The dance continued.

CAMILLE FELT SICK to her stomach, but relished the feeling as the aircraft hurled itself to the side and an explosion thumped their underside with a deafening clang of metal. The helmet she wore was dented and uncomfortable, but had saved her skull from being smashed open on the fuselage several times already.

"Not like you read about, is it?" shouted Khalophis from the far end of the compartment.

"No!" shouted Camille with a forced laugh. "It's better."

She wasn't lying. Though her skin p.r.i.c.kled with fear and her heart was thudding against her chest, she had never felt more alive. The prospect of seeing up close what the Expeditionary fleets were doing in humanity's name was a unique opportunity.

Phoenix Crag was a combat zone, and nothing was certain in a place like that. A chance ricochet, a stray artillery round, anything could snuff out her life in a moment, but what was the point of being alive if you weren't willing to come out of your comfort zone and see what was being done on the b.l.o.o.d.y knife-edge of history?

"How long until we land?" she called.

"One minute," said Khalophis, walking down the centreline of the aircraft's ready line with his Practicus, a warrior called Yaotl, ensuring the Thunderhawk's cargo was ready for deployment. "Are you sure you want to see this? Astartes war is not pretty for those unused to such sights. Mine is certainly not."

"I'm ready," Camille a.s.sured him. "And I want to see it. I'm a remembrancer, I need to see things first hand if my accounts are to be worth anything."

"Fair enough," said Khalophis. "Just keep behind the maniples. Stay out of my way, for it's not my duty to protect you if you get into trouble. Keep close to Yaotl, he will shield you with a fire cloak, so be careful not to touch anything of value you might find a it will burn like promethium-soaked paper."

"Don't worry," said Camille holding up her gloved hands. "I won't."

Khalophis nodded and turned to the muttering Techmarine following him. The Techmarine consulted a data-slate and made last minute adjustments to the weapon systems of the Thunderhawk's silent pa.s.sengers.

Ranked up in three lines were nine automatons, bulky machines in the shapes of humanoids, but twice as tall as an Astartes. Khalophis had called them Cataphracts, battle robots that reeked of grease and a hybrid electric fuel smell. Their bodies were exaggerated and armoured on the torsos and thighs, heavy plates of armaplas bolted to piston legs and cog-driven arms.

Coloured a vivid blue and gold, their heads were hunched down in the centres of their chests like peaked crowns, their carved faces like expressionless masks of long-dead emperors. Each was armed with a long cannon on one arm and a grossly oversized fist on the other. A huge, belt-fed weapon was slung behind each robot, and from the greased rails on their backs, Camille guessed they would slide up onto the shoulders when the time came for them to fire.

What would she feel from such an inanimate hunk of metal, what purely objective recall might its frame of steel and ceramite yield? She pulled off a glove and tentatively reached out to touch its cold arm.

She closed her eyes as the sensations came: the lightless times between battles, the dark, oil-dripping voids between activation and oblivion. She saw through its unfeeling eyes, a host of foes falling beneath its weapons, an eternity of war waged without thought for the consequences or reasons behind its actions.

Camille followed the coursing energy filling the robot as its power came online and new life flowed through its cabled veins. She followed the trail of power from its source, feeling the swelling sense of purpose as the robot's battle program came alive, its synthetic cortex processing the instructions that would send it to war.

That journey stopped as she sensed a higher consciousness within the machine, a spark of something she hadn't expected to find within its circuits and valves. She sensed a dreadful, aching need to destroy occupying the higher functions of its part-machine, part-organic mind.

Camille saw a shard of mirror-smooth crystal embedded in the robot's cortex, and knew immediately that it had been cut from a place called the Reflecting Cave on Prospero, just as she knew it had been carefully nurtured by an apprentice crystal grower named Estoca, a man who had that day learned he had an inoperable form of lung blight, but who wasn't worried because a Pavoni healer had been scheduled to come to his home that evening.

Seated in the back of the crystal was a dancing flame, an animating will that overrode the robot's childishly simple doctrina wafer, a consciousness that linked all nine robots together under one supreme authority.

