In their current state, the Scions would continue to kill until they received an order to stop, or either the enemy or exhaustion killed them. Their armour was soaked through with rank water, sweat and blood. As physical mechanisms, their bodies were bound to wear out at some point – Norroll fought to keep from shaking. His muscles cramped across his entire body, feeling as if they were shredding beneath his skin. While he could still feel the pain of his injuries and the febrile burning of lactic acid in his muscles, his psychological architecture, coupled with the lingering, nerve-deadening effects of the vitalotox, rendered him incapable of acting on it. His greatest hope was that they would soon simply run out of enemies to kill and be able to continue the mission, but the foe seemed inexhaustible.

  Despite his age, Fennech appeared to be holding up best under the tremendous physical exertion. Norroll had no idea how much of the original commissar remained beneath his greatcoat – it seemed much of him was powered by the compact fusion generator he wore on his back. Fortified by the Officio Prefectus’ fathomless strength of will, Fennech fought with power fist and power sword in tandem, the combination of brutal power and flickering speed ending any who came within his reach.

  Fennech was shouting something and Durlo reacted, raising his lasgun as Norroll severed a Guardsman’s hand at the wrist. A single Rilisian traitor darted towards them, bouncing from the walls with seemingly comical slowness as he somehow evaded Durlo’s fire.

  The Guardsman clenched a grenade’s pull-ring between his teeth, and Norroll nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. The grenade was in his left fist, the top of the explosive fizzling like a firework as he wound up his arm to throw. Left foot planted, his right hand came up and his left arm snapped forward. He pitched backwards as one of Durlo’s rounds struck him in his mouth, but the grenade was already tumbling down the corridor, vomiting a tail of smoke and sparks like a comet. It ricocheted from the wall to Norroll’s right and bounced into the corridor behind him, just before the world ended in a rush of sound and hellfire.

  ‘Keep it together,’ Norroll whispered, trying to push Annigan forward.

  ‘Cut my foot open on a stone back there,’ Annigan hissed through his teeth. ‘I think it sliced a tendon.’

  ‘“Pain is an illusion of the body,” remember?’ Norroll said. ‘Blood and sand’ll clot up the wound, and we can clean it when we get back.’

  Ahead of them, Actis turned around and waved for the pair to move forward. ‘Come on!’ he whispered urgently, though he had sense enough to not stop.

  The queue of cadets behind them began to pass them by. Norroll wrapped his arm around Annigan and started to drag the boy forward through the scouring obsidian sands.

  Annigan shrugged him off. ‘Aiding another progenius is proscribed during the Path of Faith, Gry.’

  ‘Then they’ll have to kill us both,’ Norroll said defiantly.

  ‘Will we?’

  A pit seemed to open in Norroll’s stomach as the moment’s recalcitrance withered.

  Commissar Fennech loomed over Norroll, his face impassive as an alabaster effigy’s. He held his bolt pistol loosely at his side, almost casually, the muzzle angled towards the ground.

  ‘Forgetting oneself on the field of battle, however well intentioned, jeopardises the mission, Cadet Norroll,’ Fennech said. ‘If the God-Emperor smiles, it is only the transgressor who pays the price for indiscipline.’ He raised a white-gloved finger. ‘I have learned, however, that the Emperor rarely smiles.’

  ‘“A round squandered is as two in the backs of your allies,”’ Norroll said. The adage came unbidden – he had read it somewhere, once, but the source eluded him. ‘Commissar,’ he added quickly.

  The other progenia filed past, their eyes fixed upon the tall dune ahead and away from the commissar and their fellows.

  ‘So it is,’ Fennech agreed. ‘And so it is written, by Primarch Guilliman’s own hand, no less. Very good, Cadet Norroll.’

  The bolt pistol flashed up and fired. Norroll jolted as Annigan’s blood spattered across his respirator’s visor.

  Blood dripped down Norroll’s face as he gaped up at death.

  ‘Allowances must be made for misfires,’ Fennech said, and marched off.

  Norroll awakened to the whine of hydraulics and the clatter of pebbles on cracking rockcrete. He struggled to breathe beneath the crushing pressure buckling his cuirass tight against his ribs and spine. The obsidian sands of Abstinax faded as sunlight streamed through Norroll’s optics, washing his vision out in a flash of brilliant monochrome before his lenses could step down.

