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Chapter One

Voyagers

‘We’re ten minutes from the Sanctus Reach Mandeville point, justicar,’ Hadrianna Furia said as she walked into the Chamber of Militant Quiet.

Justicar Styer looked up from the hololith of Squire’s Rest that dominated the projection table in the centre of the room. ‘Thank you, inquisitor.’ The Grey Knight did not resent the arrival of an unannounced presence into the room, intrusive though it was. The space was meditative and tactical, a sanctuary for prayer and war. Situated one level above the bridge of the Tyndaris, it provided a valued retreat for Styer while giving him rapid access to the strike cruiser’s nerve centre when necessary. It was circular. The adornment of its dome was simple. The ribs were carved into the representation of spears, in alternating orientation. Between them was the darkness of obsidian. When he gazed upward, Styer found he could empty his mind of the extraneous and concentrate on the absolute necessity of the moment. What was even more crucial: he could bear down on the problem that faced him and strip it of its inessentials, unearthing the true core of the challenge. On the walls beneath the dome were shelves holding texts that were devotional, military, and arcane. As a librarium, the Chamber of Militant Quiet had a small collection, but it was a powerful one.

Furia looked at the projection of the world. ‘Any luck?’

‘No.’ Styer had been going over everything in the Tyndaris’s data banks about the planet during the strike cruiser’s journey to Sanctus Reach. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The world is innocuous.’

‘It is in the path of a massive ork force.’

‘And its inhabitants have my sympathy.’

‘Do they?’ Furia asked.

Was she testing him? Styer wondered. For what? Necessary signs of humanity, or extraneous ones? Or was her purpose less well defined, a question of probing him from different angles, looking for the weakness that would explain his scepticism about the mission? He shrugged off the questions. They weren’t useful ones. ‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘I am not unmoved by their plight. But I will not waste time or energy mourning what a single squad cannot prevent. Nor do I find any records,’ he waved his hand at the data-slates fanned across his side of the table, ‘that point to the work of the Ruinous Powers. What purchase would they find in a population composed of retired Imperial Guard who have been rewarded for loyalty and service? If the fall of Squire’s Rest is a concern for the Inquisition, I would think it falls within the purview of the Ordo Xenos, not the Ordo Malleus.’

‘Nevertheless, those are the coordinates the prognosticators gave us. A major daemonic incursion is imminent.’

Styer grunted.

‘You doubt the prognostication?’ Furia sounded surprised. She shouldn’t. He hadn’t made his reservations a secret. But this was the first time they had discussed the matter directly.

‘About its accuracy, yes.’

‘That is a highly unorthodox attitude, justicar.’

‘And a sound one. I have no wish to suffer further pointless losses.’

The last mission had savaged his squad. The prognosticators had forecast an incursion in the Angriff System. Situated in the Finial sector, Angriff was close enough to the Eye of Terror for warp distortions to be expected. Still, all information had pointed to Angriff Primus’s moon as the site of the attack. The planet was a miserable forge world, but it was in the moon’s mining colonies where the Ordo Malleus and the Ecclesiarchy had already been combating a growing cult whose conception of the Emperor was a dangerously extreme deviation from the orthodoxy of the Imperial Creed. The Tyndaris had arrived, preparations had been made, and the cult’s centres of activity assaulted. But the daemons had appeared on Angriff Primus itself. Styer’s squad had had to fly into battle with no time to formulate a proper strategy. They had managed to contain the infection to a single manufactorum. In the end, they had destroyed the plant and every soul, possessed or innocent, inside.

Two battle-brothers had been lost. Erec and Morholt, their centuries of battle deeds brought to an end by the abominations that should never have been given the chance to enter the materium. Styer didn’t know when his squad would be back to full strength. He bore a new set of scars: huge claw slashes, two sets of three parallel gouges that ran down either side of his face from his temples to his chin. The raised flesh of the wounds’ ridges reminded him of how badly they had been blindsided. If the prognosticators had sought deliberately to mislead his squad, he thought, they could not have done better. He kept these musings to himself. He would never accuse another Grey Knight of treason or corruption. Those were impossibilities. But what he saw on the table before him made him question the accuracy of the prognosticators even more.

