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More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

• GAUNT’S GHOSTS •
Dan Abnett

THE FOUNDING
Book 1: FIRST AND ONLY
Book 2: GHOSTMAKER
Book 3: NECROPOLIS

THE SAINT
Book 4: HONOUR GUARD
Book 5: THE GUNS OF TANITH
Book 6: STRAIGHT SILVER
Book 7: SABBAT MARTYR

THE LOST
Book 8: TRAITOR GENERAL
Book 9: HIS LAST COMMAND
Book 10: THE ARMOUR OF CONTEMPT
Book 11: ONLY IN DEATH

THE VICTORY
Book 12: BLOOD PACT
Book 13: SALVATION’S REACH
Book 14: THE WARMASTER
Book 15: ANARCH

More tales from the Sabbat Worlds

SABBAT CRUSADE
Edited by Dan Abnett

SABBAT WORLDS
Edited by Dan Abnett

DOUBLE EAGLE
Dan Abnett

TITANICUS
Dan Abnett

BROTHERS OF THE SNAKE
Dan Abnett

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Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

One: The King of the Knives

Two: Other Business

Three: The Effects of the Dead

Four: Vapourial Quarter

Five: Leaving Sadimay

Six: Protection

Seven: Arrivals

Eight: Deployment

Nine: Bad Shadow

Ten: Woe

Eleven: Contact

Twelve: Qimurah

Thirteen: Up Into the Light

Fourteen: Truth and Other Lies

Fifteen: Into Fire

Sixteen: Close Quarters

Seventeen: Flesh is Weak

Eighteen: In the Slow Hours

Nineteen: Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others

Twenty: Blood for Blood

Twenty-One: Many, Many are the Dead

Twenty-Two: The Victory

Epilogues: One Week Later

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dark Imperium: Plague War’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.

Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

With thanks to Lord Militant Nick Kyme, versenginseer Matt Farrer, and, always, Nik Vincent-Abnett for noticing when something’s awry.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Rob Leahy, and to everyone who has marched with the Tanith Ghosts since the very beginning.

To the high-most God, who is of the throne above, and to whom falls mastery of All Things, the mind, the blood and the tech ever after, we dedicate our service, and trust that, from him, and from the priests who serve at the Eight corners of his throne, we may inherit the knowledge of the Use of Fire, and the Forging of Devices, and the Making of All Things, so that, from the hands of our brotherhood, even to the last regeneration, we shall fashion the Secret Instruments and Weapons that will assure his eminence hereafter and provide for his Eternal Victory.

– Dedication scripture common to the lay-tech dynastic
orders of Urdesh Forge World; also a recitation found,
in variation, in a number of non-aligned, non-Imperial,
and xenos cultures in the Sanguinary Worlds

‘In the opening months of 792.M41, the thirty-seventh year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, Warmaster Macaroth’s prosecution of the Anarch Sek, focusing on the contested forge world of Urdesh, reached a critical pass. The Imperial victory at Ghereppan, led by Saint Sabbat herself, had broken the Archenemy’s main strength and exposed the callow ruthlessness of his intended strategy – to behead the Imperial high command even if it meant sacrificing the precious forge world. Sek’s decapitation strike at Eltath had been repulsed, and many tacticians believed that a tide had turned. The Anarch was spent, and the crusade force, now focused under Macaroth’s chosen Lord Executor, Ibram Gaunt, would deliver the Urdeshi theatre in a matter of months, if not weeks. After that, the Archenemy Archon Gaur would be alone. At last, a credible end-point to the crusade seemed within reach.

‘But the war on Urdesh was not done, nor was the Anarch as disarmed as many supposed. Then began the bloodiest and most astonishing period of the campaign thus far, a sequence of events that many history texts have reported with the utmost credulity. Whatever the fine truth of it, it is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the entire sector hung in the balance, to be determined by just a handful of the Astra Militarum. Failure at Urdesh during those few, bleak weeks would end the crusade, wipe out thirty-seven years of Imperial gains in the Sabbat Worlds, and hand the victory to the enemy of mankind…’

– From A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

ONE: THE KING OF THE KNIVES

Under the watchful glare of mosaic saints, the floor was a lake of blood.

The saints were ancient and Imperial, and their names were mostly forgotten. Tesserae were missing in places, making their shapes ill-defined, their features indistinct, their frozen, pious gestures vague. But their eyes remained, weary eyes that had seen long histories pass, with all the blood and loss that histories claim as their price.

Still, they seemed appalled. The eyes of some were wide, in astonishment or horror; in others, they were half-closed in denial. Some looked away entirely, as if it was too much to bear, diverting their gaze to the distance, perhaps to some golden light of promise that might appear on a far horizon and spare them from witnessing more atrocity.

The blood was shin-deep. It had been dammed inside the great chamber’s floor by the short flights of ouslite steps that rose to each entry. It was bright, like a glossy red mirror, rippled by the movement in the room, glinting in the torchlight. It had frothed and clotted into curds around the piled bodies. Half-submerged, soaked in blood, they seemed like tumbled island outcrops rising from a red sea, or moulded plastek forms lifting from run-off liquid composite on a manufacturing rack.

The hot stink of it was unbearable.

The screams were worse.

Damogaur Olort oversaw the work, hands behind his back, barking orders to his sonpack. Sons of Sek brought the captives in one by one. Some struggled and fought, shrieking and spitting obscenities. Others came placidly, stunned by the fate that was overwhelming them. Each of the Sons had made more than one visit to the chamber, and their ochre battle gear was dappled with gore. From the very sight of them, any prisoner brought up from the pens knew what awaited them.

