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ONE

Assembly
A Fine Sword
Death Lord

In the void, the vessels gathered. Shifting gently in the silent darkness, the crenellated hulls and great ornate shapes appeared as a congregation of Gothic edifices, cathedral-wrought in their complexity, drifting as if torn from the surface of worlds and carved into warships. Great sculpted bows filigreed into arrow points turned, stately and lethal, to face into the dark on a uniform heading. Torches burned on some, in apparent defiance of the airless vacuum. Plasma fires trailed white-orange streams of turbulent gas from chimneys along the kilometres of gunmetal hulls. These beacons were lit only when conflict was in the moment. The flares of wasteful, daring heat they generated were signs to the enemy.

We bring the light of illumination to you.

The craft that rode at the head of the flotilla was cut from steel the shade of a stormy sky, with a prow sheathed in dark ocean green. It moved as a slow dagger might in the hand of a patient killer, inescapable, inexorable. It bore little in the way of ornament. The ship’s only decorations were martial in nature, etchings on the plough-blade bow in letters the height of a man, long lines of text that recalled an age of battles fought, worlds visited, opponents lain to wreckage. Her only adornments of any note were twofold: a golden spread eagle with two heads across the face of the flying bridge and a great icon made of heavy nickel-iron ore, a single stone skull set inside a hollow steel ring in the shape of a star, at the very lip of the spiked blade, watchful and threatening.

More ships fell into line behind her, taking up a formation that mirrored the battle-patterns of the warriors that were her payload. In echo of the unbreakable resolve of those fighters, the warship proudly bore a name in High Gothic script across her iron hull: Endurance.

Behind her came more of her kind, ranging in class and size both larger and smaller: the Indomitable Will, Barbarus’s Sting, Lord of Hyrus, Terminus Est, Undying, Spectre of Death and others.

This was the fleet that gathered beyond the umbra of the sun Iota Horologii, in order to bring the Great Crusade and the will of the Emperor of Man to one of the gargantuan cylinder worlds of the jorgall. Carried in their thousands aboard the ships that served their Legion, the instruments of that will were to be the Astartes of the XIV Legion, the Death Guard.

Kaleb Arin moved through the corridors of the Endurance in a swift dance of motion, holding his heavy cloth-wrapped burden to his chest. Years of indentured service had bred in him a way of walking and behaving that rendered him virtually hidden in plain sight around the towering forms of the Astartes. He was adept at remaining beneath their notice. To this day, even with so many years of duty glittering in the dull rivets fixed to his collarbone, Kaleb had not lost the keen awe at being among them that had filled him from the moment he had bent his knee to the XIV Legion. The lines on his pale face and the grey-white of his hair showed his age, but still he carried himself with the vitality of a man much younger. The strength of his conviction – and of other, more privately held ones – had carried him on in willing, unflinching servitude.

There were few men in the galaxy, he reflected, who could be as content as he was. The truth that never left him was as clear to him now as it had been decades ago, when he had stood beneath a weeping sky of toxic storm clouds and accepted his own limitations, his own failures. Those who continued to strive for what they could never reach, those who punished themselves for falling short of the dizzy heights they would never reach, they were the souls who had no peace in their lives. Kaleb was not like them. Kaleb understood his place in the scheme of things. He knew where he was supposed to be and what it was he was supposed to be doing. His place was here, now, not to question, not to strive, only to do.

Still, he felt pride at that. What men, he wondered, could hope to walk where he walked, among demi-gods cut from the flesh of the Emperor himself? The housecarl never ceased to marvel at them. He kept to the edges of the corridors, skirting the broad warriors as they went about their preparations for the engagement.

The Astartes were statues come to life, great myths in stone that had stepped off their plinths to stride about him. They walked in their marble-coloured armour with green trim and gold flashing, some in the newer, smoother models of the wargear, others in the older iterations that were adorned with spiked studs and heavy-browed helms. These were impossible men, the living hands of the Imperium going to their deeds with shock and awe trailing around them like a cloak. They would never understand the manner in which mortal men looked upon them.

In his indenture, Kaleb knew that some among the Legion considered him with disrespect, as an irritant at best, worth no more than a drooling servitor at worst. This he accepted as his lot, with the same stoic character and dogged acceptance that was the way of the Death Guard. He would never fool himself into thinking that he was one of them – that chance had been offered to Kaleb and he had fallen short in the face of it – but he knew in his heart that he lived by the same code they did, and that his meagre, human frame would die for those ideals if it would serve the Imperium. Kaleb Arin, failed aspirant, housecarl and captain’s equerry, was as satisfied with his life as any man could hope to be.

