He took a two-handed grip. It forced Iulus onto the back foot, but he then rolled on his heel and allowed Scipio to lunge forwards into mid-air. Using the flat of his blade, he smacked Scipio hard on the back of his neck.

'I don't think you're angry at me, brother.'

Stung, Scipio turned with murderous eyes and flung his rudius like a throwing dagger. The move almost fooled Iulus who was forced into a desperate block that sent the weapon spinning loose. It was a hair's breadth from his neck and causing serious injury.

Iulus threw down his rudius a second later and punched Scipio hard in the jaw. He recoiled but didn't retaliate. Shame supplanted anger as he realised he'd broken a sacred trust.

Iulus was breathing hard; they both were. 'You want to fight for real, bring armour and chainblades next time, but don't expect to walk out of this cage.' He moved in close, his voice deep and full of menace. 'You'll need to be carried out.'

Scipio's face was a hard, defiant line.

'Bout over,' he said, and left.

When Scipio was gone, Iulus sagged and wondered at how he had failed to see his friend's degeneration and pain. He slammed his fist into the cage wall, stretching the metal into a perfect mould of his knuckles. Then he picked up the rudius and performed training rotas until he was sore and burning, and all the frustration had vented away.

The wise say, just before you die, that your life and all its achievements pa.s.s before you in a blur of enlightenment.

Iulus recalled the words of the ancient Macraggian philosophers he'd been forced to endure as part of his neophyte training. On his back in the dirt and b.l.o.o.d.y snow, he found issue with that belief. There was only an encroaching darkness and the dense thunder of pumping blood in the ears. There was no epiphany, no glorious moment when a golden halo beckoned or cherubim sang of his deeds in archaic verse.

It was copper-stink, it was hot fading breath and the futile knowledge that he had been found wanting in the face of his liege lords of old.

As the necron's grip ever-tightened Iulus railed against his fate, too obstinate to accept it. He wanted to scream his defiance but even that was denied him. He'd pushed the chainblade as deep as it would go, dragged it around organs that were not organs, but still the necron endured.

Then the pressure lifted.

First his sight returned, like a fresh dawn after a moonless night. The blood stopped rushing quite so loudly and mortally after that, and was replaced by a hard insistent clank clank. Something that looked like a spear-tip jabbed out of the necron's left eye socket. Then it happened again and again. Before it phased out, Iulus was dimly aware of a human clinging to the creature's back and hacking for all his worth. The ice-spike's final blow punctured the necron's forehead, dead centre, and it flickered from existence.

The human, a conscript by the look of his uniform, landed heavily but on his feet.

He grinned at Iulus. Behind him, there were other conscripts hacking with blades, picks and axes. 'I have saved an Angel,' he said, and offered his hand.

Iulus got to his feet, ignoring the human's aid because his weight would have toppled him and he didn't want his saviour to suffer that indignity. 'Who are you?' he asked instead.

The necron elites were defeated. The entire war cell had phased out, removed tactically from the battlefield by their masters below and abroad.

'Kolpeck,' said the human. He sketched a salute, but it was awkward and rough. 'Falka Kolpeck.'

Iulus liked him already.

History would not remember the deeds of the d.a.m.nos Ark Guard in the liberation of Kellenport. They would fail to record the courageous actions of the four hundred souls who ventured beyond the western gate from the Courtyard of Thor to certain death. Sicarius and his glorious Second would be the heroes and for them alone the laurels of the battle attributed.

But Iulus Fennion would always know the full truth of it.

He regarded the bedraggled remnants of the Ark Guard that had fought and died in the 'wastes' alongside the Ultramarines and felt... surprise surprise.

Ever since Ghospora City back on Black Reach, over a century ago, he had known humans had mettle. To fight greenskins from behind barricades and fortified battlements was one thing; to charge headlong into hand-to-hand combat with necrons was something else. Perhaps these hundred or so soldiers before him were suicidal.

