Excommunicate Traitoris by the Inquisition within six decades of Founding. He had been a young neophyte then, not even blooded, yet those had been ignominious days. They had been driven from their home world by Space Wolves, a broken Chapter pursued into the warp by lupine hunters. They became thieves: foraging, hiding, always hunted. The brothers had stayed together only for survival, the Chapter divided by minor war‐captains and factions who 57
sealed off entire sections of the Cauldron Born as their own fiefdoms and baronies. There was no dignity to their name.
It was to be Gammadin who united the warring companies. It was he who waged an intra‐Chapter war that left much of the space hulk in devastation, even to this day. But in the aftermath of fratricide, the Blood Gorgons found cohesion. It had been Gammadin who devised the rituals of blood‐bonding to ensure that his Chapter would never again fight internally, pledging their very co‐existence to each other and the powers of Chaos. No Blood Gorgon would ever turn his blades on his brother again.
But Sabtah believed history came and went in cycles. What was due, would be due. The Blood Gorgons’ unity had been constructed and could thus be dismantled.
Yet Sabtah also believed he could change it and map the course of his Chapter; it was his duty as Gammadin’s blood bond. After all, Sabtah had been there from the beginning. He had been there the very day the Blood Gorgons rose up, seething and angry after decades of shame, to confront their Space Wolf pursuers.
Sabtah could still remember the fury and pent‐up anguish that the Blood Gorgons had released against those loyalist Space Marines. Sabtah had never experienced anything like it since. They had engaged the Space Wolves with Lamprey boarding craft simply to inflict damage, a malicious hit‐and‐run assault that left their pursuers with severe casualties.
Feared though the Wolves were in battle, they did not possess the refined boarding tactics of the Blood Gorgons. Although Sabtah had been a fresh‐blood then, he slew a Grey Hunter that day. He had even scalped his enemy’s long beard and plundered his axe.
He could not bear to see the Blood Gorgons live such shallow, inglorious existences again. They were a free Chapter, free to travel to the edge of the universe.
The Blood Gorgons knew nothing of restraint. Restraint, to Sabtah, was the bane of human existence. He knew that citizens of the Imperium worked their constant shift cycles until they withered and died, never deviating from doorstep to factorum. That was not existence. No, Blood Gorgons were like the sword‐bearing generals of Old Terra, conquering and plundering whatever they touched. There was substance to that. It was something Sabtah could be proud of.
Suddenly, Sabtah snapped out of his reverie. He felt a tweak in the base of his neck, and a chill ran across his skin. A flutter of nerves made his abdomen coil and uncoil.
Something was wrong.
Sabtah trusted his instincts without hesitation. The veteran pivoted on his ankle. He glimpsed movement as he spun mid‐turn. It was fleeting. A ghostly double image in the corner of his vision, disappearing behind the pillars that framed the temple entrance.
He was old, but his eyes did not lie to him.
Sabtah gave chase, exploding into a flat sprint. He did not know what he had seen. The Cauldron Born was old and large. He had seen odd things aboard the vessel before. There were rumours of strange, immaterial things that dwelt in the forgotten catacombs and drainage sumps in the lower levels of the ship. Others spoke of a dark terror that lurked in the collapsed passages beneath the rear boiler decks. Those with no knowledge of the arcane would accuse the ship of being ‘haunted’. Sabtah knew it was an inevitable influence of warp travel.
Twice more he caught sight of something large yet frustratingly elusive to his eyes. He pursued doggedly, his heavy legs pounding the ground. It led him further and further away from the serviced areas of the vessel. Sabtah chased hard, refusing to slow. He realised he 58
was being led into the forgotten areas. The corridors became unlit. The ground was uneven, broken by rust and calcification, but Sabtah was consumed by the chase. His hearts pulsated in his eardrums.
The thing, whatever it was that Sabtah saw, appeared once more, like a black sheet caught in the wind, and then vanished.
Sabtah found himself in a cavern. Leakage in the overhead pipes had created a curtain of stalactites,