The gleaming eyes in the darkness of the forest glittered in approval at the fury of the bout before them.
Skálmöld was bleeding freely from a long stomach wound, but Luth knew he was worse off. The wound at his neck was deep, and his breath was hot and painful in his chest. Despite his injuries, Luth grinned, feeling the wolf within take the pain and turn it to his advantage.
To let Skálmöld take the initiative would be a mistake.
Luth leapt at Skálmöld before he realised how badly he was hurt. The impact was sudden and ferocious, knocking the challenger head over heels. He followed up with a clawed lunge at the raw part of Skálmöld’s neck, but the Moonsorrow threw him off and then the two princeps were at each other again. Fountains of snow were thrown up as they fought, spraying in all directions and falling in a mist of glittering crystalline droplets.
Skálmöld tore a wound in Luth’s belly, but a moment later, after another convulsive explosion of snow, both princeps were standing upright like duellists. Luth slashed at Skálmöld’s face, but the Moonsorrow was hitting back just as savagely. The weight of their blows was far beyond what their physical forms could have inflicted, as if Imperator Titans were swinging wrecking balls at one another.
Claws slashed flesh, teeth crashed on teeth and breath roared harshly. The snow of their arena was splashed with red and trodden down for metres into a crimson mud.
Skálmöld was bigger and stronger than Luth and he had had the best of the fight so far. Both princeps’ forms wavered between human and wolf, like mythic lycanthropes in the midst of a transformation. Neither man could allow the wolf full rein, for none had ever come back from such a surrender. To allow it near the surface was as much as either of them dared risk.
Luth was breathing heavily. Both princeps were wounded in the shoulders, arms, and neck, but Luth’s wounds were the deeper. Skálmöld was hungry to be alpha, but Luth knew he was not yet ready to lead the warriors of the pack. He wondered if this was hubris speaking, the inability to cede control of the pack before he became too weak to lead.
No, decided Luth, looking into Skálmöld’s yellowed eyes.
The Moonsorrow was a killer and would be a great leader one day.
But that day was not now.
At least Luth hoped not.
Skálmöld circled the bloody slush of their combat, his eyes roving in search of a weakness. Luth saw a feral grin split his features as he found it. Luth was limping, his left arm hung unmoving at his side. Luth watched Skálmöld replay the last of their clashes in his head, baring his fangs as he understood that Luth had not struck a telling blow with his left hand for some time. The crushing punches he’d delivered only a few seconds before were now little more than gentle slaps.
‘Surrender the pack to me,’ said Skálmöld, red foam spitting from the corner of his jaw. ‘You don’t have to die.’
‘I don’t plan to die.’
Skálmöld laughed. ‘Look at the blood on the ground, Arlo. Little of it is mine. You cannot win. Your arm is gone. The tendons at your elbow and shoulder are fraying.’
‘I only need one hand to beat you, Eryks.’
‘Good, good, you still have spirit,’ taunted Skálmöld. ‘A victory is not a victory if it is won over a foe who already believes he is dead.’
‘Then come finish me,’ said Luth, letting his shoulder drop.
Skálmöld obliged, swinging blows at Luth from right and left – each impact a thunderbolt from the heavens, a slamming hammerblow he could no longer parry. Luth moved backwards, one step after another, crouching low under the rain of blows from the grinning Moonsorrow.
But what Skálmöld had not seen was that he was moving backwards only to seek firm rock beneath him. Luth felt the resistance of the ground underfoot change from snow to the heart-rock of the black and silver mountain. He braced himself against it, tensing his legs like a runner at the starting blocks and waiting for his moment.
That moment came when Skálmöld vaulted towards him, bellowing his triumph and raising his clawed arms to slash down at Luth’s apparently weak side.
Luth moved.
Like an avalanche that had built its strength over a thousand miles of bare mountainside to sweep all before it in a tide of devastation, Luth exploded from his firm footing on the heart-rock and sent a ferocious blow at Skálmöld’s exposed side.
It was an appalling, horrifying, mortal strike. Luth’s claws punched through Skálmöld’s torso and ripped the entire right side of his ribcage clean away. Shattered bones flew through the air, spraying blood to the snow a dozen metres away.
