‘ I have the other one in my sights now,’ Pergellen returned, scope pressed against his eye. He relayed coordinates, turning again so his back was facing the wall, and began to prep his rifle.

Numeon peeked above cover to gauge the snipers’ relative positions but was forced back when a bolt shell clipped the wall.

Breathing hard, furious at their impotence to do anything, he opened up the vox.

‘Hriak.’

The Librarian shook his head. ‘ They’re too far away, and without a target I can see, there’s little I can actually do.’

Numeon snarled. ‘Damn it.’

He noticed Shen’ra working at the panel on his gauntlet, his haptic implants making the data connection between the Techmarine and his Rapier.

‘ Get me a precise vector for both targets,’ he voxed.

Leodrakk overheard and called to Pergellen.

‘If I draw them out, can you track them?’

The scout nodded, ditching the rifle but keeping the scope.

Realising what his brother was about to do, Numeon shouted, ‘Leo, no!’ and began to move just as Leodrakk stood up with bolter ready.

Grammaticus had his head down as instructed, facing the Techmarine and the scout.

He heard Numeon shout his brother’s name, felt the tremor of motion as both rose to their feet.

Two shots followed in rapid succession, a carbon copy of the ones that heralded the deaths of Varteh and Trio.

A half-second later, he read the following words on the Techmarine’s lips, ‘ Engage forty-seven point six by eighty-three. Strafe.’

The churn of servos activating cut the tension as the Techmarine’s tracked cannon cycled up. A burst of incandescent light from its weapon array was pre-empted by a hot flare of pain and the searing white magnesium flash that accompanied being shot.

Grammaticus knew he was hit even before he felt the blood seeping through his clothes, and the chill as his frail human body was torn open.

The cityscape erupted in a series of explosions as domiciles, manufactorums and other structures were ripped apart by the Rapier’s laser destroyer mount. Debris cascaded in chunks like heavy hail from shattered facades, ruptured pillars and thoroughly gutted interiors.

Emitting a high-pitched, staccato drone, the laser destroyer stabbed a continuous barrage of beams into the area designated by its operator. It didn’t stop until the Rapier powered off for emergency cool-down.

Dust clouds were still dissipating, the odd section of debris belatedly collapsing onto the street below by the time Numeon and the others surfaced from cover.

Helon, Uzak and Shaka were all dead, their bodies littering the apron outside the vehicle yard.

Domadus stomped forwards through the narrow gap between the outer wall sections. His bionic eye was still scanning, exothermic and motion detection.

‘There’s nothing out there. No visible threats.’

Pergellen agreed, snapping his scope back onto his rifle, but adopting overwatch all the same.

‘Keep eyes on, both of you,’ said Numeon, going over to help Leodrakk to his feet.

Numeon had tackled him to the ground when he’d tried to bait the shooters, sending them both sprawling.

Leodrakk had a mark down the flank of his battle-plate where something had scored a shallow groove into the metal.

‘Ricochet,’ he said, grunting as he got up with Numeon’s assistance. ‘Lucky.’

‘Luckier than them,’ said Numeon, and as he turned to gesture to their dead comrades he noticed the prone form of John Grammaticus.

The human was lying with his face to one side, clenched in a mask of pain. He clutched his side, his hand and most of his arm drenched in blood.

Numeon scowled, realising where the errant shell had deviated.

‘Damn it.’

Narek yanked Dagon clear of the rubble. It looked as if several storeys had collapsed on top of him whilst the sniper was making his escape.

‘I warned you not to linger,’ Narek told him, letting go so that Dagon could dust off his armour and cough the grit up out of his lungs. His helmet was wrecked, dented by a stone slab or a girder. Both retinal lenses were smashed, Dagon had a deep gash above his left eye where the impact had pushed inwards, and the vox-unit was in pieces. Taking a last look at the snarling, daemonic visage on the faceplate, Dagon discarded his helmet.

His true face, Narek decided as Dagon looked at him, was entirely more disturbing.

The brow, nose and cheekbones were raised, the skin in between sunken as if drawn in by age. It had a slightly coppery tinge, but not like metal – more like oil, and the colour changed subtly depending on how the light struck it. Most disturbing of all, though, were the two bony nubs either side of Dagon’s forehead. In their infancy right now, Narek knew they would only grow, the longer Dagon was in Elias’s presence.

Here, on Traoris, in Ranos, he felt the shifting of reality. It trembled, affecting him on an internal level, like maggots writhing beneath his skin.

Narek betrayed none of this to Dagon, who smiled, revealing two rows of tiny fangs instead of teeth.

‘Four kills, you said.’

Narek checked the load in his rifle before slinging it back over his armoured shoulder.

‘I counted a tally of three,’ he replied.

‘The human was caught by a stray.’

‘You should have killed the legionary as instructed.’

‘He shifted.’

‘Then compensate,’ said Narek, and headed out of the wreckage.

‘He was ripped open, brother. No human could survive his injuries. Four for four.’

‘No, Dagon. We scratched three. Even if the human dies, it’s blood for blood. Legionary for legionary.’

Dagon nodded and followed his mentor back through demolished streets.

‘We’ll be back for the fourth,’ Narek called over his shoulder. ‘And then we’ll take the rest.’

CHAPTER TEN

Burning flesh

‘We have all burned. Down in the fire pits, or from the brander’s iron in the solitorium, we have all touched the fire. It leaves scars, even for us. We carry them proudly, with honour. But the scars we took that day on that battlefield, we bear only with shame and regret. They are a memorial in flesh, a physical reminder of everything we have lost, a burn even we fire-born cannot endure without pain.’

– Artellus Numeon,

Captain of the Pyre Guard

I lived.

Despite the fire, I had, against the odds, survived. I remembered the furnace, or at least fragments of what it had done to me. I remembered my skin blistering, the stench of burning fat, the smoke from cooking meat filling my eyes as the vitreous humour boiled within them.

Scorched black, rendered to ash, I was nothing but dust. A shadow without form, not unlike my gaoler-brother’s favoured aspect.

And yet…

I lived.

The furnace was gone. Ferrus was gone. All was darkness and cold. I remembered that I was on a ship, somewhere in deep space. I remembered the prison that my iron-hearted sibling had made for me, a cage strong enough to hold a primarch.

I was still weak. My limbs felt heavy and my hearts were beating furiously in my chest as some act of enhanced physiology worked to keep me alive. Perhaps I had healed, some regenerative gift I didn’t know I possessed. More likely, the furnace was not real, nor my ordeal in it. I had been seeing the grim corpse-visage of my dead brother, after all. Who knew what traumas my mind had endured?

For a moment I considered the possibility that all of this was fabrication, that I was lying on Isstvan V, wounded and in a sus-an membrane coma. Or that I had been recovered and my body laboured to revive itself in some clinical apothecarion chamber, my mind struggling to catch up with it.

All of this, I dismissed. My abduction was real. Curze was real. This place, this prison that Perturabo had made for me, was real. There was no waking up from a nightmare – this wasthe nightmare. I was living it. Every tortured breath.