His eyes ran over us again, and I could see he was adding up the discrepancies between our appearance and what he had expected to see. We were unshaven, our uniforms were torn, we were red-eyed from marching on stimms; some were wounded, including myself. Many casualties would not be returning at all.
‘Show me your chronometer,’ Macharius said. The officer complied. Macharius shook his head. ‘Sixteen minutes,’ he said to Drake. ‘We’ve been gone sixteen minutes.’
Drake looked haunted, as he had done ever since we saw the Fist of Demetrius. He nodded as though Macharius had simply confirmed what he had suspected. ‘At least we made it out,’ he said.
Macharius nodded grimly. ‘And it means I have returned in time to ensure the slaughter of the xenos.’
He began to speak into the comm-net with rasping authority, getting reports as to how the situation stood, then rapping out orders for dealing with remnants of the eldar attack. As he did so he kept walking, and we kept moving with him, emerging from the labyrinthine temple into a night scarred by the blaze of battle.
Macharius launched himself into the conflict with the zeal and fury of a true servant of the Emperor. We strode by his side, weapons blazing, striving as always to keep him from harm.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William King is the author of the Tyrion & Teclis trilogy and the Macharian Crusade, as well as the much-loved Gotrek & Felix series and the Space Wolf novels. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and compilations, including White Dwarf and Inferno!. Bill was born in Stranraer, Scotland, in 1959 and currently lives in Prague
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William King, The Fist of Demetrius
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