They were mainly miners, he decided, d.a.m.nosian labourers pressed into service as a last act of a desperate world to sh.o.r.e up its decimated armies. They'd just returned from the capitolis administratum bastion with the acting lord governor. With the Deathwinds' payload depleted, it was no longer safe and he was to be secured within Kellenport.

Word had come through Daceus from the front. Sicarius was pressing on into enemy-held territory, to Arcona City and the Zephyr Monastery. He'd requisitioned forces from the rearguard, both squads of Devastators and Brother Ultracius. Kellenport was won, but he wanted to keep it that way.

According to Tactica briefings, Commander Sonne had over fifty thousand Ark Guard at his disposal; a large part of the planet's remaining population. Iulus was given the unenviable job of galvanising them and ensuring they held the line and the ground already won.

Agnathio could not make the long walk. The damage done to his motive functions had reduced the mighty warrior to an undignified shuffle and until a Techmarine could be tasked with conducting the correct rituals and rites to effect repairs, he would remain so. The Dreadnought joined Iulus's command and the brother-sergeant was glad of his presence and his wisdom.

Presently, he had one ear to the recently restored long-range comm-feed.

'Brother.' The return was crackly and broken, but Iulus recognised the voice of Praxor. 'I'm sorry that you've been left behind.'

'It is no matter,' Iulus replied. 'My duty is to the captain and the Emperor whatever form it takes. How goes the battle farther out?'

'Tough.' It was rare for Praxor to be so upfront and honest about the severity of the fight ahead. He was usually possessed of the same vainglory as their captain.

Iulus wondered what had changed.

'You lost battle-brothers?'

The voice that came back over the feed was quieter, almost hushed, 'More than I'm comfortable with. The Shieldbearers are at barely half-strength.'

'We always knew this war would be arduous. Galvia and Urnos were wounded but we are inviolable still.' He was referring to the fact that ever since they'd been formed, the Immortals had yet to sustain a casualty. That feat might be put sorely to the test on d.a.m.nos.

'I only wish you were fighting by my side, Iulus,' said Praxor, his mood oddly candid. 'I have need of your counsel and temperance.'

'Guilliman willing, we will all survive this campaign to fight another in the primarch's name.'

'Or die in the prosecution of it.'

Iulus nodded without trace of regret or denial. 'If that is his will, then yes.'

Praxor left a pause as if agreeing with his fellow sergeant then asked, 'Any word from Scipio?'

The activation runes on the portable hololith projector were flashing. Iulus needed to cut this short. 'None, but there is another comm shroud over the Thanatos Hills.'

'May Guilliman watch over him.'

'And all of us. Courage and honour, brother.'

'Courage and honour.'

Iulus cut the feed. Troopers were filing in from the western gate, more Ark Guard. There were twenty thousand men with heavy cannon and servitors. The majority looked like the conscripts arrayed before Iulus in the reclaimed 'wasteland' in front of the first defensive wall.

The hololith unit flickered to life, a grainy blue three-dimensional image suspended in mid-air through a projector node, and Iulus looked away from the marching men.

'Lord Fennion.' It was Commander Sonne, from somewhere within the Kellenport city-bastion. He gave a crisp salute but his eyes appeared haggard, his face drawn and his uniform bedraggled.

'I am a s.p.a.ce Marine sergeant,' Iulus corrected him, nodding in recognition of the salute, 'so you may refer to me as such. I am no one's lord.'

'Duly noted, sergeant. I want to convey my deepest appreciation for your efforts in liberating Kellenport. You have saved many lives with your actions and all of d.a.m.nos expresses its grat.i.tude to you, our saviours.'

The words were there, but the belief was not. Sonne did not think his life or the lives of his people were saved, nor did he regard the Ultramarines as saviours. Iulus saw a broken man before him, one that was going through the motions and had all but given in to fatalism.

'Further hard work is needed, commander. We have only stalled the necron advance, not stymied it completely.'

'I am at your disposal, as are my men. I've already sent the twenty thousand requested to the wastes.'

'You might want to reconsider naming that zone,' Iulus advised.

Sonne nodded, mildly chastened. 'Of course... Yes. It was the Courtyard of Chronus before the desolation. So it shall be again.'