He was surprised that Furia didn’t share his mistrust. She had been on Angriff Primus too. She had fought, and she had been wounded. Badly. Most of the left side of her body was augmetic. Arm and leg were bionic. Anyone who saw her in profile saw one of two different people. On the right, there was the flesh of a mid-career inquisitor. Juvenat treatments preserved something that could not be said to be youth – her eye was too hard for that – but was the prime of strength. The left side of her face was a bronze mask, just as stern and remorseless as the flesh, the red lens of her eye a piercing judgement, but the time and the expression were frozen. The right side of Furia was capable of expressing kindness. It could laugh. The left was frozen in unending purpose.

‘Our losses on Angriff Primus were not in vain,’ she said.

‘True,’ Styer replied. ‘But neither were they necessary. If we had been looking in the right place from the start, they would not have happened.’ He stabbed a finger at the hololith of Squire’s Rest. ‘And this is the wrong place. Again.’

‘The coordinates were specific. One of the moons, perhaps?’

‘Doubtful. They’re just fragments. Nothing larger than a mountain. No mining operations on any of them. They’re dead rock.’

‘Then there is something that we’re missing. Just as there must have been something we missed on Angriff Primus. We were in error, not the prognostication.’

‘If we go into battle second-guessing our strategy, we deserve defeat.’

‘Then we will make certain we are not in error,’ Furia said, and turned to go. ‘I think we should be on the bridge, Justicar Styer.’

He grunted and extinguished the hololith. He was dissatisfied with his session in the chamber. He had come to no resolution. He left with as many doubts as he had entered. But Furia was right.

The Grey Knights were about to arrive on their field of battle. Time to lead the charge.

As he and Furia stepped outside the chamber, he saw Vohnum waiting for him. ‘I’ll join you in a moment, inquisitor,’ he said.

Furia glanced at Vohnum, nodded to Styer, and walked on.

‘You wanted to see me, brother?’ Styer said.

‘I was wondering whether you had found greater clarity with regards to our mission, brother-justicar.’

Styer didn’t care for the ambiguity of Vohnum’s phrasing. It could be read as a helpful expression of concern. It could also be a veiled criticism. Vohnum might be implying that it was Styer who lacked clarity, not the mission. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have not.’ He waited for a moment, then said, ‘Why? Do you see something I don’t?’

Vohnum was the most senior of the warriors who served with Styer. It was he who commanded the other combat squad when they split their force into two on the battlefield. They had fought side by side for over a century, and they had done so well. But Angriff Primus had driven a wedge between them. Vohnum didn’t doubt the prognosticators. His faith in every aspect of them was absolute. If something went wrong, the blame fell with the decisions made in combat. Following that logic, Styer knew that his battle-brother was looking at his leadership critically.

‘It is not for me to engage in exegesis,’ Vohnum began.

‘Why not? An interpretation that would make sense of the contradictions before us would be helpful.’

‘I see nothing to interpret. The prognosticators have foreseen a daemonic incursion at these coordinates. So we have come to defeat it.’

‘Indeed we have.’

Vohnum grimaced in frustration. ‘Forgive me, brother-justicar, but that is not the impression you are giving.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘You have not made a secret of your questions about the prognostication.’

‘And?’

‘I believe doing so is detrimental to the spiritual health of our squad.’

Styer bristled, but he made himself calm down before answering. Honest debate was part of the mortar of trust between battle-brothers. But not when disagreement crossed over into dissension. ‘After Angriff Primus, I have questions. The current situation makes them even more urgent. I will not conceal my doubts from the rest of you.’

‘I expressed myself badly,’ Vohnum said. ‘It is not your honesty that troubles me. It is the questions themselves.’

‘Are you questioning my leadership?’

‘I seek reassurance about the soundness of your judgement.’

‘Then be assured,’ Styer said, and the air filled with ice. ‘Any question I ask is for the benefit of our squad, and for the fulfilment of our duty and our oaths.’ He leaned in toward Vohnum. ‘Have no doubt of that.’ He was not reassuring the other Grey Knight. He was giving him a direct order.

