The Sons of Horus were good, battle-hardened and chosen for skill and ferocity. They were killers all. But they went backwards, formations and fire lines distorting as they tried to bring their guns and blades to bear on the Lord of Templars. Sigismund drove into them, every movement of his sword a strike. He barely registered the mass of them, his eyes fixed on Horus Aximand amongst the throng of his warriors. The jolt of blade parting armour, the steps that pushed him forwards past the cuts of his enemies – all fell away leaving only the path to this one enemy. He was going to die here. Sigismund knew that. The only choice left to be made was how.

‘Alone and unremembered…’ came the ghost-voice of Euphrati Keeler.

He shrugged aside a blow from a hooked axe, felt its force crack his right pauldron and cut down. A gasp of fresh blood into the air, another body falling, another step forwards. Aximand was moving towards him now, his own blade unsheathed and lit. A shell exploded on his damaged shoulder. The ceramite shattered. Pain exploded through him and his next cut twitched aside from its mark. He caught the failed cut and raised his sword in time to meet a maul swung from just out of sight. Then another blow swinging in, hacking at his midriff, the attacker one amongst a crowd. A chainsword spun sparks as it raked down his arm, shredding armour from wrist to forearm.

Blood. He could taste blood now.

Aximand was coming close, unhurried. The sword in his hand was as broad as a mortal’s shoulders, a slaughterman’s blade.

Sigismund turned another strike and sliced his own sword across a throat under a bronze faceplate. A concussive boom, and an explosion in his side. Pain. A world shattering into white slivers. He was not going forwards now, and the crowd of green armour was all around, striking, roaring.

Aximand was almost there, a red cloak spilling from his shoulders, eye-lenses red in the tusked grotesque of his faceplate, a devil-king come to deliver the last gift to a crippled foe.

‘Come to me!’ breathed Sigismund.