Ben Counter - Grey Knights

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++Priority Transmission: Coding/Delta/Rouge++

++Recipient: Loyal Imperial Commanders – as designated

by Commissariat, The Librarius Staff, Inquisitor Baptiste

& Canoness Arrea.++

++Subject: Traitors and Executions++

++Author: [Rus]Incubus – Scrivenor-in-attendance to

Inquisitor Nikolay Vinogradov++

++Thought for the Day: To cheat is both cowardly and

dishonourable++

Attention all loyal citizens of the Imperium!!!

Scanning of sacred books is a mortal sin!

*********

Whispered by Tzeentch, Lord of Hidden Knowledge.

Inspired by Slaanesh, Master of Forbidden Pleasures.

Resist foul machinations of the Dark Gods and buy

books from the Black Library.

***********

Thought of the Day: All traitors will be executed

without mercy and compassion!

Inquisition are watching YOU!

To Helen

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

BL Publishing,

Games Workshop Ltd.,

Willow Road, Nottingham,

NG7 2WS, UK

10 987654 3 2

Cover illustration by Philip Sibbering.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, Black Flame, BL Publishing, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated

marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the

Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and.'or • Games

Workshop Ltd 2000-2004, variably registered in the UK and other

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 13: 978 1 84416 087 7 ISBN 10: 1 84416 087 4

Distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, US.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque, Surrey, UK.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

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It IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of

Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his

inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the

Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the

daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the

psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst

his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are

legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inqui-sition and the tech-priests of

the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the

ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse. To BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold

billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the

power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of

progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an

eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

ONE

KHORION IX

It was a heaving sea of hatred, an ocean of pure evil.

Far below, the surface of Khorion IX was covered in a seething forest of torture racks, crosses and

squares and stars of bloodstained wood on which were broken hundreds of thousands of bodies, mangled

and wound around the wood like vines around a cane. It was like a huge and horrible vineyard, with rows

and rows of crucified bodies spilling a terrible vintage of blood into the earth. The victims were trapped

between life and death, their bodies exsanguinated but their minds just lucid enough to understand their

agony. They were the servants of the Prince of a Thou-sand Faces, the cultists and demagogues

summoned to their master's planet in the hope of an eternal reward that was all too real. Their bodies were

merged with the wood that had grown as the seasons passed, twist-ing their limbs into canopies of fleshy

branches and deforming them until there was barely anything human in them save for their suffering.

They said the screams could be heard from orbit. They were right.

At an unheard signal, the ground began to seethe. The crucified of Khorion IX began to wail even louder,

their agony supplanted by fear, as the sodden earth burst into fountains of bloodstained soil and a hideous

gibbering rose up from beneath. Iridescent, shifting creatures crawled up to the surface, some with long

reaching fingers and torsos dominated by leering, huge-mawed faces, others with bloated fungoid bodies

that belched multicoloured flame. There were raven-ous swarms of tiny, misshapen things that gnawed at

the roots of the crucified forest and immense winged monsters like huge deformed vultures that spat magic

fire. Every one was a shining multicoloured vision of hell, and each was just a pale reflection of their

master. The Prince of a Thousand Faces, the Forger of Hells, the Whisperer in the Darkness -

Ghargatuloth the Daemon Lord, chosen of the God of Change.

A tide of daemons burst like an ocean from the ground and flooded through the crucified forest, shrieking in

anticipation and hunger, the greater dae-mons marshalling the lesser and the lowest of them, forming a

mantle of daemon flesh that covered the ground in a sea of iridescence.

The daemonic tide poured onto the surface until from far above it looked like an ocean of daemonskin, the

lesser daemons sweeping between the rows of the crucified and the greater crushing Ghargatuloth's

slave-victims beneath clawed feet. The will of Ghargatuloth resonated through the very crust of Khorion

IX; every single one of the Tzeentch's servants felt it.

The next turning point will be here, it said. Thou-sands of the Change God's plots were coming to a head in

this battle, a tangled nexus of fates that would set the path for the future. It was fate that formed the

medium through which Tzeentch mutated the uni-verse to his will, and so this was a holy battle where fate

was the weapon, the prize and the battleground.

The cackling of the daemon army mixed with the screams of the crucified and the air vibrated with the din.

For light years in all directions the insane bab-bling and screams of desperation gnawed at every mind,

whispering darkly and shrieking insanely. Though the space around Khorion IX was largely devoid of

human habitation, many of those few who heard the call of the daemon lost their minds in the prelude to the

battle.

But the minds that mattered, the minds of those who would face the horde of Ghargatuloth, were

unwavering. They had trained since before they could remember in resisting the trickery of Tzeentch

himself and the creeping corruption that had brought so many to the fold of Ghargatuloth. They were armed

with the best weapons the Ordo Malleus could give them, pro-tected by consecrated power armour

hundreds if not thousands of years old, shielded from sorcery by hexagrammic and pentagrammic wards

tattooed onto their skin by the sages of the Inquisitorial archives.