His load was awkward in its wrapping and he shifted it, cradling the object in a diagonal embrace across his chest. Not once had he dared to let it touch the deck or pass too close to an obstacle. It filled him with honour just to hold it, even through a thick cowl of forest green velvet. He found his way forward and up via the twisting and circuitous corridors, over the access ways that crossed the reeking, thunderous industry of the gun decks. He emerged on the upper tiers where the common naval crew were not allowed to venture, into the portions of the ship that were allotted exclusively to the Astartes. Should she wish to, even Endurance’s captain would need to seek the permission of the ranking Death Guard to walk these halls.

Kaleb felt a ripple of satisfaction, and unconsciously ran a hand over his robes and the skull-shaped clasp at his collar. The device was as big as his palm and made from some kind of pewter. The mechanisms within it were as good as a certified passage paper to the machine-eyes and remote scrying systems on the ship. It was, after a fashion, his badge of office. Kaleb imagined that the sigil was as old as the warship, perhaps even as old as the Legion itself. It had been used by hundreds of serfs, who had died in service to the same role he now fulfilled, and he imagined it would outlast him as well.

Or perhaps not. The old ways were fading, and there were few among the senior battle-brothers of the Death Guard who deigned to keep the careworn traditions of the Legion alive. Times, and the Astartes, were changing. Kaleb had seen things alter, thanks to the juvenat treatments that had extended his life and given him a fragment of the longevity of his masters.

Forever close to the Astartes, but still held at a distance from them, he had seen the slow shifting of mood. It had begun in the months following the Emperor’s decision to retire from the Great Crusade, from the time that he had bestowed the honour of Warmaster upon the noble primarch Horus. It continued still, all around him in silent motion, shifting slow and cold like glacial ice, and in his darker moments, Kaleb found himself wondering where the new and emerging way of things would take him and his beloved Legion.

The housecarl’s face soured and he shook off the sudden attack of melancholy with a grimace. This was not the time to dwell on ephemeral futures and anxious worries of what might come to pass. It was the eve of a battle that would once again enforce humanity’s right to stride the stars unfettered and unafraid.

As he approached the armoury chamber, he glanced out of a reinforced porthole and saw stars. Kaleb wondered which one was the jorgall colony world, and if the xenos had any inkling of the storm about to break upon them.

Nathaniel Garro raised Libertas to his eye line and sighted along the length of the blade. The heavy, dense metal of the sword shimmered in the chamber’s blue light, a wave of rainbow reflections racing away from him along the edge as he tilted it down. There were no imperfections visible in the crystalline matrix of the monosteel. Garro didn’t look back at his housecarl, where the man waited in a half bow. ‘This is good work.’ He gestured for the man to stand. ‘I’m pleased.’

Kaleb gathered the velvet cloth in his hands. ‘It’s my understanding that the servitor who attended your weapon was a machine-smith or a blade maker in its previous life. Some elements of its original artistry must remain.’

‘Just so.’ Garro gave Libertas a few practice swings, moving swiftly and easily in the confines of his Mark IV power armour. He let the smallest hint of a smile creep out across his gaunt face. The nicks that the blade had suffered during the Legion’s pacification of the Carinea moons had troubled him, the result of a single mis-blow on his part that cut through an iron pillar instead of flesh. It was good to have his favourite weapon in his hands once more. The substantial mass of the broadsword completed him, and the idea of venturing into combat without it had troubled Garro on some level. He would not allow himself to voice words like ‘luck’ and ‘fate’ except in mocking humour, and yet without Libertas in his scabbard he had to confess he felt somehow… less protected.

The Astartes caught sight of his own reflection in the polished metal: old eyes in a face that, despite its oft weary countenance, seemed too young for them; a head, hairless and patterned with pale scars. A patrician aspect, showing its roots from the warrior dynasties of ancient Terra, pale-skinned, but without the pallidity of his brother Death Guard who hailed from cold and lethal Barbarus. Garro brought the blade up in salute, and slid Libertas back into the scabbard on his belt.

He glanced at Kaleb. ‘It predates even me, did you know that? So I have been told, some elements of the weapon were fabricated on Old Earth before the Age of Strife.’

