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Gift of the Gods

Ben Counter

‘Banishment,’ spat Lord Antonidas Hajos of the Dire Claws. In the darkness of the shuttlecraft, his face was lit from beneath by the glowing power coils of his armour. ‘Why did they not just kill me? Put my head upon a pike at the fortress gates? Why was it banishment?’

‘It is written,’ replied Chirurgeon Koridis. ‘The Chapter pronounced exile as the punishment for attempting to usurp their Chapter Master.’

‘A law from an age of cowards!’ snarled Hajos. ‘Those were the times when the Dire Claws still skulked beneath the Imperial yoke! Even though we have cast off the Corpse-God for the lords of the warp, the cowardice remains. They feared to make a martyr of me, chirurgeon! The discontented would kneel before my severed head and carry it onto the battlements of our fortress in triumph! I was banished because they fear what I would become in death.’

The shuttle touched down. It had been fuelled only enough to reach the world nearest to the Dire Claws capital ship on which Hajos had been tried. Now it had reached that world, and its engines shut down for the last time.

‘They shall curse their folly,’ said Hajos, ‘that they let me live.’

The shuttle’s rear ramp boomed open to reveal a sweltering mass of jungle, a dark green ocean of choking foliage. The ship had come to rest on a hill of clear ground, and Hajos could see for miles across the rolling canopy, broken occasionally by mountains and plateaus. The sky overhead was deep blue and hung with heavy clouds, and it was speckled with columns of shrieking avian creatures set to flight by the shuttle’s arrival.

‘We were fortunate,’ said Koridis as he emerged from the shuttle beside Hajos.

‘Fortunate? We were betrayed!’ Hajos’ battered, leathery face creased with anger. ‘We have been reduced to vagabonds, and you call us fortunate?’

‘We could have been exiled to a dead world,’ replied Koridis, his own expression unchanging. Of all the Dire Claws, Koridis seemed the most immune to Hajos’ rages. ‘Or one otherwise inimical to survival. This is a world full of life.’

Hajos seemed about to speak, but something mollified him and his face turned from angry to stern. ‘Full of life,’ he said. ‘Brethren! Scout around! I will not tarry here!’

Less than half of Squad Morituris had accompanied Hajos on his exile. They had joined him in storming the throne room of the Dire Claws’ fortress-monastery, and those who now jumped down from the shuttle were all that had survived the ensuing firefight. Sergeant Morituris had been among the dead, and now Brother Forelm was their de facto leader.

‘Perimeter!’ ordered Forelm, gesturing with his power axe. ‘Give me eyes all around! Seek a foothold, we are too exposed up here! Get to it, vermin!’

‘Where there is life,’ said Hajos as the Dire Claws spread out, ‘there are the foundations of an empire. From less than this have mighty civilisations been wrought.’

‘Our priority should be our immediate survival,’ said Koridis. The chirurgeon had joined Hajos in exile for reasons of his own – he had not been among the would-be Chapter Master’s conspirators. He had claimed that his purpose was to retrieve the gene-seed of any fallen exiles and return it one day to the Dire Claws, but few had believed him.

‘I shall let the brethren deal with that,’ replied Hajos. ‘I must think for the long term. Survival is not enough, not for a Dire Claw! We do not survive, Koridis. We rule!’

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