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Helbrecht: Knight of the Throne – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Prologue

A DEMIGOD’S DISPLEASURE

Then

The knight knelt in the heart of sanctity.

The vast ship was a sacred place – a fragment of a bygone age given leave to sail the stars, crafted in a time of wonders when mankind had still borne out its primal ambition. Such immense engines of war were known as Gloriana. Where other vessels of humanity’s conquest of the stars had been brief candles, these were infernos. Potent beyond reckoning, they would burn and fight and die until the ending of time.

They were few now. Precious. Holy in their rarity.

Of those that remained, there were none that could rival the Eternal Crusader’s forthright mastery of the void.

High Marshal Helbrecht bowed his head in prayer. He meditated upon the holy space that he occupied. He dwelt upon the injuries sustained by his plate. His armour bore the scars of dozens of battles, so relentless and all-consuming that it would have taken an entire team of armourers weeks to return it to full functionality. Time he did not have to spare. He stank of blood and smoke, of sacred oils and the machine-reek of constant movement in powered plate. His face was streaked with soot and an ashen cross had been daubed upon his forehead, just above the brazen circlet that graced his brow. His armour was heavy now, a weight of which he was intimately aware. Muscle-fibre bundles bunched with his subtle agitation, rippling with the exaggerated movements of his breathing.

But he did not feel soiled in the heart of the great war vessel. If anything he felt deserving of his presence there. A right he had earned in fire and blood.

His hands clenched involuntarily and he drove his armoured knuckles into the perfect marble of the floor. Banners swayed at the edges of his vision, speaking of thousands upon thousands of crusades waged down the long years of their unending struggle. The Eternal Crusade. The undertaking of Dorn.

‘That is why I fight,’ he whispered, the words rendered into a prayer by his surroundings. ‘In your name. In the name of all those who have gone before me. In the God-Emperor’s light.’

He raised his head and examined the plinth before him. Across the stone lay the sword.

The blade was a thing of glory. It, like the ship it occupied, had been forged in a lost age. Risen from the fires of grief and shame to be borne again with duty and faith behind it. A sword of heroes. The sword of Sigismund. The Sword of the High Marshals. Even now, so long in the keeping of the blade, he found he almost could not look upon it without weeping. It was a mighty thing. Too long and heavy for a mortal man to wield – perhaps too much of a burden for many of the Astartes brotherhoods who roamed the stars.

His weapon. His burden.

In this sword was embodied the many facets of command within the Chapter. To wield it was to stand as first amongst equals. Master of the Eternal Crusade.

He allowed his fingers to close around the hilt as he rose to his feet and drew it up from its plinth. The blade caught the light of the stasis fields that surrounded it, dancing with the refracted radiance of other plinths holding other relics. The blade was keen and well tended where his own appearance was still ramshackle. He had cleaned and oiled it himself, with reverence and due faith.

‘With faith and fidelity I wield the weapon of Sigismund, instrument of the past and key to the future. I hold the Chapter’s legacy as I direct its course. I do this in your name, O beloved Emperor, that you might see my deeds and judge them by your holy metric. On the day of judgement, when death finally claims me, I shall stand before you and let the worth of my soul be weighed. That I might dwell at the right hand of the Throne, to serve and fight forever.’

He bowed his head again. His lips continued to move as he prayed before the blade. In his ruin he had never been more glorious, nor truer in his faith.

A chime echoed from behind him. It sounded once and rang through the open, empty space of the temple. He ignored it. He continued his recitations and kept his eyes locked upon the blade.

The chime came again. And again. It grew more insistent until he finally rose to his feet. He sighed. Helbrecht had dismissed even the Chaplain brotherhood from their attendance within the temple. He had wished to undertake his obeisance in private, that only the God-Emperor might perceive and judge him.

‘Come,’ he said at last, and turned towards the vast doors of the chamber.

The doors opened, casting the low crimson of candlelight and the dull glow of lumens into the temple. Centule, a Chapter-serf, bowed low.

‘My lord,’ he said softly, his voice quaking, ‘He is here. The primarch is come.’

Helbrecht looked at Centule for a long moment, then sheathed the great weapon and bowed one last time before he went to face down destiny.