The fire burned brightly, swelling to fill the crystal with potency and the urge to fight. The robots raised their cannons in unison, their shoulder-mounted weapons locking into the upright position with a clatter of gears and a wheeze of hydraulics.

Then the Thunderhawk slammed down with a jarring thud, and the connection was broken as her hand fell from the robot's arm.

The robots turned their faces to her, and a lifeless voice rumbled from the depths of every one of them. The electronically rendered voice of the Khalophis rasped from the mouthpiece of all nine robots, saying, "Stay out of our way, Mistress Shivani."

The a.s.sault ramp blew open, and a howling wind of grit and acrid propellant smoke was sucked inside. The deafening roar of gunfire and explosions filled the compartment.

The maniples of robots marched from the Thunderhawk in ordered ranks and into battle.

THE DISTINCTIVE SNAP of wings folding tight into a white furred body was the first warning of the attack. Magnus looked up past the ruin of a smoking tower to see a host of snow-shrikes plummeting on an attack run, thirty at least.

"Spread out!" he cried, and the warriors of the Scarab Occult threw themselves into the plentiful cover. With a thought, he sent Mahavastu Kallimakus into the shadow of a toppled lion statue, the venerable scribe gla.s.sy eyed and compliant. His scrivener harness recorded Magnus' thoughts, the quill-tipped mechadendrites filling page after page for his grimoire. Shards of gla.s.s and twisted metal filled the street, as well as the blazing wrecks of Avenian fighters brought down by the s.p.a.ce Wolves.

The shrikes let loose ululating screams as they dived down through the hail of gunfire. Bolts filled the air, but even Astartes found it hard to hit such fast-moving targets. Ma.s.s-reactive sh.e.l.ls sparked from toppled spires, but only a few of the diving creatures were hit, tumbling to the street in explosions of b.l.o.o.d.y fur.

They were agile flyers, their white-furred bodies like feathered serpents. Their wings were long and flexible, capable of incredible feats of manoeuvrability. Raking dewclaws snapped from the leading edges of their wings, turning them into serrated blades, but their long, razor-sharp beaks were their preferred killing tools. Two riders, strapped into flight harnesses, controlled the beasts, one a pilot of sorts, the other a marksman equipped with a lethally accurate longrifle.

Magnus watched in fascination as the Avenian line-breakers swooped low through the maze of debris, their riders controlling them with an ease that spoke of a bond formed over decades of shared experience.

One of the Scarab Occult stepped from cover to take a snap shot, but he had misjudged the speed of the creatures. A shrike flashed down like a glorious chevalier of old Franc, its razored beak like a glittering lance as it skewered the warrior. The blade punched through his chest, and the shrike's gunner fired a repeating pistol into his face. One direct hit punched through the warrior's visor and blew out the back of his helmet.

Magnus blinked and the creature erupted in flames, its piercing shrieks a paltry revenge for the death it had caused. Its riders tried to hurl themselves from their blazing mount, but Magnus pinned them to its back with a thought, and let them burn.

The other shrike-riders swept through their position, but the Scarab Occult were too canny to be caught in the open when they had other weapons to wield.

"Channelling," ordered Magnus, and glittering shapes unfolded from each warrior, Tutelaries in the forms of birds, eyes, lizards and a myriad other unnameable guises. They darted out into the open, and streams of fire and lightning erupted from their shimmering forms as their masters channelled aetheric powers through their insubstantial bodies. A score of shrikes erupted into blazing torches of screaming flesh and fur. The survivors fled skyward, and Magnus waited until they had reached suitably lethal alt.i.tude before crushing their bones to powder.

He heard the beasts' shrill cries of agony, but didn't bother to watch the riders plummet to their deaths. Sporadic gunfire barked towards the Thousand Sons as running Avenian infantry came into view at the end of the street.

"Foolish," said Magnus. "Very foolish."

He clenched his fist, and the guns exploded in the Avenians' hands, felling the entire line at a stroke. Screams of pain quickly followed, but Magnus paid the awful sound no heed, and strode towards the fallen soldiers. Most still blazed with fear and life, but the stamping boots of the Scarab Occult soon doused them.

