tank turret. Beyond his field of vision, pitch‐black shadows leaned out across the room like lunging spectres.
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Sabtah erased the transmission from the atmospheric caster with a squeal of the turn dial. He slapped a side‐mounted magazine into his bolter, made sure the transmission had been cleared, and rose from his seat.
Raising the muzzle of his underslung flamer, Sabtah released the blast seal to his bed chambers. The lighting in the wide, steel corridor outside had been cut. Emergency glo-strips flickered weakly along the mesh decking.
As was his practice, Sabtah hollered for his guard hounds. They were each three hundred kilos of vat‐brewed muscle, a mutant species of the bearded crocodilian.
Aggressive and unseeing, the guard hounds always answered his calls dutifully but now there was no sign of them.
Edging slowly down the corridor, Sabtah tried to remember the basic foot patterns of silent movement. It had been many thousands of years since he had practised the steps as a neophyte but the neural programming came back to him. Sinking his weight with each step, Sabtah crept softly, although he had not felt the need for stealth in many centuries. As a champion of the Chapter, he could usually afford the luxury of charging from the fore, gladius in one hand and combi‐bolter in the other.
But there was an unsettling darkness and quiet that warranted a vigilant approach.
Sabtah swept quickly through the crumbling ruins of his tower’s lower levels. Over the years, the plunder and loot of his many campaigns had lain forgotten in his dominion. The hilts of swords and gilded treasures peered from between the cloth‐like sheets of spider webs and dust. He swung his weapon at each corner, hunting furtively through the statues and stacked chests for a target.
Sabtah swept out into the interior courtyard. He could smell blood and entrails. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw his gutted sentries, quite dead and sprawled in his garden.
There was a soft ping from his MKII suit’s internal auspex.
Sabtah looked up reactively. He spied a large, imposing figure scaling a ceiling cable. It was already disappearing into the smoking, gaseous heights of the Cauldron Born’s upper ceiling shafts. Guide lights reflecting off the overhead network of pipes turned the deck’s upper reaches into an interior atmosphere of smoke clouds and electric stars. Squinting upwards, Sabtah fired a ranging shot with his bolter as the figure was winched up. He fired again, but the figure scrambled onto a nearby gas main and disappeared into a canopy of steam hoses and cables.
Sabtah scanned the courtyard. One of his bearded croc‐hounds lay on its side. They had cut the reptile by its throat flaps. One of its clawed hind feet still twitched spasmodically.
His pet’s eyes had been cut out and its tongue severed from its gaping maw. The symbolism of the croc‐hound’s death was not lost on Sabtah. He knew what it meant. The intruders had tried to breach his citadel again but failed, and this time had chosen to leave him a warning.
Sabtah realised Muhr and his patron knew. He did not have time on his side.
ON THE HORIZON of Bassiq, an undulating red plain broken only by occasional boab trees, two figures could be seen. They plodded, slowly and methodically, but forwards, always forwards. One was big and broad. Trailing behind, lashed by a chain, dragged almost on all fours, came a smaller figure bent double. A Blood Gorgon and his dark eldar.
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They went north, following the multiple dawns and sunsets on the horizon, always northwards. For five full days Barsabbas walked, leading his captive.
The interior of the central plains was a vast, empty space of bushland and drying river beds where the pockets of wildlife slowly withered to meet the dune systems of the north, the largest longitudinal dune systems on the continent.
The earth had a higher ferric content here, coloured a deep red. Here and there, slivers of water boiled on silty tracts of old waterways. Dunaliella algae lent the lakes a pinkish hue. Barsabbas knew the plainsmen would eat the fish that were preserved in the salt on the river beds, but how he came to know, he could not remember.
Barsabbas and his captive did not talk. They simply plodded along as Sindul pointed the way.
The heat was shocking. Even sealed up in the climate vacuum of his armour, Barsabbas could feel the prickly heat. He made sure to stop and water his captive regularly. When Sindul collapsed from exhaustion, Barsabbas simply draped him across one arm. The