'Careful Lucius, you veer close to arrogance,’ Tarvitz pointed out. 'Are you questioning the War-master's decision?'
'Questioning, no,’ said Lucius defensively, 'but come on, even you have to admit it's a sledgehamВmer to crack a nut,’
'Possibly,’ conceded Tarvitz, 'but for the Isstvan system to rebel, it must have been compliant at one stage,’
'What's your point?'
'My point, Lucius, is that the Crusade was supВposed to be pushing ever outwards, conquering the galaxy in the name of the Emperor. Instead it is turning back on itself to patch up the cracks. I can only assume that the Warmaster wants to make some kind of grand gesture so show his enemies what rebellion means,’
'Ungrateful bastards,’ spat Lucius. 'Once we're done with Isstvan they'll beg us to take them back!'
'With four Legions sent against them,’ replied Tarvitz, 'I don't think there'll be many Isstvanians left for us to take back,’
'Come, Saul,’ said Lucius walking ahead of him, 'did you lose your taste for battle against the green-skins?'
A taste for battle? Tarvitz had never considered such an idea. He had always fought because he wanted to become more than he was, to strive for perfection in all things. For longer than he could remember he had devoted himself to the task of emulating the warriors of the Legion who were more gifted and more worthy than he. He knew his station within the Legion, but knowing one's staВtion was the first step to bettering it.
Watching Lucius's arrogant swagger, Tarvitz was reminded of how much his fellow captain loved battle. Lucius loved it without shame or apology, seeing it as the best way to express himself, weaving between his enemies and cutting a path of bloody ruin through them with his flashing sword. 'It just concerns me,’ said Tarvitz. 'What does?' asked Lucius, turning back to face him. Tarvitz could see the hastily masked exasperaВtion on the swordsman's face. He had seen that expression more and more on Lucius's scarred feaВtures recently, and it saddened him to know that the swordsman's ego and rampant ambition to rise within the ranks of the Emperor's Children would be the undoing of their friendship.
'That the Crusade has to repair itself at all. ComВpliance used to be the end of it. Not now,’
'Don't worry,’ smiled Lucius. 'Once a few of these rebel worlds get a decent killing this will all be over and the Crusade will go on,’
Rebel worlds… Whoever thought to hear such a phrase?
Tarvitz said nothing as he considered the sheer numbers of Astartes that would be converging on the Isstvan system. Hundreds of Astartes had fought on Deep Orbital DS191, but more than ten thouВsand Emperor's Children made up the Legion, most of whom would be journeying to Isstvan III. That in itself was enough for several war zones. The thought of four Legions arrayed in battle sent shivВers up Tarvitz's spine.
What would be left of Isstvan when four Legions had marched through the system? Could any depths of rebellion really justify that?
'I just want victory,’ said Tarvitz, the words soundВing hollow, even to him.
Lucius laughed, but Tarvitz couldn't tell if it was in agreement or mockery.
Being confined to his quarters was the most exquisite torture for Kyril Sindermann. Without the library of books he was used to consulting in Archive Chamber Three he felt quite adrift. His own library, though extensive by any normal standards, was a paltry thing next to the arcana that had been destroyed in the fire.
How many priceless, irreplaceable tomes had been lost in the wake of the warp beast he and Euphrati had conjured from the pages of the Book ofLorgar?
It did not bear thinking about and he wondered how much the future would condemn them for the knowledge that had been lost there. He had already filled thousands of pages with those fragments he could remember from the books he had consulted. Most of it was fragmentary and disjointed. He knew that the task of recalling everything he had read was doomed to failure, but he could no more conceive of giving up than he could stop his heart from beatВing.
His gift and the gift of the Crusade to the ages yet to come was the accumulated wisdom of the
galaxy's greatest thinkers and warriors. With the broad shoulders of such knowledge to stand upon, who knew what dizzying heights of enlightenment the Imperium might reach?
His pen scratched across the page, recalling the philosophies of the Hellenic writers and their early debates on the nature of divinity. No doubt many would think it pointless to transcribe the writings of those long dead, but Sindermann knew that to ignore the past was to doom the future to repeat it.
The text he wrote spoke of the ineffable inscrutability of false gods, and he knew that such mysteries were closer to the surface than he cared to admit. The things he had seen and read since Sixty-Three Nineteen had stretched his scepticism to the point where he could no longer deny the truth of what was plainly before him and which Euphrati Keeler had been trying to tell them all.
Gods existed and, in the case of the Emperor, moved amongst them…
He paused for a moment as the full weight of that thought wrapped itself around him like a comfortВing blanket. The warmth and ease such simple acceptance gave him was like a panacea for all the ills that had troubled him this last year, and he smiled as his pen idly scratched across the page before him without his conscious thought.
Sindermann started as he realised that the pen was moving across the page of its own volition. He looked down to see what was being written.
She needs you.
Cold fear gripped him, but even as it rose, it was soothed and a comforting state of love and trust filled him. Images filled his head unbidden: the Warmaster strong and powerful in his newly forged suit of black plate armour, the amber eye glowing like a coal from the furnace. Claws slid from the Warmaster's gauntlets and an evil red glow built from his gorget, illuminating his face with a ghastly daemonic light.
'No…' breathed Sindermann, feeling a great and unspeakable horror fill him at this terrible vision, but no sooner had this image filled his head than it was replaced by one of Euphrati Keeler lying supine on her medicae bed. Terrified thoughts were banВished at the sight of her and Sindermann felt his love for this beautiful woman fill him as a pure and wondrous light.
Even as he smiled in rapture, the vision darkened and yellowed talons slid into view, tearing at the image of Euphrati.
Sindermann screamed in sudden premonition.
Once again he looked at the words on the page, marvelling at their desperate simplicity.
She needs you.
Someone was sending him a message.
The saint was in danger.
Coordinating a Legion's assets – its Astartes, its spacecraft, staff and accompanying Imperial Army units – was a truly Herculean task. ManagВing to coordinate the arrival of four Legions in
the same place at the same time was an impossiВble task: impossible for anyone but the Warmaster.
The Vengeful Spirit, its long flat prow like the tip of a spear, slid from the warp in a kaleidoscopic disВplay of pyrotechnics, lightning raking along its sides as the powerful warp-integrity fields took the full force of re-entry. In the interstellar distance, the closest star of the Isstvan system glinted, cold and hard against the blackness. The Eye of Horus glared from the top of the ship's prow, the entire vessel having been refitted following the victory against the Technocracy, the bone-white of the Luna Wolves replaced by the metallic grey-green of the Sons of Horus.
Within moments, another ship broke through, tearing its way into real space with the brutal funcВtionality of its Legion. Where the Vengeful Spirit had a deadly grace to it, the newcomer was brutish and ugly, its hull a drab gunmetal-grey, its only decoraВtion, a single brazen skull on its prow. The vessel was the Endurance, capital ship of the Death Guard fleet accompanying the Warmaster, and a flotilla of smaller cruisers and escorts flew in its wake. AH were the same unembellished gunmetal, for nothВing in Mortarion's Legion bore any more adornment than was necessary.