Mahavastu Kallimakus trotted obediently after him, the continual stream of Magnus' thoughts transcribed faithfully into his journal. When this battle was won, Magnus would cull those thoughts into a more artful text for his great work.

He reached the end of the street, looking into the sky along a glorious, flying b.u.t.tress-like causeway that arced out into thin air towards the raised entrance of the Phoenix Crag's Great Library.

Corvidae divinations had pinpointed the location of the city's largest repository of knowledge and history, a vast museum housed in a pyramid of silver, six hundred metres high and two kilometres wide that rose from the main body of the mountain. The similarity to the Great Library on Prospero was not lost on Magnus. Dozens of slender bridges led to a plaza before the eagle-wreathed gateway, some shattered in the a.s.sault, others on fire and yet more the scenes of furious running battles.

Leman Russ and his s.p.a.ce Wolves were mauling the upper echelons of the city, tearing through its leaders and politicians like ocean predators in a feeding frenzy. Vox reports indicated that the Word Bearers and Imperial Army units had swiftly overcome the defenders of the valley gates, and were pushing up through the lower levels of the city, leaving little but ashes and devastation in their wake.

Nothing would be left of the city if it were not for Magnus' restraining hand.

The primarchs had met the previous evening to discuss how best to a.s.sault Phoenix Crag, Leman Russ and Lorgar both eager to utterly eradicate the city, though for very different reasons. Russ simply because it stood against him, Lorgar because its ignorance of the Emperor offended him.

It would be hard to imagine three more different brothers: Russ with the b.e.s.t.i.a.l mask he thought fooled everyone with its bellicose savagery, and Lorgar with his altogether subtler mask that hid a face even Magnus could not fully discern. They had spoken long into the night, each of his brothers vying for the upper hand.

Phoenix Crag would not be like the other mountain cities of Heliosa, its records destroyed, its artefacts smashed and its importance forgotten. Magnus would save the history of this isolated outpost of humanity, and reclaim its place in the grand pageant of human endeavour.

This world had survived the nightmare of Old Night, and deserved no less.

"Onwards, my brothers," said Magnus. "We have a world's legacy to save."

THE CITY'S BUILDINGS were graceful structures built into the fabric of the rock, a maze of dwellings, workplaces, recreational s.p.a.ces and interconnecting streets, boulevards and subterranean pa.s.sages. To any normal force, this kind of uphill fight would be a brutal, building-to-building brawl, time-consuming and wasteful of lives, but the Thousand Sons were no normal force.

Ahriman maintained his connection to Aaetpio, using his Tutelary's link to the aether to shift his perceptions into the near future. He saw traps before they were sprang, and read the presence of minds alive with antic.i.p.ation of ambush.

Instead of breaking open each building, the Scarab Occult simply willed their Tutelaries into their enemies' hiding places, and burned them out with invisible fires or crashed them with psychic hammer blows. Methodical and swift, Ahriman's First Fellowship pushed upwards towards Magnus, the primarch calling his warriors to him to defend the city's intellectual heart from destruction. The Thousand Sons fought their way up into the mountain city along marble-flagged boulevards, each Fellowship fighting in the manner of its captain's nature.

Phosis T'kar's 2nd Fellowship bludgeoned their way straight through the middle of the enemy brigades they encountered, smashing their strongholds with barrages of aetheric force while advancing under the protection of invisible mantlets of pure thought. Hathor Maaf's 3rd Fellowship burned their enemies alive, boiled the blood in their veins or sucked the air from their lungs, turning their bodies against them in spitefully painful ways.

Khalophis alone was not summoned by the primarch's call, instead tasked with securing the Thousand Sons' rear echelons with his Chapters of Devastators and battalions of robot maniples. Psychically resonant crystals allowed the captain of the 6th Fellowship to direct his mindless charges with complete precision, instead of relying on the doctrina wafers provided by the Legio Cybernetica.

