BY THE TIME Kalliston arrived, Phaeret was crouched down before the base of a pillar. The shaft was broken off about two metres up and rubble littered the surroundings. There were more ruined remnants of other buildings ahead, some no more than swaying spurs hanging over the curves of blast craters.

‘What is it?’ Kalliston asked, coming down to the same level.

Phaeret gestured towards the ground, saying nothing.

There was a gauntlet lying amid the blasted stone. Kalliston picked it up, turning it over to make the most of the light. It was gunmetal-grey and ready to fall into pieces. The construction was Legiones Astartes power armour – no mortal would have been able to wear such gear. Two of the fingers were missing, and the hollow stumps were black from burning. On the back of it, where the main ceramite plate guarded the warrior’s fist, a rune had been inscribed. There was nothing clumsy about it. Even Kalliston, who was by no means an expert on artificer tech, could see the careful workmanship.

‘And which of our brothers makes use of the runes?’ he asked, speaking to himself.

His mind went back to the assault on Shrike, the name his Legion had given to Ark Reach Secundus. It was there that Magnus and Russ had first clashed over the preservation of the avenians’ libraries. That had been a terrible day. Kalliston had been there when the Wolf King had stormed across the causeway with terrible violence in his eyes, and it had seemed as if Space Marine would fight Space Marine. He remembered the sheer majesty of the Wolves of Fenris, the terrifying potency locked into their single-minded frames. True, they had been stopped by sorcery for a time, but the barrier would have broken eventually. They would have kept on coming, heedless of the casualties, spinning into contact like a shell loosed from a gun-barrel.

Remorseless. The power that, once loosed, can never be called back.

‘This is their work,’ said Phaeret, and his young voice was savage with emotion. ‘The Wolves of Fenris.’

Kalliston stood, his eyes still locked on the gauntlet.

They had always been the primary suspects. The bad blood between Magnus and Russ had been well-known, as had the capability of the Wolves for sudden and unpredictable brutality. The trial at Nikaea had been at the instigation of Russ, so it was rumoured. The Wolf King’s hatred of sorcery had given him the pretext, and it seemed that he had acted on his intolerance at last.

But how had such a thing been dared? Had Russ gone rogue, finally giving in to the barbarism that burned in his feral soul? Or had this thing been sanctioned by a higher power?

The more Kalliston gazed at the gauntlet, letting his eyes run over the single rune etched into the ceramite glove, the more questions clamoured at him. It was one thing knowing the perpetrator of an act; quite another to understand his reasons.

‘Captain,’ voxed Arvida, breaking into Kalliston’s train of thought. ‘Evidence. There are traces of Space–’

‘I know it,’ said Kalliston, a dead weariness hanging on the words. ‘Russ’s dogs.’

‘Armour fragments,’ confirmed Arvida. ‘And they’ve carved things in the walls. Some of them are… obscene.’

Kalliston felt a stab of anger then. They were brutes, the Wolves, as shallow and thuggish as greenskins. He’d never understood what place they’d had in the Great Crusade, other than to ruin the reputation of enlightened humanity and stain the achievements of Unification. Only Angron’s berserkers were worse, and at least they’d been taken under the wing of the Warmaster. There had been no such wise, restraining hand to keep the Wolves of Fenris within civilised parameters, and it looked like they’d finally lost any semblance of control.

‘We’re getting more signs, the further we go,’ replied Kalliston, speaking to the whole squad over the mission channel. ‘Head to the Pyramid of Photep, where we’ll regroup.’

Phaeret started to move off immediately, but Arvida maintained the comm link.

‘There may still be Wolves on the planet,’ he warned. ‘Is this zone clear of targets?’

‘I read nothing,’ replied Kalliston, giving away his irritation. Arvida was only doing his job, but something about the sergeant’s drip-feed of scepticism was getting under his skin. ‘Move to heading–’

Even as he spoke, Phaeret’s head and shoulders disappeared in a cloud of whirling armour, bone and blood. The booming report of heavy weapons echoed down the street, followed by the sharp clatter of bolter fire.

Kalliston threw himself behind the pillar, feeling the stone tremble as the reactive rounds thumped into it and blasted the stone open. He scrambled backward, away from the firestorm and into the lee of a more solid wall-section. As he went, more shells impacted around him, throwing up glittering waves of glass.

There were cries of alarm over the comm, and a thin recording of bolter-fire. His squad were all coming under fire. Two more life-sign runes dropped out of his helm-display.

Throne, where are they coming from?

‘Heavy incoming!’ reported Orphide, two hundred metres away. ‘Getting multiple–’

Then his signal wavered and died, leaving static on the channel.

‘Lock on to my position!’ ordered Kalliston, whirling round, trying to make the best sense of the terrain around him. There were plenty of cover-points in the ruined cityscape, but nothing much that would stand up to concerted assault. ‘Fall back to this location. Repeat, fall back to this location.’

He risked a look through a gap in the wall, keeping his helm as low as possible. There were still no target runes on his helm display, but auspexes could be jammed.

Two hundred metres distant, at the far end of the desolate street, he saw movement for the first time. Something pale grey flitted between cover, head low, moving fast. The profile was unmistakable – Space Marine power armour. Kalliston saw no others, but knew there’d be more out there. He checked the magazine was locked in place and that the ammo counter read full. His hearts had begun to beat in that steady, deep rhythm that always preceded action. He felt the familiar prickle across his skin as stimms entered his bloodstream and primed the muscle-nerve interfaces of his carapace.

‘This is my world, dogs,’ he snarled, his voice eager. ‘So you’re going to have to fight me for it.’

‘NINE OF YOU,’ he says. ‘Nine fools. You seem to have had few plans, other than to sniff around in the ruins and look for scraps. Did it never occur to you that the destroyers of Prospero would leave troops behind?’

‘Of course it did.’

‘And you still came.’

I briefly ponder whether to try my luck again. I can make him angry so easily, but there is the question of timing. For the moment, I restrain myself.

‘Yes. Our position was in any case bleak. We were alone, separated from what remained of our fleet. In such a position of ignorance, we were vulnerable. I decided to seek survivors on Prospero, perhaps the primarch himself. We knew that there were unlikely to be any, but there were other reasons to – as you say – sniff around in the ruins.’

There was a minuscule pause then, a slight catch in the otherwise metronomic regularity of the breathing.

‘Other reasons?’

I decide to keep talking, to stick to the truth. This interrogation will be coming to an end soon in any case.

‘Prospero was the greatest seat of learning in all the worlds of men,’ I say, and make no effort to keep the pride out of my voice. ‘There were libraries here that were the envy even of the ancient races. There were secrets in our vaults, secrets that even we hadn’t fully had the time to unlock properly. While you were sailing across the sea of stars, plundering and maiming, we were learning.’

As I speak, I recall using much the same words to persuade Arvida of the wisdom of returning home. He’d listened just as intently as my questioner did now.