THE RETURNED

James Swallow

THE SKIES ABOVE the Razorpeak range wept oil. Low cowls of cloud, grey as ancient stone, ranged from horizon to horizon, grudging to allow only a faint glow of sunlight to pierce them from the great white star of Gathis. The clouds moved upon the constant winds, the same gales that howled mournfully through the jagged towers of the mountains, the same heavy gusts that reached up to beat at the figure of Brother Zurus.

The slick rain, dark with the metallic scent of oceans and the tang of rotting biomass, fell constantly upon the landing platform where he stood. Zurus watched it move in wave fronts across the granite and steel. The storms hammered, as they always did, against the constructions men had built high up here in the tallest crags. The platform was only one of many extensions, cupolas and balconies emerging from the sheer sides of the tallest fell among the Razorpeaks. The earliest, most primitive tribes of Gathis II had christened it the Ghostmountain, a name not in honour of its white-grey stone, but in recognition of the many dead that haunted it, so lethal were its slopes. Thousands of years later and the name was, if anything, more fitting.

Once, before men had come from Terra to colonise this world, there had been a true peak atop the Ghostmountain, a series of serrated spires that rose high enough that they could pierce the cloud mantle. Now a great walled citadel stood in their place, the living rock of the peak carved and formed by artisans into halls, donjons and battlements of stark, grim aspect. At each point of the compass, a hulking tower rose, opening into the sculpted shape of a vast raptor screaming defiance at elements and enemies. These warbirds put truth to the name of the great fortress-monastery atop the Ghostmountain: the Eyrie.

One of the great eagles stood at his back, and like the raptor, Zurus was watchful. He peered out from under the hood of his heavy, rain-slick over-robe, waiting for the roiling, churning sky to release to him his responsibility. In the far distance, down towards the settlements of Table City and the lowhill coasts where the tribals lived, great jags of bright lightning flashed, and on the wind the grind of thunder reached his ears a few moments later, cutting through the steady hiss of the falling rains.

Zurus was soothed by the sound. He found it peaceful, and often when he was far from Gathis, perhaps upon the eve of battle at some distant alien battleground, he would meditate upon the sounds of the rainfall and find his focus in it. And so, when he had awoken at dawn this day, he had at once sensed something amiss. Zurus exited his sleeping cell and found only rays of weak sunlight reaching down the passages of the dormitoria; and outside, a break in the clouds, and a silence in the air.

A rare thing. By the ways of the Gathian tribes, an omen of ill fortune when the eternal tears of Him Upon The Throne ceased to fall, and with them the protection the God-Emperor of Mankind provided. After a time, the rain began again, as constant as it ever was, but Zurus had witnessed the moment of silence, and was on some level unsettled by it.

AS HE HAD crossed through the gate to venture out to the landing platform, a figure in red-trimmed robes was waiting for him in the lee of the entranceway.

Thryn, the Librarian Secundus. The old warrior's sallow, bleak features always measured Zurus whenever he turned to face him. The look in his eyes was no different from the expression he had shown when the battle brother had first seen the psyker, on the fateful day the Chapter had recruited Zurus into their fold. Many decades ago now.

Thryn nodded towards the open gate and the sky beyond. 'The rain returns,' he noted.

'It never leaves,' Zurus replied. The exchange of words had a ritual quality to them.

The Librarian's lip curled in something that a generous observer might have considered a smile. 'If only that were so. The light of naked sun upon the peaks… It does not bode well.'

Zurus gathered in his robes, unfurling the hood. 'I have no time for omens.'

Thryn's mouth twisted; the old warrior could sense a bald untruth even without the use of his witch-sight. 'You are ready for this, brother?' he asked, turning to stare out at the empty landing pad. 'You did not need to take on this duty alone.

Other men—'

'It is right that I do it,' Zurus spoke over the Librarian. 'It is right,' he repeated.

Thryn turned back to study him for a long moment, then stepped away, out of his path, 'As you wish.' The Librarian banged his fist against the inner door of the gateway and halted. Metal gears began to grind as the saw-toothed hatchway drew open. When Thryn spoke again, he did not face him. 'But remember this, Zurus. What comes today, what you go to meet… You have not faced the like before.'

Something in the other warrior's tone chafed on him. 'If you think I will falter when… if the time comes, you are mistaken. I do not shrink from death.'

Thryn gave a low chuckle. 'That much is certain. We are Doom Eagles, brother.

Death is part of us.'

'I know the difference between friend and foe,' Zurus insisted. 'I know what the Archenemy looks like. I can tell a traitor when I see one.'

The inner gate clanged open. 'I have no doubt you believe that. But Chaos has faces it has never shown to you, kinsman. Do not forget that.' Thryn walked away, back into the fortress.

THE THUNDER WAS closer now, sullen and deep enough to echo in his bones. His companion rains drew hard across the metal decking as if they were scouring it, preparing it for the arrival; and then it came to him that the tone of the storm-sound had changed, a new note growing loud, fast approaching.

Zurus looked up, following his hearing. The oily rain touched his face, streaking over an aspect that was a maze of scars. He saw a shape up there, only the suggestion of it really, a shadowed thing with broad wings and a hooked profile.

A vast eagle, falling towards him, talons extending. The sound was strident, and it opened the cowl of cloud cover for a brief instant. On pillars of orange fire and hard jet-noise, a gunmetal-silver drop-ship suddenly emerged from the haze, dropping fast. Rain sluiced from the steel wings and across the blocky, rigid angles of the Thunderhawk's blunt nose. Zurus's robes snapped and billowed as the thruster backwash buffeted him, but he did not move from his sentinel stance.

The drop-ship landed firmly, the slow impact resonating through the landing platform. Engines keening as they powered down, the craft settled on hydraulic skids, lowering itself to the deck as if it were thankful to have completed its journey. Zurus saw motion behind the windows of the cockpit, but nothing distinct. He found he was holding his breath, and chided himself, releasing it.

The Astartes warrior resisted the urge to throw a glance over his shoulder, back towards the Eyrie. He had no doubt Thryn was at some gallery window far above him, watching.

With a crunch of cogs, the Thunderhawk's drop ramp unfolded, a mouth opening to show the dark interior of the transport craft. A servitor was the first to shamble out, head bobbing as it chewed on the punchcard containing its command strings. The machine-slave dragged a wheeled trolley behind it, half-covered by the tattered remains of a war cloak.

Zurus's gaze was momentarily drawn to the trolley as it was pulled past him; he saw the distinct and unmistakable shape of ceramite armour heaped within the wheeled container. The silver wargear, the trim of red and ebon, as familiar to him as the scar-patterns on his own face. Doom Eagle armour, but corroded and damaged in a fashion no son of Aquila would ever willingly countenance.

When he looked back there was a hooded man at the top of the ramp. He was looking down at his hands, and the streams of rainwater spattering off his upturned palms. He resembled a pilgrim accepting a benediction.

The Thunderhawk's sole passenger spoke, after a moment. 'The rains,' he began, in a low, crack-throated voice. 'I thought I might never see them again.' He took in a deep, long breath through his nostrils. 'On the wind. I smell Chamack.'

There was a smile in the words.

Zurus nodded. Down in Table City, leagues away from the Eyrie, the great bio-matter refineries that fabricated lubricant oil from the fibres of the sinuous Chamack sea-plant worked night and day, and the heavy, resinous odour was always present in the air. Zurus only ever noticed it by its absence.

The moment passed and the new arrival bowed his head. He began to walk down the ramp, but in two quick steps Zurus had crossed to the bottom of the gangway and stood blocking his path. The other man faltered, then halted.

'Who are you?' said Zurus. 'Let the ghosts of the mountain hear your name.'

From beneath the other man's hood, eyes narrowed and became cold. 'The ghosts know who I am, brother. I am a Gathis-born son, as you are.'

'You must say the words,' insisted Zurus. 'For protocol's sake.'

Hands tightened into fists, before vanishing into folds of the dripping robes. 'The protocols of which you speak are for outsiders. Strangers.'

Zurus searched the face concealed beneath the hood for any sign of subterfuge or malice. 'Say the words,' he repeated.

The other man said nothing, and the moment stretched too long. Then finally, with a fall of his shoulders, the new arrival relented. 'My name is Tarikus.

Warrior of the Adeptus Astartes. Brother-Sergeant of the esteemed 3rd Company of the Doom Eagles Chapter. And I have returned home.'