They were ready. Their very purpose was to be ready, because when the time came to fight something like

Ghargatuloth, who else could do it? They were the Grey Knights, the daemon hunters of the Adeptus

Astartes, tasked by the Ordo Malleus of the Inquisi-tion and hence the Emperor Himself to fight the

daemon in all its forms. They were just a handful in number compared to the trillions of citizens making up

the Imperium but when a threat like Ghargatuloth was finally brought to bear, the Grey Knights were

lit-erally the Imperium's only hope.

There were three hundred of them bearing down on Khorion IX to have their say in the confluence of

fates. And Khorion IX was waiting for them.

The first things Grand Master Mandulis saw of Kho-rion IX were the thick bands of cloud, white and

streaked with red, as they rushed past the viewport of the drop-pod that plummeted through the planet's

lower atmosphere. The screams from below sounded even through the din of the descent and the pod's

lan-der engines, a million voices raised in praise and anticipation, calling out for blood and for new spirits to

break on the anvil of Ghargatuloth's sorcery.

The Grey Knights' briefing sermon had told them that an ancient pre-Imperial barrows complex was their

landing zone, but the plans they had to go by were from exploratory records three hundred years old. There

could be anything on Khorion IX. It had taken more than a century to track Ghargatuloth to the planet, and

the daemon prince would know the Grey Knights were coming. It would be savage. Very proba-bly,

nothing would survive. Grand Master Mandulis knew this and accepted it, for he had sworn long ago that

the destruction of the daemonic was of greater importance than his life. He had decades of experience in

the ranks of the Grey Knights, he had fought across a hundred worlds in the unending hidden war against

the horrors of the warp, but if he had to die to see Ghargatuloth banished from real space then he would

gladly die.

But it wouldn't be that simple.

The drop-pod's proximity alarms kicked in and filled the cramped interior with deep red light. It picked out

the face of Justicar Chemuel, whose squad Mandulis was accompanying in the assault. Chemuel was as

good a soldier as the Grey Knights had, and Mandulis had seen how he led his Purgation squad. His

Marines carried psycannon and flamers and Chemuel had drilled them until they could lay down massive

pin-point fire. It would be Chemuel's task to help clear the path through Ghargatuloth's servants so the

veteran Terminator assault squads could close with the greater daemons and even with the Prince of a

Thousand Faces himself.

That was the plan, but plans never lasted. The Grey Knights could fight the battles they did precisely

because every one of them was trained and psycho-doctrinated to survive in the forge of battle alone if

needs be; Chemuel like his battle-brothers would fight alone when the battle broke down into a slaughter.

That was when, not if. That was the way of daemons. They wrought bloodshed and confusion because

they enjoyed it. Ghargatuloth had surrounded himself with an immense army of such creatures, and if the

Grey Knight had to fight them all at once, then they would.

The restraints holding Mandulis and Squad Chemuel into their grav-couches wound in suddenly for the

impact. Blood-streaked clouds rushed past the viewport and then they were gone. The pod's lan-der

engines fired and again the pod decelerated suddenly, swooping as it came in to land. For a moment

Mandulis was looking out on the twisted nightmare that was Khorion IX - the landscape shat-tered as if

struck by a giant hammer, row upon row of tormented bodies staked out or nailed to crosses and arranged

in terraced fields stretching between horizons. A waterfall of blood poured into a churn-ing red sea in the

distance.

A network of pre-Imperial barrows, the only recognizable landmark from the ancient maps of the planet,

was ringed with banner poles from which hung innumerable flags of flayed skin. And worst of all, the

daemon army seethed, hundreds of thou-sands strong, surrounding the closest barrow in an unbroken sea of

daemon flesh.

Mandulis had been a Grey Knight since before he could remember. He had fought the Chaotic and

daemonic from the heart of the Segmentum Solar to far-flung daemon worlds, from the halls of plane-tary

governors to the endless slums of hive cities. Mandulis had seen so much that volumes of his bat-tlefield

reports filled shelves of the Archivum Titanis, and yet still in all his days he had never seen anything like the

horde of Ghargatuloth.

He was not afraid. The Emperor himself had decreed that a Space Marine shall know no fear. But Grand

Master Mandulis's soul still recoiled at the sheer magnitude of evil.

'I am the hammer,' he intoned as the landing jets pushed even harder against the drop-pod's descent. 'I am

the right hand of my Emperor, the instrument of His will, the gauntlet about His fist, the tip of His spear, the

edge of His sword...'

The Marines of Squad Chemuel followed Man-dulis as he led them in the final battlefield prayer, intoning

the sacred words even though they could barely hear them above the scream of the drop-pod's final braking

jets.