The housecarl nodded. ‘Then, master, I would say it is fitting that a Terran-born son wields it now.’

‘All that matters is that it turns in the Emperor’s service,’ Garro replied, clasping his gauntlets together.

Kaleb opened his mouth to respond, but then a motion at the chamber door caught his eye and immediately Garro’s housecarl sank again into an obeisant bow.

‘Such a fine sword,’ came a voice and the Astartes turned to watch the approach of a pair of his brethren. As the figures came closer, he resisted the urge to smile wryly.

‘A pity,’ the speaker continued, ‘that it cannot be placed in the care of a younger, more vigorous warrior.’

Garro eyed the man who had spoken. In the fashion of many of the Death Guard’s number, the new arrival’s scalp was shaven, but unlike the majority he sported a tail of hair at the back of his head, in black and grey streaks that dangled to his shoulders. His face was craggy and broken, but the eyes set there had sardonic wit in them.

‘The folly of youth,’ Garro replied, without weight. ‘Are you sure you could lift it, Temeter? Perhaps you might need old Hakur there to help you.’ He gestured to the second man, a wiry figure with thin features and a single augmetic eye.

Rough humour emerged in a scattering of dry laughter. ‘Forgive me, captain,’ replied Temeter, ‘I only thought to exchange it for something that would better suit you… say, a walking stick?’

Garro made an exaggerated show of thinking over the other man’s proposal. ‘Perhaps you are right, but how could I hand my sword to someone whose breath still smells of his mother’s milk?’

The laughter echoed through the chamber and Temeter raised his hands in mock defeat. ‘I have no recourse but to bow before our great battle-captain’s age and venerable experience.’

Garro stepped forward and clasped the other man’s armoured gauntlet in a firm grip. ‘Ullis Temeter, you war dog. You only have a few years less than me on your clock!’

‘Yes, but they make all the difference. Anyway, it’s not about the years, it’s the quality that counts.’

At Temeter’s side, the other Death Guard kept a dour face. ‘Then I’d venture Captain Temeter is sadly lacking.’

‘Don’t give him any support, Andus,’ replied Temeter. ‘Nathaniel has enough barbs without you helping him!’

‘Merely assisting the commander of my company, as any good sergeant should,’ said the veteran with a nod. Someone who did not know Andus Hakur as well as his captain did might have thought the veteran’s insulting turn against Temeter to be honest, and indeed Garro heard a sharp intake of breath from his housecarl at the words; but then Hakur’s manner was dry to the point of aridity.

For his part, Captain Temeter laughed off the comment. Both he and Garro had served with the older warrior in the years before they had risen to lead their respective companies. It was a point of mild dispute between them that Garro had persuaded the old Astartes to join his command squad over Temeter’s.

Garro returned Hakur’s nod and drew Temeter aside. ‘I hadn’t expected to see you until after the assembly on the Terminus Est. That’s why I was here.’ He patted the sword’s pommel. ‘I didn’t want to step aboard Typhon’s warship without this.’

Temeter flicked a questioning glance at the housecarl, then smiled slightly. ‘Aye, that’s not a vessel to be unprotected aboard, is it? So, then, I take it you haven’t heard the news?’

Garro gave his old comrade a sideways look. ‘What news, Ullis? Come on, don’t play to the drama of it, speak.’

Temeter lowered his voice. ‘The esteemed master of the First Great Company, Captain Calas Typhon, has stepped down from command of the jorgall assault. Someone else is going to lead us.’

‘Who?’ Garro insisted. ‘Typhon wouldn’t stand down for any Astartes. His pride would never allow it.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ continued Temeter, ‘he wouldn’t stand down for any Astartes.’

The sudden realisation hit Garro like a wash of ice. ‘Then, you mean…’

‘The primarch is here, Nathaniel. Mortarion himself has decided to take part in this engagement. He’s brought the timetable forward.’

‘The primarch?’ The words slipped out of Kaleb’s mouth in a whisper, trepidation and awe in every syllable.

Temeter gave him a look, as if he were noticing Garro’s helot for the first time. ‘Indeed, little man. He walks the decks of Endurance as I speak.’

Kaleb dropped to his knees and made the sign of the aquila, his hands visibly trembling.