Even when they fought and cursed, and had to be beaten and dragged, the sight and smell of the chamber silenced them. Some fell mute, as if dazed. Others wept. A few prayed.

The chamber was the inner precinct of the Basilica of Kiodrus on Sadimay Island. A holy place. That it had been transmuted into a hell was too much for most of the prisoners to bear.

Olort studied the next captive as he was brought in. The man stumbled, splashing through the blood, as though led to a baptismal pool against his will.

‘Da khen tsa,’ Olort said. Hold him.

The Sons, big brutes, their faces covered by glowing optic units and the human-hide leatherwork that stifled their mouths, obeyed, dragging the man upright. Olort approached, noting the insignia and unit marks of the captive, the torn and filthy state of his uniform. The man flinched as Olort lifted his dog tags to get his name. Kellermane. There was a paper tag pinned to the left breast of the man’s tunic. It read ‘Captured near the Tulkar Batteries,’ in handwritten Sanguinary block-script.

Olort saw a tear running from the man’s eye, and wiped it away with his fingertip. The almost tender gesture left a smudge of blood on the man’s cheek.

Kellermane. Artillery officer. Captain. Helixid.

‘Kell-er-mane,’ Olort said, switching to the clumsy language of the foe, of which he had some small measure. ‘An offer. Renounce your god. Assent now, pledge fellowship to He whose voice drowns out all others, and keep your life.’

The captive swallowed hard, but didn’t reply. He stared as if he didn’t understand.

Olort tried to look encouraging. He had unclasped his leather mouth guard so that the captives could see and appreciate the honesty of his smile.

‘Cap-tain Kell-er-mane,’ he said. ‘Repudiate, and pledge. Thus, life is yours.’

Kellermane mumbled something. Olort leant in to hear.

‘Join you?’ Kellermane asked in a tiny voice.

‘Yes.’

‘A-and you won’t kill me?’

Olort looked solemn, and nodded.

‘Th-then I swear,’ stammered the captive. ‘Yes. Please. Yes. I w-will s-serve your Anarch…’

Olort smiled and stepped back, the blood pool swirling around his boots.

‘Vahooth ter tsa,’ said Olort. Bless him.

One of the Sons took out his ritual blade, the hooked skzerret of the Sanguinary Worlds, and opened the captive from throat to sternum with one downward slash. The man convulsed, useless noises of dismay and loss coming from his mouth, and collapsed. Arterial spray hit the temple wall and jetted across the faces of disgusted saints.

The Sons let the body fall.

How simply they fold, Olort thought, when faced with something so brief as death. Where is their trumpeted mettle? He whose voice drowns out all others has no use for cowards.

Olort resumed his place, hands behind his back.

‘Kyeth,’ he said. Next.

The Sons waded back across the chamber and left. Two more entered, a sirdar and a packson flanking another captive.

This one didn’t look promising to Olort. His black hair was matted with blood and dirt, and he evidently carried several minor injuries. But at least he walked unaided. The Sons didn’t have to drag him or frog-march him.

Olort approached, noting how the prisoner refused to make eye contact. There were no rank pins or regimental patches on the man’s torn black fatigues, and the paper label was missing.

Olort glanced at the sirdar.

‘Khin voi trafa?’ Where is his label?

The sirdar shrugged apologetically.

‘Let’he het?’ Olort asked. Circumstances?

‘Tyeh tor Tulkar, damogaur magir,’ the sirdar replied, and continued to explain that the captive had been taken alive after fierce fighting in the boat-docks near the Batteries. He had fought, the sirdar said, like a cornered ursid.

Interesting after all, thought Olort. A man of courage. He reached for the captive’s dog-tags. The captive did not flinch.

Mkoll. Recon. Sergeant. Tanith First.

‘Mah-koll,’ Olort said, in the foe’s ugly tongue again. ‘An offer. I make this now. Renounce your god. Pledge fellowship to He whose voice drowns out all others, and keep your life.’

The captive did not reply.

‘Repudiate and pledge,’ said Olort. ‘Do you understand?’

The captive remained silent.

Olort considered things for a moment. The man was evidently strong. He had borne a great deal. He had not broken. This was the mettle that the Sons watched for. He whose voice drowns out all others had no place for cowards.

But some could be too brave. This man stank of a silent defiance that would not submit and could not be broken. That was the way of things. Most were too weak. Some were too strong.

Olort glanced at the sirdar, who already knew what was coming and was unfastening his skzerret.

‘Vahooth ter tsa,’ Olort instructed.

The blade flashed up. Olort abruptly stopped the sirdar’s hand.

He had noticed something.

The captive had an insignia pin after all. A small dark badge fixed to his torn collar. It had been blackened to dull its gleam, which is why Olort hadn’t spotted it at first.

He unfixed it. A skull, with a straight dagger placed vertically behind it.

‘Mortekoi,’ he said. Ghost.

‘Magir?’ the sirdar asked, blade poised.

‘Ger shet khet artar, Sek enkaya sar vahakan,’ said Olort. This is one of the special ones, the ones He whose voice drowns out all others has told us will lead the way to the Victory.

Olort looked at the pin again, then slipped it into his tunic pocket.

‘Voi het tasporoi dar,’ he ordered. Make him ready for transport.

The sirdar nodded and sheathed his blade.

Olort looked at the captive.

