'I told you Julius and Marius wouldn't let us down,' he said.

Caphen shook his head as the captains who led the relief force marched over towards them. 'That's not who came.'

Solomon looked up in confusion as the nearest warrior removed his helm.

'I heard you could use some help, and thought we'd lend a hand,' said Saul Tarvitz. Behind Tarvitz, Solomon saw the unmistakable swagger of the swordsman, Lucius.

'What about the Third and the First?' he hissed, the fact that his battle-brothers had forsaken the Second more painful than any wound.

Tarvitz shrugged apologetically. 'I don't know. We were beginning our push to the main control centre and heard your request for support.'

'It's a good thing we did,' said Lucius, his scarred face twisted in amusement. 'Looks like you needed the help.'

Solomon felt like punching the arrogant bastard, but held his tongue, for the swordsman was right. Without their aid, he and his warriors would have been slaughtered.

'I'm grateful, Captain Tarvitz,' he said, ignoring Lucius.

Tarvitz bowed and said, 'The honour is mine, Captain Demeter, but I must regretfully take my leave of you. We must move on our primary objective.'

'Yes,' said Solomon, waving him away. 'Go. Do the Legion proud.'

Tarvitz threw him a quick martial salute and turned away, sliding his helmet back on and issuing orders to his warriors. Lucius gave him a mock bow and saluted him with the energised edge of his blade before joining his fellow captain.

Julius and Marius had not come.

'Where were you?' he whispered, but no one answered him.

'My lord!' cried Vespasian, marching into Fulgrim's staterooms without pause or ceremony. The lord commander was arrayed in his battle armour, the smooth plates oiled and polished to a reflective finish. His face was flushed and his stride urgent as he made his way through the mess of broken marble and half-finished canvases, towards where Fulgrim sat in contemplation before a pair of statues carved to represent the captains of two of his battle companies.

Fulgrim looked up as he approached, and Vespasian was struck again by the change that had come over his primarch since they had taken their leave of the 63rd Expedition. The four week journey to the Callinedes system had been one of the strangest times Vespasian could remember, his primarch sullen and withdrawn and the soul of the Legion in turmoil. As more and more of Apothecary Fabius's chemicals were introduced to the Legion's blood, only a blind man could fail to see the decline in the Legion's moral fibre. With Fulgrim's and Eidolon's sanction, few of the Legion's captains were willing to resist the slide into decadent arrogance.

Only a very few of Vespasian's companies still held to the ideals that had founded the Legion, and he was at a loss as to know how to stop the rot. With the orders coming directly from Fulgrim and Eidolon, the rigid command structure of the Emperor's Children allowed little, if any, room for leeway in the interpretation of their orders.

Vespasian had requested an audience with Fulgrim all through the journey to the Callinedes system, and though his exalted rank would normally entitle him to such a meeting without question, his requests had been denied. As he had watched the battle hololiths from the Heliopolis, and seen Solomon Demeter's company abandoned, he had decided to take matters into his own hands.

'Vespasian?' said Fulgrim, his pale features energised as he returned his gaze to the statues before him. 'How goes the battle?'

Vespasian controlled his temper and forced himself to be calm. 'The battle will be won soon, my lord, but—'

'Good,' interrupted Fulgrim. Vespasian now saw that his lord and master had three swords laid out before him. Fireblade lay pointed at a statue of Marius Vairosean, the damnable silver sword of the Laer pointed at one of Julius Kaesoron. A weapon with a glittering grey blade and golden hilt lay in a shattered pile of marble sitting between the two statues, and Vespasian could see from the remains of a carved face that the statue had once been of Solomon Demeter.

'My lord,' pressed Vespasian, 'why were Captains Vairosean and Kaesoron held back from supporting Captain Demeter? But for the intervention of Tarvitz and Lucius, Solomon's men would be dead.'

'Tarvitz and Lucius saved Captain Demeter?' asked Fulgrim, and Vespasian was shocked to see a hint of annoyance surface on Fulgrim's face. 'How… courageous of them.'

'They shouldn't have needed to,' said Vespasian. 'Julius and Marius were supposed to support the Second, but they were held back. Why?'

'Are you questioning me, Vespasian?' asked Fulgrim. 'I am enacting the Warmaster's will. Do you dare to suggest that you know better than he how we should prosecute this foe?'

Vespasian was stunned at Fulgrim's pronouncement and said, 'With all due respect, my lord, the Warmaster is not here. How can he know how best to prosecute the greenskins?'

Fulgrim smiled, and lifting the grey sheened sword from the remains of Solomon's statue he said, 'Because he knows that this battle is not about the greenskins.'

'Then what is it about, my lord?' demanded Vespasian. 'I should dearly wish to know.'

'It is about righting a monstrous wrong that has been done to us, and purging our ranks of those without the strength to do what must be done. The Warmaster moves on the Isstvan system and on its bloody fields a reckoning will take place.'

'The Isstvan system?' asked Vespasian. 'I don't understand. Why is the Warmaster moving on the Isstvan system?'

'Because it is there that we will cross the Rubicon, my dear Vespasian,' said Fulgrim, his voice choked with emotion. 'There, we will take the first steps on the new path the Warmaster forges: a path that will lead to the establishment of a new and glorious order of perfection and wonder.'

Vespasian fought to keep up with Fulgrim's rapid delivery and confused ramblings. His eyes flickered to the sword in the primarch's hand, feeling a dreadful threat from the blade, as though the weapon itself were a sentient thing and desired his death. He shook off such superstitious nonsense and said, 'Permission to speak freely, my lord?'

'Always, Vespasian,' said Fulgrim. 'You must always speak freely, for where is the pleasure to be had in our facility for locution if we restrain ourselves from freedom? Tell me, have you heard of a philosopher of Old Earth called Cornelius Blayke?'

'No, my lord, but—'

'Oh, you must read him, Vespasian,' said Fulgrim, guiding him towards a great canvas at the end of the stateroom. 'Julius introduced me to his works, and I can barely conceive of how I endured this long without them. Evander Tobias thinks highly of him, though an old man such as he is beyond making use of such raptures as may be found locked within the pages of Blayke's work.'

'My lord, please!'

Fulgrim held up a hand to silence him as they arrived at the canvas, and the primarch turned him around to face it. 'Hush, Vespasian, there is something I wish you to see.'

Vespasian's questions fled from his mind at the horror of the picture before him, the image of his primarch distorted and leering, the flesh pulled tight over protruding bones and the mouth twisted with the anticipation of imminent violence and violation. The figure's armour was a loathsome parody of the proud, noble form of Mark IV plate, its every surface covered with bizarre symbols that appeared to writhe on the canvas, as though the thick layers of stinking paint had been applied over a host of living worms.

It was in the eyes, however, that Vespasian saw the greatest evil. They burned with the light of secret knowledge, and of things done in the name of experience that it would sear his soul to know but a fraction of. No vileness was beyond this apparition, no depths too low to embrace, and no practice too vile to be indulged in.