Pillars of light unfolded in mid-air across the deck. Blast waves tore out. The Sons of Horus caught in the glare blurred to shadows before they came apart. Figures in yellow armour stood in their place. Sigismund saw the shapes of boarding shields locked in defensive circles. Bolters fired, and the sound of explosions chased the fading thunder of teleportation. Traitor legionaries fell, punched off their feet by impacts. The circles of Imperial Fists broke apart and flowed back together, shields locking into a single wall. Sigismund saw the twin axe emblem burned into the pitted yellow, and Rann’s black shield at the centre of the line as it charged. They fired as they came, shooting from the loopholes in their high shields. It was brutal perfection, like a perfect axe blow to shatter a skull. And as Sigismund rose, his own blade cutting into the enemies surrounding him, he heard the shield-wall crash into the Sons of Horus.

The mass of sea-green warriors reeled back, but they were neither humans nor newborn Space Marines. They were the XVI Legion as they had once been, warriors who had earned in blood and death the high place from which they had fallen. They reformed to meet the Imperial Fists shield-wall. Gunfire punched out. Streams of plasma and melta-beams struck a single shield and vaporised both shield and warrior. The scattered Sons of Horus came together in a narrow wedge to force open the break in the shield-wall before the gap closed. A command roared out above the heads of the Imperial Fists, echoing across the vox.

‘Open!’ shouted Rann.

The wall pulled apart, wide spaces appearing between the shields. Warriors in yellow and black charged through the openings. Enamelled laurels crowned their helms, and the swords in their hands lit with blue fire. At their head ran Boreas, his white tabard of office flecked with blood and burned by flame. The Templars struck the Sons of Horus as the shield-wall closed behind them.

It was as though a thunderbolt had reached ahead of the closing storm front. The bridge was suddenly a press of bodies and weapons grinding together like bloody teeth. Power weapons split flesh and armour, and now the deck was a swirl of hacking, slicing and battering. Sigismund saw Boreas put his sword through a warrior in sea-green, and fire half a clip of bolt-rounds into the face of another before kicking the corpse off his blade in time to meet the downward cut of a chainglaive. Another slice of time, and the jaws of battle closed over Boreas.