‘Yes, my lord?’ said Aximand.

‘Your attention is elsewhere, I think.’

‘Lupercal, I’m sorry. For a moment there…’

‘What?’

‘I could hear breathing, my lord.’

The Warmaster regarded him with what looked like amusement.

‘We all do it,’ he said.

‘No, I mean… Do you not hear it?’

‘I hear weakness,’ said the Warmaster. ‘Where is this frailty coming from, Aximand? You’re jumpy.’

‘My lord, is there somebody else in your quarters with us?’

‘No. No, there isn’t. I know this for a fact.’

Aximand rose to his feet.

‘Then who is that?’ he asked. ‘Lord, who is that, standing just there, on the other side of the fire?’

‘Oh Little Horus,’ said the Warmaster, ‘you are beginning to speak with the tongue of madness.’

And just as Aximand realised that he was, he woke.

HE ASSEMBLED HIS squad commanders, and reviewed the tactical data. Aximand was, perhaps, the most scrupulous of all the Sixteenth Legion’s captains. He was not one, like Targost for example, who only ever wanted to know the fundamentals of a target, or was annoyed by extraneous detail. Aximand liked to know everything, every last facet. He studied climate charts. He learned the names and phases of Dwell’s eighteen moons. He studied the intelligencer plans of the Mausolytic Precinct, and had the Fleetmaster’s strategic architects fashion a sensory simulation he could walk through.

He learned the names of his foe. The Tyjunate Compulsories, a high-calibre division of ceremonial city troops whose duty it was, by tradition, to protect the Precinct. The Chainveil, an elite corps named after the ritual screen surrounding the thrones of the Elders of Dwell, who were rumoured to be supplementing the Mausolytic defence.

No confirmation had yet come of Meduson or any of his agents reaching Dwell. If he had beaten the 63rd in the race, it was thought unlikely he would position himself at the Precinct. This role would probably be handed off to one of his trusted warleaders, perhaps Bion Henricos, or to one of the White Scars captains such as Hibou Khan or Kublon Besk.

‘Let us hope for the Fifth,’ said Lev Goshen, Captain of the Twenty Fifth Company, who was to command the second wave behind Aximand. ‘Ill-favoured for static defence, they will make themselves crazy waiting for our overture, stuck in one place.’

‘The Scars should not be underestimated,’ said Grael Noctua, Sergeant of the Warlocked Tactical Squad.

Goshen glanced up from the strategium display, looked at Noctua, and caught Aximand’s eye.

‘He’s got a voice, then,’ he remarked.

There had been some murmuring amongst the upper ranks of the Legion when Noctua’s role as second to Aximand for the Mausolytic assault had been announced.

‘I have been advised I had better use it well, captain,’ said Noctua. There was a reserve to him, a restraint that reminded Aximand of someone. Noctua had that true sonface, but the balance of humours was unusual: there was less of the arrogant charismatic and more of the calculated intellectual. Abaddon described Noctua as a blade weapon rather than a firearm.

Goshen grinned.

‘Let’s have your wisdom, Noctua,’ he said.

‘I had the honour to serve alongside a detachment of the Fifth Legion seven years ago during the Tyrade System Compliance. They impressed me with their battlecraft. I was reminded of the Wolves.’

‘The Luna Wolves?’ asked Goshen.

‘The Wolves of Fenris, sir,’ Noctua replied.

‘That’s twoenemies you’ve mentioned,’ said Goshen. ‘You understandthey are our enemies, don’t you, Noctua?’

‘I understand they are both utterly lethal,’ replied Noctua. ‘Should we not appreciate the qualities of our enemies above all else?’

Goshen hesitated.

‘This terrace here, this parade,’ he said, returning to the chart display. ‘We will need air cover to achieve it.’

The briefing continued. Aximand thought for a moment that someone else had something to say, someone who had come into the room late, to stand at the back of the grouped officers.

But there was nobody there.

‘I HEAR YOU’RE considering Kibre and Noctua,’ said the Warmaster.

‘You hear everything, as usual,’ Aximand replied.

‘Not Targost, then?’

‘He has other responsibilities,’ said Aximand, ‘and we did not wish to dilute them.’

The Warmaster nodded. He moved another carved bone counter across the board between them. Of all his sons, Aximand most enjoyed the practice and discipline of strategy games. The anteroom was furnished with many fine sets, most of them gifts from war leaders or brother primarchs. There was regicide, chatranj, caturanga, go, hneftafl, xadrez, mahnkala, zatrikion… It was rare to find a primarch’s homeworld where a skill-honing wargame had not evolved.

‘Ezekyle favoured Targost, didn’t he?’ asked the Warmaster as Aximand studied the field and contemplated his reply.

‘He did, sir.’

‘And when you persuaded him against the choice, did you tell him the real reason, or did you manufacture one that would be more palatable to him?’

Aximand hesitated. He remembered the conversation with Abaddon, wherein he had not chosen to say that Targost, the Captain of the Seventh Company, was not a son, a trueson. He was Cthonic stock. Aximand had not chosen to reveal that part of his disinclination.

‘I didn’t–’ Aximand started to say.

‘Tell him?’ asked the primarch.

‘I didn’t… recognise my true motive,’ Aximand replied, with reluctance.

‘Interesting when you see it, though, don’t you think?’ the Warmaster asked, sitting back. ‘You and Ezekyle, Widowmaker and Noctua, all of you… What is it you call it? True sons?’

‘True sons,’ Aximand echoed.

‘So, do you suppose,’ the Warmaster chuckled, ‘it is because you prefer the reassurance of a familiar face? Or is there another face you wish to block out?’

DRY AIR, COOL, a faint hint of salt. The Sea of Enna in the flat rift valley below, like a sheet of glass in a culvert. Along its shore, the teeming city of Tyjun, collected like flotsam, like multicoloured shingle. On the far side of the immense valley, across the back of the sleeping sea, the block line of the opposite valley wall, squared off and velvet black in the dawn light. The sky was violet, shot with stars and occasional moons. To the north, the pre-glow of the rising sun. To the east, the false dawn of the port, on fire since midnight. That was the handiwork of Jerrod and Thirteenth Company.

In the high morning of the Mausolytic plateau, the buildings of the Precinct stood like stone hangars for vast airships. Rectangles, unadorned, they were faced with yellow stone rendered gold by the early light. In places they were linked by soaring colonnades and porticos, gold stone columns the size of ancient redwoods. The pavements were made of etched steel, polished like mirrors. The atmosphere held a dry, static charge, as if great electromagnetic machines operated nearby.

The vaunted Chainveil made no appearance in the direct line at the Precinct. Chainveil soldiers caused a brief delay to Abaddon’s advance into the City of Elders. The First Captain made curt, grudging reports of their determined resistance. Goshen’s advance took a bastion west of the city where the defenders boasted they were Chainveil, but Goshen was sure they were merely regular army claiming to be the elites, so as to seem more intimidating.

He slew them all, anyway.

The Tyjunate Compulsories, resplendent in silver and crimson wargear, formed the main defence. The troopers were armed with long power swords, with energised axes and pikes, with munition-loaders, with sonic tubes, with plasmic-system weapons and las-rifles. Entering combat, they engaged individual, segmented force shields, light-absorbing fog that dimmed the glory of their ritual uniforms and made them look as if they’d each been enveloped in a hand-cut piece of storm cloud.