Skálmöld landed on his knees before Luth, blood raining from his opened belly and the glistening, blue-pink meat of his ruptured lungs oozing outwards. The Moonsorrow was suddenly helpless, and Luth’s hand fastened on his throat, ready to tear Skálmöld’s life away in his claws.
‘Do you yield?’ demanded the Wintersun.
‘I yield,’ nodded the Moonsorrow.
‘I am alpha?’
‘You are alpha.’
‘Then we return to the pack united,’ said Princeps Luth, and the black and silver mountain fell away.
‘Drink?’ asked Roboute, pouring himself a stiff measure of a spirit he’d acquired from a trader by the name of Goslyng on a trading excursion around the Iabal and Ivbal clusters. The liquid was pale turquoise, which always struck Roboute as an odd colour for a drink, but he couldn’t argue with the taste, which was like ambrosia poured straight from the halls of Macragge’s ancient gods.
‘No, thank you,’ said Tarkis Blaylock. ‘I suspect the molecular content of that beverage would react poorly with my internal chemistry.’
The Fabricatus Locum had appeared at the opened flanks of the Renard while Roboute sourced parts and tools with Magos Pavelka to begin repairing the broken grav-sled. Its sadly neglected parts had lain rusting in a corner of the cargo deck, and its state of disrepair had been a thorn in his side ever since their return from Katen Venia.
Pavelka had reminded him numerous times of the oath he’d sworn to repair the sled during their escape from the crystal-forms on the planet’s surface, admonishing him that to renege on such a pledge would be tantamount to blasphemy. Roboute almost laughed at her, but changed his mind when he saw Sylkwood backing her up with a serious expression on her face and the heavy wrench held at her shoulder.
Then Magos Blaylock had saved him from an afternoon of manual labour.
Throwing his hands up with a ‘what can you do’ expression, he’d left Pavelka and Sylkwood to it, leading Blaylock and his coterie of dwarf attendants through the Renard to his staterooms on the upper decks. Now, drink in hand, he was beginning to wonder if he’d made the right choice in leaving the cargo decks.
‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Tarkis?’ asked Roboute, taking a seat behind the expansive rosewood desk and taking a sip of his drink.
‘I believe the pleasure will be mine,’ said Blaylock, lacing his mechanised hands before him like a man who enjoys delivering bad news.
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘For you, perhaps.’
Roboute put his drink down on the desk next to the astrogation compass he’d taken from the wreckage of the Preceptor. He noticed the needle was wavering, bouncing back and forth, where before it had kept a steady and true course since the crossing of the Halo Scar. The Fabricatus Locum nodded to the keepsakes and mementos Roboute kept on the walls of his stateroom: the commendations, the rosettes and laurels and the hololithic cameo of Katen, the girl he’d left behind.
‘The last time I came here, I was most impressed by the certificates of merit you had earned in your travels,’ said Blaylock.
‘No, you weren’t,’ said Roboute. ‘You were going through the motions of being human, just before you asked me to surrender the Tomioka’s memory coil. Just like you’re doing now, right before I imagine you’re going to ask me for some other favour I likely won’t feel inclined to grant.’
 
; ‘That is where you are mistaken, Mister Surcouf,’ said Blaylock.
‘Then get to the point, Tarkis.’
Blaylock nodded, almost as though he were disappointed Roboute hadn’t played along.
‘Very well,’ said Blaylock, circling around the desk to stand before Roboute’s Letter of Marque. He took a long look at it and Roboute’s hand slid over his desk to the top drawer, unlocking it with a precise series of finger-taps. He kept one eye on Blaylock’s back as the drawer slid open.
‘A Letter of Marque is a powerful artefact,’ said Blaylock, lifting the gilt-edged frame from the wall. ‘In the right – or wrong – hands it can be a powerful weapon. With such a document, a man could forge himself an empire among the stars. Or roam free from many of the more… bureaucratic entanglements in which smaller trading fleets might otherwise find themselves mired.’
‘Very true, Tarkis,’ said Roboute, slipping his hand into the drawer. ‘It’s the one good thing to come out of my time aboard the Preceptor. My service record went a long way to persuading the officials at Bakka that I was worthy to bear such a letter.’