‘Mah-koll,’ he said, with a soft smile. ‘Ver voi… you are a ghost, kha? A ghost? Mortekoi, kha?’

The captive looked directly at him.

‘Nen mortekoi,’ he said. ‘Ger tar Mortek.’

Olort jerked backwards. The sirdar and the Son started in surprise, and looked at the damogaur, bewildered. The Imperial had just used their language fluently. I am no ghost. I am death.

Mkoll lashed out with his right hand. The brass hook-pin that had once fastened his missing label had been straightened and concealed in his palm. He punched it into the packson’s neck just below the ear.

The Son reeled away, yelping and clawing at his neck. Mkoll was already turning on the sirdar. He grabbed the sirdar’s right wrist, snapped his arm straight, and twisted, forcing the officer over in a helpless, painful stoop. Mkoll brought his knee up into the officer’s bowed face.

The sirdar dropped to his knees, lifting a spray of blood. Mkoll maintained the arm lock, reached over the officer’s hunched back, and yanked out his skzerret.

He pivoted, locking the arm in a tighter twist with his left hand, meeting the charging Son with his right. The packson still had the pin jutting out of his neck. The ritual blade sliced through the Son’s throat. He staggered backwards, blood jetting between his clamping hands, and fell sideways, lifting waves that churned the surface of the blood pool.

Olort lunged at Mkoll. Mkoll kicked him in the gut and folded him up. Everything was slick and sticky with blood. The kneeling sirdar managed to wrench his wrist out of the armlock.

He tried to tackle Mkoll. Mkoll blocked him with a forearm, grabbed him just below the left elbow, and forced him to turn with another twist. The sirdar barked in pain. He was rotated. Mkoll forced the trapped left arm up like the lever of a pump, and punched the skzerret hilt-deep in the sirdar’s armpit.

Mkoll wrenched the blade out, and the sirdar dropped on his face in a violent splash. Olort was trying to back up, trying to rise, trying to breathe. He floundered in the blood pool.

He pulled out his sidearm, but Mkoll kicked it away. Mkoll grabbed him by the front of his soaked tunic, dragged him to his feet and slammed him back against the mosaic wall. He put the skzerret to the damogaur’s throat.

The saints watched, eyes wide.

No one was coming. The Sons in the anteroom outside were used to cries of pain and dismay echoing from the chamber.

‘What did you mean… special ones?’ Mkoll hissed.

‘Voi shet–’

‘My language!’ Mkoll whispered. ‘I know you have some. Why are we marked out by your Anarch?’

‘Khet nen–’ Olort gurgled.

Mkoll pinned him by the throat with his left forearm, and used the edge of the ritual knife to cut open the seam of the damogaur’s tunic pocket. He fished out the Tanith pin and held it up for Olort to see.

‘Why does this matter?’ he growled.

‘Y-you are the ones,’ Olort gasped. ‘He whose voice drowns out all others has identified this. You are enkil vahakan. You–’

‘Those who hold the key of victory.’

‘Kha! Kha! Yes!’

‘So he fears us?’

Olort shook his head.

‘Nen. He will take the key from you. For the woe is already within you.’

‘Woe?’

‘The Herit ver Tenebal Mor!’

‘The bad shadow? The Heritor’s bad shadow?’

‘Yes. It was cast upon you a long age ago, mortekoi.’

Mkoll glared into the damogaur’s eyes. He relaxed his grip.

‘Next question,’ he whispered. ‘How do we get out of here?’

TWO: OTHER BUSINESS

‘Enough,’ said the First Lord Executor.

More than forty people were present in the chamber, and all of them had been talking. At his word, most of them stopped: all the regimental commanders, tacticians, adepts and advisors at least. Only the lords general and militant kept going, because they were used to being the senior figures in any room.

As quiet descended, even they trailed off. Someone coughed, uncomfortably.

‘It seems there’s been a misunderstanding,’ said Lord Executor Ibram Gaunt quietly. He sat at the head of the table, the area in front of him stacked with data-slates, folders and strap-bound blocks of Munitorum forms. He was studying one of the data-slates. His long, lean face carried no expression. ‘This isn’t a discussion. Those are orders.’

Gaunt looked at them. Everyone at the table, even the most senior lords, winced. There was still no expression on Gaunt’s face. But no one liked to be fixed by the fierce and cold gaze of his artificial eyes.

‘Go and execute them,’ he said.

Chairs scraped across the etched black stones of the floor. Staff members rose to their feet, and gathered their papers. There was some quick nodding, a few salutes. Murmuring, the personnel left the Collegia Bellum Urdeshi.

Only Adjutant Beltayn remained, perched on a chair by the wall. He clutched data-slates in his lap, and a portable field-vox sat in its canvas carrier at his feet.

‘Me too, sir?’ he asked.

‘Stay,’ said Gaunt.

The four Tempestus Scions assigned to him as body-men stayed too. They closed the hall doors after the departing officers, and took up their stations, silent and rigid, hellguns locked across their broad chests. There was no point dismissing them. They went wherever Gaunt went.

Gaunt had come to consider them as furniture, the dressing of any room he occupied. Sancto and his men were humourless, sullen and unyielding, but that was the product of indoctrinated loyalty, and such loyalty ensured confidence and discretion. Gaunt had been First Lord Executor for little more than three days, but in that time he had learned many things about what his life would be like from now on, and one of those things was that the Scions were simply bodyguard drones. However annoying their constant presence, he could speak freely around them.

