Helsreach

the last day.

A gathering of figures clusters by the

Grey Warrior.

Most wear the ochre uniforms of the Steel Legion. One of them, a man known to me, beckons me over.

I walk to him, and the crowd erupts into more cheers. It is the first time I have moved in almost an hour.

An hour of listening to tedious speeches transmitted from the gathered group, over to a vox-tower nearby that blares the words across the sector.

'Grimaldus, Reclusiarch of the Black Templars,' the vox-voice booms. More cheers as I draw close. The soldier that beckoned to me offers quiet greetings.

Major, or rather,

Colonel

Ryken has regained much of his face since I last saw him. Burn scars spread across much of the remaining skin, but over half of his features are dull-metalled augmetics, including significant reconstruction to his skull. He makes the sign of the aquila, and only one of his hands is his own. The other is a skeletal bionic, not yet sheathed in synthetic skin.

I return the salute. The vox-speech - the speaker is a member of General Kurov's staff I have never met before - drones on about my own heroism alongside the Steel Legion. As my name is shouted by thousands of humans, I raise my fist in salute to them all.

And all the while, I am thinking how my brothers died here.

Died for them.

'Did Adjutant Quintus Tyro survive?' I ask.

He nods, his ruined face trying to make a smile. 'Cyria made it.'

Good. I am pleased for him, and for her.

'Hello, sir,' another of the Legionnaires says. I glance behind Ryken, to a man several places down the line. My targeting reticule locks on him - onto his grinning face. He is unscarred, and despite his youth, has laugh lines at the corner of his eyes.

So. He's not dead, either.

This does not surprise me. Some men are born with luck in their blood.

I nod to him, and he walks over, seemingly as bored with proceedings as I am. The orator is declaring how I ''smote the blaspheming aliens as they dared defile the Temple's inner sanctum''. His words border on a sermon. He would have made a fine ecclesiarch, or a preacher in the Imperial Guard.

The ochre-clad soldier offers his hand for me to shake. I humour him by doing the same.

'Hello, hero,' he grins up at me.

'Greetings, Andrej.'

'I like your armour. It is much nicer now. Did you repaint it yourself, or is that the duty of slaves?' I cannot tell if this is a joke or not. 'Myself.'

'Good! Good. Perhaps you should salute me now, though, yes?' He taps his epaulettes, where a captain's badges now show, freshly issued and polished silver.

'I am not beholden to a Guard captain,' I tell him. 'But congratulations.'

'Yes, I know, I know. But I must be offering many thanks for you keeping your word and telling my captain of my deeds.'

'An oath is an oath.' I have no idea what to say to the little man. 'Your friend. Your love. Did you find her?'

I am no judge of human emotion, but I see his smile turn fragile and false. 'Yes,' he says. 'I did find her.'

I think of the last time I saw the little storm-trooper, standing over the dockmaster's bloody corpse, bayoneting an alien in the throat, only moments before the basilica fell.

I find myself curiously glad that he is alive, but expressing that notion is not something I can easily forge into words. He has no such difficulty.

'I am glad you made it,' he uses my own unspoken words. 'I heard you were very injured, yes?'

'Not enough to kill me.'

But so close. I quickly grew bored of the Apothecaries on board the

Crusader

telling me that it was a miracle I clawed my way from the rubble.

He laughs, but there is little joy in it. His eyes are like glass since he mentioned finding his friend.

'You are a very literal man, Reclusiarch. Some of us were in lazy moods that day. I waited for the digging crews, yes, I admit it. I did not have Astartes armour to push the rocks off myself and get back to fighting the very next day.'

'The reports I have heard indicated no one else survived the fall of the basilica,' I tell him.

He laughs. 'Yes, that would make for a wonderful story, no? The last black knight, the only survivor of the greatest battle in Helsreach. I apologise for surviving and breaking the flow of your legend, Reclusiarch. I promise most faithfully that I and the six or seven others will be very quiet and let you have all the thunder.'

He has made a joke. I recognise it, and try to think of something humorous with which to reply. Nothing surfaces in my mind.

'Were you not injured at all?'

He shrugs. 'I had a headache. But then it went away.'

This makes me smile.

'Did you meet the fat priest?' he asks. 'Did you know him?'

'

I

confess, I do not recall anyone by that name or description.'

'He was a good man. You would have liked him. Very brave. He did not die in the battle. He was with the civilians. But he died two weeks after, from a problem with his heart. Ayah, that is unfair,

I

think. To live through the end and die at the new beginning? Not so fair, I am thinking.'

There is a twisted poetry to that.

I would like to speak words that comfort him. I would like to tell him

I

admire his courage, and that his world will survive this war. I want to speak with the ease Artarion would have done, and thank this soldier for standing with us when so many others ran. He honoured us all in that moment, as did the dying dockmaster, the prioress, and every other soul that faded from life on the night only I survived.

But I say nothing. Further conversation is broken by people chanting my name. How alien it sounds, voiced by human throats.

The orator whips the crowd up, speaking - of course - of the relics. They want to see them, and that is why I am here. To display them.

I signal the cenobyte servitors forward. Augmetic servants, vat-grown by the Chapter's Apothecaries and augmented by Jurisian to haul the Temple's artefacts. None of the mindless wretches bear a name; just a relic that represents all I could do to ease my guilt at such a shameful defeat.

The crowd cheers again as the servitors move from the vulture shadow of my Thunderhawk, each of the three carrying one of the artefacts. The ragged scraps of the banner. The cracked stone pillar, topped by the shattered aquila. The sacred bronze globe, sloshing with its precious holy water.