In spite of himself, his master’s throat went dry. Until Temeter’s announcement, Garro, like the majority of his Legion, had believed that the gaunt leader of the Death Guard was engaged elsewhere, on a mission of some import for the Warmaster himself. This sudden and secretive arrival left him reeling. To know that Mortarion would ride with them against the jorgall, he felt a mixture of elation and disquiet. ‘When are we to assemble?’ he asked, finding his voice.

Temeter smiled broadly. He was enjoying the normally stoic Garro’s moment of discomfort with mild glee. ‘Right now, old friend. I’m here to summon you to the conclave.’ He leaned in closer, his words hushed and conspiratorial. ‘And I should warn you, the primarch’s brought some interesting company with him.’

The assembly hall was an unremarkable space. It was nothing more than a void in the Endurance’s forward hull, rectangular in aspect, open at the far end to the stars through two oval panes of armoured glass holding out the killing vacuum. There were louvred shutters half-closed across the windows, casting patterns of dim white light in bars where the glow from a nearby nebula reached the vessel.

The ceiling was an arch, formed from the primary spars of the warship’s iron ribcage where they met and meshed in steel riveted plate. There were no chairs or places where one might rest. There was no use for them. This was not a hall in which lengthy debate and plots would be hatched, but a place where blunt orders would be given, directives made and battle plans drawn in swift order. The only adornments were a few combat banners hanging down from the metal beams.

The room was littered with shadows. Alcoves formed from the spaces between the girder ribs went deep and ink-black. Illumination fell in pools, tuned to the same yellow-white of high sun on Barbarus. In the centre of the chamber, a hololithic tank turned on a lazy axis, a ghostly cube of blue drifting there. Mechanicum adepts ticked and skittered around the disc-shaped projector device below it, moving in orbits around each other, but never straying more than a hand’s length away. Perhaps, Garro mused, they were afraid to venture out among the assembled warriors.

The battle-captain cast around, taking in the faces of ranking naval officers and designated representatives from all of the starships in the flotilla. Endurance’s commander, a whipcord woman with a severe face, caught his eye and gave him a respectful nod. Garro returned the greeting and moved past her. At his shoulder, Temeter whispered. ‘Where’s Grulgor?’

‘There,’ Garro indicated with the jut of his chin, ‘with Typhon.’

‘Ah,’ Temeter said sagely, ‘I should not be surprised.’

The captains of the Death Guard’s First and Second Companies were in close consultation, the murmur of their words pitched low enough so that even the acute senses of another Astartes were not enough to divine their meaning. Garro saw that Grulgor had noticed their arrival, and, as was his usual manner, he ignored it, despite the lapse in protocol a failure to greet them represented.

‘He’s never going to be a friend to you, is he?’ ventured Temeter, who saw it too. ‘Not even for a moment.’

Garro gave the slightest of shrugs. ‘It’s not something I dwell on. We don’t rise to our ranks because of how well-liked we are. This is a crusade we are winning, not a popularity contest.’

Temeter sniffed. ‘Speak for yourself. I am extremely popular.’

‘I have no doubt you believe that.’

Typhon and Grulgor abruptly disengaged and turned to meet their cohorts as they came closer. The First Captain of the Death Guard, master of the prime company and right hand of the primarch, was a formidable sight in his iron-hued Terminator armour. A dark tail of hair spilled over his shoulders and the man’s bearded face was framed by the heavy square hood of the wargear. His helmet nestled in the crook of his arm, a single horn protruding from the brow. Whatever emotions dwelt inside him were well masked, but not so well that the lines of annoyance around his eyes could be completely hidden.

‘Temeter. Garro.’ Typhon gave both men a level, measuring stare, his voice a low growl.

At once the easy air that Temeter had brought with him was gone, evaporating beneath the first captain’s piercing gaze. Garro could only wonder at the anger behind those dark eyes, still smarting at the slight of being usurped from leading the jorgall attack at the eleventh hour.

‘Grulgor and I were discussing the changes in the engagement plan,’ Typhon continued.

‘Changes?’ repeated Temeter. ‘I was not aware–’

‘You are being made aware,’ said Grulgor, with a hint of a sneer. Despite having been born on a world on the opposite side of the galaxy, Ignatius Grulgor shared a similar bearing and physicality with Garro, even down to the hairless head and a collection of trophy scars; but where Garro was stoic and metered, Grulgor was forever on the edge of arrogance, snarling instead of speaking, judgemental instead of considering. ‘The Fourth Company is to be re-tasked, to conduct boarding operations among the bottle-world’s picket force.’