Gaunt sat back and steepled his fingers. He could hear the distant crackle of the void shields surrounding the Urdeshic Palace and, more distant, the moan of raid sirens echoing across the city of Eltath. Occasionally, a burst of klaxon welled up from the palace beneath him. A recurring fault, he had been told.

The air in the Collegia smelled of stale cigar smoke and hot wax. The many candles flickered, shimmering the more constant light of the hovering lumen globes.

‘What’s done?’ Gaunt asked.

Beltayn rose to his feet, and consulted one of his slates.

‘Called in Militarum reinforcement to Eltath, Zarakppan, Orppus and Azzana. Despatched Lords Kelso and Bulledin to secure the Zarakppan front. Instructed Lord Grizmund to consolidate the south-west line of the Dynastic Claves. Sent Lord Humel to coordinate the liberation of Ghereppan. Brought the war-engine legions up to the ninth parallel. Asked Lord Van Voytz to prepare for the arrival of the Saint–’

Gaunt watched his adjutant read down the list. There was no sign of it ending in the near future.

He raised his hand.

‘That was sort of rhetorical,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ said Beltayn. He lowered the slate. ‘Not clear from context, sir.’

‘My apologies,’ said Gaunt. ‘I was looking for concision. Your answer could have simply been “everything on the day list”, Bel.’

‘Noted, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘Except–’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s not everything on the day list. Generals Urienz and Tzara have both requested audience, the Munitorum has a list of queries regarding resupply quotas, an inquisitor called… umm…’ He checked the slate. ‘…Laksheema, Inquisitor Laksheema, has asked for urgent attention–’

‘Concerning?’

‘Unstated. Above my pay grade, sir. There’s also, of course, the other regimental business you asked me to note–’

‘Ah, that,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes, and also the matter of your staff personnel selection.’

Gaunt sighed.

‘I just need good people,’ he said. ‘Tactical. Communication. Administration. Can’t they be assigned?’

‘I think the feeling is you should appoint them, sir,’ replied Beltayn.

Which meant interviews, evaluations, isometrics. Gaunt sighed again.

‘This is the Astra Militarum,’ he said. ‘People are supposed do what they’re ordered to do. It’s not a personality contest.’

‘There’s a certain… prestige involved, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘Appointment to the private office of the Lord Executor. It carries… significance. You’re the chosen instrument of the warmaster…’

‘I am,’ said Gaunt. He rose to his feet. ‘I set the rules now. Rule one. People follow orders. I don’t care if it’s front line grunts or lofty staff level Astra Militarum. Do as you’re told. I need a good tacticae core.’

‘Biota seemed willing, sir,’ said Beltayn.

‘Well, he’s very capable. But he’s been Van Voytz’s man since forever.’

‘I think Tactician Biota is eager to distance himself from the lord general since… since the lord general’s disgrace.’

‘Van Voytz is not disgraced.’

‘Well, you know what I mean, sir.’

‘Tell Biota he’s got the job. Tell him to hand pick three… no, two advisors he deems capable.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Tell Urienz and Tzara I’ll see them in an hour.’

‘And this inquisitor?’ asked Beltayn.

‘The inquisitor can go through channels and make the nature of the matter clear. Then I’ll assign time.’

‘Yes, sir. Uhm, I expect you’ll want a staff adjutant assigned too. I mean, I’m happy to fill in for now–’

Gaunt looked at him.

‘You’re my adjutant.’

Beltayn pursed his lips. ‘I’m a company level vox-officer, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m not–’ he gestured at the hall around him, as if the grandeur of it somehow made his point for him.

‘You’re my adjutant,’ Gaunt repeated.

‘Yes, but you’ll be transferring me back to First Company soon,’ said Beltayn. ‘I’m a line trooper. Lord Grizmund did advise about–’

Gaunt looked at Beltayn sharply. He was well aware of the off-the-record conversation he’d had with Grizmund a few hours earlier.

‘You’re not Tanith any more, Ibram,’ Grizmund had said with a sad smile. ‘Your line days are over. Oh, the Tanith will remain in your purview, but the scale has changed.’

‘You remain the commander of the Narmenians,’ Gaunt had replied.

Grizmund had nodded. ‘Yes, but that’s fifteen armoured and eighteen infantry regiments. Brigade level. Backbone of my divisional assets numbering seventy thousand men. I don’t ride a tank any more. Nor do you personally command a little recon scout force. Put someone else in the top spot, form up division assets – in your position, you can have a free choice – and put your Ghosts somewhere in the midst of them. They’ll still be yours, but they’re a small part of a much bigger picture. Regimental business is no longer your business, Ibram. Make the break. No sentiment. And make it fast. That’s my honest advice. Take it from me, it’s heartbreaking otherwise. All those years of toil together then you elevate above them. Make the break, and make it fast and clean.’

‘Something awry, sir?’ Beltayn asked.

Gaunt hesitated. He wanted to say it was too much, to confide in his adjutant that there was now so much to consider. The constant dataflow, the push-back from the command staff, the clashing personalities…

But that was an unfair burden to drop on Beltayn. ‘Above his pay grade’, wasn’t that how Beltayn had put it? Gaunt was another breed of creature now.

Rather than reply, he waved his hand at the piles of slates and documents.

‘A lot to process,’ he said.

‘And they don’t listen,’ said Beltayn.

‘Who?’ asked Gaunt.