The impact was immense, like slamming into a wall. The grav-couch restraints jolted back as the pods

ploughed through the branches of wood and bone, into the middle of the daemon throng. A great scream

rose above the din of the impact as daemons were vaporised by the impact, and the viewport was sud-denly

covered in their many-coloured blood.

'Pod down!' yelled Justicar Chemuel. 'Blow the restraints!'

The servitor-pilot controlling the pod's systems responded to the pre-programmed order and the bolts

holding the pod's sides together burst with a series of sharp reports. The sides of the pod burst open and

Mandulis's restraints fell away. Baleful reddish light and a truly appalling stench of decay flooded in, so

thick it was like plunging into a sea of blood. The screams of the engines were replaced by the unearthly

and hideous keening of thousands of daemons, like an atonal choir howling out a wall of sound. The

weeping sky was scratched by the reaching branches of crucified limbs, the forest swarmed with daemons,

the pure hatred of Ghargatuloth's army was like a wave of pain pouring into the drop-pod.

Mandulis had a split second before the daemons closed in again. The pod had blasted a crater, thick with

daemon gore, ringed by broken crucifix-trees. Blood spurted from tears in the ground as if from sev-ered

arteries. The stench that got through Mandulis's helmet filters was of burning and blood, and the howl-ing of

the daemons hit him like a gale.

'Squad, suppression fire!' called Chemuel and his Marines, their psycannons already loaded and primed,

thudded off a single, huge volley that blasted apart the daemons scrambling over the ridge of the crater.

Mandulis saw another pod hitting home close by, throwing up a foul rain of blood and daemon body parts.

'That's Martel!' voxed Mandulis. 'Chemuel, give him cover and link up!'

Two Marines ran up the crater ridge and their incin-erator-pattern flamers poured gouts of blue-hot flame

into the tide of daemons pouring towards them through the woods. Mandulis stomped after them, the servos

of his ancient Terminator suit whirring, his wrist-mounted storm bolter barking as he sent blessed bolter

shots streaking into leering daemon faces. He reached the lip of the crater and saw the army for the first

time from ground level - gnarled limbs of irides-cent pink and blue, bloated creatures that belched flame, the

lopsided shapes of avian greater daemons lurching towards the drop zone.

Mandulis drew his Nemesis sword from its scabbard on his back. The blade leapt into life, its power field

calibrated to disrupt the psychic matter of daemons' flesh, the stylized golden lightning bolt set into its sil-ver

blade glowing hot with power. He lunged forward and cut a wide arc through the daemons clambering

through the burning remains of their brothers; he felt three unholy bodies come apart under the blade's

edge.

It was a good blade. One of the Chapter's best, given to Mandulis when he first attained the rank of master.

But it would have to drink more daemon's blood than it had ever done before if he was to succeed in his

mis-sion now.

Psycannon fire from Chemuel was shrieking past, the modified bolter shells exploding in spectacular

starbursts of silver that shredded the attacking dae-mons. The flamer troops moved up and were beside

Mandulis, pouring more fire into the attacking dae-mons as Mandulis's Nemesis sword carved through any

that got within range.

Martel's Terminator squad cut their way towards Mandulis, the huge tactical dreadnought armour bat-tering

aside the crucifix-trees as volleys of storm bolter fire cut through the forest.

'Brother Martel,' voxed Mandulis. 'Chemuel will cover you. We are close to the first barrow, follow me.'

'Well met, grand master.' replied Captain Martel as he speared a daemon with his Nemesis halberd.

'Jus-tinian is close behind us. I think we are cut off from any of the others. '

'Then we will carry the attack ourselves.' voxed Man-dulis. 'We knew it would come to this. Give grace to

the Emperor for our part in this fight and keep moving. '

'In position!' came the vox from Justicar Chemuel. Mandulis turned to see the Purgation squad lined up on

the lip of the crater, surrounded by the dissolving remains of charred daemons, ready to send volley after

disciplined volley from the psycannon into Ghargatuloth's horde.

Grand Master Mandulis could feel, thrumming through the bloodsoaked earth and cutting through the

screams of the crucified, the deep angry growl of something waking. Below the ground, huge and

malevolent, making ready to play its hand if the time came. The pre-battle guesswork had been correct - it

was beneath the barrows and would be surrounded by the deadliest of its servants.

Mandulis mouthed a silent prayer to the Emperor as the daemon tide came again, gibbering and screeching

as they swung through the trees and loped along the ground, shining with flame and foul sorcery.

Mandulis pressed down on the firing stud in his gauntlet and sent a stream of bolter shells ripping into the

advancing daemons. He hefted his Nemesis sword ready to strike and, with Martel's Terminators at his

side, he charged.

The Grey Knights' strike force that attacked Khorion IX was the strongest the Ordo Malleus could

assemble. Compact, fast, led by three grand masters of the Grey Knights and composed of the best

daemon-hunting warriors the Imperium had, it was nonetheless far from certain that the force would

succeed. It had taken a century to hunt down Ghargatuloth, the power which, through dozens of avatars

and aspects, directed thousands of Chaos cults in acts of depravity and ter-ror.

