The Librarian pushed his doubts and questions aside. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that hesitation in battle was often fatal. 'Halt and deploy!' he called over the intercom. Leaping to his feet, he drew his bolt pistol from its holster and addressed his squad. 'Tactical pattern delta! Treat all contacts as hostile until otherwise directed.' He raised his staff, noticing for the first time the rime of frost coating the metal shaft. 'Loyalty and honour!'

The Land Raider rumbled to a halt, its front assault ramp deploying with a hiss of powerful hydraulics. Astelan stood, igniting his power sword's energy field. 'For Luther!' he shouted to his men.

As one, the Dark Angels answered Astelan's cry. Zahariel had no time to wonder at the chapter master's strange oath; he was already rushing towards the assault ramp, the golden double eagle at the top of his staff held before him like a talisman.

The landing field was a dark, grey plain of permacrete some five hundred metres square, bounded on three sides by huge, multi-storey mineral refinery and storage plants. Cylindrical sifting towers loomed over the idle refineries, ringed every ten metres by blinking red hazard lights. They cast long shadows across the field, bisecting the orderly rows of Condor transports crouching silently on their squat landing struts.

Zahariel swept the field with his bolt pistol, searching for targets as the squad spread out around him.

The transports' assault ramps were down and all of the craft he could see had one or more of their maintenance hatches open, but there were no signs of activity.

The Librarian felt his scalp prickle as he grew aware of the deathly stillness that hung over the plant. He glanced at one of the warriors in his squad who was busy sweeping the field with a portable auspex unit. 'Any readings?' he asked.

'No movement. No life signs,' the Astartes answered. 'Trace heat on the engines of the transports, but that's all.'

Zahariel's eyes narrowed warily. That wasn't quite all; he could sense the tension in the warrior's voice. There was something else, something invisible that didn't register on any of their equipment. He'd felt it once before, many, many years past, when he'd travelled deep into the forest in search of the last Calibanite Lion.

This was an evil place, Zahariel knew. The air was heavy with a sense of malice and slow, hateful corruption, and it knew he was there.

A dreadful sense of deja vu swept over him. Zahariel raised his head and looked past the hulking buildings and silent towers, searching the horizon for clues. He studied the broken line of mountains that comprised the nearby Northwilds, and realised that he was very close to that same spot where he'd fought the lion, decades ago. The terrible, twisted trees were gone and the echoing hollows had been scraped bare, but the aura of the place somehow remained.

'Not far from here,' a hollow voice spoke in Zahariel's ear. With a start, he turned to see Attias staring at him, just a couple of metres away. The lenses of Attias's augmetic eyes were flat and depthless in his polished, skull-like face.

'What is that, brother?' Zahariel replied.

'The castle,' Attias replied. The words were flat and emotionless, resonating from the small, silver vox grille embedded in his throat. He raised his chainsword and pointed off to the northeast. 'The fortress of the Knights of Lupus was just a few score kilometres off that way. You remember?'

Zahariel followed the whirring tip of the sword and stared off into the gathering darkness. Sure enough, he could just make out the distant flank of Wolfs Head Mountain, the old peak from which the disgraced knights had taken their name. They had been the last of the knightly orders to defy Jonson's plan of unification against the great beasts that terrorised Caliban's people, and their intransigence had ultimately led to open conflict. He remembered the horrific assault on the fortress as clearly as if it had been yesterday. That had been his first real taste of the brutality of war.

The worst shock, though, had been once the knights of the Order had breached the outer walls and fought their way into the castle proper. The outer courtyard of the fortress had been full of enclosures, most of them filled with twisted monstrosities. Zahariel and his brethren had been horrified to learn that the Knights of Lupus had been collecting as many of the great beasts as they could and preserving them from the wrath of Jonson's forces. Jonson had been so furious he'd ordered the fortress to be completely destroyed. Not one stone had been left atop another, and every trace of the Knights of Lupus had been wiped away.

Except for their library, Zahariel realised. The library of the renegade knights had been vast, larger even than the one at Aldurukh, and filled with a huge assortment of ancient and esoteric tomes. To everyone's surprise, Jonson had ordered the library to be catalogued and transported back to the Rock. No one knew why, and Zahariel never learned what happened to the books after that.

The Northwilds had always been the oldest, wildest and most dangerous wilderness region on Caliban. Now, nearly all of the forest was gone - but had something ancient and inimical somehow remained?

Astelan's voice shook Zahariel from his reverie. 'Is your vox-unit working, brother?' he said. He nodded his head back at the idling Land Raider. 'I've tried to check with the crew, but no one is responding.'

Zahariel turned and stared worriedly at the massive vehicle. He keyed his vox-unit. 'Raider two-one, respond.'

Nothing. No interference, no static. Just dead air.

The Librarian took a step towards the assault tank just as the driver's hatch rose on hydraulic hinges and the warrior's helmeted head appeared. 'We've been trying to call you for a full minute,' the driver said over the rumbling engines. 'Our vox-unit's not working properly.'

Frowning inside his helmet, Zahariel tried to contact Luther. The orbital communications array and the Rock's far more powerful vox-unit should have easily picked up the signal, but once again, all he heard was dead air. The unit was working fine, he knew, and there were no signs of jamming. It was as though their vox signals were simply being swallowed, though he couldn't imagine how such a thing was possible.

'The vox was working fine at the plant's perimeter,' Astelan said, clearly thinking along the same lines. 'We could send the Land Raider back to maintain contact with Aldurukh while we secure the site.'

Zahariel shook his head. The whole point of bringing the Land Raider in the first place was to provide a base of heavy firepower for the squad and to serve as a mobile strongpoint that the Astartes could fall back to in the event of an emergency. Until he knew more, he wanted the tank close by.

'Button up and keep a close eye on the auspex arrays,' he ordered the driver. 'And secure the assault ramp until we signal.'

The driver acknowledged with a curt nod and dropped back inside the tank. Within seconds the circular hatch and the heavy ramp clanged shut, sealing the vehicle tight. Zahariel then turned to Astelan. 'Take two brothers and see what you can find at the plant's control room,' he said. 'There ought to be a log of vox transmissions at the very least.' He indicated the landing field with a sweep of his staff. 'We'll inspect the transports and try to find out what happened to the relief force.'

Astelan acknowledged the order with a nod. 'Jonas and Gideon, you're with me,' he said, and headed off across the landing field at a ground-eating jog with two of the squad's warriors close behind him.

Zahariel waved the rest of the squad forward. 'Spread out,' he ordered. 'But remain in visual contact at all times. If you see anything strange, inform me at once.'