He received the primarch in his sanctum, the Galleria Astra, still rimed with the detritus of war. He had turned the arming servitors, serfs and Neophytes – all eager to attend upon him and see to his armour – away, preferring to meet the primarch as a commander fresh from war. By will alone he stilled the tremble in his flesh and allowed himself to exhale. This was a singular moment. One he had yearned for and dreaded in equal measure. To see a fragment of the exalted past walk the stars anew; beholding a son of the God-Emperor Himself as he strode the galaxy. The bringer of wrath and flame. The fury of the heavens kindled.

It is the Emperor’s will that he return to us now. As the galaxy splits and evil walks abroad, so too must the glories of the Great Crusade stir anew. Would that it had been our own gene-sire. To see Rogal Dorn once again at the galaxy’s helm…

Yet it was not him. Not the great Praetorian who had raised Terra’s ramparts in ages gone past. It was Guilliman. The statesman. The Avenging Son. A being whom many now called regent, and viewed as the Emperor’s incarnate will.

Helbrecht wondered what it would be like to look upon the primarch. Would he be as the statues were? He wondered if he might pick out the familial resemblance between Guilliman and the renditions of his own primogenitor. Would he be a thing of flesh or something rendered numinous? He had never journeyed to Macragge, in pilgrimage to their shrine as his cousins might. He had knelt in the sight of Dorn’s skeletal hand upon the Phalanx – as was the right of all those of the gene-line of the Imperial Fists – and thought it a holy thing, transcendent. Divine.

The doors slid open with a hiss and Helbrecht allowed himself to look up. To know.

To gaze upon the primarch was truly a thing of wonder. He was not a numinous thing of light and fire but neither was he stolidly material. He was a storm of cold blue and gold, bound into the shape of a man. It almost hurt to look at him. It was not simply the superlative craft of his armour, but the skill worked into his very flesh. This was a being who had been sculpted by the Emperor’s own hand. The primarch had fought and bled with the Master of Mankind Himself; upholding His truth, enforcing His laws, and shaping what the Imperium had become down the long marches of darkness. He was a fragment of the very soul of the human species, carved out and presented as an exemplar.

Helbrecht looked up at his face, the stern patrician features, and beneath that gaze he stood taller, as surely as any initiate upon the battlefield spurred to zealous action by the attention of a marshal.

The primarch spoke in a rumble, in a voice as different from Helbrecht’s as a Space Marine’s was from a mortal man.

‘You are the one they call Helbrecht? The High Marshal of the Black Templars?’

‘I have that honour,’ Helbrecht said as he went to one knee.

‘I was there when your brotherhood was founded,’ Guilliman said. ‘When my brother eventually yielded and allowed his Legion to be broken.’ A smile flickered across his lips. As he strode forward he seemed more at home in the great chamber than Helbrecht – occupying a space which had been intended for his brother and slowly repurposed for his heirs. ‘Your forebear, Sigismund, I fear he would have fought the edicts of the Codex forever had circumstances not intervened as they had.’

‘You honour me, my lord. It is as the God-Emperor wills that you return to us now.’ Helbrecht looked up, just quickly enough to catch the wrinkle of distaste which graced the demigod’s face. He had heard the rumours – that the divinity of the Emperor and His primarchs sat ill with the Avenging Son. A test, perhaps. A sign of the strange mechanisms by which the galaxy turned. Most other brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes shunned the Imperial Creed, true enough, but the primarch had walked in the age of the Emperor’s glory and gazed upon His eternal entombment.

‘Rise,’ Guilliman said, to dispel the fleeting moment of awkwardness. ‘It is enough that bureaucrats and functionaries greet me upon their knees – it is no place for a warrior.’

Helbrecht stood. ‘Forgive my appearance. The days since the opening of the Rift have been unkind. We have fought and we have bled. Against the greenskins whom we pursued and against those worlds which have proven unworthy of His light. They turned, and for those sins they were burned clean. Now we are again upon the path. The fleets of the crusades gather and they will hunt the Beast of Armageddon until death finally claims it.’

‘The Beast of Armageddon…’ Guilliman tilted his head as he considered the words. For a being such as him even a minor gesture was loaded with potency and meaning. ‘You mean to pursue this course?’

‘I am set upon it,’ Helbrecht admitted. ‘There has been too much blood spilled by the alien. These are nights of blood and fire. Madness walks abroad, but I know my duty. The crusades we have launched… those that have been fought and for which brothers have died… Ash Wastes. Void. Helsreach. The Beast must answer. I would see its head taken and mounted upon a pike that all might see the ruin which befalls those who challenge the Throne. There can be no compromise. No peace. Only judgement and death. That is what the enemies of mankind deserve.’

