‘Skatar’var,’ said Vulkan. ‘How is Seriph?’

‘The remembrancer?’ he asked, initially wrong-footed by the request. ‘She lives.’

‘Good,’ said Vulkan. He addressed them all. ‘You are my finest drakes, my most trusted advisors. Our father fashioned us as crusaders, to bring fire and light to the darkest reaches of the galaxy. Our task is to protect mankind, shield humanity. It’s important that the Remembrancer Order sees this. Our appearance is…’

‘Monstrous, my lord,’ ventured Leodrakk, eyes blazing through his helm lenses.

Vulkan nodded. ‘We come to Kharaatan as liberators, not conquerors. We cannot forge civilisations out of rubble, out of sundered flesh and bone.’

‘And our cousins, will they hold to that also?’ a voice asked from the shadows.

All eyes turned to Igataron, whose gaze was fixed on the primarch.

‘If they do not,’ Vulkan promised, ‘my brother and I will have words.’

Numeon ended his vox exchange with Captain Nemetor. ‘Fifteenth are advancing,’ he announced, as he turned back to face his brothers.

Vulkan nodded. ‘Commander Arvek will be making contact in less than a minute. Helms on, prepare for immediate embarkation. When the ramp opens we will be ready to advance.’

In clanking unison the Pyre Guard obeyed.

Igataron and Ganne moved to the front, shields up, as Leodrakk and Skatar’var unhitched their power mauls and went in just behind them. Vulkan was next, Numeon at his side clutching the staff of his halberd. Varrun and Atanarius were last; the former holding his power axe high up the short haft near its double-edged blade, the latter unsheathing a power sword to kiss the naked blade.

All seven warriors carried bolters. Save for Varrun, who was an exceptional marksman, they seldom used them. Every one of their weapons was forged by its bearer, every one could spit fire like the drakes of old.

‘Eye-to-eye,’ snarled Numeon, reciting the Pyre Guard’s war mantra.

‘Tooth-to-tooth,’ the rest replied, including Vulkan.

Now they were forged and ready.

The hololith transmitter crackled into life, displaying a head and torso rendering of Commander Arvek.

‘ You have your breach, my Lord Primarch. Withdrawing now.’

Through his retinal lenses, Vulkan saw Arvek’s tank formations pushing away from Khar-tann’s core wall. Each engine was rendered as an icon – the display was awash with their signatures. Behind them came the Rhino armoured transports of the 15th and behind that were the Mastodons.

‘Any losses?’ asked Vulkan.

‘ None. We met zero resistance. Even when we closed to fifty metres they did not fire on us.’

A tremor of unease entered Vulkan’s mind, but he concealed it at once.

‘Relay to Captain Nemetor,’ he said to Numeon through the vox-feed as he cut the link to Arvek.

‘Something wrong, my lord?’ asked Numeon.

‘I expected some form of counter-attack.’

‘Perhaps they’ve decided to capitulate after all,’ suggested Atanarius.

‘Then why not open the gates?’ countered Varrun.

‘A trap?’ growled Leodrakk, prompting a nod of agreement from his sibling Skatar’var.

Vulkan’s mood darkened, his unease evident in his silence.

Either way, once Nemetor was inside the core wall they would find out.

Captain Nemetor had already removed his war-helm as he met Vulkan at the breach point in the core wall. The broad-shouldered warrior looked uneasy, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead.

All lights inside the city were doused; roads, battlements and interior buildings snuffed out by darkness. The only source of illumination came from scattered fires left by the earlier bombardment, but even in this gloom evidence of Commander Arvek’s armoured assault could be seen everywhere.

Bodies of the Khar-tann soldiery were twisted amidst the rubble of the shattered core wall, which had collapsed in on itself from the severe shelling. Several watch towers had fallen into the city itself, lying broken in heaps of rockcrete and plasteel. Corpses lingered here too, already polluting the air around them with the stench of putrefaction. The entire city was rank with it, and stank of death.

Beyond the core wall and the flattened gate, burst inwards by a demolisher shell, there was a long esplanade. From the positions of exploded sandbags and mangled tank traps, Vulkan imagined the Khar-tans might have been staging a second defence line here. In several places he noticed the burned-out shells of pillboxes designed to create choke points and funnel an invading enemy into a kill zone. Punctuating the line of pillboxes were much larger bunkers, solid-form and permanent additions to the city’s defences. Smoke still drooled from the vision slits of some of the bunkers, telltale evidence of a rapid and aggressive clearance.

Of the inhabitants of Khar-tann, there was no sign.

‘Do you see that?’ asked Numeon, nodding to where the primarch had been looking.

‘Yes.’ Vulkan’s earlier sense of unease grew further.

‘A tank bombardment doesn’t do that. It flattens bunkers, it doesn’t cleanse and burn them. A strike team has already been here.’

Vulkan took in the scene of carnage, tried to look beyond the obvious wreckage and mortal destruction. Past the esplanade, the concentration of buildings thickened from initially military to civilian. He saw warehouses, manufactorums, vendors, commercia… homes. Through a gap in the narrow city streets he caught a glimpse of something swinging gently in the breeze.

Nemetor saluted as Vulkan reached him, the sharp clank of his fist striking his left breast enough to get the primarch’s attention. Behind him, the Pyre Guard were spreading out. Strict orders had been given that the rest of the Legion should stand down and wait outside.

‘Captain,’ said Vulkan.

Nemetor was shaken, though it was hard to tell from what. ‘You need to see this, my lord.’

Vulkan spoke over his shoulder to Numeon. The Pyre Guard were to secure the area immediately beyond the breach but advance no farther. Then he nodded to Nemetor, and the captain led them both on.

At the heart of Khar-tann City they found the bulk of the dead. Soldiers in barrack houses, gutted and flensed; pyres of still-burning bodies, impossible to identify from their charred remains, filling the air with greasy smoke; city officials impaled on spikes; civilians hanging by their necks, swinging to and fro in the breeze.

‘They slaughtered them,’ said Nemetor as he surveyed the carnage. Four Salamanders accompanied him, and despite the fact they were wearing their battle-helms they looked just as uneasy as their captain.

Vulkan unclenched his teeth.

‘Where are the rest of your company?’

‘Dispersed amongst the ruins, trying to find survivors.’

‘There’ll be none,’ Vulkan told him. ‘Recall them. We are not needed here. The people of Khar-tann are beyond our help.’ His gaze settled on a bloody symbol daubed on the wall of a scholam. The primarch’s jaw hardened.

‘When did they even make planetfall?’ asked Nemetor, following Vulkan’s line of sight.

‘I don’t know.’

He didn’t speak the language, but he recognised the cursive script, the sharp edges to the graffiti.

It was Nostraman.

Back up on the escarpment, Vulkan was alone but for the distant roar of the flames below.

Khar-tann burned. It burned with the fire of a thousand flame gauntlets, Vulkan having set his Pyroclasts the task of turning the city to ash. He wanted no such monument to slaughter to stand any longer than was strictly necessary. Its very existence had disturbed the Army cohorts especially, and even the legionaries treated it warily.

Vulkan waited patiently, listening to the vox-channel he had just opened. It took several seconds of softly crackling static before Vulkan got an answer. When he did, it sounded like the person on the other end of the link was smiling.