I recognised his voice as belonging to the one who had addressed us earlier.

‘I don’t take orders from Nostraman gutter scum dressed as soldiers,’ Corax replied.

Behind us, a further ten warriors cut off our escape.

I glanced at them, smirking. ‘Only forty? Curze has overestimated your ability to stop us.’

The Atramentar laughed; it sounded dull and grainy through his vox-grille. Spikes protruded from his shoulder guards and painted-on lightning bolts livened up the drab metal of his midnight-blue armour. In one gauntleted fist, he clutched a heavy-looking maul.

‘Night Haunter told us to take you alive,’ he said. ‘He didn’t say you were to be left unscathed.’

All around the four Night Lords squads, blades and cudgels were drawn.

‘His mistake,’ muttered Corax, soaring into a turbine-boosted leap. A shriek ripped past his lips, an avian war cry that stunned the Atramentar for a precious half-second. Steel wings spread, an angel of death’s shadow bearing down, Corax impaled the warrior on his lightning claw, and I saw the Atramentar’s body slide to the deck where the Night Lord died, gurgling blood.

The Ravenlord lashed out with his whip as he landed, snaring a charging legionary around the waist, yanking him off his feet and smashing him into the wall.

I turned, tearing down a tower of crates that crashed into the path of the warriors behind us. It would hold them for a few seconds, but it was all I needed.

Barrelling into the Night Lords coming at us from the front, I met two legionaries in mid-charge and swept them up off the deck with my sheer bulk and momentum. I hurled one like a discus, my arm around his waist, and saw him pinwheel into three others. The second of them I seized around the head and pile-drove into the floor. The deck bent and split under the impact, several of its rebars impaling my opponent through the back to jut out from his chest.

Panicked, some of the remaining Night Lords drew bolters. I felt a shell score my side, leaving a burn. It barely even slowed me down. I backhanded the shooter, snapping his neck at an awkward angle before hoisting another above my head and bringing him down across my knee, breaking his back.

I seized the generator of a fifth, dragging him towards me and caving in his stomach with my fist. With the blade of my hand, I shattered the clavicle of a sixth. Someone got a sword thrust in and I felt it pierce my midriff with a sudden sawing motion. I snapped the blade off at the hilt, and scooped up my attacker by the chin, gripping his jaw before swinging his flailing body overhead and slamming it into a heavy crate. The legionary’s head punched right through it and I left him there, hanging by his neck, dead.

Killing was not akin to revelry for me, but I revelled in this. Every torture I had endured, every injury against my men, I visited back upon the Night Lords. As the barricade broke down behind us, I welcomed my enemies. A host of corpses lay around me. Blades and bolters were within easy reach, but I had no need of them. Clenching and unclenching my hands, I wanted to tear these warriors apart in the most intimate way possible.

‘Come unto my anvil,’ I challenged, a feral snarl curling my lip.

The fact that the ship was gone, our only means of escape lost with it, didn’t even enter my mind. I craved this violence. I desired nothing more than to break these warriors, who would suffer for the deeds of their father.

My fists were like hammers, my fury blazing like forge-fire.

One by one, the Night Lords died and I rejoiced in their destruction.

By the time it was over, I was breathing hard through clenched teeth. Spittle flecked my trembling lip. My entire body quaked with the violence that was slowly bleeding from my every pore. In my mind’s eye I beheld an abyss. It was red-raw, the colour of blood and death. I stood upon its edge, looked down into the chasmic black at its nadir. Madness waited there for me. I heard its calling and reached out to touch it…

Corax brought me back.

His hand upon my shoulder. The urgent tone in his voice.

‘Are you all right, brother?’

It took me a few seconds to realise he was referring to the sword still impaling me.

I yanked out the blade. A welter of blood came with it to paint the deck, soon lost on an already blood-soaked canvas.

‘Believe me, it’s nothing,’ I said, steadily regaining my composure.

Corax nodded, betraying no sense of what I had shown to him, expressed in the charnel leavings on the deck around me.

‘What now?’ I asked, the wrecked Thunderhawk before us.

‘Delve deeper, penetrate the ship’s core. There’ll be other vessels we can commandeer.’

It was a small hope at best. I knew Corax realised that, but chose not to say it out loud.

‘Failing that, we could fight our way to the bridge,’ I replied. ‘And take our wrath out on whoever we find enthroned upon it.’

‘Agreed.’

Corax jerked his head up, listening.

‘More are coming.’

‘Let them.’

His cold retinal lenses regarded me. ‘Does it end here, or on the bridge with Curze’s beating heart clenched in your fist?’

I nodded, though I thought our chances of reaching the bridge and Curze were remote at best. ‘The bridge. Lead on, brother.’

Leaving the massacred Night Lords in our wake, Corax took us through several more chambers until we entered a warren of sub-tunnels reached through a service hatch. The confines of the tunnels were close, and my brother was forced to leave his beloved jump pack behind. Despite his efforts at obscuring the trail, our pursuers were always close behind us. Snarled Nostraman curses followed us down vents and pipes, the din of scraping power armour echoed. I imagined Curze’s men on their knees and elbows, crawling after us.

But however deep we went, however many the turns we took, the Night Lords stuck to us like our shadows. They knew this ship, its every inch. I felt the trap again, its rusty teeth closing around my neck. Escape or capture, there was no other way for this to end for me. I feared for Corax, though. Curze would not be kind to him for this affront.

After an hour of scurrying through the service tunnels like rats, Corax found another access hatch. Kicking it through, the grate landing with a clatter below, my brother dropped from sight for a moment before calling up to me to follow. I went after him and plunged from the lightless warren into a barren chamber. It was dimly lit, fashioned of dark iron like so much of this desolate place, and I discerned blade marks in the floor. There were bloodstains too, but it was empty. It was strangely familiar, though I had never been here before.

A single archway led further, though it was beyond the weak corona of light cast by the lumen orbs ensconced in the walls, and therefore heavily shadowed.

‘See, the way is unobstructed,’ Corax hissed, gesturing to the archway and the darkness beyond it. ‘I’ll make sure we were not followed. Here.’ He tossed me his gladius, the last of his secondary weapons. I caught it and nodded, hastening to the archway, but could see and hear no danger.

‘There are steps leading down,’ I called. ‘And I can feel a breeze.’

It was artificial of course, and the air was musty, but it could indicate that we were close to a deck with atmospheric recycling, which almost certainly meant a human presence.

Corax waited under the gaping hatch for a few more seconds before joining me.

‘What of your helm sensors?’ I asked, knowing that my brother was already cycling through the visual spectra of his retinal lenses.

‘Shadows…’ he hissed, his tone leaving me slightly unnerved.

If I didn’t know my brother better, I would swear he sounded concerned about that.

‘Only way is down,’ I muttered, levelling my gladius at the darkness as though it were a foe I could engage.