  Blinded, Norroll blinked away tears as he attempted to clear his vision. The pressure on his back released suddenly and he could breathe again, sucking air through the clogged filters of his respirator. Still blinking, he looked up.

  Fennech stood above him, shifting the slab of rockcrete that had crushed Norroll beneath it with the enormous hydraulic fingers of his power fist. He grimaced, his organic components straining under the tremendous weight borne by his augmetics. Fennech tossed the slab aside, freeing the recon trooper from the site of his premature burial. On either side of the commissar, Durlo and Akraatumo cleared debris.

  Durlo hauled at a steel beam pinning Norroll’s left shin. ‘Can you move?’

  Norroll rose with halting movements, attempting to assess his condition without causing himself further damage. ‘Seems so,’ he replied.

  Akraatumo helped lift him to his feet.

  Norroll tapped on his breastplate, the armour so badly dented, scoured and stained that it retained barely any of its original green colouration. ‘God-Emperor’s blessing,’ he wheezed. His ribs, hips and shoulders burned. Though there was still little enough pain, he felt that all was not quite well with him internally. ‘Are they all dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fennech said. ‘Emperor be praised, the enemy grenadier did more damage to his own than to us. We eliminated the few remaining survivors before digging you out.’

  Norroll nodded. ‘Not that I’m unappreciative, commissar, but why did you dig me out?’

  Durlo held up his slate monitron and shrugged. ‘You weren’t dead.’

  ‘Would have been a waste, not having you along to draw fire for us,’ Akraatumo said.

  ‘It’s good to be useful.’ Norroll looked up to the sunlight streaming in through the hole above them, tapping a code into his wrist-slate. Actis awakened from where it idled in the corridor junction, its grav-impellors humming quietly as it rose up to the surface.

  Norroll consulted the readings that scrolled across his vambrace. ‘Emperor be praised, indeed,’ he said. ‘Seems that grenadier killed his friends and gave us a shortcut. We’re less than three hundred yards south of the artillery position.’

  ‘Your intent?’ Fennech asked.

  ‘We go up, kill the crews and turn this ambush on its head.’

  XIV

  Zheev leaned forward in his Chimera’s command hatch, watching the mayhem unfolding in the ruins of the academy grounds through his magnoculars with a combination of fury and revulsion. Dust billowed from the ruins ahead, fresh insult to the injuries done there three months earlier. He could not see what was happening for the cloud but had no doubt of First Eradicant’s involvement.

  The lakrish root bobbed up and down between his lips as he chewed it. By defying orders, Traxel and his Scions had cost him an entire company at Pokol, and he had lost nearly two companies more trying to take it back. Strong as Zheev’s desire to crush Hurdt’s traitors into the dust was, he nursed a no less intense desire to see every Xian Tiger on Rilis executed for dereliction. The current battle at the academy only intensified this urge.

  ‘Save some for me, Oleg, you old bastard,’ he muttered, lowering the magnoculars. ‘I intend to skin Traxel myself.’

  Directly ahead, Attack Battalion, or what was left of it, led the charge down the academy’s bomb-rutted thoroughfare. A column of Chimeras, with Major Raff’s at its head, thundered towards the dust cloud at the academy’s heart.

  ‘Iron Zero to Attack Zero.’

  ‘Go ahead, Iron Zero,’ Raff said.

  ‘What do you see, Attack?’

  ‘Looks to be a major engagement up ahead, sir, but it’s difficult to see what’s going on through the dust. Something’s got the traitors riled.’

  Zheev grunted. ‘Damned Scions, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Likely. Colonel Mawr said they were heading to the academy’s depot for resupply.’

  ‘Wonder how they could want for anything, after the way they cleaned you out.’

  After a long pause, Zheev felt compelled to fill Raff’s guilty silence. ‘I’m tempted to let Hurdt’s turncoats have their way with them,’ he said with a gallows bird’s grin. ‘But that would rob me of the pleasure of hanging Traxel myself.’

  Multi-laser fire stitched across his Chimera’s right flank, forcing Zheev to duck into the turret.

  ‘Dammit!’ Zheev cursed as a las-bolt crackled over his head. Heavy bolter fire hammered the vehicle’s side armour.

