, clerk primary,’ the warrior sat opposite him said. He stretched as he stood. The ancient baroque plate burred as he moved, and the light of the room’s single lumen caught on its hard edges. The cold iron of it glinted. ‘I want you to take them where they want to go.’

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CHAPTER NINE PLAINS OF DESPAIR ‘Clerk Primary Klath tells me you need a guide,’ the man said with a wry smile. In the hour since Klath had hobbled off the Space Marines had not moved, merely maintained their rough cordon around the Overlord, gazing out at the broken world around them. Work crews hurried forwards, ready to go about their duties of clearing or breaking, but idled as they drew near. They had expected a pilgrim intake or supply ship, though both had become infrequent, and instead were confronted with icons from legend. The Black Templars had ignored their scrutiny, until the unkempt man had shouldered his way past the line of soldiers with nary a backward glance, and had bowed ostentatiously to Helbrecht. ‘I am told you need a guide?’ he repeated, tilting his head one way and then the next as though speaking to a child. He wore hard-wearing leather clothing in the same muted grey as the soldiery and the clerk– the uniform grey of the planet’s shattered stonework – and carried a hunting las. His skin was tough and ruddy, his dark hair clipped short. Functional, was the word that sprang to Helbrecht’s mind upon seeing him. ‘Zeric, lord,’ the man said brightly. ‘At your service.’ He patted the hunting las slung over his shoulder. ‘You’re in luck, sir. No one knows the ruins as well as I do.’ ‘You are a huntsman?’ Helbrecht asked. Zeric nodded. ‘I have that honour, sir. Protect the work crews, chase off the rad-wolves.’ He looked up at Helbrecht when he spoke and laughed dryly. ‘Always a threat around these parts. Like to go for the children when they gather shrapnel. Deserve a shot between the eyes, and no mistake.’ ‘I see,’ Helbrecht said, in a tone which clearly said that such problems were beneath him. ‘And you will lead us out into the old battlefields?’ ‘If that’s where you need to go.’ ‘It is.’

‘Then that is where I shall take you,’ Zeric said with a smile. ‘Not many range out that far. Not in these rotations, not at this time of year.’ He clicked his tongue and drummed his fingers along the stock of his rifle. An old habit never truly exorcised. ‘It’s cold out amongst the paths, and a lot of people think the outer ruins are haunted.’ ‘Haunted?’ Helbrecht asked. He could feel the potency of the place. Yet to him it had the weight of the divine rather than the touch of the morbidly ethereal. ‘Aye, lord,’ Zeric said with a nod. ‘They say that the ghosts of the past wander the battlefield and fight their dying battles over and over again. Walk amongst them and you’ll share their fate. Death by violence.’ ‘And do you believe that?’ ‘Don’t matter what I believe, lord, I’m just a hunter. Just a guide. I’ll tell you this though,’ he said and patted his rifle again, ‘I’ve not met anything out there that my friend here couldn’t handle.’ Helbrecht nodded solemnly. When he spoke his tone was level and measured. ‘This is a holy undertaking. We have a duty to perform. You shall not question that duty. You shall not interfere with it. Once we find what we seek then you will return without us. Is that understood?’ ‘Absolutely, lord,’ he said with an eager nod. ‘I’ve had similar business arrangements in my time. They’ve always been profitable.’ ‘There will be no profit here,’ Helbrecht said. There was an edge to his voice now: the low crackle of violence, like a power weapon going live. Zeric’s eyes flicked from the High Marshal’s face, to the sword scabbarded at his hip, and along the line of power-armoured warriors. ‘There is only the God-Emperor’s sacred duty. That is its own reward.’ ‘Of course, as you say. Forgive me for implying otherwise.’ Zeric flashed a grin. Our lives are in service to Him, my lords. Mankind’s true master. That’s what we’re here for, after all. Each generation, one after the other, making amends for the sins of the past. If we can’t kill our past then we don’t rightly deserve a future.’ ‘Enough,’ Helbrecht said. He moved and Zeric started back at the gesture, as though suddenly realising the sheer lethality of the High Marshal and his warriors. Bolheim mirrored Helbrecht’s movements, and Zeric retreated with their every step. The others fell in beside them. ‘Take us out,’ Helbrecht ordered. ‘Show us what has become of this world.’

They travelled west from the tent sprawl of the settlement, out into the Plains of Despair. Desolation lay heavy upon the world. The stink of salt hung in the air, thickening as they advanced across the cracked deadness of the plains. All moisture had slowly been drawn from the soil until even the air was dry and parched. Zeric stopped occasionally to draw deeply from a canteen which he pulled from his grey coat. The Space Marines did not avail themselves of any water and after the first time Zeric stopped offering. Everywhere they were confronted by the shattered remains of long-lost fortifications. A curtain wall had slumped, collapsed, and slowly been fragmented by generations of pressure and erosion. The splintered and burned-out remains of tanks and armour jutted from the dunes where tectonic action or the scouring winds had forced them free. The metal had calcified, grown over with salt deposits which gave them an organic layer of marbling, like displaced deep-sea coral. Helbrecht paused and stooped. He took hold of a helmet and raised it up to the wan desert light. The heavy brow and faceplate grille spoke of an ancient mark of armour, yet one that was hideously familiar from the vision. If he closed his eyes he could visualise the calibre of men who would have worn it. Iron Armour was ever the shield of tyrants. Worn by those who favoured brute intimidation and hollow domination. He let the helmet fall back into the dust and salt of the plains and then trudged on, aware that he was walking over the ashes and bones of the longvanquished foe. ‘Do you see anything?’ Helbrecht shouted as he turned to look back at Bolheim. The Champion kicked the helmet out of the way and looked up as the High Marshal called him. He shook his head. ‘Nothing yet, brother,’ Bolheim said, and even through the voxamplification Helbrecht could hear the exasperation in his voice. ‘The signs are indistinct, though I know that this is the right place. We walk the battlefields that we saw together. Surrounded by the detritus of the enemy. Here, where even the toil of millennia has failed to reach.’ ‘They will beat every rock between here and there to powder, and still not have scratched the surface of this world or expunged its sins.’

‘Impossible tasks breed similar attitudes,’ Raimbert put in, his voice a hissed broadcast from his skull-helm as he drew even with the others. ‘They have dedicated their entire existences to a single task, shaped by oaths sworn ten millennia ago. In the sight of demigods. How many times have those oaths been tested, I wonder? We are not the first of Dorn’s line to come here and doubtless we shall not be the last.’ ‘Yet we come now,’ Helbrecht said simply. ‘With the galaxy aflame and the people of this world swaddled in ignorance and shame. They cower from the responsibilities expected of them by the Imperium. A world languishes under a pall of dust and ashes, never raising regiments to fight amidst the stars or to challenge the tyrannous fates. They languish in chains of history. Still fighting the same war, instead of turning their gazes skyward and aiding in the wars which concern us now.’ ‘Such was Dorn’s will,’ Raimbert cautioned. ‘They languish because it is their place. He was wrathful, yes, but just. They have served as an example for countless others. Pilgrims walk these sands and think only of the sacrifice undertaken. Their faith is the water upon the wheels of prayer and succour upon the barren earth.’ Helbrecht spared a glance at their human guide. Zeric did not notice, or pretended not to be aware of, the High Marshal’s scrutiny as it passed over him. ‘Some ground,’ Helbrecht intoned, ‘is stonier than others.’ He shook his head and then addressed the mortal directly. ‘Where are you leading us?’ ‘There is a place,’ Zeric said softly. ‘A place of execution for the settlements. Out in the deep wastes. A golgoth.’ He fell silent again, as though dwelling upon the magnitude of the place. ‘There’s been works out near there that might have cast up new finds, if that’s what you seek. They were places where Stone and Iron clashed, in the days gone by.’ ‘And Stone triumphed over Iron, and cast down the false tyrannies,’ Helbrecht said. ‘That is your catechism and creed, is it not? That Rogal Dorn redeemed this world through sacrifice, and in doing so, dedicated your people to their redemptive toil. To serve as examples, as custodians of that legacy.’ This world is their crucible, just as the wars of the past were the world’s, and just as Armageddon was mine. The thought surprised Helbrecht as it emerged; as scouring a presence as the desert’s relentless dust. The battles

which forged me before were immaterial; even the crusade against the Fiends was a mere farce, a dress rehearsal before the Emperor presented us with our true challenge. Armageddon was the whetstone and we the blade. Zeric looked up at the High Marshal and nodded. ‘That is so, lord,’ he said carefully. There was a coiled tension in the man that had only grown as they had crossed the seas of sand, dust and shattered masonry. The furtherthey travelled from what passed as civilisation, the more unsure the man seemed and the less genial his uncaring attitude became. Even the most certain of men withered in the presence of transhuman warriors, and amongst those noble brotherhoods the Black Templars were a particularly fearsome exemplar. The wariness which we inspire in others is absent in us, Helbrecht considered. There are yet worlds in the Imperium, sacred Terra amongst them, where the presence of our warriors inspires fear instead of faith. Where we are a curse rather than a blessing. Perhaps that was what had happened here. A pall lay over the entire world. One born of ancient crimes and older enmity. The Archenemy had held this place in its talons and gouged marks upon its soul; yet so had the faithful. Was it worth it? The wounds we inflicted, in the name of justice and revenge, did they truly solve this world’s problems? Did they aid the Imperium? We have profited for ten thousand years of pilgrimage and piety. Yet I cannot help but consider what was lost. He thought again of Guilliman and the primarch’s urgings against empty shows of faith. The shadow of their meeting stretched long and coloured every deed he had undertaken since. He had fought for the shrine worlds of humanity at Guilliman’s urging, he had crossed the Rubicon Primaris to seize control of his own destiny, and he had prepared once again to pursue the Beast in order to prove the righteousness of his cause. Yet had that truly been what he desired? Was he worthy of such a hunt? What would the gene-sire of the Ultramarines think, Helbrecht wondered, to see him grubbing in the dust of conflicts past – seeking after relics, casting about for certainty like a blind man? How would such a being judge his actions when next they met? The primarch would think him a fool, perhaps, yet Helbrecht did not fear such a day, no more than he feared when he would have to recount his deeds before the Emperor Himself.

Would that this world could be held to account. Had the Emperor yet walked the galaxy in the aftermath of the Heresy, if He had been at Dorn’s side as the Scouring raged and the traitors were driven back, what fate would He have chosen for them?

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CHAPTER TEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE SKULL The golgoth lived up to its ancient title. As they descended into the rough valley, carved from weathered bedrock and lined with shattered marble, the squad found themselves observed by the hollow eye sockets of flensed skulls. They had been embedded roughly into the stonework, jammed into hewn spaces without care. It was not a ceremonial place, or a place of reverence for the dead; they were detritus, discarded without further thought. Above each set of empty eyes had been carved a suitable admonishment, directly across the brow of the skulls. Traitor. Heretic. Lawbreaker. As they passed each, the blandishments changed and became more elastic. As the population of criminals, recidivists and heathens had been culled, so what passed for crime had grown more expansive. There were some who appeared to have been executed for idleness. Others for insufficiency of faith or lack of prayer. Fine things to punish, Helbrecht knew, but he likewise knew the danger of this mindset. The need to punish and blame made worlds into sepulchres. Like the blood sacrifices of old, even vengeance would inevitably run dry, and the people would have nothing but their doubt and recrimination. ‘They dig their own graves,’ Zeric said quietly. Helbrecht looked at the man and he eventually turned to regard the High Marshal, his eyes slowly leaving the crudely interred offerings. ‘The last time they hold a digging tool in their hands is to carve out the place where their skull will sit. Always made sense to me. One last act of service before the axe fell. They had betrayed the covenant which binds all souls.’ He shook his head and looked away from the morbid monument. ‘Betrayal always wounds.’ ‘And they are wounds slow to heal,’ Raimbert affirmed from behind the human. Zeric had taken the lead as they advanced into the narrow mouth of the valley of skulls, where the path was barely wide enough for the Astartes to pass in single file.

The valley widened as they progressed, one by one. As they became able to they fanned out, maintaining operational discipline. Their hands had not yet strayed to their weapons but the intent, as ever, was there. Something sat – no, something knelt – in the centre of the valley. Halfobscured by the drifting dust of the endless desert and the powdered castoffs of the ruins, it seemed neglected and forgotten. It squatted in the shadows cast by the valley’s sheer sides, caught in the collective gaze of the dead and the disgraced. It drew in that attention as much as it drank in the shadows, making it seem pitch-black – a tarnished reflection of Helbrecht and his brothers’ own armour. For it was armour. The shape of it became increasingly clear as the squad advanced upon it. A figure, not in armour, but made of it. The components had been rescued piecemeal from the ruins and crudely mounted together like an agrarian bird-scarer. It cut a tatterdemalion silhouette in its broken, blackened plate, the heraldry unrecognisable beneath the ruin of ages, yet it had been raised with some reverence in this place of ignominy. Helbrecht drew his blade. The sacred steel of it glimmered in the sunlight and cast its own crackling light into the shadows, dispelling the darkness with the purity of illumination. He extended the blade ahead of him, close enough now to almost touch the makeshift idol. The blue light revealed the worn iron of its construction and the hint of yellow-and-black hazard markings. Not the sacred yellow of the Imperial Fists, which he had worn in his vision, but the colours of the enemy. The Archenemy. The oldest foe. ‘What is the meaning of this blasphemy?’ Helbrecht snarled. His warriors had fanned out around the iron idol and all held their weapons ready. Raimbert’s crozius lent its own light to that of Helbrecht’s blade. Bolheim was at the High Marshal’s side in a heartbeat and the Black Sword was pointed at the idol’s unliving throat. Fire burned behind the Champion’s eye-lenses, inflamed almost beyond reason by the desecration of a holy place. Nivelo joined Helbrecht to his right, raising his shield in his liege’s defence. Theodwin and Andronicus raised their bolters as they moved out to the edges of the line. Zeric had fallen silent. He stared at the idol not with revulsion or hate, but with a dry and tired acceptance. As it played across the man’s face

Helbrecht knew, with absolute certainty, that he had been here before. He had seen this totem and he had known that they would find it. The High Marshal turned and put his blade to Zeric’s throat. The man did not flinch. His eyes slowly drifted up, all false camaraderie fled. All that remained was the blank and bitter hate he ought to have reserved for the thing behind them. ‘Why?’ Helbrecht asked simply. Zeric stared for a long moment and then spat at the High Marshal. Helbrecht unpowered the blade, turned it about and slammed the flat of it against Zeric’s head. The man tumbled to the ground. When next he moved to spit, it was to cast blood to the sands– turning the faded grey and ochre to stark crimson. ‘Why?’ Helbrecht pressed again. ‘Why would you turn from His light to venerate this? To go on your knees before false gods and idols? Why?’ ‘From iron…’ Zeric whispered. He forced himself up on trembling legs and stared down the High Marshal. The certainty of death had made him bold, perhaps, or else it was the simple determination of a true believer. ‘From iron cometh strength. From str–’ Helbrecht drove the blade down. Not through Zeric but past him. It embedded itself into the dusty earth and Helbrecht levered himself forward off the momentum of it. His hand closed around the man’s throat and he lifted him bodily, spinning him about so he dangled before the profane icon he had worshipped. The pale dust whipped up around Helbrecht’s greaves as he drove the man back, choking the life from him as he did. Zeric’s eyes were wide with fear. His fingers clawed at the Templar cross upon Helbrecht’s chest even as his feet kicked out, scrambling for purchase. His lips were still moving. Trying to finish his oath. The words were dying in his throat and yet he struggled to force them out into the world. To enforce them upon the crusaders, like a brand or curse. The words were still coming. Echoing about the valley. Carried by voices upon the wind. New voices, raised in praise. Helbrecht turned his gaze from the wretched thing in his grasp and saw them coming. They moved with a determined, soldierly precision, but riven through with an agitated nervous energy. When the soldiers crested the ridge they wore not the ashen grey of the settlement’s guards but an iron shade which matched the heresy of old.

Their helmets had been carved with the harsh lines of a graven skull, an echo of the Mark III helmets which littered the dunes. They do not wear the skulls of sanctity and instead bring shame to them. ‘From strength cometh will.’ The words drifted from the edges of the valley like the lowering of a shroud, yet the iron intent behind them was clear. Weapons clattered against stone as they took position. Lasguns whined even as two-man teams struggled to set up heavier weapon positions. Grenades filled the air and rattled down the slopes of rock and bone. ‘From will cometh faith.’ Explosions blossomed around them and cast up clouds of dust and pulverised bone. Teeth and shards of skull flew in the sudden rush of inferno winds. Helbrecht and the others stood, perfectly still, even as the storm was born in their midst. Everything was fire and ruin. The statue imploded with the sudden heat and the rain of shots as the ancient armour finally yielded to the touch of war. Still they chanted. Still they defied. ‘From faith cometh honour.’ Helbrecht almost laughed at that. He heard the gurgled attempt at recitation from Zeric, and looked back at the man. He had been suspended above the tumult, struggling all the while. Smoke clung to him in oily wisps, though his hard-wearing leathers had avoided catching fire outright. ‘From honour cometh iron, and may it ever…’ Helbrecht snarled as he moved his hand from Zeric’s throat, letting go and then catching the man again, as though adjusting his grip upon a blade’s hilt. When his hand closed again it was locked around Zeric’s skull proper. He listened to the muted recitation of the litany and then silenced it forever. Helbrecht squeezed until he heard bone yield with a crunch between his armoured fingers. There was a rush of fluid and then silence, before he let the body fall to the ground. He took up his sword once more. Helbrecht hurled himself forward, bounding up the tiered sides of the valley. Skulls cracked beneath his tread. He launched himself up the last level and landed with a thud upon the makeshift ramparts of fractured stone and drifting dust. The blade swung round in a dizzying arc and clove two of the soldiery in half, leaving their torsos falling away screaming in welters of gore. He spun

about and split another from crown to groin and then stepped through the soldier’s flailing corpse. Helbrecht turned the immense blade over in his hands and drove it down, impaling a soldier through the helm as he tried to flee. Helbrecht savoured the dual crunch of the blade slamming through armour and bone, straight into the length of the man’s body. He drew the sword back and out with a hideous sucking noise and looked for the next of his prey. ‘Is this all you have?’ Helbrecht bellowed. ‘I am Helbrecht! I am High Marshal of the Black Templars! I held a line of ship-steel and fire above Armageddon! I have faced down daemon princes and drinkers of blood and souls! I bear the Emperor’s light and His will and His wrath! I am His fury and His judgement incarnate! Yet you dare to stand against me!’ By now, bolt-rounds were detonating about him as his brothers found their marks. Cult-soldiers who turned towards him, weapons raised, suddenly found their gun-hands detonating or their legs blown out from under them. A two-man team turned their weapon to face Helbrecht, scrambling madly to get the lascannon operational. No sooner had it begun to whine than the crackling metal edge of a shield slammed down through it. Components and discharged energy filled the air with an actinic pulse and the men tumbled back, staining their grey fatigues and flak plate with the creeping taint of the dust. Helbrecht watched as Nivelo brought his shield round and the power field atomised the front of the first soldier’s helm and face. He fell back, mantra dying between shattered teeth, and Nivelo pivoted about to slam his sword through the gap between the other soldier’s chestplate and helmet. It almost tore his quarry in half, but Nivelo paid it no mind. He moved to Helbrecht’s side. ‘No true threat,’ the Sword Brother mused. ‘If they thought to end us then they will be more than disappointed.’ ‘This will not be the end of it,’ Helbrecht said with a growl. ‘Even madmen would know that these were foul odds. Multitudes will be coming for us. We must send word to the Faith Adamant and the Flame of Terra. Mobility will be key. We cannot fight an entire world unsupported and on foot.’ ‘The vox is out,’ Nivelo said. By now the others had joined them on the ridge, weapons crackling with field discharge, bolters smoking. Around them all was blood and carnage. Bodies lay in pieces, slumped over the