'Chronus it is,' said Iulus. 'Our tank commander will be pleased.'

Sonne didn't understand the reference, but acknowledged the remark with another nod anyway.

Iulus went on. 'Your thirty thousand will defend the city-bastion whilst the other twenty will be split evenly garrisoning the defensive walls. The third wall we mine and give up to the enemy.'

Sonne went to object but Iulus cut him off. 'We're already stretched and defending three walls will spread us too thinly. Our focus shall be on the first two walls, the first as a fall-back point for the second and then Kellenport city-bastion as our last redoubt.'

Sonne looked ashen at that last remark. If they lost Kellenport then it was over. For everyone.

'You push on for the outer territories?' he asked, a rare glimmer of hope in his tired eyes.

'Captain Sicarius is driving the spearhead purposefully, yes.'

As Iulus understood it, the 'spearhead' was actually a series of daring raids. The necron vanguard had been beaten, a tiny respite bought for the Kellenport defenders, but the mechanoids would return as soon as they'd calibrated for fighting against the Ultramarines. Iulus nearly said as much to Sonne but chose to stay his tongue. Perhaps some of Scipio's old empathy was rubbing off on him. But that had been a different version of his friend. Something, the death of Orad he suspected, had hollowed out that optimism and replaced it with a core of ice. He'd half heard of an altercation with Praxor in the past, something prior to d.a.m.nos, but had no wish to pry. The business of others was precisely that. Iulus knew his duty and how to do it to the best of his ability. He had gifts, the legacy of his Chapter brothers flowing in his veins, and he meant to honour that with each and every one of his actions.

Iulus only half-watched Commander Sonne's salute, his mind on other things as the hololith shrank back into the projector node.

'Don't let it consume you, Scipio,' he said to the wind, shifting his gaze to the Thanatos Hills where the necron barrage continued unabated. 'Don't give in to reckless hate, brother.'

Aristaeus loomed behind him; Iulus could hear the warrior's careful tread.

'Break up the squad,' said the sergeant, 'and distribute it around the separate battalions.' He regarded the one hundred survivors from the battle for the plaza, the renamed Courtyard of Chronus. Falka Kolpeck was standing in the middle, their de facto leader. 'These ones are with me.'

It had been so long since he had hunted.

For a moment he was skin and bone again and it was blood, not oil and circuitry, that flowed through him. The wild lands of his birth stretched as far as he could see and the hooting of cattle and herd-beasts called into the umber evening. The sun was dipping and he felt its warmth fading on his cheek. The coa.r.s.e grain of his antique phase-rifle was a rea.s.suring presence in his hand. The wind, ghosting through the hills and across the plain, touched his exposed skin with chilling tendrils.

As quickly as they came, the sensations bled away again and left numbness and sorrow in their wake. The sun did not warm him, the wind was as dead as the bloodless arteries of his mechanised body. No rifle identified him as a n.o.ble plains hunter, instead a pair of gruesome talons betrayed him for what he was a monster.

Sahtah the Enfleshed groaned inwardly. Even as the tundra rushed by in a blur of greyish white, as his slaves followed his lead, he was not placated. Funnelling into a deep gorge, he paused before the carca.s.s of a dead herd-animal. Its flesh steamed with recently exposed entrails. Sahtah plunged his talons inside, turning them incarnadine with the beast's spilled viscera, hoping...

'Why can't I feel it?'

He rounded on his slaves in a sudden fury. 'There is no heat from the blood, no kill-stench. Where is it?'

Powerless to answer his demands even if they wanted to, the flayed ones merely stared and waited. Their flesh-cowls were rank with putrefaction but stirred a pang of jealousy in their lord.

'I want my robes!' Sahtah raged. His synthetic voice could only simulate his anger. In a quieter voice, he added: 'I want my body.'

His instincts told him the genebred humans were close.

'Soon I will have it,' he promised. 'Soon I will be enfleshed again.'

CHAPTER NINE.

