He spun low and cut his attacker in two, darting like a striking snake as he stabbed and thrust with his butcher’s blade. Tagore appeared at his side and shot two men in the back before they could turn to face him. The World Eaters sergeant laughed, revelling in the murderous ballet that raged around him, and didn’t see the blow that drove him to his knees.

Ghota loomed above Tagore, a heavy hammer of wrought iron spinning around his body as though it weighed nothing at all. Another crashing hammer blow thundered into Tagore’s side, sending him spinning through the air as he struggled to rise. Subha threw himself at Ghota, but a backhanded jab of an elbow smashed into his jaw and sent him flying.

‘Kiron!’ shouted Atharva, edging towards one of the narrow alleyways that led from this battleground. ‘Kill that one!’

A bright lance of plasma energy spat from the ruins, but either Ghota had heard Atharva’s shout or some preternatural sense warned him of imminent danger, and he swayed aside from the killing blast. The warrior of Fulgrim’s Legion vaulted from the ruins and ran towards Ghota, outraged that this upstart had ruined his perfect record of headshots.

Asubha thrust with his crackling blade, but Ghota turned it aside and sent a thunderous left hook into his attacker’s jaw. Asubha staggered, his face a mask of shock more than pain. A pistoning jab crashed into Asubha’s face, then another, and the warrior reeled as Ghota swung his hammer in a killing arc.

Atharva dropped his kine shield long enough to lift his mind into the lower Enumerations where he could draw on the basic abilities of the Pyrae. With a surge of thought, Atharva hurled a searing bolt of cracking fire towards Ghota. It struck the hulking warrior before he could deliver the deathblow to Asubha, and the cloak at his shoulders erupted with flame.

Ghota roared in pain and tore the blazing cloak from his armour as a fluid shape emerged on the flank of the attackers. The ghostly form of Severian slid from the shadows like a wolf on the hunt. He killed without warning, leaving dead bodies in his wake and moving before his victims were even aware of their danger.

Kiron threw aside his discharged plasma carbine and swept up Subha’s fallen blade. The edge no longer crackled with energy, but Kiron did not care. His dirty white hair flowed behind him as he attacked like a swordsman forced to fight with an unbalanced blade.

‘You might look like us, but you’re just a pathetic copy,’ snapped Kiron.

Ghota laughed. ‘Is that what you think?’

A duel between a swordsman and a longer-reaching hammer was an unequal contest, but these were no ordinary combatants. As Severian killed with impunity and the World Eaters regrouped in the midst of a furious short-range firefight, Kiron darted and wove between slashing blows of Ghota’s hammer. His skill was prodigious, his footwork flawless and his attacks launched with no hint of their target, and Atharva saw him working towards a decapitating strike.

It was a battle of contrasts: precisely controlled skill and perfect discipline against raw violence and hunger for the kill. In the end, there could only be one victor. Kiron ducked beneath a killing arc of the hammerhead and thrust his blade into the narrow gap between Ghota’s breastplate and pauldron. The blade stabbed deep into the meat of the man’s body, yet he merely grunted as the blade went in. Ghota shoulder barged Kiron, gripping him by the neck and smashing his forehead into the exquisitely handsome features of his opponent.

Kiron’s nose and cheeks broke, transforming his beautiful face into a shattered mask of fractured bone and squirting blood. Atharva paused in his escape, stunned at Kiron’s wounding. Though gunfire and screams still filled the square, the tempo of the battle seemed to drop as the combatants on both sides watched so perfect a warrior fall.

Ghota’s hammer looped around in a bludgeoning curve, and smashed into Kiron’s shoulder, destroying muscle and flesh and driving down into his chest in a welter of broken ribs. Atharva heard the crack of bones and felt a sympathetic spasm of pain as Kiron’s agony flared in the aether.

Kiron spat a torrent of blood, staring defiantly at his killer.

Ghota’s hammer swung around to crush Kiron’s skull to splinters.

A heavy fist caught the enormous weapon’s haft on its downward arc, a pale, sepulchral hand streaked with blood and empowered with all the strength bred into the warriors of Mortarion’s deathly Legion.

Gythua sent a right cross into Ghota’s jaw, the blow hitting home like a pile-driver and sending Babu Dhakal’s warrior reeling.

‘That’s my friend you’ve killed,’ he barked.

Atharva knew the Death Guard should not be alive. He should already be dead, a bled-out corpse cooling on Antioch’s bench. He shouldn’t even have survived the crash, but here he was, unyielding even unto the end. Ghota shook his head and spat blood, taking in the measure of his opponent and giving a crooked-toothed smile.

‘You’re as good as dead,’ said Ghota.

‘That’s as maybe,’ agreed Gythua. ‘But come near my friend again and your blood will run with mine on this fine ground.’

‘I’ll kill you before you can raise a fist,’ Ghota promised.

‘Then come on, boy,’ snapped the Death Guard. ‘You’re boring me already.’

Gythua’s talk was brave, but Atharva knew he could not hope to stand against Ghota. Determination and honour were keeping Gythua on his feet, but they wouldn’t be enough against so formidable an opponent.

The sounds of gunfire slackened, and Atharva saw that as Kiron and Ghota had fought, Severian and the World Eaters had finished the battle. Bodies littered the square, some cut open, some headless and some simply torn limb from limb. The odds in this battle had turned on their head, and Atharva saw that understanding in Ghota’s blood-red eyes.

The warrior raised his hammer and spat on the ground before walking away from the slaughter. No one raised a weapon against him, though Tagore had one of his victim’s guns held across his bloodied chest. Subha and his twin watched Ghota go with a mixture of wary respect and anger, while Severian swept up a fallen rifle and scanned for fresh threats.

With Ghota out of sight, Gythua sank to his knees beside Kiron, his head dropping to his chest as the life ebbed from him. Atharva ran to his side and laid Kai down on the ground in time to catch the Death Guard as his indomitable strength finally gave out. He held the dying warrior and wiped blood from his ghostly pale face.

Beside him, Kiron coughed a frothed mouthful of blood and struggled to speak through the pain of his shattered body. The World Eaters gathered round, bloodied angels of death come to witness the final moments of their fallen brothers. Even Antioch had emerged from the wreckage of his home to see something most mortals would never see through the entire span of their impossibly brief lives: the death of a Space Marine.

‘Didn’t… think… you’d get a… glorious death… all to… yourself, did you?’ hissed Kiron with gurgling, breathy effort.

‘Can’t say I was… trying… to die at all,’ replied Gythua. ‘Damn fool of you to go up against that big bastard.’

Kiron nodded. ‘He made me miss, and… I never… miss…’

‘I won’t tell,’ said Gythua, and the last of his life bled out.

Kiron nodded and put a hand on Gythua’s shoulder before letting out a rattling cough that stilled his breath. Atharva watched the light of his aura fade to grey and bowed his head.

‘They are gone,’ he said.

‘They died well,’ observed Tagore, one hand pressed to his side where he had been shot.

Asubha knelt beside the two dead warriors and closed their eyes.

‘Their Crimson Path is ended,’ said Subha.

Tagore looked over at Atharva and aimed his gun at Kai. ‘You still think the astropath is worth this?’