Temeter bowed, hiding the irritation that Garro was sure his comrade felt at being denied a share of the mission’s greater glories. ‘As the primarch wills.’ He looked up and met Grulgor’s gaze. ‘Thank you for preparing me, captain.’

‘Commander,’ Grulgor spat out the word. ‘You will address me by my rank, Captain Temeter.’

Temeter frowned. ‘My error, commander, of course. The traditions sometimes slip my mind when my thoughts are otherwise occupied.’

Garro watched Grulgor’s jaw harden. Like all of the Legiones Astartes, they had quirks and customs that were unique to them. The Death Guard differed from many of their brother Legions in the manner of the command structure and ranking, for instance. Tradition had it that the XIV would never number more than seven great companies, although those divisions held far more men than those of other Astartes cohorts like the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels; and while many Legions had the tradition of giving the honorific of ‘first captain’ to the commander of the prime company, the Death Guard also held two more privileged titles, to be bestowed upon the leaders of the Second and Seventh Companies respectively. Thus, although they held no actual seniority over one another, Grulgor could carry the rank of ‘commander’ if he so wished, just as Garro was known as ‘battle-captain’. It was Garro’s understanding that his particular honorific dated back to the Wars of Unification, to a moment when the mark of distinction had been handed to a XIV officer by the Emperor himself. He was proud to bear it all these centuries later.

‘Our traditions are what make us who we are,’ Garro offered quietly. ‘It’s right and correct that we hold to them.’

‘In moderation, perhaps,’ Typhon corrected. ‘We should not allow ourselves to become hidebound by rules from a past that is dust to us now.’

‘Indeed,’ added Grulgor.

‘Ah,’ said Temeter. ‘So, Ignatius, you hold on to tradition with one hand and push it away with the other?

‘The old ways are right and correct so long as they serve a purpose.’ Grulgor threw Garro a cold look. ‘That pet helot you keep is “a tradition” and yet there is no point to it. There is a custom that has no value.’

‘I beg to differ, commander,’ Garro replied. ‘The housecarl performs flawlessly as my equerry–’

Grulgor snorted. ‘Huh. I had one of those once. I think I lost it on an ice moon somewhere. It froze to death, weak little thing.’ He looked away. ‘It smacks to me of sentiment, Garro.’

‘As ever, Grulgor, I will give your comments the due attention they deserve,’ said Garro. He broke off as a figure in gold caught his eye moving through a shaft of light.

Temeter saw where Garro was looking and tapped twice on the shoulder plate of his armour. ‘I told you Mortarion had brought company.’

Kaleb busied himself with the sword cloth, folding the green velvet mantle into a neat square. In the alcove of the arming pit, Captain Garro’s weapons and battle equipment were arrayed around him on hooks and wire-frame racks. Upon one wall, resting on steel spikes, lay the heavy silver ingot of his master’s bolter. It was polished to a matt sheen, the brass detail glittering under the wan light of biolume glow-globes.

The housecarl replaced the cloth and wrung his hands, thinking. It was hard for him to maintain a clear focus, with the idea gnawing at his mind that the primarch was only a few tiers above him, up on the high decks. Kaleb looked up at the steel ceiling and imagined what he might see if the Endurance were made of glass. Would Mortarion radiate dark and cold as some said he did? Would it be possible for a mere man such as himself to actually look the Death Lord in the eye, and not feel his heart stop in his chest? The serf took a deep breath to steady his nerve. It was a lot for him to handle, and the distraction made performing his normal tasks difficult. Mortarion was a son of the Emperor himself, and the Emperor… the Emperor was…

‘Kaleb.’

He turned to face Hakur. The seasoned veteran was one of the few Astartes who called the housecarl by his given name. ‘Yes, lord?’

‘Mind your work.’ He nodded at the ceiling, at the place where Kaleb had been staring. ‘Sees through steel, the primarch does.’

The serf managed a weak grin and bowed, gathering up a cleaning cloth and a tin of waxy polish. Under Hakur’s neutral gaze he moved to the centre of the alcove and set to work on the heavy ceramite and brass cuirass that rested there. This was a ceremonial piece that Garro wore only in combat or upon formal occasions. In tandem with the honour-rank of battle-captain, the decorative over-sheath sported an eagle, wings spread and beak arched, sculpted from brass as if about to take flight from the chestplate. Similarly, the rear of the cuirass had a second eagle as a head-guard that emerged from the shoulders when worn over the backpack of Astartes armour.

