Sanguinius sent his need towards hidden Terra. He could not call it hope, the thing that would travel with his fleet through the warp, this convulsion in his soul that the galaxy felt too small to contain. He could not expect it would guide them to his father. But he reached out as if it would. In the exodus from Signus, anger and military priorities had been the driving needs. They were still present, but the desperate reach for redemption was even more powerful. If Sanguinius stretched out his arm, surely he should be able to grasp the path to Terra.

The need was that strong.

But there was no certainty, and he would not fall to the illusion.

He turned to Mkani Kano. The Librarian stood at Raldoron’s right hand. ‘Your men are at their posts?’ he asked. Sanguinius had ordered a Librarian be stationed in the Navigation chambers of every vessel in the fleet. They were to do what they could to protect the fragile humans from the forces that would come for them in the immaterium. There was no more certainty they would succeed than there was of reaching Terra.

‘They stand ready,’ said Kano.

Sanguinius turned his back on the shutters. He faced his sons and the human crew. Below the dais was a squad of Raldoron’s Sanguinary Guard. With them was the Angel’s herald. This was his sacrificial son, the legionary whose identity Sanguinius had necessarily hidden from himself, who had become the Angel’s voice in the Imperium Secundus. It was he who had been the figure most of the supplicants to the throne had seen, and not Sanguinius. The Angel now saw this son’s sacrifice as all the greater for having been part of an immoral folly. His presence on the bridge, close to Sanguinius, was in recognition of his service, and as a visible reminder of the need for atonement. The sacrifices his sons had made weighed heavily on his mind. On Signus Prime, Meros had taken his place to become the Red Angel, giving up all nobility and humanity to become the worst of the Blood Angels’ savagery. The herald lived, and remained human, but the price he paid was a high one. His helm kept his face hidden, and would until the legionary’s death. Sanguinius was no longer Emperor. There was no need for the role of herald any longer. Yet the legionary’s identity remained subsumed by his duty.

What you have created, you must not destroy.

The instinct was imperative. The herald had a significance that Sanguinius could not see yet. The role was needed. There was something in it he had created that was pure, that was the best of what the Blood Angels could be.

‘Let us strike forth to Terra,’ Sanguinius pronounced, and the power of his voice made the walls of the bridge thrum. ‘Shipmaster,’ he said to Carminus, ‘signal the fleet. We jump.’

‘So ordered, lord,’ Carminus replied.