‘The landings are still ongoing, inquisitor,’ Lowell Montgelas said.

Malia Orbiana stifled the worst of her impatience. ‘I can see that very well, shipmaster.’ The primary oculus of the Scouring Light displayed the long rain of ork landings. ‘The bulk of the ork fleet is moving on though, is it not?’

‘It is,’ Montgelas admitted.

She looked down at him from where she sat in the command throne. The seat was an isolated one, rising from the end of a platform that projected into the space of the bridge like a spur from the rear wall. Orbiana’s position was four metres above the deck. She had a clear view of the oculus and of the activity below her. She was present before her crew, but far beyond their level. The architecture of the bridge was symbolic, and symbols could have a direct impact, shaping the perception of power and its currents. ‘The greenskins crave violence like a drug,’ Orbiana continued. ‘This is an agri world. It isn’t worth much of their attention.’ She gestured at the oculus. ‘Clearly, they know this. How many ships at anchor do you see?’

‘None,’ Montgelas said after a minute.

‘Precisely. The orks who seek sport here are landing. Their kin won’t tolerate waiting around without a battle coming their way. We’ll have the near space of Squire’s Rest to ourselves. Don’t concern yourself unduly about the greenskins. How close are we to the coordinates I gave you?’

‘We’re nearly there.’ Montgelas was standing at a pulpit in the centre of the bridge, a few metres forward of Orbiana. When she was absent, the station gave him the authority he needed. When she was in the throne, Montgelas’s subordination to her will was reinforced. He was the shipmaster, but the Scouring Light was hers. Every soul aboard served the will of the agent of the Ordo Xenos. ‘Auspex,’ Montgelas said to the woman sitting at the station to his immediate left. ‘Please show us the target.’

Marga Furth tapped some keys, and runes appeared on the oculus, highlighting the goal of Orbiana’s journey. It was very close to a cluster of ork landing sites.

‘That could be better,’ Orbiana muttered. ‘What do we know of the vicinity?’

‘Farmland,’ said Furth. ‘Sparsely inhabited. The specific destination is not immediately adjacent to cultivated areas.’

Orbiana nodded. ‘So the orks will have little reason to venture there.’

‘They will if we’re there,’ Montgelas said.

‘Then we’ll be discreet.’ She mentally ran through the risks. Montgelas was right, of course. If the orks decided her landing party was interesting, then the mission would come to a quick end. She decided that the danger was a manageable one. ‘Get the shuttle ready,’ she said and stood up. She wanted to make her preparations for landing, keep herself busy. She didn’t want to listen to the small, grating voice in the back of her mind, the one whose accusations made her chest pinch.

She didn’t want to listen, but as she walked along the platform and off the bridge, she heard what it said anyway. It complained that she had only pretended to weigh her options, and that she had decided on her course of action before she had even known how close the greenskins would be to the target. That was true. Of course she had. She had decided months before arriving in Sanctus Reach.

The full truth? There was no decision to be made.

She commanded the voice to be silent.

The Scouring Light was Orbiana’s personal vessel. A modified Viper-class sloop – it was not a combat ship, though it had slit the throat of many xenos threats. It was fast, stealthy, its dark plating almost as effective at concealment as that of the Black Ships. It was a shadow that slipped into enemy territory and brought the Emperor’s Light in the form of purifying death.

Orbiana made her way down from the superstructure and headed forward. Midway to bow, she turned off the main corridor. She took maintenance tunnels, dropping three more levels and weaving through multiple intersections before she arrived outside a closed vault door. ‘Is he here?’ she asked the guard stationed before it.

‘No, inquisitor,’ one answered. ‘He said he was going to rest.’

‘Has he been gone long?’

‘About an hour.’

She nodded her thanks. She walked on another hundred metres, and then took a staircase up a level. She stopped before another door. This one was as nondescript as the one below was massive. They both protected objects of great value. She rapped once on the door. After a few seconds it opened.