Tarikus. Zurus had been there on the day that name had been added to the Walls of Memory in the great Relical Keep. He had watched with due reverence as a helot carved the name into the polished black marble, etched there for eternity among the hundredfold dead of the Chapter. Zurus had been there to hear the Chaplains announce Tarikus's loss, and cement it in the annals of Doom Eagle history. Two whole Gathian cycles now, since he had been declared Astartes Mortus. Many seasons come and gone, his life become a revered memory among all the honoured fallen.

The other man drew back his hood for the first time and walked on, down towards the end of the drop ramp.

Zurus took a wary step backwards and met the gaze of a dead man.

'IS IT HIM?'

Thryn did not turn away from the rain-slicked windowpane, watching the two men far below on the landing platform. He saw Brother Zurus step aside and allow the passenger from the Thunderhawk to stride back towards the gate. The Librarian clearly saw the tawny, battle-scarred aspect of the man, lit by a momentary pulse of high lightning. 'That remains to be seen, lord,' said Thryn, at length.

In the shadowed gloom of the observation gallery, Commander Hearon folded his arms across his barrel chest and his ever-present frown deepened. The answer was unsatisfactory to the Chapter Master of the Doom Eagles. 'I allowed him to be brought here on your advice, old friend,' Hearon rumbled. 'I did so because I thought you could give me the answer I wanted.'

'I will,' Thryn replied. 'In time.'

'Not too much time,' said the Chapter Master. 'Voices call for a swift end to the matter of this… return. Chief among them the Chaplains and your senior, Brother Tolkca.'

Thryn nodded. 'Yes, I imagine the Librarian Primus is ill-tempered at the thought of such a thing being placed in my hands.'

Hearon gestured at the air. 'He is at battle a sector distant. You are here. If he's irked by my decision, he may take it up with me on his return.' The commander leaned in. 'There is no precedent for this, Thryn. Death is the closure of all things, the last page in the passage of a life. For that book to be re-opened once we have written the final entry…' Hearon trailed off. 'This man… if that is what he is… must be put to the question. The truth of him must out.'

The Librarian nodded again, musing. Thryn had pored over the battle records and honours listed under the name of Tarikus. A veteran of bloody conflicts and engagements on worlds such as Thaxted and Zanasar, he had risen to the rank of Brother-Sergeant with command of a tactical squad under Consultus, the current captain of the 3rd Company. The 3rd had a history of ill fate; two commanders in succession had been lost to them during the last Black Crusade of the Archtraitor Abaddon, at Yayor and then again at Cadia, but Tarikus had survived them all - even the great massacre at Krypt, where the Doom Eagles had lost many men on the surface of that brutal, frigid planetoid.

It was only after the destruction of the planet Serek, on a voyage back to the Segmentum Tempestus, that the luck of Brother Tarikus had run dry. The medicae frigate he had been aboard was ambushed by the hated Red Corsairs, and torn apart. Tarikus had not been among the Astartes who made it to the saviour pods before the wrecked ship had plunged into a star. He was given the honour of a worthy end, and declared dead, with all the ritual and rite such a tribute entailed.

But now… Now a ghost walked the halls of the Eyrie.

Thryn was well aware that some brother Chapters of the Doom Eagles regarded their association with matters of death as unusual. Morbid, even macabre; he had heard these slights from warriors of the Space Wolves and the White Scars, even brothers of the Ultramarines, the very Legion his Chapter had been drawn from.

Some viewed the character of the Doom Eagles and saw an obsession with fatality; but this was a short-sighted, narrow view.

The Doom Eagles were gifted with an understanding of the universe. They knew the truth, that all life is born dying, moment by moment. What others saw as fatalism, they saw as pragmatism, a manner born out of knowledge that life and joy were transient things, that the only constants in existence were despair, loss -

and ultimately the embrace of death. We are already dead, so said the first words of the oath of the Chapter. The Doom Eagles understood that death was always close; and so they fought harder, strove longer, to perform their duties before the cloak of Final Sleep came upon them. They had no illusions.

Death was the end of all things. Nothing could come back from the void beyond it. This knowledge was the pillar upon which stood everything the Chapter believed in.

Tarikus, by his presence, his mere existence, challenged that.

Hearon spoke again. 'You have my authority to do as much as required in order to cut to the core of this circumstance.' The Chapter Master turned away. 'I ask you only be certain.'

Thryn felt a tightening in his gut as the full scope of Hearon's command became clear to him. 'And if I cannot be certain, my lord? What would you have me do then?'

'There is no scope for doubts, brother.' Hearon paused at the edge of the chamber's shadows and nodded towards the window. 'End him if you must. Our ghosts remain dead.'

TARIKUS AWOKE, AND his first reaction was one of shock. It faded quickly, to be replaced by a twinge of annoyance; ever since his escape from the prison on Dynikas V, each new slumber ended with the same tremor of fear and uncertainty, and it angered him.

Each time, he expected to find himself back in the searing metal cell, his ash-smeared skin slick with sweat against the hard surface of his sleeping pallet, the humid air about him resonating with heat. It was as if his subconscious mind could not willingly accept that he had found his freedom. He had experienced so many strange tortures during his imprisonment in that Light-forsaken hell that even now, weeks after breaking out of the cursed place, some seed of doubt remained lodged in his thoughts, some tiny part of him too afraid to accept the reality presented to it for fear it would be torn away a moment later.

The stone and steel of the prison on Dynikas V was no more, his tormentors consumed by tyranid swarms, the prison itself scoured to the bedrock by Astartes lance fire; but the walls still stood in Tarikus's mind, and he wondered if they would ever fall.

With a sigh, he pushed such thoughts away, rose and moved to the simple fresher unit in the corner of his room. Perhaps there was an irony in the fact that this small chamber was also called a ''cell'', but its function was dedicated to providing silence and peace, not confinement. He ran cold, brackish water over his face, glancing at the small circular window high in the wall. A simple pattern of acid-etching covered the glassaic; the shape of a spread-winged eagle and upon that the lines of a human skull. The sigil of his Chapter. Seeing it made Tarikus's chest tighten; the symbol meant so much to him. It had been his life for so long, and in the darkest moments of his incarceration, he had thought never to lay eyes upon it again.

Men of the steady and dour nature that characterised most of the Astartes of the Doom Eagles Chapter were not often given to moments of open excitement or joy, and yet Tarikus could not deny that he felt something close to those emotions deep within him, a strange elation at being home once more, but tempered with apprehension at what was to come next.

A day now since he arrived on the Thunderhawk. A day, after a sullen greeting from this Brother Zurus; none of his questions answered, mind, only the offer of a Spartan meal and the room and rest. A place where you can reflect, Zurus had said. It was not lost on Tarikus that, although the door to his chamber had not been locked, a discreet gun-servitor had been stationed nearby. And he knew without needing to search for them that audial and visi-spectrum aura sensors were concealed in the covings above him.

They were watching him closely. He expected as much.

Should he have been affronted by such surveillance? On some level he was. On another, he understood the motivation behind it. Trust was a precious commodity in the Imperium of Mankind, and it was only in places where bonds of brotherhood and fealty ran strong that it could be spent. The ranks of the Adeptus Astartes were one such place, but when outsiders ventured into that circle - outsiders and strangers, Tarikus reminded himself - the wellspring quickly ran dry.

His own kinsmen did not trust him, and for reasons that a cursed fate had forced upon him.

Tarikus grimly considered the unfairness of it, the hard reality of callous outcome that was the way of his bleak universe. After Serek, where he and his squad had engaged a force of Necrontyr and ultimately been compelled to flee a planet in its death throes, he had healed aboard a hospitaller ship. In a narthecia-induced slumber, his enhanced physiology working to repair the damage of a poor teleport reversion, he had slept the voyage away - at least until the Traitor-kin had ambushed them. Too weak to fight them all, Tarikus had been captured even as his brothers escaped, thinking him dead. From there, the whoreson Red Corsairs sold him like chained cattle to the master of the Dynikas prison - and he had remained in that place for month after month, year after year, confined with other Astartes stolen from battlefields or presumed dead. Forgotten men turned into laboratory animals, test subjects for the amusement of the Chaos primogenitor who called himself Fabius Bile.

Tarikus had expected to die there - but then he was a Doom Eagle, and Doom Eagles always expected death. Still, when the chance for freedom came, he embraced it with all his might, aware that his service to the Golden Throne was not yet over. In his soul, Tarikus knew that he was not ready to perish, not on Dynikas, not at the hands of Bile and his freak-army of modificate mutants. He had not been granted permission to die.

He heard footsteps out in the corridor, then a voice. 'Tarikus,' called Zurus, 'will you join me?'

The Doom Eagle gathered in his duty tunic and over-robe, then opened the cell door. 'Are we going somewhere?'

Zurus nodded once. 'I have something I wish you to see.'