What made this piece unique was that its eagles differed from the Emperor’s aquila. While the symbol of the Imperium of Man had two heads, one blinded to look at the past, one sighted to see to the future, the battle-captain’s eagles were singular. Kaleb fancied this meant that they only saw into the time yet to pass, that perhaps they were a kind of charm that could know the advance of a killing shot or deadly blade before it arrived. Once he had voiced that thought aloud and received derision and scorn from Garro’s men. Such thoughts, Sergeant Hakur had later said, were superstitions that had no place on a ship of the Emperor’s Crusade. ‘Ours is a war to dispel fable and falsehood with the cold light of truth, not to propagate myth.’ The veteran had tapped the eagles with a finger. ‘These are inanimate brass and no more, just as we are all flesh and bone.’

Still, Kaleb’s hand could not help but drift to a brass icon on a chain around his neck, hidden inside the folds of his tunic where none could see it.

The figure was most assuredly female, lithe and poised, clad in a shimmering snakeskin over-suit of dense chainmail and a sweep of golden armour plate that resembled a bodice. A half-mask lay open at her neck, revealing an elegant face. Garro sometimes found it hard to determine the age of non-Astartes, but he estimated she could be no more than thirty solar years. Purple-black hair rose in a topknot from a seamless scalp, bare but for a blood-red aquila tattoo. She was quite beautiful, but what locked his attention on her was the way she moved noiselessly across the iron decks of the chamber. Had he not seen her emerge from the shadows, the Astartes might have thought the woman to be a holo-ghost, some finely detailed image cast from the projector.

‘Amendera Kendel,’ noted Typhon, with a hint of distaste. ‘A witchseeker.’

Temeter nodded. ‘From the Storm Dagger cadre. She is here with a deputation of the Silent Sisterhood, apparently on the orders of the Sigillite himself.’

Grulgor’s lip curled. ‘There are no psykers here. What purpose could those women serve in the coming battle?’

‘The Regent of Terra must have his reasons,’ Typhon suggested, but his tone made it clear he thought little of what they might be.

Garro watched the witchseeker orbit the room. Her tradecraft was commendable. She moved in stealth even as she was obvious to the eye, passing around the naval officers in a way that appeared to be random, even as Garro’s trained sense understood it was not.

Kendel was observing. She was cataloguing the reactions of the people in the assembly hall, filing them away for later review. It made the Astartes think of a scout, surveying the land before a battle, seeking weak points and targets. He had never encountered a Sister of Silence before, only heard of their exploits in service to the Imperium.

Their name was well deserved, he considered. Kendel was silent, like the wind across a grave, and in her passing, he noticed that some would shiver without being aware of it, or become distracted for a moment. It was as if the witchseeker cast an invisible aura around herself that gave mortal men pause.

Garro watched her pass by the entrance to the assembly hall and his gaze was hooked by the shine of brass and steel upon two grand figures that stood either side of the hatch. Barrel-chested in highly artificed armour, taller than Typhon, the identical sentinels blocked the steel door with crossed battle-scythes, the signature weapon of the Death Guard’s elite warriors. Only the few personally favoured by the primarch were permitted to carry such artefacts. They were known as manreapers, forged in echo of the common farmer’s harvesting scythe that it was said Mortarion had fought with in his youth. The first captain wielded one, but Garro recognised these twin blades immediately.

‘Deathshroud,’ he whispered. These two Astartes were the personal honour guards of the primarch, fated never to reveal their faces to anyone but Mortarion, even to the end of their lives. So it was said, the warriors of the Deathshroud were chosen by the primarch from the rank and file men of the Legion in secret, and then listed as killed in action. They were his nameless guardians, never allowed to venture more than forty-nine paces from their lord’s side. Garro felt a chill when he realised that he hadn’t even been aware that the Deathshroud had entered the chamber.

‘If they are here, then where is our master?’ asked Grulgor.

A cold smile of understanding flickered over Typhon’s lips. ‘He has been here all along.’

At the far end of the chamber, a towering shadow detached itself from the dimness beside the oval windows. Steady footsteps brought silence to the room as they crossed the deck plates. With every other footfall there came a heavy metallic report as the base of an iron shaft tapped out the distance. Garro’s muscles tensed as the sound made several of the common naval officers back away from the hololith.

