‘That’s enough, Hriak,’ whispered Leodrakk. ‘We don’t need to remember that, and he doesn’t need to hear it either.’

‘My presence here has complicated things for you, hasn’t it?’ said Grammaticus.

‘You have undermined our entire mission.’

Grammaticus shook his head, nonplussed at the mordant Salamander. ‘What the fug did you intend to achieve, anyway? What were you, twenty-something men against an entire host, an entire city? I get it that you want payback, but how does throwing yourselves on your enemies’ swords get you what you want?’

Leodrakk stood, and for a brief moment looked like he was about to end Grammaticus, but decided against it.

‘It is not so simple as revenge. We want to get back into the war, make a difference, for what we do to have meaning. Before we came here, we had been tracking the Word Bearers of this particular cult for a while. We followed them to a small, backwater world called Viralis but were too late to prevent what they unleashed there.’

Grammaticus frowned. ‘Unleashed?’

‘ Daemons, John Grammaticus, a subject about which I suspect you are well-versed.’

‘I have seen the Acuity,’ he admitted.

‘Caeren Sebaton’

Leodrakk scowled. ‘I won’t even ask what that is. A gift from your Cabal, no doubt.’

‘It’s no gift, it’s truth and one I wish I could erase from my mind.’

‘Again, not my concern. What does concern me,’ he gestured to Hriak too, ‘ us, our mission, is to prevent what happened on Viralis from happening here. Their leader, the Word Bearers cleric, was supposed to die by our hand. We would slip in unnoticed, find him and execute him. Pergellen was our trigger man, the rest of us would ensure rapid egress in the face of reprisal. Our chances of success were good, our chances of survival less so, but at least we would die knowing Traoris was safe.’

‘No world is safe, Salamander,’ Grammaticus countered. ‘No part of the galaxy, however remote, is going to be spared.’

Leodrakk snarled, angry, but more at the situation than Grammaticus. ‘We would spare this world. At least from that.’ He backed down, the threat of violence ebbed. ‘But now we are discovered and being hunted. Shen and Pergellen should have left you in that warehouse.’

Grammaticus nodded. ‘Yes, they should have. But they didn’t, and now you have me and know what I know, so what are you going to do with that?’

‘Nothing,’ said a voice from deeper in the tunnel. It was dark, but even Grammaticus recognised the warrior coming to meet them. He was not alone, either.

‘Numeon.’ Leodrakk went to greet him. They locked wrists. Hriak merely bowed his head to acknowledge the captain. Leodrakk’s good mood soured when he saw who else had come back with Numeon. ‘So few?’ he asked.

‘Their sacrifice will have meaning, brother.’

Of the twenty-three legionaries that had made planetfall on Traoris from the Fire Ark, barely thirteen remained. Shen’ra had come back with Numeon, as well as K’gosi. Pergellen lingered at the back of the group, returning a few minutes after having made sure they were not followed. Hriak was the last of the Ravens now, and he muttered a Kiavahran oath for the fallen Avus. The rest were Salamanders.

Grammaticus beheld a broken force. Fate, oh that capricious mistress, had conspired against them. It had delivered him into their grasp and the fulgurite spear to the Word Bearers. The phrase ‘fugged beyond all reason’ didn’t even begin to describe it.

He also noticed that a key figure was missing, as did Leodrakk.

‘Where is Domadus?’ asked the Salamander.

Numeon sighed, weary. He took off his battle-helm. ‘We lost him during the fight. He and several others went out to meet the Seventeenth to stymie their assault. I didn’t see him fall, but…’ He shook his head.

‘So, what now?’ asked Shen’ra, hobbling to stand beside his brothers.

Grammaticus answered.

‘Let me go. Help me reclaim the spear and get off Traoris. What is there to lose now?’

Numeon ignored him, and went over to Shen’ra. He was badly wounded and struggling.

‘I have seen better days, before you ask,’ said the Techmarine acerbically. He was slumped against the tunnel wall, a trickle of effluence from the cracked ceiling painting a grubby track down his armour. Numeon kneeled to speak with him.

‘You saved us all, you irascible bastard.’

‘Lost the track-mount, though. Anyway…’ he paused to cough, ‘someone had to.’

Numeon laughed, but his humour quickly faded when he saw Shen’ra’s injuries.

The Techmarine’s bionic eye was only partially functional and he carried a limp, but his cracked breastplate hinted at the real damage. Internal injuries, partial biological shut-down.

Two other Salamanders in the returning party were already comatose as their brutalised bodies tried to repair themselves. Prognosis did not appear favourable. Three more were dead, shredded by bolt-rounds, impaled by blades. Not one killing wound, but several small ones amounting to the same. Attritional deaths. Their brothers had carried them, those that were washed down with them into the tunnels, just as they had before.

Grammaticus was surprised at the level of humanity they showed to their dead, and wondered if it was a common Nocturnean trait.

‘So, what now?’ he asked. ‘Are we to hide out in these tunnels until they find us?’

Numeon finished muttering some words of encouragement to the Techmarine and rose to his feet.

‘We move on. Find another way to achieve our mission.’

Leodrakk approached, noticing Numeon touching the sigil of Vulkan he had carried ever since they had fled Isstvan.

‘What do you think it’s for?’ he asked.

Numeon glanced down at it. Fashioned into a simple blacksmith’s hammer, it looked unremarkable.

‘I think it’s a symbol,’ he said. ‘When I see it, I believe in our primarch, that he is still alive. Beyond that, I don’t know.’

‘I hope you’re right, brother.’

Pergellen, returning from scouting out the tunnel ahead, interrupted them.

‘The way on is clear,’ he put in. ‘This tract ends in an outflow. It’s towards the edge of the city and should give us a good vantage point to plan our next move.’

Numeon nodded. ‘Make sure there are no surprises.’

Taking K’gosi with him, the scout headed back off into the darkness.

‘I hate to echo the human,’ said Leodrakk when Pergellen had gone, ‘but what isour next move?’

Numeon regarded Grammaticus.

‘They’re after him now. The attack on the manufactorum is proof of that. We might be able to use that. To use him.’

And just like that, fate twisted again and Grammaticus bemoaned that he had ever been ‘saved’ by the Salamanders.

The outflow ended in a broad sink, a few metres deep. It was raining heavily overhead, causing the dirty sewer run-off in the manmade basin to flow over its rockcrete lip in a rushing cataract that crashed down in an ever-deepening pool below.

At one side of the sink there was a wooden jetty. The bodies of three men laid face down on it. Their attire suggested they were sump-catchers. They had been stabbed to death, and the crude sigil daubed in blood on the jetty suggested it was cult-related. Above them hung a lattice of fishing lines, dead sump rats strung along them by their tiny feet. There were a couple of long pikes, too, and a crumpled-up net stuffed into an empty oil drum. A tarpaulin provided ineffective protection against the elements, covering two thirds of the jetty and suspended on guide poles like a crude tent.

‘Don’t want to slip in there, human,’ muttered Leodrakk as he escorted Grammaticus over a wooden walkway that creaked with the legionary’s every step.

Grammaticus looked down into the viscous, grimy soup slowly coagulating in the sink. Foulness practically radiated from it, the water an ugly pale yellow. Carcasses bobbed up and down in it, disturbed by the effluvia running out from the pipe and cascading over the basin edge.