Behind him, he heard howls of pain, but also the sounds of the tribe following him, wet, meaty footfalls and the crack of malformed bones grinding together.

The black lesions spread across his body as he ran, but the Lord of the Unfleshed shut out the pain, his entire being focused on reaching the cooling darkness of the cave. He vaulted a fallen slab of rock and slowed his pace as he slid into the shadow. The immediate burning sensation subsided, but the crawling pain in his limbs and body remained.

He turned as the faster members of the tribe completed their mad dash to the cave, howling and gnashing their teeth against the pain. The Lord of the Unfleshed turned to see others making their painful way over the open ground, the golden light searing and blackening the meat on their bones with every passing second.

One of the Unfleshed, a creature with stunted legs and an oversized upper body tripped on a loose boulder. It fell to the ground with a shriek of pain, viscous ooze seeping from burns that tore open as it landed. Its glistening, red body split apart where it was burned and it fought to right itself. Its body was out of balance and it could not get up. Powerful arms sought to haul it to its feet, but the pain and horror of what was happening to it were too much.

The creature collapsed with one final howl, and the Lord of the Unfleshed watched the blackness creeping across its body as the unforgiving sun burned away the last of its life.

'Dead now,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed and the others shuffled over to look at the blackening corpse. They could smell the meat on it and he could sense their confusion and hunger, but none dared venture out into the light.

The Lord of the Unfleshed turned away from the light of the cave mouth. Black, water-streaked, walls stretched off into the distance and the darkness was comforting after the pain of the light. The Lord of the Unfleshed lurched deeper into the cliff, his thoughts in turmoil at this new pain.

Once more they were monsters, lurking in the darkness of the cave, where all monsters should be.

Anger swelled within the Lord of the Unfleshed.

The troop compartment of a Chimera armoured fighting vehicle claimed to be able to convey twelve soldiers and their kit into battle. As was typical for spaces designed by the military, it assumed that the soldiers would not need to move so much as a muscle once they were packed in. With two Space Marines inside, that space became seriously confined and five soldiers had been displaced and forced to ride back on the roof of the vehicle.

'And I thought Rhinos were cramped,' said Pasanius. 'Remind me never to complain to Harkus again.'

Uriel did not reply, keeping his eyes fixed on the landscape coming into view through the scuffed vision blocks that punctuated the sides of the vehicle and allowed a little natural light to enter the compartment. Recessed glow strips ran the length of the roof, but their light was a sickly red.

Four soldiers of the Achaman Falcatas sat with them in the back of the Chimera, three helmeted warriors with their lasguns held across their laps and the sergeant who had removed Pasanius's weapon. He alone had removed his helmet and Uriel saw that the ocular implants were integral to it and not part of him.

The sergeant was middle-aged, but had a weathered, deeply lined face topped by a shock of sandy hair. The man's eyes were hard, but not unkind, and he looked at Uriel and Pasanius with an expression that was part awe and part nervous excitement.

'So you're Ultramarines?' he said.

'We are,' nodded Uriel.

'I'm Sergeant Jonah Tremain,' said the man, extending his hand to Uriel. The hand beneath the gauntlet felt hard and inflexible to Uriel and he suspected that the sergeant's hand was augmetic.

His suspicions were confirmed when Tremain held up his hand and said, 'Lost it in a skirmish against eldar pirates. Caught a ricochet and a splinter of something got under the skin. Got infected and the medics had to take it right there and then.'

'I have fought the eldar before,' said Uriel. 'They are swift and deadly killers.'

'That they are,' agreed Tremain. 'That they are. But then the colonel was no slouch either. Outmanoeuvred them and none of their fancy tricks could save them when his Screaming Eagles had them locked in place.'

'His? I don't understand.'

'Ah, of course. Colonel Kain's only been in charge of what's left of the regiment since Restoration Day,' explained Tremain. 'Before that, Colonel Barbaden led the Falcatas.'

'The same Barbaden who is now governor?'

'The very same,' agreed Tremain. 'We won this world fair and square. Did our ten years of service, and after we'd fought through the hell of Losgat and Steinhold we were given the right to settle here once we'd won it back for the Emperor.'

Uriel glanced over at the silent soldiers who sat by the heavy iron assault door at the rear of the vehicle. They were hard, tough men and the notion that the sergeant would be so garrulous seemed out of character.

'So how did you pair come to be all the way out here?' asked Tremain.

'In that city or on this world?'

'Both,' said Tremain, smiling, but Uriel could see that the expression was forced. 'I'm sure it's an exciting story. We don't get many visitors here, let alone Space Marines. So come on, tell me how you came to be out here.'

Uriel could sense Pasanius's unspoken warning of saying too much and wondered if Colonel Kain was listening in. Had she placed Tremain in here to get them to talk unguardedly in front of a friendly sergeant?

'That is a long and… involved tale, Sergeant Tremain,' said Uriel.

'You must have a ship. I mean, how else would you have got to the surface?'

'No, we don't have a ship,' said Uriel.

'So did you just teleport down?' pressed Tremain. 'From a vessel in orbit? Or maybe a drop-pod? You Space Marines use drop-pods, don't you?'

'We do,' agreed Uriel, 'but we did not arrive in one.'

'Then how did you get here?'

'As I said, that's a long story, and one I think I'd prefer to tell Governor Barbaden. I will tell you this, though, we are loyal servants of the Emperor, just as you are. We have been on a mission for our Chapter and all we want is to go home to rejoin our battle brothers.'

'It's just that of all the places you had to turn up, it was there,' said Tremain.

'In Khaturian? That's what that place was called wasn't it?'

'Yes, that's what it was called,' said Tremain, and Uriel sensed the man's reticence to talk further of the dead city.

'What happened to it?' asked Uriel. 'Why does it carry a death penalty to go there?'

'It just does,' snapped Tremain. 'Now we'll have no more talk about the Killing Ground.'

'The Killing Ground?'

'I said we'd have no more talk about it,' warned Tremain, clearly not intimidated by the fact that he sat opposite a warrior who could kill him in the time it took to think it. Whatever the truth of Khaturian, or the Killing Ground as Tremain had called it, it was not a subject he was comfortable talking about.

Seeing he was going to get nothing useful from Uriel, Tremain's volubility evaporated and the next few hours of the journey were undertaken in silence, the sergeant offering no more insights to the world of Salinas or its inhabitants. Uriel made no attempt to engage him in conversation, and, instead, turned his attention to the slivers of landscape that he could see through the vision blocks fitted above the vehicle's integral lasguns.

What little he could see suggested a lush landscape of tall mountains, wide forests and clear skies. To see such things after the nightmarish landscapes of a daemon world in the Eye of Terror was a very real pleasure and Uriel looked forward to seeing more of this world before departing for Macragge.