The Lion wrenched his blade back, the silver steel breaking through the air in lashing chops, blurring into a crescent that reflected the moons above. Each carving strike crashed against Curze’s blocking claws. Both warriors moved beyond mortal capability, with speed that defied sight. Yet one was a knight, the other merely a murderer. Curze’s grin was a brittle facade at the best of times. Now it turned to glass.

‘We never sparred, did we?’ the Lion sounded almost bored, his words still carrying over the vox. Every few seconds would see a new cut ripped open in Curze’s armour or slashed across his face. He was fast enough to avoid death at the Lion’s hands, but not skilful enough to flawlessly defend against every attack.

‘I never cared for swords,’ Curze weaved under the carving blade, thrusting out with both claws. The Lion tilted back, his balance executed to preternatural perfection. Curze’s claws shredded the ivory tabard, barely scratching the layered ceramite beneath.

‘There exists nothing of elegance inside you.’ The Lion turned the blade in his hands, parrying another dual-claw strike with his single blade. ‘And nothing of loyalty. For a time, I considered you my truest brother. No others grew untouched by civilisation, only you and I.’

Curze licked his sharpened teeth, eyes narrowed with effort. ‘You should be with us, brother. Even your own Legion senses it. The First Legion’s strife is not unknown to the Warmaster.’

‘There is no strife.’

Their blades locked in that moment, Curze catching the Lion’s sword in the net of his linked claws.

‘No?’ The Night Lord spat the word as a curse. ‘No risk of the fair Angels falling? When did you last walk upon the soil of Caliban, oh proud one?’

The Lion smiled – the first time Curze had ever seen it – but the movement of his brother’s lips still did nothing to warm his statuesque visage. Stone gave off more warmth than that smirk. He gave no answer beyond the smile.

Curze returned it, just as insincere, just as lifeless. In that moment, he stopped fighting, ceased his measured duelling, and leapt at his brother with a howl. Where the warring primarchs had represented the pinnacle of human possibility in warfare, now the Lion’s poise, skill and grace counted for nothing. They brawled as brothers, rolling across the ground, hands at each other’s throats.

When the tumbling ended, Curze knelt atop the Lion. Pinkish saliva sprayed from his pale lips as he bore down on his brother, claws clasped to strangle, to inflict that most slow and intimate of murders, when slayer and slain stare into each other’s eyes.

‘Die,’Curze breathed. Desperation ruined his voice, rasping it from bleeding lips. ‘You should never have survived that tainted world you call home.’

The Lion’s armoured hands grasped his brother’s throat in mirror response, but the Night Lord’s advantage was crystal clear. Curze shook the Lion’s neck in his fists, cracking his brother’s head against the rocky ground again and again and again.

‘ Die now, brother. History will be kinder to you this way.’

XII

HE WAS GETTING farther ahead, weaving through a forest of stone columns and rockcrete walls, far enough for Alajos to warn him, ‘Caution, brother. We’re being hunted.’

‘Why haven’t you summoned the Ninth Order?’

Alajos grunted in response. ‘I already have. A drop-pod assault will still take seven minutes to reach us.’

Corswain moved to another pillar, his eyes gleaming red and his tabard turned cream in the gloom. ‘I’m going to help the Lion.’

‘Corswain…’ Alajos warned again. ‘He needs none of our help to slay that ghoul.’

‘I saw him go down into the dust.’ Corswain risked another glance. The fortress’s foundations were a forest of stone columns and walls, and the wind whipping through the crater stole any hope of hearing the Night Lords’ armour thrumming.

‘What did you see?’ Alajos’s voice came more hesitantly now, ripe with doubt.

‘The revenant leapt at the Lion. They went down into the dust.’ Corswain listened to the wind clawing at his helm, muffled to dull buffeting. ‘I think I see them. Cover me.’

‘Wait!’

He didn’t wait. He sprinted through the construction site, falling under fire almost immediately. Sheng.It had to be. Corswain weaved through fire from his left, ignoring Alajos’s warning cries. Several shells struck home, ripping chunks from his war plate and sending black armour shards cracking against the stone walls. Each detonating shell kicked like a warhorse, knocking him off-balance, but he could focus on nothing but the Lion lying in the dirt, his slack neck in a heretic’s grip.

The enemy fire ceased. Alajos was breathless over the vox, ‘I’ll… kill Sheng.’ The audible clashing of blades served as percussion to the words. The captain already battled the Night Lord. ‘Behind you!’ he threw another warning over the vox.

As Corswain tore closer to the prone figure of his liege lord, the snarl of a chainblade throttling up came from behind. He didn’t turn as Sevatar finally made himself known, never breaking the headlong sprint.

‘I can outrun him,’ he whispered into the vox. The chainspear’s growl was already fading. His hearts thudded as hard as a warhorse’s hooves on the snowy ground. Around pillars, over low walls, he sprinted and weaved, doing all he could in case Sevatar opened fire.

Behind him, only silence. Over the vox, the crash of blade on blade.

‘Brother,’ Alajos voxed, ‘keep running.’ The tone of his voice was enough to make Corswain turn, though he didn’t slow down. After vaulting another wall, he looked over his cloaked shoulder just in time to see his captain die.

XIII

ALAJOS WAS MANY things beside his rank of Ninth Captain: a loyal son; a dutiful knight; a gifted tactician; and a warrior with a head for the detailed logistics of planning and organising a crusade force. He was also one of the finest swordsmen in the First Legion, and had once lasted almost a full minute in a spar with his primarch.

He suspected the number of Legiones Astartes warriors capable of besting him numbered fewer than twenty across all the Legions. Ezekyle Abaddon of the traitorous Sons was one; Jubal Khan of the Scars another; and Templar Sigismund of the Fists definitely another.

As was Sevatar. His name joined the others, coursing through both sides of the Imperial Civil War, cheered by some, cursed by others.

Sheng was Nostraman gutter trash – he offered almost no threat at all despite being his primarch’s huscarl. When Alajos assured Corswain he would kill the Night Lord, it hadn’t been false bravado. He could, and would, do just that. The first clashes of blade on blade told Alajos all he needed to know about the other warrior’s form: Sheng was an aggressive killer, seeking to stab rather than chop, dodging rather than blocking. But the tells betrayed him, as they always did to those who knew what to seek. Sheng was slower than Alajos. Weaker. Less experienced. He overbalanced when he dodged. He missed the perfect angle of his blade each time he parried.

Appallingly inelegant swordwork. He’d be dead in minutes. Alajos engaged him and held nothing back, utterly convinced of victory.

When Sevatar finally broke cover behind Corswain, Alajos had whispered his warning. Corswain chose to run on. Sevatar, curse his eyes, chose not to pursue. Alajos had watched Corswain’s pounding boots breed more distance between them, while Sevatar stalked back to aid his foul brother, Sheng.

Alajos backed away from them both now, his blade up to guard against Sheng’s stabbing sword and Sevatar’s grinding halberd. The Night Lords stalked closer, stolen skulls and Dark Angel helms clacking against their ceramite war plate as they dangled on chains.