head first. There was a sharp, jarring impact. Sabtah’s back slammed back into the marble dais. He felt his spine shatter, vertebrae twisting. His legs loosened, flopping aside as his nervous system seized.
Sabtah had one last window of opportunity and he took it. As Eeluk pulled its head free, Sabtah’s knife hand followed it.
Basho Eeluk was still bellowing victory as Sabtah blinded its other eye. The daemon reeled. Completely sightless it lurched, limbs awkwardly flailing. Its cry became one of despair. It dragged itself over the edge of the marble dais and slithered over the edge, banishing itself back into the rolling clouds of the warp‐sea. It roared one final time, fading cries marking the depth of its descent.
102
‘Muhr,’ Sabtah said. He tried to rise, but he no longer had control of his lower body.
Given proper clinical treatment and augmentation, the spinal severance would only be a minor injury.
Muhr drifted into view. He stood over Sabtah’s splayed body.
‘Sabtah. How sad it has come to this,’ Muhr said.
‘Betrayer,’ Sabtah accused hoarsely.
‘Not so,’ Muhr replied. ‘I only have the glory of our warband in mind. I can make the Blood Gorgons a proper Chapter again. Not renegades, but an army.’
‘We’ve always been who we are, Muhr.’
‘Vagabonds,’ Muhr finished testily.
‘We have a name. The Imperium does not wish to fight the Blood Gorgons. We have a history.’
‘Under Opsarus and the Legions of Nurgle we will achieve more than we ever could alone. We will raise empires. Empires, Sabtah. Hauts Bassiq is a small price to pay in return for Opsarus’s patronage.’
‘But we won’t be Blood Gorgons any more,’ Sabtah concluded bluntly. He was beginning to feel drowsy. His body was fighting the massive trauma he had sustained: a severed hand, a ruptured liver, serious cuts, a broken back. Endorphins flooded his brain as the Larraman cells in his bloodstream coagulated the wounds. His sus‐an membrane began to slow the beating of his hearts. His breathing became shallow.
‘Nothing you have to worry about, Sabtah.’ Muhr cocked his bolt pistol. ‘I never wanted to do this. You are a good warrior and a sound tactician. But our ideologies are irreconcilable.’
Sabtah shook his head as blood bubbled into his beard. A dowry. That was what they used to call it.
In order to cement the Blood Gorgons’ alliance to greater powers, there needed to be a gift, a token. That was Hauts Bassiq. Mineral‐rich, resource‐rich, a staging post of conquest that would become the jewel of Opsarus’s dominion. In ancient days, humans exchanged livestock, beads, even precious stones. Hauts Bassiq was no different. It was a valuable gem for those who could exploit it.
Meek. That was the accusation Sabtah wanted to use. Muhr was meek. He was selling Sabtah’s bond‐brothers to the Cult of Rot and Decay merely for the promise of power.
Amongst soldiers such as themselves, the word meek was the gravest insult.
But the witch had sold the warband like a bride. There was no allegiance here. Muhr was trying to buy his way into power by offering Nurgle both a Chapter and a world. For a moment, Sabtah was overwhelmed by the hot rush of anger and the contrasting cold of his wounds.
‘You are a bondless witch,’ Sabtah murmured. He invoked the last of his bleeding strength. ‘Muhr the Meek. That is how history will know you.’
Muhr flinched at the accusation. ‘I may not have the blood bond but I have devoted myself to this Chapter all the same. You just can’t accept it.’
Muhr pressed the pistol against Sabtah’s head.
THE MARBLE DAIS reappeared in the Temple Heart with a clap of expanding gas. The fifty-tonne disc slammed back onto the decking with a force that caused earthquake tremors across a third of the space hulk.
103
As the dust cloud parted, Muhr was the only one remaining on the dais. Blood and fragments splashed across the white marble. The assembled squads had formed a ring around the dais, weapons primed and aimed. Muhr waved them back.
‘The waves and tides of the immaterial realm have cast me in the role of guardian,’ he declared.
Some of the Blood Gorgons reacted more slowly than Muhr would have liked, giving him a hesitant salute. There were those among the assembly who did not react at all.
Beneath the screaming face‐plates of their helmets, there would be surprise and perhaps some measure of fear. Muhr made sure to remember those dissidents who now disrespected his rank; they would need to be quelled soon.
But for now, Muhr had other things to attend to. The