On the blood-slicked sandbanks, Mortarion stabbed at the air with the blade of his scythe. 'The captain of the Seventh has keen vision! The xenos seek to distract us with easy kills, to keep our attention on the ground!'

The primarch gave Garro a curt nod and strode to the top of another shallow powder dune, ignoring the scatters of enemy needle-shot that whined off his brass armour. Mortarion let his hood roll back so he could turn his face to the caged sky. We must correct them.'

For a long second, Nathaniel found himself rooted to the spot by his master's casual acknowledgement, despite his best intention to make little of it. The favour of his primarch, of an Emperor's son, even for an instant was a heady thing indeed, and he found some understanding as to why men like Grulgor would go so far to court it. Then Garro shook it off and slammed a fresh sickle magazine into his weapon. 'Seventh, to arms!' he cried, bringing the bolter to his shoulder and sighting upward along its length.

THE JORGALL FLYERS came in numbers that dwarfed the ragged packs of land-based fighters the Death Guard met at the lake. Clad in a flickering green armour that wound about them in strips, the airborne xenos had sacrificed two of their limbs to their mechanical surgeons. In their stead were beating wings of sharp metal feathers, each edged like a razor. Feet had become balls of curved talons, and there were more of the lethal arc-throwers and needle-guns embedded in joints where they had keen fields of fire.

They came down whistling and hooting, met a wall of bolt shell and high-energy plasma and died, but this was only the first wave and more of them, green glitters in the sky, poured out of the gauzy yellow cloud.

Garro saw one of Hakur's men wreathed in humming glints of artificial lightning and smelled the stench of crisping human meat as a flight of the xenos flyers shocked the life from him. Nearby the dreadnought Huron-Fal deployed his missile packs and threw explosive death into the wheeling flocks, blasting dozens of them out of the air with the concussion. For his part, Garro moved carefully, low

to the oxide sands, picking off the xenos in bursts of full-auto fire as they dropped in on swooping strikes. The attack pattern of the aliens was clear. They were attempting to push the Astartes back into the icy lake.

'Not today,' said the battle-captain to the air, clipping the wings of a large adult female. The creature spiralled headfirst into the sands and twitched.

He became aware that he had company. Garro glanced over his shoulder and frowned in mild surprise at the cadre of lithe golden figures coming up behind him. The Sisters of Silence moved in quick lockstep, maintaining coherent fire corridors and combat discipline with an efficiency that he had only previously seen among his brother Astartes.

It was difficult for him to tell the women apart. Their armour was polished to a glittering sheen, unadorned by any brash sigils or fluttering oath papers like the pale wargear of the Death Guard. Their faces were hidden behind hawkish gold helmets that reminded him of the barred gates to some ancient citadel, no doubt equipped with breather gear that let the unmodified Sisterhood manage the toxic air of the bottle-world. They seemed identical, as if they were forged from some mythic mould by the Emperor's hand. He wondered idly if normal men might view the Astartes in a similar way.

The Sisterhood carried swords and flamers, blades and plumes of fire licked at the jorgall flyers as they dipped into range. Some also carried bolters.

As was their vow in the Emperor's service, the women never spoke, even those speared by needle rounds or struck by arc-fire. They communicated in line of sight using a gestural language similar to Astartes battle-sign, or through a code of clicks over the vox. From the way they crossed the engagement

zone, he had no doubt in his mind that they knew exactly where they were going.

As they passed, the Sister closest to him spared Garro a look, and the battle-captain felt a peculiar chill fall across him. That the Sisterhood ranged the galaxy in search of rogue psychics to capture or expunge was widely known, but what was less understood was the manner in which they did it.

Garro had heard that unlike other living beings, these unspeaking women were silent not just in the material world, but also in the ephemeral realm of the mind. There were names for them: untouchables, pariahs, blanks.

He frowned at the irrational nature of thoughts, pushing them away. In the next second, they were forgotten as warning runes blinked inside his visor. Garro caught the sound of shrieking air over razor wings.

He moved as a flight of jorgalli came down upon them. Fast as only an Astartes could be, he slammed his hand into the back of the Sister at his flank and sent her down and away as tenfold claws cut through the air towards them. Garro threw his arm up to deflect the blow and felt the talons slice gouges through his vambrace. The screeching jorgall ripped upwards and into his helmet, tearing it from his neck ring in a bone wrenching impact. He staggered and recovered, bringing his bolter to bear. Garro's gun barked and from the sand the Sister fired with him. None of the flight that had dared to attack them lived to take air again.

The battle-captain grimaced and patted his face, content to find he had gained no new scars from the encounter. Getting to her feet, the witchseeker walked to him and presented Garro with his helmet, ripped

back from the jorgall claws. It was badly damaged, but the symbolic gesture was an important one. The woman looked up and inclined her head. With her free hand she touched her heart and her brow. The meaning was clear. My thanks to you. Unsure of the correct protocol, Garro simply nodded in return, and that seemed enough. The women moved on, leaving him behind. It was only as he saw their backs that Garro noticed the plume of dark hair issuing from the Sister's golden helm, and the red aquila etching across her shoulder blades.

He moved down to the core of the fighting, over a dunescape littered wim jorgall dead and on rare occasions, fallen figures in pale grey power armour. Each brother perished here ground Garro's rage like stone on stone, for every one of them was worth a thousand of the freakish intruders.

The captain heard the slamming crack of Mortar-ion's Lantern once again, and looked up to see the primarch sweep it through the air like a searchlight, catching aliens afire, turning them into a rain of ashen fallout.

Typhon's harsh growl sounded on the general vox channel. 'If this is all we have to face, I question if our might will even be tested today!'

'My father sent me here.' Mortarion's words were mild, but heavy with intent. 'Do you think him wrong to do so, first captain?'

Another man might have baulked at the veiled threat, but not Typhon. 'I only chafe at such poor sport, lord commander. We dally here too long, sir.'

Garro caught a grunt of agreement. 'Perhaps we do, my friend.' When he spoke again, the primarch did it aloud, eschewing the vox to broadcast his voice. 'Sons

of Death! You know your objectives! Take your units and prosecute the foe! Typhon, with me; Gralgor, the drives; Garro, the hatchery. Go now!'

The elements of the Seventh Company came to him and the battle-captain was pleased to see that there had been few losses among them. The Apothecary, Voyen, looked him up and down, silently commenting on the state of his helmet where the headgear hung from his belt. Decius too was unhooded and his pale face was split with a murderous grin. The staining of viscera on his power fist was mute testament to his kills so far.

He nodded to them, and the men of the Seventh took up their formation. They moved, letting Grul-gor's company mop up the last of the airborne jorgall. They crossed out from the crystalline dunes at a quick pace, and into groves of tall tree-like forms woven from some kind of rough fibre.