Flocks of shrikes looped in to attack the Thousand Sons at every opportunity. These attacks were so swift and b.l.o.o.d.y that not even Ahriman's heightened pre-cognitive senses could antic.i.p.ate them all. The First Fellowship had suffered nearly a hundred casualties so far, and he knew there would be more before the battle was concluded.

Ahriman made his way towards a fallen pillar, behind which Lemuel Gaumon was sheltering. He noticed its fluted length was cla.s.sically proportioned and the capital was shaped like the leaf-topped columns of the Great Library on Prospero. Ahriman smiled at the incongruous nature of the observation.

Lemuel's hands were pressed to his ears to block out the barking shrieks of the alien birds and the thunderous bangs of Astartes bolt fire. The man's terror flared from his body in streams of greenish yellow energy. Beside him, Sobek returned fire, the percussive reports of his weapon sending up puffs of dust from the top of the column.

"Is it all you hoped for?" asked Ahriman, slamming a fresh magazine into his pistol.

Lemuel looked up, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. He shook his head.

"It's terrible," he said. "How can you stand it?"

"It is what I am trained for," said Ahriman, as a booming volley of bolter fire echoed from the walls. Shrieking wails echoed, and stuttering return fire spanked from the top of the pillar. Lemuel flinched as energy projectiles whined past, curling himself into a tight ball. Sobek kept up his methodical volleys, unfazed by the nearness of the enemy fire-bullets.

A sudden, violent pulse of warning from Aaetpio sent Ahriman to his knees.

The shrike's beak slashed over his head, and he spun his heqa staff up to block a slashing wing. He shot the creature in the face, leaving only a spraying stump as the bolt detonated within its skull. It collapsed, as another flight of shrikes dived in to attack.

A flying killer's claws tore into the column next to him. The stone split apart as the beast slashed its wings at him, dewclaws snapping from leathery chitin-sheaths. Lemuel screamed in terror, and the monster turned its long, stabbing beak towards the remembrancer. Ahriman reached out with an open palm and crushed his hand into a fist.

The shrike standing over Lemuel gave a strangled squawk as its nervous system overloaded with pain impulses. It collapsed into a shivering heap until Ahriman stamped down on its neck, spinning around as his precognitive sense screamed a warning at him. He blocked another bladed beak with a sweep of his staff, sending a pulse of fire along its length.

The creature shrieked as its body caught light, the flames spreading over its furred body with unnatural rapidity. The flames fed on a victim's life-force, and would only extinguish when the creature was dead.

Sobek battled two of the beasts, his left arm held in the beak of a white-furred shrike as it attempted to saw through his shoulder. The second beast's wings boomed as it hovered above his Practicus in a dust-filled whirlwind, raking Sobek's armour with tearing claws.

Astartes and predatory killers fought in a confused ma.s.s of thrashing limbs, blades and claws. Ahriman swung his pistol around and drew on Aaetpio's connection to the Great Ocean, tracing the myriad potential pathways of the future to follow the path his bolt would take in a fraction of a second. He squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession.

The first bolt punched through the skull of the shrike holding Sobek down, the second exploded the heart of the hovering beast, both impact points less than ten centimetres from Sobek's body. Both beasts collapsed, slain instantly by Ahriman's precision kill-shots.

"Thank you, my lord," said Sobek, freeing his gouged limb from the beak of the shrike. The armour was sliced through, and the meat of Sobek's arm was b.l.o.o.d.y and torn.

"Are you able to fight?"

"Yes, my lord," Sobek a.s.sured him. "The wound is already healing."

Ahriman nodded and knelt beside Lemuel.

"And you, my Neophyte?" he asked.

Lemuel took a deep breath. His skin was ashen, and streaked tears cut through the dust caking his cheeks. Gunfire still rattled further down the boulevard, but none of it was aimed in their direction.

"Are they dead?" asked Lemuel.

"They are," confirmed Ahriman. "You were in no danger. Sobek maintained a chameleon field around you, so the birds were probably not even aware of you until you screamed, and Sergeant Xeatan protects you from a chance kill with a kine shield."