THEY WALKED, AND Zurus did his best to observe his charge without making his scrutiny an open challenge. Tarikus seemed no different from the man shown in his file picts, or captured by the imagers of servo-skulls in battle footage. He carried himself like an Astartes should, and with no prompting the warrior showed all the correct fealty and honour towards the sacrosanct statuary ringing the gates of the great circlet corridor, which ran the circumference of the Eyrie. If anything, Tarikus seemed almost moved to see the great carving of Aquila, first of the Doom Eagles and chosen of the Second Founding. Zurus looked up from his own deep bow a moment quicker than usual, examining the curve of the other man's shoulders.

Finally, Tarikus stood and straightened. 'Perhaps you wish to set an hourglass at my side, brother. That might be method enough to gauge my piety.'

'I am not an inquisitor,' replied Zurus, a little too swiftly. In truth, he wondered what the representatives of the Ordo Hereticus might have done if they knew of Tarikus and his circumstances - or indeed that of the other handful of Astartes, who had been liberated from Dynikas by brothers of the Blood Angels Chapter.

To spend months, years even, in a gaol ruled by one of the most notorious traitors of the Heresy… Could anyone, even a chosen warrior of the Emperor's Astartes, emerge untouched by the experience? Could a Space Marine survive such a thing and not be tainted in some fashion? Zurus held the question in his thoughts as he spoke again. 'You are among kinsmen here.'

'And who better to judge me?' Tarikus looked around, his hard gaze sweeping the ranges of the curving corridor, the galleries overhead and the gloomy alcoves where lume-light did not fall. 'Where are my other watchers? Nearby, I'd imagine.'

Zurus resisted the urge to look where Tarikus did. He knew full well that the Librarian Thryn was somewhere close at hand, studying them both. He wondered what Thryn thought of them; outwardly, the two Doom Eagles were similar in aspect, although Zurus's hairless scalp was paler - the legacy of his origin in the sea-nomad tribes, unlike Tarikus, who was a son of the high-mountain kindred. They were both as good an example of the aspect of a Son of Aquila as one could hope to find on the Ghostmountain; but it was what lay beneath that aspect that could not be quantified.

That which could not be valued in the weight of coin; this was what Zurus had to quantify. If Tarikus was found wanting, it would mean ignoble death - the worst of fates for a Doom Eagle to suffer.

A party of Scouts passed close, and Zurus guessed by their garb and weapons they had returned from a training sortie out in the equatorial island chains. He gave the youths a terse nod that was returned, but none of them acknowledged the presence of Tarikus, passing him by without making eye contact. Zurus saw him stiffen at the slight, but he said nothing. After a moment, he nodded to himself, as if accepting something.

'Where are my men?' said the other warrior, without meeting his gaze. 'It has been two years since I last saw them, and this question I have asked more than once. Do they live still?'

Zurus had been ordered not to speak of Tarikus's former comrades-in-arms, but the command sat poorly with him. He could not in good conscience remain silent on the matter. At length, he gave a nod. 'They live,' Zurus admitted. At Serek, Tarikus had led a number of good, steadfast Space Marines - Brothers Korica, Petius and Mykilus - each of whom had survived the Red Corsair attack on the medicae frigate.

'I wish to see them.'

Zurus shook his head. 'Perhaps later.'

Tarikus shot him a glare. 'Do not lie to me, brother. Grant me that, at least.'

He sighed. 'What do you expect me to say, Tarikus? What did you think would happen when you returned here?' Zurus gestured around. 'Did you think we would welcome you with open arms? Take you in as if nothing had happened?

You said it yourself. Two years, brother. A long time in the heart of darkness.'

The other man's gaze dropped to the ornate stone floor, and despite himself, Zurus felt a pang of sympathy for him. 'I'm a fool, then,' said Tarikus. 'Naive to think that I could return and pick up where I left off.' He shook his head. 'I only want to return. That is all.'

Zurus frowned and walked on. 'Come,' he told Tarikus, 'you must see this. You'll understand better when you do.'

THE EYRIE'S CENTRAL feature was a great octagonal tower, tallest of the citadels that reached for the sky, deepest of those that plunged levels down into the heart-rock of the Ghostmountain. The Reclusiam was a million memorials to countless deaths across the galactic disc. Entire floors were given over to relics recovered from the sites of terrible battles and brutal wars across the entire span of the Imperium. Many were from conflicts in which the Doom Eagles had taken a direct part, but others were from atrocities so soaked in despair and fatality that warriors of the Chapter had been drawn to visit them.

The Doom Eagles were born from the Legion of the Ultramarines in the wake of the Horus Heresy, in the shadow of Great Aquila. He had been a warrior of Guilliman during the Siege of Terra, and along with the rest of the Ultramarines, battles fought during the race to reinforce humanity's home world waylaid them at a most crucial moment. As Chapter history told it, Aquila had been so wracked with guilt and despair at arriving too late to protect the Emperor from his mortal wounds at the hands of Horus, that he had sworn an oath never again to delay in defence of the Imperium. When the time of the Second Founding came, Aquila willingly broke away to forge the Doom Eagles and make his belief manifest in them. The first Master made it a tenet of his new Chapter that every Son of Gathis would understand the cost of hesitance, of failure - and with it, the great guilt that came in step.

He would have them see these things, know them first-hand. And so, the relics; gathered by brothers on pilgrimages to places of battle and failed wars, each item a piece of despair and calamity made solid and real.

Many levels of the Reclusiam were such grim museums, halls reverent with shards of stone and bone, glass and steel. Armageddon, Rocene, Malvolion, Telemachus, Brodrakul, and countless other war-sites, all represented here. And in the hallowed core, brought to this place by Aquila himself, the silver-walled chamber where pieces of shattered masonry from the Imperial Palace lay alongside a feather from the wing of Sanguinius and a shard of the Emperor's own battle armour.

It was said that those with the witch-sight could hear the ghost-screams in the tower. If that were so, if these relics could indeed contain a fraction of the pain and anguish that had enveloped them, then Zurus was glad the great chorus of sorrow thundering silent in the air was hidden from him.

This was not their destination, however. With Tarikus quiet at his side, the Space Marine rode the grav-car that ran the brass rails following the length of the tower. They rode up and up, beyond the ranges of the death-relics of strangers and into the Hall of the Fallen.

The largest open space inside the Eyrie, the vast walls, floor and ceiling were sheathed in great tiles of polished obsidian, each the size of a Land Raider.

Hanging at right angles from complex armatures, some from floor to ceiling, others suspended at differing heights, there were free-floating panels of the same dark stone. At a distance, the glassy black panes seemed clouded somehow, but as one drew closer, definition unfolded.

Each panel was perfectly laser-etched into thin strips; each strip sported a half-globe of glass, behind which lay a random item. Upon the strip, the name of a Doom Eagle claimed by death. Next to each name, inside the glass, a relic: a fragment of armour, an eye-lens, a bolt shell, an honour-chain. Every artefact, something touched by the dead. A piece of them, to be held in trust for as long as the Chapter existed.

The grav-car changed tracks, joining a conveyor that took them across the span of the hall, down and across in zigzag motions toward one of the tallest of the panels.

Zurus looked down towards the floor far below. Somewhere down there was the memorial of Aquila, and beside it a cracked helmet under glass. It had no dressing, no great and ostentatious detail to set it aside from every other marker.

The First Master had ordered it so, knowing that in death, all men were in unity.

He glanced up and saw that Tarikus was also looking downward. Mimicking me, he wondered? Or is he feeling the reverence that I feel?

At last, the grav-car rattled to a halt some distance up the face of a suspended wall and Zurus gestured towards the pane that hung before them. Behind a glass bubble, an Astartes combat blade was visible, the fractal edge still bright and sharp even though the length of the knife was dirty and pitted with use.

Tarikus saw the weapon and took a half step towards it, then stopped dead. 'It's mine,' he said. The tone of his voice was peculiar; there was something like fear in it.

Zurus nodded and indicated the memorial panel. 'Look here, brother.'

There in gothic script, etched by the hand of some machine-slave stoneworker, letters lined in heavy silver. As if he had no control over the action, Tarikus reached out and ran his fingers over the shape of his name. 'No…' began the other Astartes, shaking his head.

Zurus nodded again. 'You were lost, brother. You know our laws and diktats.

Your name was cast from the rolls. The ceremony of loss completed and sanctified. Your name, carved here, in memoriam. By the lights of the Chapter and all of Gathis—'

The other Doom Eagle turned abruptly to face him, a curious shade of emotion in his dark eyes. 'I am dead,' he said, finishing Zurus's sentence for him. 'I no longer exist.'