stained masonry. They had been broken and gutted in the same fashion as their object of worship. ‘Whatever these bastards have done, it has robbed us of any communications off-world or with the transport. Throne willing, someone will notice our silence before long and send relief. If the Faith Adamant can relieve us, then we can bring the Chapter’s full wrath to bear.’ ‘We cannot simply sit idle and do nothing,’ Helbrecht hissed. He swung his blade about and gestured down into the pit of skulls. ‘There sits an idol to heresy and the tyranny of false gods. It has been raised upon a world under our protection, a world supposedly hallowed in the Emperor’s name, and they dare – they dare – to attempt to slay me. With this rabble?’ He threw back his head and laughed bitterly. The others were silent, indulging his mania. ‘They are as children. Assuming they can lay low giants with stones and slings! I will tear them from their warrens and their hovels. I will mount that clerk’s head upon a pike, and when we are returned to orbit I shall raze every last trace of them. We shall hammer them into the dust that spawned them!’ ‘My liege…’ Nivelo trailed off. He shook his head and then tried again. ‘Brother, there will be a time for vengeance. What matters now is securing our position and establishing a plan of egress.’ Helbrecht looked at him for a long moment and then deactivated his sword. He was about to speak again, his choler checked, when a sudden distant roar drew their eyes skyward, like the threat of a summer storm breaking. Far above, something died in fire.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN GARDENS OF BONES They forged across the desert, not in fear of their enemy but in search of advantage. A world was turned against them. Though its martial capabilities were anaemic and sparse, they would undoubtedly be turned against the squad’s meagre numbers. Even the greatest of predators could be laid low by sufficiently numerous foes. The warriors of the Adeptus Astartes were no exception to this. They were mighty, but never infinite. Only the God-Emperor was truly undying in this universe of transient horrors. None of the warriors looked up. The earlier tumult in the heavens had been shockingly brief but all knew, on some soul-deep level, that the Faith Adamant was dead, and with it any hope of escape from this world or the system. Debris had streaked the skies with false comets, omen-stars of blighted epochs. A curse to those who yet served the Emperor, and yet Helbrecht had no doubt that the heretic masses would even now be cheering what they considered their victory. Rising from their tent cities and ruins, clawing their way starward. Helbrecht was more than familiar with other cult breeds; with the tyranid spoor-infected acolytes of the genestealer cults, their entire existences geared towards sacrificial consumption, and a hundred other nihilist expressions of hateful creeds. They revelled in destruction and in the humbling of the Imperium; as though, with thousands of grubby fingers, they could wear down the edifice which had endured ten thousand years. Arch-heretics and alien overlords had tried and failed. They would fail again. Helbrecht’s fist clenched about his sword hilt and he pushed onwards through the drifts of dust and ashes. Rocks and fragments of ruined building were crushed beneath their relentless advance. None spoke, the only sounds the howl of the wind and the whipping passage of the grit over their armour. With enough time it would scour them

clean of symbol and heraldry. It would render them as more slate-grey relics to be paraded by cultists or cast into refuse pits. ‘Vestige,’ Bolheim said. The squad paused and all eyes were upon the Champion. He had not spoken since the assault at the golgoth, stopping along their path only to pray and beseech the Emperor for guidance. He had urged them to travel north, to where the bedrock of the broken world heaved up into mountains, as grey and listless as the shattered stonework which surrounded them. ‘Vestige,’ Bolheim whispered again. ‘The place we seek– upon the maps it bore the name Vestige. A simple place sprawling about the great mountain fastnesses of old. Cored out in their defiance, but if anywhere possesses the means to send messages beyond this world then it will lie there.’ ‘The Faith Adamant is gone,’ Theodwin said. ‘Whether by some craft of the foe from the ground or by attack in the void, they have been taken from us. What hope then is there, if we have no orbital support?’ ‘If they maintain an astropathic choir then it will be somewhere secure. Somewhere like Vestige,’ Nivelo allowed. ‘Insulated from this world’s troubles and the poison that spreads through it. There is a chance that some of the organs of Imperial rule endure and have not yet atrophied.’ ‘The Emperor’s light burns brightest at Vestige,’ Bolheim said. There was new strength in his arm and a fluidity of movement which spoke of the power which worked through him. The Emperor’s Champion strode forward and gestured with the Black Sword of his office. ‘There.’ From where they stood, the low mountains, mere echoes of the distant and ancient Himalazia, were surrounded by a squat and tumorous sprawl of tumbled crenellations and shattered battlements where an ancient fortress had succumbed to ruin. They all knew now which banners would have adorned them before their obliteration. They would have been pledged to the Lord of Iron and the bastard sons of Olympia. Only the might and genius, and indeed the unbridled wrath, of Rogal Dorn had torn them down. Cast to the dust with every tool he could muster. Within him then had been the grief of an orphaned son and the determination of a wronged brother. Dorn would have smote the very stars if it had been within his ability. He would have torn down the heavens if the shards would have dashed his erstwhile siblings beneath their arcs. The blood and fire of the Scouring,

even unto the hateful undertaking of the Iron Cage, had been purgative. The Imperial Fists had vented their choler forth and been cleansed of it. Less kind brother-Chapters would claim that such zealous choler had instead coagulated into the Black Templars. Yet they had been led by Sigismund himself. The First Captain. The first to bear the title of Emperor’s Champion and High Marshal both. He had been their lord and their light, and through him they had cast forth to avenge every slight– to punish every heathen culture and xenos upstart. To secure a galaxy for humanity. ‘If the Champion beholds a path set before us by providence, then we shall follow it,’ Helbrecht stated. ‘We are caught within the trap of the enemy. Only by cleaving to our faith and to the will of the God-Emperor shall we be liberated from it. “Though you dwell in a cage of beasts, do not fear them, for I shall gird you in fire that they cannot close their jaws.”’ ‘From First Meditations Upon Confinement and Punishment,’ Raimbert said, and nodded. ‘The Reclusiarch would approve.’ ‘Grimaldus may be our Chapter’s spiritual heart, but I am its animus given form,’ Helbrecht said. ‘I know its very soul. I bear the honour of this blade and the burden of command. That does not make me a truer son of our Chapter. It does not make me grander in the Emperor’s eyes. It is simply this. I stand. I serve. Inevitably I will fall, but it is not here. Not now.’ One by one each of the warriors went to their knees in the dust of the wretched world, casting up new plumes of it to dance upon the chill wind as it swept down off the mountains. Bolheim was first. The Champion knelt and pressed his blade into the earth. Nivelo followed suit and let his sword and shield rest for but a moment. Raimbert was to Nivelo’s left, hands clasped about the haft of his crozius as though in holy prayer. Helbrecht could not hear the words but he knew that the Chaplain would be praying, his lips incessantly moving through the homilies. Theodwin and Andronicus went to their knees in almost the same moment. They were a study in contrasts, the two of them. One in the healer’s white of an Apothecary and the other in the black of a Neophyte. Even the white of Andronicus’ tabard had begun to accrue the invading dust of Hevaran. ‘We will cross this sea of woes and we shall find our way back to the Chapter,’ Helbrecht said. ‘We shall stand upon the Eternal Crusader’s

decks once more, raise our voices in the hymnal, and we shall stride forth to reclaim this galaxy.’ He paused. He could feel the dust in his throat and spat to one side. ‘We will hunt the Beast itself and we shall stretch forth our hand to seize the Rift and choke it closed. I have crossed through death. I have been transformed. I am reborn with His light, and with the Throne as my witness I shall not turn from any battle.’ He rose again and looked to the mountains rising in the north. ‘We go onwards.’ Beyond the golgoth, across the plains of ruins and ashes, they passed the workings of the enemy. Before, they would never have been aware of it, but a vigilance had overcome them as they continued their long and weary march. Pits had been dug into the sallow earth, bones pulled from the dusty graves. The remains littered the plains with casual disregard, save where they had been drawn together and shaped. Idle hands, or the perfidy of the enemy: it was not clear which had contributed more. The bones had been piled and sharpened into makeshift cairns and low walls– stretching out in a mind-numbing pattern that was incomprehensible from the ground. Such things, Helbrecht knew, were meant for the eyes of obscene gods. Charnel offerings and subversions of the oldest creed the world possessed. They had not laid stone atop another and so the barbed bone briar had become their tool. Generation after generation toiling in secret until their poison could consume the world entire. And are there yet loyal souls upon Hevaran? he thought. Or merely more examples of the lost and the damned? These are tests placed before me. Obstacles only I can overcome. The stony road which leads to salvation. To Him. Only the wail of the wind and distant sirens answered. Helbrecht stalked forwards and raised his sword, igniting the blade with a crackle before driving it down and through the abominable construction. Behind him he heard the snap of other power weapons activating as his brothers followed his example. They channelled their hate and frustration down and through the interlaced bone. Ribcages split. Limbs tumbled free. Blow by blow the ornamentation of the unholy was broken to powder, driven down, crushed beneath boots.

They relished the opportunity to fight back, to struggle anew against thechains of fate in the absence of flesh-and-blood foes. To tear down the works of the enemy was as much a joy as to slay them. That had ever been the creed of the Imperial Fists, and so fragments of it lingered within the aspect of the Black Templars. It was not enough to be siege-smiths in an age where the galaxy itself had been shattered like an insufficient bulwark. They must be truer examples of their creed. ‘Iconoclasts,’ Helbrecht snarled. ‘We have ever been the instrument by which idols are laid low. This is no different!’ There were no skulls amongst the carnage. He only noticed when he was already coated in the bone-dust residue. They had been taken, harvested as surely as the skulls of the criminals which had lined the golgoth. These were the thousandfold, millionfold dead of the past. Of the wars which he had seen in his visions. Repurposed even in death, used as the brick and mortar of heretics. ‘Bolheim,’ Helbrecht said, and turned to the Champion. ‘My lord,’ Bolheim answered. He still possessed that breathless tone of awe. The Armour of Faith was yet untouched by the relentless dust, its lustre undulled. He was a thing too sacred to be sullied. ‘Vestige is where the light of the Emperor guides us,’ Helbrecht stated simply. ‘What will we find there? What has He shown you?’ ‘He speaks to me in the thunder of the air and the tremoring of the earth.’ Bolheim’s words came urgently. ‘You were there. You saw it as surely as I did.’ ‘I remember it. Everything was fire and upheaval.’ ‘Yet he was with us. Dorn himself. The world did not merely burn because it was disloyal, but because he graced it with his presence. Like the golden wrath of the Emperor, kindled.’ ‘I felt that grace pass over me, and by me. To stand in it…’ Helbrecht shook his head. His armoured bulk shifted with the motion. They walked on, ahead of their fellows, who were yet carving at the grotesquery which had been raised. Where Bolheim and Helbrecht walked, they noticed the great and rent plates of dead mega-causeways. These had been the streets and thoroughfares, the winding supply roads and arterials which they had traversed in their dreams.

‘It has gone from us now. It is no longer here. Does he walk with the Emperor, I wonder? We have so many stories. The relic of his hand upon the Phalanx. Was it cast aside? Or was it all that remained? The other brotherhoods have their myths and their legends, or worse still they have their certainties. All we possess is an absence. A void.’ Bolheim dropped down and scooped up a handful of dust, scrutinising it as he ground it between his fingers. ‘Without doubt…’ he began, and then stood. ‘Without doubt there can be no faith. We are true servants because we fight despite doubt. Without fear, or pity, or remorse. This is but one battlefield. One war. Mere scenes within the tapestry that is the Eternal Crusade. Though we stand alone, bereft of support, we do our duty. Even if we die unremembered, unsupported, and the Chapter arrives only to pick over our bones… we shall have served His will. For only in death does our duty end.’ ‘Your station has made you wise, Bolheim,’ Helbrecht said with a dry chuckle. ‘You stand in defence of my spirit as you once held watch over my body.’ ‘I merely am as the Emperor wills.’ Bolheim bowed his head. ‘It’s almost strange to think of my time in the apothecarion – as a mender of flesh I could never have dreamed of standing amidst the worthiest souls in the Chapter. Yet it is not for me to question.’ He paused and laughed. ‘He moves in strange ways, our Emperor, and casts His errant arrows forth to defy the fates. To fight against false gods for the sake of all mankind.’ A sudden roar split the calm. They all turned and looked finally to the heavens, where a streak of flame cut across the horizon and tore its way overhead. Engines roared with a throaty, unhealthy whine as the Flame of Terra swept above them and past, onwards to the north-west. Wounded but alive. As yet unbroken by the enemy. The stolid weight of the Overlord scarred its way through the sky, over and away. If it had seen or detected them then there was no sign. ‘His arrows indeed,’ Helbrecht breathed. ‘Now we have a destination. We shall reinforce our brothers and with the Flame, we shall take what we require from Vestige. Then we shall hold against them until relief comes. And when it does, we shall render upon them such judgement.’

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CHAPTER TWELVE ON WINGS OF FLAME It had not been a gentle landing. The Overlord’s desperate flight had gouged a new scar into the tapestry of woe upon Hevaran’s skin. Fire trailed along the great groove of tormented earth and rent stone. A partly uncovered arch, the symbols which had adorned it long since lost to time, had been cracked apart by the impact. Theodwin ranged ahead, intent on being the first to the wounded vessel. He prised open a hatch with his gauntlets and dragged the pilots free. Their red armour, the mark of those sworn upon Mars to the Emperor-Omnissiah, was redder still with spilled blood. Helbrecht watched as the Apothecary checked their vital signs, narthecium clicking and whirring in time with his motions. ‘They will live,’ he intoned, though Helbrecht could hear the doubt in his voice. He fussed at the helmet seals of the first pilot and pulled it free with a hiss of escaping air. The unconscious warrior’s features were pale and burnscarred, typical of a life dedicated to the forge. ‘Brother Wolfger,’ Theodwin acknowledged as he looked down upon the warrior on the darkened sands. ‘A fine pilot. Throne willing he will bear us up once more.’ ‘If the ship matches his resilience,’ Helbrecht said with a scowl. The Overlord had not landed well or easily. The outer hull still smouldered with impact craters where the enemy’s ordnance had clawed at it. It was dented and scraped where it had scored against the rocky ground. It was hardy and difficult to kill, but this might yet prove beyond even its ability to endure. The High Marshal’s hand closed tight about the hilt of his sword as he considered their options. ‘The enemy will not be idle. The longer we tarry, the sooner they will find us. We need the tactical advantage which the ship provides. Without it we are lamed and exposed– easy prey for these cultists and their masters.’ ‘We will need to wait for them to recover.’ Raimbert had stepped up and laid his gauntleted hand against the black hull of the ship. ‘She has a strong

heart but her machine-spirits are in upheaval. It will take time.’ We do not have time. Helbrecht’s mind whirred. He processed their options, taking in the lie of the land and their disposition. It made for a bleak assessment. They could hold the ground, certainly, but there was no true defensive position, no walls or ramparts for them to stand upon. There was only a world ground beneath the heel of time, now forcing its way back up into rebellion. ‘Whatever comes for us, we shall hold against it,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Rouse them as swiftly as you are able. Get us mobile. We will not be hemmed in here by–’ He paused. The rumble of engines reared up, sudden and fierce. He strode along the impact crater and looked out across the plains. There were plumes of dust rising from the east, cutting across the ruinscape with great eagerness. He could see them through the fogging of debris – a trio of Taurox-pattern transports, their autocannons already primed. He imbedded his sword into the rock and unslung his rifle. The weapon was master-crafted, an object of sheer artistry. Black inlaid with gold and silver, the Templar cross picked out against its side like a mark of reverence. He raised it with ease and sighted along its length. He had never truly favoured marksmanship, relying instead on bladecraft. But there was a need for every advantage to be grasped in war. Helbrecht felt his breathing catch as he paused. Watching. Waiting. The vehicles trundled nearer, and even their quad-tracks struggled with the rugged terrain of Hevaran. Helbrecht doubted many other land vehicles could have surmounted the varied obstacles cast up by the ruined world– hence the commitment to so many on-foot paths of pilgrimage. The transports would be upon them soon, unless something was done. He fired. The melta-blast lanced out in a roar of fusion, like a stellar exhalation. A furnace-breath of blinding, searing light. It caught the lead Taurox between the front treads as it moved to turn. The light pierced it, carried on, and molten metal flowed in its wake where it was not instantly vaporised. Red hot, then white hot. From here he could hear the screech of metal on stone as the vehicle slumped and skidded, the sounds of human agony as the blast reached the occupants.

The first to die would have been cut as though with a hot knife. Those around them would have combusted near instantly from the fusion backwash. To be armed with the capability to unleash such violence was the Emperor’s gift to His chosen warriors. They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. The utterance rose in his mind even as he sighted again. Like clay I shall mould them and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. He fired. He could feel the determination bleeding from him as surely as heat from the rifle. There was an urgency now to make war. Something profound within him. A potency he had never truly felt before… not since he had crossed the Rubicon. ‘In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed.’ He spoke the words now. He watched as the shot holed the engine block of the wounded Taurox and the vehicle exploded. Debris skipped across the sands like stones across calm water. Fire blossomed and the other members of the convoy almost reared back, like startled animals. They broke ranks. Veering in alternate directions and weaving across increasingly fraught spans of rubble and broken roadway. Their swerving, erratic motions kicked up more dust as they advanced. Helbrecht scowled and fell back, down the line of the Overlord’s crash landing. ‘Be ready,’ Helbrecht urged. Each warrior was already armed. Bolters and pistols held ready, power weapons sparking with lambent discharge. In that moment, dark-armoured against the pale earth, standing in the defence of their own, he knew he would never be prouder than he was now. I am a leader of men. That is the role the Emperor has laid down for me. They braced for the coming storm. The Taurox transports drew up alongside one another along the lip of the ridge, autocannons pivoting to take aim. Hatches rattled open and the sound of metal against metal rang down to them. Ten men disgorged from the transports and fanned out ahead of them, forming a line upon the ridge. These cultists wore armour that spoke of their position, bearing the sigil-etched plates of appropriated Tempestus Scion armour. Each of them was festooned with bones cast in iron, which clicked with every movement, as relentless as blades along whetstones. Their motions had a ghoulish, unreal quality, made all the more

morbid by the metallic skull faceplates which they had crudely anchored to their masks. Hellguns were raised, yet Helbrecht and his coterie stood defiant. ‘Surrender!’ a rough voice called through vox-amplifiers. ‘Surrender and we shall give your deaths meaning!’ ‘No.’ Helbrecht stood ahead of his brothers. The line of cultists, almost as one, took a step back as their collective will threatened to falter. Before them stood an echo of the past, the same breed of warrior who had meticulously and deliberately killed their world. The idea of even a handful of them returning was almost enough to unman them with fear, and to spur them to the most desperate of hatreds. Helbrecht could see the war within them, making them stumble as they set about the war without. They were, as so many breeds of fools tended to be, nothing more than children. Playing at revolution. A sound like grating stone echoed out from behind them, then devolved into barks of laughter. He heard the noise of metal on metal, and watched the balance of the rightmost Taurox shift as weight redistributed. Heavy footfalls boomed and the cultists shrank from them, even before the huge silhouette had emerged into the wan sunlight. It was taller than any of the mortals, and taller perhaps than any of Helbrecht’s number– bar the High Marshal himself. Despite its shape and bearing, Helbrecht could not bring himself to think of the abomination as a warrior – as an equal. It was a rancid thing. A creature in the shape of a man. A slave of the warp. The figure was like the idol of the golgoth yet hideously in motion, utterly alive. Darkness clung to it, as though the air itself were diseased by its mere presence. The armour was iron grey and hazard markings sat as a flash of black and yellow along one shoulder. It wore no helm, keeping it clamped to its hip, and instead presented a flat, brutish face, twisted into a sneer. The years of the Long War had been cruel. Scars adorned its features like brands of honour, alongside poorly sutured wounds which seemed as though they would never heal. Itwas pallid and hairless, and when it began to speak Helbrecht was able to note the sharp spurs that passed for its teeth. It was a thing from which all nobility had been bled and drained through endless grinding attrition, until it had become a creature as world-weary,

ravaged and hope-deprived as the trenches it had grown accustomed to haunting. ‘It is good that you have come, and we have been waiting for some time,’ it gurgled. ‘Blood calls to blood, like to like. It has always been so. My lord will be gratified to know that it is the sons of Dorn who have come to his court. Even if you are second generation mongrels and not the Legion of old.’ It snorted and reached back, drawing the long haft of a power axe from its back. ‘Which of you receives the honour of my presence?’ ‘I am Helbrecht,’ he said. ‘High Marshal of the Black Templars and inheritor of Sigismund’s mantle. I do not fear you, traitor, nor any of your works. Nor will I be quailed by the shadow of your master. If he is so mighty, let him come before me and we shall see his mettle. His iron, as his honour, shall be brittle.’ The Iron Warrior gurgled with mirth and then coughed consumptively, spitting a gobbet of reeking saliva to the ground and stepping forward bullishly. The cultists started away from it, like frightened cattle. ‘A lofty title for one who commands but a handful of broken little men…’ It turned the axe over and over again in its hands. ‘In the days when we still followed the Emperor, the Fourth Legion could hold an entire world with your numbers… It is not so easy to take one.’ It laughed again. ‘Yet when the Imperial Fists were chosen to add yet more gilt to the False Emperor’s walls… well, they went almost entire. Imagine being so weak that almost all of your strength was required to act as glorified watchmen for a craven thing which had already crafted ten thousand of His own.’ ‘And from their mouths shall pour lies and scorn, for the truth of their soul shall be apparent to all with the eyes to see it.’ Helbrecht levelled his sword at the abomination. He could see the contrast between the gleaming steel of the sacred blade and the worn and ragged raiment of the Iron Warrior. ‘I would know your name, before I end you.’ ‘Bold… as bold as any of your wretched breed.’ It laughed. ‘You face Lykas of the Fourth. Who strode Terra before your ancestors were even conceived. Sworn in sacred service to the majesty and the glory of Torven Vakra– warsmith and master of Hevaran.’ Helbrecht stepped forward again. The line of his blade did not waver. It remained pointed directly at Lykas’ throat. He had already envisaged the killing strike. The rush of foetid blood as the head left the shoulders, like a