"I thought you were Corvidae?" said Lemuel. "Divinators? Aren't Raptora the telekines?"

"Most of my warriors are Corvidae," nodded Ahriman, pleased to have this opportunity to teach, even in the midst of a firefight. "Like all Fellowships of the Thousand Sons, each Chapter and every squad is made up of warriors belonging to a variety of cults. Sobek and I are Corvidae, but Xeatan is Raptora."

Ahriman pointed to a warrior sheltering in a recessed doorway from the sustained fire of a dozen Avenian soldiers. His shoulder guard was emblazoned with the serpentine star of the Thousand Sons with the image of a long, colourful feather at its centre.

"And Hastar over there is Pavoni. Watch."

Despite his obvious terror, Lemuel peeked over the edge of the column in time to see Hastar leap out into the street as the Avenian soldiers broke from cover. His bolter was clamped to his thigh, and he braced himself with his back foot at right angles to his out-thrust left leg. The Avenians saw him, and raised their weapons. Before they could fire, sheet lightning leapt from Hastar's outstretched hands, and a deafening thunderclap shattered every pane of gla.s.s for five hundred metres in all directions.

Ahriman's autosenses compensated for the sudden brightness, but Lemuel blinked away dazzling afterimages. By the time his vision had cleared, it was all over. The Avenian soldiers were charred columns of blackened flesh, burned statues kept upright by heat-fused bones. Flesh ran from their corpses like melting b.u.t.ter. Lemuel bent over and vomited the contents of his stomach.

Lemuel looked up in horror.

"Sweet Inkosazana, Lady of Heaven save me," he said.

Ahriman forgave the heathen imprecation as Lemuel took several deep breaths and wiped his mouth clean. He spat and said, "That's... horrible, I mean to say, incredible... How... how did he know those soldiers were going to move at that moment?"

"Because across the street is an Athanaean captain named Uthizzar," said Ahriman, indicating a warrior crouched in the cover of another fallen column. "He read the thoughts of their commander and told Hastar when they were going to move."

"Incredible," repeated Lemuel. "Simply incredible."

Ahriman smiled, pleased that his Neophyte had so quickly accepted the fundamental powers of the Thousand Sons. The new Imperium's unseemly rush to embrace secularism and reason had encouraged many of its subjects to abandon their sense of wonder. The new creed denied knowledge of the esoteric, condemning those who pursued such science as unclean sorcerers instead of embracing their work as simply a new form of understanding.

"You are a fast study, Lemuel," said Ahriman, standing and rallying his warriors with a raised fist. "Now read the auras and tell me what you feel."

Three hundred warriors, primarily Ahriman's Sekhmet Terminators and veterans of the Scarab Occult, formed up alongside Uthizzar's plate-armoured warriors.

"Pride," said Lemuel, closing his eyes, "fierce pride in their abilities."

"You can do better than that," said Ahriman. "A child could tell me that of warriors. Reach out further."

Lemuel's breathing deepened, and Ahriman read the change in his aura as he forced himself into the lowest of the Enumerations. It was clumsily done and awkward, but it was more than most mortals could do.

How easy it was to forget that Ahriman had once not known how to rise through his states of consciousness. Teaching someone a task he found as natural as breathing made it easy to forget where the difficulties lay.

"Let it come naturally," said Ahriman. "Be borne upon its waves and it will guide you to what you seek."

Lemuel's face eased as he caught the city's emotional pulse, the fearful black of its populace, the angry crimson of its soldiers and the underlying golden pride that beat in every heart.

Ahriman sensed the violent spike of psychic energy a second before it hit.

It swept over them, a sudden, shocking blast of psychic noise that overwhelmed the senses with its sheer violence. Uthizzar cried out and dropped his weapon. Lemuel doubled over in pain, convulsing in spastic fits.

"What in the name of the Great Ocean was that?" cried Sobek. "A weapon?"

"A psychic shockwave," gasped Uthizzar. "One of immense proportions."

Ahriman forced the pain away and knelt beside Lemuel. The remembrancer's face was a mask of blood. It wept from his eyes and poured in a steady stream from his nose.