'Then I will gather the coven immediately,' said Ahriman.

'Yes, gather them, but await my arrival before beginning. Horus may yet surprise us.'

Panic, fear, indecision: three emotions previously unknown to Loken seized him as Horus fell. The Warmaster crashed to the ground in slow motion, splashing into the mud as his body went completely limp. Shouts of alarm went up, but a paralysis of inaction held those closest to the Warmaster tightly in its grip, as though time itself had slowed.

Loken stared at the Warmaster lying on the ground before him, inert and corpse-like, unable to believe what he was seeing. The rest of the Mournival stood similarly immobile, rooted to the spot in disbelief. He felt as though the air had become thick and cloying, the cries of fear that spread outwards echoing and distant as though from a holo-picter running too slow.

Only Petronella Vivar seemed unaffected by the inaction that held Loken and his brothers firm. Down on her knees in the mud next to the Warmaster, she was weeping and wailing at him to get back up again.

The knowledge that his commander was down and a mortal woman had reacted before any of the Sons of Horus shamed Loken into action and he dropped to one knee alongside the fallen Horus.

'Apothecary!' shouted Loken, and time snapped back with a crash of shouts and cries.

The Mournival dropped to the ground beside him.

'What's wrong?' demanded Abaddon.

'Commander!' shouted Torgaddon.

'Lupercal!' cried Aximand.

Loken ignored them and forced himself to focus.

This is a battlefield injury and I will treat it as such, he thought.

He scanned the Warmaster's body as the others put their hands on him, pushing the remembrancer out of the way as each struggled to wake their lord and master. Too many hands were interfering, and Loken yelled, 'Stop. Get back!'

The Warmaster's armour was beaten and torn, but Loken could see no other obvious breaches in the armoured plates save where the shoulder guard had been torn away, and where the gaping puncture wound oozed in his chest.

'Help me get his armour off!' he shouted.

The Mournival, bound together as brothers, nodded and, grateful to have a focus for their efforts, instantly obeyed Loken's command. Within moments, they had removed Horus's breastplate and pauldrons and were unstrapping his remaining shoulder guard.

Loken tore off his helmet and cast it aside, pressing his ear to the Warmaster's chest. He could hear the Warmaster's hearts, pounding in a deathly slow double beat.

'He's still alive!' he cried.

'Get out of the way!' shouted a voice behind him, and he turned to rebuke this newcomer before seeing the double helix caduceus symbol on his armour plates. Another apothecary joined the first and the Mournival was unceremoniously pushed aside as they went to work, hissing Narthecium stabbing into the Warmaster's flesh.

Loken stood watching them, impotent and helpless as they fought to stabilise the Warmaster. His eyes filled with tears and he looked around in vain for something to do, something to make him feel he was helping. There was nothing, and he felt like crying out to the heavens for making him so powerful and yet so useless.

Abaddon wept openly, and to see the first captain so unmanned made Loken's fear for the Warmaster all the more terrible. Aximand watched the apothecaries work with a grim stoicism, while Torgaddon chewed his bottom lip and prevented the remembrancer from getting in the way.

The Warmaster's skin was ashen, his lips blue and his limbs rigid, and Loken knew that they must destroy whatever power had felled Horus. He turned and began marching back towards the Glory of Terra, determined that he would take the stricken craft apart, piece by piece if need be.

'Captain!' called one of the apothecaries, a warrior Loken knew as Vaddon. 'Get a Stormbird here now! We need to get him to the Vengeful Spirit.'

Loken stood immobile, torn between his desire for vengeance and his duty to the Warmaster.

'Now, captain!' yelled the apothecary, and the spell was broken.

He nodded dumbly and opened a channel to the captains of the Stormbirds, grateful to have a purpose in this maelstrom of confusion. Within moments, one of the medical craft was inbound and Loken watched, mesmerised, as the apothecaries fought to save the Warmaster.

He could see from the frantic nature of their ministrations that they were fighting an uphill battle, their Narthecium whirring miniature centrifuges of blood and dispensing patches of syn-skin to treat his wounds. Their conversations passed over him, but he caught the odd familiar word here and there. 'Larraman cells ineffective…'

'Hypoxic poisoning…'

Aximand appeared at his side and placed his hand on Loken's shoulder. 'Don't say it, Little Horus,' warned Loken. 'I wasn't going to, Garviel,' said Aximand. 'He'll be alright. There's nothing this place could throw at the Warmaster that'll keep him down for long.'

'How do you know?' asked Loken, his voice close to breaking. 'I just do. I have faith.'

'Faith?'

'Yes,' answered Aximand. 'Faith that the Warmaster is too strong and too stubborn to be brought low by something like this. Before you know it we'll be his war dogs once again.'

Loken nodded as the howling downdraught of a Stormbird snatched his breath away.

The screaming craft hovered overhead, throwing up sheets of water as it circled on its descent. Landing skids deployed and the craft came down amid a spray of muddy water.

Before it had touched down, the Mournival and apothecaries had lifted Horus between them. Even as the assault ramp came down, they were rushing inside, placing the Warmaster on one of the gurneys as the Stormbird's jets fired to lift it from Davin's moon.

The assault ramp clanged shut behind them, and Loken felt the aircraft lurch as the pilot aimed it for the skies. The apothecaries hooked the Warmaster up to medicae machines, jamming needles and hissing tubes into his arms, and placing a feed line of oxygen over his mouth and nose.

Suddenly superfluous, Loken slumped into one of the armoured bucket seats against the fuselage of the aircraft and held his head in his hands.

Across from him, the Mournival did the same.

To say that Ignace Karkasy was not a happy man was an understatement. His lunch was cold, Mersadie Oliton was late and the wine he was drinking wasn't fit to lubricate the gears of an engine. To top it all off, his pen tapped on the thick paper of the Bondsman number 7 without any inspiration flowing. He'd taken to avoiding the Retreat, partly for fear of running into Wenduin again, but mostly because it just depressed him too much. The vandalism done to the bar lent it an incredibly sad and gloomy aspect and, while some of the remembrancers needed the squalor to inspire their work, Karkasy wasn't one of them.

Instead, he relaxed in the sub-deck where most of the remembrancers gathered for their meals, but which was empty for the better part of the day. The solitude was helping him to deal with all that had happened since he'd challenged Euphrati Keeler about her distributing the Lectitio Divinitatus pamphlets - though it certainly wasn't helping him compose any poetry.

She'd been unrepentant when he'd confronted her, urging him to join her in prayer to the God-Emperor, before some kind of makeshift shrine.

'I can't,' he had said. 'It's ridiculous, Euphrati, can't you see that?'

'What's so ridiculous about it, Ig?' she'd asked. 'Think about it, we've embarked upon the greatest crusade known to man. A crusade: a war motivated by religious beliefs!'

'No, no,' he protested, 'it's not that at all. We've moved beyond the need for the crutch of religion, Euphrati and we didn't set out from Terra to take a step backwards into such outmoded concepts of belief. It's only by dispelling the clouds and superstitions of religion that we discover truth, reason and morality.'