He saw Aximand then, standing back from the killing whirl of his warriors, a snarling bronze-fronted helm beneath a red crest, a great sword sheathed at his back. A half-moon of jet and silver sat on his shoulder beneath the red eye of Horus.

The weight of the sword in Sigismund’s hand seemed to vanish. The chains were gone. It would end here. All the years of war would end here.

Death… alone and unremembered.

He could see it all. The arc of a chainaxe sweeping down to cut his sword arm, the blow of a sword, the path of the rounds that would chew his legs from beneath him, on and on – the spinning truth of blades writing the words of death. He could read it all and see that there was no unravelling it.

Death…

Alone in the stars, not at his father’s side.

Keeler had been wrong.

Death and failure…

He would die here.

The realisation sank through him, and for the first time in perhaps all his life, he felt peace.

But I will not die alone…

His sword met the chainaxe blade edge to blade edge. Sparks and lightning shrieked through the air. He cut through the axe head, sword juddering in his grip as chain teeth sprayed into the air. He pushed the cut on and down into the chest of the warrior that had swung the axe. The traitor did not have time to fall. Sigismund rammed his weight forwards, pushing the blade down and out of the bottom of the warrior’s torso.

A power sword thrust into the space Sigismund had just left. Its power field split the armour over his ribs. He slammed an elbow into the new attacker’s face. Bolts exploded on the deck and in the air around him, but he was already moving forwards, pulling his sword around to take the legs from under the warrior with the power sword, even as his comrade collapsed to the deck in a wash of gut-fluid and blood.

This was not the swordplay of the duelling cages. It was what Khârn of the XII would have called ‘the truth of battle’. Stabbing, hacking, breaking. Killing without pause or cease as blood painted the world. It had a rhythm, though – a terrible and pure beat drummed out in the clash of blades and the roar of guns and the surge of muscle and blood. It was all around him, and within him, the last refuge of his soul, the home he had carved himself cut by cut.