The man who admitted her to the small sleeping quarters was twice her age and a head shorter. He seemed even smaller thanks to his rounded posture. His hair was lank and grey and his chin sprouted rough, greasy-looking whiskers. His robes bore multi-coloured chemical stains, and there were pinprick burns in the sleeves. His face was sallow, its flesh hanging loose. He looked exhausted.

‘I’m sorry to disturb your sleep,’ Orbiana said to Ertuo Andoval.

‘Not at all, inquisitor,’ the sage answered. ‘You know how much I value our exchanges.’

‘Are you making progress?’

He shrugged, embarrassed and modest. ‘Some, I think. Always forwards, inquisitor, always forwards. I have, I believe, stumbled onto what might be some very promising variants, but of course we can’t know with any certainty. We need more material–’

‘You’ll get it. Plenty of it.’

‘And the other…?’

‘That’s what I’ve come to tell you. We’ve arrived.’

‘Will I be coming down with you?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

Andoval looked crestfallen. ‘But what we’re looking for is so specific…’

‘I know very well what we require. Are you questioning my skills?’

Andoval shook his head quickly and took a step away, head bowed. ‘I would never think to do that.’

‘Good. And this is for your own safety. The orks are here before us. You are too valuable to risk taking you there.’

‘I will continue my research while you are gone, then, inquisitor.’

‘No,’ she snapped. She used her tone as a whip. Andoval recoiled as if struck. Good. ‘You will do no such thing. You will never do that work when I am not on board. Am I clear?’

‘Yes, inquisitor.’

‘Am I clear?’

‘Yes, inquisitor,’ Andoval repeated, hunching lower as if he might kneel.

‘Good. We are close,’ she said more gently. ‘I have strong hopes that we are only a few cycles away from the answer. Such an accomplishment is worth a bit more patience, isn’t it?’

Andoval nodded. ‘It is.’

She gave him a long stare, then said, ‘Thank you, Ertuo,’ and left.

As she walked away, she faced the idea of Andoval disobeying her command. She knew that he would not. He was loyal. He held the authority of the Inquisition in great awe, as he should. He knew the dangers. He would not disobey.

But he had proposed a course of action that should never have crossed his mind. So Orbiana made herself confront the possibility of Andoval’s disobedience. When she did, she felt more than a pinch in her chest.

She felt terror.

Chapter Two

An End to Rest

‘That is no ork vessel,’ Styer said.

With the full squad of Grey Knights in attendance on the bridge, the Tyndaris had begun a reconnaissance of Squire’s Rest. The auspex scan had revealed massive ork deployments on the surface, but only one other ship in orbit, and that was the Imperial sloop the strike cruiser was now approaching.

‘Squire’s Rest must be interesting in more ways than we think,’ Epistolary Gared remarked.

‘I recognise that ship,’ Furia said. ‘The Scouring Light. It is the private vessel of Inquisitor Malia Orbiana, of the Ordo Xenos.’

‘You do not sound pleased. Isn’t what is happening below more her domain than ours?’ Styer said.

‘If she has the means of stopping this invasion on her own, then I hope she shares that knowledge with the rest of the Imperium.’ Furia shook her head. ‘I doubt her reason for being here is to counter the greenskins.’

‘A coincidence? That seems unlikely.’

‘If the Ruinous Powers are at work here, then we should expect stranger coincidences than this.’

Styer nodded, conceding the point. ‘But you haven’t answered my question. Why does her presence anger you?’

‘Inquisitor Orbiana’s methods are unsound.’

‘She’s a radical?’

‘Yes. A Xanthite.’

Styer looked at the Scouring Light with a new suspicion. He understood and shared Furia’s distaste for that philosophy. Furia was an Amalathian. Her respect for Imperial orthodoxy was adamantine. She and Styer worked well together. From the perspective of the Grey Knights, the radical factions in the Inquisition were little better than outright heretics who had somehow avoided excommunication and execution. Their beliefs and practices put their souls, and by extension the Imperium itself, at risk. If a Xanthite was up to something dangerous, Styer found it increasingly plausible that a daemonic event could occur on Squire’s Rest. Xanthites had no compunction about using the darker powers of warp to achieve their ends. Worse: they sought out those powers, and their research was misguided in the extreme. Styer knew the value of a full knowledge of the Ruinous Powers, but only for the sole purpose of destroying them. The Xanthites hoped to harness what they found. That was madness.