Ghargatuloth's purpose was to spread chaos and car-nage in the name of its god Tzeentch, following an

infinitely obscure plan that was all but impossible to trace. The Ordo Malleus had fought long and hard to

find out that it lived on Khorion IX, an uninhabited and largely unexplored world deep into the Halo Zone of

the Segmentum Obscurus where the beacon of the Astronomican barely reached. All that time

Ghargatu-loth had prepared and the Ordo Malleus had no choice but to send their troops into his trap,

because they might never get another chance. Khorion IX was too isolated for a planet-scouring Imperial

Navy assault and normal troops would last a matter of sec-onds on the planet. Even the Exterminatus, the

ultimate Inquisitorial sanction, would not be enough - someone had to see Ghargatuloth die and, even with a

devastating strike from orbit, the Ordo Malleus could not be sure.

It had to be the Grey Knights. Because if anyone could survive long enough to face Ghargatuloth in bat-tle,

it would be them.

The fast strike cruisers Valour Saturnum and Vengeful carried over two hundred and fifty Grey Knights,

as large a force as could be moved quickly enough through the vastness of the Segmentum Obscurus. Lord

Inquisitor Lakonios of the Ordo Malleus was in ultimate command but once the drop-pods were launched

and the atmosphere of Khorion IX was breached, it was the Grey Knights themselves who gave the orders.

Grand Master Ganelon, who had personally killed the Vermin King of Kalentia when still a justicar, landed

well off-centre in the thick of the daemon army. With nearly a hundred Grey Knights under his command

he fought a valiant battle of survival against wave upon wave of daemons, back-to-back and com-pletely

surrounded. Marine after Marine died under sorcerous lightning or the talons of rampaging greater daemons

and Ganelon himself began the Prayer of Purification, readying the souls of his men for the inevitable

journey after death to join the Emperor in the final battle against Chaos.

The Marines under Grand Master Malquiant smashed into the edge of the crucified forest and formed a

fearsome spearhead of seventy Grey Knights, tipped with the Terminator-armoured assault squads and

ultimately the sanctified lightning claws of Malquiant himself. Huge portions of the horde swarmed to blunt

the attack but those who bypassed the Malquiant's Terminators were cut to pieces by the massive,

well-ordered crossfires from the Purgation and Tactical squads that followed. Malquiant's assault drained

vast numbers of daemons from the forest, bleeding Ghargatuloth's horde dry in an awesome dis-play of

sheer bloody-minded aggression. But the horde was too vast and the broken terrain slowed the assault -

Malquiant knew he would not reach the objective, and could only do what he could for his battle-brothers by

forcing the bulk of the horde away from the barrows. As the assault ground to a halt Malquiant turned it

into a killing zone, overlapping fields of fire and launching counter-assaults into any-thing that got through.

Grand Master Mandulis had landed closest to the barrows. Along with Squad Chemuel and Squad Martel,

and Squad Justinian's tactical team who arrived in time to help cover the advance, Mandulis made the first

strike into Ghargatuloth's lair. Over the static-filled vox he learned of Ganelon's sacrifice and Malquiant's

relentless but bogged-down assault, and knew as he had somehow always known that it was up to him.

Those who could told him that the strength within him was the Emperor's and that with His will he would

prevail. Then Mandulis led the charge up the slopes of the barrows and all contact was lost, as sor-cery

flickered like lightning in the clouds ahead and the daemon horde began to sing the praises of their master.

The crest of the barrow was lined with bodies whose skeletons had been deformed into tall spears of flesh

and bone from which hung pennants of skin rippling in the hot, blood-damp breeze. The pennants were

emblazoned with symbols that would have burned the eyes of lesser men - Mandulis recognised the same

sigils that had been carved into the skin of Ghargatuloth's cultists and written in blood on the floors of their

temples.

Beyond the crest of the barrow, something huge roared. Mandulis, his gunmetal armour now black with

blood and smoke coiling from the charred twin barrels of his storm bolter, turned to see the Grey Knights

who had followed him. One Terminator from Squad Martel was down, along with several from Squad

Justinian who had followed in the path blazed by Mandulis. Justinian himself had lost an arm and his helmet

had been wrenched off by the gnarled hands of a daemon - his face was streaked with grime and his

breathing was ragged and bloody.

Further back, Chemuel was forming a cordon to pro-tect Mandulis's men from a counterattack. Mandulis

had no doubt that Justicar Chemuel would sell his life at the foot of the barrow, holding back the daemonic

tide with flamers and psycannon. It was a good and honourable way to die, but it would mean nothing if

Mandulis could not press home the attack now.

'Martel! With me!' voxed Mandulis. The captain ran up the slick earth of the barrow, his Terminators

fol-lowing. 'Grace be with you, brother. Over the top.'

