The Iron-Father's hearts-rate had momentarily doubled, his blood pressure rising dramatically with it. The Apothecary's own pulse had quickened fleetingly then as well. He could not lose the Iron-Father now, not during such a routine operation. Gdolkin had served the Chapter for over two hundred years, the two metal studs implanted in the bone of his skull attesting to that fact, recording it for posterity.

What experience was the Iron-Father reliving that could cause provoke such a psychosomatic reaction in a superhuman warrior, a man who had spent the last twenty decades of his life confronting and overcoming some of the most unspeakable horrors - human, alien, and otherwise - that threatened the Imperium across a dozen warzones, in a thousand battles on a hundred worlds?

A moment later the panicked bleeping subsided. Caduceus looked again at the medicae-skulls' work. The chirurgeon servitors darted away from the Apothecary as he moved in to assess their work. The procedure was complete.

Caduceus would allow his patient some hours' rest and then a stimulant adrenal-shot would need to be administered. But for now Iron-Father Gdolkin could rest.

He was still breathing and he hurt all over in ways he had never thought possible, so he was alive at least.

But for the time being he did not need to open his eyes, not just yet.

Anatolus tried to remember what had happened, how he had managed to stop the death's-head daemon droid. Recollection seeped back into his mind, vague and unclear, memories the consistency of half-remembered dreams on the moment of waking.

He remembered the confrontation in flashes, as though he were reliving the battle once again. He remembered the lightning-fast reflexes of the serpentine guardian, the arching body twisting and turning, flashes of striking silver. He remembered the glass-sharp blades closing around his left wrist, scissoring through flesh and bone and gristle, the hot-cold feeling of the blood spurting from the surgically precise amputation. He remembered numb shock seizing his exhausted body, the anger flaring through the pain, the kick of his father's gun in his other hand, the bolter shell exploding in the creature's neck, the electronic screaming of the construct, the violent epileptic spasming, blue-white electricity arcing between its overloaded systems, and the lashing of its long segmented tail.

The odds had been overwhelming that he, a mere boy, could defeat one of the guardians of the Ancients, a soulless creature created by long-dead masters of technomancy, but then the odds of him ever getting so far had been overwhelming to begin with. So in its own illogically logical way, it seemed to make sense that he should have succeeded. Ferrus Manus had been looking down on him that day indeed. If it was his fate to die here and now, at least he had proved himself a man, a true child of Medusa.

But now he just wanted to sleep.

His heart beat loudly inside his head, a repetitive thud, like marching feet. The marching sound grew louder, became more distinct. He heard voices.