The defeat looked complete. It was at this moment of maximum danger that Holzhauer threw his elite Elnaur Chasseurs into the battle.

Bendikt had just raised the banner of Cadia upon the lower circuits of Tor Tartarus when a wedge of Elnaur Chasseurs appeared in their black carapace and visored helmets.

‘Where is the traitor general?’ Bendikt demanded, and for the first time there was an answer.

‘I am Holzhauer!’ a figure declared.

The two generals strode towards each other. Both were dressed in suits of fine armour and both carried ancestral blades of ­ancient manufacture.

They came to a stop twenty feet from one another on the inner circuit of the firing parapet. Holzhauer was the taller man. He handled his broadsword with a practised ease. The Elnaur Chasseurs were famous for their swordsmanship, which had never been Bendikt’s forte.

‘Let me fight him,’ Mere said, but Bendikt would have none of it.

‘No,’ Bendikt said, ‘he is mine.’

Bendikt strode forward. He did not like to fight in a helmet, and took his off and tossed it to the side.

Holzhauer took this as a mark of arrogance, but he could not be outdone with displays of bravado. ‘I have never been defeated,’ he called out, as he unbuckled his chin-strap and pulled his helmet up and back, letting it drop behind him.

Holzhauer’s cheeks were blue, his gaze severe; he had the look of a man Bendikt might have respected once.

‘General Holzhauer, I name you traitor,’ Bendikt declared.

‘By whose authority do you judge me, you who have lived a lie, and serve the high lords who failed your world?’ the general sneered.

‘By the authority of Lord Militant Warmund, and the writ of the Imperium of Mankind, whose peace you have disrupted with wilful violence.’

Holzhauer spat. He had no time for this nonsense. ‘There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. You follow a dead faith, and a dying Imperium. You cannot put out the light of truth.’

‘No,’ Bendikt said, ‘but I can cut out the tongue of a lying traitor!’

Holzhauer leapt forward, his sword hissing as it cut through the air. Bendikt charged into the blow, knocking aside the traitor’s blade with his own. Paragon proved the better blade. Holz­hauer’s own sheared off, and its crackling blue flame flared and died, as Bendikt caught him by the throat.

There was a strangled gasp as Holzhauer plunged the blunt hilt of his sword into Bendikt’s side. It cut through armour and padding. Bendikt swayed as he stood there, his hand still around the other man’s neck.

Holzhauer stabbed Bendikt again. The Cadian held on. Despite the lancing agony, he smiled.

‘What humours you, Cadian?’