Under cover from Justinian, Mandulis and Squad Martel charged over the crest of the barrow. Before them

stretched the whole barrows complex, a series of concentric circular mounds surrounding a ruined stone

tower like the stump of a huge tree. Twisted trees, once Ghargatuloth's most loyal cult leaders, grew in

tormented tangles everywhere, forming knots of screaming, blackened flesh. In the depressions between

the mounds, blood had drained into deep moats, blood that churned as something massive writhed beneath

the ground.

As Mandulis watched, the ground seethed and he saw pale shapes clawing their way from the earth. Stone

coffins broke the surface and spilled mouldering bones and grave goods onto the ground. So massive was

the evil beneath the barrows that those who had originally been buried there, thousands of years ago before

Khorion IX had ever been discovered by the Imperium, were clawing their way from their graves to get

away from it.

Mandulis led the charge. As he ran full pelt down the reverse slope of the first barrow there was a titanic

eruption of earth nearby and something pale, towering and monstrous burst from the surface. A wave of

dae-monic sorcery washed over everything and the wards tattooed onto Mandulis's skin burned white-hot

as they fought off the daemon's magic. He saw a hunched, twisted body, with a foul distended stomach,

rotting skin sprouting feathers, and a long neck from which hung a wickedly grinning beaked head. Wings of

blue fire spread from its back as it lunged and stamped down on Brother Gaius, shattering the Grey Knight's

leg with a taloned foot. Storm bolter fire streaked up at it and Brother Jokul's psycannon punched holes into

its decaying chest, but it just shrieked with joy as it picked up Gaius and tore him in two with its beak.

'Press on!' yelled Mandulis into the vox. 'Brother Knights, with me! Chemuel, Justinian, move up and give

cover!'

Mandulis heard Gaius die over the vox, the Grey Knight's last breaths gurgling prayers of hate as he hacked

at the greater daemon with his Nemesis weapon. Brother Thieln, Justinian's flamer Marine, died a moment

later, cut in two by a huge rusted metal glaive wielded by a second greater daemon that tore itself out of the

slope of the barrow.

Ghargatuloth's inner circle of daemons - Lords of Change, the cultists called them, generals of the Change

God's armies - were bursting from the bar-rows to slaughter the Grey Knights who dared attack the Prince

of a Thousand Faces. This was the heart of Ghargatuloth's trap. Mandulis had known it would end like this

- a mad charge in the faint hope that the Grey Knights would reach Ghargatuloth in enough numbers to

stand a chance of defeating him.

A daemon erupted from the ground close by, show-ering Mandulis with blood and earth. Captain Martel

lunged in with his halberd, spearing the avian daemon through the thigh. Mandulis ducked the staff it swung,

sorcerous lightning arcing off his armour and pushing his antipsychic wards to the limit. He swung his sword

into the heart of the iridescence and the daemon's head was sheared clean off, the severed neck spewing

viscous, glowing blue gore onto the ground.

Mandulis strode on as bolter fire and lightning streaked everywhere. He waded through the waist-deep gore

of the moat and scrambled up the crumbling earth of the next barrow, crunching through ancient graves.

He could hear voices whispering and screaming inside his skull, a babble of madness that would have

swamped a lesser man's mind. But the mind of a Grey Knight was built around a hard core of pure,

depthless faith. Where other men had fear, the Grey Knights had resolve. Where others had doubt,

Mandulis had faith. An Imperial guardsman, no matter how courageous or pious, still had that unprotected

hollow of despair, greed, and terror at the heart of his soul. A Grey Knight did not. Ghargatuloth's mind

tricks broke against Mandulis's mind like waves against rocks.

That was why it had to be the Grey Knights assault-ing Khorion IX. The Lords Militant could assemble

armies hundreds of millions strong, but not one of those Guardsmen would have kept his mind for a minute

under the gaze of Ghargatuloth. So it was up to the Grey Knights, and now it was up to Mandulis.

Glowing hands were reaching from beneath the soil, large enough to pick up Brother Trentius and hurl him

so hard that his body smashed into the stone tower at the centre of the barrows. One of the daemons held a

staff of bloodstained black wood, pink lightning spilling from the bundle of skulls nailed to its top, arcing off

power armour, blasting Marines off their feet where the other greater daemons could move in for the kill.

Squad Chemuel were buying time with their lives. They were surrounded, the towering avian daemons

ablaze with blessed burning fuel and smoking from holes blasted by psycannon rounds. Chemuel himself

had drawn his Nemesis weapon, which the artificers on Titan had fashioned into a spear, and was stabbing

at the nearest daemon even as it tore off his other arm.

Squad Justinian had tried to keep pace with Man-dulis and Martel but their charge had faltered. Justinian

himself died in a sea of pink fire that boiled up from below, dragged down by daemon talons and torn apart.

