PART ONE

DEATH OATH

CHAPTER ONE

Uriel kept his breathing smooth as he stepped through the last moves of his attack routine, every action in perfect balance and focus, his body and mind acting in absolute synchronicity. Slowly and deliberately, he performed the strikes, first his elbow then his fist striking an imaginary foe, keeping his movements precise. He kept his eyes closed, his stance light and balanced, with all parts of his body starting and ending their movements at the same time.

Completing his steps, Uriel took an intake of breath as his fists crossed before him, then exhaled, maintaining his concentration as he returned his arms smoothly to his sides, centring his power within himself.

He could feel the potentiality of the lethal force in his limbs, sensing the strength grow within him and feeling a calmness he had not felt in many weeks enfold him as he completed the last of the prescribed movements.

'Ready?' asked Pasanius.

Uriel nodded and shook his limbs loose as he dropped into a fighting crouch, fists raised before him. His former sergeant was much larger than him, hugely muscled and wearing a sparring chiton of blue cotton that left his legs and arms bare. Even though it had been nearly two years since Pasanius had lost his arm fighting beneath the world against an ancient star-god, Uriel still found his eyes drawn to the gleaming, silver-smooth augmetic arm that replaced his lost limb.

Pasanius wore his blond hair tight into his skull and though his face was capable of great warmth and humour, it was set in a deathly serious expression as they prepared to fight. Pasanius launched a slashing right cross towards his head and Uriel swayed aside to avoid the blow. He deflected Pasanius's follow-up punch and spun inside his guard, hammering his elbow towards his opponent's throat. But the big man pivoted smoothly away and deflected Uriel's strike, pulling him off balance.

Uriel ducked beneath a scything punch and leapt backwards in time to dodge a thunderous kick to his groin. Despite his speed, the heel of Pasanius's foot still hammered into his side, and he grunted in pain as the breath was driven from him.

Uriel dodged away from the next blow, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet as his opponent came at him again, blocking and countering everything Pasanius threw at him. The big man was faster than he looked and Uriel knew he could not avoid being hit forever. And when Pasanius landed a clean blow, very few got back up.

He threw murderous punches towards Pasanius, pivoting his hips and shoulders to get his full weight behind his blows, while ducking in to deliver rapid-fire punches to his opponent's ribs. Pasanius stepped back, untroubled by such strikes, and Uriel swiftly followed him, throwing a hooking punch at his head. It was a risky gambit and easily blocked, but instead of Pasanius's gleaming forearm coming up to block the blow, Uriel's fist smashed home against his right temple.

Pasanius stumbled and dropped to one knee, bright blood weeping from where the skin had split above his right eye. Uriel stepped away from Pasanius, dropping his fists and easing his breathing as he stared in puzzlement at the gash on his former sergeant's forehead.

'Are you all right?' asked Uriel. 'What happened? You could easily have blocked that.'

'You just caught me by surprise,' said Pasanius, wiping away the already clotted blood with his fleshy hand. 'I expected you to go for the legs again.'

Uriel replayed the last few seconds of their bout again in his mind, seeing again his and Pasanius's positions and movements as they sparred.

'The legs? I wasn't in a strong position to attack your legs,' said Uriel. 'If I wanted to attack from that position, I had to go for the head.'

Pasanius shrugged. 'I just didn't get my block up in time.'

'You didn't even try, not even with the other arm.'

'You won. What are you complaining about?'

'It's just that I've never seen you miss such an easy block, that's all.'

Pasanius turned away, picking up a towel from where it hung on the brass rail that ran around the circumference of the geodesic viewing dome Captain Laskaris had given over to them for sparring and training. The blackness of space filled the view from the dome: stars spread across it like diamond dust on sable. Reflected light from the distant star of Macragge glittered on the dome's many facets and cast a soft pall of ghostly light throughout the viewing bay.

'I'm sorry, Uriel, this whole situation has me a little… off balance,' said Pasanius, draping his towel over his augmetic arm. 'To be exiled from the Chapter…'

'I know, Pasanius, I know,' said Uriel, joining his sergeant at the edge of the dome. He gripped the rail as he stared through the toughened arrhaglass at what lay beyond.

The gothic, cliff-like hull of the bulk-transporter, Calth's Pride, stretched away into the darkness of space and beyond sight as the vessel journeyed from Macragge towards the Masali jump point.

Uriel stepped into his quarters, throwing his towel onto the gunmetal grey footlocker at the foot of his bed and walking into the small ablutions cubicle set into the steel bulkhead. He pulled off his sweat-stained chiton and hung it from a chrome rail, turning the burnished lever above the chipped ceramic basin and waiting for it to fill. He scooped up a handful of ice-cold water, splashing it over his face and letting it drip from his craggy features.

Uriel stared at the foaming water in the basin, its spray reminding him of his last morning on Macragge, kneeling on Gallan's Rock and watching the glittering spume in the rocky pool at the base of the Falls of Hera. He closed his eyes, picturing again the distant seas, shimmering like a blanket of sapphires beyond the rocky white peaks of the western mountains, themselves sprinkled with scraps of green highland fir. The sun was setting, casting blood-red fingers of dying light and bathing the mountains in gold. It had felt as though the homeworld of his Chapter had been granting him one last vision of its majesty before it was denied to him forever.

He would hold onto that vision each night as he lay down on his simple cot bed, recalling its every nuance of colour, sight and smell, anxious that it should not fade from his memories. The stale, recycled taste to the air made the memory all the more poignant, and the harsh, spartanly furnished quarters he had been allocated aboard the Pride were a fond reminder of his captain's chambers back on Macragge.

Uriel lifted his head and stared at the polished steel mirror, watching as droplets trickled like tears down his reflection's cheek. He wiped the last of the water from his face, the grey eyes of his twin watching him, set beneath a heavy, brooding brow and close-cropped black hair. Two golden studs were set upon his brow and his jawline was angular and patrician. His physique dwarfed that of the ordinary human soldiers who filled this enormous starship, genetically enhanced by long-forgotten technologies and honed to the peak of physical perfection by a lifetime of training, discipline and war. His arms and chest were criss-crossed with scars, but greater than them all combined was a mass of pale, discoloured flesh across his stomach where a tyranid Norn-queen had almost slain him on Tarsis Ultra.

He shuddered at the memory, turning and sitting on the edge of his bed, remembering his last sight of Macragge as the shuttle had lifted off from the port facility at the end of the Valley of Laponis. He had watched his adopted homeworld shrink away, becoming a patchwork of glittering, quartz-rich mountains and vast oceans that were soon obscured as the shuttle rose into the lower atmosphere.