‘And I do not doubt that you are well suited to delivering it, but I would urge caution. I have absorbed the tactical circumstances of every warzone, across every segmentum, known to us before the Rift opened. The Beast is not alone amidst the pantheon of horrors set against us. Each tears wounds in our galaxy, gouting the Imperium’s blood into the void. I would ask for your aid.’

Helbrecht was silent. He could sense the challenge in the primarch’s words but would not rise to it. ‘Then ask it,’ he said. ‘Ask and I shall consider your request in my capacity as High Marshal and by the will of the Emperor.’

‘You speak of the battles that have been fought. Helsreach, the Void and Ash Wastes crusades. I have studied the history of many Chapters and many wars as I seek to heal my father’s beleaguered empire. I would give you new objectives in place of the old. Service in lieu of vengeance. Aurilla, Ophelia VII, Dachsus, Orteg III. They, along with dozens of other shrine worlds, are within reach of your gathering forces. A hammer blow against those who would strike against the Imperium’s morale.’

O, Emperor, how you test me. How you offer me an easier path and tempt me with what seems to be the very voice of righteousness.

‘You speak with wisdom, yet the opening of the Rift is opportunity for the Beast to escape. Even now it flees from our justice, to burrow into whichever crevice will hide it. It will spawn in the darkness until its hordes come again. And again. And again. No more. We have its scent and we will fight to burn it from the galaxy.’

‘You would choose vengeance over duty?’

Helbrecht slammed his bionic fist against the chamber’s desk. Primarch or no, none questioned his honour without reproach. ‘I would choose duty and honour. My warriors gather – numbers enough for our task but far from enough to minister to every world that cries for succour. The defenders of such worlds bear their own aegis of faith. Sisters of Battle, Militarum regiments, other Chapters who are closer. The Emperor has set this task before me – as His servant, should I not do His will?’

‘There are many amongst the Ecclesiarchy,’ Guilliman said, and Helbrecht could see the ripple of bemused frustration play across his features, ‘who would insist that I am the very instrument of His will. If not in the manner of my perceived divinity then certainly in my capacity as Imperial Regent.’

‘We are not the lay preachers of the Imperial Creed to be awed by signs and wonders. We are Templars, my lord Guilliman. We stand, black against the darkness, bearing the righteous fire of the Emperor’s wrath. We cast down false idols, break the backs of recalcitrant civilisations, and sear the alien from the flesh of the Emperor’s galaxy. That is our duty. Our honour. Our lives.’

‘It is strange to find you so.’ The primarch shook his head. Such a peculiar gesture to observe, to note, as though a mountain were shaking its head. ‘In you I see so much of the Great Crusade as it was, yet changed beyond recognition. Your creed is in opposition to everything intended by that era. We wrought enlightenment, not superstition. We were the light that they required to lead them out of the darkness of Old Night.’ He sighed. ‘I fear that you are the very same chains that would bind them.’

Helbrecht stood taller. ‘There are few other forces that have fought for as long or as hard as our sacred brotherhood. We follow the example laid down by Sigismund as he fought before the walls of the Palace. He was the exemplar of our bloodline. We take not a single step backwards. We fight on. Across the galaxy with faith and fury, we fight. Only His word will stay our wrath.’

‘There is much in you, High Marshal, that reminds me of First Captain Sigismund – as I knew him.’

‘You do me an honour, lord.’

‘That was not my intent,’ Guilliman said. ‘To you he is a legend, perhaps even an idol. I knew him as a man. Impetuous and flawed, as all men are.’

Helbrecht’s jaw tightened but he said nothing in response.

‘A fine soldier. A great leader of men. Yet despite all that, he was guided, at times, by his own will and wants. He erred in that, perhaps.’

‘As you think that I err now.’

‘I do,’ Guilliman said plainly. ‘I bring you reinforcements. Men and materiel that will enable you to rise to answer the challenges laid before us. Now, more than ever, I require people of vision and insight. Those who can think on their feet but who can appreciate the grander threats we face. Who can look at the galaxy and take stock of what must be done.’

‘I do that every single day, lord regent,’ Helbrecht said, with no small amount of pride. ‘Where I command it, hosts move to answer. There are none more numerous nor more dedicated amongst all the brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes. You bring many warriors, like the Legions of old, so they claim, yet what are they next to the oathsworn knights of the Black Templars? When these reinforcements you speak of are inducted into our ranks they shall be trained as befits warriors of the Eternal Crusade. They shall burn with the light of the Emperor and carry it back to the dark places. Whether that is where you suggest, or whether it lies in claiming the Imperium’s due from the Beast.’

