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phantoms across the dark plain. Even the burning fire in their eyes was extinguished, hidden by battle-helm

lenses set to maximum opacity like one-way glass in an interrogation chamber.

Traversing the open dunes in a crouching run, his widely-dispersed squad slowly converging, Tsu’gan

reached the edge of the first redoubt. Even in the dark, his keen eyes picked out the silhouettes of sentries

lurking within. The sergeant took care to remain out of their direct eye line, his movements low and fluid so

as not to arouse suspicion. The Iron Warriors had, up to that point, not moved, so he assumed his advance

had gone undetected.

Creeping around the edge of the redoubt, using its bulk to hide his position from the lofty walls of the

fortress several hundred metres back, he listened intently.

Only the wind and the faint clank of booted feet on the battlements above came back at him.

Tsu’gan edged further, sliding the tarnished blade of his close combat weapon from its sheath in preparation

for the kill. The redoubt wasn’t gated at the back and could be accessed freely through an open doorway in

its rear wall.

That was good. It would make creeping behind the sentry that much easier. He considered briefly how it

might affront the martial pride of some Chapters to sneak up on an enemy in this way. The Salamanders,

though, had always been pragmatic in the ways of war. They believed its fires could cleanse the soul and

purify the spirit, but they also adhered to the end justifying the means, and victory at all costs.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tsu’gan saw more dark phantoms sweeping silently through the night as the

other combat squads moved into position. His own cadre of warriors arrived at his back. Brother Lazarus

was foremost amongst them and nodded to indicate his readiness. S’tang was right behind him. His battlehelm,

like his brothers’, was swathed in camouflaging ash. Honorious and Tiberon guarded the entrance,

ensuring no enemy escaped. Silently, the other three Salamanders entered the redoubt.

Two sentries waited within, Iron Warriors both, with their backs to them. S’tang would hold back, only

intervening if needed. The traitors were standing stock-still, surveying the dark dunes beyond the redoubt.

Death is upon you, brothers, Tsu’gan thought bitterly, noticing a battered but razor-edged storm shield

leaning against the wall inside. His sheathed his blade silently, deciding not to sully the weapon with

traitor’s blood, and took up the shield.

Lazarus was poised to strike, his jagged spatha held in a reverse grip so he could strike downwards, aiming

for the slim gap between gorget and cuirass.

Tsu’gan was ready too, and battle-signed the order to attack.

He leapt forwards, resisting the urge to roar a battle cry, and battered the Iron Warrior to the ground with a

fierce, two-handed smash from the shield. The momentum of the strike carried Tsu’gan forwards. He dived

on the prone traitor, pinning his arms with his knees and ramming the razor-edge of the shield into the Iron

Warrior’s neck, cutting off his head.

He turned to Lazarus. The Salamander was withdrawing his blade and wiping off the blood, which seemed

oddly sparse. Tsu’gan put it down to the low light impeding his vision, but when he looked at his dead sentry

he knew that something wasn’t right.

There was almost no blood.

He had severed the bastard’s neck; there should be blood — lots of it. Yet, there was almost none. Tsu’gan

tossed the shield aside and lifted up the sentry’s decapitated head, inspecting the wound. It was dark and

viscous, but didn’t flow. The blood was clotted. The Iron Warriors had been dead before they’d even entered

the redoubt.

“The guards were already dead,” he hissed into the comm-feed, patching in all combat squads and breaking

vox silence.

A slew of similar reports came from the other four assault groups. Each had entered their respective redoubt

undetected and killed the sentries inside, only to discover the enemy was deceased.

Tsu’gan rasped a reply.

“Go to bolters.” The brother-sergeant scanned the dark through the redoubt’s firing slit and then the open

doorway. Inwardly, he cursed. The Iron Warriors had drawn them in like neophytes, exposed their position.

Racking his bolter’s slide, preparing to unleash death if he was to meet his end, he crouched down so he

presented a smaller target. Then he waited.

Several minutes passed in the silent blackness. No assassins came creeping from the dark; no kill-teams

closed the elaborate trap they had set.

The expected counter-attack did not materialise, was not going to materialise. For some unknown reason, the

Iron Warriors had manned their redoubts with the dead.

“They weren’t trying to lure us,” Tsu’gan realised, keeping his voice low. “They were deterrents.”

“Sergeant?” Brother Lazarus hissed.

Tsu’gan waved away the question. He had no answer to it. Yet.