sewer as it vented filth. That would come to pass. He was a knight sworn to the Throne. A warrior of the Emperor. He did not know fear, not even in the face of this ancient monster. ‘Hevaran has but one master.’ The thing which called itself Lykas laughed. It co*cked its head, almost mockingly. Its tongue flicked into the dusty air, as though scenting an approaching storm. There was a whistle. Not of the wind, but borne upon it. Helbrecht recognised it a fraction of a second later. Artillery! ‘Let us see if He protects you, then,’ Lykas growled. The Iron Warrior was already in motion and its cohort were already beginning to fire when the world around them exploded in cleansing flame.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN THROUGH FIRE AND FAITH Everything was chaos and confusion: the rush of choking dust storms and the roar of fire. The shells had impacted almost exactly along the line of the Overlord’s landing, surrounding the ship and its defenders in a smothering pall of shadow and ash. Helbrecht shook dust and ashes from his armour, blade up and ready, as the enemy came for them through the haze. The squad formed a knot of defence without him even having to give the order. They loomed from the smoke like statues come to life, wreathed in the sepulchral powdering. Black became grey became white, mere shades in the tumult. Lances of crimson light slashed through the throng as the cult troopers advanced. The metal clatter of their bone adornments echoed strangely through the tormented air. Bolt-rounds cracked and snapped in the smoke, detonating and adding their own deuterium and propellant reek to the riot of competing odours. Raimbert bellowed hymns into the face of the false storm. His skull mask glimmered faintly red in the light of the hellgun blasts, reflecting his anger and his hatred at the sheer arrogance of the heretics. Nivelo was at Helbrecht’s side, a constant presence, reassuring in his solidity of purpose. The younger warriors, Theodwin and Andronicus, fired again and again, pausing only to reload as they advanced. ‘Bold, for mortals!’ Nivelo hissed. His bravado had been all but cast aside, consumed by the immediacy of combat. Las-blasts earthed themselves against his shield and he cursed. He raised his voice above the tumult. ‘They are nothing before us! We hold! We stand with the High Marshal!’ ‘For the High Marshal! For the Emperor!’ Bolheim cried as he swept forth like a force of nature. His very passage cut a clean swathe through the murk, aglow with a barely perceptible light. The Black Sword was a crackling, barely contained presence chained to his wrist. Swinging this way and that, the blade knocked grenades aside and earthed the blasts with

the sword’s power field. Helbrecht knew he sought greater prey. The Champion’s duty lay in facing down the greatest of the foe, following the Emperor’s guidance as it radiated through the universe. Was that what you saw? Did that draw us towards Vestige? Not the hope of a desperate message or the dream of the relic… was it simply to battle that we were led? Perhaps it had been. If it was the Emperor’s will then he would follow it; he would plunge himself into the very fires of the Rift if it would serve the God-Emperor’s design. Now, though, he faced an utterly mortal struggle. The oldest test of arms and will. Truth against lies. Sanctity against the unholy. Faith against heresy. They had turned. Whether as recently as the cultists or ten thousand years past, when beasts such as Lykas had paid lip service to the Emperor’s Great Crusade. They had been tested and they had faltered. Helbrecht knew in his hearts that he would never fall as they had done. He had doubted, and his faith had been tested, but he had emerged stronger. Reborn, time and again. He did not require the biochemical apotheosis of the Rubicon to be reforged anew. He gritted his teeth. ‘With me, brothers!’ Helbrecht called. ‘Though the traitor rises to face us down, he will never survive in the Emperor’s light! This is His world! We are His warriors! Fight! Endure!’ The darkness and murk felt unnatural, emboldened by the presence of the Heretic Astartes. Ashes clung to Helbrecht as he moved. Every movement felt forced. Like wading through tar. As though the bombardment had unseated the world and altered gravity. It was a fleeting disorientation, a failing that ought to have been beneath him. Then it was gone. Robbed from him not by circ*mstance, but by necessity. Lykas barrelled through the smoke, suddenly present, suddenly screaming. The axe swept down in a brutal arc, and Helbrecht slid backwards, out of its reach. Autocannon fire dogged their advance through the melee. Helbrecht lashed out, the Sword of the High Marshals scarring the air, a beacon of light in the gloom. Its passage lit the twisted visage of Lykas, the gurning features rendered even more wrong by the purity of the blade’s light. It was a shadow of what it had once been and stood for. ‘I expected better,’ Lykas gurgled. ‘A lord amongst men, and what are you? Besides a borrowed relic weapon and some new armour? Nothing!’

The axe swung for Helbrecht’s head and clashed against the edge of his sword instead. Helbrecht heaved the warrior back, retaking the momentum. ‘I am His sword. His knight!’ Helbrecht snarled. More artillery shells burst around them. The earth shook and the air burned. Everything was reduced to the rhythm of the fight. He was aware of Bolheim and Nivelo moving in his peripheral vision, desperate to aid him. Flame and confusion lay between them. The air was alive with blasts and explosions. Krak grenades and melta bombs burst around them, casting up yet more light and heat. He felt it against his armour like tongues of fire. The plate stuttered in its movements under the onslaught. The relentless rain of debris and pressure clawed at him, pressed him to the earth, like an immense hand holding him in its grip. The Iron Warrior showed no such hesitation. The crushing weight of the conflict was something to be shrugged off, like an inconvenient downpour. ‘Pathetic,’ Lykas gloated. The thing was drooling, lips curled into a mocking grin. Their blades met again in a shower of sparks and discharged energy. Helbrecht swung for Lykas as they came apart, his armoured gauntlet cracking into the side of the Iron Warrior’s head. It reared back and snarled, spitting acid as it recovered and swept in on Helbrecht’s left. His sword came up but the axe slammed into the High Marshal’s side. He bit back a grunt of pain. The rush of blood within his armour was a reassuring heat. Pain, the Imperial Fists had always held, was the wine of communion with heroes. Truth lay in agony. Progress in suffering. Through battle lay salvation. The Iron Warrior was relentless. Blow after blow rained down upon the High Marshal, either turned aside by bladework or simply weathered by pure resilience. Another cut scored along his shoulder. Helbrecht hissed, fell back, and then hurled himself at Lykas. His blade pierced its torso, skewering ceramite and flesh in a rush of stinking black blood. Lykas glowered at him, drew back its head, and slammed its face into Helbrecht’s. The blow floored him. He felt the blade skitter from his hand across the stone. Lykas leered down at him. Triumph danced upon its features. ‘Even the mightiest fall,’ it burbled. Blood and sputum oozed from the corner of its mouth. ‘This is how you die. Unremembered and unmourned.

Just more bones upon the pilgrim’s trail.’ ‘I…’ Helbrecht slurred. ‘I do not die here.’ The heat of bleeding had transmuted almost imperceptibly to burning. Pulsing through his veins with the beating of his hearts. He could sense it as it spread. The weapon… Whether by curse or poison, he could feel the taint of it within him. Sweat beaded his brow. He tried to speak again but the words died in his throat as saliva congealed into froth and foam. Not like the caustic whipping of the wind, grit and smoke catching in his lungs, but like sinking back into the polluted waters of a boiling sea and allowing it to drown him. Lykas’ grin of triumph was a spitefully curdled thing, spreading across its tattered mask of skin as it raised the axe again. A black blur slammed into it out of the storm, trailing contrails of flaming debris from the desperate flight through the tumult. Nivelo bellowed war cries as he turned aside the axe with his shield and slammed his sword again and again into the armoured bulk of Lykas. The Iron Warrior fell back, snarling and spitting, robbed of its triumph. Helbrecht pushed up from his elbows, tried to rise again to his feet, but the strength ebbed from him. Nivelo fought like a berserker. Every blow resonated with rage, coloured through with fury, even as his shield buckled and broke, hewn apart by the incessant axe-blows of Lykas. They rained down until even the reinforced power-fielded metal shattered and fell away. Nivelo cast it back into his enemy’s face in a rain of shattered spars and serrated edges. His eyes flickered back, just once. ‘High Marshal,’ he said. His voice was ragged with exertion. ‘Forgive me.’ The axe caught him again. First in the side and then in a ragged cut across his chest that tore open his armour and cracked the Templar cross upon his breastplate. Nivelo slumped. His sword fell from his hand as the other hand splayed out on the broken, burning earth. He tried to rise, as Helbrecht himself had tried, but this time he was driven back down into the dust by another strike. Nivelo’s helmeted head tumbled from his body. Blood anointed the sands. The blood of heroes, and of martyrs. Whining filled the air, building into a roar. Helbrecht turned to the best of his ability and watched as the Overlord began to rise from its self-made grave. Weapon-mounts pivoted and began to fire even as the autocannons of the enemy moved to track it in turn. The first Taurox died in a burst of

flame, casting its sparse line of defenders to the ground. The other tried to move off, only to be ripped apart in turn amidst a hail of heavy bolter rounds. Whatever return fire flickered back through the smoke met with the crackling barrier of the void shields. He saw the Iron Warrior stalking back through the maelstrom of battle, cursing the heavens and slashing at the air. Fury coloured its every movement, the rage of the denied. Helbrecht knew he would see the warrior again. He swore, with all his fading strength, that he would see it dead. He could hear voices above the madness. Hands gripped his armour, lifting him. Drawing him back towards the waiting gunship. Bolheim bore him up, even as he whispered prayers of comfort and contrition. He saw Theodwin rushing to his side. He witnessed Raimbert taking up the Sword of the High Marshals. Andronicus stood, holding Nivelo’s blade – staring at it with a reverent stillness. And then the darkness closed in about him, and High Marshal Helbrecht saw no more.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE JUDGEMENT OF THE PAST He had expected death to be a place of gold and glory, and yet it was the same place of worn grey and broken dreams that Hevaran had become. A graveyard of ideas and ideals, stretching out and onwards towards infinity. Shadows danced at the edges of his perception, echoes of the past given form. Some were skeletal, flaring now and then with dim green flame, while others bore horns and brands of bleaker darkness upon their beings. He remembered the foes he had fought, in their undying multitudes. His hand ached again with phantom pain, as though the cybernetic itself was wracked by agony. He knew, though, in his hearts, that the wound was of the spirit. Victory, robbed from him by Imotekh the Stormlord. He remembered the loss of his hand, and the realisation of what had truly been done, as he had been remade in the image of Dorn himself. All sons are echoes of their fathers, he thought, but not all echoes are made equal. ‘Is that what you fear?’ Helbrecht looked up. The figure was made from shadows, just as the rest of the phantoms, yet it stood before him– close enough for details to resolve. For its identity to become apparent. Clad in the blackest of armour, hung with battle honours and marks of purity, the figure was unmistakable. Its face was a silvered death mask. For a moment he had thought it was Grimaldus, somehow robbed of life and delivered to this sepulchral plane, but the voice was not Merek’s. ‘Mordred?’ Reality spasmed at the mere utterance of the word. Muted colour crept into the landscape. The plains contorted into tongues of fire and blood, flashfrozen as they lapped at the sky. The sound of combat blossomed around them in a riot of detonating bolter rounds and clashing blades. ‘It was an honour to fight and to die in service to His will. To fight against the Archenemy is the greatest undertaking of our breed. As Dorn fought. As

Sigismund fought. We are not echoes of that intention. We are its inheritors.’ Helbrecht looked down at himself, only now realising that he was clad in the white robes of a supplicant. Unstained by war or wounding. He felt naked, robbed of his arms and armour. ‘You are the High Marshal,’ Mordred said. Helbrecht’s fists clenched at the utterance. ‘You have said as much yourself, time and again. You have cast your Chapter into the fire to prove it so. You dared the impossible with the Fiends and then set yourself upon the course of Armageddon. What was that, if not duty?’ ‘It is our place to fight and die, just as you did. And in our turn to be replaced.’ ‘Grimaldus succeeds me, then.’ The skull-helm nodded in approval. ‘The soul of our Chapter is yet held in the most trusted of hands.’ Somewhere in the spectral, fractal non-space of the dream a cheer went up. The charnel wind was scented with incense. Helbrecht could hear hymnals, dancing on the edge of perception. An angelic chorus. Fitting. ‘He is… a hero amongst men. Honoured from the first deeds done in the role. Our Chapter is in safe hands. I have no doubt that he will choose a fitting successor.’ Mordred’s laughter was a grim bark. ‘You truly think you will die here?’ ‘If I am not dead already… then, yes.’ ‘Have faith, High Marshal. Not merely in His will, but in yourself.’ Mordred stepped back and away from him, into the shadows. They swallowed him whole, even the darkest black of his armour gone in the umbral embrace. He walked the constantly shifting battlefield. Beneath spars of glossy black metal that shifted in the darkness, out to open fields of slaughter where the immaterium roiled and screamed above. He had stood toe to toe against alien tyrants. Defied princes of the warp with naught but a combat blade. Liberated Cephian IV. Time and again he had earned his laurels, been confirmed by the judgement of his betters. ‘And we were not wrong to do so,’ Daidin said. Marshal Daidin looked at him with the same rough-hewn paternal scrutiny he had worn in life. Fully

armoured as he had been when he had led the Cephian Crusade. ‘You were the most suited for the task.’ ‘Amongst the youngest ever to rise to the position of Sword Brother,’ interjected another voice. High Marshal Kordhel stepped from the mists. He was pristine. Perfect. The axe-wounds which had ended him were thankfully absent. His armour glimmered with dark light, catching on the honour marks and gilt. The two warriors moved around Helbrecht as they observed and scrutinised. ‘And then a marshal, and then High Marshal. You have served. You will continue to serve.’ ‘I have stumbled blindly into the nest of the enemy. Brothers have died.’ Helbrecht was on his knees in the dust and ashes of the dream. He had not dreamed when he crossed the Rubicon. The Emperor had spared him His intervention. He had wondered why. This was more like the shared vision of Hevaran’s traitorous past. ‘To be High Marshal is not to be invincible, or even truly to be an exemplar. Even the greatest of us can fall. Not all get to share in Sigismund’s last stand of glory and defiance.’ Kordhel shook his head. His helm was impassive even as his voice resonated with pride. ‘You passed through death and changed for the sake of the Imperium. You have beheld a demigod walk the stars again. Miracles we could only dream of.’ Daidin took Helbrecht by the arm and helped him to his feet. Helbrecht winced at the movement and looked down, at the blood which now marred the whiteness of his robes. ‘The dream,’ Helbrecht laughed bitterly. ‘The dream cannot last forever.’ ‘And yet it must,’ Kordhel and Daidin both said, in the same moment. ‘Remember that the strength of the Imperium lies in the loyalty of its people, and the strength of their faith.’ The indistinct light of the place became more erratic, until it was a golden glow like a sunrise. It poured in and dispelled the phantoms of friend and foe. The last glimpse he had of them was of both kneeling as though in prayer, as the wave of illumination swallowed everything. The golden light burned as it washed over him. His skin danced with the sensations, as he was baptised anew in fire.

Around him the battle was a frozen tableau, not of abstract conflict and past glories, but one instantly recognisable. He had only just fled from this place, from the tumult which had laid him low. The long slopes of the impact crater, littered with dead heretics. He could see the imprint where his own wounded form had lain. ‘It is no easy thing to look upon your own grave, no more than it is to see any other destiny.’ Nivelo spoke with a dull laugh in his words. He was whole, hale, as strong and resilient as any of the other phantoms of the dead who had presented themselves. Crafted from shadows and black flame, set stark against the gold. Yet this wound, fresh as it was, ached all the deeper. ‘Brother,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Forgive me.’ ‘I asked the same thing of you. I only asked because I did not wish to die with my soul unshriven, and my duty unfulfilled. That failure, more than anything else, was my fear.’ ‘We do not fear,’ Helbrecht said firmly. He stalked forward as though his presence alone would dispel the phantoms of the enemy, change the hateful past, and restore his brother again to life. He seized Nivelo by the forearms and shook him. ‘We are beyond such things!’ ‘We are masters of our fear, but that does not rob us of it. Failure is anathema to any of us. To be found wanting in our duty…’ Nivelo turned to survey the frozen field of battle. He let his hands clench and unclench, absent their sword and shield. He cut a melancholy figure, robbed of his purpose. But then, Helbrecht thought, that is the lot of ghosts. To mourn and haunt. To mock. ‘Do not so readily seek His side, High Marshal,’ Nivelo implored. ‘You have endured more than many. The galaxy needs men such as you. It was an honour to stand at your side, and in your shadow, and watch you as you rose through the ranks.’ ‘The honour was mine,’ Helbrecht said. ‘You have ever been my sword and my shield. We shall meet again, brother. When the galaxy is brought to heel. When the Beast is slain. When at last my appointed hour comes– then we shall meet again at His side. To fight His wars forevermore.’ Nivelo knelt in the dust, amidst his own spilled blood. The fallen warrior did not look up again. The world seemed to convulse anew at his gesture. The wind began to wail again, ripe with the scream of artillery. Helbrecht

could see darkness clawing at the gold of the dream. As everything began to fade, he heard Nivelo speak one last time. ‘Cast your eyes into the dust, brother. As they have built, so they have also carved into the past. The wiles and tricks and traps of the enemy shall be your guide. Turn their blades against them, even in their strongest fortress.’

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN FROM THE BRINK OF DEATH His first breath was a heaving, sucking gulp for air. Helbrecht threw himself up, hearts hammering, his veins burning not with the traitor’s poisons but with a new and intense vitality. He trembled, until he realised that the world itself was trembling. They were underway. He was on a ship. The Flame of Terra, burning true. Theodwin fussed at his neck and he felt the bite of an injector, the click-hiss close to his ear. ‘Throne,’ Helbrecht breathed. ‘Truly, the Emperor watches over you,’ Theodwin whispered. He turned and looked past the High Marshal’s prone form, nodding to Bolheim. The Champion was kneeling, Black Sword held point down against the decking. Before him, at Helbrecht’s side, lay the Sword of the High Marshals. Helbrecht’s fingers moved to touch the hilt. He could already feel himself drawing strength from the weapon’s proximity. To touch the ancient metal, the very sword which Sigismund had wielded, gave new might to his arm. He felt more himself in that moment. The pain and confusion fled. ‘What is our situation?’ He winced as he rose to his feet and took up his sword once more. His unsteadiness was fading, alongside his pain, into the backwash of righteous indignation. ‘What is our status?’ ‘We are currently moving under cover of an equatorial storm, High Marshal,’ Wolfger’s voice cut in through the vox. ‘It ought to hide us from the enemy’s orbital elements, and provide us cover to regroup and reengage.’ ‘Thank you, Brother Wolfger,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Have we had any word from orbit? Any contact from crusade elements, or survivors from the Faith Adamant?’ ‘Nothing, lord,’ Wolfger stated solemnly. ‘Beyond a few isolated prayer channels, the only vox-broadcast currently going out is this.’