‘I imagine you are feeling a greater confidence in the prognostication,’ Furia said softly, for Styer’s ears alone.

‘Yes,’ he said. He still found the situation disturbing. Had they travelled to Squire’s Rest solely because of what Orbiana was about to do? Was the prediction of the incursion not based on a location, but on a person? And still he wondered why here, and at this moment. Xanthites were inherently dangerous. He and his brothers would have nothing to do with them. Even so, Orbiana and her like were inquisitors, and they were not triggering incursions every cycle. And though he shared Furia’s doubts about Orbiana’s reasons for being in Sanctus Reach, the fact of the ork waaagh! meant that her presence was entirely justified.

Styer felt as if he were seeing the first links of a dark chain of events being forged. There was logic at work that he did not like, though he could not put his finger on the precise reason for his discomfort.

‘We must go aboard that ship,’ Furia said. ‘We must learn Orbiana’s purpose.’

‘Agreed.’ It was the only way to know what role, if any, she had to play in the foretold crisis. ‘Hail the Scouring Light,’ he ordered.

There was no answer at first. The sloop maintained vox silence until the Tyndaris was almost upon it. When the Scouring Light’s shipmaster finally responded, Styer had been on the verge of having the boarding torpedoes readied. Even then, Lowell Montgelas extended no welcome. He acknowledged the hails, assured Shipmaster Bruno Saalfrank of the Tyndaris that all was well, and said nothing else.

Styer took the vox. ‘Shipmaster Montgelas,’ he said. ‘I am Justicar Styer. Your estimation of your well-being is of little interest to me. My mission is. You will receive me, my squad, and Inquisitor Furia aboard the Scouring Light.’

‘But without the authorization of Inquisitor Orbiana…’ Montgelas began. There was a quaver in his voice. He was clearly terrified by his own defiance.

Styer granted him a degree of respect for doing his assigned duty. He granted the man nothing else. Certainly not mercy. ‘You will drop your shields and open you starboard landing bay to our gunship. You will do so immediately, or be destroyed.’

Montgelas complied.

The orks hadn’t come yet. There were larger farms to the west. The land in the plains below the shelf that Brauner and Stumar worked was more fertile, though a far cry from how bountiful it had been in centuries past. There were larger population centres in that direction too. More fun for the greenskins.

There was news from those farms. It came in the form of distant conflagrations and smoke that rose in huge clouds from the land.

Brauner was talking with Stumar outside his house. Dietrick had done as ordered and gathered the farmhands inside. The building was a low, long, brooding, stone structure, holding his quarters as well as the barracks. It was solid, not built for war, but ready if it came. After a decade of raids, and centuries of benign neglect on the part of the rest of the Imperium, there weren’t too many homes on Squire’s Rest that hadn’t suffered damage or decay. Stumar’s had been hit the year before, and half the length of its barracks was still a burnt-out shell. Brauner had been lucky. His land had been spared to date. His walls were the strongest. So when the time came, Stumar would pull her workers back to here, and together the two groups of veterans would make a redoubt of Brauner’s home.

That way, Brauner joked to Stumar, and to her alone, they should last another five minutes.

‘Any sign they’re moving our way?’ he asked Stumar now.

She shook her head. ‘For the time being, they aren’t interested, or haven’t noticed we’re here.’

‘Let’s hope they’re blind. That eastern windbreak of yours might make all the difference.’ The trees that marked the boundary between the farms stood close together. It wasn’t easy to see through them to the cultivations on the other side.

She looked at him for a long time before answering. ‘That doesn’t sound like you. You know the greenskins have been on my land before.’

‘Different ones, different time. No reason to think they shared the knowledge.’

‘Magical thinking. What’s wrong with you?’