“We hold here,” he said. “We wait.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I

Besieged

Billowing ash clouds were dissipating slowly on the grey horizon. It was the last evidence of N’keln’s

muster from the Salamanders’ encampment. Brother Argos had managed to release the land vehicles from

the hold of the Vulkan’s Wrath. N’keln had taken the Land Raider, Fire Anvil, with the Firedrakes, his

Inferno Guard and Chaplain Elysius aboard. Even Fugis made the journey. The Apothecary had considered

staying behind to tend the wounded, but his place was by N’keln’s side and his brothers would likely need

him in the coming battle against the Iron Warriors, so he had ventured back to the front line for the first time

since Stratos.

The rest of the Salamanders’ vehicles comprised four Rhino APCs that conveyed all three squads of

Devastators and Brother-Sergeant Clovius’ Tactical squad. The captain had selected his task force according

to firepower. He intended to breach the fortress walls at distance, rather than storm them. Devastators were

well suited to that task, and since Clovius boasted both missile launcher and plasma gun in his ranks, he was

an ideal fourth squad choice and occupied the remaining Rhino.

Vargo and his Assault squad were the final element to the task force. His troops would make their way on

foot, using bursts from their jump packs to keep pace. Once the walls were breached, Brother-Sergeant

Vargo and his troops could quickly exploit the gap.

Dak’ir was left back to maintain vigil over the encampment. Though he would rather have joined the task

force, he knew his duty and respected the will of his captain. The other squads continued with their

rotational duties of excavating the Vulkan’s Wrath, guarding the medical tents and searching for survivors.

Naveem’s old squad spent most of its time within the battered confines of the ship, opening up sealed areas

and exhuming the dead from their metal, airlocked tombs. Brother Gannon had taken temporary charge,

though he was untested as a sergeant. Agatone was content to remain behind. There were the observances of

ritual cremation to be conducted for Vah’lek, and he was keen to be present for them.

These thoughts tumbled through Dak’ir’s mind like flakes of ash drifting from the far off peaks of Scoria’s

volcanoes. As he stared into the grey void, the vista before him seemed to blend and shift…

…once distant mountains loomed suddenly large and immediate, arching over Dak’ir’s head like crooked

fingers until they touched and formed a canopy of rock. Ash, so ubiquitous before, drained away as if

escaping through the cracks of the world to flee certain doom, and left solid rock beneath Dak’ir’s feet. H e

was in a cave. It reminded him of Ignea. A tunnel led down, down into the heart of Scoria where promised

fire lurked, flickering against the walls like dancing, red spectres. They took him deep, these imagined

apparitions, to the nadir of the earth where lava ran thick in streams and shimmered with lustrous heat.

Pools of liquid fire threw murky, joyless light that seemed to cling and conspire instead of illuminate. And

there, dwelling within a vast cavern and surrounded by pits of flame like balefires, the dragon uncoiled.

Scales shimmered like spilled blood in the lava-light, its sulphurous breath overwhelming the reek of the

mountain.

Dak’ir was standing across from it. A tall pike was gripped in his gauntlet, and the lake of fire separated

them. Hunter and beast eyed each other across the flaming gulf that ignited in empathy for their mutual

anger.

“You are my captain’s slayer.” The voice sounded distant and strange to him, but Dak’ir knew it as his own.

It was a much a promise as an accusation.

Rage lent strength to his body that he didn’t know he possessed, as Dak’ir leapt across the massive lake of

fire to land crouched on the other side.

Challenge given and accepted, the dragon came at him, a bestial roar ripping from a fanged mouth

wreathed in black fire.

Dak’ir cried out for Vulkan, and the primarch’s vigour steeled him. As the beast came on, its footfalls

shedding rock and cracking stone, Dak’ir took the pike and drove it like a lance into the dragon’s belly. It

screeched and the cave shook. It was a cry so full of wrath and agony that it levelled mountains and opened

up the roof to a grey sky that was steadily turning red.

Clawing, rending deep grooves into the stone, the dragon struggled. Dak’ir pushed. He drove it to the lak e

of fire, heaved it flailing over the edge and let it burn as the heat rose up to consume it.