His Marines were scattered by the daemon that rose from the fire, wielding a great spiked metal block on a

long chain that scythed through two Marines before their battle-brothers could turn and riddle the daemon

with storm bolter fire.

Mandulis scrambled up the slope of the final barrow. Mattel's Terminators, only a handful of them left now,

turned to cover Martel and Mandulis. The swarm of lesser daemons broke over the far barrow and poured

into the complex to join their master in a waterfall of daemons' flesh. The last sight Mandulis had of Justicar

Chemuel was of his body being thrown by a greater daemon into the advancing tide, to be played with and

torn apart like prey Mandulis pressed on. The ground itself was fighting him, collapsing beneath his feet into

great fissures. The tower loomed overhead, ancient stones spilling off its ruined walls, and beneath him the

pure hatred reached a screaming pitch as Ghargatuloth tried to force his way into Mandulis's mind.

The daemon prince would not succeed. That meant he would have to stoop to defending himself

person-ally. And that was Mandulis's only chance.

The tower was shattered and thrown into the air in a shower of stone. The ground tore open and Mandulis

dug his feet into the crumbling earth as the storm tore over him.

The sky rotted and turned black. A Shockwave of cor-ruption ripped outwards and turned the landscape of

Khorion IX into tortured, screaming flesh. Mandulis glimpsed Captain Martel being picked up by the

howl-ing wind and thrown into the sky and out of sight, fire still spitting from his storm bolter.

In the centre of the storm a huge, dark column shot up from the site of the tower, so tall it punched through

the black clouds overhead. It was a spear of twisted flesh, something living but never alive, and it was

accompa-nied by a seething chorus of pure madness that tore at the barriers of Mandulis's mind with such

frenzy that Mandulis, for the first time in his long life, felt a spark of doubt that he would hold out against the

assault.

He crushed that doubt and held his Nemesis sword in both hands, storm bolter forgotten because not even

holy bullets could harm something like this.

The eyes of the storm swept over Grand Master Mandulis and suddenly the air was calm, the cacophony of

screams clear and horrible, the assault on Mandulis's mind a pure keening.

The true face of the Prince of a Thousand Faces looked down on Mandulis. The grand master of the Grey

Knights mouthed a final, silent prayer, and charged.

TWO

TETHYS

One thousand years passed. The Imperium endured -men and women died in uncountable numbers to

ensure that. Armageddon was lost to the orks. The Damocles Gulf was conquered and strange new species

were encountered. The Sabbat Worlds were overrun by Chaos and an immense crusade launched to

reclaim them.

Stratix died in screaming plague, Stalinvast in the fiery extremes of the Exterminatus. The Eye of Terror

opened and hell poured out through the Cadian Gate. The Inquisition continued to torture itself for the good

of mankind, the Adeptus Terra tried to unpick laws and declarations from the will of the Emperor. The

warp created new hells outside real space. Whole systems were lost in madness and new ones settled in

their hundreds.

There were only two constants in the galaxy. The first was the Imperium's bloody-minded refusal to die

beneath the weight of heresy, secession, alien aggres-sion and daemonancy. The second was war - an

unending, merciless, and all-consuming tide of war-fare that formed the Imperium's bane, function, and

salvation.

One thousand years of hatred, one thousand years of war. Enough time for a great many new horrors to

rise, and for old ones to be all but forgotten.

When the first shot had hit, Justicar Alaric had thought of the final days - the days when the Emperor would

be whole again, when the heroes of the Imperium and the soldiers of its present would be led into war as

one, and the final reckoning would come.

With the second shot, the one that punched through his leg and tore up into his abdomen, he had realised

that he was not dead and that the final days would not come for him yet. He remembered red runes

winking maddeningly on the back of his eye, telling him that his blood pressure was falling and both his

hearts were beating erratically, that two of his lungs had been punctured by the shot to the chest and his

abdomen was filling up with blood. He remembered dragging himself into cover as overcharged las-shots

ripped into the stone floor beside him.

He remembered the shame as his consciousness drained into a dim grey oblivion, willing his limbs to move

so he could loose a last volley of shots against the cultists who had wounded him so badly.

That was what Alaric felt as he awoke again. Shame. It reminded him of how young he was compared to

some of the grand masters who had walked the halls of Titan. He had the crystal-pure mental core of a

Grey Knight, that was certain, but wrapped around it was a mind that still had much to learn. Not about

fighting - that knowledge had been sleep-taught to him so deeply that it had displaced any memory of

Alaric's childhood - but about the great discipline that meant not even shame, rage, or honour could get in

the way of a grand master's sense of duty to his Emperor.

Alaric was all but submerged in a vat of clear fluid, a concoction of Titan's apothecaries that helped flesh

heal and kept infections at bay. He felt tubes snaking all around him, feeding medicines into his veins and

sending information back to the cogitators he could hear thrumming and clicking away around him. He was

bathed in light coming from lumoglobes arranged in a circle on the stone ceiling above him. The whole of

the Grey Knight fortress-monastery was carved from the same dark grey living stone of Titan, snaking

deep beneath the moon's surface in layer upon layer of cells, chapels, training and instruction halls, medical

facili-ties, parade grounds, armouries and, deepest of all, the tombs of every Grey Knight who had fallen in

battle during the Chapter's ten thousand year history.