TARIKUS STRODE FROM the gates of the Reclusiam across the processional bridge with such pace and intent that it was a long moment before he realised he had nowhere to go. He slowed and the grief he had tried to outrun caught up with him, as if it were only his swift tread that had kept it at bay.

In his darkest moments, trapped in that hated prison cell, Tarikus had encountered a great dread within himself that had shocked him with its potency.

He had feared that he was forgotten; that after he was lost in deep space, the many sorties and battles he had fought, the honours he had earned, all would count for nothing among his brethren. He feared that all he had done would be meaningless.

But now he saw that the greater horror was this - that he had been remembered, in so final and damning a way as to make each breath he drew now a phantom.

In the eyes of Great Aquila and his Chapter, Brother-Sergeant Tarikus had perished aboard that lost medicae frigate, years past. His kinsmen had counted him gone and made their peace with that fact.

Was it any wonder the Scouts had looked away from him, unsettled by his presence? For a Chapter so intimate with the manners of death, to see a warrior return from it must have shaken them to their core. Our ghosts remain dead, Tarikus thought, recalling the words written in the Prayer Mortalis.

Zurus called his name and he turned as the other Doom Eagle approached him, his pale face set like ice.

'This must be undone,' Tarikus began, but Zurus waved him into silence.

'Do you understand, brother?' Zurus demanded of him. 'You see now why your reappearance is… problematic?'

Tarikus felt a swell of anger inside him, and let it rise. 'Don't speak to me as if I am some whining neophyte. I am a battle-brother of this Chapter with honour and glory to my name!'

'Are you?' The question slipped from Zurus's lips.

He glared at the other warrior. 'Ah. I see. At first I thought you were concerned that my wits might have been dulled by my confinement, that perhaps you suspected my spirit damaged by my experiences… But it's more than that, isn't it?' Tarikus made a spitting sound and advanced on the other Doom Eagle. 'Can it be that you doubt the evidence of your own eyes, brother?' He put savage emphasis on the last word.

'The truth—'

Tarikus's anger was strong now, and he refused to let Zurus speak. 'What do you presume?' He spread his hands. 'Are you waiting for me to shed my skin, to transform into some hell-spawned Chaos daemon? Is that what you think I am?'

Zurus's gaze did not waver. 'That question has been asked.'

He took a quick step forward and prodded Zurus in the chest with his finger. 'I know what I am, kinsman,' snarled Tarikus. 'A warrior loyal to Holy Terra!'

'Perhaps,' said Zurus, 'or perhaps you are only a thing which believes that to be true. Something that only resembles Brother-Sergeant Tarikus.'

Muscles bunched in his arm, and for a long second Tarikus wavered on the verge of striking the other Space Marine across the face. That another Doom Eagle would dare to impugn the honour of a kinsman lit his fury still higher, reasons be damned.

And in that moment, through the lens of his cold anger, Tarikus discerned something else: a greasy, electric tingle across his skin and the sense of a hundred eyes staring at him. He relaxed his stance and turned away, glaring about across the length of the high marble bridge. The only sound was the clatter of heat exchangers working far below in the depths of the Ghostmountain.

To the air he spoke a demand. 'Show yourself, witch-kin.' Tarikus shot a look at Zurus, and the other warrior's expression confirmed his suspicions. He turned away again, ranging around. 'Come, brother. If you wish to damn my name, at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye when you do so,'

'As you wish.' The voice came from behind him, close and low. Tarikus found a figure in the lee of a carved support, swamped by red-trimmed robes. The Doom Eagle had looked in that direction only moments earlier, and there had been nothing there. Only 'shadows.

The psyker walked closer, dropping his hood. Cold, hard eyes bit into Tarikus, searching for any sign of weakness. He betrayed none.

'I am Thryn,' said the Librarian. 'My name is known.'

Tarikus nodded once. 'I have heard of you. A chooser of the faithful.'

'But not you,' Thryn replied. 'It was not my duty on the day you were picked from the aspirants to join this Chapter, all those decades ago. Perhaps, if it had been, this question would already be answered.'

'There is no question,' Tarikus retorted. 'What you see before you is all that I am.

Doom Eagle. Adeptus Astartes. Son of Gathis.'

Thryn cocked his head. 'The enemy hides in plain sight. A tactic the followers of the Ruinous Powers are quite fond of. They have warped many a mind in the past. It is only sensible that we must be certain that has not happened here.'

Tarikus met Thryn's burning gaze and refused to look away. 'Do you know what kept me centred for all those months inside that hellhole, witch-kin? It was my faith in my brothers, my Chapter and my Emperor. Was I wrong to believe that?

Have I been forsaken?'

'That is the question we must ask of you, Tarikus,' said Thryn.

'You dare ask me to prove myself?' The fury boiled inside him. 'After all that I have done in Aquila's name, you question me?' He advanced on the psyker until they were face to face. He could feel the prickling aura of the Librarian's controlled mind-force pressing on his flesh. 'This is your greeting for a lost brother, who by the grace of He That Is Most Mighty, has had the temerity to survive. Nothing but disdain and isolation. Accusations and disrespect.'

'This is the universe we live in,' offered Zurus.

Tarikus paused, holding Thryn's gaze. 'Perhaps you would have preferred it if I allowed myself to die in confinement.'

Thryn cocked his head. 'That would have brought a definite end to this matter, to be sure.'

'Then I apologise for daring to live,' Tarikus shot back. 'It must be very inconvenient for you.'

'There is still time,' said the psyker. 'But not much time.'

Tarikus was silent for a long moment, and with an effort, he calmed himself and shuttered away his annoyance. That there was some logic in the challenge posed by Zurus and Thryn only made matters worse; but rather than resist it, Tarikus drew in a breath and looked to his heart, to the soul and spirit that made him a Doom Eagle.

'So be it,' he said grimly. 'If I must be questioned, then I must be questioned.

This is the way of things. I will face it and not flinch. Tell me what must be done to put this challenge to its end.'

'You're certain?' asked Zurus. 'It will be difficult. Some have been broken by less.'

'Tell me,' repeated Tarikus, glaring at the psyker.

Thryn looked back at him with a level, even gaze. 'There are rituals of purity.

Rites of passage. You will be tested.' The psyker turned to leave. 'Tomorrow, at dawn—'

Tarikus's hand shot out and grabbed the Librarian's forearm, halting him instantly. 'No,' said the Doom Eagle. 'We will begin this now.'

Thryn studied him. 'You understand what you will face?'

'Now,' repeated Tarikus.

THEY BEGAN WITH the Talons.

A mechanism made of bright, polished steel, and as cold as polar ice, it wrapped around Tarikus and held the Doom Eagle in its grip. It resembled an artificer's vice, scaled up to the size of a giant. A great oiled screw turned, bringing knurled blocks of metal towards one another in an inexorable approach. From each block grew a fan of wicked barbs, claws modelled on the talons of the great raptors that rode the thermals of the Razorpeak range.

Tarikus stood between them, clad only in thin exercise robes. The muscles of his arms and legs bunched and became iron-solid as he settled in against the blocks.

Only his strength and fortitude held back a crushing death. He breathed evenly, pacing himself, marshalling his strength rather than spending it all in a single effort.

The Talons pressed in. They never tired. The slow-turning gears pushed against the Space Marine's resistance, daring him to falter for just a moment; and there was the insidious thing about the trial. If the warrior relaxed, even for an instant, the blocks would lurch forward by a full hand's span, reducing the space between by a good measure - but in doing so, giving him a moment's respite from the struggle. Thus, the Talons preyed on fatigue and inattention. After hours, days between the blocks, a warrior might consider letting them close the distance a little, just to take a precious second of rest before they reached their stops and started to press in once again; but that was the route to failure. So it was said, Hearon himself once managed a lunar month in the Talons and never gave any quarter.

Tarikus was there for days. With no windows in sight, he could only make the most basic reckoning of the passing hours. And unlike Hearon's trial, Tarikus was not left alone with his struggle. From the shadows about the Talons, figures moved and called out to him, bombarding him constantly with questions and demands. They asked him to recite lines of catechism and Chapter rote, or they hectored him over every last point of the story he told of his confinement in Bile's prison. The interrogation went on and on, without end, circling his thoughts until he felt his mind going numb.

Thryn was among his questioners; perhaps he was only one of them, perhaps he was all of them, but as sweat dripped from Tarikus's limbs and acid slowly filled his veins, the warrior did not give the answers the Librarian wanted. He told the same story over and over, he recited his hymnals and prayers as he should have, all the while resisting the constant, blinding pressure. Denied food, denied water, denied release, he stood his ground.