‘The lords,’ said Beltayn. He looked reluctant to say any more, but then plunged on anyway. ‘It’ll take them a while to get used to the fact you’re above them now. Leap-frogged them all. In my opinion. Just take them a while to get used to taking orders from you.’

‘How long did it take you, Bel?’

Beltayn smiled. ‘I was a common-as-feth slog trooper, sir. I did as I was told right off the bat because otherwise you’d, you know, shoot me and everything.’

Beltayn looked over at the stacked documents.

‘As for that,’ he said. ‘Triage.’

‘Triage? Meaning?’

‘Permission to speak candidly, my lord?’

‘Always.’

‘Most of that, it’s just noise,’ said Beltayn. ‘I’m a field adj, a vox-officer. How do you think I kept my eye on the actual vitals in the thick of it? When it was all going off, and the artillery was coming in, and there was fething las shrieking hither and yon? How did I keep it neat and get you the stuff you needed, no extraneous crap?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Focus. Triage. Data triage. Most of that stuff is only wildfire las whipping around you. Screen it out. Filter it down. Or find someone who can do that for you. Always worked for me.’

‘You ignored things?’

Beltayn shrugged. ‘Only the stuff that didn’t matter, sir.’

‘I’m almost glad I didn’t know this before now.’

‘You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

Gaunt smiled. ‘Judgement call, then?’

‘Always. Works on the ground. Should work for you. I mean, your judgement is what got you that high and mighty rank, right?’

Gaunt nodded. His smile faded.

‘I’ve got ten minutes. I’ll handle that other business now.’

‘The regimental business, sir?’

‘The regimental business,’ said Gaunt.

He was learning things, learning them fast as part of his new role. One was that he could walk and read at the same time.

The Scions flanked him at all times, two in front, two behind. If he stayed aware of the heels of the men in front of him, Gaunt could speed-read data-slates as he strode along, confident that Sancto and his men would steer him around corners, avoid obstacles, and open doors without him even having to look up.

He reviewed the slate again. Disposition reports on the Tanith First, laid out in simple unfussy terms. The main strength of the regiment, under Rawne, was still down at the Tulkar Batteries in the Millgate Quarter, following the brutal repulse of the enemy push three days before. Two companies – V and E – nominally under the command of Captain Daur were billeted in the palace itself, along with the retinue.

For nearly four days, he hadn’t been able to find time to go and see either element in person, not even the section secure in the palace with him.

And just four days before, Ibram Gaunt would not have allowed such an oversight to happen. He’d been colonel-commissar then, and his men had been his only priority.

How things changed. How perspective shifted. Maybe Grizmund had been right. He’d had no reason to lie. Make the break and make it fast. No sentiment. Otherwise it’s heartbreaking.

The trouble was, it was heartbreaking.

As a soldier rose through the ranks of the Imperium, he was obliged to leave many things behind. Gaunt knew that. He’d walked away from the Hyrkans after Balhaut. He wondered if he could ever do the same to the Ghosts.

But it wasn’t the officer in him responding to these things, it was the human being. It was personal, it was sentiment. The feelings made him doubt his suitability for the rank he now held, and he had hidden them from other lords militant for fear of their scorn.

Just a few lines on a report, and they had cut him through. Line items that mattered to him as a man, not as a soldier.

At the Tulkar Batteries, there had been significant losses. He’d reviewed the casualty lists sadly, wearily. It had always been a painful task.

One thing had stood out. Sergeant Mkoll, MIA. Presumed dead. Mkoll, chief of scouts, had always been core to the Ghosts, one of the most able soldiers.

And a good friend.

Gaunt couldn’t believe that Mkoll had finally gone.

Then there was the report, filed by Commissar Fazekiel, of an incident during the evacuation of V and E companies from the Low Keen billet. It made so little sense. Three Ghosts dead, one of them Eszrah ap Niht. Another miserable personal loss.

Gaunt wanted an explanation. The three had died during an incident involving his son.

Except Felyx Chass was, apparently, no longer his son.

And that was the hardest thing of all to understand.

Captain Daur was waiting for him in the anteroom of the private quarters assigned to him. He stood as Gaunt entered with his Scion honour guard, set aside the book he had been reading, and snapped smartly to attention.

Sancto and his men looked at him dubiously.

‘Wait outside,’ Gaunt said. The Scions withdrew. He could feel their reluctance.

‘At ease, Daur,’ Gaunt said.

‘My first opportunity to congratulate you, my lord,’ said Daur.

‘Thank you,’ Gaunt replied. ‘My first opportunity to attend to any regimental matters. My apologies. You’ve been holding the fort, I trust?’

‘Both companies and the retinue are housed in the undercroft, lord,’ said Daur. ‘There are the usual run of issues to deal with. I have them in hand, though Major Baskevyl is very keen to speak to you directly.’

‘About?’

‘Major Kolea, lord. Detained by the Intelligence Service in regards to the assets recovered at the Reach.’

‘I’d heard something about that. I have a hunch that explains why the ordos are sniffing around too. Tell Baskevyl to come up and I’ll get to him as quickly as I can.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘I need to deal with this first,’ Gaunt said. ‘It’s overdue.’

‘Of course. She’s in there,’ Daur said, gesturing to the inner door.

‘An account, please,’ said Gaunt.

‘I wasn’t present,’ said Daur. ‘Blenner and Meryn were the officers of record at the time. Fazekiel is in charge of the investigation.’

‘And I’m sure she’ll be thorough. A summary, please.’