  Four Chimeras, armoured in Stygian black, roared from the motor pool, followed by twelve others in Rilisian ochre. The Stygians ignored Attack Battalion entirely, making directly for Zheev’s command Chimera. The others peeled off, forcing themselves between Attack and the Stygians. Behind them, dismounted infantry poured from between the buildings, their heavy weapons teams readying mortars and missile launchers as the riflemen took their positions.

  ‘Shit,’ Zheev snarled into the inter-vox. ‘Hard right, enemy Chimeras in the open.’ Switching over to the regimental net, he called, ‘Bear Zero, Cold Steel Zero, this is Iron Zero. Two-Hundred-and-Twelfth is making a move on Attack Battalion, and I’ve got Stygians inbound. Need immediate support at the south-west corner of the academy depot.’

  ‘Acknowledged, Iron Zero,’ Major Gunvaldt replied. ‘Be advised, we are completing our flank action and approaching the northern bend of the Hukstrom.’

  Zheev pivoted his turret towards the Stygian Chimeras and opened fire with his multi-laser. ‘It’ll take you at least twenty minutes to get here, Gunvaldt.’ He paused. ‘Bear Zero, where are you?’

  ‘Trying to extract three Chimeras from the river, Iron Zero,’ Sarring said.

  ‘Oh, for the love of the Throne!’ Zheev shouted, shielding his face as the impact of a heavy bolter shell filled the turret with spall. ‘They’re Chimeras! They’re supposed to be amphibious!’

  ‘They were damaged. Took on water–’

  ‘Leave them!’ Zheev barked, wiping blood from his right eye. ‘Balt and I can’t manage against the Two-Hundred-and-Twelfth and a platoon of Stygians at the same time, Euri. Eat the losses and move, dammit!’

  ‘Acknowledged, sir. Bear moving.’

  A wave of nausea curdled in Zheev’s belly as the black Chimeras closed. It wasn’t fear – he had faced worse odds on half a dozen worlds – but something else, a vibration in the air that froze his marrow and sent his courage trickling away like water. A chill settled over him despite the heat of his Chimera, bristling the hair on his neck and arms.

  The Stygian Chimeras accelerated around Zheev’s vehicle, encircl­ing it and insulating it against ready support from Raff’s battalion. A ramp dropped and a team of Stygians rushed onto the tarmac, covering their comrade with the meltagun. The meltagun’s shrieking beam slagged the command vehicle’s left drive sprocket, bringing Zheev’s Chimera to a shuddering halt.

  A whisper, uttered with the hushed intensity of a secret bursting to be told, hissed at the edge of Zheev’s hearing. He barely noticed it at first, distracted as he was by the Stygians surrounding his vehicle, but it persisted, a half-heard noise sibilating in his ears like tinnitus.

  As it repeated, he began to understand it as a word – a name, perhaps, or a statement of intent in some foul tongue inimical to understanding.

  Esh’laki’im.

  ‘Everybody out!’ Zheev shouted. ‘Dekkan, Grelt, get that autocannon ready!’ He punched the rear hatch’s emergency release, firing his bolt pistol into the Stygian squad to their rear as the ramp clanged down.

  A krak grenade bounced towards the Chimera, pinging gently as it cantered across the pavement.

  ‘Move!’ Zheev shouted, hurling himself headlong from the vehicle a moment before the grenade burst, sending shrapnel and fragmented track links whizzing from the blast.

  Zheev crawled across the tarmac, keeping his head beneath the dazzlingly bright crossfire sizzling through the air scant inches above him. Behind him, a hotshot round caught his medic, Turmring, in the left side, punching through his flak armour. Firing his bolt pistol in the direction of the Stygians, Zheev grabbed Turmring under the arm and heaved him up and forward.

  Autocannon fire roared from around the edge of the stricken command Chimera as Dekkan and Grelt opened fire, sending the sable-armoured troopers behind the shelter of their own vehicles.

  A round struck Zheev in the centre of his back, knocking him from his feet. Burdened by Turmring’s weight, the colonel struggled back up, cursing.

  Something lumbered from the Stygian Chimera on uneven legs.

  Esh’laki’im. Esh’laki’im.

