‘They are words to cool the fires of battle in a warrior’s heart when the killing is done,’ he said warily.

‘You’re a Space Marine, aren’t you?’

He nodded, unsure what this boy wanted from him.

‘I’m Arik,’ said the boy, holding out his hand.

Tagore looked at the hand suspiciously, his eyes darting over the boy’s thin frame, unconsciously working out where he could break his bones to most efficiently kill him. His neck was willow thin, it would take no effort at all to break it. His bones were visible at his shoulders and ridges of ribs poked through his thin shirt.

It would take no effort at all to destroy him.

‘Tagore, storm-sergeant of the 15th Company,’ he said at last. ‘I am World Eater.’

Arik nodded and said, ‘It’s good you’re here. If Babu Dhakal’s men come back then you’ll kill them, won’t you?’

Pleased to have a subject to which he could relate, Tagore nodded. ‘If anyonecomes here looking for me, I’ll kill him.’

‘Are you good at killing people?’

‘Very good,’ said Tagore. ‘There’s nobody better than me.’

‘Good,’ declared Arik. ‘I hate him.’

‘Babu Dhakal?’

Arik nodded solemnly.

‘Why?’

‘He had my dad killed,’ said the boy, pointing to the kneeling statue at the end of the building. ‘Ghota shot him right there.’

Tagore followed the boy’s pointing finger, noting the silver ring on his thumb, its quality and worth clearly beyond his means. The statue was of a dark stone, veined with thin lines of grey and deeper black, and though it had no face, Tagore felt sure he could make out where its features were meant to be, as if the sculptor had begun his work, but left it unfinished.

‘Ghota killed one of my… friends too,’ said Tagore, stumbling over the unfamiliar word. ‘I owe him a death, and I always repay a blood debt.’

Arik nodded, the matter dealt with, and returned to reading his pamphlet.

Tagore was in unfamiliar territory, his skills of conversation limited to battle-cant and commands. He was not adept in dealing with mortals, finding their concerns and reasoning impossible to fathom. Was he supposed to continue speaking to this boy, or were their dealings at an end?

‘What are you reading?’ he asked after a moment’s thought.

‘Something my dad used to read,’ said Arik, without looking up. ‘I don’t understand a lot of it, but he really liked it. He used to read it over and over again.’

‘Can I see it?’ asked Tagore.

The boy nodded and handed over the sheet of paper. It was thin and had been folded too many times, the ink starting to smudge and bleed into the creases. Tagore was used to reading tactical maps or orders of battle, and this language was a mix of dialects and words with which he was unfamiliar, yet the neural pathways of his brain adapted with a rapidity that would have astounded any Terran linguist.

‘Men united in the purpose of the Emperor are blessed in his sight and shall live forever in his memory,’ read Tagore, his brow furrowed at the strange sentiment. ‘I tread the path of righteousness. Though it be paved with broken glass, I will walk it barefoot; though it cross rivers of fire, I will pass over them; though it wanders wide, the light of the Emperor guides my step. There is only the Emperor, and he is our shield and protector.’

Tagore looked up from his reading, feeling the pulse of his implant burrowing deep into his skull as his anger grew at these words of faith and superstition. Arik reached over and pointed to a section further down the pamphlet.

‘The strength of the Emperor is humanity, and the strength of humanity is the Emperor,’ said Tagore, his fury growing the more he read. ‘If one turns from the other we shall all become the Lost and the Damned. And when His servants forget their duty they are no longer human and become something less than beasts. They have no place in the bosom of humanity or in the heart of the Emperor. Let them die and be outcast.’

Tagore’s heart was racing and his lungs drew air in short, aggressive breaths. He crumpled the pamphlet in his fist and let it drop to the ground.

‘Get away from me, boy,’ he said through bared teeth.

Arik looked up, his eyes widening in fear as he saw the change in Tagore.

‘What did I do?’ he said in a trembling voice.

‘I said get away from me!’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think I might kill you,’ growled Tagore.

NAGASENA WATCHES THE building from a projection of rock at the mouth of the canyon, knowing his prey is close. In the streets behind him, six armoured vehicles and nearly a hundred soldiers wait in anticipation of his orders. Though there is only one order to give, Nagasena hesitates to issue it. Athena Diyos and Adept Hiriko wait with them, though there is likely no part in this hunt left for them to play.

Even Nagasena concedes that in the latter stages of a hunt there is a certain thrill, but he feels none of that now. Too much uncertainty has entered his life since he left his mountain home for him to feel anything but apprehension at the thought of facing Kai Zulane and the renegades.

Through the scope of his rifle he can see there are no escape routes from the structure, its statue-covered façade presenting the only obvious way in or out. Hundreds of people are gathered before the building, and they have brought their dead with them. Nagasena understands the need to cling onto the lost, to honour their memory and ensure they are not forgotten, but the idea of praying to them or expecting that they will pass onto another realm of existence is alien to him.

The advanced optics on Nagasena’s scope, obtained at ruinous cost from the Mechanicum of Mars, penetrates the marble frontage, displaying a coloured thermal scan of the building’s interior. Through a fine copper-jacketed wire, that image is displayed on Kartono’s slate.

Perhaps sixty people are inside the temple, and the Legiones Astartes are immediately apparent in their heat signatures as well as their size. It is impossible to pick out which of these people might be Kai Zulane. As Antioch had said, there are five of them, and they are gathered around a much smaller individual. Their heat signatures blur. Something behind their overlarge bodies is scattering the readings from his optics, wreathing the entire image in a grainy static that makes Nagasena’s eyes itch.

‘So much for those expensive bio-filters,’ grunts Kartono, slapping a palm against the side of the slate. The image quality does not improve, but they have enough information to mount an assault on the building with a high degree of success.

‘We should storm the building,’ says Golovko. ‘We have over a hundred men now. There’s nowhere left for them to run. We can end this within the hour.’

‘He’s right,’ says Saturnalia with obvious reluctance to align himself with the Black Sentinel. ‘We have our quarry boxed in.’

‘And that makes them doubly dangerous,’ says Nagasena. ‘There is nothing more dangerous than a warrior who is cornered and has nothing left to lose.’

‘Just like the Creatrix of Kallaikoi,’ says Kartono.

‘Exactly so,’ snaps Nagasena, unwilling to relive that particular memory right now. He still bears scars that will never heal from that hunt.

Saturnalia takes the slate from Kartono’s hands and holds it up in front of Nagasena, as if he has not yet seen it. He taps the hazed images of the five men they have come to kill.

‘There is no reason not to go in,’ says the Custodian. ‘We have our orders, and they are clear. Everyone here is to die.’

Nagasena has read and reread their orders, searching for a way to interpret them in a manner that will not scar his memories for life and result in the deaths of so many innocents, but Saturnalia is right; their orders are without ambiguity.

‘These are Imperial citizens,’ he says, though he knows he is wasting his breath trying to convince Saturnalia to alter his course. ‘We serve them with our deeds, and to betray them like this is wrong.’