Kai knew he should join this struggle, but his limbs were filling with ice water and lead.

Scharff’s hands were crushing the life from Hiriko, and the restraint she had shown towards her fellow neurolocutor was forgotten as she accepted that the force controlling Scharff was too strong for him to defy.

Kai saw the needle glint in the harsh overhead lights, and watched as it described a short arc that saw it thrust into Adept Scharff’s eye. The man howled and his back arched in pain. Scharff hurled himself away from Hiriko, as though distance from the source of his hurt could somehow lessen it. Viscous fluids drooled down Scharff’s cheek and he flopped onto his back as the chemicals raced to his brain.

His body convulsed as rogue electrical impulses sent his muscles into spasm. Spittle flew from his mouth and a hideous wet gurgling bubbled up from his lungs with bile-flecked foam. Scharff beat his heels on the floor and scrabbled with clawed hands, tearing out his fingernails and leaving bloody tracks on the tiles.

Hiriko slumped to the floor as Scharff’s body twitched with what remained of his life, and Kai felt sick to his stomach at the sight. He had watched the astropaths of Choir Primus die, had felt Sarashina’s blood on him, and had listened to the entire crew of the Argodie, but to see a man die so painfully right in front of him was a truly horrific sight.

The interrogation chamber was silent save for the soft chiming of the bio-monitoring equipment, Hiriko’s laboured breathing and the dripping of noxious saliva from Scharff’s gaping mouth.

Kai let out a terrified breath, knowing he had only a few precious moments to make the most of the opportunity Scharff had given him. Before he could do more than recognise that fact, a booming impact struck the door of the interrogation chamber. Another swiftly followed, and Hiriko smiled as she slid down onto her side.

‘They’re coming for you,’ she said, her words coming out in a hoarse rasp.

Another impact shook the door, and this time it buckled inwards, the locks holding it closed shattered by the force assaulting them. One further blow tore the door from its housing, and it landed of the tiles with a booming clang. A towering shape in a form-fitting yellow bodyglove ducked through the doorway, and Kai backed away from this latest terror.

Long black hair framed a face of thick, flattened features that nevertheless combined in a handsome whole, and Kai smelled a pungent reek emanating from the warrior’s skin as he extended a hand towards him.

‘Kai Zulane, I am Atharva of the Thousand Sons,’ said the giant. ‘Come with me.’

FOURTEEN

Flight and Fight

THE GIANT’S WORDS took a moment to sink in, and even then Kai couldn’t process their meaning. There could be no question that this figure was a Legiones Astartes warrior: his bulk and unspoken threat was undeniable, but there was more to it than that. Kai saw the world through artificial eyes, and every sweep, curve and angle of the giant’s face seemed somehow more solid than any other living soul he had seen.

‘You are Legiones Astartes,’ said Kai, his words slurred and little more than a whisper.

‘I already said that,’ stated the giant, taking hold of Kai’s shoulder and hauling him to his feet as though he weighed nothing at all. Atharva was enormous, as tall as Saturnalia, but broader and more powerfully built.

‘Why?’ said Kai.

‘I have little time for questions, and no patience for ones so ambiguously formed,’ said Atharva. ‘Our escape has not gone unnoticed, and warriors we cannot face will be on their way. Now we must hurry.’

Kai stumbled through the buckled doorway of the interrogation chamber. He glanced over his shoulder at the recumbent form of Adept Hiriko, wondering if she were alive or dead. Despite all that she had subjected him to, Kai hoped she still lived.

Six figures filled the vestibule beyond the chamber in which he’d spent an unknown amount of time, six warriors of enormous bulk and distinct character that was immediately apparent even if they hadn’t sported tattoos and Legion markings on engorged biceps, mountain-ridge shoulders and forearms larger than Kai’s thighs. Instantly, he knew who had rescued him from his cell.

‘You are the Crusader Host,’ he said.

‘What is left of it,’ said a warrior with hair that was a dirty mix of pale white and dark roots. ‘You do not see us at our best.’

‘That name is meaningless to us now,’ said another with a bare chest that rippled with muscles and crudely-inked tattoos of weapons and teeth. ‘We are dead to the Imperium.’

‘We are outcast,’ spat the warrior next to him, and Kai saw a resemblance between the two that went beyond their shared genhancements.

‘The Outcast Dead,’ said Atharva, with a sly twist of a grin. ‘If you knew what that meant in ages past, you would appreciate the irony of that.’

‘The Outcast Dead,’ repeated a grim-faced warrior who was a giant even in the company of giants. ‘A dishonourable name for warriors, but a more fitting one than the last we bore.’

‘What’s happening here? I don’t understand what’s going on,’ said Kai.

‘What is to understand?’ said a brute with half his head encased in hammered pig iron and plugged with copper-wound wires. ‘We are fighting to be free. You are coming with us.’

‘Why?’

‘Again with the vaguely-worded questions,’ said Atharva, shaking his head. ‘Tagore, Asubha and Subha are World Eaters, Kiron is Emperor’s Children, Severian a Luna Wolf and that hulking brute with the shaved skull is Gythua, a true son of Mortarion. We were incarcerated, as were you. And as Tagore says, we are fighting to be free, a situation that would be made a great deal easier if you were to save your questions until later. Understood?’

Kai nodded, and Atharva gestured to the corridor behind the warrior he had named as Kiron. Severian ghosted down its length, far faster and quieter than a man of such bulk had any right to move.

Atharva turned to one of the World Eaters and said, ‘Subha, keep this one safe.’

‘I am not your lapdog, sorcerer,’ snapped the warrior.

‘And yet you will do it,’ said Atharva with a firm, demanding tone. Kai sensed a brief flare of psychic energy, but said nothing as Subha nodded and took hold of him. The warrior’s fingers easily encircled Kai’s upper arm, and he winced at the strength of the grip.

Atharva gave him a smile that was part conspiratorial, part shared secret, and set off after Severian. The rest of the group fell in behind them, moving with a familiarity that spoke of decades of training.

He had seen warriors of the Legiones Astartes many times before aboard the ships of the XIII Legion, but where the Battle Kings of Macragge were honourable paragons of all that it meant to be noble, these warriors were more like corsairs or mercenaries.

Or traitors, thought Kai, remembering why they had been held captive in the first place.

He was in the company of traitors, so what did that make him?

THE PACE WAS brutal, and Kai wasn’t so much walking behind the Space Marines as being dragged by them. Tunnels of rock, corridors of antiseptic sterility and bare stone passageways passed in a blur until Kai lost all sense of direction.

‘Enemies,’ came a voice from ahead. Little more than a whisper, yet sounding as though the speaker were right in front of him. Kai saw Severian at a cross junction, making a chopping motion with his hand along a corridor at right angles to their route.

‘Tagore,’ said Atharva.

‘On it. Asubha, low and fast.’

‘Me first,’ said Kiron, rolling around the corner with a rifle that looked absurdly tiny in his fist. He fired two blisteringly bright shots in quick succession, before ducking back into cover.

‘Go,’ he said.

Tagore bared his teeth and ran around the corner with Asubha at his side. Kai heard the pounding of feet and a feral roar that sounded inhuman in its ferocity. The grip on his arm tightened, and Kai let out a muffled grunt of pain.