‘I don’t know yet. Those instructions won’t be given until I’m safely off Traoris.’

The conversation had ended there, as Numeon had gone to consult with Pergellen on how they would approach an assault on a heavily guarded space port.

Using the Fire Arkwas immediately discounted. Since the commencement of the bizarre storm that kept Ranos smothered in darkness and filled the sky with variegated lightning, there had been no communication with the ship. For all they knew, it was already destroyed. Several amongst the surviving legionaries had suggested as much until Numeon had silenced them.

He had lied to Grammaticus. It wasn’t hope that drove them, nor was it faith. It was defiance and a refusal to give in when the possibility of achieving something of meaning still existed, even if that thing were merely vengeance. With his last words, Skatar’var had sworn him to that promise and Numeon meant to keep it. They all did.

Away from the heart of the urban sprawl, the city thinned out and became less of a warren. Tall stacks gave way to smaller, blister-like habs and outpost stations. Here were the stormwatchers, the men and women charged with the dangerous duty of watching the lightning fields and the ash wastes that kept each of the eight cities apart. Even across the grey deserts surrounding Ranos, the lightning had changed. It struck more fiercely, with greater frequency, carving scorched-black rifts in the earth as if nature itself were being wounded by the Word Bearers’ ritual.

The space port squatted on a flat plateau, raised a few hundred metres above the cityscape itself. From the outflow and the aqueduct in the valley beneath, the legionaries and their human cargo had headed towards the port, hoping to find a route off the planet for Grammaticus. They had skirted the edge of the plateau, neglecting the roads, for they were well watched. They had come low, through the tributaries spat out from the sewers, and found themselves arriving close to the space port’s borders and looking up at its iron-grey towers and desolate landing apron. Like the gnarled creatures of childhood myth, Numeon and his shattered company crouched beneath a large, partially collapsed bridge, the manmade ditch it spanned dry and dead.

On the bridge and beyond it, the strip of Ranos roadway was dead to all forms of traffic. A civilian half-track and a couple of heavier freight loaders cut forbidding skeletons with their chassis burned out and black. Smoke had long ceased rising from their metal carcasses. Here, at the space port, the Word Bearers’ wrath had fallen first and fallen hardest. No vessel could be allowed to escape and raise alarm. The XVII Legion had massacred everyone and everything, including vehicles.

Numeon was hidden by shadows and the ignorance of his enemies as he surveyed through his scope. On a slab beside him were his weapons, the rest of his ammunition and the sigil.

He heard Leodrakk approach and saw him pick up the hammer icon that had once belonged to their primarch and would, perhaps, again.

‘Do you believe it?’ Numeon asked, putting the scope down.

Around him, dispersed along the underside of the bridge and concealed by its overhang, the last of his shattered company made ready for their final hours. All remaining weapons and ammunition had been collected and redistributed to ensure every legionary could fight to his maximum efficacy. At one time it would have been Domadus’s task, but the Iron Hand was gone and so K’gosi had taken on his mantle as quartermaster. They had lost Shen’ra too and many others who should have seen a better end. Numeon owned that, all of it. He would carry that to his pyre.

‘That Vulkan lives?’ Numeon clarified.

‘I said the words, did I not?’ said Leodrakk, handing back the sigil. ‘Still trying to fathom its mysteries, Artellus?’

Numeon glanced at the hammer, at the gemstone fashioned into the cross section. ‘Ever since I took it from the battlefield. But I am at a loss, I’m afraid. Much of Vulkan’s craft is beyond my understanding. It is a device of some kind, not merely ornamental. I had hoped it might yield a message or some piece of knowledge to guide us…’ He shook his head, ‘I don’t know. I always just saw it as a symbol, something to give us hope in our darkest hour.’

‘And this is it then, our darkest hour?’

‘It might prove to be, but you didn’t answer my question. Do you believe that Vulkan lives? Saying it is not believing it.’

Leodrakk’s gaze strayed to where John Grammaticus was hunched down and muttering to himself, arms wrapped around his knees, head bowed as he tried to stay warm. Hriak was nearby, ostensibly keeping an eye on the human. He had shielded him psychically from the cleric’s warpcraft, thrown the soul-flare of Grammaticus’s essence outwards like a ventriloquist throws his voice, drawing the Word Bearers into the trap at the outflow. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience for the human, but the Librarian noticed that little and cared even less.

‘I see something in the spear that kindles hope that has only been the barest embers for so long,’ Leodrakk admitted, gesturing to the fulgurite sitting snugly in Numeon’s scabbard. ‘I have resisted because to hope for one is to hope for another.’

‘Ska,’ Numeon correctly assumed.

‘He could yet live.’

‘As may all of our Pyre brothers, but I have my doubts.’

‘We know he did not die in the blast,’ Leodrakk tried, but couldn’t keep the bite from his tone.

Only later, when their drop-ship was aloft and had broken through the traitors’ pickets surrounding Isstvan, did Numeon tell Leodrakk that Skatar’var had contacted him. He knew Leodrakk would have wanted to go back, that he wouldn’t heed his brother’s wishes as Numeon had. He hadn’t raged or struck out at the Pyre captain as Numeon supposed was his right. He had simply darkened as a flame does when slowly starved of oxygen.

‘I forgave you that moment on the ship when you told me,’ Leodrakk said.

‘Your forgiveness is irrelevant, Leo. I either saved our lives or went back for Skatar’var and signed all our death warrants. I made the pragmatic decision, the only one I could in the circumstances.’

Leodrakk looked away, out past the bridge and towards the space port. Even from this distance, the patrols were visible.

‘Why tell me this now, brother?’ asked Numeon.

‘Because I wanted you to know there wasn’t any bad blood between us for this. I would have wanted to go back, and I know all three of us would have died. It doesn’t make it any easier, though. There will always be a part of me that wonders if we could have found him, if he had survived and we passed him by, only metres away.’

‘I have had the self-same doubts regarding Vulkan, but I stand by my decision and know if presented with it all over again that I would not waver from the course I have already taken. History cannot be unwritten and scribed anew. It is done, and all we can hope for is that we perform our duty until death, irrespective of the destiny we crave for ourselves.’

Pergellen interrupted on the vox.

‘Speak, brother,’ said Numeon, reacting to the Iron Hand’s comm request as he activated the bead embedded in his ear.

‘ I have eyes on our former cousins.’

‘How many?’

‘ More than you or I should like.’

‘Then these are our final hours.’

‘ So it would seem, brother,’ the Iron Hand replied. There was no regret, no sorrow in his voice. It served no purpose. There was but one duty left to perform now.

Numeon thanked the scout and cut the link.

‘Get them ready,’ he said.

Leodrakk was turning to carry out the order when Numeon clutched his Pyre brother’s arm. ‘I know, Artellus,’ Leodrakk told him, clapping the Pyre captain on the shoulder. ‘For Shen, for Ska, for all of them.’

Numeon nodded, and let him go.