In the dusty Terran legends that survived from the histories of nation states like Merica, Old Ursh and Oseania there was the myth of a walker in the darkness who came to claim the freshly dead, a skeletal individual, an incarnation that threshed souls from flesh as keenly as wheat in the fields. These were just stories, though, the speculations of the superstitious and fearful, and yet, here and now, a billion light-years from the birthplace of that folklore, the very mirror of that figure rose into the half-light aboard Endurance, tall and gaunt beneath a cloak as grey as sea-ice.

Mortarion halted and touched the deck plates with the hilt of his manreaper, the scythe as tall as the primarch and a head again. Only the Deathshroud stayed on their feet. Every other person in the room, human or Astartes, was on his knees. Mortarion’s cloak parted as he raised his free hand, palm upwards. ‘Rise,’ he said.

The primarch’s voice was low and firm, at odds with the ashen, hairless face that emerged from the heavy collar surrounding his throat. Wisps of white gas curled from the neck brace of Mortarion’s wargear, captured philtres of fumes from the air of Barbarus. Garro caught the scent of them and for an instant his sense memory took him back to the grim, clouded planet with its lethal skies.

The assemblage came to its feet, and still the primarch dominated the room. Beneath the grey cloak, he was a knight in shining brass and bare steel. The ornamental skull and star device of the Death Guard grimaced out from his breastplate and at his waist, level with the chest of a file Astartes, Garro saw the drum-shaped holster that carried the Lantern, a hand-crafted energy pistol of unique Shenlongi design.

Mortarion’s only other adornments were a string of globe-shaped censers in brass. These too contained elements from the poisonous high atmosphere of the primarch’s adoptive home world. Garro had heard it said that Mortarion would sometimes sample them, like a connoisseur tasting fine wines, or by turns pitch them into battle as grenades to send an enemy choking and dying.

The battle-captain realised he had been holding in his breath and released it as Mortarion’s amber eyes took in the room. Silence fell as his lord commander began to speak.

‘Xenos.’ Pyr Rahl made the word into a curse without effort, drumming his fingers across the stubby barrel of his bolter. ‘I wonder what colour these will bleed. White? Purple? Green?’ He glanced around and ran a hand through the close-cut hair on his head. ‘Come, who’ll make a wager with me?’

‘No one will, Pyr,’ answered Hakur, shaking his head. ‘We’re all tired of your trivial gambling.’ He threw a glance back to the arming pit where Garro’s housecarl was hard at work.

‘What currency is there to wager between us, anyway?’ added Voyen, joining Hakur at the blade racks. The two veterans were quite unalike in physical aspect, Voyen ample in frame where Hakur was wiry, and yet they were together on most things that affected the squad. ‘We’re not swabs or soldiers grubbing over scrip and coinage!’

Rahl frowned. ‘It’s not a game of money, Apothecary, nothing as crude as that. Those things are just a way to keep score. We play for the right to be right.’

Solun Decius, the youngest member of the command squad, came closer, rubbing a towel over his face to wipe away the sweat from his exertions in the sparring cages. He had a hard look to him that seemed out of place on a youth of his age. His eyes were alight with energy barely held in check, enthused by the sudden possibilities of glory that the arrival of the primarch had brought. ‘I’ll take your wager, if it will quiet you.’ Decius glanced at Hakur and Voyen, but his elders gave him no support. ‘I’ll say red, like the orks.’

Rahl sniffed. ‘White as milk, like the megarachnid.’

‘You are both wrong.’ From behind Rahl, his face buried in a data-slate festooned with tactical maps, Tollen Sendek’s flat monotone issued out. ‘The blood of the jorgall is a dark crimson.’ The warrior had a heavy brow and hooded eyes that gave him a permanently sleepy expression.

‘And this knowledge is yours how?’ demanded Decius.

Sendek waved the data-slate in the air. ‘I am well-read, Solun. While you batter your chainsword’s teeth blunt in the cages, I study the foe. These dissection texts of the magos biologis are fascinating.’

Decius snorted. ‘All I need to know is how to kill them. Does your text tell you that, Tollen?’

Sendek gave a heavy nod. ‘It does.’

‘Well, come, come.’ Voyen beckoned the dour Astartes to his feet. ‘Don’t keep such information to yourself.’