Then without warning, a week into the trial, it ended. The Talons retracted, and Tarikus fell to the deck, his muscles twitching and cramping. It took him a moment to get back to his feet. Dimly, he was aware of figures in the cowled robes of Chapter serfs crowding towards him.

He frowned. This could not be the end of it. He had not suffered enough.

He was correct.

TARIKUS WAS STRIPPED naked and put into the hold of a rotorflyer. The aircraft left the Ghostmountain with a sudden upward lurch, and almost as quickly it began a steep downward arc. The Doom Eagle had barely enough time to register the howl of winds over the hull of the craft before the deck beneath him parted and he fell.

Tarikus landed hard on a shelf of icy rock, a harsh bombardment of sleet angling across it towards a sudden, sheer drop into the mist. He glanced up to see the flyer power away on flickering blades and caught sight of the Eyrie beyond it.

They had deposited him on one of the nearby peak sides, little more than half a kilometre distant from the Ghostmountain as the eagle flew, but uncrossable without a jet pack or a wing-glider.

He cast around, searching for something to shield himself from the punishing weather, and found only a canted slab of rock. Aching from the strain of the Talons, Tarikus made it into the poor cover and found mud and lichen in the lee.

The fungus he ate, the mud he smeared over his flesh to hold in his body heat.

He wondered if this was some kind of punishment. Had he failed the first test in some way that had not registered in his mind? Or had Thryn and those who sat in judgement of him tired of the game and made their choice, left him out here to die of exposure? Both seemed unlikely; a bolt shell to the back of his head would have ended him far faster than starvation or hypothermia, and the Doom Eagles were not given to cause suffering where it need not occur - there was enough of that to go around in the universe, without adding to the volume of it.

As he half-dozed behind his rough shelter, Tarikus imagined the scrutiny of distant eyes, watching him from the windows of the fortress-monastery he thought of as his home. He felt darkness crowd in on him, a numbness spreading through his body. Still they questioned him, only now it was without words, now it was with the force of ruthless nature. Now it was Gathis itself, the voice of the Ghostmountain and the Razorpeaks, that challenged him.

And still, the answer that was sought was not given. By the following dawn, Tarikus had died.

THRYN SENSED HIS master's displeasure before he entered the observation gallery. It filled the space around him like a cold fog, present in everything and ready to become an ice-storm at a moment's notice.

Within he found Hearon at the heavy window, and off to one side the figure of Brother-Captain Consultus. The warrior was clad in his wargear, and he stood at stiff attention, eyes focused on a distant point beyond the far wall. Consultus looked like carved stone, immobile and rigid; but Thryn saw past that, reading the steady churn of emotions inside the captain of the 3rd.

The Luckless 3rd, so the other company commanders called them, but never to their faces. Thryn considered this and saw truth in it; the return of Tarikus was just one more piece of ill fortune laid at the boots of Consultus and his men.

Hearon threw a glance at the Librarian. 'You have an answer for me?'

'I do not, lord,' he replied.

'Where is he now?'

The psyker gestured with a nod. 'In the Apothecarion. He was recovered before brain death could occur. He will live.'

'For what that is worth.' Thryn's master made a negative noise. 'Does your witch-sight fail you? Look into his soul, tell me what you see.'

'I have,' admitted the psyker, 'and I can draw no conclusion. Resilient as he is, his psyche was tormented by imprisonment and suffering, but that is to be expected. But this is not a case of black and white. There are many shades of grey.'

'I disagree,' Hearon replied. 'The question is a direct one. Is Tarikus to be trusted? Yes or no?'

'He has endured the trials,' ventured the captain. 'Survived, once again.'

'I know your opinion already,' Hearon snapped. 'Repeating it serves no purpose.'

He looked back at Thryn.

'The captain is quite correct,' said the Librarian. 'His flesh withstands great punishment. He does not waver beneath chastisement that would kill a warrior of lesser courage.'

Hearon grimaced. 'That is a thing of meat and blood,' he said, with a terse gesture. 'And we know those can be controlled.' The Chapter Master shook his head. 'No, it is the question of Tarikus's spirit that tasks me. His soul is where the question lies.'

'His faith in the Emperor is strong.' Thryn paused, framing his words. 'His faith in his Chapter also.'

'Even after we have done this to him,' Hearon was looking at Consultus as he said the words. 'I don't need Thryn's powers to pluck that thought from your mind, brother-captain.'

'It is so, lord,' Consultus replied.

'Let no man here labour under the mistaken belief that I take pleasure in this,'

Hearon grated. 'But Tarikus is one man. My responsibilities are to a Chapter one thousand strong, to a heritage of ten millennia. The Doom Eagles are my charge, and if I must shoulder the guilt of persecuting a single kinsman in order to protect them, I will do so without hesitation. It is only a grain of sand against the weight of Aquila's holy remorse.'

Thryn was silent for a moment. He knew full well why he had been called to this meeting, and why too Consultus, as Tarikus's former commanding officer, had been brought in as a witness. 'There is word from the Council of Eagles?'

Hearon nodded. 'Modelled after the High Council of Terra, the Doom Eagles encompassed a commission of men of highest rank who would draw together on matters of import facing the Chapter. The group would offer advice to the Chapter Master, and while ultimately Hearon held the sanction over all commands, he drew upon the knowledge and advice of all his company captains, his senior Chaplain, Apothecary, Forge Master and Librarian. 'The greater body of my warriors question the need to prolong this matter. The risk outweighs the gain. The damage that might be wrought by a single turncoat among our number is huge when compared against the value of one veteran sergeant.'

'Is it?' Consultus said quietly. 'Do we not damage the Chapter ourselves if we reject a warrior whose only crime was a failure to die?'

'The others believe he is tainted?' asked Thryn.

'The others suggest that Tarikus be put down,' said the captain, with no little venom.

Hearon ignored Consultus's interruption. 'I… am not convinced.'

'My lord?'

The Chapter Master returned to the window. 'The Doom Eagles have always been the most pragmatic of the Adeptus Astartes. We have no time for vacillation. That we may never again delay… Those words are etched on our hearts.' He paused. 'Some of our battle-brothers say we should excise this man and move beyond. End him, and confirm what has already been laid to stone; that Tarikus of the 3rd is dead and gone.'

Thryn cocked his head. 'And yet?'

'And yet…' repeated Hearon, glancing toward Consultus, 'I cannot in all good conscience end this in so cursory a manner. When death comes to claim me, I find myself asking how I could go to the Emperor's side and answer for this.

That I would allow a Son of Gathis to meet the sword's edge all because of an unanswered question?' He shook his head. 'That will not stand.'

Thryn's eyes narrowed. 'There is another way, lord. A method I have yet hesitated to employ. A weirding, if you will. '

'Do what you must.' The Chapter Master looked over his shoulder at Thryn. 'You will bring me an answer, Librarian.'

'Even if Tarikus is destroyed by it?' said Consultus.

'Even if,' Hearon replied.

ZURUS EXITED THE south range after morning firing rites, and found the three of them waiting for him. He hesitated, for a moment uncertain how to respond, then beckoned the Space Marines to follow him. They moved to a worktable in the far corner of the arming hall, and he took the only stool and sat upon it. With careful, spare motions, Zurus dismantled his bolt pistol and set about the work of cleaning the weapon.

As he expected, it was Korica who spoke first. 'Lord,' he began, tension thick in his tone, 'we have talked amongst ourselves of… of this matter, and we have questions.'

'Indeed?' said Zurus, taking apart the trigger assembly. 'Questions seem to be the matter of the day.' From the corner of his eye, he saw the other two Doom Eagles exchange glances; one of them, his face dark and intense with old fire scarring, the other sallow of features with a single silver ring in his ear and the helix electoo of an Apothecary upon his neck. He read conflict in their aspects.

It came as no surprise; he felt the same thing they did, to some degree.

'There is much talk in the galleries,' Korica went on, gesturing with his carbon-and-steel augmetic arm. 'Rumour and hearsay. We would know the truth.'

Zurus stopped and studied the pieces of his gun. 'Would you?' he said, a warning in his manner. 'Tell me, brother, would you also have me go against the express orders of the Chapter Master?'

'We would never disobey a legal command, brother-sergeant,' said the Apothecary. 'You know that.'

He nodded. 'Aye, Petius, I do.' Zurus glanced at the scarred warrior. 'Mykilus?

As your kinsmen have spoken, I trust you must have something to venture as well?'