‘There will be no convincing you,’ Guilliman rumbled.

It was no easy thing to bear the weight of a demigod’s displeasure. Helbrecht could feel the scrutiny upon his skin like ball lightning. He leant into the discomfort of it. He braced himself with the judgement of the divine.

‘There will not.’

The primarch said nothing. Instead he strode past Helbrecht to stand before the graven glass of the observation cupola. He stared out at the tormented void, at the ships as they milled about their formations – filling the rendezvous point with constant motion. Jostling for primacy as they sought proximity to their liege lord. He turned and regarded Helbrecht with sad, all-too-human eyes.

‘Do you know the provenance of the blade that you carry, High Marshal?’

‘Of course I do–’ Helbrecht began to say, but the primarch ignored him and continued on.

‘It was forged from the shards of my brother’s own blade. When he found our father’s broken body, when he saw what Horus had done to Him, he knew despair. He knew what it meant to fail the very reason for your existence. Everything in him understood the stakes which we had faced, and the price of defeat.’ He shook his head. ‘And there was defeat, even in victory. My brother, Rogal Dorn, a man of stone, broke his sword over his knee. He felt unworthy of wielding his weapon, knowing it had never had the chance to be raised in defence of our father – not when it truly mattered.’

Helbrecht swallowed. ‘I know this, my lord. It is as holy writ. I could recite it myself.’

‘Yet you did not live it, High Marshal. You did not see a brother broken by loss and self-castigated by despair. Nor did you have to watch a son try, in vain, to elevate his father’s mood. It was your founder, First Captain Sigismund, who gathered up those shards and allowed them to be forged into the blade which you carry. To transmute base mourning into golden promise, like the alchymists of Old Terra. Because duty bears more weight than any scrap of personal glory or desire.’ There was a quaver in the demigod’s voice, rife with mortal emotion, though amplified – exalted – to a truly post-human level. ‘Remember that, High Marshal. Remember what can be gained by choosing duty over the base whims of an ego bruised by failure after failure.’ He looked at Helbrecht, nodded once, and then walked past him and out of the doors.

Helbrecht did not speak for many minutes. He drew his blade again and went down upon his knees, the tip of it pressed to the stone of the floor. His lips moved in constant prayer and his hands tightened about the hilt.

‘My lord?’ asked a wavering voice. Centule stood there, wide-eyed and staring. Helbrecht stood reluctantly and stalked forward. For a moment the serf almost flinched from his lord’s path, so wrathful had it become – like a wounded storm.

‘Gather my marshals,’ Helbrecht growled. ‘They will have crusade assignments.’

Centule hesitated. ‘The muster is over, lord?’

‘The muster is over,’ Helbrecht agreed. ‘The Imperium calls for aid and we shall answer.’ He did not look back as he strode from the chamber, still clinging to his blade. ‘We shall not be found wanting in our duty.’

Chapter One

THE FIRE OF TRANSFORMATION

Now

Though fleets had amassed at his order a hundred times before, this was the first time he had seen it through new eyes. Much had changed since he had stood before the primarch. Wars had been fought and won since that chastisement. Since he had remembered his duty. Entire legions of the damned pushed back. The Shrine Worlds Crusades were over, and now only the uncertainty of the future beckoned.

High Marshal Helbrecht stood upon one of the many embarkation decks of the Eternal Crusader and gazed out at the gathering warriors. Black armoured and zealous, they moved with a surety of purpose which spoke of their skill and determination. The air was fogged with incense as the warriors assembled and trained, swearing oaths to the God-Emperor and reaffirming their commitment to His unbreakable will.

To look upon them was to know pride. To stand with them was an honour. Helbrecht’s eye drifted across their ranks and noted as many differences as he saw similarities. The Firstborn and the Primaris, not divided by the variances of biology but bound together by their love of the Emperor and the hatred of His foes.

Helbrecht understood both of them. He had served and risen through the ranks as an Adeptus Astartes of the old pattern… and he had braved the Rubicon Primaris to be reborn. Not in ascension. Not in a false state of grace, nor through grievous mortal wounds. He had chosen his fate, embraced it as the Emperor’s will, and now stood taller. Though his wounds yet ached and his body continued to adapt, he felt new strength blossom through his limbs. He had been transmuted. Forged anew from fire and faith.