  The muzzle of its bolt pistol spat flame as the twisted Heretic Astartes fired into the fleeing Rilisians. Bolts spanged from flak armour or detonated on impact, pinning them to the ground. The Chaos Space Marine closed the gap, its horned battle helm nearly obscured by the noxious fume billowing from its gorget. Some manner of blade was fused to the twisted lump of jagged bone and barbed ceramite which had once been its fist. It keened hungrily, its hideous unlight leaving migraine-bright afterimages dancing unsteadily across Zheev’s vision. The sword was a corporeal manifestation of pure nightmare, and Zheev held a hand before his eyes to block the sight of it.

  The colonel raised his bolt pistol in defiance of the horror stalking towards him. The shot struck true beneath the tarnished iron of the distorted Adeptus Astartes’ distinctively vented plastron. Externally mounted power cables crackled as the round bored through the more vulnerable flexible armour covering on the warp-gnarled Space Marine’s abdomen and burst. Even for the genhanced physiology of an Adeptus Astartes, such a wound should prove almost instantly fatal.

  The fiend staggered but did not fall, though its answering bolt-round went wide of the mark. Head down, it squared its shoulders and charged, drawing back its dreadful blade for a reaping strike.

  The Heretic Astartes was dropped sprawling, punched off its feet by a salvo of autocannon fire from Dekkan and Grelt. The monster pitched over but scrambled clear with uncanny speed.

  Zheev made the most of the brief respite, lugging Turmring as he dodged through the Stygians’ resumed las-fire.

  The heavy weapons team continued to pour fire on the warp-twisted Space Marine.

  ‘Hold this,’ Zheev said, handing Turmring his bolt pistol. Priming a grenade, he hurled it at the Stygians.

  Though the frag grenade did little against the elite troopers’ carapace armour, it had the desired effect, sending them instinctively ducking to avoid the shrapnel.

  The monstrous Chaos Space Marine bellowed with two voices, its footfalls thundering across the cracked tarmac as it charged headlong at Zheev.

  Zheev pulled a grenade from Turmring’s belt pouch and side-armed it at the furious Space Marine, bouncing it across the macadam as if he were skipping a stone across a pond. It detonated on the third bounce, practically between the twisted Adeptus Astartes’ legs, though it scarcely slowed the accursed warrior’s furious charge. Smoke bled from the flashing edge of the hideous blade as it parted armour and flesh, carving through two Stygians who stood in its path. The remaining black-armoured troopers fled, desperately attempting to gain space between themselves and the enraged juggernaut rampaging through them.

  The heavy weapons crew pivoted their autocannon, stitching fire up the berserk Space Marine’s torso. Craters burst open across the brute’s armour as the force of the impacts spun it around, shattering iron-plated ceramite in bursts of black slime. The Heretic Astartes staggered and fell, skidding face first onto the ground as it collapsed.

  The Space Marine vibrated where it lay, its movements appearing somehow out of phase with the world around it. A low, burbling sound, horridly reminiscent of weeping, or perhaps laughter, gurgled from it. Its body twisted and expanded, contorting unnaturally as irregular clusters of iron-shod, bony spikes speared through splitting ceramite. Power armour melted and flowed like wax, coalescing with the livid flesh and crackling bone beneath in a heaving, amorphic mass. Oily black blood flowed from rents between joints, hissing as it boiled away the pavement beneath in a cloud of rancid smoke.

  Its right arm flailed, brass-taloned fingers scoring asphalt as they spasmed, knocking its bolt pistol spinning across the ground. Smoking vestigial wings tore free of the armour’s backpack, twitching spasmodically as they shed blackened feathers of flame-edged iron.

  Blood flowed from Zheev’s nose as something burst behind his eyes. The whisper grew louder and louder, reaching a crescendo as the flickering blade pulsed and writhed in time to it like some hideous chant.

  Esh’laki’im. Esh’laki’im. Esh’laki’im.

  The Stygians ran in blind panic, order and discipline forgotten in the face of the incomprehensible, seething monstrousness of their erstwhile ally’s transformation.

  The Rilisians ran as well, sprinting into the depot’s maze of containers and pallets as the monstrous Heretic Astartes struggled to its feet behind them. Zheev carried Turmring over his shoulders, at the rear of the group. The heavy weapons team abandoned their autocannon in their haste to flee.