‘Honour?’ queried Pergellen, rising. ‘I understood that the Seventeenth had long abandoned such scruples.’

‘I serve my own code. Now turn.’

Pergellen did so and saw a warrior armoured in red and black. His trappings were battered and stained. He remembered him from the ambush site, the attack on the manufactorum and the skirmish at the outflow. Seemed the Word Bearer remembered him too.

‘You are the scout,’ he said, nodding.

Pergellen wondered if he’d done it out of respect.

‘And you the huntsman.’

The warrior nodded again.

‘Barthusa Narek.’

‘Verud Pergellen.’

‘Your skill is impressive, Pergellen,’ Narek admitted.

‘I don’t think we’re here to compare notes, though, are we?’

‘Correct. I would have preferred to match myself against you rifle to rifle, but there is no time for that now.’ He sounded almost regretful. ‘Instead, we are left with bolt pistol or blade.’

Upon first sight of him, Pergellen had logged and gauged the threat of each of the huntsman’s weapons. They seemed to consist mainly of blades, but he also had a bolt pistol and the sniper rifle currently aimed at the Iron Hand’s heart.

‘Are you agreeable to these terms?’ Narek asked.

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I assume you’re not asking about the acts of my Legion, or my fealty to that Legion. If what I think you’re asking is why did I not just execute you where you lay and why now am I allowing you a chance to kill me, the answer is simple. I need to know… who is the better?’ Crouching down, his eyes never leaving Pergellen for a second, he unhooked the rifle’s strap from over his shoulder and set it down on the ridge in front of him. Then he stood. ‘Now we are even, so I shall repeat, bolt pistol or blade?’

The ash wind was howling and the grit lashing around the two legionaries facing one another across the dune. Pergellen estimated there was little more than four metres between them. He had to end it quickly. Enemies were converging on Numeon and the others. If nothing else, he had to issue a warning, but not before he dealt with this. He made up his mind.

‘A fair offer,’ said Pergellen. ‘Blades?’

‘Very well.’

Each legionary grabbed for his pistol, knowing that the other would do the same. A single shot rang out. Narek was faster.

Numeon looked over to the ridge, tracking the report of a pistol heard even above the storm. A lightning bolt cracked the earth in front of him and sent the Pyre captain crashing down onto his back, armour drooling smoke.

In the same instant he turned and saw the warriors behind them. He counted three, and they were moving swiftly through the churning ash. They flickered, like a mirage shimmer, first distant, then closer, and closer still. It was warp-craft.

‘Hriak!’ he bellowed, slow to rise. On the far ridge, the one where Pergellen was meant to be keeping watch, he saw a slumped shadow and another, this one standing, disappearing into the storm as it backed away.

‘Prepare yourself,’ the Librarian hissed at Grammaticus. Then he was running, but not to Numeon’s aid. He passed the Pyre captain without a second glance, having sensed the psyker in their midst. ‘It’s the cleric,’ he shouted. ‘I’m sorry, Artellus, he must have followed my psychic spoor into the wastes.’

Numeon was back on his feet and rushing over to Grammaticus, who was struggling through the storm. Without the kine-shield he was being battered, and only the drake hide was keeping him alive.

‘Where is your fugging ship?’ he snapped, irritated, from inside the cloak.

‘Close.’

‘You hid a ship out here?’ asked Grammaticus.

‘Not I – my brother Ravens,’ said Numeon. ‘It was undetectable.’ He turned his attention to Hriak, who had begun to describe arcane patterns in the air before him. ‘Brother?’ Numeon called out. He blink-clicked a proximity icon that had recently flashed up on the part of his retinal display that was still working, and gestured into the storm.

Looking in the direction that Numeon had pointed, Grammaticus noticed a bulky silhouette looming through the ash-haze.

Hidden in plain sight, using the storm as cover, thought Gramma-ticus. How like the XIX.

‘Go, get him out,’ said Hriak. ‘I’ll deal with this. The raven’s feast has been long overdue for me. Victorus aut Mortis.’

Numeon turned back to the human. ‘Are you all right, are you–’

Grammaticus aimed his fist at him. Something sparkled on the ring he wore.

‘Better than you, I’m afraid.’

The las-beam stabbed into Numeon’s retinal lens, burning out his eye and searing his face beneath. He cried out, clutching his eye, the trauma of it putting him on his knees. The bolt had struck him, and split part of his armour. It wasn’t clotting properly, Numeon’s enhanced physiology undone by something in the storm, something the cleric had incepted. It made the eye burn all the more painfully.

Half blind, he snatched for the human, meaning to crush him this time.

Grammaticus had hit him with a potent charge. Whilst the legionaries were plotting their assault on the space port and this cunning feint to get him to another ship, he had been altering the tech in his ring. The blast had exhausted it. The digital weapon was done and wouldn’t charge again, but it pierced the legionary’s defences and put him down long enough to scurry from the warrior’s grasp.

He snatched the fulgurite from Numeon’s scabbard, deftly avoiding the Salamander’s grab.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Grammaticus, his voice growing more distant the farther away he ran, ‘but you were in my way.’

Running hard against the storm, he reached the ship. The gentle throb of turbine engines was obvious up close. Now he was alongside the ship, he could see it more clearly. He looked back for any sign of his captors.

Lightning crackled in the distance that was not caused by the storm. It illuminated three figures, armoured in legionary battle-plate. One other, the Raven, opposed them. Numeon was still down but rising.

He could pilot this vessel without the Salamander’s help, but Grammaticus knew he didn’t have long to get aboard and get away. Moving around to the rear access ramp, he paused.

There was something dripping through the rear access hatch, as if someone had released a valve and filled the hold with water. It was dark, murky and reeked of stagnation. There was something wrongabout this place, this city. Grammaticus had felt it ever since he had made planetfall with Varteh and the others. He had no weapon – the ring was useless, and so he could only rely upon his own wits. At that precise moment they seemed more than a little fragile.

Hammering the hatch release icon, Grammaticus braced himself for what was within. He had wanted to leap up and onto the gunship’s still descending ramp, to rush to the cockpit and quit Traoris for good, but the figure standing before him was blocking his path.

Trapped for so long in the drainage basin, all those years… The water had not been kind. Grammaticus couldn’t remember his name, but the thing glaring at him through the strands of lank hair hanging down over its sunken face knewGrammaticus.

Instinctively, he backed away, his ankle throbbing where the five tiny weals still showed on his flesh.

‘You aren’t…’ he began, but how could he be sure? All the things he had seen, all the deeds he had done…

The drowned boy advanced towards Grammaticus, his gait shuffling and unsteady, leaving a trail of drain water behind him.

A childhood trauma, one from his first life; why did this horror eclipse all the others?

Grammaticus recoiled and found unyielding war-plate preventing further retreat. He turned to face his attacker, knowing the game had ended at last.

‘You’re headed the wrong way if you want to escape,’ said Numeon, one eye ablaze through his retinal lens.