The signal took a moment to resolve. A voice, speaking over and over again. It spoke in calm, measured tones. The very sound of it sat ill with Helbrecht even before he truly absorbed the words themselves. It was a false nobility. Honeyed promises spilled across the vox like poison. Unchallenged, they would drown entire worlds in blood and sedition. He closed his eyes and felt his fists clench as he listened. ‘Rejoice, for you are liberated at last from your prisons of guilt and shame. Ten thousand years of history has been pressed down upon you, until you could not stand, could not build, could not breathe. You languish in the dust while pilgrims walk your world, as though it were there for their pleasure. No longer. The time of stone is over and the age of iron has come. Rejoice! I am Torven Vakra, warsmith of the Fourth Legion. I shall raise you from the ashes. I shall redeem you in the sight of truth. This world shall be free, and you shall take your hammers and your picks to the stars for truly righteous iconoclasm, where the only monuments you shall grind to powder shall be those of the False Emperor. Swear yourself to me and you shall finally slay your past. You shall be free of your shackles.’ ‘Lies and treachery!’ Helbrecht snapped. He stalked the compartment like a penned beast. Rage flooded him and fuelled him. ‘I will burn every last traitor from this world and crush all who lend them succour.’ ‘And yet…’ Bolheim raised his head. ‘The Emperor has seen fit to place us here at the turning of the tide. As our enemy bares his face to the light of the sun, we are summoned. Not in force, but with the blades of the holy in our hands.’ He took up the Black Sword and brought it up, parallel to Helbrecht’s own blade. ‘I carried you from the battle, just as Dorn carried the Emperor from the lair of the Arch-Heretic. That is why I was brought here. Not for the promise of the armour, but to be your shield.’ Remember that the strength of the Imperium lies in the loyalty of its people, and the strength of their faith. ‘The other broadcasts,’ Helbrecht said cautiously. ‘The prayer channels. Can you pinpoint their location?’ They swept low over the dune seas of Kharas, where the ruins of the past lay drowned beneath the drifting sands. Gnarled tower-tops jutted from the earth like finger bones questing for the heavens, clawing their way from a grave that they had earned. Atop the plains brickwork had been laid: not

one stone upon another, but a single layer of recovered masonry. Some pieces were flat, others blocky, and some had been placed to form sweeping arcs in the relentless sands. From above, as the Overlord passed overhead, the patterns became apparent. The spread wings of Imperial aquilae. Row after row of them were arranged across the plains, impressed into the barren soil. It was the work of generations. From a single seed it had grown into dozens and then hundreds. In the febrile word of mouth which flowed along the pilgrim trails of Hevaran, to walk the Eagle Ways of Kharas was considered as a truly holy undertaking. Beneath them the sands teemed with grey-robed pilgrims: lying before the stones in prayer, or making the great treks between outcroppings. Sunblasted faces looked skyward at the roaring passage of the Overlord. Some fell to their knees in worshipful awe, considering themselves truly blessed, even by the standards of the teeming pilgrim masses. Plasma kissed the sands, searing them into glass with a backwash of superheated air. The descent and landing had drawn a small audience. Pilgrims pressed their faces to the ground, like grey ghosts before the solid black hull of the ship. The rear ramps deployed with a hiss and the warriors of Squad Helbrecht strode forth. Even the High Marshal held his head high and his back straight. He would not sully himself in showing pain or weakness before the mortals. ‘Praise be,’ one of the pilgrims breathed. An older man, creased by time, his hair and beard grey, peppered with white. He looked up from his knees at the towering figures. He had walked the pilgrim paths of the Imperium for decades and had never once had the terrifying honour of walking in the presence of the Adeptus Astartes. Now five of them stood before him, clad in a black so deep that it humbled the night and the void, bearing blades and the sacred mace of a Chaplain. They were wonders wrought from terror and wrath, as angels ought to be. ‘Speak,’ Helbrecht growled. He stepped forward and the old man started backwards, almost falling over the stone pattern which stretched out behind him. ‘Who are you and where do your loyalties lie?’ ‘Lord, I…’ The old man trailed off, struggled to collect himself, and then forced himself to look up at the demigod, mining some seam of inner

resolve. ‘Laren. Waymaster Laren. I lead this flock of the Emperor’s faithful upon their chosen path– a path I have walked myself, here, for two decades, and three more decades abroad in the Imperium before that.’ ‘Then these souls are loyal souls, sworn to His will?’ Helbrecht asked. His hand had not left his sword, not since he had stepped down from the Overlord’s cavernous compartment. The need for violence bled from him, becoming an infectious tension in the air. Everyone around him was on edge, poised for the blow which never came. ‘There are none here who would turn from His light, lord,’ Laren said softly. ‘If they would then let my life be forfeit. Bury your blade in my heart – I would deserve it for such blasphemy being allowed to flourish under my watch.’ ‘And yet,’ Helbrecht growled, ‘this whole world is diseased. Riven through with taint. Suborned by the Archenemy.’ That declaration drew murmurs of surprise and shock from the gathering flock. Someone made the sign of the aquila upon their chest. Another began to weep. ‘Hush, Pavra,’ Laren whispered indulgently. ‘This is not a time for tears.’ He looked up and met Helbrecht’s gaze. ‘This is a time of struggle. Of holy war.’ Despite the wounds and losses which had haunted them, Helbrecht allowed himself a smile. He liked this man. In him, the old truths of the Imperium yet lived. Faith, backed by fury. The fuel of the Eternal Crusade. ‘From the mouths of the faithful flows the truth,’ Helbrecht intoned. ‘How many souls do you shepherd?’ ‘I could not say for certain, my lord.’ Laren scratched at his chin. ‘Two hundred, perhaps? There are many other pilgrim caravans abroad across the plains. I do not have command of, or contact with, most of them…’ ‘That will suffice,’ Helbrecht said. He strode past the prostrate waymaster and regarded the milling pilgrims. Their eyes darted over his armoured bulk and then snapped away quickly. He knew that he was an object of awe and fear to them, just as he was throughout the Imperium. That was the burden of the Adeptus Astartes. The exemplars of humanity’s empire, yet forever apart from it. Rendered into a totemic force, able to turn the tide of entire wars by their presence alone. The scalpel cut, not the hammer blow.

‘I want you to gather the most able of your number. All those who would wield pick and hammer in the service of the Emperor.’ ‘It will be done, lord,’ Laren piped up eagerly. He rose to his feet unsteadily, coated with the cloying dust of Hevaran’s ruin. For a moment he was rendered as much an apparition as any who had haunted Helbrecht. ‘What is the Emperor’s will for us?’ ‘The same as He has willed for me, Waymaster Laren,’ Helbrecht said. ‘We go to war.’

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN A WAR OF GHOSTS The roar of engines and fire from black wings heralded their arrival. The cultists squatting in their rough-hewn bunkers, trenches and dugouts looked skyward as the Black Templars gunship screamed overhead, even as its bolter rounds tore into the ground and the nose-mounted melta carved new glassy furrows into the earth. The bravest amongst them fired impotently into the sky as the Overlord moved off and away, back into the cover of the storm. A strike of shock and awe to distract them from the quiet death that approached. Every time the cultists caught sight of the enemy, the same emotions overwhelmed them. Even masked and helmeted, robed and armoured, the ironclad devotees could not hide the soul-deep fear which radiated from their bodies. Their stances changed, became erratic, and they could do nothing except shout or scream, firing blindly at the figures that loomed out of the storm. They looked like revenants. Vengeful ghosts dragged up from some primordial hell. The dust that clung to them like smoke and ashes did little to obscure the deep black of their armour. They moved faster than should have been possible, their movements lit by the flash of lightning and the pulses of weapons fire that never seemed to find them. It sparked the flame of fear in the dry kindling of the cultists’ withered souls. This was wrath and ruin sent down upon them by the Emperor Himself. Their false patrons had led them astray and played them false. Vengeance came with sword and fire. With bolt and hate. Every sweep of Helbrecht’s sword was a cleansing one. It exorcised doubt in a baptism of spilled blood and rent flesh. Human debris and detritus clung to the Black Templars as they moved through the cultists like a scythe through wheat, barely stopping to appreciate what they cut down. What were such things to warriors such as they? The enemy did not even deserve the moniker of men. They were merely an obstacle to be overcome,

another bulwark made of skin and bone that lay between Helbrecht and his prey. In the wake of the Space Marines came the men and women who had once been pilgrims. The crucible of battle had remade them. Not as mere followers, but as warriors in mankind’s ultimate war. The struggle had made them lean and hard-edged, jagged beings with their robes pared away – rendered functional for the relentless pressures of combat. They carried their picks, axes and reclaimed lasguns with new purpose. Upon the brow of each, by Helbrecht’s own hand, was marked an ashen cross. The Chapter’s mark. They were pilgrims no longer. They were crusaders. Laren hefted up his hammer, a brutal double-headed idolbreaker, as though in imitation of Raimbert’s martial stance. Like a child imitating a parent. Helbrecht almost laughed at the disparity. Raimbert was yet young in his role, one of the new breed of Primaris Chaplains. Younger than the eager yet bedraggled waymaster, yet the older man looked to the Chaplain with mortal awe, and Raimbert barely acknowledged him – save as an instrument to turn against the enemy. It was a dichotomy which Helbrecht had seen repeated over and over across the Imperium of Man. The doubt of baseline humans meeting the rocky determination of the Astartes. Waves forever lapping at the shore. Wearing them down by degrees across the span of millennia. The galaxy had changed, time and again, and yet that truth remained static. The demands of mortals upon the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes were relentless. Example and exemplar, both. A station to strive to, angels to be worshipped. They were many things to many men. Such men picked their way through the carnage, looting the bodies of the dead. The crusaders took the weapons and any ammunition from the fallen, dragged the bodies away, and set them alight. Helbrecht watched them burn. Flesh smouldered and fell away, armour melted, bone cracked as the smoke rose and the corpse-stink drifted across the plains. It felt righteous to cleanse them; to finally expunge the insult. Betrayal deserved nothing less. It could only be answered with blood and fire. He turned from the pyres, light catching upon the bronze and black of his armour. He raised his sword and examined the blade. It showed no wear, no weakness, no imperfection. It always amazed him. It humbled him. The

weapon of Sigismund. The shards of Dorn’s own sword were within it, a part of it. They lent the blade strength, just as it fuelled his own fury. Three figures knelt in the dust before him. Raimbert was at their head, his crozius held out before him, still smouldering with burned blood. Bolheim’s weapon and armour seemed pristine, unsullied. Laren burned with the same fire as the funeral pyres, a caged and febrile rage that writhed beneath his skin. He had changed from the moment Helbrecht had found him amidst the splayed and broken wings of the stone eagles. That hesitant and obedient waymaster had been transfigured into a whirlwind of zealous indignation. The thought of this heresy having festered under his watch was like promethium upon the embers of his soul. Helbrecht looked at the man and allowed himself the barest glimmer of pleasure. This is what they must become. In a galaxy divided, we must hew close to our faith and let its flames be fanned. Only then shall false gods be cast down and mankind’s true master reign supreme. ‘My men of faith,’ Helbrecht breathed. ‘Each of you is as an aspect of the Emperor’s will. His wrath.’ He nodded to Bolheim. ‘His wisdom,’ he said, with a gesture towards Raimbert. The Chaplain straightened at the acknowledgement, invigorated by the praise. ‘And His humility.’ Laren’s wizened features creased into a smile and he looked down again, tears glistening upon his cheeks. Their passage washed away the layers of grime, ash and blood which clung to the man’s weathered skin. ‘Our trek has not been easy or without sacrifice,’ Helbrecht said simply. The other three nodded. ‘We have bestrode this world not as conquerors or kings, but as the hunted and accursed. Our enemy has sought, at every step, to humble us.’ He buried his sword into the ground before them and stalked around them, as relentless and animated as the assaults of the enemy. ‘Yet we endure. The blood of the foe is upon you. The world is cleansed by our passing and vindicated by their end.’ ‘Praise be!’ all said in perfect, quiet unity. ‘It is not enough,’ Helbrecht said, ‘to slay the enemies of man. We must tear down their works and their lairs. Every last fastness returned to ruin. We break their walls and remind them, time and again, that they failed. Ten thousand years ago they sought to break humanity’s soul, and they failed– though the sacrifice was beyond any countenanced.’

The wind picked up as he spoke and the Flame of Terra swept back in to land beside them, engines burning as brightly as their resolve. Brother Wolfger stepped down from the Overlord and gazed upon the burning corpses. He nodded to Helbrecht and then turned back to begin the rites of maintenance. Helbrecht understood. Wolfger and those anointed in the knowledge of Mars had their own ways of giving praise to Him. ‘The Emperor…’ Helbrecht began. He took hold of his sword again. Others had gathered in the dust of victory. Andronicus was no longer the inexperienced Neophyte. Instead he walked with purpose, Nivelo’s blade held with a warrior’s determination. Theodwin was surrounded by a gaggle of crusaders, walking wounded all, who bore signs of recent exertion. His skills were keeping them in the fight, rendering them able to continue to serve. ‘The Emperor wears many guises. He appears to us in many forms and takes upon Himself many roles. Warrior and leader. Healer and scientist. Creator and destroyer.’ The crusaders gathered closer and in greater numbers. Ten became twenty. Fifty. A hundred. They had dragged themselves up from the sands and from the begging, scraping adoration which had characterised their durance upon the ruinworld. Now they were made mighty, transmuted. ‘The enemy, the true enemy, waits beyond. He thinks himself a builder. A shaper of men’s lives and fates. The Emperor demanded that this world be reduced to nothing, and so it shall remain so. Only by the hand of the faithful may it be redeemed. It shall not rise in service of tyrants.’ ‘Only the Emperor’s grace can redeem such a place,’ Laren said, nodding in agreement. He pushed himself up from his knees to gaze upon Helbrecht’s mighty frame. The High Marshal was ragged and battle-scarred, but unbroken. The wounds in his armour had been patched but still showed plainly. Grit had accumulated in every crevice. His skin was worn rough, but his will was unquestionable. Laren seemed to draw strength from this. ‘We bring His wrath,’ he finished. ‘We bring His wrath,’ Helbrecht affirmed. ‘From the deepest desert to the strongest mountain. We are His fury given form.’ He turned away from the light of the pyres and the rising stench of burning flesh. He moved to stand with Bolheim and the Champion rose to face his liege.

‘We shepherd a war of ghosts,’ Bolheim said approvingly. ‘Raised up from nothing, just as the first Reunification of Terra began with so few. A kingdom shaped by intention alone. The dream of humanity’s dominance. I have seen that dream, time and again. Played out behind my eyes.’ ‘Drawing us ever forward. Together. As it was intended to be.’ Helbrecht was quiet for a long moment. ‘Vestige is where we will meet their might head-on.’ Bolheim nodded. His helm was impassive but his voice quivered with rapturous anticipation. He took hold of Helbrecht’s shoulders. ‘As we fight, in the presence of these noble souls, the fog lifts. The light returns and our path becomes clear.’ ‘The Emperor chooses the moments of revelation,’ Raimbert said. If he yet held doubt in his abilities it was subsumed in the righteous prosecution Hevaran had provided them with. When he spoke, the crusader throng listened. Where he directed them to war, they marched without question or fear. Helbrecht had watched them fall upon the convoys of the enemy like a pack of wolves, and leave nothing but corpses in their wake. ‘Has the vox-traffic changed?’ Helbrecht asked, though he already knew the answer. ‘If anything the broadcasts have intensified,’ Andronicus cut in. ‘Vakra rallies his defenders. Though his own personal guard seem limited in number.’ The Neophyte looked to his blade, as if considering just how many of the true enemy he would be able to dispatch with it. ‘It is ever their way to hide behind thralls and slaves. Collaborators,’ Helbrecht spat. ‘We will march upon their stronghold, even if we are outnumbered a hundred to one. We shall avenge their slights against us. We shall punish the unworthy. That is His will. If the fleet comes then we may have our vengeance, but even if we die it shall be as He intends. With a prayer upon our lips and our weapons in our hands.’ He thought again of the wraiths. Daidin. Kordhel. Leaders and champions. Anointed in the Emperor’s sight to lead His crusades. Their legacy lived on in him. They had shaped him as leaders and as mentors– moulded him to follow their example, just as he led men in the void above Armageddon, the defence of the shrine worlds, or even here on this forgotten world. ‘We shall drive them out,’ Helbrecht vowed. ‘No matter the cost.’

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN GATES OF IRON Augustus Klath had never been in a vehicle before. Even the basic dustbikes and dune-runners had always smacked of the impious and the unnatural to him. If he had to go anywhere, then he would walk, and if it was too far for him to walk… Well, then it was not worth the effort to begin with. In his role as an administrator he had always relied upon masses of underclerks and runners, uplifted from the base work of iconoclasm to serve his whims. Now he found himself moving at the urging of another, by a means he did not understand or trust, into the heart of danger. ‘You are a fool,’ he muttered to himself. ‘A damned fool. You have supped with daemons…’ If his fellow travellers heard him they gave no indication. The Taurox hit another uneven block of shattered masonry and lurched abruptly. He stopped himself from crying out, ashamed at the very thought of being unmanned so in front of these… men. The occupants of the compartment held their peace. The iron bones rattled against their armour as the vehicle moved off again, jangling with the slightest of movements. He swallowed hard and tried not to look at the skull visages which had been soldered into place over their helms. Nails had been driven through the material to hold them firm. Blood had congealed around the barbs, hard and black. Is this the price of freedom? Do I still pay it gladly? When their benefactors had first descended, he had thought it a blessing. Finally, an escape from the grinding tedium of service. A new world had beckoned, crafted from iron and rising as inexorably as their new stoneworks. Ruins such as Vestige had begun to grow again, crawling their way back to life. Yet all blessings are barbed and every cup is poisoned, he thought grimly. As the change had swept the ruined and wasted districts of the world, so it had begun to change their people. The most eager and choleric of them had

volunteered to become a defence force, swollen far beyond the humble guards of the pilgrim’s ways, and that had mutated swiftly into a standing army. From there the character of the men and their calling had shifted. They had begun to wear the desiccated bones dredged up from the deepest pits and decorated in molten iron. Mutilations had become increasingly common. Some days he no longer recognised his world or the men who inhabited it. That would have made him fear, if not for the persistent presence of Torven Vakra. His long shadow, dense and dark though it was, had its own peculiar warmth. Now he was drawn again into the orbit of that dark star. The Taurox ground to a halt and he clambered out as its ramps descended. The exterior had long since been scoured clean of any Imperial insignia, and the repair scars of old battle damage spoke of its origins in other wars. So much of what the Iron Warriors had returned to Hevaran had been sourced from elsewhere, rendering it yet more other. Klath made his way across the vast open courtyard of Vestige’s central keep, weaving between the constant flows of work crews and soldiers as they manoeuvred huge iron support beams into place. Blocks of stone, hewn from the mountains themselves, were pushed into place by gangs of half-stripped volunteers, their torsos gleaming with sweat in the baking sun. The light, for all its comfort and cruelty, was a passing fancy. When Klath looked to the horizon he could see the truth. A storm was coming. The mountain face had begun to be carved. Just as on the ground, countless workers and thralls scuttled up and down the scaffolding and brought their chisels to bear. Where once they had broken idols, now they carved immense representations of their saviours. Half a helm glowered out, mighty in its ancient dominance, and the makeshift workforce pushed themselves to render it yet more perfect for their masters. The keep itself was set into the weathered stone, its entrance flanked by the emerging statues, while its heights striated the substance of the mountain like rot. At the peak of its powers it had commanded a world, and now it was a mere echo. A whisper. Vakra had told Klath of the fortress as it had been, as though he himself had been there. Perhaps he had. He spoke of

it with such an ingrained adoration that he must have had some role in its conception. ‘They called it the Citadel of Sighs, for its guns spoke in a whisper. Garden-gilded, as so much of this beautiful world once was. Oh, you ought to have seen it.’ It was not the fire and madness of scripture, which decried the rule of iron as the puppetry of the daemonic. It sounded… beautiful. A world without want, without privation, without the constant bite of the dust storms and the ache of necessary duty. He had chafed for so long at such chains as the Imperium had made him wear. Even his title was a joke: to be the highest authority on an entire world and yet be nothing more than a clerk. A glorified bookkeeper, keeping count of how many pilgrims came to wonder at the ruin of his home. To think themselves blessed to walk in the footfalls of wrathful demigods, who would have struck even them aside with little regard. And now those demigods had returned… Fear and anger played out their dance within him, and he was not sure which of them took the lead. They whirled about his psyche in a mad rush of adrenaline and ague, driving him to sudden rages and deep, heaving despairs. He wondered whether, were he a more martial man, he would have marked his skin and clad himself in iron and bone. He did not like where such thoughts brought him. He had climbed the winding stairways that slithered their way through the citadel, up to a more recently excavated chamber. Previously only the central spire had been occupied, by the skeleton staff who attended to the world’s meagre astropathic choir. Now it teemed with excavators, builders and soldiery. Klath stepped out into the large, open chamber and gazed out across the wide, dead expanse of his world. The horizon was a charcoal sketch of storm and shadow, reaching out with its black tendrils to drown everything they had sought to build. Lightning crackled in the loaded thunderheads before it earthed itself into the ground, turning sand to glass as it sought the spurs and barbs of metal which still extended from the ruins. The chamber was a room that had been made to survey all that it dominated. It had been made to rule. Klath hesitated just inside the doorway, a portal made for

beings of far grander proportions than his own limited frame, before stepping forward. Set against the storm’s front was a deeper shadow. Its armour was grey against the black, and yet it seemed to swallow the light. It reached out with one gauntleted hand, in an almost graceful gesture, and took hold of a great warhammer. The hydraulics of the glove whirred and clicked as the immense figure lifted it and turned. Torven Vakra was not possessed of kind features. Every part of him was rough-hewn and war-wearied, yet he bore an unmistakable nobility in his bearing. Pale skin, crossed here and there with scars, rose above the monstrously proportioned gorget of his armour. His eyes were pale and grey, set in a broad and stern face. His scalp was bare, pockmarked by interface nodes, from which cables trailed back into the recesses of his plate. He had been built to make war. To end civilisations. To shatter worlds as easily as Hevaran had been shattered– yet he claimed to be a liberator. To be their salvation. The black-armoured monsters who had descended with fire and fury, who wore their zealot’s mania upon their features plainly, were the true enemy… the true monsters. ‘Clerk primary,’ Vakra murmured absently. ‘I had almost forgotten that I had sent for you. All proceeds as it ought, would you not agree?’ He rumbled as he moved. A dry chuckle escaped him as he moved around the edges of the chamber, turning his weapon over and over in one hand. He burned with the imminence of violence. That was the best way to think of it. Every last example of his breed was made for that singular purpose. The galaxy had been tamed by beings such as this. Monsters in ceramite plate. Yet Klath was caught, locked into the orbit of Torven Vakra. Like stellar debris… though that implied a grandeur of scale that he resoundingly lacked. Klath knew that next to such a being he was, in many ways, simply a pet. ‘My lord,’ Klath whimpered, disgusted by his own obeisance. ‘Come now, have we not reached the point where we might consider each other friends?’ Vakra asked. The insincerity of it was plain. In his distraction, poised between victory and frustration, Vakra’s patience for dissembling was fading with each passing moment. ‘It is important that we