The other Doom Eagle gave a slow nod. 'Sir,' he began, 'you have commanded our squad for two cycles and we have been bound in blood and fire together. No disrespect to you is intended… but Tarikus was our sergeant for a long time. He saved each of our lives on one battleground or another. We thought him dead, and now we learn that he still lives…' Mykilus trailed off, unable to find the right words.

'Aquila's remorse runs strong in us,' said Korica. 'We believed Tarikus had been killed at the hands of the Red Corsairs. We brought back his knife. We share the guilt at giving up on him.' He shook his head. 'We let him down. We should have done more. Searched longer.'

Zurus looked up for the first time. 'No,' he said flatly. 'Do not torment yourselves. You could not have known.'

'We want to see him, sir,' said Petius.

'Impossible.' Zurus shot a glance at the Apothecary. 'It is forbidden. He is to remain in isolation until he has been judged.'

Korica's face twisted in anger. 'Tarikus is no traitor. We know the man better than any other battle-brother on the Ghostmountain! He is steadfast!'

Zurus studied the faces of the three men. 'Is that what you all think?' He got a chorus of nods in return - and yet, the warrior could sense some tiny inklings of doubt lurking behind the hard eyes of his men. The very same hesitation he himself experienced. 'I took on the mantle of Tarikus's stewardship for one reason,' Zurus went on. 'Because of what I knew of the man whom I had succeeded. I did it because of what you told me of him.' He didn't add that in truth, Brother Zurus had always felt as if he could not measure up to the shadow of the squad's former commander.

'Then tell us what you think, sir,' said Mykilus. 'If we cannot speak to him ourselves, tell us your thoughts.'

'Aye,' added Petius. 'You have looked him in the eye. What did you see?'

Zurus sighed. 'One of us.' His gaze dropped to the disassembled bolter. 'Or so it seemed.'

'Chaos does not lurk within the heart of Brother Tarikus,' grated Korica. 'I would stake my life on that.'

'Are you sure?' Zurus returned to his work. 'Trapped in the heart of madness, tormented every moment of every day by the foulest traitor-genius hell ever spawned? Could a man not be twisted under such pressure?'

'A man, perhaps,' said Petius. 'But not a Doom Eagle.'

'Not Tarikus,' insisted Korica.

Zurus was silent for a long time, carefully rebuilding the weapon. 'It is no wonder you wish Tarikus to be found pure,' he said, at length. 'Each of you carry the guilt of speaking his death when in fact he had only been lost. But that remorse will pale into nothing if he is proven to be tainted.'

'If that is so,' Mykilus began, his voice leaden, 'then we three will be the ones to send him into oblivion.'

'But it is not,' Korica insisted. 'And we three will be there to welcome him back once this mistrust is swept away!'

The gun went back together smoothly, and Zurus tested the action before returning it to his holster. Finally, he rose and walked away.

At the threshold of the chamber door he paused and glanced back at his men.

But not really my men, he told himself. Tarikus's men.

'Are you coming?' he asked.

HE WAS AT peace.

Sleep, pure and real. Tarikus struggled to remember the last time he had rested so well, free from nightmares and horrific recollections. Sluggish amniotic fluid swathed him, and he drifted in a tiny, warm ocean of his own. His fingers brushed the inside of a glassy orb. No sound reached him here.

Peace. And all he had needed to do to find it was to die.

He knew that what he experienced now was not true death; he had known that even as the cold had crept into his flesh, tightening about his bio-implant organs, pushing him towards nothingness. No, this was the little-death of the healing trance, the strange state between where the engines of his Astartes physiology were left to work their chemical magicks. He had been here before. After the battle for Krypt. After the narrow escape from Serek—

Serek. Tarikus suppressed a shudder. Memory of that incident returned to him with harsh clarity. After Serek, he had been in a trance like this, repairing damage wrought by a forced teleport transition. And it had been inside a medicae tank such as this one that he had watched the Red Corsairs come to take him. It came back in hard punches of sense-memory - bolt shells cracking the glassaic, his body sluicing out with the liquid on to the deck, still broken, still unready. The renegades coming in to attack him. Blood mixed with the yellowish amnio-fluid. Fighting and killing; but ultimately, failing.

A shiver ran the length of him. Suddenly the warm liquid was as cold as the mountainside.

Tarikus took a breath of the oxygenated medium and felt the chill bore deeper.

Out beyond the walls of the medicae tank shapes moved to and fro. They might have been other Astartes, perhaps come to observe this curiosity, this warrior back from the dead, this soul in limbo - or perhaps they were just servitors, going about their tasks, making sure Tarikus did not perish. Not yet.

He did not have permission to die. Aquila had not granted it.

The Doom Eagle looked inside himself and dared to wonder what a real death might feel like. He had been close to that abyss so many times, but never fallen to it; and now, in this moment of great darkness he dared to wonder if death would be the better end for him. If he had perished aboard the hospitaller ship, or perhaps in the cells of the Dynikas prison, then all that happened now would not have come to pass. Tarikus's Chapter would continue on, untroubled by the aberration of his chance survival. The pestilent questions would not have been asked. Constancy would not be challenged.

He felt hollow inside. In his prison cell, whenever he could snatch a moment away from the eyes of the mutant guards and the modificate freaks, he had prayed to the Golden Throne that he might live to see home once more. And in all that time, he had never once thought that he would not be trusted by his own kinsmen.

Conflict raged inside him. At once he hated Thryn and the others for daring to doubt him, but at the same moment he understood why they did so. If matters had been different, if it had been Zurus returning to Gathis and not Tarikus, then what choices would he have made in the same place? What questions would Tarikus have demanded answers for?

It came to him that the only way he would be able to prove himself would be to give up the last breath in his body. In death, truth could not be hidden.

THE DOOR TO the psyker's sanctum opened on oiled pistons and a grave voice issued out from the darkness inside. 'Enter, Zurus. If you must.'

Zurus did as he was bid. Thryn's meditation chamber was little bigger than the accommodation cell where the sergeant laid his head, but it had the illusion of depth thanks to the strange jumble of shadows cast by electro-candles atop a series of iron stands, each at the corner of a mathematical shape carved into the floor.

Thryn rose from a kneeling cushion and pushed aside a fan of imager plates.

Zurus glanced at them and saw only unreadable texts and oddly blurred images.

He swallowed and failed to hide a grimace. The air in here was strange, almost oily, but with an acid tingle on the bare flesh of his face and hands.

Thryn glared at him. The psyker was in his wargear, and about his head in a blue-white halo, the crystalline matrix of a psionic hood glowed softly. 'You're interrupting my preparations, brother. And you have no good reason.'

Zurus met his hard look with one of his own. 'I have every reason—' he began.

'I'll save you the trouble of explaining yourself to me, shall I?' snapped the Librarian. 'You've been swayed by Tarikus. You've listened to his men, and felt their anxiety for their former commander's fate.' He turned away. 'And as you have never truly felt content as the leader of Tarikus's former squad, you wish to have him return to our fold so you can be free of your conflicts. Is that close to the truth?'

Zurus bristled at the other warrior's tone. 'You make us sound like mewling, weak children! You mock men who dare to show compassion and loyalty to their brothers!'

'Pragmatism is the watchword of the Doom Eagles,' Thryn continued. 'We do not let matters of sentimentality cloud our vision.'

'You think fidelity is something to be dismissed, witch-kin?' Zurus advanced on him. 'Is your warp-touched heart so empty that you forget your bonds of brotherhood?'

'I have forgotten nothing,' Thryn replied. 'But some must bear the burden to voice the questions that no others can utter. Some must dare to speak the hard words that no brother wishes to hear!' He turned to face him, the psy-crystals flickering. 'This obligation is mine. I will see it to its end.'

Zurus's shoulders sagged. 'How much further must this go? You have looked into his mind - tell me, have you sensed the taint of Chaos in his thoughts?'

Thryn shook his head. 'I have not.'

'And the testing of his flesh, first the Talons and then the wind and ice. Did his body belie the touch of the Archenemy at any time?'

'It did not,' intoned the Librarian.

'Then how can you let this go on? Tarikus is not corrupted!'

Thryn nodded. 'I agree.' It was not the answer Zurus was expecting. Before he could speak again, the psyker continued. 'I agree that his mind and his body are sound. But it is not those that I seek to test, brother. It is his soul. That which is the most ephemeral, yet the most powerful element of a life.' Thryn sighed, and something of the bleak aspect of his face softened. 'We know the insidious ways of Chaos, the Emperor blight them. Tarikus may carry a seed of darkness within him and never know it. It has happened before. He may live out a long life, and then one day, at an appointed time, or at some word of command, be transformed into something horrific. All that, if the smallest sliver of warp-stigma lies buried in his aura.'