He had been avoiding asking himself that question. Perhaps what was wrong was that he knew the end had come for all of them this time, and he was trying to fill up the time between now and then with a pretence of meaningful action. Perhaps he didn’t want to believe in the inevitability of the burning of Squire’s Rest, and the death of everyone.

Or perhaps he feared some deaths more than others.

He didn’t fear his own. He had had that particular anxiety beaten and scorched out of him decades ago. He couldn’t remember if he had ceased to care about his own mortality during his training period or after, during his first campaign in the trenches of Beria. The distinction didn’t matter. He wasn’t afraid to die.

He was afraid of Stumar’s death.

He could tell himself that, though it was more than their friendship was worth to let her know. She was cut of the same tough leather as he. Too stubborn to die. Almost too chewed up to live. Their lives of brutal toil and blood had won them a reward, and their slice of paradise had been, in reality, just a doorway to more toil. And now the final measure of blood was going to be exacted from them. Some of their farmhands had retained enough illusions to start families. Brauner had not.

He had never allowed himself to articulate the thought of Stumar as something other than a fellow former officer, a valued comrade in the battle to keep the fields of Squire’s Rest fruitful, a trusted neighbour. A best friend.

No, he had never allowed himself to think anything more, because the life he had led – the life they both had led – was not one where such thoughts had a place. They were too soft. They were parasites that weakened their hosts, leaving them vulnerable to misplaced hope and wide-eyed blindness.

Even so, the thought that Stumar might die terrified him.

And that, he realised, was why he was indulging in the ridiculous speculation that the orks would not notice the two farms on this shelf.

‘Don’t know what I’m saying,’ he told Stumar. ‘Tired old man.’

‘You’ll have plenty of time to sleep after the orks are done with us.’

‘True, true.’ He slapped the wall of the house. ‘So what are we thinking? This will hold them for a bit. Then what? We make them burn us out?’

She grimaced. ‘Not my first choice.’

‘Another retreat, then?’

‘If we don’t leave it too long, maybe. Where to?’

They looked up at the slope behind the house. Brauner’s land continued for some distance yet to the east of here, but the soil was no longer arable. It was too thin, then too rocky, then too steep. There was a rough forest for the first half kilometre, and it gave way to scrub, then scree.

‘Not much shelter,’ Stumar said.

‘I can think of one possibility.’

‘Really? Not what I could call ideal.’

He shrugged. ‘Strong walls, though.’

‘Do you think–’ she began, then stopped.

The roar of engines. Airborne. Coming closer.

They looked up. Some of the armed farmhands emerged from the house. For a moment, Brauner expected to see the silhouettes of an ork bomber squadron. But no, he realised: the engines, though deep-throated, weren’t the ugly, chugging, snarling abominations of greenskin technology. And there was a single set.

The vehicle was Imperial. It drew closer, its shape acquiring definition as it dropped in altitude. It was a shuttle, sleek, expensive enough to belong to a wealthy merchant, but with heavy, dark shielding, and front-mounted heavy bolters. There were no identifying markings. That fact alone told Brauner that whoever commanded the craft was formidable. His instinct for self-preservation, honed over hundreds of battlefields, warned him to keep his questions to himself.

The shuttle kept dropping. It slowed, then ceased its forward flight and descended to the field opposite the farmhouse. Maize burned in the wash of its retro-motors. Bits of crop flew, hail in a whirlwind. Brauner didn’t blink at the damage. It would all be ash soon enough anyway.

The shuttle landed, its engines fell silent, and an access door opened on its side. A staircase dropped to the ground. A moment later, a woman in power armour started down them.

‘The Sisters of Battle…?’ Stumar began.

‘I don’t think so,’ Brauner said. He had encountered a few of the Adepta Sororitas in his time. They were forbidding figures, as was this woman, but there was an aura of piety that was missing. The seals and wards that adorned the crimson-and-emerald armour did not appear to be religious icons. At least, not ones that he recognised as such. Then there was the pendant. It hung over her chestplate from a thick, iron chain. It was a rosette in the form of a column with a skull at its centre.