all stand together in this moment. A clear sign of cooperation as we strive ever onwards.’ ‘Of course.’ Klath wrung his hands and swallowed again. He blinked away tears where the grit had found its way into his eyes. His head ached. He had never been this high before. He didn’t like it. The pressure wound about his skull and buried itself in his chest. He couldn’t breathe properly. Klath tried to look up at Vakra and draw strength from the warrior’s martial bearing. In his full plate and with a demigod’s might, Vakra seemed indefatigable, as though even the ravages of their broken world could not humble him. Everything here is worn down, pushed into the muck. Yet they stand and they rise. Stronger than stone. That is the glory of iron. ‘You do not sound entirely convinced,’ Vakra rumbled. He snapped the hammer back upright, leant forward to examine the head and then smiled. His fingers played across the ignition rune and the killing face of it was wreathed in fitful lightning. ‘Do you fear them? The zealot pretenders to Dorn’s bloodline? Those who would bring back your shackles and your shame? Have I not given you illumination enough to see their lies?’ ‘You have provided us with much, and we are eternally grateful.’ Klath looked down, away from the shadowed potency. ‘But yes, I fear them.’ He closed his eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath. ‘They… they are the fire that burned everything here to ashes.’ ‘And I am the steady hand that shall shield you from the flame.’ Vakra deactivated the hammer and stood, silhouetted in the looming storm. He sighed and his entire armoured bulk rippled with the subtle gesture. Everything, Klath realised, was enhanced. ‘One day it shall be the people of this world who carry forth the cleansing fire. War is coming. An entire segmentum, considered and accounted for. Dissected by the greatest makers of war to ever bestride the galaxy.’ He paused and laughed, softly and bitterly. ‘The world of my birth is long since lost to history… killed by its own weakness. Our adopted home, though, you have not seen its like. To stand within its fortress halls and plan the ruin to come… Beyond this meagre sky there is a galaxy waiting to be brought to heel. Wounds ten thousand years old to be avenged.’ ‘Such things are beyond me,’ Klath gasped. ‘I am not a warrior. I will only ever be a servant. A clerk. I have spent so long counting the steps of others,

wondering at their comings and goings, existing in the shadows of their lives. I will never hold a wall or storm a trench. I do not have it within me.’ ‘Then you shall walk in the shadows of heroes. Iron-wrought and skullmarked. Perhaps you shall chronicle their passing, as the remembrancers of old, eh?’ ‘My lord?’ Klath asked. ‘Another concept lost to you. You have fallen so far… but do not fear. We shall raise you up.’ The wind filled the chamber as the storm descended. Desert sand swirled through the air, carried upon the sudden gale. The chamber grew close with the static build-up and lightning struck again at the walls. The world roared, screamed, and then held its breath. In that moment of silence, Klath heard it. It had been hidden beneath the wind’s fury and the storm’s wrath. A low growl, building to a roar. As artificial and unnatural to him as the Taurox’s engines. This was a guttural bellow compared to that timid beast. The storm’s howl rose again, reverberated with the new sound, and lent its own tortured voice to the cacophony. Encouraged by the intrusion, stirred up by the fitful thunder, the storm built to a crescendo. Lightning split the skies again and he could see it now. He could see it. Black against the darkness of the storm clouds, lit only by the heavens’ own fury. The shape tore across the sky with fire and thunder as its hymnal. ‘Ah,’ Vakra breathed and raised his arms before the onrushing gunship. ‘At last.’ They sang as they went to war, voices raised as they plunged once more into the maelstrom. Helbrecht led the chant, lending his strength to the chorus. The battering wind and acid rain could not harm them, the lightning would not ground them. Within the confines of the vessel their weapons burned in sympathy, already ignited. The two holy blades blazed like tamed infernos, Andronicus’ borrowed weapon was aglow and eager to bring vengeance, Raimbert’s crozius shone with light like starfire – a beacon in the muted shadows within the Overlord. ‘O, Emperor, deliver us from ruin and return us to glory. Shield us with fire and gird us with wrath. For we shall rain vengeance upon the unworthy

and the unclean.’ Raimbert led the chant as the ship shook in the storm’s fury. Even without the sacred refrain, Helbrecht would have known the truth. The Emperor rode with them. His was the storm that shielded them and the lightning that danced anew in their veins. The blade-light caught against Helbrecht’s armour and the Templar cross upon his chest seemed to burn, to smoulder with that same holy fervour. It burned with the pyre-light of the Cythor Fiends’ charnel home world and with the sulphurous embers of Armageddon. It sparked and spat like shipfire in the void, and kindled with the cold grandeur the braziers of the Temple of Dorn contained. ‘I am His fire and His wrath,’ Helbrecht intoned. The Overlord shook as it banked and its weapons finally opened up. Lascannon and heavy bolter rounds raked the enemy’s outermost walls. Masonry exploded to powder. Troops burst in clouds of crimson mist, soiling the rock with their heretic blood. The ship fired again. The nose-mounted melta spoke in a lance of light and heat, gouging into the gates behind which the enemy cowered. The metal glowed red and then split asunder. It slumped and ran in torrents of molten iron. Below its unremitting rain the heretic soldiery cried out and caught fire. Robes burned. Armour was eaten through. Even the iron-clad bones they wore shattered under the sudden onslaught of heat. Beyond the walls, from the wastes, a cheer went up. The pilgrim throng, grey-robed and dust-coated, rose up from their hiding places and advanced in a sudden wave. The crack of las-fire echoed out across the sands. More men tumbled from the wall, caught in the sudden crossfire. The return volleys were solid shot. They lanced down from the walls, detonating amidst the dust and ruins. Some of the defenders turned their guns skyward, seeking to tear the gunship from the sky. The Flame of Terra wheeled about and returned fire. The walls shuddered again. Where shots found their mark, the Overlord was suddenly wreathed in a crackling aegis as the defensive shields triggered. It plunged through the fusillade of fire, trailing golden light, before it dropped without warning. The engines fired with a rush of plasma and it arrested its descent, holding position at the lip of the wall. The ramp slammed down, hard enough to crack the rockcrete. The squad hurled themselves forward, out of the ship and into the fray.

Helbrecht was at their head. His sword was raised. The moment he hit the wall he was already turning, swinging the Sword of the High Marshals. A head rolled free in a rush of sudden gore. ‘No pity! No remorse! No fear!’

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE WRATH OF ANGELS They moved with one will as they spread out across the wall. Behind them the Flame of Terra made its roaring ascent back into the tortured skies, rekindling its own personal war even as the storm broke around it. The heavens finally opened and deluged attackers and defenders alike in hissing acid rain, which stung at the exposed skin of the mortals and coated everything in a cloying, acrid stink. It was the tepid lifeblood of a corpse-world. Slowly draining away, nourishing less with every diminishing cycle. It was everything wrong with the pustule that the planet had been allowed to become. Helbrecht hated it. He hated the weakness of men that had brought this world to ruin twice over. He despised the feeble defiance of the slave soldiers, motivated by nothing more than broken oaths and fear for their worthless lives. They chanted as they fought, spewing forth their litany as though it could protect them from righteous judgement. The battle became a blur. He split another of the Iron-wrought soldiers with an overhead strike, blood sizzling to powder against the power field. He moved onwards, through the unfolding carnage. Helbrecht backhanded a screaming cultist off the wall, hearing the sickening crunch of bone as the man met the ground, and a moment later the detonation of the melta bomb he had been brandishing. Bullets and las-bolts cracked and spat against his armour, the plate proof against all assaults, as inviolate as the ancient walls of the Imperial Palace. He was a living bulwark. The will of the Emperor made manifest and set forth into the cosmos to fight and to die for humanity’s dream of domination. Nothing else mattered. Not the dreams of the Beast or any notion of hunting for it. Penance withered beneath the cleansing flame. Old shames and defeats bled and burned away in the fire of battle– as it always was. To

stand in the heat and roar of it was to be purified. Baptised anew, remade each time as surely as though he was crossing the Rubicon once more. They rushed at him only to die and die and die again. Bodies were hurled from the walls, knocked to the ground, crushed underfoot as they tried, in vain, to resist his onslaught. Raimbert was at his side, his encouragements ever at Helbrecht’s ear. ‘Into them! For the glory of Him on Terra! Cleanse them from the face of creation! The Emperor is with you! He is in your every deed!’ The milling throng of pilgrims cheered his vox-amplified words and echoed them. They plunged into the fray on the ground below the Space Marines, aping their martial deeds as they surged through the gate. Hammers and picks rose and fell. Weapons snapped and pulsed. For every one of them that was lost, another instantly took their place in the line. Fighting and firing. Killing and dying. Helbrecht paused for a moment, his fist closed around the throat of another struggling cultist, and looked down at the line of grey-robed, muck-covered pilgrims as they fought. Not the steel of the Astartes or the Astra Militarum, but each one of them fought with zeal and passion. They had learned at the feet of the Black Templars and been marked with the crusader’s cross. Each of them, young or old, man or woman, now bore the sigil upon them: marked on their brow in ashes, cut into their robes, pinned to their flesh. They bore their devotion as a brand until the symbol itself was immaterial, for they had become the symbol. The strength of the Imperium is in its people. In the flock who give themselves to the creed. An army girded in true faith has no equal. It can overturn the galaxy if its heart is pure and sworn unto Him. More of the enemy swarmed forward in a living tide. Iron rattled against ceramite as they threw themselves at Helbrecht. They clung to his armour, tried to bear down his arms, weighing him beneath a wave of bodies. Knives scratched along the plates, embedding themselves between the gaps as they sought a way through his defences. He let the cultist he had been holding drop from the walls as the others beat at him. Helbrecht moved. The simplest gesture sent the weakest of his foes tumbling. He drew up his sword and the blistering heat of it seared the flesh of the cultists nearest to him, driving them back. Iron armour ran molten. He thrust out his fist and felt the resistance as it met flesh and bone. The

flesh tore. Bones broke. Beside him a skull split as Raimbert’s crozius mace staved it in. The Chaplain struck again, forcing the gouting corpse to the ground so violently that its knees broke, humbled in death. Helbrecht felt a savage grin break across his face. He was wild. Rain-slicked, blood running from him where it had not stained his tabard. The blade sizzled in his hand with the constant downpour and the spilled blood of the foe, and he rejoiced at the sound. High Marshal Helbrecht threw his head back and laughed. He laughed in the face of death and the worst efforts of the enemy. He turned and looked back across the wall, down the path of ruin he had carved through the enemy. Across theplain of blood and entrails, his brothers still fought. No less mighty, no less hateful. Bolheim led a warrior’s charge. He hacked and cleaved through the enemy as though they were not there. Andronicus stood at his side, his own sword in constant motion, turning aside the strikes of lesser warriors before he ended them with sharp, simple pivots of the blade. He had taken well to Nivelo’s weapon, as though the dead warrior’s spirit guided his hand. He no longer seemed a mere Neophyte, but a true initiate brother of the Chapter. If they lived, then Helbrecht would witness his ascension himself. Theodwin held the rearguard, turning his bolt pistol against any enemy who dared to draw near. Cultists burst apart in the open space of the courtyard, caught beneath the Apothecary’s guns. Helbrecht leapt from the wall. His boots broke a cultist’s spine as he hit the man, almost splitting him in half. His sword was instantly in motion. He snapped it out to its full length, impaling another. He shook the corpse free and advanced across the killing field which now dominated the keep’s interior courtyard. The enemy was firing blindly. Las blasts and solid shot burst around him. Somewhere a lascannon emplacement opened up. The beam went wide, through ineptitude or panic. An ammo store caught, exploded, casting fiery fingers towards the sky. Helbrecht stood for a moment, haloed by the atrocity. What do they see when they look at me? he wondered in that moment. A monster of blood and fire? An avenging angel bringing the Emperor’s wrath?

All was light and fury. His chest heaved from the exertion. But he did not feel pain. Whatever wounds he had already sustained did not slow him. He stalked forward out of the ashen wind and slammed the tip of the blade into the rockcrete expanse before him. ‘Is this all you have?’ he snarled. ‘Puppets and mongrels. Children, playing at war! Is this all you can muster?’ He unslung his rifle and fired. The first bolt-rounds caught the lascannon operators across the chest, painting the walls in crimson spatter. He fired again. This time the melta painted its line of hellish light across the battlefield. It atomised half a dozen cultists in quick succession. Their bodies disintegrated in a burst of superheated matter and then were gone. Helbrecht strode forward. The others had joined him, though their own descents had been more fraught. Behind them came the loyalist host. Laren was limping, leaning on the haft of his warhammer. The old man was panting with the strain of the battle but showed no sign of slowing down. Others bore injuries. Las-burns and cuts from shrapnel sat alongside bullet wounds. They were bloodied, yet unbowed. Helbrecht looked to his warriors, to his charges. He gestured up at the carved face of the mountain, its stone skin pitted by reworking. ‘Behold the lair of the enemy,’ he breathed. ‘You have walked this world for too long without purpose. Now I bring you to the very gates of ruin.’ Some of the pilgrims fell to their knees amidst the dust and blood. Helbrecht rounded on them, as though offended by their show of piety. ‘Do not grovel!’ he snapped. His blood was up. Every part of him burned to continue the fight. To hunt Vakra to the depths of his domain and drag him into the light. He would flense the thing that called itself a warsmith alive. Stake him out for all to see, as an example to his entire vermin breed and the legions of fools who followed in his wake. ‘You shatter false idols and their fallen fortresses to dust. Now I give you fresh fodder for your hammers. I dedicate you to the greatest task of all. Serve as we serve. Fight as we fight. Do the work of Dorn!’ He gestured again with his blade. The sacred metal was untouched, untainted. It crackled and danced, a mirror to the lightning above. ‘Bring them to ruin.’

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CHAPTER NINETEEN SANCTITY’S CAGE Helbrecht threw open the doors. Three times again as tall as he was, they had been crafted for an age of wonders and horrors long since consigned to legend. Vestige’s central keep had a history which stretched back to the Great Crusade and the Heresy war which had followed it. A citadel of the Iron Warriors. The antithesis of everything that Dorn and the Emperor had stood for. It had been one of the few structures upon the planet mighty enough to endure its cleansing. The central spire had weathered orbital bombardment, bracketed as it was by the mountain’s stone. Time had rendered it into a half-crewed fastness. The kernel of Imperial authority upon the planet. A place where the meagre bureaucracy of the world could commune with the Imperium which had forsaken it. The hall would once have been the centre of any defence, yet now it was barren and hollow. Plinths stood empty, devoid of arming racks or cogitator nodes for command and control. Everything still carried a coating of dust– either accumulated down through the epochs of disuse or dredged in by the coming and going of the traitor forces. Paths had been worn into the patina of age, leading off down winding, nebulous side passages. If it had ever fit a standard Imperial pattern then those days were long since lost to it. The Iron Warriors had made their mark upon the structure and twisted the nature of its soul, whether from madness or pride. ‘Reason enough,’ Helbrecht said softly to himself, ‘that places such as this were forbidden to them, pilgrim and penitent alike. The threat was always too grave.’ Had the rot begun here? Dredged up from the darkness to pollute their minds? Or was it enough when false saviours descended from the heavens? Was there ever any hope of saving their souls? Helbrecht looked back at the others as they moved into the central chamber. His brothers had formed a line and now knelt behind him, as

though in prayer. Around them the pilgrims moved, turning their tools towards destruction. They gouged at the walls where the hint of ancient murals or symbols threatened to show through. Helbrecht turned from them and regarded the single object present in the room. Towards the back of the hall, flanked by staircases which curved up and away into the shadows, sat a throne. A simple thing, proportioned for a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes. It had been hewn from black iron, so rich and dense that it drank in the light. It had not been made here. It bore none of the marks of a dead and meagre world such as Hevaran. Helbrecht doubted it had been created entirely within the materium. It was a fane as much as it was a symbol of rule. To sit upon it, to use it, was to give homage to those that dwelt beyond. To false gods and daemon kings beyond comprehension. He raised the Sword of the High Marshals, turned it in his hands, and exhaled. The blade flashed down. Where it struck the throne there was a moment of resistance. Sacred steel met unholy iron. The storm without was mirrored within. The chamber was filled with a sudden wind. Roaring, howling, the air turned close and electric, striated with black lightning. He struck again and gritted his teeth as the energy washed over him in a wave. Each blow was a cleansing thing. There was no greater service than to expunge evil. He turned the blade over in his hands and drove the point through the back of the throne, impaling it to the floor and splitting it entirely. A pillar of black light screamed skyward. The entire structure shook with a sudden palsy. ‘Thus shall suffer all who stand against His light. And all who would betray Him.’ Every eye was upon him now, mortal and Astartes both. It was as though a great weight had been lifted from the chamber and its occupants. The passing of some terrible dark scrutiny, as deep and lightless as the gravity of a collapsed star. The cosmic scale of such things dissipated as the idolthrone died. ‘Praise be,’ Raimbert breathed. He rose from his knees and brought his fist against his breastplate. ‘Behold the Emperor’s blade.’ Theodwin and Andronicus rose unsteadily, ready to lend their own voices in support. ‘Impressive. I would expect nothing less from the High Marshal of Dorn’s own bloodline.’

A voice cut in through hidden vox-speakers, drowning the Chaplain’s praise. The mortals shrank from it but Helbrecht stood firm. He ground the remains of the throne to smouldering powder beneath his boot and turned back to his brothers. They remained kneeling. Bolheim had his forehead pressed to the floor, locked in prayer and contemplation, channelling the Emperor’s will. ‘Vakra,’ Helbrecht breathed. ‘I trust my hospitality is a fitting match for your own? Having seen the state you left Hevaran in once before, I thought it apt to prepare it further.’ ‘You have raised an abomination in the eyes of the Emperor and, Throne willing, we shall tear it down. I would kill this entire world to stymie your petty goals, but I would far rather do the deed myself.’ ‘Are we sons of the Lion and the Wolf, now? To settle our squabbles with honour duels?’ Vakra laughed and the sound carried about the great hall, rich with mockery. ‘There was always more purity in our feud. They played at conflict while our gene-sires readied themselves for the ultimate test. You thin-blooded whelps cannot imagine what it was like to stand upon Terra and make war. To exist at the very apex of siegecraft. Instead you have committed yourself to ceaseless crusade, flitting from war to war. Ever in search of purpose. Will you find it, I wonder? Has this world satisfied your longing?’ ‘I long only to do His will. To serve, as a knight must serve. Life is duty. Duty is strength. And strength can drive back even the deepest darkness.’ ‘If you truly believe that then I pity you,’ Vakra scoffed. ‘War is coming. The Imperium is broken, and we shall shatter it further. A thousand hammer blows, ten thousand salients. Wars beyond count and battles without end. That is the glorious future that awaits you. The Lord of Iron need not bestride the galaxy in fire, when he can reduce it to rubble, a world at a time.’ ‘And we shall be there to face him down. We do not fear him. We do not fear you. All daemons shall be laid low before the faithful, and repaid for their treachery in blood and fire.’ ‘Is that why you have come, High Marshal? To face me down? To make an example of me?’ Helbrecht looked to the gathered mortals. Laren returned his gaze with abject fear. The hammer in his hands trembled. His legs gave out and he

slumped to the floor. Where once a psychic miasma had hung over the chamber, now it was merely the lash of petty mortal terror. ‘All tyrants fall,’ Helbrecht stated bluntly. ‘You will be no different. Your legacy is failure. You failed at Terra. You failed here.’ ‘And at Sebastus?’ Vakra’s laughter returned. ‘Oh, we wounded your Legion there… You had pride before that. To be resolute and unbroken. To never submit. After that… you were nothing. Yet more whipped curs for the Avenging Son to shape as he saw fit. Now he walks abroad once more. I wonder if you have learned to love the lash as keenly as your primarch did. Or the First Captain of old. The Emperor’s Champion.’ Bolheim looked up as Vakra’s taunts echoed about the chamber. He rose unsteadily and moved to stand beside Hel-brecht. The Armour of Faith was scored and battered, the Black Sword was still in his hand, burning with its own furious intensity. He nodded as he drew even with the High Marshal, content to listen for now. Vakra’s voice did not come again. ‘They taunt us with the lies of the past, as though they could prise open old wounds,’ Bolheim said. There was a meditative quality to his speech. With every passing moment it seemed that less of the Apothecary remained, subsumed into the wisdom of ages. When he spoke it was with the true gravitas of a Champion. ‘Vakra knows he cannot break you in open combat.’ ‘And so he thinks to unman me with taunts and jibes? I had expected better of one who bears a lofty title, even by the standards of the Fourth Legion.’ ‘Such men are hollow things. Animated only by the spite of their past. They have seen fit to betray their purpose. To betray Him. There is no salvation for such beings. He shall show them no mercy come the end.’ He looked down. ‘And the end is nigh.’ ‘You have been gifted with a vision,’ Helbrecht said. ‘You have seen truth in revelation.’ ‘I was sent here to tend to your soul and guide you from the penance you believe you deserve. You have sacrificed more than many others. You have given of yourself. You shared in our first vision and saw Hevaran aflame. Now you know why that came to pass. We walk in the shadow of that great war, itself a mere echo of the greatest of conflicts. An ancient enmity.’