He had hoped that the Emperor would speak to him in the close darkness between life and death – but there had been no dreams, no visions, and no revelations. Only the cloying black, hot with the scent of sickness and the spice of pain. The ache had passed, but the emptiness had not. It had dogged his steps. As pernicious as doubt.

He remembered so much of the near-ritual of the surgeries. The drawn-out procedure itself. The Eternal Crusader had detoured and stopped for the undertaking, that their lord might be remade surrounded by the stolid trappings of the materium, not the hellish miasma of the warp. They had drifted at the edges of the system as he prepared himself for the transition. He had given a recounting of his deeds for the Chapter archives, that his knowledge and his undertakings might survive him should the worst transpire, and then submitted himself.

In the dim light cast by the star, Helbrecht had closed his eyes and braced for the knife. It was only fitting that a knight of the Throne such as he should be born again beneath the starlight of Sol itself.

He had passed through darkness and light, and he had emerged stronger for it. Resurgent as the great Imperium was surely resurgent. The Indomitus Crusade raged, but that was nothing new to him.

What is one more crusade to those who fight them endlessly? A matter of scale alone. If anything, now the Imperium marches in lockstep with us. The Great Crusade is come again only for those for whom it never ended.

Now they had gathered at the muster point of Varjek, upon the road to Octarius, to wage war once again. To honour their oaths.

‘It is a curse to be the most faithful sons of a complacent empire,’ he muttered, ‘where even angels have lost their way.’ He shook his head as he gazed down from the raised platform. ‘They must be reminded why we fight and why we are allowed to exist.’

‘At least we can be confident that your ascension has not altered you enough that you might be mistaken for an optimist, my lord.’

Helbrecht turned at the voice and his mouth creased into a smile.

Nivelo bowed his head in greeting and then moved to stand beside the High Marshal. He was an old warrior, a veteran of countless campaigns. His bare scalp was criss-crossed with old scars and his beard was iron grey, wiry against his cheeks and chin. They had risen through the ranks together – though Nivelo had found his place amidst the Sword Brethren. Now he was a source of close protection and even counsel.

There were few others whom Helbrecht would take so close into his trust. Merek Grimaldus, perhaps, now that the choler between them was tempered. A few favoured serfs and confessors.

Finally, Helbrecht answered. ‘Some things the Emperor has set in stone, brother. It will be time’s ending before ever they change.’

‘I should hope so. Tell me though, truly, how does it feel?’

‘I am mostly healed, so the Apothecaries say. I am to submit to their scrutiny but a few more nights and then I shall be whole. Beyond that?’

Helbrecht paused and looked down at the ranks of warriors. The Primaris Marines were easy to spot, taller in their Mark X plate. He understood now what had escaped him when they had first entered the Chapter. The differences between them and the Firstborn, and the unity which held them together.

‘There is greater steel in my body and my soul. I feel… whole. Not as though I have satisfied a lack, or that this is as I was intended to be. More that I have been gifted something precious. I am the same man as I was before I crossed the Rubicon. I burn with the same fire that carried me through the Shrine Worlds Crusades. Only keener.’

‘You speak,’ Nivelo began cautiously, ‘as though they are truly our superiors. Many fear replacement. That we will be swept aside in a wave of Mechanicus-forged flesh. You were there when we first welcomed them into our ranks from Guilliman’s vault ships. How plain-minded they were then – relics cast out of time, clinging to old truths and machine learning. There was no fire to them.’ He drummed his fist against his breastplate. ‘No soul.’

‘We taught them that,’ Helbrecht said. He paused as gunships swept into the embarkation deck and landed in a rough line along the docking platforms. Superheated air buffeted the gathered warriors but none stirred or broke formation. They stood, poised sentinels, in the shadows of the Thunderhawks and Overlords. Underslung weapons glinted and crackled, eager to unleash wrath against mankind’s enemies.

They had been baptised in the fires of war, Helbrecht had seen to that. There would be many more wars to come, of that he had no doubt.

‘We taught them zeal and faith,’ Helbrecht continued. ‘We stripped them of their suppositions and made them as Neophytes before the altar. They learned by example, as we all must. At the very tip of the blade. The guidance of the Chaplaincy ever in their ears. Now they preach with our words and back them with their own fervency. That is strength. It is triumph to take the unforged and to make converts of them.’