‘Yes, your service record,’ said Blaylock, turning to face Roboute once more. ‘A most impressive catalogue of valorous conduct, exemplary behaviour and all the right connections. Some might call it a perfect record, yes?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Roboute, withdrawing his hand from the drawer. ‘But then, perfect is the level to which the people of Ultramar aspire. You’d be doing me a disservice to think I’d be anything less. But enough of this dancing, Tarkis, I know why you’re here.’
‘And why is that?’ asked Blaylock, placing the framed Letter of Marque between them.
Roboute looked up at Blaylock’s face, cowled in scarlet and with only the shimmering emerald light of his optics to impart any visual clues to his demeanour. He lifted the item he’d taken from the desk drawer, placing the long cigar in the breast pocket of his coat.
‘So you know?’ he said.
‘Yes, Mister Surcouf,’ said Blaylock. ‘I know that this Segmentum Pacificus accredited Letter of Marque is a fake. A very clever fake, one that even I almost believed was genuine, but a fake nonetheless. You are no more a legally-operating rogue trader than I am.’
‘So I don’t have an official bit of paper to permit me to do what I do,’ said Roboute. ‘Who cares?’
‘You are in violation of numerous laws, both Imperial and Mechanicus,’ said Blaylock, as if the severity of his crimes should be self-evident. ‘Would you like me to list them all for you?’
‘Imperator, no! We’d be here all week,’ said Roboute. ‘So what are you going to do next?’
Blaylock lifted the Letter of Marque from the desk and said, ‘I will take this to Archmagos Kotov and let him decide your fate.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Roboute. ‘What the hell does it matter anyway? We’re on the other side of the galaxy, beyond the Imperium and any law you’d care to punish me with. I brought you here and before you start getting all high and mighty, you might want to remember that.’
‘I do not forget anything, Mister Surcouf,’ said Blaylock. ‘Insults and condescension least of all.’
‘Then do what you need to do,’ said Roboute.
Sparks flew from each hammerblow, filling the smoke-filled forge with strobing flashes at each pounding impact. Tanna was no Techmarine, but he knew how to wield a hammer and beat out a chain. Every Black Templar was taught how to fashion the chains that bound a weapon to a bearer and, though it had been many decades since Tanna had beaten metal upon the anvil, it was a skill that, once learned, was never forgotten.
Magos Turentek’s forges were well-equipped and well-stocked, but they were intended for use by adepts of the Mechanicus. The menials and forge-slaves inhabiting this flame-lit vault had protested at the Space Marines’ arrival, but one look into Tanna and Varda’s purposeful eyes sent them scurrying from the forge in fright.
Hot exhaust gases vented from smouldering furnaces, keeping the temperature within the forge close to volcanic, a giant cog at the far end of the chamber turning solemnly with booming peals of grinding metal. A great chain, each link a metre thick, was wrapped around the cog’s teeth, turning at regular, clanking intervals – hauling who knew what from who knew where. The hiss of crackling binary spat from ceiling-mounted augmitters and a number of oil-dripping servo-skulls bobbed in the shadows, ready to assist their Mechanicus overseers.
Every so often they would approach the two Space Marines with a hash of lingua-technis, which Tanna supposed was an offer of assistance, but sounded more like disparaging comments on his smithing skills. He waved them away each time, but they kept coming back.
The Black Sword of the Emperor’s Champion rested on a wheeled workbench beside the anvil with oiled cloths laid beneath its blessed blade. Varda knelt beside the anvil, feeding the length of broken chain onto it for Tanna to beat back into shape.
Tanna brought the hammer around as Varda pulled the heated metal taut.
Metal struck metal. Sparks flew.
The chain was rotated, another link added, and the hammer fell once more.
Stripped to the waist, the Emperor’s Champion looked like a bare-knuckle pugilist of old, massively muscled and taut with the barely-controlled need to do violence.
Tanna rolled his shoulders and brought the hammer down.
‘The links are crude compared to those originally cast for the Black Sword,’ he said, ‘but it is the bond between weapon and warrior that matters. You and the sword must be as one until your death.’