‘Gendler attacked Felyx in the shower blocks at Low Keen,’ said Daur. ‘The piece of shit… Excuse me, sir. It seems he believed Felyx has access to private funds, and wanted a slice. Jakub Wilder was in on it too. Never liked him either. Too much in the shadow of his war-hero brother… which, by the by, will give you problems as far as the Belladon are concerned. That’s two Wilders deceased under your–’

‘I’m aware, Ban.’

Ban Daur studied his face, frowned slightly, then continued.

‘Gendler attacked Felyx,’ he said. ‘Bungled it. Ezra discovered them, killed Gendler. Wilder killed Ezra. Meryn and Blenner found this total fething lunacy in progress. Witnessed it, for the most part. Blenner executed Wilder on the spot.’

‘And Felyx?’

‘Is your daughter. Merity Chass. She’d been disguising her gender.’

‘Why?’

Daur shrugged. ‘The son of the great hero of Vervunhive stands to advance faster than any daughter? I don’t know, to be honest. Verghast was always damned patriarchal. There’s an issue of honour here, primogeniture, succession. Shame.’

‘Shame?’

‘Take your pick,’ said Daur.

‘She’s in there?’ Gaunt asked.

Daur nodded. ‘You haven’t asked how she is,’ Daur said.

‘I’m going to find out, Ban,’ replied Gaunt.

‘Do it gently,’ Daur suggested.

‘I’m aware of the sensitivity,’ said Gaunt. ‘Her mother is de facto governor of Verghast. That means F– Merity could succeed in turn. If she acquires enough status here at the front line for the families of Verghast to take her seriously. To return with any disgrace or stain on her reputation would guarantee a lack of confidence from the rival houses, and that would in turn lead to a power struggle and instability on the planet that–’

‘Not that,’ said Daur. ‘I know that. I meant because she’s scared.’

He let himself into the room, closing the door behind him. His bedchamber was a simple space of white-washed stone. There was a folding cot and a wash stand, and his kit bag and effects had been brought up by an attendant and piled in the corner. A freshly laundered uniform had been laid out on the cot. Items had been ordered up from the Munitorum stores: black trousers with dark silk piping and a black pelisse jacket with black frogging. Gaunt had been very specific about a lack of ostentation. He wondered if the clothes would fit.

A side door led through to the small tower room that served as a study. Merity was sitting at the desk under the window. She looked small, dressed in the simple black fatigues of a Tanith trooper. When she turned to face him, he saw, despite her close-cropped hair, how much like her mother she truly looked.

She rose to her feet, and stood like a soldier on review. Her face was pinched-pale, and there was a clean field-dressing on her forehead.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry this has occurred.’

‘Sir.’

‘I’m sorry you… you felt compelled to conceal your real identity from me.’

‘Females do not advance on Verghast,’ she said. ‘Coming here was a chance to achieve some credibility. Some capital that rendered my gender irrelevant.’

‘I thought coming here was about finding your father?’ said Gaunt.

‘I found him,’ Merity said. ‘He was a soldier. Occupied with the war. He was not family-minded, nor do I blame him for that. I never expected a happy family reunion. I saw only political gain.’

‘Really?’

Her face remained hard-set.

‘Who knew?’ he asked.

‘Only Maddalena. Then Dalin and Ludd.’

‘Both of them?’

‘I swore them to secrecy. They both honoured that.’

‘You could have told me,’ said Gaunt.

She half-shrugged. ‘Not really,’ she said.

‘We could talk about it.’

‘I apologise for the problems I’ve caused. I expect to be returning to Verghast as soon as circumstances allow.’

‘We could talk about it now, I mean.’

‘You have time?’

‘I have… ten minutes or so.’

‘Ten minutes of the Lord Executor’s time. I’m honoured.’

‘I didn’t–’

‘I wasn’t being sarcastic. I’m impressed you’re even here. Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it. About any of it. I’d rather–’

‘What?’

‘No one’s really talked to me about anything for the last four days. Commissar Fazekiel has been very sensitive in her questions. But I’d rather talk about… well, absolutely anything else.’

Gaunt took a seat.

‘Like what?’

‘This war, maybe?’

‘This war?’ he echoed. He gestured to the desk chair and she sat back down.

‘I have been shut in here for three days,’ said Merity. ‘I know nothing about anything. I’m hoping for distraction, I suppose. You have been named Lord Executor?’

‘I have,’ said Gaunt.

‘Which makes you warmaster elect. Second only to Lord Macaroth. His–’

‘Fixer,’ said Gaunt.

She looked surprised.

‘You’re not pleased at the promotion?’

‘It’s a huge honour, and unexpected,’ said Gaunt. ‘But I’m not a fool. Macaroth is a private man, and his detachment from staff business has become a chronic problem. I’m supposed to bridge that gap, become his mouth. I’ve no illusions. A fair amount of dirty work will come with the role. Most of it political.’

‘You must learn the art of delegation,’ she said.

‘You’re not the first person to tell me that today.’ He smiled.

‘The Munitorum, the Administratum, the Officio Tacticae and the Office of the Militarum exist to take ninety per cent of that burden off your desk. Leaving you only with the command effect decisions. A warmaster elect can surely establish his own cabinet to filter and process information, just as a secretarial cabinet of the Administratum would–’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘I had no idea you were so well-versed,’ he said.

‘Only in terms of civil administration,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.’

‘Please do,’ said Gaunt. ‘We’re only having a conversation.’

