Since the coordinates had been broadcast to the rest of the Imperial forces all contact had been lost with the advance reconnaissance sections.

Sensing the captain’s fatalism, Vulkan became solemn. “And they are dead.”

“Not all of them, primarch.” Heka’tan’s fiery gaze could not hide his apprehension. “There was a sole survivor, a non-combatant.”

“A remembrancer?”

“So I understand, my lord.”

“And is he unharmed?” It was almost as if Vulkan already knew the answer by the expression on Heka’tan’s face.

“Miraculously so.”

Vulkan broke eye contact to look into the distance where the pursuing Imperial forces were harrying the enemy deeper into the jungle. He purposely averted his gaze from the growing piles of dead natives. “Where is this survivor now?”

Heka’tan paused. “There is more.”

Looking back down, Vulkan’s blazing eyes were questioning.

“He says there is another node, much bigger and more powerful than the one you destroyed.”

A muscle spasm in Vulkan’s cheek gave the only hint of his displeasure.

“Take me to him at once.”

THE REMEMBRANCER CUT an unassuming figure. Dressed in plain robes of an obscure Terran style, the survivor sat on the ground with his eyes open and alert. It was only the fact he was surrounded by the bodies of the Army scout division sent to locate the node that made his presence in the jungle incongruous.

“You are the primarch of the Salamanders Legion?” he asked.

“I am.” Vulkan approached slowly, bidding his Pyre Guard to wait outside the circle of the dead Army scouts.

It was an order that displeased Numeon and the others, but they obeyed nonetheless.

Vulkan looked around at the massacre. From the position of the bodies and how they’d fallen, it appeared the scouts had made a last stand. His shifted his gaze to peer deeper into the jungle.

“You were followed?”

“From the site of the fourth obelisk, yes.”

“And you got as far as this point before the eldar caught you.”

“Precisely.”

When Vulkan looked back at the man, who seemed wise but somehow youthful at the same time, his eyes were penetrating.

“How is it they all died and you alone lived?”

“I hid.”

Vulkan stared at him, trying to ascertain if what the remembrancer was saying was the truth.

The man seemed content to sit amongst the dead and hadn’t yet moved.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I am still deciding,” Vulkan answered honestly. He stepped towards him.

Numeon’s armour shifted before he warned, “Primarch…”

Vulkan held up his hand to cool his equerry’s anxiety. The remembrancer’s gaze flicked over to the Pyre Guard and back again.

“I don’t think your bodyguards like me.”

Vulkan was standing before him and looked down on the man. “They just don’t trust you.”

“That’s a pity.”

“What is your name, remembrancer?”

“Verace.”

“Then come with me, Verace, and tell me all you know about this obelisk.”

Vulkan turned and as he was leaving the site of the massacre he passed by Numeon.

The primarch kept his voice low. “Watch him closely.”

Verace got to his feet and smoothed down his robes.

Numeon glared at him, and nodded.

There was something… strangeabout this Verace, but Vulkan wasn’t threatened by him. After all, what threat could a flesh and blood human pose to a primarch? But as he was walking back to the Stormbird, Vulkan was reminded of a time when he’d met another stranger, one he’d known as the Outlander…

VULKAN KNEW HIS grip was failing. Even with his prodigious strength, he knew he couldn’t hold on to the edge of the cliff with one hand and still cling to the drake hide with the other indefinitely.

It had been a magnificent beast of vermillion scale, thick and gnarled like overlapping shields. The firedrake’s ribbed belly was taut with muscle, its jaws wide and powerful. The grumbling mountain had summoned it and the drake had answered, emerging from its lowest deeps.

The spear Vulkan had forged to kill it was lost to the lava chasm below him. Hours of crafting had been undone in an instant when the mountain’s blood reclaimed the weapon; just as his life would be undone should he slip.

The sun baked his naked back but the heat of it was ebbing. Steam and smoke clouded Vulkan’s eyes, filled his nose with sulphur and ash. Hours had passed since the volcano had erupted and tossed him over the edge. Only his superlative reflexes and strength had saved him, or forestalled his death at least.

Even Vulkan, champion of Hesiod and slayer of dusk-wraiths, could be destroyed by lava.

After the defeat of the slavers, word had spread quickly around the major townships of Nocturne. Within weeks, the tribal kings of the other six settlements and their emissaries had greeted the leaders of Hesiod and asked to meet the black-smiter’s son who was rapidly becoming a legend.

As he hung precariously on the rocky precipice, Vulkan considered this would be a poor end for such a figure. He slipped and for a moment thought it was over. A sense of falling overtook him, but he reached out to salvage a desperate handhold on a lower crag. Dust and grit fell in a hard rain, beating against his body, but he held on.

Though his heart was hammering like a hammer upon an anvil in his chest, he tried not to breathe too deeply. This close to the lava trench, the air was a poisonous miasma thick with sulphurous alkalis. He could already feel the blistering around his nose and the skin of his throat. An ordinary man would have died long before now. It only enhanced the belief that he was not truly of these people, that Nocturne was not his birth home. Vulkan’s father, N’bel, had said as much to him before the tournament. He had promised to seal the vault below the forge and did so, but he couldn’t suppress the truth. Vulkan had asked him outright before the events began but the answer hadn’t come. N’bel, stifled by looming grief, couldn’t tell him. Perhaps now, he never would and Vulkan would be forever ignorant of his origins.

Fingers stiff as stone, his arm burning like all the fires of the forge were ignited in it, Vulkan thought about letting go of the hide. With both hands he could probably clamber up the rock face to safety. The bubbling, cracking refrain of the lava below seemed to urge him, or maybe it was trying to entice him to fall.

The last eight days had taken their toll, though. Vulkan didn’t know what strength was left in his limbs. In truth, he could barely feel them anymore and had to constantly fight a strange sense of weightlessness that threatened to loosen his grip unconsciously.

“You will not beat me.”

He spoke the words aloud to galvanise himself.

The lava crackled below in what was beginning to sound like rumbling laughter.

It baffled reason how the pale-faced stranger had managed to match him through every trial. No one knew where he had come from, though some suspected he hailed from the nomadic tribes of Ignea. Vulkan doubted it. When he’d come into the town, this Outlander, as he’d come to be known, was wearing garb unfamiliar to any Nocturnean. From Heliosa to Themis, there were cultural derivations amongst the people of the planet but they shared common traits. The Outlander shared none.

His boasts were utterly audacious. Vulkan remembered the derision he’d caused when claiming he could best anyone in the town, even the champion of Hesiod, in the tournament. Out of respect, perhaps sheer disbelief, Vulkan had kept a straight face.

“Let him enter if he wishes,” he’d said privately to N’bel when questioned. “The fool will either give up or lose his life to the mountain. Let the anvil decide.”

Considering his current situation, those comments now seemed remarkably short-sighted.