Further into the vast space of the embarkation deck, as though to prove his point, warriors were sparring. Some bore full plate and blunted blades while others fought in mere training bodygloves hand to hand. The clatter of steel against ceramite and the rhythmical slapping of flesh against flesh was evocative. Electric. Grunts of pain echoed about the cathedral-like spars of the great chamber, war cries were bellowed, and chanted encouragement and jeers chased the warriors as they paced like hounds. They fought in mixed groupings: Firstborn and Primaris. There were varying levels of experience and physical prowess on both sides, with no guarantee of victory for either generation of Astartes.

It was good to see.

The slow annealing together of warriors into brothers. To guide them and shape them was the duty of the Chaplains and all who rose to prominence within the Chapter’s holy precepts. Every marshal was the guardian of their crusade’s soul, just as Helbrecht himself was the shepherd of their endeavours.

‘There is something to be said for them,’ Nivelo said with a nod. He leant on the railing before them, his armoured forearms dangling across it. Helbrecht heard the metal groaning under Nivelo’s weight. ‘We have suffered losses in the Shrine Worlds Crusades. There are gaps in deployment that it would be good to see mended. I take it that is part of the reason for the muster?’

‘Partly,’ Helbrecht said.

Nivelo’s brow furrowed at the ambiguity in his lord’s statement. He looked to Helbrecht for clarity and the High Marshal sighed.

‘We muster again in pursuit of the Beast. I have bided my time. I have answered the lord primarch’s call and protected those holy worlds he bade us to reinforce. How many servants of the Imperium yet draw breath because of our exertions? How many brothers fell in their defence? Or now stand sentinel over the sacred places? Our numbers swell, our crusades cry out for word of their next undertaking. Now that service shall be repaid in blood. The blood of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.’

‘Blood long owed,’ Nivelo agreed, perhaps too eagerly. ‘The heart of every battle-brother burns to avenge the slights of Armageddon, whether they were there to receive them or not. It is a just thing to bring the Beast to account.’

‘There are rumours that our cousins in the Crimson Fists have launched a new Crusade of Vengeance. One to burn the greenskins from the very stars. Can you imagine?’ Helbrecht gazed out at the warriors. From the lowliest Neophyte to the greatest marshal, they would all fight and die at his word. ‘Ever has the ork been a tenacious foe of mankind. The legends spoke of how the Emperor and His sons smote them at ancient Ullanor. How the blood of Dorn repulsed them again when the Great Beast arose. They are our most enduring foe. Man and ork have been at war since first we came to the stars. The aeldari claim that this was their galaxy before the Imperium clawed it back, but that is a lie they comfort themselves with in their craftworlds. The galaxy has forever belonged to the ork.’

‘I look forward to seeing your plans for the undertaking, brother,’ Nivelo said with genuine mirth. ‘No doubt you shall fashion our ships into spears and cast them across the void till they find flesh.’

‘Have you known me to fight differently?’

‘Never, brother. Not when you ascended to replace Daidin nor Kordhel. A stubborn soul of stone and fire. No blade more righteous.’

Helbrecht chuckled at the words and his bionic hand reached for the hilt of his sword. ‘No blade more righteous indeed… Yet it is a fleeting honour. I am the bearer of its legacy. By its grace I lead men into war. One day it shall pass to someone else, as it came to me after Kordhel fell to the Archenemy. I am ready for that time to come. Our blood is strong, as strong as the lessons of Sigismund, and from our gene-line shall emerge another hero who holds that mantle.’

‘I pray that day never comes, my friend.’

‘All men die, Nivelo,’ said Helbrecht. ‘What matters is the deeds that justify the lives they live. Done in faith and truth, before the Emperor’s light.’

‘Praise be unto He who lays the path before us.’

‘Praise be unto Him,’ Helbrecht echoed. A chime emitted from his armour and he sighed. ‘I have to go for a time – more observed convalescence.’ He nodded back towards the landing grounds, where more drop-ships were landing and more warriors were spilling out in their thronging crowds. Prayers rose higher and more fervent, scattering cherubs into the upper reaches of the hangar amidst clouds of incense. ‘Keep an eye on the proceedings. If there is any alteration then summon me at once.’

‘As you will, High Marshal.’ Nivelo bowed low, realising that the time for camaraderie had passed. ‘I shall guard their lives as surely as I guard yours.’

‘See that you do,’ Helbrecht said. ‘The soul of one is as precious as the soul of all.’

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o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.