Alaric turned his head to see the brass-cased cogita-tors quietly spewing sheet after sheet of paper onto

which were scribbled the long, jagged ribbons of his life signs. The medical facility was one he had been to

before - it was here that he had received the hexagrammic wards that formed a thin lattice of blessed silver

beneath his skin. Medical orderlies were moving quietly between other recovery tanks and auto-surgeon

tables, checking on the patients - some were troops or other personnel from the Ordo Malleus. Others were

the inhumanly tall and muscular forms of Alaric's fel-low Grey Knights. The facility was like a vaulted

cellar, the ceiling low and oppressive, the stone cold and sweating. The lumoglobes casting pools of light

around the patients, surrounded by shadow where cogitators and hygiene servitors hummed gently.

Alaric recognised Brother Tathelon, one arm blown off at the elbow and his body covered in tiny shrapnel

scars. Interrogator Iatonn, who had accompanied Inquisitor Nyxos in the assault, lay with his entrails

exposed as the dextrous metallic fingers of the auto-surgeon worked to knit his innards back together.

Alaric had seen Iatonn fall, a blade plunged through his gut. Nyxos, as far as Alaric knew, had made it out

unharmed, but of course Alaric had not seen the final stages of the assault.

One of the orderlies, one of the blank-faced, mind-scrubbed men and women the Ordo Malleus used for

menial work, saw Alaric was awake and came to inspect the life signs streaming from the cogitators.

Alaric stood up in the tank, pulling electrodes from his skin and needles from his veins. The black carapace,

a hard layer beneath the skin of his chest and abdomen, had a large ragged hole in it where the first shot

had broken through his armour and Alaric could see through the crystallized wound to the surface of the

bony breastplate that had grown together from his ribs. There was another hole, larger, in the meat of his

thigh, with a tight channel of internal scar leading up into his abdomen. He could feel the wounds inside him

but they were almost healed thanks to his internal augmentations and the Chapter apothecarion. He was

covered in smaller scars, burns from where his armour had become red-hot from the weight of las-fire

slam-ming into it, cuts and gouges from shards of ceramite, newly lain over the old scars from previous

battle wounds and surgical procedures.

Apothecary Glaivan was hurrying over from the far end of the facility. Glaivan was ancient, one of the few

Grey Knights currently in the Chapter who had reached the extended old age a Space Marine's

enhancements could grant him. Glaivan's hands had been replaced long ago with bionic armatures that gave

him a surgical touch far finer than human hands, with splayed fingers tipped with scalpels and pincers. Grey

Knights usually wore their power armour when outside their cells or at worship, but Glaivan had long since

left his battlegear behind. Beneath the long white apothecary's robes his body was braced with steel and

brass, and his redundant organs had been removed to leave Glaivan a shell of a Marine. His face was long

and so heavily lined it was hard to believe there had once been a younger man in there. Glaivan was more

than four hundred years old, all but the first handful of those having been spent in service to the Grey

Knights and the Ordo Malleus.

'Ah, young justicar.' said Glaivan in a voice lent a faint buzz by his reconstructed throat. 'You heal well. A

good thing, borne of willpower. They were high-powered las-burns, justicar, very deep. I am surprised that

you are awake so soon, and very little surprises me.'

'I didn't see how it ended. ' said Alaric. 'Did we...'

'Seven dead.' said Glaivan with a hint of melancholy. 'Twelve were brought to me here, most will be made

well. But yes, Nyxos was successful. Valinov was taken alive, they have him on Mimas.'

Alaric climbed out of the tank, feeling the tightness in his muscles. Alaric had seen Valinov, just as the

storm of las-fire had ripped out of the underground temple from the cultists under Valinov's command. He

had seen a tall slim man with a sharp face and shaven, tattooed head, barking orders in a foul warp-taught

language. His cultists - the mission briefing had sug-gested several hundred of them in the underground

temple complex - were hunched and pallid-skinned, wearing tattered robes of grimy yellow, but they had

been well-armed and perfectly willing to die beneath the storm bolters and Nemesis weapons of the Grey

Knights. Alaric had been one of the first in, leading the squad he had recently come to command.

Now the assault was over and the survivors were back on Titan.

'How long?' asked Alaric. The orderly handed him a towel and Alaric began to wipe off the fluid - the

heal-ing fluid was cold and sticky, and pooled on the cold stone floor around his feet.

'Three months.' replied Glaivan. 'The Rubicon made good speed back. They wanted to make sure Valinov

was placed in Mimas as soon as possible. That man is pure corruption.' Glaivan spat on the stone floor, and

a tiny hygiene servitor scuttled over to clean up the spittle. 'To think. An inquisitor. Radicalism grows ever

stronger, I fear.'