‘I was raised as the heir of House Chass,’ she said. ‘Civic Administration was considered a fundamental skill-set, so my primary at Vervun Didact was administrative proceeding. My mother believed any scion of House Chass needed a full grounding in housekeeping, and I say “house” in the fuller sense of the dynasty itself. I had begun to broker those qualifications into a placement with the Verghast-Vervun Munitorum as a way to acquire some military credentials. Then a more direct path appeared.’

‘Coming here?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Coming here,’ she agreed. ‘Clearly, now, an idiotic plan. But the rivals of House Chass, House Anko, for instance, barely tolerate my mother’s seniority. To accommodate, when the time came, a second female successor… well, that successor would need exemplary credentials. Significant military experience, of any sort. And even then–’

‘You’re ambitious?’

Merity stared at him.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Like my mother. Like my father.’

‘I don’t know how ambitious your father is,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ she replied. ‘Given the lofty position he now finds himself in.’

There was a long silence.

‘Is Sek defeated?’ she asked. ‘The raids have subsided.’

‘That is the question,’ said Gaunt. ‘The assaults on Eltath and Zarakppan have been repulsed for now, but there is considerable enemy activity in the surrounding zones. Fresh assault could begin at any time. Our forces under the Beati have dealt the Archenemy a considerable blow at Ghereppan. In fact, we don’t know how badly the Saint has hurt Sek. He may even be dead. Certainly his death, or serious incapacity, could explain the sudden collapse of the assaults at Eltath. Then again, he could be regrouping. Intel operations are in progress. The next few days will show us. Either we’re approaching the final battle with the Anarch’s forces, or we’re facing a long suppression and purge of surviving enemy elements. Whichever, Urdesh is far from won.’

‘Why do you believe he could be regrouping?’ she asked.

Gaunt paused, then allowed himself a small smile.

‘That’s the question I keep asking,’ he said. ‘Sek could be wounded and running, or even dead. But the nature of his breakaway in Eltath has… I just have a feeling about it. It didn’t feel to me like a burn-out. Like an assault that had lost momentum. It felt like a deliberate cessation. As if some objective, unknown to us, had been achieved. The halt was deliberate, as though a phase was over. We don’t know what the next phase is.’

‘But you have suspicions?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Concerning?’

‘That, I’m afraid, is entirely classified. I’m sorry.’

‘Of course,’ she said, dismissively. ‘Though I wager it connects to the materials recovered during the Salvation’s Reach operation.’

‘I couldn’t comment,’ said Gaunt. ‘But I am impressed by your appreciation of the circumstances.’

‘I was there, at the Reach.’

‘You were.’

‘Do others share your appraisal? Other lords, I mean? Macaroth himself?’

‘There is some dispute,’ said Gaunt. ‘At staff level, there is seldom consensus. I’m going to have to work hard to keep everyone who matters convinced of the critical danger we may be facing.’

‘You don’t have to convince anyone,’ she said. ‘You are Lord Executor. If you believe there’s a present danger, you order them to fall in line. They are obliged. Isn’t that the point of a Lord Executor?’

‘You would think so,’ he agreed. ‘In practice…’

He shrugged.

‘This is the Imperial Guard,’ he said. ‘Orders are supposed to be orders, not points of debate. I fear the problem is that there are too many chiefs here. Too much authority, concentrated in one place.’

‘And you’re an unknown factor. Untested. They’re not used to your supreme authority.’

‘There’s that,’ he agreed.

‘Then you should exercise it. Demonstrate it. Make an example of someone.’

‘I don’t think–’

‘Before everything else, you were a commissar. You need a little of that, perhaps.’

He nodded. ‘Perhaps so.’

‘What about Van Voytz?’ she asked.

‘What about him?’

‘He is disgraced,’ she said.

‘Who told you that?’

She winced. ‘Your adjutant mentioned–’

‘Beltayn’s wrong,’ Gaunt said gently. ‘Van Voytz took action he deemed was right for the crusade. It was misguided. He has been reprimanded.’

‘But not disgraced. Have you sent him away to some fourth tier duty?’

‘No. I thought it better to keep him at hand. Punishment sometimes sends the wrong message. I’ve taken the Fifth Army off him for my own division, and charged him with preparation for the Saint’s arrival.’

‘Is that…’ she paused. ‘With respect, is that wise? His insubordination was a slim legal definition away from treason. The two of you were close, in times past. Could this not be read as you going easy on an old ally?’

‘Where making an example of him would demonstrate my authority shows no one favours?’ he asked.

Merity nodded.

‘I was a commissar, as you said,’ said Gaunt, ‘then a line officer too. My whole career, I have tried to temper the ruthlessness of the former role with the consideration of the other. A balance. To be unswervingly strict when necessary, but also not to make enemies needlessly. There are more than enough of those in this galaxy as it is.’

‘Yet you are, in fact, neither of those things now,’ she said. ‘You are First Lord Executor. You don’t need to make enemies or friends.’

He looked at her quizzically.

‘Have I amused you, sir?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said.

‘I was just talking,’ she said. ‘Chattering, I suppose. I have felt very isolated. I am…’

‘What?’

‘I am sorry they died. Ezra, and even those men.’

Gaunt was about to respond when someone knocked hard at the outer door. It opened.

‘My lord?’ Sancto called.

Gaunt rose, and motioned Merity to stay. He walked through the bedchamber. The Scion Sancto stood in the doorway, Beltayn hovering behind him.

‘I told him you were busy,’ Beltayn said.