Brakkius led Retiarii up the slope. Brothers Renatus and Herdantes kept low behind their squad leader, weapons up. As soon as they were spotted a strobe of emerald gauss-fire lit up the snow and ice. It was answered by bolter fire that incapacitated one of the raiders but didn't render it inoperative. Before Brakkius and his troops were retreating the downed necron had already begun to self-repair.

Despite the lack of lasting damage, their attack provoked the reaction Scipio was hoping for. Three of the six raiders left the obelisk and went after Brakkius.

Two hard bangs bangs from Ortus took one of the mechanoids in the side of the skull. It crumpled into a heap, shuddered and phased out. Another shot exploded a raider's shoulder and left it unable to shoot. from Ortus took one of the mechanoids in the side of the skull. It crumpled into a heap, shuddered and phased out. Another shot exploded a raider's shoulder and left it unable to shoot.

The crossfire was working. It drew the other three necrons out. Scipio and Largo had already sneaked into position before Brakkius's attack and were about to flank them when the sniper fire stopped. Scipio was about to give the attack order when he hesitated and looked over to Ortus's vantage point, wondering why he'd stopped firing.

'Brother, report,' he snapped into the comm-feed. Then came the screaming from back down the slope. It sounded like Renatus.

'Brakkius!'

The reply was frantic. 'Under attack, sergeant...'

Scipio had moved out of the gorge and couldn't see back down the path because of the slope's sharp incline. He caught muzzle flashes, though, and knew the weapons that made them were turned away from the obelisk.

'In the ice. Beneath us!'

Largo was ready to move. 'What do we do?'

The raiders were laying down a thickening curtain of fire. Their slow, methodical advance would get them to the edge of the path and looking down on the gorge in a few minutes. Then Brakkius would face enemies to the front and rear. Scipio swore loudly. He still had no sense of what was attacking Brakkius in the gorge but he suspected it was the same foe that had neutralised Ortus.

'We fight!' Scipio came up off his haunches like a jackhammer and thundered half a clip into the nearest raider. Battered, the necron turned and unleashed a swathe of gauss-beams. Scipio took one in the leg that staggered him, but he kept on running. Just behind him, Largo provided support fire and tore the raider's chest open with a series of precise shots. It phased out, leaving four and whatever was in the gorge.

A claw broke through the ice at Scipio's feet, answering that question, and locked onto the sergeant's ankle. Instinctively he shot downwards at his a.s.sailant, carving up the ground into jagged chips. Pitiless eyes glowed emerald through the glossy filter of the ice before dying into embers and then voids as he creature phased out.

It was not alone.

Scipio cursed again, realising there had had been faces beneath their feet but not of d.a.m.nosian natives, not any more they were necrons, flesh-wrapped nightmares that tunnelled and burrowed like mechanical insects. Brakkius fought the same foes. Ortus had been claimed by them. This was a trap, but one of the necrons' making, and Scipio had blundered right into it. been faces beneath their feet but not of d.a.m.nosian natives, not any more they were necrons, flesh-wrapped nightmares that tunnelled and burrowed like mechanical insects. Brakkius fought the same foes. Ortus had been claimed by them. This was a trap, but one of the necrons' making, and Scipio had blundered right into it.

'Sergeant Vorola.n.u.s!'

The ice broke apart at Scipio's feet and he was dragged downwards, Largo's warning echoing behind him. He kicked out and made a solid connection, ceramite hitting necron metal. For want of a better strategy, he jabbed his chainsword into the ice-slush where the half-fleshed horrors were slowly emerging. Sparks fizzed and died as they hit the ground, cascading off whatever Scipio's blade was locked against.

Talons. The creatures had long, curved talons just like the ambushers they'd met and destroyed at the Thanatos Refinery. Scipio cursed himself for a fool. He had rushed to engage without properly gauging the lie of the land, but he was an Ultramarine with his brothers beside him all was not lost. He swung his bolt pistol around, sending two sh.e.l.ls into the ice just as a lance of pain shot up his leg where the flayed one had impaled him.

A second broke free of the ice and loomed over him. Scipio yanked his chainsword free and parried a blow that would have slashed open his neck.