'Wh-'

Sahaal flexed the claws.

'No! No! N-no! F-forty-first!' the words rushed out like an avalanche, jumbled and formless. 'Forty-first millennium, year nine-eight-six! Forty-first! Sweet Emperor's blood, forty-jzrsr!'

The bottom fell from Sahaal's mind.

He killed the man quickly, too distracted to even relish the moment.

He returned to the factory he'd adopted as his lair.

He scuttled in the dark and brooded. He vented his anger on the shattered masonry of the ancient building, and when the violence overcame him he peeled off one mighty shoulder-guard and began slowly, precisely, cutting grooves into the exposed flesh of his arm.

It didn't help.

One hundred centuries had passed.

It was the bodies that brought answers, finally.

He had taken them, all twelve, from where they died: dismembered and brutalised, hung high from stanchions in public places and busy roads, emptying their thickening fluids upon the debris below. This was not savagery on his part, nor some crude announcement of territory - but as vital a part of his master's doctrine as was the attack itself.

'Kill a thousand men,' the lesson had run, his master's solemn voice echoing through the warship Vastitas Vic-tris, 'and let no man bear witness. What have you achieved? Who will ever know? Who will ever fear you? Who will ever respect or obey you?

'But kill a single man, and let the world see. Hang him high. Cut him deep. Bleed him dry. And then... Disappear.

'Now. Who will ever know? Everyone. Who will ever fear you? Why, everyone! Who will ever respect you, who will ever obey you ? Everyone!

'These humans, their imaginations are strong. Kill a thousand men and they will hate you. Kill a million men and they will queue to face you. But kill a single man and they will see monsters and devils in every shadow. Kill a dozen men and they will scream and wail in the night, and they shall feel not hatred, but fear.

"This is the way of obedience, my sons. They are panicky, gossiping beasts, these humans. It serves us to allow them to be so.'

On the third day, when he had crept through the ductcrawls beneath the local settlements and listened to the villagers' fearful rumours, when two separate posses had ridden out from Spitcreek with furtive eyes and crude weapons to catch the killer, when his fits and rages had exhausted him, there came cautious footfalls into his lair. He watched the invader from above, irritated that his sanctuary should be defiled by such clumsy, thoughtless steps.