Sendek sighed and stood, his perpetually morose features lit by the glow of the data-slate’s display. He tapped his chest. ‘The jorgall favour mechanical enhancements to improve their physical form. They have some humanoid traits – a head, neck, eyes and mouth – but it appears their brains and central nervous systems are situated not here,’ and he tapped his brow, ‘but here.’ Tollen’s hand lay flat on his chest.

‘To kill would need a heart shot, then?’ Rahl noted, accepting a nod in return.

‘Ah,’ said Decius, ‘like this?’ In a flash, the Astartes had spun in place and drawn his bolter. A single round exploded from the muzzle and ripped into the torso of a dormant practice dummy less than a few metres from Garro’s arming pit. The captain’s housecarl flinched at the sound of the shot, drawing a tut from Hakur.

Decius turned away, amused with himself. Meric Voyen threw Hakur a look. ‘Arrogant whelp. I don’t understand what the captain sees in him.’

‘I once said the same thing about you, Meric.’

‘Speed and skill are nothing without control,’ the Apothecary retorted tersely. ‘Displays like that are better suited to fops like the Emperor’s Children.’

The other man’s words drew a thin smile from Hakur. ‘We’re all Astartes under the skin, brothers and kindred all.’

Voyen’s humour dropped away suddenly. ‘That, my brother, is as much a lie as it is the truth.’

In the hololith cube, the shape of the jorgalli construct became visible. It was a fat cylinder several kilometres long, bulbous at one end with drive clusters, thinning at the other to a stubby prow. Huge petal-shaped vanes coated with shimmering panels emerged from the stern of the thing, catching sunlight and bouncing it through massive windows as big as inland seas.

Mortarion gestured with a finger. ‘A cylinder world. This one has twice the mass of the similar constructs found and eliminated in orbits around the planets Tasak Beta and Fallon, but unlike those, our target is the first jorgall craft to be found under power in deep space.’ One of the adepts tickled switches with his worm-like mechadendrites and the image receded, revealing a halo of teardrop-shaped ships in close formation nearby.

‘A substantial picket fleet travels ahead of the craft. Captain Temeter will lead the engagement to disrupt these ships and break their lines of communication.’

The primarch accepted a salute from Temeter. ‘Elements of the First, Second and Seventh Great Companies will stand with me. This battleground is suited to our unique talents. The jorgall breathe a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen with heavy concentrations of chlorine, a weak poison that our lungs will resist with little effort.’

As if to underline the point, Mortarion sniffed at a puff of gas from his half-mask. ‘First Captain Typhon will be my support. Commander Grulgor will penetrate the drive cluster and take control of the cylinder’s motive power centre. Battle-Captain Garro will neutralise the construct’s hatcheries.’

Garro saluted firmly, mirroring Grulgor and Typhon’s gestures. He held off his disappointment at his assigned target, far down the cylinder from the primarch’s attack point, and instead began to consider the first elements of his battle plan.

Mortarion hesitated a moment, and Garro could swear he heard the hint of a smile in the primarch’s voice. ‘As some of you have deduced, this fight will not be the Death Guard’s alone. I have, on the request of Malcador the Sigillite, brought a cadre of investigators from the Divisio Astra Telepathica here, led by the Oblivion Knight Sister Amendera.’ The primarch inclined his head and Garro saw the Sister of Silence bow low in return. She gestured in sign language, quick little motions of finger and wrist.

‘The honoured Sisters will join us to seek out a psyker trace that has led to this bottle-world.’

Garro stiffened. Psykers? This was the first he had heard of such a threat on the jorgalli ship, and he noted that only Typhon did not seem surprised at such news.

‘I trust that the full importance of this endeavour is impressed upon each of you,’ continued the Death Lord, his low tones strong. ‘These jorgall repeatedly enter our space in their generation ships, intent on spawning over worlds that belong to the Emperor. They must not be allowed to gain a foothold.’ He turned away, his face disappearing into his cloak. ‘In time, the Astartes will erase these creatures from humanity’s skies, and today will be a step along that path.’

Garro and his battle-brothers saluted once more as Mortarion turned his back on them and moved away towards the welcoming shadows. They did not chorus in a battle-cry or mark the moment with raised pronouncements. The primarch had spoken, and his was voice enough.

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First published in Great Britain in 2007. This edition published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

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