‘And yet duty demands I am here,’ said Aures. ‘As are you, Captain Aeschelus of the Ultramarines. Why did you not leave on your ship?’

‘Every second of delay to the departure put the escape at risk.’

‘Do you truly believe Lieutenant Praxa­medes managed to break warp?’

‘I have no idea, Sister,’ Aeschelus admitted. ‘They could be dead, or adrift in the becalmed wilderness of the warp, lost forever. We will not know before we die.’

They came away from the bulk of the crowd. Pieces of necron were scattered all about. A crashed assault craft burned with emerald fire just a few yards away, its remains buried yards-deep into the curtain wall. Some pieces were stirring – severed limbs twitching with renewed life, cracked skulls with flickering jade gazes.

‘Their unlife returns with the arrival of new lords,’ said the Sister, kicking at a creeping hand. ‘Even their destruction is stolen from us.’

Aeschelus said nothing. This was not the ending he would have crafted for himself. Was this punishment for his pride? It helped nobody to be drawn along such lines of thought. He had done as he thought right at every turn. The arrival of the second necron fleet did not diminish the achievement of the first’s destruction. Had the Ultramarines not come to Orestes, the system would have been overrun without incident. Perhaps, in some way, the xenos plot would be thwarted by his intervention and the warning he entrusted to the Ithraca’s Vengeance was speeding back to the Indomitus Crusade and the lord pri­march.

But he also resolved himself to the idea that this was it; an end without meaning beyond himself. That was enough.

He would die here, alone and unremembered.

As the first emerald mist clouded the sky and a squadron of crescent-ships appeared, Aeschelus drew his blade. He recalled another piece of Imperial wisdom, though he did not know who had first voiced it.

‘Duty is its own reward.’

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The First Wall, Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Pri­marchs, and several audio dramas. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah and the Rise of the Ynnari novels Ghost Warrior and Wild Rider. He also wrote the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and recently wrote the Age of Sigmar novel The Red Feast. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.

An Extract from ‘Mephiston: City of Light’

An extract from Mephiston: City of Light.