‘And now we rise to meet the foe. We drag it from its towers and cast it to the rocks.’ ‘No.’ ‘No?’ Helbrecht laughed. ‘It is the Emperor’s will that you deny me?’ ‘The miasma of the enemy has cleared. My mind and sight are once again His to illuminate.’ Bolheim bowed his helmed head solemnly. ‘We came here for a reason. Guided by His hand to seek it. Even with all that has come to pass, that truth remains.’ ‘The relic,’ Helbrecht said. He almost laughed at the thought. ‘The armour? Here, of all places?’ ‘The enemy is voracious. As much as they range upwards and rebuild, so too must they plumb the depths. Wherever the armour was concealed, it has been revealed. To them and to us. Now, in this moment, the opportunity presents itself. To safeguard that which is most holy. To reclaim what is owed to our Chapter. If we stand in its light, then we cannot falter. It is the armour of the Praetorian himself, he who kept the walls of Terra inviolate beyond what anyone would have dared to hope. He is our gene-father, and we shall stand with him, in honour of him, even as the enemy bears down upon us.’ ‘A son of Dorn may make any place a fortress,’ Helbrecht quoted. ‘For in them is the surety of stone.’ ‘Such is the wisdom of Dorn. Carried by all his noble sons, whether they hold walls or break them. In us his choler burns, hot and urgent. We do not stop. We do not wait. We fight. We have fought the length and breadth of the galaxy, in numbers undreamed of until the Unnumbered Sons returned in their grey legions. For us the Great Crusade never truly ended.’ ‘Nor shall it, until the last world of this galaxy is secured and the aquila flies over a compliant Imperium.’ Helbrecht turned the sword over in his hands, suppressing his agitation. ‘We are the last sons of a lost age. So few amongst our brotherhoods yet bear His light. We carry it forth into the darkest of places.’ He paused. ‘Even now. Even here.’ He looked around the chamber at the dark stone. Not the natural rock of the mountain but a more robust off-world material. This place, for all its trickery and deceit, had not been an idle construction. It had been a labour to construct and maintain, when it had been more than a mere ruin. Slowly it had been rebuilt. Remade for a new age of warfare and cruel dominance.

It had no resources to command or exploit. It would have existed purely out of spite. Forged to frustrate the Imperium, lodged in its skin like a parasite in a grox’s hide. How long can a thing exist, purely for petty cruelty? Helbrecht almost laughed at the irony. The sons of Dorn would lay it low, yet it was mortal hands that would deal the greatest wounds. The pilgrim faithful with their hammers and picks were undoing plans ten thousand years old, the fantasies of tyrants and fools. Faith, unbridled human faith, would end these spiteful dreams. He clenched his fist around the sword’s hilt and rounded on Bolheim once more. The two blades were almost close enough to touch, sparks leaping between their power fields. One forged for vengeance, the other sanctified in shame. Fitting, Helbrecht thought. Bolheim was exalted. A warrior elevated. Helbrecht though, he was riven by old doubt. Haunted by the ghosts of his past. It had not fallen to Bolheim to stand before the primarch and defend his actions. Nor had the Champion led the charge against the traitors as they assailed the holiest sites in the Imperium. Had he fought in the blood and ashes of the Shrine Worlds Crusades? Driven back the hordes of scar-skinned cultists with their filed teeth and blood-rimed blades? Helbrecht had watched walking atrocities conjured from the very air. Daemons summoned for the sole purpose of desecrating the holy places. Statues had wept blood, faces split by silent screams. There was none of the cold and callous, measured defiance that they found here. Like iron woven through stone. The enemy has patience. We must match them blow for blow. Helbrecht closed his eyes. ‘I will do whatever the Emperor demands, if it means that these slights are avenged.’ ‘When we set out upon this course you wished a solitary pilgrimage. To walk this world alone and to find the relic.’ Bolheim smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘You may yet have your prayer answered.’

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CHAPTER TWENTY AS ABOVE, SO BELOW The stairs rang with the thunder of their passage as ceramite boots hammered against the stone, or clattered against black iron where rough scaffolding had replaced collapsed sections. Here and there the walls were marred with the signs of combat, where bolter rounds and plasma bursts had detonated in times gone past. The citadel had been intimately gutted. Not merely burned out and left for the carrion crows. It had been swept. The ancient battles here had been reduced to close melees within the narrow confines of the corridors. Bolheim pushed on ahead, leading the squad as though born to it. As an Apothecary, such command would have been beyond him. Now he bore the mantle of leadership, and all looked to him for guidance. The Black Sword blazed in his hands, cutting a line of fire through the darkness. Even with the enhanced senses of his helm there was an oppressive shadow, a pall which hung over their advance. He turned and regarded those who followed him. The eagerness of youth burned in every movement Andronicus made. He thought he was subtle, his bravado contained behind a warrior’s bearing, and yet it was unmistakable. Bolheim remembered his own impetuous past. Before his ascension to Champion, before even his induction into the Apothecarion, he had fought with that same vigour. Raimbert had been silent for the duration of their march. The Chaplain’s bellicose oratory had ebbed in the Champion’s wake. His thoughts, Bolheim was certain, lay with the High Marshal and the task that awaited him alone. Where Andronicus’ agitation was born of impatience, Raimbert’s body was wracked by a call to urgency. Had he not been ordered otherwise, he would have turned about and marched to Helbrecht’s aid. Then there would have been a prayer upon his lips and the joy of battle in his heart. Of all of them it was Theodwin who was the most introspective. Quiet focus bled from the Apothecary. He checked his supplies, saw to his

weapons, and followed on. His prayer lay in action, even if it was a tightly bound and reserved action. They advanced upwards, never pausing. At the apex of the ruin lay the astropathic eyrie, from whence messages could be sent beyond the world on the whispers of dreaming minds. Their hopes of contacting the fleet lay with gaining control of the astropaths, just as their chances of victorylay with the High Marshal. ‘Hold,’ Bolheim said suddenly. He held up a hand and the small knot of warriors halted. The air had grown cold and still, like deep water filling the space. The chill quiet engulfed them, unnatural in its immediate intensity. ‘The enemy entreats the warp,’ Raimbert growled. The skull visage loomed out of the darkness, eye-lenses aglow. ‘They will call down their infernal masters upon us and loose the fire of perdition.’ ‘Let them try.’ Andronicus laughed. ‘We are armoured with faith. A Champion of the Emperor walks with us. They will break against our aegis and we shall cast them from the heights.’ ‘Confidence swiftly becomes arrogance, if not tempered by wisdom,’ Theodwin put in. The Apothecary had drawn his bolt pistol. ‘Be ready. Do not underestimate them. The ways of traitors are not those of honest warfare. When they strike it shall be with treachery and madness.’ Their voices filled the dark space they now occupied. The stairway had finally terminated, forming a long avenue. Alcoves lined it, much like the plinths in the central chamber below. Beyond them lay a great door. Silver glittered upon the plates of it, wound through in stylised constellations. Patterns of warding sigils and binding wards. Perhaps it was merely the captive strangeness of the astropathic choir leaking out from the sealed chamber. They moved on. Bolheim led from the front, blade up and ready. The first shots began to hammer at them from the furthest alcoves before he had time to raise a cry. As above, so below. The darkness beneath the fortress was absolute. Stygian. A darkness so intense that it seemed to have physical form. Umbral tendrils coiled about him, void-black against the dark of his armour. Helbrecht did not fear the shadow. It held no power over him. It could not harm him. Not when he

bore the Emperor’s light. His soul was bright in the gloom. His blade burned brighter still. The Sword of the High Marshal banished the darkness as it ignited, casting the light of purity about the depths. The lustrous black stone of the inner fortress had faded away to worn grey, the bedrock of the shattered world itself. Compared to the ruined wards and chambers above, these were fresher. Newly delved into the earth, the passages lacked the regimented layout of the fortress proper, but instead wound and wove beneath the mountain. Some sprawled out into makeshift bunkrooms or storage areas. Supplies were piled haphazardly: weapons and materiel, meagre foodstuffs. Helbrecht scowled to see it. The semblance of life creeping back into the corpse of the fortress. The casual heresy of it was as much an affront as any other act of violation which had unfolded across Hevaran. To disobey the will of Dorn and the Emperor, there was no greater insult. This far beneath the earth, the sound of battle had faded to a dull rumble. Detonations shook the ground and reverberated through like a pulse. Helbrecht walked the tunnels and, for a moment, knew a semblance of peace. He surrendered himself to the Emperor’s will. Fate guided his steps, just as it guided his blade. He thought of the Strategium Occultis upon the Eternal Crusader, from where he surveyed the Chapter’s crusades throughout the galaxy. By His will am I animated, and by my will fleets and armies move. No matter what else befalls the galaxy, that truth has its own power. He followed the winding labyrinth of tunnels, tracking the newer pick marks along the rough-cut walls. As he advanced, the bare stone gave way to properly crafted foundations. Arches rose around him. Blunt, solidly Imperial work. After the primitive tunnels dug by the cultists, the return to more familiar environs was reassuring. The tunnels opened out around a vast, sealed portal. The door was not crafted of stone and iron but shone like gold. Helbrecht placed his hand upon it. It did not yield, nor display any signs of weakness. Burn marks marred the exterior where they had attempted to cut into the sacred material. It had yet to be violated. ‘Auramite,’ Helbrecht breathed. The entire chamber was a vast reliquary. Precious beyond reckoning.

At his approach the doorway seemed to respond. A small hatch unfolded to his right, displaying a brace where a limb could comfortably sit. He leant forward and placed his arm into the waiting device. Mechadendrite tendrils coiled about his limb, slithering over his armour like something alive. It felt as though he were being enveloped by deep-sea life; something tentacled and blood-hungry. He winced as the machines bit at his armour, wending their way through gaps in the ceramite plate. Feeder-tendrils finally found his flesh and drank of his life. breathed a mechanical voice from around him. It was a sigh of canted satisfaction, its duty finally done. Mag-locks disengaged with a solid thud, sliding back into the edges of the sealed chamber. Light spilled out as the door began to open. Helbrecht felt it wash over him in a cleansing wave, as bright and comforting as the distant rays of Sol itself. He closed his eyes as it embraced him. When he opened them, he beheld.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE UNDERVAULT The walls were lined with gold and etched with scenes that seemed lifted from scripture itself. Helbrecht knew not what had carved the golden walls, yet the care and craftsmanship shone through – even in the liminal darkness beneath the enemy’s very feet. A narrow corridor, barely wide enough for him to pass alone, led out into a wide gallery of columns. Graceful yet robust, they did not strain as though burdened with the weight of the world, but instead radiated placid strength. He recognised the warriors carved into the pillars. They stared down from gilded veneration impassively, regarding him with the indifference of idols. Yet their renderings were unmistakeable. Their armour had been reproduced with an artisan’s careful hand, capturing every detail as though they had been entombed alive in gold– trapped as insects in amber– yet these were not slumbering rulers awaiting the hour of direst need. These heroes had taken their place in history and walked into legend. Sigismund, First Captain and High Marshal, looked down from one of the pillars. Hands clasped around the hilt of his sword, the length of it held with the point down before his armoured form. The golden rendition stole none of the ancient warrior’s vitality or zealous fury. It glowered down, lit by the lambent glow within the chamber– cast by low-burning lumens. Helbrecht’s breath left him in a ragged sigh of awe. Despite the circ*mstances which had brought them to this moment, there was still something to be savoured. He moved past the golden pillars, all seven sets of them, and stood before the central plinth at the chamber’s rear, so like the reliquary plinths within the Temple of Dorn itself. It too was golden, though it glimmered with the pale blue light of the stasis field it generated. Within it, suspended in the light, was the relic. The shard of armour. It was more beautiful than the vision could ever have imparted. There, the golden light had faded from it as soon as it was hewn from Dorn’s body, but

it had lost none of its lustre. It had been part of a pauldron once, by its lines. It had been worn away, scarred by cuts and by the action of what could only have been teeth. ‘Praise be,’ Helbrecht whispered. The quiet had grown near monastic. Reverent. Separate from the material world of war and tumult. This had been raised in secret, to honour the sacrifices of the VII Legion as they had brought worlds to compliance, fighting to scour the traitors from the Imperium and burn them from out of sight. What holy hands built this place? With love and adoration? The moment of perfect peace passed. Helbrecht felt the world convulse, even this deep, even in the shielded structure he now occupied. His senses parsed the impacts as they resonated through the bones of the planet. The stasis field seemed to flicker for a moment, in terrible sympathy with the lumens, but held steady. Shelling, he realised. The enemy was shelling its own fortress, in desperation or in arrogance. Perhaps they considered their efforts here expendable if it meant that Helbrecht and his cohort were expunged. Perhaps the lords of the IV believed that they would be untouched by the fire and storm of the bombardment. He thought at once of his brothers. They had the strength to endure the tides of fire and death. They were warriors, with the Champion at their head. Surely they fought and struggled still. Why else would the enemy rain down ruin upon its own works? The motivations mattered not. They were under siege once more. Helbrecht turned and looked down the central avenue of the sealed chamber. He saw it as though for the first time, with fresh eyes. This close to the relic, his mind was aglow with the caged lightning of his faith. It saturated his very being. Every part of him, every facet which had passed through the Rubicon and been remade, was alight. He held the sword before him in mirror of hallowed Sigismund. He lowered his other hand to cradle the grenades belted at his hip. He knew what must be done. The enemy had not presented itself. Not truly. Cultists threw themselves from the hidden alcoves and sally ports which riddled the corridor, eager to die against their blades. Bolheim killed until the killing became reflex

alone. His blade was ever in motion. The others were the same, a knot of defiance amidst the carnage and the chaos. Blades broke against his sacred plate. Hands clawed at him. Fists pounded at him, even as his attackers succumbed. They feared the Black Templars less than the wrath of their masters. The air stank of blood and voided bowels, of fear and sickness. Of underlying rot and ashes and grave dirt. The close confines took on the character of an abattoir. It was slaughter. He hacked them apart in bursts of blood and organs. He turned the Black Sword about and cracked skulls with the pommel. Slowly they edged forward towards the choir chambers. Gore streaked them. It congealed upon their boots. They trod the dead underfoot and drove the living back. Even point-blank, the cultists’ weapons found little purchase. The lead cultist, his face hidden behind an elongated silver death’s head, fired his lasgun impotently before Bolheim’s advance. The Champion seized the gun and yanked its barrel up, letting it discharge harmlessly into the ceiling. The cultist struggled, screaming his defiance into the faces of the Black Templars. Bolheim turned his blade and drove it down through the mortal’s abdomen. Blood trickled from between the silver skull’s clenched teeth. ‘From… iron…’ the dying man slurred. Bolheim snarled as he drew the sword up and out, bisecting the metallic rictus. The split helm and shattered skull fell away. Bolheim pushed past. They were too close to halt. In this moment, all that mattered was the inevitability of their victory. The choir would be theirs and the fleet would come. There could be no other outcome. The Emperor would not allow it. ‘I will not allow it,’ Bolheim whispered hoarsely. The door hissed open. The stench of it bubbled forth, stronger now. The chamber within was dark save for the low light cast from the walls by the runic patterns which smouldered there. The script wound across the cold iron walls of the chamber, illuminating the figures which writhed beneath them. Bolheim’s lip curled in distaste as he looked upon them. The astropaths had been elevated from the human flock by selection and soul-binding, ethereal and distant, but these examples had descended into true depravity. Their lank frames had stretched and distended. They were bound to their couches. Leather straps held them at their wrists, ankles and throats.

Another had been wrapped around their hollowed eye sockets, digging into the flesh. Blood had congealed around the bonds where the skin had been worn raw. Their breaths exuded from them in a sickly rattle before dissolving into tinkling laughter. Their dreams rippled in the air, ephemeral and incandescent. Serpents of light wove and danced above them before bursting apart into clouds of iridescent insects, or crashing to the ground in glittering rains. Bolheim strode into the midst of it and turned his sword over in his hands again. He held it by the hilt, its fielded surface ablaze. The flare formed the sacred cross of his brotherhood and cast the Emperor’s light upon the unworthy. What must they see, with their witch-sight? He let the thought wash through him as he brandished the blade. A giant of black armour and golden light? His light? Do they see me burning with the fire of faith? Their supine indolence changed in a heartbeat. They were suddenly ramrod straight, backs tight against the cool metal of their support cradles. They whined and keened, snuffling at the air like frightened beasts. ‘I bear His light. Look upon it.’ He slammed the tip of the blade into the chamber’s marbled floor, gouging into the stone. ‘Look at me! If your wretched minds can bear any truth, then let it be this. The Emperor’s servants have returned to your world. Sing of that before I end your pathetic existence.’ Their whimpering built into a scream. The room shook with it. The sigils etched into the stone burned brighter, trapped in the firmament like captive stars. +Hevaran! Hevaran! HEVARAN!+ The howling of their minds buffeted the warriors like a hurricane, filling the chamber with the thunder and gale of their terror. Minds reduced to a single thought, a single place, bereft of sense or coherence. Bolheim stepped back, bracing against the wave of force. Lightning danced in the air, clinging to his armour in a sudden flare of witchfire. It bit into the plate like acid, working at the substance of it with a corrosive persistence. Concepts themselves had become toxic and been loosed against him – no longer the idle fancies of tame minds, but the hate-laced desperation of the damned.

As though they could outrun fate with but a brief show of defiance. Bolheim hated them. They had been loyal once, as surely as any of the others he had butchered. They, though, had been sworn to the Emperor – bound to Him truer than by oath alone. Whether they had been perverted by others or had chosen their own damnation, they had betrayed a sacred soul vow. He looked about the chamber, at the charnel totems that had been made of those who had chosen death rather than damnation. Skulls were nailed to the walls or to the cradles, bones cracked underfoot. Dried skins billowed and blew in the sudden rush of the killing winds. The traitors had been thorough in their desecrations. They had savoured it. There could be no mercy for such a betrayal. Bolheim raised his sword and brought it down upon the first of the astropaths. It wore a crown of golden electrodes, wired into its bald head as though it were something regal and noble. Its lips drew back around the worn nubs of teeth and the eyeless sockets flexed beneath their binding, as though in anticipation. Breath hissed from it in a rush of escaping air. +Finally… Release.+ Release. Release! Release! The word took form as the chamber vacillated between stillness and storm. Someone fired and the shot detonated another skull. Arcane mechanisms in the walls finally burst asunder and fire rained from the ceiling. Their roiling minds stirred the ashes, creating the mad patterns of their dying thoughts. Andronicus barged forward and lent his own blade to the task. As the astropaths died their grief transmuted from the base babble of madness to the ardent last scream of a mortis cry. It was beyond sound. A howl of immaterial rage and loss that spiralled up through the tower, through the fortress, out and into the waiting void. Everything was aglow with fitful lambency as the dire power earthed itself through the stone and rushed out, away. Bolheim staggered back, eyes closed against the hellish conflagration. Pain flooded his nerves. Everything was aflame. He could feel his armour seizing. He fought it. Prayers died upon his lips as he struggled to regain control. ‘Enough,’ he hissed. ‘By the Emperor, let it be enough.’

He had barely finished speaking when the first artillery shells struck the fortress. He could hear the grinding of the exterior walls sloughing away, the carved figures upon them crumbling to ruin. Everything shook. The chamber was in sudden motion as the enemy’s self-destructive fire came again, and again. Then everything succumbed to a mad rush of fire and gravity.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO STONE AND IRON The echoes of atrocity filled the tunnels. Above, there was only screaming and death. He did not know if it was his own pilgrims-turned-crusaders or the hosts of the enemy who suffered. Helbrecht knew only that battle had once again been joined. The howl of artillery coloured everything and the world shook with its passing. And in their vanity and wrath they turned their weapons upon themselves and wounded themselves to the core. It was ever the way. Mankind’s enemies were the alien and the insane. Their plans and weapons always turned against them. Whether it was now or ten thousand years past, the ways of the traitor led inexorably to failure. He stood alone against such evils. He stood upon the threshold of the golden light of a more reverent age and gazed at the works of madness. The sprawl of tunnels, makeshift storehouses and barracks. Did they think they would tame the world with such pretence? ‘They are not men,’ he whispered to himself, alone in the darkness. ‘They cannot build nor master. They can only corrupt and destroy. There will be no end to it, save in blood.’ ‘Is that what you believe?’ a voice rumbled from the shadows. Helbrecht bristled at the sudden intrusion. He could hear the mockery behind the words. His sword was at his side, blade driven into the cold rock. He held his rifle idle, as though he had been simply waiting for this moment. Providence had not disappointed him. The figure emerged from the darkness beneath the world and rolled its immense shoulders. Its form was almost a reflection of Helbrecht’s own, but distorted, as though through a child’s looking glass. Broad shoulders were made broader still by the ancient Cataphractii armour it wore. It went helmless, displaying the pale cruelty of its features. It bore a sneer as though born with it.