The dragon died, and in the haze and smoke of its conflagration it changed to become a man. His armour

was red like scale, his mouth was fanged like a maw and he wore the defiled livery of a former angel who

had turned his back on duty and loyalty, to embrace corruption. The body broke away, naught but bones and

ash, a frugal meal for the lake of fire. Then the world broke away with it. A great tremor wracked the earth

and Scoria split. Columns of fire erupted like bursts of incendiary exploding from under the ash, and the

mountain was swallowed beneath the earth. Dak’ir witnessed a world die, consumed by itself. Then the fire

came to him, and he was burning too…

“I sense doubt in you.”

Arrested suddenly from the dream, Dak’ir flinched. He kept the reaction small, though, and barely

noticeable. Until that moment, he had thought he was alone.

“It’s not doubt, Brother-Librarian,” he replied coolly, shrugging off the remnants of his vision as Pyriel came

to stand beside him.

They were a hundred metres or so from the edge of the encampment, looking out across the dunes past the

relentlessly pacing Thunderfire cannons and the hidden grenade belt beyond them. “More a lack of

resolution. Something I can sense, but beyond my reach.”

It wasn’t a lie. The instinct had been there throughout the dream, just subdued by his subconscious mind.

“That there is something here, beneath the ash, that we are just not seeing,” stated the Librarian.

“Yes,” said Dak’ir, looking for him to extrapolate, uncertain why he himself was so surprised at Pyriel’s

prescience. The Librarian kept his gaze on the horizon, inscrutable as rock.

In the absence of further explanation, Dak’ir decided to go on.

“Ever since we made landfall, after the crash, I felt as if I was… being watched.”

Now Pyriel turned to regard him. “Go on,” he said.

“Not the ash creatures that attacked us,” Dak’ir explained. “Not even an enemy as such, just something…

else.”

“I have felt it, too,” admitted the Librarian, “A glimpse of a consciousness unknown to me. It is not the mind

of a xenos that I feel. Nor is it the taint of Chaos exhibited by the traitors Brother Tsu’gan has found. It is, as

you say, ‘else’.”

The Librarian stared at Dak’ir a little longer, before turning back. “Look out there,” he said, gesturing to the

grey horizon. Dak’ir did as he was told. “What do you see?”

Dak’ir opened his mouth to speak, when Pyriel raised a hand to stop him.

“Think carefully,” he advised. “Not what there is, but what you see.”

Dak’ir readjusted and looked hard. All he saw was ash and spires of distant rock crested by dark clouds, and

a grey horizon smudged with umber and red where the volcanoes vented.

“I see…” he began, but stopped himself to truly open his eyes. “I see Nocturne.”

Pyriel nodded. It was a small movement, near undetectable, but expressed his satisfaction elegantly.

“That is what I see also. Beneath the layers of ash there is rock. The volcanoes have been venting for so long

and so continuously that the grey flakes have made this place a grey world, with darkling skies, bereft of life.

The oceans, for I believe the deep basins in the ash deserts were once large water masses, dried up long ago.

Underground tributaries might still exist, but I doubt they’re enough to support significant life. Scoria, I

suspect, was once much like Nocturne, only more advanced in its geological cycle.” Pyriel stooped and

placed a hand against the ground. He beckoned Dak’ir to do the same.

“You feel that?” the Librarian asked, closing his eyes, shutting out smell and sound, focusing purely on

touch.

Dak’ir nodded, though he had no way of knowing if the Librarian had seen or realised his affirmation. There

was a tremor running through the earth, faint but insistent like a pulsing vein.

“Those are the last heartbeats of a dying world, brother.”

Dak’ir’s eyes snapped open and he stood. The recent vision came back at him, and he wondered briefly if

somehow Pyriel had seen it, had looked into his mind and perceived his very dreams.

“What are you saying, Librarian, that Nocturne will suffer the same fate?” The question came across more

petulantly than he would have wanted.

“All worlds end, Dak’ir,” Pyriel answered pragmatically. “Nocturne’s demise might be millennia from now,

it might only be a matter of centuries. I wonder if our progenitor brought us here to see something of our

home world’s fate.” His eyes flashed with cerulean fire. “Is that what you’ve seen, brother?”

Seismic thunder erupted from the crash site before Dak’ir had to answer. Both Space Marines, even several

hundred metres from the quake, were staggered by it. Then they were running, heading for the swathes of

ash pluming into the air as the Vulkan’s Wrath shifted and sank. A hundred metres from the ship and the

Salamanders were engulfed by a grey cloud that struck their power armour in a gritty wave.

Dak’ir had rammed on his battle-helm, snapping on his luminator as he cycled through the optical spectra to