It was a measure of the respect in which Glaivan was held that he could voice such concerns freely. The

Grey Knights were technically autonomous, but the Ordo Malleus were in practice their masters, and they

cer-tainly didn't want the Grey Knights harbouring seditious opinions about the Inquisition. Radicalism was,

officially, a non-existent threat, and that was all the Malleus would officially say to the Grey Knights about

it.

Alaric sifted through his last memories of the raid - gunfire streaking through grimy underground tunnels,

battle-brothers charging in a storm of explosions. If the Rubicon had indeed made good speed then Alaric

had probably been in Glaivan's care for a couple of weeks. 'Who was lost?'

'Interrogator Iatonn will not survive.' Glaivan glanced sadly at the interrogator's body, opened up beneath

the autosurgeon. 'LeMal, Encalion and Bali-gant died in the assault. Gaignun and Justicar Naimon died on

the Rubicon, Tolas and Evain in my care.'

'Encalion and Tolas were my men.' Alaric had attained the rank of justicar three years before, and he had

lost men before - but he had seen them die. It was part of the bond between Alaric and his squad that they

had all shared in the deaths of their battle-broth-ers, but this time Alaric had not been there.

'I know, justicar. There is a place for them in the vaults. Grand Master Tencendur has decreed they will be

interred after your debriefing. I shall tell him you are fit.' Glaivan picked up one of the long sheets of

parchment and passed it through his metallic hands, reading the patterns in Alaric's heartbeats and blood

pressure. 'I should not say much until Tencendur has had his say, but from Nyxos I hear that your

battle-brothers did you proud. When you fell they pressed the attack for revenge instead of faltering in

despair. I have seen many leaders in this Chapter and what marks them out is that whatever they do, even

falling to the Enemy, they inspire the men who follow them. Your Marines thought you were dead, and they

fought on all the harder. Remember that, young justicar, for I feel you shall not remain a mere justicar for

much longer.'

Alaric pulled out the last of the needles from his skin. 'I need to get back to my cell.' he said. 'There are

Rites of Contrition for my armour before the artificers can repair it. And I must have missed out on much

prayer.'

'Do as you see fit. Soon you will be ready to fight again. Chaplain Durendin is receiving confessions in the

Mandulian Chapel and it sounds as if you could use his counsel before debriefing. I shall have the servi-tors

bring you a habit.'

Glaivan waved an order and two of the menial servi-tors rolled off through the cellars of the apothecarion

on their tracks to fetch Alaric some clothing so he could walk through the corridors of Titan with suitable

humility. There was a great deal Alaric had to do after any battle, let alone one where he had been both

severely wounded and been exposed to potential cor-ruption. He would have to confess, receive

purification, have his battlegear repaired and reconse-crated, see his name entered in the immense tomes

recording the deeds of the Grey Knights, and be debriefed by Grand Master Tencendur and the inquisi-tors

who had been ultimately responsible for the attack.

The life of a Grey Knight was ritual and purification punctuated by savage combat against the foulest of

foes - just a few days of it would break a lesser man, and sometimes Alaric was grateful he could not

remember anything else. But this was not the time to skirt the edges of heretical doubt. Valinov was

captured and his cult shattered. There was a victory to celebrate, and there were fallen brothers to

remember.

Inquisitor Gholic Ren-Sar Valinov had been a member of the Ordo Malleus since his recruitment as an

interrogator by the late Lord Inquisitor Barbillus.

Barbillus was an old-school inquisitor, the kind of man sculpted into the friezes of Malleus temples and used

as exemplars of righteous valour in sermons. Barbillus had worn armour covered in gold filigree depicting

daemons crushed beneath the Emperor's feet and wielded a power hammer with a head carved from

meteoric iron. He had ridden his war pulpit into the deepest pits of daemonic horror. He was a soldier, a

fighter, a smiter of the foul and a scourge of the heretic. When the citizens of the Imperium heard rumours

of the Imperium's secret defenders in the Inquisition, they imagined men like Barbillus.

Barbillus had an extensive staff, mostly of warriors who rode with him into battle, recruited from martial

cultures all over the Imperium. But he also needed people to get him to the battlefield. Investigators.

Interviewers. Scientists. Some of Barbillus's rear eche-lon staff went deep undercover for him, infiltrating

noble houses suspected of daemonancy or vicious hive-scum gangs sponsored by hidden cultist cells. They

were disposable and exposed, both to the vio-lence that would follow discovery and the madness that could

result from seeing too much of the Enemy. They did what they did because it was their way to join the fight

against Chaos.

Very few of them survived to advance in Barbillus's private army. One of them was Gholic Ren-Sar

Valinov.

The Ordo Malleus's records of Valinov's origins were patchy, mainly because he erased or altered most of

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