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on these uncharacteristically gloomy thoughts.
    She decided to ask another question and steer the conversation in a more upbeat direction, when a looming shadow fell over the pair of them and she turned to see the massive, slab-like form of First Captain Abaddon towering over her.
    As usual, his long hair was pulled up in its silver-sheathed topknot, the rest of his scalp shaved bare. The captain of the First Company of the Sons of Horus was dressed in simple sparring fatigues and carried a monstrous sword with a tooled edge.
    He glared disapprovingly at Mersadie.
    ‘First Captain Abaddon—’ she began, bowing her head, but he cut her off.
    ‘You bleed?’ said Abaddon and took Loken’s arm in his powerful grip, the sonorous tone of his voice only accentuating his massive bulk. ‘The sparring machine drew Astartes blood?’
    Loken glanced at the bulging muscle where the blade had cut across the black, double-headed eagle tattoo there. ‘Yes, Ezekyle, it was a long session and I was getting tired. It’s nothing.’
    Abaddon grunted and said, ‘You’re getting soft, Loken. Perhaps if you spent more time in the company of warriors than troublesome poets and inquisitive scriveners you’d be less inclined to such tiredness.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ agreed Loken, and Mersadie could sense the crackling tension between the two Astartes. Abaddon nodded curtly to Loken and gave her a last, barbed glance before turning away to the sparring cages, his sword buzzing into throaty life.
    Mersadie watched Loken’s eyes as they followed Abaddon, and saw something she never expected to see there – wariness.
    ‘What was all that about?’ she asked. ‘Did it have anything to do with what happened on Davin?’
    Loken shrugged. ‘I can’t say.’
    D AVIN . T HE MELANCHOLY ruins scattered throughout its deserts told of its once civilised culture, but the anarchy of Old Night had destroyed whatever society had once prospered many centuries before. Now Davin was a feral world swept by hot, arid winds and baking under the baleful red eye of a sun. It had been six decades since Loken had last set foot on Davin, though back then it had been known as Sixty-Three Eight, being the eighth world brought into compliance by the 63rd Expeditionary force.
    Compliance had not improved it much in his opinion.
    Its surface was hard, baked clay clumped with scrubby vegetation and forests of tall, powerfully scented trees. Habitation was limited to primitive townships along the fertile river valleys, though there were many nomadic tribes that made their lonely way across the mighty, serpent-infested deserts.
    Loken well remembered the battles they’d fought to bring this world into compliance, short sharp conflicts with the autochthonic warrior castes who made war upon one another, and whose internecine conflicts had almost wiped them out. Though outnumbered and hopelessly outclassed, they had fought with great courage, before offering their surrender after doing all that honour demanded.
    The Luna Wolves had been impressed by their courage and willingness to accept the new order of their society and the commander – not yet the Warmaster – had decreed that his warriors could learn much from these brave opponents.
    Though the tribesmen were separated from the human genome by millennia of isolation, and shared few physical traits with the settlers that came after the Astartes, Horus had allowed the feral tribesmen to remain, in light of their enthusiastic embracing of the Imperial way of life.
    Iterators and remembrancers had not yet become an official part of the Crusade fleets, but the civilians and scholars who hung on the coattails of the expeditionary forces moved amongst the populace and promulgated the glory and truth of the Imperium. They had been welcomed with open arms, thanks largely to the dutiful work undertaken by the chaplains of the XVII Legion, the Word Bearers, in the wake of the conquest.
    It had been a good war; won rapidly and, for