‘Is that…’ Stumar began, then stopped herself.

‘I don’t know,’ said Brauner.

‘Neither do I,’ Stumar said quickly.

‘Inside,’ Brauner told his farmhands. When he glanced back, he saw their pale faces and compressed lips. None of them could say that they knew with certainty what that rosette represented. But they had all heard whispers. What they did know was that it was a mark of absolute authority. Any information beyond that was not healthy to possess. They retreated to the interior of the house, removing themselves from the woman’s gaze.

Behind her came a squad of men-at-arms. Their uniforms mirrored the colours the power armour. Their faces were grim, but if they were in the service of the owner of the rosette, at least they didn’t carry the same terrible symbol themselves.

The woman stopped a few strides away from the gathering. ‘My name is Malia Orbiana,’ she said. She was, Brauner guessed, close to his and Stumar’s age. His judgement was not based on her apparent age, but on her overlapping scars. They were the topography of past battles. Her eyes, though, burned with the passion of someone much younger. Orbiana was driven by obsessions that went far beyond simple duty, or the need to win the day. They were another sign, for Brauner, that Orbiana was not a warrior in the sense that he understood. She made war, but by means that he would be happy not to know about.

Brauner stepped forward. ‘Welcome to Squire’s Rest,’ he said. He introduced himself and Stumar.

‘This is your land?’ Orbiana asked him.

‘It is.’

‘Then you can be of assistance.’

‘Honoured to be of use,’ he said. Despite his wariness of the authority Orbiana obviously wielded, Brauner resented the cavalier way she ignored the crisis faced by the citizens of Squire’s Rest. She had noticed the ork army, just a few kilometres distant, hadn’t she? He was careful to keep all irony out of his tone as he said, ‘However, the greenskin invasion is–’

She cut him off. ‘I’m seeking the tomb of Major-General Luter Mehnert. My information is that it is in this vicinity.’

‘Uh… yes. Yes it is,’ Brauner stuttered in surprise. ‘About a kilometre from here.’ It was that officer’s mausoleum, and the cemetery surrounding it, that he and Stumar had been discussing as their next line of defence. The coincidence alarmed him.

‘You will take us there.’

‘Of course.’ He exchanged a glance with Stumar, who had joined him.

‘Is there something wrong?’ Orbiana’s tone was sharp.

‘With the tomb?’ Stumar asked. ‘No.’

Brauner wondered if Orbiana would catch the implication that there was a lot wrong with everything else.

If she did, she ignored it. ‘Tell me,’ she said, speaking now to everyone present, ‘is there any folklore associated with the Mehnert tomb?’

‘No,’ said Brauner. ‘None that I’ve ever heard.’ The cemetery was an old one. Interred on its grounds were some of the original colonists of Squire’s Rest. All the lines of descent from the men and women who had gone to their final rest there had long since withered away. The site had fallen into disuse. No one visited. It sat on the extreme eastern edge of Brauner’s territory, and he had explored it a few times. He knew where it was and its layout. He knew the names on the largest tombs. But that was all.

‘What of Mehnert himself?’ Orbiana continued. ‘Any stories?’

Bruaner shook his head. The general was known for his role in the early settling of the planet. His military career, to the best of Brauner’s knowledge, was distinguished primarily by the fact that he had survived it. His name and his history were sinking into the mire of the past. He was no legend. He was just a man.

Orbiana frowned briefly. ‘Odd,’ she said.

Brauner did not ask why. Neither did Stumar.

Orbiana looked past them, at the hard land upslope. ‘Then let us go pay our respects,’ she said. ‘We have little time.’ She paused, and the silence was filled by the rumble of the invasion. It sounded less distant. Orbiana turned her attention back to the farmers. ‘And you have still less. I am not unsympathetic to your situation. With your aid, however, it may be possible to end the greenskin plague forever.’

She was holding out hope but Brauner didn’t dare grasp it. Leaving the farmhands to complete the preparations for defence, he and Stumar led the way towards the cemetery.

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For Margaux, and the team we make.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Nacho Molina.

© Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-624-8

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