‘I doubt a Dreadnought could pull this chain apart,’ said Varda, inserting another heated link with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
‘The Black Sword is part of you, Varda,’ said Tanna. ‘Part of all of us. That the crystal-forms parted it from your wrist is a bad omen.’
Varda snorted. ‘This entire venture has been filled with bad omens. What does one more matter?’
Tanna lowered the hammer and said, ‘Do not speak of such things lightly.’
‘I do not,’ said Varda. ‘I speak as I find. How else would you describe this crusade but ill-fated? Aelius falling at Dantium Gate, the loss of the Adytum and the death of Kul Gilad, what are these but the footsteps of doom that march at our side? And now Auiden is gone, our Apothecary.’
‘None feel his loss more than I,’ said Tanna. ‘He saved my life more than once, and I returned the favour time and time again.’
‘We all grieve for him, but that is not what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant.’
‘Without our Apothecary, we have no means of recovering the gene-seed of the fallen. All that we are will be lost, never to be remembered.’
‘We will be remembered,’ promised Tanna. ‘By the enemies we fight, on the worlds we conquer in His name and the deeds of glory we will bring back to the crusade fleets.’
‘You are so sure we will come back at all?’ asked Varda.
‘To admit defeat is to blaspheme against the Emperor,’ warned Tanna.
‘I admit nothing of the sort,’ snapped Varda. ‘I simply mean that when we die out here, our flesh will not return to the Chapter to be reborn in the hearts of the next generation of warriors. Without Auiden, we become as good as mortal.’
‘You say “when” as though the manner of our deaths is a foregone conclusion.’
‘You do not feel that to be the case?’ asked Varda. ‘Truly?’
Tanna was about to dismiss Varda’s comment as doom-mongering, but caught himself as a memory returned to him.
‘Kul Gilad once spoke to me of a creeping sense of ruination that haunted him ever since Dantium,’ said Tanna, ‘but the Reclusiarch was always given to melodramatic pronouncements in the days following a battle.’
Varda nodded in agreement, then looked away. ‘Perhaps he was right this time.’
Tanna heard something deeper in Varda’s tone and said, ‘Did you see something? When the war-visions came to you aboard the Ad
ytum, did the Emperor grant you revelation?’
Varda’s hesitation was answer enough.
‘What did you see?’ demanded Tanna. ‘Tell me, brother.’
‘I do not know what I saw,’ said Varda. ‘Nothing I can articulate clearly. I saw us on a world of lightning, a million points of light reflecting from glass, and…’
Varda trailed off, his voice choked with loathing.
‘Go on,’ said Tanna. ‘Speak.’
‘I saw the eldar, the same psyker-bitch that killed Aelius,’ said Varda. ‘I saw myself fighting at her side, and Emperor forgive me, I saw my blade save her life. Tell me, Tanna, how can that be true? Why would He show me such a vision of treachery? What evil can come to pass that would see me fight for the life of the xenos wych who killed Aelius and our Reclusiarch?’
Tanna heard the despair in Varda’s words and understood the turmoil that had fuelled his anger. To have been granted the Emperor’s blessing, only for the very moment of apotheosis to reveal an act of apparent treachery must have torn Varda’s soul like splintered glass.
‘Brother Varda,’ said Tanna, resting the hammer upon the anvil and placing his hand on the crown of Varda’s shaven head. ‘You have been chosen by the Emperor to be His champion, and He does not lightly offer His trust in such matters. Of all the warriors I have fought alongside over the centuries, there are none I would rather have as my Emperor’s Champion than you. To believe that you might fall to treachery is to believe the Emperor has made a mistake in your anointing. And I refuse to believe that.’
Varda looked up and Tanna saw acceptance there.
Tanna offered a hand to him, but Varda shook his head and rose with the fluid grace of a master swordsman. Varda lifted the chain from the anvil, running the still-hot links across his callused palm. Satisfied, he lifted the Black Sword from the workbench and snapped the iron-lock fetter around his wrist.
The Emperor’s Champion swung the sword in a looping series of cuts, thrusts and ripostes to test Tanna’s work, the midnight blade whistling as it cut the dense air of the forge.
‘You are no artisan,’ said Varda, his hawkish cheekbones lit by the glowing maws of hungry furnaces. ‘But it will do.’