‘Torven Vakra,’ Helbrecht said at last. The figure could be no other. Behind him followed his odious court. Helbrecht could see the predatory shadow of Lykas, armour still as burn-scarred as its flesh. Its wounds seemed more odious now that fresh outrage had been painted across them. The creeping scar tissue met old sutures in a hateful contrast, red and angry upon its rotted pallor. Where before it had fought with animal savagery, in the presence of its master it was reduced to a tamed hound. There were two others with it. Giants in the plain iron of the IV Legion, silent and impassive as they waited for their warsmith’s word. Horns rose from their helms in a commingled riot of bone and iron, curving up like those of a ram. ‘High Marshal Helbrecht,’ Vakra acknowledged, with a bow of his head. ‘I should thank you for your presence here. It is not often that so young an undertaking is blessed by such an august personage as yourself.’ He laughed dryly and his immense bulk shook with the tiny gesture. ‘It is not every day that one can sanctify the foundations of their dream with the blood of a legend.’ ‘You will have no such opportunity,’ Helbrecht snarled. ‘He is with me.’ ‘So you claim,’ Vakra said. ‘Where is He?’ He gestured about him. ‘Was He here when Hevaran burned? Did He shatter its towers? Break its people? I was there. I saw the world drowned in fire and petty vengeance. I did not see your Emperor – only His Praetorian. We built this world up from nothing!’ he snapped suddenly. His hammer crackled in his grip and his features twisted into a rictus of hate. ‘And your mongrel kind ground it into ashes in days.’ ‘The punishment for your treachery.’ ‘The end result of your folly. Dorn would have drowned the galaxy in blood if it meant he could wash away but a fraction of the guilt he felt. He failed at Terra. He failed at the great task laid before him. He failed to hold his nerve when Guilliman reshaped the Imperium to suit his whim. And world after world suffered.’ He chuckled darkly. ‘A Scouring, they called it, as they sought to wash the blood from their own hands.’ ‘Enough,’ Helbrecht said. ‘I have listened to enough of your idle heresies.’ ‘You would lecture me on heresy?’ Vakra’s laughter rose as a cruel bark, echoed by his cohorts. ‘You cleave to a god who shuns you. Who censured Legions for acting as you act. Do you think He is proud of you, entombed

in gold? Watching as you flit across the cosmos like faithful mayflies? He cares nothing for your worship. He is unworthy of it.’ ‘Enough,’ Helbrecht repeated. He had occupied them long enough. The krak grenade embedded in the tunnel’s wall finally detonated, spitting loose detritus and shards. As the Iron Warriors turned to react to the explosion, he was already firing. The melta-blast cut across the close space of the tunnels like a scythe blade, sweeping above their heads. Rubble tumbled in, drowning the meagre light even as it crushed two of the Iron Warriors. The full weight of the fortress came in upon them. Armour broke beneath the pressure. Vakra shouldered his way through with a snarl and Lykas followed in his wake, like a predatory shadow. Helbrecht let the rifle fall and took up his sword again. The Sword of the High Marshals ignited with a static snap, filling the undervaults with light and heat. It whipped out, and the powered flat of it knocked Lykas sideways into the tunnel wall. Its head hit the stone with a sickening crack, and the warrior wheeled about, spitting blood. The creature hissed like an enraged serpent, and swung its axe in a disorientated arc. Helbrecht sidestepped. The sacred blade flashed out again, scoring a line of blood across Lykas’ wounded cheeks. It reared back, cursing, as the sutures in its mutilated visage burst open. Blood and rancid meat spilled down Lykas’ face. The cut had torn the corner of its mouth, reducing its speech to a slurred bellow of rage and hate. The Iron Warrior threw itself forward, mindless in its anger. Helbrecht’s gauntleted hand seized the haft of the axe and he slammed his face into Lykas’. It screamed and staggered back. Its face was a mask of blood, gouting from a mutilated mouth and broken nose. The axe came round again and this time struck true. Helbrecht grunted as it caught him across the shoulder. He felt blood welling within his armour, felt the sting of the blade’s poison. His body rallied now, inured to the toxins of the enemy. ‘You,’ Helbrecht snarled, ‘have no power over me. You are nothing.’ He drew back and drove the sword through Lykas’ breastplates. He felt the death resonate down the sword. He felt the monster’s heart burst. Helbrecht slammed his fist into Lykas’ shattered visage and smashed it to the ground.

The hammer swung in a dizzying arc that caught Helbrecht across his wounded shoulder, staggering him. The blow cracked his pauldron, deforming the Chapter sigil which graced it. That was almost a greater wound than the strike itself. He spat blood and brought his blade up just swiftly enough to repel the next strike. Vakra hurled himself forward and brought all his strength to bear. Byblows reduced walls to powder. He swung like one of the iconoclastic pilgrims of the wastes. Intent upon breaking Helbrecht like a statue, he attacked without care. The tunnels quaked. When he struck, it was with the fury of artillery and the enmity of ages. Hate, long cultivated, was finally vented. When Vakra made war he was still fighting a battle ten thousand years dead. He fought the Siege of Terra and the breaking of Hevaran. He fought with the spite of the Iron Cage in his veins. Helbrecht defied him. The sword met the hammer. Stone met iron, even as he was driven back through the darkness and towards the light, back into the reliquary chamber. Vakra took hold of the warhammer’s haft with both hands and drove the head into Helbrecht’s breastplate. He felt something break within his armour. The solid mass of his fused ribcage cracked. He gritted his teeth and bit back his pain as he stumbled backwards. He ducked the next strike and the sweeping hammer blow shattered the warlike features of Sigismund. ‘This is what you grovel for?’ Vakra laughed again. ‘False idols and graven images? It will be a mercy to end you.’ They stood before the plinth and its sacred cargo. Helbrecht felt the cold energy of it against his back like the lapping of a distant sea. Blood loss had wearied him and yet, this close to the relic, he felt new vigour burn within. Dorn would not falter in such a moment. Sigismund would not cease his vigil. They endured. They fought no matter the odds. In the madness of the Siege they had risen to every challenge. The enemy had closed in, raised their own works and sought to bring them low. They had never turned from duty. They had not shirked from Him. Helbrecht brought his sword up almost by instinct and turned aside another withering hammer strike. He stalked forward. The momentum of the battle shifted. He burned with righteous fury now, dredged up from generation after generation of Dorn’s bloodline. Mordred’s hate blazed in his return

strikes, as did Kordhel’s might, and Daidin’s zeal. They were with him. Every warrior of the Eternal Crusade, bound by common cause, their souls sworn to Him. He fought for every scattered brotherhood. He fought for duty. He fought for the Emperor, as was the duty of a knight. The Terminator-armoured warsmith was unwieldy and lumbering. Helbrecht weaved about him, ducking around the pillars, cutting and slashing with the great two-handed blade. The hammer glanced him or missed. It impacted the pillars or slammed into the floor, but Helbrecht trusted in his speed and his endurance. He dropped low and the hammer swung overhead, shattering another pillar. The chamber shuddered. Helbrecht brought his sword back up. The weapons collided with another ringing clatter. The warring energy fields cast up sparks again. Fortitude… even in the face of ruin. He did not allow them to part. Instead Helbrecht forced the blade closer against the warhammer, hooking it behind the weapon’s cruel head. He pulled the weapon closer. The whine of competing fields built, yet he knew he could weather the storm. He could endure. The sword would endure. Ten thousand years of war and struggle had not dimmed its fire. The hammer’s field flared and blazed, yet the sword burned hotter. He heard the sputter as the hammer finally failed. He drew back and then slammed his blade against the deactivated weapon. It detonated in its master’s hands. Shards of it embedded themselves in his face and Vakra reared back, bellowing and swinging blindly. His fist soared past Helbrecht’s head as the High Marshal moved round and beyond him. The holy blade cut through the cold iron of the plate. Servos juddered to a halt and muscle-fibres bunched in futility. Helbrecht ducked low and swept the blade across the back of Vakra’s legs. The Iron Warrior grunted as he staggered, falling backwards into a forced crouch. The armour locked. He strained against it, pale flesh coloured with impotent rage. ‘Torven Vakra, warsmith of the Fourth Legion,’ Helbrecht hissed. ‘I bring you death in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind. Who you betrayed. Who you abandoned. May your soul burn in the fires of perdition.’ ‘You,’ Vakra breathed, ‘are a slave. A puppet. From iron cometh–’ Helbrecht bellowed his hatred as he swung the blade. He felt the brief resistance as it met Vakra’s spine, and then the warsmith’s head tumbled

free. The world shook. The ceiling heaved and deformed. Helbrecht could hear the scream of artillery and the grinding roar of the world as it collapsed. He did not run. He did not fight. He surrendered to the will and judgement of the Emperor. ‘Praise be,’ Helbrecht intoned as he sank to his knees.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE INHERITORS He dug his way from the earth, with grave-dirt in his throat, forcing his way up and into the light. His fingers ached. His armour had almost failed in places, where the crushing pressure of the world had tried to kill him. ‘He’s here!’ a voice cried from above. Helbrecht looked up, blinking as light finally found him once more. Little remained of the great keep. The mountain which housed it had finally succumbed to ruin after the prolonged bombardment– better to ensure their deaths. Fortresses, after all, could be rebuilt. Bolheim looked down at Helbrecht, his helm impassive, yet the High Marshal could sense the relief that bled from him. The Champion’s armour was worn and battered from the ravages of the siege. The others joined him as he helped to pull Helbrecht from the sunken pit which the stairways had become. Stone and iron had both collapsed and blocked the transitway, necessitating the frantic digging. Andronicus was sheened in blood and sweat, his features blank, as though he could not believe he had survived the ordeal. Raimbert stood, impassive in his skull-helm, like an echo of Grimaldus and Mordred. The dusting of powdered rock and masonry gave his armour a ghoulish cast, as though in truth he had not outlasted the guns of the enemy. Theodwin rushed to Helbrecht’s side, checking his vitals and immediately beginning to treat his wounds. Helbrecht shrugged him off. ‘There will be time enough for that later,’ the High Marshal said. He held up one hand. ‘Behold.’ The brothers of Squad Helbrecht looked upon the item with awe. They went, as one, to their knees. In his hands, Helbrecht held the gleaming shard of Rogal Dorn’s armour. ‘There is one last thing that must be done,’ Helbrecht said.

He did not know how long he had been walking. Only that he had to keep going. He had watched the fire claim the citadel from a distance, watched the mountain sway and slip like a drunkard. The gunship of the Black Templars had swept across the plains and killed the great siege weapons of the Iron Warriors. He had cringed away from it, thrown himself to the ground, feeling its eyes upon him. Augustus Klath feared judgement. He had thought that champions of iron could protect him from the watchful past, but he had been wrong. They had thrown battalions against the crusaders and yet they endured. Blessed, armoured in faith, they possessed a certainty that Klath himself lacked. He lacked the courage to take up a weapon, or to wear iron and bone. He had served in his own way. He had been an instrument. A mouthpiece. A useful puppet. Now he was a fugitive. A heretic. He was– The crack echoed across the desert and he heard it before he felt it. He was on the ground before he was even aware that he was falling. Blood and pain blossomed in his lower spine where the shell had struck and burst. He could not feel his legs. He could barely breathe. The agony was absolute. He tried to draw breath, but he could only cough and sputter into the choking dust. A rough gauntlet took hold of him and flipped him. He looked up at the figure with eyes already clouding. He tried to speak, but the pain would not allow it. He could see the black armour, silhouetted by the sun. Like a statue. Like an Angel of Death, rendered in glassaic. The High Marshal looked down at him, and then raised his sword. ‘Sic semper traitoris,’ the High Marshal said. Augustus Klath did not have time to close his eyes, before judgement found him at last. ‘Bring forth Laren,’ Helbrecht commanded. The old man was ushered through the kneeling ranks of pilgrims. They gathered before Helbrecht in what remained of the keep’s courtyard, a tide of grey before the black-armoured exemplars. Laren was bloodied and his breathing was laboured, but he yet lived. Helbrecht was impressed. ‘You have fought well,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Thank you, my lord. We have only done as you have shown us. We serve as instructed, and as duty demands.’

‘Duty will demand much more of you,’ Helbrecht said. He stepped forward and placed a hand upon Laren’s shoulder. ‘The traitors who tried to take this world are dead. Their collaborators are being put to the torch. We do not know when the crusade fleet shall find us again. Thus, this world must be made safe. I entrust it to you.’ The old man started as though struck. ‘My lord! I… I am not worthy.’ ‘Enough,’ Helbrecht growled. ‘You are worthy. You fought where others fell into darkness. Yet your responsibility is not merely to rule.’ Helbrecht looked at the relic. It had been placed on a bed of fine white cloth. ‘I grant you licence to once again build upon this world. You will shatter the works of the enemy and from the untainted stone you shall raise chapels in His name. You shall cultivate the people of this world and show them the way of the warrior. You shall, in time, send forth men of faith to serve in the Astra Militarum, and redeem this world’s place within the firmament. That is my commandment.’ ‘And it shall be done, lord.’ ‘Go then. Bear the mark of the crusader out into the wastes. Cleanse those who do not submit to the Emperor’s justice, and raise up those who would serve.’ Laren nodded with forced eagerness and hurried off down the ranks. The kneeling pilgrims rose and followed in his wake like a litter after their mother. Helbrecht smiled as he watched them go. ‘This will not be without consequences,’ Bolheim interjected. ‘It was the will of Dorn that this world be left in sacred ruin.’ ‘And what did it accomplish?’ Helbrecht swept his arm out. The collapse had not been kind. The central courtyard was almost entirely gone, drowned in the debris of the fallen mountain. Half of the etched helms of the Iron Warriors’ bas-reliefs stared up blindly at the clear sky and the blazing sun, baking beneath its wrath, awaiting the hammers of the faithful. ‘We chained them to their past and they learned nothing, save new ways to succumb to their own weaknesses. Men like Laren and his flock will give this world another chance at grace. But to do that, they must have the trappings of faith.’ He sighed. ‘Let them lay one stone atop another, so long as what they build is of worth. Dedicated unto Him.’ ‘When we are able we shall send word to the fleets and to the other sons of Dorn. Not only to impart your judgement, but to spread word of the relic.’

‘Dessian and the others will not fight long upon this matter.’ Helbrecht nodded decisively. ‘In this new age of darkness, we must be more than we have been. There can be no half measures.’ His fingers closed around the hilt of the Sword of the High Marshals. He barely felt its weight, nor the mantle of responsibility. As he remade the world, he felt only the conqueror’s pride. ‘It is not enough that there is only war. We must ensure that there is only ever victory.’

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EPILOGUE The knight stood in the heart of sanctity, and gazed upon the divine. Helbrecht wore his armour. Restored and renewed, it had taken the artificers an entire week of toil to rid it of the wounds and wear brought by the trials upon Hevaran. Now the black plate glistened, worked with oils and lapping powders. The Templar cross shone at his breast. He was a symbol in this sacred moment. He had eschewed suggestions that he should stand the vigil alone. The Chaplains came in their multitudes, raising their voices in rapturous prayer that filled the grand space of the Temple of Dorn. Firstborn and Primaris were both joined in sacred song. Cherubs shook incense burners and flicked anointing oils from aspergils. Grimaldus led the rites from the front, as he always did. The Reclusiarch seemed to burn brighter before the plinth as he chanted the Rites of Interment and committed the armour of Dorn to the care of the Chapter. Compared to the golden prison which had been raised around it upon Hevaran, the Eternal Crusader was a more fitting resting place. ‘Praise be unto the God-Emperor,’ Grimaldus boomed. Others answered his words with their own affirmations. ‘From the jaws of defeat, He brings victory. From the driest desert, He shall call forth the purest springs.’ He turned to regard Helbrecht. The death mask’s impassive features did not faze the High Marshal. They had spoken, after his return, of the sojourn at the precipice of death and the souls who had offered him counsel. Grimaldus’ quiet pride had been humbling for Helbrecht. When the revels ended, they were left alone. Helbrecht reached out, fingers poised as though to touch the now active stasis field. Its flickering blue light added to that cast by the many other captive relics there. ‘Ten thousand years of history,’ Helbrecht said, and sighed. ‘Ten millennia of struggle. All faced down without pity, remorse or fear.’ ‘As it has ever been,’ Grimaldus affirmed. ‘A tradition that yet holds. A deed as worthy of note as any of our sacred past. You endured a storm of heretics and their treacheries. You avenged yourself and the honour of

Dorn. Another old grudge laid to rest.’ The Reclusiarch paused, as though considering his words. ‘Old grudges…’ Helbrecht laughed bitterly. ‘You worry that I will again submit myself to the chase.’ ‘Am I wrong?’ Grimaldus asked simply. ‘Time and again we return to this moment. Where duty meets desire. You have made your oaths to our primarch, to the regent, to the Emperor, and yet we always find ourselves retreading the same path. I ask you– has your sojourn taught you nothing? Will you again pursue the Beast of Armageddon?’ ‘I have walked in the dust of shame, brother. I have clawed my way back from darkness and death. Not once, but twice now. Where I have seen the shadows, I have borne His light.’ Helbrecht turned away from the relic and stepped forward. They were face to face now. Brothers. Equals. Helbrecht reached out and placed his hand upon Grimaldus’ shoulder. ‘If the Emperor sees fit to deliver the Beast unto me, then He shall do so. If he wishes to lay low the Stormlord, and have me crush the fiend’s iron bones to dust, He shall do so. I know only this… I am His knight. I am His instrument. So long as our Eternal Crusade burns across the stars, it shall be so. Until death claims me, that is my duty. That is my purpose.’

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book fought its way through the back end of 2020 into 2021 and at least two lockdowns, and so I would like to thank everyone who helped me through the trenches. Thank you to Kate and Will, who both helped this book to find its purpose and set it upon the questing path. To my wife, Anne-Sophie, who offered no shortage of encouragement and reassurance. To Mark-Anthony, who is always my first port of call in the storm of novel writing. And to Gareth, James, Daniel, Sean and Chris for the many video calls that kept me sane. Thank you to my family, for their constant support, encouragement, and pride. I would also like to acknowledge the supreme role that the works of Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Guy Haley, Dan Abnett, Rachel Harrison and others have played in my research of the character and the Chapter.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. He is the writer of the Warhammer Crime novel Grim Repast, as well as the short story ‘Cold Cases’, which featured in the anthology No Good Men. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the novels Void King and Helbrecht: Knight of the Throne. When not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

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An extract from Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son.

