I remembered, and lowered my head at the memory of what I had done, what I nearlydid.

‘You weren’t yourself, brother,’ hissed Ferrus, his graveyard breath whistling through skeletal cheeks. ‘You had a backbone.’

Curze seemed not to notice.

‘Our father’s gifts are wasted on you,’ he said. ‘Eternal life, and what would you do with it? Till a field, raise a crop, build a forge to make ploughshares and hoes. Vulkan the farmer! You sicken me! Guilliman is dull, but at least he has ambition. At least he had an empire.’

‘ Had?’

‘Oh,’ Curze smiled, ‘you don’t know, do you?’

‘What has happened to Ultramar?’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll never see it.’

I suddenly feared for Roboute and all my loyal brothers that fell beneath Curze’s notice. If he had done this to me, then what could he have done to the rest of them?

‘Nemetor…’ I said, as parts of my most recent ordeal came back to me, including the appearance of a son I had thought dead. ‘Was he…?’

‘Real?’ Curze suggested, grinning.

‘Did you kill him?’ I pressed.

‘You’re dying to know aren’t you, brother?’ He held up his hand. ‘Sorry, poor choice of words. You’ll see him again, before the end.’

‘So, this willend then?’

‘One way or another, Vulkan. Yes, I sincerely hope it will end.’

He left me then, backing off into the shadows. I watched him all the way to the cell door. As it was opened, I saw the slightest shaft of light and wondered how deep my prison went. I also half caught a hurried conversation and got the sense of a commotion outside. Though I didn’t hear his muttered words, Curze seemed irritated in his curt responses. Booted footsteps moved quickly, hammering the deck, before they were cut off by the cell door shutting.

Lumen-globes burning in the alcoves in the flanking walls died, darkness returned and with it the faint, mocking laughter of my dead brother.

‘Shut up, Ferrus,’ I said.

But it only made him laugh louder.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Egress

The north-facing aspect of the manufactorum was a broken ruin. Outside, the dead and injured littered the streets.

Narek had lost eight legionaries in the frontal assault, not including Amaresh, who had been cut down by their sniper. Despite the losses, he appreciated the symmetry of that, one hunter pitched against the other. He decided that he would have a reckoning with this warrior – see how sharp his own edge was and if, despite his grievous injuries, he could still consider himself worthy. It was an honourable contest, not like the bloodbath he had left behind.

Distasteful and profligate as it was, it was also necessary. Discovered in the midst of stealthing to their gate, Narek had no other choice but to push down the throat of the loyalists, knowing full well that they had a track-mounted cannon and a defensible position. Admittedly, he hadn’t predicted they would open fire straight away – the bulk of his troops were still vaulting barricades and running stooped-over to the next scrap of cover when the world lit up in actinic blue – but it had served its intended purpose. Dagon, Narlech and Infrik had circled around the rear egress. That left Melach, Saarsk, Vogel and himself skirting the flanks; two on the right, two on the left.

Head down, hugging the edge of the street as the gun battle to the front of the manufactorum raged, Narek hissed down the vox to his elite, ‘Close the trap, find the human and bring him to me alive.’

‘ And the rest?’ Narlech voxed back.

Narek could already hear the bloodlust in his voice. ‘Kill anyone that gets in your way. I don’t want prisoners, give me corpses.’ He cut the feed.

Nearby he could hear that his enemies had broken out of the back of the building.

‘How did they find us?’ Leodrakk had to shout to be heard, bolt shells and chips of rockcrete from the manufactorum’s slowly disintegrating structure raining all around them.

Numeon shook his head. ‘Could’ve been the pyre smoke or we may have been under watch already.’

‘But why come at us like this, straight at us?’

‘Pergellen forced their hand.’

‘Doesn’t make sense. They would have hunkered down, circled us and called in reinforcements.’

Numeon paused, eyeing the gloom beyond the walls. Behind him, he heard Domadus shouting orders between the percussive reports of his heavy bolter. As soon as word came from Pergellen that the XVII had found them, all legionaries inside the manufactorum had formed up into a firing line. Only Numeon, Leodrakk and two in raven’s black moved through the back of the building to the manufactorum’s rear exit. It was no fortress, and they couldn’t stay here, but what Leodrakk was saying made sense. Why not lay siege and wait until they could storm the barricades in force?

‘It’s a distraction,’ he decided. ‘Keeping our attention front.’

The rear exit to the manufactorum was a depot strewn with the half-blasted carcasses of freight-haulers. Lots of cover, lots of places to hide.

‘You see that?’ said Numeon, crouching down by the rear door and gesturing outside.

‘There are three of them,’ whispered Hriak, his hand firmly gripping the human’s shoulder.

‘You aren’t seriously considering going out there?’ asked Grammaticus.

Numeon ignored him. He caught the slight movement again. Whoever they were, they were using the haulers to get close.

‘They’re after the human,’ he said. ‘Capture, not kill, this time.’

‘How can you be sure?’ asked Leodrakk.

‘The frontal assault was to flush us out. They knew we’d try and bolt with the human. Because if they havebeen watching us, it’s likely they saw what we saw.’

Hriak looked down at Grammaticus. ‘Your apotheosis…’

‘No explanation was needed,’ Grammaticus replied snidely. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You’re going to carry on blindly like this, regardless of consequence, aren’t you? You’ve lost your faith in everything.’

Leodrakk snarled. ‘We’ve lost much more than that.’

‘Be calm,’ Numeon told him, giving Grammaticus a quick glance to shut him up before going on. ‘We’re wasting time. Get himout of here. We can draw these three off.’

He looked at Avus crouching next to him, the foils of his jump pack folded back for now. The legionary had kept his own counsel until that moment.

‘I’ll have weregeld for Shaka, measured in blood. And when my corvidae hangs in memory of the sacrifice I made, and I become part of the raven’s feast, only then shall I know peace,’ he vowed. ‘ Victorus aut Mortis.’

Hriak bowed his head in solemn respect. ‘ Victorus aut Mortis, brother.’

Numeon nodded to all three.

‘We’ll rendezvous in the tunnels. Allof us. May the Emperor go with you.’

Elias felt restive, and not only because of the dull agony in his arm. Outside the tent, the sacrificial pit was quiet, though the air still trembled with the urgent fury of the Neverborn. He could sense their anger. It mirrored his own. To be thwarted so close to his goal, and for what? Some human he had let slip through his grasp.

The overeager hand snatches air, where the considered one holds on to substance.

He had heard Erebus use these words before. They echoed mockingly back at him through the years.

Ranos was dead. His Word Bearers had effectively denuded the city of all life and now only these loyalist dregs and their prisoner remained. But still he was denied the prize he so coveted. Weapons, Erebus had told him. Half dead, his face a bloody ruin, he had uttered this truth. Elias was certain that the spearhead was one such weapon of which his master had spoken. It was raw power incarnated in a fulgurite. Any doubts he may have had about that died along with his arm and the seven acolytes that had burned to ash earlier.