‘You know the truth of death?’ Jubal asked.

Changshi let out a breath, and smiled.

‘To embrace it like a brother, and laugh in its face.’

‘Yes,’ grinned Jubal, ‘and the truth of the knife?’

‘To be sharp.’

Jubal chuckled.

‘Yes… but no.’ He stepped away, turned, rolled his shoulders. ‘To put a knife through someone’s heart is the end. It is not the means.’ He could almost see the question forming on Changshi’s lips, could hear the inhalation of breath before the words.

Jubal spun and slashed with the knife. Changshi blocked the first blow. Fast, very fast, but Jubal had already reversed the knife, hooked the warrior’s arm with it, and yanked his guard aside. Changshi recovered, but Jubal flicked the knife between his hands, slammed a palm into the young warrior’s breastplate to rock him back, cut, switched hands again before the first cut had been blocked, then pivoted back out of range of Changshi. The young warrior made to follow, but Jubal raised a hand.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing at Changshi’s armour with the point of his knife. The young warrior looked. Long, straight cut marks scored the plate just above both of Changshi’s wrists and elbows. ‘And with the next clash, another cut…’ said Jubal, stepping close to Changshi and tapping the tip of the blade against the young warrior’s upper arm, against his fingers. ‘And with each cut, a little more strength bleeds away, a little more rage is planted in the heart, a little more blindness in the eye, until…’ He tapped the knife against Changshi’s breastplate above the heart.

‘Until the blow to the heart is not seen, and cannot be stopped,’ said Changshi. Jubal nodded, and flicked the knife over and held it out to the young warrior pommel first.

‘That is the truth of the knife, of life, of war… You kill with the last blow, but those cuts that come before allow that final blow to fall. Even Horus, master of the spear-thrust, knew that truth once. And now we will use it to kill whichever of his sons he has sent at the head of this armada.’

Changshi took the knife, looking at it, the reflection of the crescent blade caught in his grey eyes. It was a beautiful weapon, made on Chogoris and fitted with a power field generator by the Legion smiths. It had been Jubal’s father’s, given to him when he left his family and his humanity behind. Now the young warrior, who bore a Chogorian name but had never seen its skies, looked at it and realisation formed in his eyes.

‘Master, I cannot accept this…’

‘You can and you will. Just as you will go from my side and join the Blade of the Endless Horizon before the strike.’

‘But–’