Zurus frowned. 'The only way to be sure is to kill him, is that what you mean? If you end him and he erupts into some hell beast, you are proven right. If he dies, then he was innocent and just, and goes to the Emperor's side.' He snorted. 'A poor choice for Tarikus on either account.'

'This matter cannot be brought to a close while doubt still exists,' insisted Thryn.

'Then you'll do it?' Zurus snapped. 'And not just the little-death this time, but a cold-blooded murder?'

'Lord Hearon has granted me latitude to do whatever I must to end this uncertainty. And I will end it, this day.' Thryn returned to the centre of the room and knelt once more.

Zurus felt the tingle on his skin of psy-power in the air, the near-storm sense of it growing by the second. 'What will you do?'

Thryn bowed his head. 'Go now, brother. You will know soon enough.'

He lingered at the threshold for a long moment, then stepped through and allowed the hatch to close behind him. Cogs worked and seals fell into place, and Zurus stood outside, staring at the strange hexagrammatric wards etched into the metal, wondering what final trial Tarikus was about to face.

A sound came to him, echoing down the stone corridor. It sounded like thunder, but it could just as easily have been the report of distant shellfire.

TARIKUS AWOKE, AND he was in hell.

He fell hard, the rough metal plating of the floor rising up to slam into his knees and arms. He groaned and coughed up a river of stinging bile and thick amnio-fluid. Black streaks of blood threaded the ejecta from his lips. The warrior felt strange; his body seemed wrong, the impulses from his fingertips somehow out of synchrony with the rest of his nerves. He tried to shake himself free of the sensation but it would not leave him. Tarikus's flesh hung on him like an ill-fitting suit of clothes.

He looked up and blinked, his eyes refusing to focus properly. Lights and shadows jumped around him, blurring into shapes that he could not define.

Something hove close and he perceived a hand reaching out to him, offering assistance.

'Here,' said a thick, resinous voice. 'To your feet. Come. There is much work to do.'

He took the grip, and felt peculiar talons where fingers should have been; but he was already rising, legs working, muscles tightening.

Light flashed, too slow to be storm-glow, the thunder-pulse with it too quick, too near. Gunfire? The sluggish thought trickled down through the layers of his awareness.

Tarikus jerked his hand away. 'Who are you? What is happening?'

Harsh laughter answered him. 'So many questions. Be still, warrior. All will be made clear.' One of the shadows came closer, looming large. 'Don't fight it, Tarikus. Let it happen.' He heard another low, callous chuckle. 'It will be less painful.'

There was heat at his back, burning and steady like the beating of a pitiless sun; and in the air about him, he perceived motes of dust falling in a slow torrent. He saw steel walls. Chains and broken glass. 'What is happening?' he shouted, but his words were lost in the blazing roar of a weapon. He knew that sound: a heavy bolter cannon on full automatic fire, impacts cutting into flesh and ceramite.

'You have done well,' he was told. 'Better than we could have expected. You opened the way for us.' The shadow-man came closer. 'Our perfect weapon.'

'What?' Tarikus raised his hands in self-defence. 'I do not understand—'

'Then look at me,' said the voice. 'And know the truth.'

The light chose that moment to come again, and in its hard-edged, unflinching glare Tarikus saw a thing that resembled an Astartes, but one made of flayed meat, broken bone and corroded iron. A face of gallows-pale flesh leered at him and twisted in amusement. Beneath it, on the figure's chest, was the design of a star with eight razor-tipped points.

'Traitor!' Tarikus shouted the word.

The corrupted warrior nodded. 'Yes, you are.'

He stumbled backwards, shaking his head. His skull felt heavy and leaden.

'No…'

'Your hands. Look at your hands.'

Tarikus could not help but glance downward. The meat of his hard, calloused fingers was gone, and in its place were arcs of bone that glistened like black oil.

'The change is already upon you. It's coming now. Let it happen.'

Ice filled his gut and Tarikus thrashed at the air, smashing aside a support frame, crashing back into the opened medicae tank where he had been healing. He tried to give a wordless shout of denial, but the sound would not form in his constricting throat. His muscles bunched and he shuddered, losing balance.

Tarikus could feel a wave of something terrible billowing up inside him, reordering the meat and blood of his body as it moved. He spat and acid flew from his lips, spattering the walls with tiny smoking pits where the droplets fell.

He tried to reject it, and failed.

He could hear battle beyond the doors of the chamber now, fast and lethal.

Thunder rumbled all around, echoing through the stone at his feet. The Eyrie was under attack.

The Traitor Marine took a step towards him. When it spoke again, there was almost concern in its words. 'The Primogenitor told me it would not be an easy transformation. But hold on, kinsman. You will be renewed in all but a moment.

And then you will join us fully.'

'I am not your kinsman!' Tarikus roared, and the words were ragged animal sounds torn from the throat of some monster, not from his lips, not from the mouth of a Doom Eagle. 'What have you done to me?'

Another chuckle. 'You did this to yourself, Tarikus. Don't you recall?' The room seemed to contract, the walls closing in on them both. 'On Dynikas. When you cast off your master. When you finally understood?'

'Understood… what?' All around him the stone of the medicae chamber flowed like wax into different shapes, and through the haze across his twitching vision the walls momentarily turned into planes of steel, vibrating with heat. The cell.

The chains and the walls and the cell. Did I never really leave? Have I always been there?

The Traitor cocked its head. 'You understood that you had been discarded.

Forgotten. That your corpse-god is ashes and lies. That you mean nothing to the men who tried to make you their slave.'

Tarikus stumbled away, shaking his head, denying every word. 'No!' He tried to launch himself towards the other warrior, but the sudden heat robbed him of every ounce of energy. In place of sweat, oily fluids seeped from his skin, draining his vitality with them.

'Don't you remember?' The Traitor gestured around, and Tarikus saw a distorted liquid mirror shimmer in the air. Upon it he saw himself in rags, kneeling before a towering figure in a coat made of human skin, a giant brass spider emerging from its back.

Fabius Bile.

'No…' he insisted. 'This is a trick! That did not happen! I would never break my oath!' Tarikus lurched back to his feet. 'I would not turn!'

'But you did,' said the voice. 'Because they hated you, forgot you.' The Traitor gestured and Tarikus saw a line of figures in tarnished silver armour standing high behind him. Their proportions were monstrous; they towered like Dreadnoughts, each one jeering and mocking him. They had faces he knew: Zurus and Thryn. At their shoulders: Korica, Mykilus and Petius. And above them all, as tall as a Titan, Aquila himself.

Tarikus reached out his mutating talon-hand and they shrank away; and then the worst of it. As one, all the Doom Eagles turned their backs on him, casting him aside.

Suddenly the room was tight and small about him, the space at the bottom of a pit that stretched up and away, walls too sheer to climb, light too far to reach.

'Poor Tarikus,' said the voice, soothing and unctuous. 'Is it any wonder you accepted the gift?'

Terror filled him at the words, but he could not stay silent. 'What gift?'

The Traitor opened its claw-hand and in it lay a feather, a small curl of plume alike to those that an eagle might leave behind in passing. It was ink-black, a colour so deep and strong that Tarikus immediately knew that to touch it would be poison to him.

No sooner had he laid eyes on the barb than his chest began to burn. Tarikus gasped and clawed at the wet strips of torn tunic shrouding his torso and ripped them away. His transformed talon hands caught the surface of his skin and great rents appeared in the meat of him. From the wounds he had made, no blood flowed; instead cascades of tiny black feathers issued out, spilling from his body. He roared and felt his throat filling with a swarming mass. Tarikus retched and spat a plug of wet, matted quills from his lips.

'Do you see now?' said the Traitor. 'A Chapter that rejected you, left you to perish in the cold, pitiless void. A cadre of false brothers who fled when their lives were in jeopardy. The lies you were told about fealty and honour, but all of it sand. Is it any wonder you were broken?' The other warrior leaned in. 'Is it any wonder you let us remake you in the Primogenitor's name?' He nodded. 'And now the last shroud is released from you, kinsman. Now you are free to be one of us… and our first act will be to grind this Ghostmountain to dust.'

Tarikus could not stop himself from trembling. The worst of it was not the visions, or the perhaps-memories, or the sense of his own body slipping away from him. No, the worst of it was that he could not be sure. The Traitor's words had the edge of truth to them.

How often in those long months in that cell had he lain in torment, one single question desperate on his lips. Why have I been forgotten? His every waking moment as an Adeptus Astartes had been in service of something greater than himself, and in return, in exchange for the surety of fate and death the Doom Eagles gave, Tarikus had the priceless gift of brotherhood. The certain knowledge of comradeship among his kindred, the knowing that he would never be lost, not so long as a single son of Gathis still drew breath. So why did they never come for me? Why did they count me dead and he done, never to speak my name again?