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‘I was there at the Siege of Terra,’ Vitrian Messinius would say in his later years. ‘I was there…’ he would add to himself, his words never meant for ears but his own. ‘I was there the day the Imperium died.’ But that was yet to come. ‘To the walls! To the walls! The enemy is coming!’ Captain Messinius, as he was then, led his Space Marines across the Penitent’s Square high up on the Lion’s Gate. ‘Another attack! Repel them! Send them back to the warp!’ Thousands of red-skinned monsters born of fear and sin scaled the outer ramparts, fury and murder incarnate. The mortals they faced quailed. It took the heart of a Space Marine to stand against them without fear, and the Angels of Death were in short supply. ‘Another attack, move, move! To the walls!’ They came in the days after the Avenging Son returned, emerging from nothing, eight legions strong, bringing the bulk of their numbers to bear against the chief entrance to the Imperial Palace. A decapitation strike like no other, and it came perilously close to success. Messinius’ Space Marines ran to the parapet edging the Penitent’s Square. On many worlds, the square would have been a plaza fit to adorn the centre of any great city. Not on Terra. On the immensity of the Lion’s Gate, it was nothing, one of hundreds of similarly huge spaces. The word ‘gate’ did not suit the scale of the cityscape. The Lion’s Gate’s bulk marched up into the sky, step by titanic step, until it rose far higher than the mountains it had supplanted. The gate had been built by the Emperor Himself, they said. Myths detailed the improbable supernatural feats required to raise it. They were lies, all of them, and belittled the true effort needed to build such an

edifice. Though the Lion’s Gate was made to His design and by His command, the soaring monument had been constructed by mortals, with mortal hands and mortal tools. Messinius wished that had been remembered. For men to build this was far more impressive than any godly act of creation. If men could remember that, he believed, then perhaps they would remember their own strength. The uncanny may not have built the gate, but it threatened to bring it down. Messinius looked over the rampart lip, down to the lower levels thousands of feet below and the spread of the Anterior Barbican. Upon the stepped fortifications of the Lion’s Gate was armour of every colour and the blood of every loyal primarch. Dozens of regiments stood alongside them. Aircraft filled the sky. Guns boomed from every quarter. In the churning redness on the great roads, processional ways so huge they were akin to prairies cast in rockcrete, were flashes of gold where the Emperor’s Custodian Guard battled. The might of the Imperium was gathered there, in the palace where He dwelt. There seemed moments on that day when it might not be enough. The outer ramparts were carpeted in red bodies that writhed and heaved, obscuring the great statues adorning the defences and covering over the guns, an invasive cancer consuming reality. The enemy were legion. There were too many foes to defeat by plan and ruse. Only guns, and will, would see the day won, but the defenders were so pitifully few. Messinius called a wordless halt, clenched fist raised, seeking the best place to deploy his mixed company, veterans all of the Terran Crusade. Gunships and fighters sped overhead, unleashing deadly light and streams of bombs into the packed daemonic masses. There were innumerable cannons crammed onto the gate, and they all fired, rippling the structure with false earthquakes. Soon the many ships and orbital defences of Terra would add their guns, targeting the very world they were meant to guard, but the attack had come so suddenly; as yet they had had no time to react. The noise was horrendous. Messinius’ audio dampers were at maximum and still the roar of ordnance stung his ears. Those humans that survived today would be rendered deaf. But he would have welcomed more guns, and louder still, for all the defensive fury of the assailed palace could not drown out the hideous noise of the daemons – their sighing hisses, a billion serpents strong, and chittering, screaming wails. It was not only heard but

sensed within the soul, the realms of spirit and of matter were so intertwined. Messinius’ being would be forever stained by it. Tactical information scrolled down his helmplate, near environs only. He had little strategic overview of the situation. The vox-channels were choked with a hellish screaming that made communication impossible. The noosphere was disrupted by etheric backwash spilling from the immaterial rifts the daemons poured through. Messinius was used to operating on his own. Small-scale, surgical actions were the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but in a battle of this scale, a lack of central coordination would lead inevitably to defeat. This was not like the first Siege, where his kind had fought in Legions. He called up a company-wide vox-cast and spoke to his warriors. They were not his Chapter-kin, but they would listen. The primarch himself had commanded that they do so. ‘Reinforce the mortals,’ he said. ‘Their morale is wavering. Position yourselves every fifty yards. Cover the whole of the south-facing front. Let them see you.’ He directed his warriors by chopping at the air with his left hand. His right, bearing an inactive power fist, hung heavily at his side. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles, back forty yards, single firing line. Prepare to engage enemy breakthroughs only on my mark. Devastators, split to demisquads and take up high ground, sergeant and sub-squad prime’s discretion as to positioning and target. Remember our objective, heavy infliction of casualties. We kill as many as we can, we retreat, then hold at the Penitent’s Arch until further notice. Command squad, with me.’ Command squad was too grand a title for the mismatched crew Messinius had gathered around himself. His own officers were light years away, if they still lived. ‘Doveskamor, Tidominus,’ he said to the two Aurora Marines with him. ‘Take the left.’ ‘Yes, captain,’ they voxed, and jogged away, their green armour glinting orange in the hell-light of the invasion. The rest of his scratch squad was comprised of a communications specialist from the Death Spectres, an Omega Marine with a penchant for plasma weaponry, and a Raptor holding an ancient standard he’d taken from a dusty display.

‘Why did you take that, Brother Kryvesh?’ Messinius asked, as they moved forward. ‘The palace is full of such relics,’ said the Raptor. ‘It seems only right to put them to use. No one else wanted it.’ Messinius stared at him. ‘What? If the gate falls, we’ll have more to worry about than my minor indiscretion. It’ll be good for morale.’ The squads were splitting to join the standard humans. Such was the noise many of the men on the wall had not noticed their arrival, and a ripple of surprise went along the line as they appeared at their sides. Messinius was glad to see they seemed more firm when they turned their eyes back outwards. ‘Anzigus,’ he said to the Death Spectre. ‘Hold back, facilitate communication within the company. Maximum signal gain. This interference will only get worse. See if you can get us patched in to wider theatre command. I’ll take a hardline if you can find one.’ ‘Yes, captain,’ said Anzigus. He bowed a helm that was bulbous with additional equipment. He already had the access flap of the bulky vox-unit on his arm open. He withdrew, the aerials on his power plant extending. He headed towards a systems nexus on the far wall of the plaza, where soaring buttresses pushed back against the immense weight bearing down upon them. Messinius watched him go. He knew next to nothing about Anzigus. He spoke little, and when he did, his voice was funereal. His Chapter was mysterious, but the same lack of familiarity held true for many of these warriors, thrown together by miraculous events. Over their years lost wandering in the warp, Messinius had come to see some as friends as well as comrades, others he hardly knew, and none he knew so well as his own Chapter brothers. But they would stand together. They were Space Marines. They had fought by the returned primarch’s side, and in that they shared a bond. They would not stint in their duty now. Messinius chose a spot on the wall, directing his other veterans to left and right. Kryvesh he sent to the mortal officer’s side. He looked down again, out past the enemy and over the outer palace. Spires stretched away in every direction. Smoke rose from all over the landscape. Some of it was new, the work of the daemon horde, but Terra had been burning for weeks.

The Astronomican had failed. The galaxy was split in two. Behind them in the sky turned the great palace gyre, its deep eye marking out the throne room of the Emperor Himself. ‘Sir!’ A member of the Palatine Guard shouted over the din. He pointed downwards, to the left. Messinius followed his wavering finger. Three hundred feet below, daemons were climbing. They came upwards in a triangle tipped by a brute with a double rack of horns. It clambered hand over hand, far faster than should be possible, flying upwards, as if it touched the side of the towering gate only as a concession to reality. A Space Marine with claw locks could not have climbed that fast. ‘Soldiers of the Imperium! The enemy is upon us!’ He looked to the mortals. Their faces were blanched with fear. Their weapons shook. Their bravery was commendable nonetheless. Not one of them attempted to run, though a wave of terror preceded the unnatural things clambering up towards them. ‘We shall not turn away from our duty, no matter how fearful the foe, or how dire our fates may be,’ he said. ‘Behind us is the Sanctum of the Emperor Himself. As He has watched over you, now it is your turn to stand in guardianship over Him.’ The creatures were drawing closer. Through a sliding, magnified window on his display, Messinius looked into the yellow and cunning eyes of their leader. A long tongue lolled permanently from the thing’s mouth, licking at the wall, tasting the terror of the beings it protected. Boltgun actions clicked. His men leaned over the parapet, towering over the mortals as the Lion’s Gate towered over the Ultimate Wall. A wealth of targeting data was exchanged, warrior to warrior, as each chose a unique mark. No bolt would be wasted in the opening fusillade. They could hear the creatures’ individual shrieks and growls, all wordless, but their meaning was clear: blood, blood, blood. Blood and skulls. Messinius sneered at them. He ignited his power fist with a swift jerk. He always preferred the visceral thrill of manual activation. Motors came to full life. Lightning crackled around it. He aimed downwards with his bolt pistol. A reticule danced over diabolical faces, each a copy of all the others. These things were not real. They were not alive. They were projections of a false god. The Librarian Atramo had named them maladies. A spiritual sickness wearing ersatz flesh.

He reminded himself to be wary. Contempt was as thick as any armour, but these things were deadly, for all their unreality. He knew. He had fought the Neverborn many times before. ‘While He lives,’ Messinius shouted, boosting his voxmitter gain to maximal, ‘we stand!’ ‘For He of Terra!’ the humans shouted, their battle cry loud enough to be heard over the booming of guns. ‘For He of Terra,’ said Messinius. ‘Fire!’ he shouted. The Space Marines fired first. Boltguns spoke, spitting spikes of rocket flare into the foe. Bolts slammed into daemon bodies, bursting them apart. Black viscera exploded away. Black ichor showered those coming after. The daemons’ false souls screamed back whence they came, though their bones and offal tumbled down like those of any truly living foe. Las-beams speared next, and the space between the wall top and the scaling party filled with violence. The daemons were unnaturally resilient, protected from death by the energies of the warp, and though many were felled, others weathered the fire, and clambered up still, unharmed and uncaring of their dead. Messinius no longer needed his helm’s magnification to see into the daemon champion’s eyes. It stared at him, its smile a promise of death. The terror that preceded them was replaced by the urge to violence, and that gripped them all, foe and friend. The baseline humans began to lose their discipline. A man turned and shot his comrade, and was shot down in turn. Kryvesh banged the foot of his borrowed banner and called them back into line. Elsewhere, his warriors sang; not their Chapter warsongs, but battle hymns known to all. Wavering human voices joined them. The feelings of violence abated, just enough. Then the things were over the parapet and on them. Messinius saw Tidominus carried down by a group of daemons, his unit signum replaced by a mortis rune in his helm. The enemy champion was racing at him. Messinius emptied his bolt pistol into its face, blowing half of it away into a fine mist of daemonic ichor. Still it leapt, hurling itself twenty feet over the parapet. Messinius fell back, keeping the creature in sight, targeting skating over his helmplate as the machine-spirit tried to maintain a target lock. Threat indicators trilled, shifting up their priority spectrum. The daemon held up its enormous gnarled hands. Smoke whirled in the space between, coalescing into a two-handed sword almost as tall as

Messinius. By the time its hoofed feet cracked the paving slabs of the square, the creature’s weapon was solid. Vapour streaming from its ruined face, it pointed the broadsword at Messinius and hissed a wordless challenge. ‘Accepted,’ said Messinius, and moved in to attack. The creature was fast, and punishingly strong. Messinius parried its first strike with an outward push of his palm, fingers spread. Energy crackled. The boom generated by the meeting of human technology and the sorceries of the warp was loud enough to out-compete the guns, but though the impact sent pain lancing up Messinius’ arm, the daemon was not staggered, and pressed in a follow-up attack, swinging the massive sword around its head as if it weighed nothing. Messinius countered more aggressively this time, punching in to the strike. Another thunderous detonation. Disruption fields shattered matter, but the daemon was not wholly real, and the effect upon it was lesser than it would be upon a natural foe. Nevertheless, this time it was thrown backwards by the blow. Smoke poured from the edge of its blade. It licked black blood from its arm and snarled. Messinius was ready when it leapt: opening his fist, ignoring the sword as it clashed against his pauldron and sheared off a peeling of ceramite, he grabbed the beast about its middle. The Bloodletters of Khorne were rangy things, all bone and ropey muscle, no space within them for organs. The false god of war had no need for them to eat or breathe, or to give the semblance of being able to do so. They were made only to kill, and to strike fear in the hearts of those they faced. Their waists were solid, and slender, and easily encompassed by Messinius’ power fist. It squirmed in his grip, throwing Messinius’ arm about. Servo motors in his joints locked, supplementary muscle fibres strained, but the White Consul stood firm. ‘Tell your master he is not welcome on Terra,’ he said. His words were calm, a deliberate defiance of the waves of rage pulsing off the daemon. He closed his hand. The daemon’s midriff exploded. The top half fell down, still hissing and thrashing. Its sword clanged off the paving and broke into shards, brittle now it was separated from its wielder. They were pieces of the same thing, sword and beast. Apart, the weapon could not survive long.

Messinius cast down the lower portion of the daemon. There were dozens of the things atop the wall, battling with his warriors and the human soldiery. In the second he paused he saw Doveskamor hacked down as he stood over the body of his brother, pieces of armour bouncing across the ground. He saw a group of Palatine Sentinels corner a daemon with their bayonets. He saw a dozen humans cut down by eldritch swords. Where the humans kept their distance, their ranged weapons took a toll upon the Neverborn. Where the daemons got among them, they triumphed more often than not, even against his Space Marines. Support fire rained down sporadically from above, its usefulness restricted by the difficulty of picking targets from the swirling melee. At the western edge of the line, the heavy weapons were more telling, knocking daemons off the wall before they crested the parapet and preventing them from circling around the back of the Imperial forces. Only his equipment allowed Messinius to see this. Without the helm feeds of his warriors and the limited access he had to the Lion Gate’s auspectoria, he would have been blind, lost in the immediate clash of arms and sprays of blood. He would have remained where he was, fighting. He would not have seen that there were more groups of daemons pouring upwards. He would not have given his order, and then he would have died. ‘Squad Antiocles, engage,’ he said. He smashed a charging daemon into fragments, yanked another back the instant before it gutted a mortal soldier, and stamped its skull flat, while switching again to his company vox-net. ‘All units, fall back to the Penitent’s Arch. Take the mortals with you.’ His assault squad fell from the sky on burning jets, kicking daemons down and shooting them with their plasma and bolt pistols. A roar of promethium from a flamer blasted three bloodletters to ash. ‘Fall back! Fall back!’ Messinius commanded, his words beating time with his blows. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles to cover. Devastators maintain overhead fire.’ Squad Antiocles drove the enemy back. Tactical Space Marines were retreating from the parapet, dragging human soldiers with them. An Ultramarine walked backwards past him, firing his bolter one-handed, a wounded member of the Palatine Guard draped over his right shoulder. ‘Fall back! Fall back!’ Messinius roared. He grabbed a human by the arm and yanked him hard away from the monster trying to slay him, almost

throwing him across the square. He pivoted and punched, slamming the man’s opponent in the face with a crackling bang that catapulted its broken corpse over the wall edge. ‘Fall back!’ Mortal soldiers broke and ran while Squad Antiocles held off the foe. Telling to begin with, in moments the assault squad’s momentum was broken, and again more bloodletters were leaping over the edge of the rampart. The Space Marines fired in retreat, covering each other in pairs as they crossed the square diagonally to the Penitent’s Arch. The mortals were getting the idea, running between the Adeptus Astartes and mostly staying out of their fire corridor. With the fight now concentrated around Squad Antiocles, the Devastators were more effective, blasting down the daemons before they could bring their weight of numbers to bear upon Antiocles. Sporadic bursts of fire from the retreating Tactical Marines added to the effect, and for a short period the number of daemons entering the square did not increase. Messinius tarried a moment, rounding up more of the humans who were either too embattled or deaf to his orders to get out. He reached three still firing over the parapet’s edge and pulled them away. A daemon reared over the parapet and he crushed its skull, but a second leapt up and cleaved hard into his fist, and power fled the weapon. Messinius pumped three bolts into its neck, decapitating it. He moved back. His power fist was ruined. The daemon’s cut had sliced right through the ceramite, breaking the power field generator and most of the weapon’s strength-boosting apparatus, making it a dead weight. He said a quick thanks to the machine’s departed spirit and smashed the top of his bolt pistol against the quick seal release, at the same time disengaging the power feeds by way of neural link. The clamps holding the power fist to his upper arm came loose and it slid to the floor with a clang, leaving his right arm clad in his standard ceramite gauntlet. A century together. A fine weapon. He had no time to mourn it. ‘Fall back!’ he shouted. ‘Fall back to the Penitent’s Arch!’ He slammed a fresh clip into his bolt pistol. Squad Antiocles were being pushed back. The Devastators walked their fire closer in to the combat. A heavy bolter blasted half a dozen daemons into stinking meat. A missile blew, lifting more into the air. Messinius fell back himself now, leaving it to the last moment before ordering the Assault Marines to leap from the fray.

Their jets ignited, driving back the daemons with washes of flame, and they lifted up over his head, leaving four of their brothers dead on the ground. Devastator fire hammered down from above. Anti-personnel weapons set into casemates and swivel turrets on the walls joined in, but the daemons mounted higher and higher in a wave of red that flooded over the parapet. ‘Run!’ he shouted at the straggling human soldiery. ‘Run and survive! Your service is not yet done!’ The Penitent’s Arch led from the square onto a wall walk that curved around to another layer of defences. His Space Marines were already making a firing line across the entrance. A gate could be extended across the arch, sealing the walk from the square, but Messinius refrained from requesting it be closed, as the humans were still streaming past the Adeptus Astartes. Kryvesh waved the banner, whirling it through the air to attract the terrified mortals. The Space Marines fired constantly into the mass of daemons sprinting after them, exhausting their ammunition supplies. Shattered false bodies tumbled down, shot from the front and above, yet still they came, overtaking and dismembering the last warriors fleeing away from the parapet. Squad Antiocles roared through the arch, landing behind their brethren. Messinius passed between them. For a moment he surveyed the tide of coming fury. Endless red-skinned monsters filling the square like a lake of spilled blood, washing over a score of brightly armoured Space Marine corpses left behind in the retreat. Several hundred humans lay alongside them. He opened a vox-channel to Gate Command. ‘Wall batteries three-seven-three through three-seven-six, target sector nine five eighty-three, Penitent’s Square, western edge. Five-minute bombardment.’ ‘On whose order?’ ‘Captain Vitrian Messinius, White Consuls Chapter, Tenth Company. I have the primarch’s authority.’ As he dealt with gunnery control, he was also datapulsing a request for resupply, and checking through layered data screeds. ‘Voice print and signum ident match. Transponder codes valid. We obey.’ The far side of the square erupted in a wall of flame. Heavy cannon shells detonated in a string along the rampart. High-energy beams sliced into the

square, turning stone and metal instantly to superheated gas. The approaching daemons were annihilated. A few bolt-rounds cracked off as the last daemons nearing the Space Marine line were put down. ‘Company, cease fire. Conserve ammunition.’ Nobody heard him. Nobody could. He re-sent the order via vox-script. The boltguns cut out. Penitent’s Square was a cauldron of fire so intense he could feel the heat through his battleplate’s ceramite. The ground shook under his feet and he considered the possibility that the wall would give way. The noise was so all-consuming the idea of speech lost relevance. For five minutes the Lion’s Gate tore madly at its own hide, ripping out chunks of itself in a bid to scrape free the parasites infesting its fabric, then, as suddenly as it had begun, the bombardment ceased. Where the Penitent’s Square had been, a twisted mass of black metal and shattered stone remained. So formidable were the defences of the Lion’s Gate that the structure beneath had not been penetrated, but it was like this, in small bursts of destruction, that they could lose this war. Messinius accessed the gate’s noosphere. No daemons had as yet rounded the projecting Penitent’s Spur to come up against their new position. When the attack came again, which it would, it would come from the front. An ammunition train raced down the walkway from the fortress interior and came to a squealing stop fifty yards away. Medicae personnel jumped down. A Space Marine Apothecary came with them. Human peons rushed about with heavy sack bags full of bolter magazines, passing them out to the transhumans. Spent magazines clattered to the floor. New ones were slammed home. Messinius contacted his squad leaders, taking a quick census of his surviving men, not trusting the digits that read ‘Company Casualties 23%’ blinking in the upper right of his visual field. Through the smoke given off by burning metal on the far side of the ruined square, he saw movement. Auspex returns tripped his armour’s machinespirit, and it blinked warnings in his helm.

‘They’re coming again,’ he said. ‘My lord?’ A soft voice, one that did not belong in that moment. He ignored it.

‘Engage at fifty-yard range. Make every shot count.’ The ammunition train was hurriedly relieved of their allotted supplies, and sped off, bearing the worst-wounded, to aid whichever beleaguered unit needed it next. ‘Stand ready.’ ‘My lord?’ The voice became more insistent. The voidships in orbit were beginning to fire. Their targeting systems were perturbed by the boiling warp energy and the vortex in constant motion over the Imperial Palace, and many shots went wide, crashing down into the Anterior Barbican, a few falling as far out as Magnifican. Red monsters bounded towards them, as numerous as before, as if their efforts to thin them had been for naught. ‘Fire,’ he said coldly. ‘My lord, your duty rotation begins in half an hour. You told me to wake you.’ This time he heard. Bolters boomed. Messinius froze them with a thought, and with another he shut down the hypnomat entirely. Vitrian Messinius awoke groggily. ‘My lord,’ his servant said. Selwin, he was called. ‘You are returned from your recollections?’ ‘I am awake, Selwin, yes,’ Messinius said irritably. His mouth was dry. He wanted to be left alone. ‘Shall I?’ Selwin gestured to the hypnomat. Messinius nodded and rubbed his face. It felt numb. Selwin flicked a number of toggles on the hypnomat and it powered down, the steady glow of its innards fading to nothing and winking out, taking the immediacy of Messinius’ memories with it. ‘The wall again?’ Selwin asked. The hypnomat’s primary use was to instil knowledge without active learning on the subject’s part, but it could reawaken memories to be lived again. Full immersion in the hypnomat required cooperation from Messinius’ catalepsean node, and coming out of the half-sleep was never as easy as true waking. Reliving past events dulled his wits. Messinius reminded himself to be guarded. He forgot sometimes that he was not on

Sabatine any more. The local saying ‘This is Terra’ encompassed a multitude of sins. Spying was among them. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Personal debriefing.’ He shook his head and unplugged the hypnomat’s input cables from the neural ports set into his arms and neck. ‘Nothing new learned.’ Selwin nodded, then hesitantly said, ‘If I may be so bold as to ask, why do it, my lord, if you expect to learn nothing?’ ‘Because I can always be wrong,’ Messinius said. He pointed at the hypnomat. It was a bulky machine set on a trolley, but not too big for an unaltered man to move. ‘Take that away. Inform my armourer I will be with him in a few minutes.’ Selwin bowed. ‘Already done, my lord.’ Click here to buy Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son.

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