But it was hard to think, to reason. Ferrus’s very presence and everything I had seen or not seen made me question myself. It was harrowing enough to have flesh and bone rent, split and cleaved, but what was truly terrifying was the slow erosion of sensibility, of self and the trust in my capacity to tell reality from fantasy. How can you defend yourself against your own mind, what your senses tell you? There was no armour for that, no shield or protection save strength of will and the ability to reason.

I didn’t try to rise. I didn’t voice my defiance or anger. I merely breathed and let the coolness of my darkling cell wash over me. I tried to recall everything I knew of my gaoler, everything I could accurately remember.

And then, closing my eyes, I allowed myself to dream.

Kharaatan, during the Great Crusade

Unwashed, malnourished, the soldiery of Khartor City were a sorry sight. Like an ant horde, dressed in carapaces of dirty red, they filed from the open city gates with their arms held above their heads in surrender.

The wall guard had come first, escorting their captains and officers. Then the first line troopers from the courtyard, and the second barricaders, the tower sentries, the inner barracks troopers, the reserves, the militia. They piled their weapons in the city square as instructed by the loudhailers of Commander Arvek’s black-jacketed discipline masters. By the time the city had been emptied of its warriors, the surrendered materiel reached into a mighty black pyre.

Civilians came next.

Women pressed infants to their chests, wide-eyed men tramped in solemn procession, too afraid to cry or wail, too broken to do anything beyond stare into the rising dawn that crept across the sand dunes like a patient predator. Canines, cattle led by farmers, labourers, fabricators of every stripe, vendors, clerks, scribes and children. They vacated Khartor, their home and solace, in a great and sullen exodus.

Vodisian tanks flanked battalions of Utrich fusiliers and Navite hunters, crisp in their Imperial Army uniforms. Even Commander Arvek himself leaned from the cupola of his Stormsword to watch the throng of natives tramp past. Several stopped at the feet of their oppressors, pleading for mercy until the discipline masters moved them along. Others balked in the shadow of Princeps Lokja’s Fire Kings, believing them gods rendered in iron. When aggression and intimidation could not move them, these poor individuals had to be carried by teams of orderlies from the medicae. There was little else to use these surgeons and hospitallers for – the Imperial force had ended the conflict unscathed. And this was despite the presence of xenos amongst the dirty hordes.

It was a fact that both pleased and irritated the Lord of the Drakes greatly.

‘He was right,’ Vulkan muttered, watching Khartor City from a distance as it gradually emptied.

‘My lord?’ asked Numeon, standing beside his primarch in the muster fields. Nearby, on a plain of earth flattened by Imperial pioneers, the Salamanders were re-embarking their Stormbirds for immediate redeployment. Compliance was over. The Imperium had won.

‘Bloodless, he said,’ Vulkan replied, surveying the human masses as they left the city.

On the walls of this last bastion, cannon embrasures lay empty, watch towers stood like impotent sentinels and only shadows manned the battlements. One by one, soldier and civilian alike, the entire populace of Khartor submitted to the will of the Imperium.

Numeon frowned. ‘Was it not?’

For the first time in almost an hour, Vulkan turned his fiery gaze on his equerry. Numeon did not so much as flinch. Even his heartbeat did not betray him.

‘You are a brutal warrior, Artellus,’ said the primarch.

‘I am as you need me to be, my lord.’ He bowed his head just a little, showing deference.

‘Indeed. All of the vaunted Pyre Guard are without equal in the Eighteenth. Like the deep drakes, you are savage and fierce, sharp of claw and tooth.’ Vulkan nodded to the blade affixed to his equerry’s back. It had yet to be bloodied on this campaign and judging by the utter capitulation of the Khar-tans, it would remain unsullied. ‘But would you slaughter an entire city, soldier and civilian alike, just to send a message and spare further bloodshed?’

‘I…’ There was no right answer, and Numeon knew it.

‘The scales are in Curze’s favour. Blood for blood. Yet, I am left with a cloud of compromise and guilt over my conscience.’

Numeon looked down as if the earth at his feet could provide an answer. ‘I feel it too, my lord, but what is there to be done?’ He spared a glance at the rest of the Pyre Guard, who were waiting solemnly for their captain and primarch a little way back, separate from the Legion.

Vulkan looked over to where one army was met by another as several of Commander Arvek’s battalions joined up with swathes of Munitorum staff to receive the natives and accept their surrender. The Army troopers did it with their lasguns held ready; the Munitorum officers greeted them with mnemo-quills and data-slates instead.

‘I don’t know yet, but had I realised how deep Curze’s malady went, I would not have agreed to this compliance.’

Numeon regarded Vulkan. ‘His malady? You think the primarch ill?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. A sickness, and a most insidious one. The darkness of his home on Nostramo – I think he never really left it.’

‘You could take these grievances to Lord Horus or Lord Dorn.’

Vulkan nodded. ‘I have always valued the counsel of my elder brothers. One is close to the Crusade, the other to Terra. Between them, they will know what to do.’

‘You still sound troubled, my lord.’

‘I am, Artellus. Very much so. None of us wants another sanction, another empty pillar in the great investiary, another brother’s name excised from all record. It is shame enough to bear the grief for two. I have no wish to add to it, but what choice do I have?’

Numeon’s reply was muted, for he knew how it grieved Vulkan to speak ill of his brothers, even one such as Curze. ‘None at all.’

Nestling in a shallow desert basin by the muster field, the Munitorum had assembled an armada of transportation vessels. Gunmetal grey, stamped with the Departmento sigil and attended by a flock of overseers, guards, codifiers and quartermasters, the ships were being prepped for immediate atmospheric embarkation. Unlike the Stormbirds, these vessels were not bound for fields of war. Not all of them, not yet.

They were vast, cyclopean things, far larger than the legionary drop-ships or the tank transporters utilised by the Army. Designated for recolonisation, Army recruitment and, in some instances, potential Legion candidacy, the fate of every Khar-tan man, woman and child would depend on how wholly they embraced their new masters. Certainly, none would return to Kharaatan again; only the manner of their departure and their onward destination were in question.

After several hours of slowly denuding the city of its occupants, two camps had begun to form comprised of Khartor’s citizens: those who had fought alongside the xenos willingly and those who had fought against them. Establishing the guilt or innocence of either was taxing the Munitorum staff in the extreme, and herds of people were amassing in a sort of limbo between both whilst a more thorough assessment could be made. Pleas were made, bribes ignored under the watchful eye of Munitorum overseers, but one by one they were codified and hustled aboard ships.

It was tight. Between the sheer number of bodies, the pre-fab Munitorum herding stations, tanks and landers, there was little room to move or breathe. Processing was taking too long, but still more were fed into the codifying engine of the Departmento. Hundreds became thousands. Choke points began to form. Unrest developed, put down by vigilant discipline masters. Order held. Just.