Loken stared at the man. The oath of moment fixed to his shoulder plate fluttered in the mountain wind. 'Who is Samus?'

'Damned if I know.’ the officer shrugged. 'All I know for certain is the whole vox net has been loopy these past few days. Voices on the line, all saying the same thing. A threat.’

They're trying to scare us.’ Loken said.

Well, it worked then, didn't it?'

LOKEN WALKED OUT across the plateau in the biting wind, between the parked stormbirds. Samus was muttering again, his voice a dry crackle in the background of Loken's open link.

'Samus. That's the only name you'll hear. I'm Samus. Samus is all around you. Samus is the man beside you. Samus will gnaw upon your bones.’

Loken was forced to admit the enemy propaganda was good. It was unsettiing in its mystery and its whisper. It had probably been highly effective in the past against other nations and cultures on Sixty-Three Nineteen. The 'Emperor' had most likely come to global power on the basis of malignant whispers and invisible warriors.

The Astartes of the true Emperor would not be gulled and unmanned by such simple tools.

Some of the Luna Wolves around him were standing still, listening to the mutter in their helm sets.

'Ignore it.’ Loken told them. 'It's just a game. Let's move in.’

Rassek's lumbering Terminators approached the rock bridges, arches of granite and lava that linked the plateau to the fierce verticality of the peaks. These were natural spans left behind by the action of ancient glaciers.

Corpses, some of them reduced to desiccated mummies by the altitude, littered the plateau shelf and the rock bridges. The officer had not been lying. Hundreds of army troopers had been cut down in the various attempts to storm the high fortresses. The field of fire

had been so intense, their comrades had not been able even to retrieve their bodies.

'Advance!' Loken ordered.

Raising their storm bolters, the Terminator squad began to crunch out across the rock bridges, dislodging white bone and rotten tunics with their immense feet. Gunfire greeted them immediately, blistering down from invisible positions up in the crags. The shots spanked and whined off the specialised armour. Heads set, the Terminators walked into it, shrugging it away, like men walking into a gale wind. What had kept the army at bay for weeks, and cost them dearly, merely tickled the Legion warriors.

This would be over quickly, Loken realised. He regretted the loyal blood that had been wasted needlessly. This had always been a job for the Astartes.

The front ranks of the Terminator squad, halfway across the bridges, began to fire. Bolters and inbuilt heavy weapon systems unloaded across the abyss, blitzing las shots and storms of explosive munitions at the upper slopes. Hidden positions and fortifications exploded, and limp, tangled bodies tumbled away into the chasm below in flurries of rock and ice.

'Samus' began his worrying again. 'Samus. That's the only name you'll hear. Samus. It means the end and the death. Samus. I am Samus. Samus is all around you. Samus is the man beside you. Samus will gnaw upon your bones. Look out! Samus is here.’

'Advance!' Loken cried, 'and please, someone, shut that bastard up!'

'AND WHO'S SAMUS?' Borodin Flora asked.

The remembrancers, with an escort of army troopers and servitors, had just disembarked from their lander into the bitter cold of a township called Kasheri. The cold mountains swooped up beyond them into the mist.

The area had been securely occupied by Varvaras's troopers and war machines. The party stepped into the light, all of them giddy and breathless from the altitude. Keeler was calibrating her picter against the harsh glare, trying to slow her desperate breath-rate. She was annoyed. They'd set down in a safe zone, a long way back from the actual fighting area. There was nothing to see. They were being handled.

The town was a bleak outcrop of longhouses in a lower gorge below the peaks. It looked like it hadn't changed much in centuries. There were opportunities for shots of rustic dwellings or parked army war machines, but nothing significant. The glaring light had a pure quality, though. There was a thin rain in it. Some of the servitors had been instructed to carry the remembrancers' bags, but the rest were fighting to keep parasol canopies upright over the heads of the party in the crosswind. Keeler felt they all looked like some idle gang of aristos on a grand tour, exposing themselves not to risk but to some vague, stage-managed version of danger.

'Where are the Astartes?' she asked. 'When do we approach the warzone?'

'Never mind that.’ Flora interrupted. 'Who is Samus?'

'Samus?' Sindermann asked, puzzled. He had walked a short distance away from the group beside the lander into a scrubby stretch of white grass and sand, from where he could overlook the misty depth of the rainswept gorge. He looked small, as if he was about to address the canyon as an audience.

'I keep hearing it.’ Flora insisted, following him. He was having trouble catching a breath. Flora wore an earplug so he could listen in to the military's vox traffic.

'I heard it too.’ said one of the protection squad soldiers from behind his fogged rebreather.

The vox has been playing up.’ said another.

'All the way down to the surface.’ said the officer in charge. 'Ignore it. Interference.’

'I've been told it's been happening for days here.’ Van Krasten said.

'It's nothing,' said Sindermann. He looked pale and fragile, as if he might be about to faint from the airless-ness.

The captain says it's scare tactics.’ said one of the troopers.

The captain is surely right.’ said Sindermann. He took out his data-slate, and connected it to the fleet archive base. As an afterthought, he uncoupled his rebreather mask and set it to his face, sucking in oxygen from the compact tank strapped to his hip.

After a few moments' consultation, he said, 'Oh, that's interesting.’

What is?' asked Keeler.

'Nothing. It's nothing. The captain is right. Spread yourselves out, please, and look around. The soldiers here will be happy to answer any questions. Feel free to inspect the war machines.’

The remembrancers glanced at one another and began to disperse. Each one was followed by an obedient servitor with a parasol and a couple of grumpy soldiers.

*We might as well not have come.’ Keeler said.

*The mountains are splendid.’ Sark said.

'Bugger the mountains. Other worlds have mountains. Listen.’

They listened. A deep, distant booming rolled down the gorge to them. The sound of a war happening somewhere else.

Keeler nodded in the direction of the noise. That's where we ought to be. I'm going to ask the iterator why we're stuck here.’

'Best of luck.’ said Sark.

Sindermann had walked away from die group to stand under the eaves of one of the mountain town's crude longhouse dwellings. He continued to study his slate. The mountain wind nodded the tusks of dry grass sprouting from the white sand around his feet. Rain pattered down.

Keeler went over to him. Two soldiers and a servitor with a parasol began to follow her. She turned to face them.

'Don't bother.’ she said. They stopped in their tracks and allowed her to walk away, alone. By the time she reached the iterator, she was sucking on her own oxygen supply. Sindermann was entirely occupied with his data-slate. She held off with her complaint for a moment, curious.

'There's something wrong, isn't there?' she asked quietly.

'No, not at all.’ Sindermann said.

'You've found out what Samus is, haven't you?'

He looked at her and smiled. Yes. You're very tenacious, Euphrati.’

'Born that way. What is it, sir?'

Sindermann shrugged. 'It's silly.’ he said, showing her the screen of the data-slate. The background history we've already been able to absorb from this world features the name Samus, and the Whisperheads. It seems this is a sacred place to the people of Sixty-Three Nineteen. A holy, haunted place, where the alleged barrier between reality and the spirit world is at its most permeable. This is intriguing. I am endlessly fascinated by the belief systems and superstitions of primitive worlds.’