To question is to doubt

— Popular Imperial maxim

Berganau and Lakond sat on the stone steps of the eyrie overlooking the bay and finished the last of the Drill Abbot's amasec. They had climbed the tower on their return to the schola. Now the two men drank in silence, passing the bottle between them. Beyond their perch, the bay echoed with the cries of birds and the ceaseless crash of waves against the cliffs below.

Berganau tipped his head back and swallowed. When he took the bottle from his lips, only a tiny amount remained. He offered it wordlessly to Lakond who shook his head. Berganau shrugged, drained the last of the priceless, burning liquid and grimaced.

He looked back at Lakond. The captain was gazing intently out to sea, though whether at the ruined husks in the harbour or something beyond that, Berganau could not say. He wondered if the captain was mourning the loss of his man, Sturm. He shifted his weight on the uncomfortable stone seat and sighed.

"Come on. Out with it." Lakond's eyes remained fixed somewhere on the horizon.

"What?"

"Whatever's on your mind. Stop fidgeting and just say it, man."

Berganau looked at the empty bottle in his hand, wishing there was a little amasec left. There was something he wanted to ask Lakond, but it was not something one Imperial officer should ask another. It was the sort of thing one only spoke about with one's most trusted friends. The dacquoit had a word for it: duerverníka. According to Sergeant Dorik, it meant 'person who I may speak with foolishly' — a confidante, someone who you drank with late at night and shared your innermost thoughts, someone who would forgive you for voicing doubts in such unguarded hours, which would otherwise feel unworthy or even heretical.

Berganau had no such friend in the regiment. And he was pretty sure he would be dead soon anyway. He glanced at Lakond. The little man was motionless, eyes still fixed on something beyond the bay that perhaps only he could see.

"My father is an administrative clerk in the shipping yards at Pragnau, the capital in the northern peninsula," Berganau said hesitantly. "His father did the same job at the same desk, as his father did before that. I was supposed to follow them into the same role — after I'd completed my two years' mandatory in the PDF, before the war."

Lakond gave no sign he'd heard anything Berganau had just said.

Berganau shifted position again, still unable to find a comfortable berth. He gave a chuckle which was meant to be light-hearted, only to his own ears, it sounded horribly forced. "Look at me, now — a major in charge of a regiment, about to die in the service of the Emperor, fighting heretics, fighting…" He trailed off.

Lakond half-turned to face Berganau. One of his ruined eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly for amoment, then he turned his attention back to the sea. "You're an educated man, Tomast," he said eventually. "You must know your catechism — the part about the God-Emperor and his holy primarchs."

Berganau swallowed. "Of course." He recited from memory. "The Emperor gave mankind his nine sons who, in turn, begat his legions, the angels of death and set them to watch over humanity as their protectors."

Lakond's attention did not waver from the horizon as he nodded. "Quite so. And every space marine chapter today still claims this lineage. They are, quite literally, descended from Him on Terra." He gave a sad smile. "So, now you're wondering to yourself, how can it possibly be that we are fighting them here on Grolla?"

Berganau let out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding. Lakond had given voice to the precise question that had plagued him, lurking, wordless and unformed in his mind these past months. He hadn't once dared to articulate it, not even to himself before now. To even consider the question, he felt certain, was the worst kind of heresy.

Lakond barked a brief laugh, as empty and humourless a sound as it was possible to imagine. "Every soldier of the Imperium who finds themselves fighting the traitors eventually asks themselves that question. We all try to avoid it, but how can we — when the existence of traitor astartes is staring us in the face?"

"Have you —?" Beganau felt a sudden sense of dismay. What madness had possessed him to bring this subject up with Lakond, to be so indiscreet?

But — Throne damn it — he had to know.

Lakond gestured at his scarred and puckered features. "I got these scars at the battle of Leigora Primaris. I led a hundred rangers against a band of traitor astartes. We lost. Jens and I were the only survivors from the entire company. We would have died too, had it not been for the Preceptors space marine chapter making planetfall in the dying stages of the battle.

"Leigora was already lost. The Preceptors' mission was not to retake the planet, but to salvage as many Imperial troops and as much materiel as possible for the Indomitus Crusade. When they found us, neither Jens nor I fitted their definition of a salvageable resource. But the fact that our company had managed to kill two of the traitors seemed to intrigue them." He shrugged. "We were useless to the crusade, so they took us back to their fortress monastery."

He turned his head and Berganau suppressed a shudder as sunlight illuminated the network of scars covering one side of Lakond's face. The little man gave him a thin smile. "You wouldn't believe it looking at me today, but I was in a pretty bad state. I'd lost an arm, a leg, an eye, and several internal organs. Third degree burns over much of what remained. I barely had an unshattered bone in my body."

Berganau tried to draw a mental picture from Lakond's litany of wounds, but his mind rebelled against the image. It reminded him too much of Commissar Sladek.

Lakond sighed. "I was close to going insane during my months of convalesence. At first I was bed-ridden, hooked up to vile machinery that I needed to live, unable to get up, feed or bathe myself. Fortunately, one of the space marines who'd relieved us on Leigora — a 'tutor sergeant' named Astameus — began to take an interest in me. He visited my bedside most days. Seeing that I was bored out of my mind, he began to tell me stories about the chapter's greatest battles and all the honours that it had won. Once he'd exhausted their own history, he told me about other campaigns, military history from the earliest days of the Imperium. The astartes remember much that we've forgotten, and with far more respect for the truth than the fanciful histories of the Ecclesiarchy. I'm from a military family. I've studied accounts of war all my life. So, at first, the things Astameus taught me were fascinating: ancient campaigns and triumphs of lost space marine chapters and forgotten Astra Militarum regiments. Yet, by the time he'd finished telling me all he thought I should know, I truly wished he'd never begun."

Lakond fell silent and resumed gazing into the distance. Berganau waited, not daring to speak.

When the captain's twisted features turned back to Berganau, his eyes were twin lasbeams boring into the major's soul. "Knowledge is a terrible thing, Berganau." Lakond's voice was no more than a low croak. "So, if there were an explanation — an answer to why horrors such as traitor astartes exist, and how they came be — would you really want to know it?"

Berganau was getting used to the little man's ruined features, but still he flinched at the unexpected, maniacal intensity in Lakond's glare. Berganau's eyes refused to meet the captain's. Lakond's eyes were twin points of fury, burning cold with unnatural blue flame. Gazing into them was like witnessing a silent scream without end.

The major lowered his head. Did he truly still want to know? "No," he whispered.

Though, even as he said it, Berganau knew it was a lie.