'Because it is a lie,' said the Traitor. 'And has ever been one.' He gestured around. 'We will never lie to you, Tarikus. You will always know the truth with us.' The hand extended out to him once more. 'Take it.'

The thunder outside and the flashes of blue-white light coursed all around him.

Tarikus looked up and saw the outstretched hand, the turncoat Astartes - and beyond, the shadows of the Doom Eagles.

They were judging him.

Time halted for Tarikus, and the questions that had bombarded him since he had returned to the Eyrie were echoing through his mind. The accusations welled up from within.

He could imagine a shade of himself - a weaker, broken Tarikus - who might have had the flaw of character to yield to the strain of his confinement on Dynikas. This ghost-Tarikus, this pale copy of him, made bitter by his abandonment, clawing in desperation for the one thing every Space Marine wanted… The bond of brotherhood. Without their comradeship, the Astartes were nothing. Everything they were was built upon that foundation. What horror it would be to lose that, to be cast adrift and counted as unkindred. A weakened soul, captured at the lowest moment, might be persuaded to bend the knee to a former foe for just a taste of that blessed bond once again. A fragile spirit, yes, who would willingly hide their new loyalty beneath the cloak of the old, and carry poison back to those who had deserted them. Poison and murder, all in the name of revenge.

Suddenly, events were moving again, and he was aware of the Traitor nodding.

'Yes. You see now, don't you?'

But that shade, that weakling who appeared in his thoughts… Whatever it was, it was not Tarikus, son of Gathis, scion of Aquila. He drew himself up and with a vicious shove, pushed the turncoat aside.

Tarikus glared up at the silent, condemning gazes of his Doom Eagle brethren, peering at the phantoms of their faces. 'I am not a heretic.' He spoke, and with each word that left his mouth, Tarikus felt his vitality returning to him. A sense of righteous power enveloped him, and with it the wrongness of his changed body bled away. Moment by moment, he began to feel correct. With every breath, he moved closer to the warrior he had always been - and with a surge of strength, Tarikus realised that he had not felt so certain of anything in years. Not since before he had been taken prisoner. 'Judge me if you will,' he shouted, 'I do not fear it! You will look inside my heart and see only fealty! I am Tarikus!'

The hazed faces of his former squad mates danced there in the wraith-light.

Korica: impulsive and brave. Mykilus: steadfast and strong. Petius: taciturn and measured. They did not turn from him. They had not forgotten him.

Behind him, the Traitor was getting to its feet, coming towards him with murder in its eyes. 'Fool—'

He silenced the enemy by grabbing his throat and tightening his grip until the Traitor could only make broken gurgles. Gunfire-thunder rumbled louder and louder in his ears and Tarikus bellowed to make himself heard. 'I am a Doom Eagle! My fidelity will never falter!' He threw his enemy to the ground. 'I did not break! I will never break!'

A great pressure, silent but deafening, pushed out from inside his thoughts, and all at once the warped walls around him exploded like glass beneath a hammer.

Tarikus swept around; he was intact, unchanged. Everything that had happened in the phantom room was gone, vanished like shafts of sunlight consumed by clouds. He stood before the open healing tank, then turned and found the Librarian Thryn coming back to his feet. The psyker was nursing an ugly bruise forming at his throat. He spat and eyed the other Astartes.

'You?' said Tarikus. He sniffed the air, scenting the greasy tang of spent mind-power. 'You cast a veil over me… All of it illusions and game-play.'

'Aye,' Thryn replied, rough-voiced. 'And you almost tore the breath from me in the process.'

Tarikus advanced towards the psyker, his hands contracting into fists. Anger burned in his eyes, and the question of Thryn being clad in armour and himself not didn't cross his thoughts. 'I should beat an apology from you, witch-kin.'

'You should be thanking me,' Thryn retorted. 'At last, I finally saw into you. Saw what you hid from us.'

'I hid nothing,' Tarikus spat.

Thryn shook his head. 'Don't lie to me, not now. You hid your fear, Tarikus. The black and terrible fear that came upon you in the darkest moments of your confinement, when just for a moment, you wondered what would happen if you weakened.' The Librarian gave a crooked, unlovely smile. 'How very human of you.'

Gradually, Tarikus's fists relaxed. 'I looked into the darkness, across the edge of the abyss,' he said slowly. 'And I turned away.'

Thryn nodded. 'Indeed you did. And now I have the answer I wanted.' He offered his hand to the other Doom Eagle. 'Your integrity is assured. You are returned to us, brother. In body, mind… and in soul.'

Tarikus shook his hand in the old fashion, palm to wrist. 'I never left,' he said.

'WHEN WILL THERE be an end to this?' grated Korica. He glared at Zurus, and the other warrior nodded slightly.

'I have no answer for you,' admitted the sergeant. He looked away, his gaze crossing the towering black marble fascias of the memorial towers, each reaching up and away towards the ornate ceiling far overhead. He saw something moving; a travel platform, dropping towards them.

Mykilus saw it too, and he pointed. 'Look mere.'

Petius took a tentative step towards the edge of the gantryway, then halted. Like all of them, he was unsure of what meaning lay behind the urgent summons that had brought them to the relical.

In the next moment, the platform had arrived and a figure in duty robes stepped off, pushing past them.

'Tarikus?' Zurus could not keep the amazement from his voice. He had truly believed that he would never see the errant Astartes again. Thryn was not known for his lenience in matters of judgement. Then his thoughts caught up with him and Zurus allowed himself a small smile. He had been right about his lost brother; suddenly, all the doubts he had harboured about this duty and his part in Tarikus's ordeal were swept away, and it was as if a great weight fell from his shoulders.

Korica extended his augmetic arm towards Tarikus, but the veteran pushed past him, not slowing. The other Doom Eagles followed Tarikus down the length of the gantryway until he halted before a particular memorial slab.

Zurus knew what would come next the instant before it happened. The veteran's fist shot out and punched through the bubble of glassaic at the end of the panel and then folded around the death-remnant inside.

He watched the other warrior draw out a blood-streaked hand, and in it, a battle-worn combat blade. Tarikus looked down at the knife, and then up at them for the first time. His steady, clear-eyed gaze crossed each one of them in turn, ending with Zurus. The veteran opened his mouth to speak - and then thought better of it. Instead, Tarikus acted.

With a slow, steady draw of blade point over stone, he etched a heavy line through his own name, erasing the record of his death. He reclaimed his life.

Mykilus was the first to speak. 'Welcome back, sir.' He bowed his head. 'If we had only known that the Red Corsairs had not killed you—'

'No.' Tarikus held up his hand. 'You will not speak of that again. And by my order, you will not carry any guilt over what happened.' He stepped forward and moved from brother to brother, tapping each on the shoulder in turn. 'I hold no malice. You did no wrong that day.'

Then he was looking at Zurus. The Doom Eagle sighed, and made a decision of his own. He reached beneath his robes and his hand returned with a fetter of black and silver links pooled in the palm; it was the honour-chain that signified his command of the battle squad. He offered it. 'This also belongs to you, I believe.'

Tarikus showed quiet surprise. 'The squad is yours, brother. You have made it so. These men are your men.'

Zurus shook his head. 'No. It has been my honour to lead them into battle in the name of the Emperor and Aquila, but I have never been their commander, not in the manner you were. I have only been… the caretaker of that post. You have seniority over me, the laurel and the honours. It is your right to reclaim your prior status.'

The veteran came closer, his brow furrowing. 'You are sure you wish to step down, Zurus? I know my brothers would not have followed you if you had not been worthy of it.' He nodded at the chain.

Zurus pressed the links into Tarikus's hand. 'I will not take that which by right is yours.' He stepped away. 'I will find another place in the Chapter.'

'You already have a place, sir,' said Korica. He glanced at Tarikus, and the veteran sergeant nodded.

'Aye,' said the other Doom Eagle. 'I have need of good men, who see clearly and fight well.' Tarikus held up the honour chain. 'I will accept this on condition that you remain in the squad as my second.'

Zurus thought on the offer, then nodded. 'That seems a fair bargain.'

Tarikus was silent for a long moment; then he wrapped the chain about the hilt of the knife and put it into his belt. 'Come, then, kinsmen. The enemy tasks me.'

He gestured up towards the distant roof, where glimmers of constant storm-light flickered. 'I have been dead long enough.'

Zurus followed his commander's gaze upward to where the rain fell, steady and ceaseless as the Emperor's wrath.