‘Be quiet,’ Sancto said to Beltayn, sidelong. He looked at Gaunt. ‘Inquisitor Laksheema requests immediate audience, my lord,’ he said.

‘Inquisitor Laksheema was instructed to go through channels,’ said Gaunt.

Sancto didn’t reply, as if his part in the entire exchange was complete. Behind him, Beltayn grimaced.

‘I think this is her idea of going through channels, sir,’ he said.

Gaunt pushed past them. The inquisitor awaited him in the outer room, flanked by Colonel Grae of the Intelligence Service and members of Laksheema’s retinue. Ban Daur was standing in the corner of the room, glaring at Laksheema.

Behind Laksheema, in the doorway, stood Viktor Hark and Gol Kolea.

‘Lord Executor,’ said Laksheema, nodding her head in a quick bow of deference.

‘What’s this about?’ Gaunt growled.

THREE: THE EFFECTS OF THE DEAD

The alarms went off, screeching through the halls of the palace undercroft. Then they cut out again, just as sharply.

‘Feth’s sake,’ Baskevyl muttered. That was the sixth time it had happened in the last two hours. The Tanith personnel and retinue billeted in the cold cellars of the Urdeshic Palace were getting seriously spooked. They were well below ground in arched basement chambers beneath the palace’s Hexagonal Court, spaces once used to store wine and grain. There were no windows to look out of, no windows through which they could see if an actual attack was underway. Baskevyl was sick of asking the Munitorum work crews what the problem was, and sick of their vague answer of ‘probably faulty wiring’.

He set aside his half-finished cup of cold caffeine and got up to take another stroll through the billet and calm some nerves.

Blenner was standing in the archway of his billet area.

‘False alarm?’ Blenner asked.

‘Seems so,’ replied Baskevyl.

‘Again?’

Baskevyl pulled on his coat, and didn’t reply.

‘Are you, ah…’ Blenner began.

‘Am I what, commissar?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘You seem to be giving me the cold shoulder a little, Bask,’ said Blenner, trying a friendly smile.

Baskevyl turned and looked at the commissar as he buttoned up his jacket. His look did not return the friendship.

‘Not everything is about you, Vaynom,’ he said.

‘No. Obviously.’

‘We’re the personal company of the First Lord Executor,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Privileged and elevated. And this is what our privilege gets us. Stuck here in a wine cellar. There are matters to deal with that aren’t being dealt with. I have feth-all idea what’s going on, and I’m itching to re-join my company, which is out in Millgate somewhere, facing Throne knows what. So that might account for my demeanour.’

‘Of course.’

‘Unless there was something else you think might be weighing on me?’

‘Just…’ Blenner shrugged awkwardly. ‘Just the matter of Jakub Wilder.’

‘Because you executed him?’

‘Yes, Bask. That.’

‘He had just committed murder, had he not?’

‘He had. Poor Ezra–’

‘So I should think your field execution was entirely justified under the discipline code. You are a commissar.’

‘Is that… is that what Fazekiel is writing up?’ asked Blenner eagerly.

‘Her investigation is ongoing,’ said Baskevyl. ‘I can’t imagine how she could find in any other way. Unless there’s something you and Meryn aren’t telling us.’

‘Well, no. Nothing like that.’ Blenner cleared his throat. Baskevyl got the distinct impression that Blenner was glancing around in the hope of spotting a bottle he could pour a glass from.

‘Look, Bask,’ said Blenner. ‘The thing of it is… the thing of it is, morale really. And confidence.’

‘Go on,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Don’t make me spell it out, Bask.’

Baskevyl sighed. ‘Your specific assignment in V company,’ Baskevyl said. ‘A Belladon company. The colours band. Of which Wilder was c.o. You are concerned how they regard you now you’ve shot their senior. How any of us Belladon will regard you.’

‘Well, I mean, given the history,’ said Blenner. ‘Jakub Wilder, Lucien Wilder. An illustrious Belladon fighting family–’

‘Jakub Wilder was not a model soldier,’ Bask snapped. ‘He let the name down. He murdered, for feth’s sake. And attacked the person of the First Lord Executor’s daughter. You were doing your duty.’

‘I was.’

‘Then you and me, we don’t have a problem. Jakub Wilder brought shame to the Belladon contingent. Unless, as I said, there’s more to this.’

‘There really isn’t.’

‘Good.’

‘I’d still request,’ said Blenner cautiously, ‘reassignment.’

‘Reassignment?’

‘Attachment to another company. The boys of V Company keep looking at me like I’m a bad smell.’

There was a bad smell, all right. The background fug of sulphur from the volcanic vent the palace straddled was particularly noxious in the undercroft area. And the latrines had flooded again. Another technical issue the Munitorum work crews couldn’t adequately explain.

‘First of all, just bring them into line,’ said Baskevyl unsympathetically. ‘It’s not a popularity contest. Second, that’s not my call.’

‘You’re senior officer present.’

‘By rank, yes. But Daur has operational oversight of the Tanith here. Take it up with him if you must. Except don’t, because Ban’s not an idiot, and he’ll give you the same answer I just did.’

‘Where is Captain Daur?’ Blenner asked.

‘Fethed if I know, Vaynom.’

‘Is… is the girl all right?’

Baskevyl looked at him. ‘Gaunt’s daughter? Again, fethed if I know. Is that all?’

Blenner nodded. Baskevyl pushed past him to exit. He paused.

‘Any word from Hark?’ he asked Blenner.

‘I’ve heard nothing.’

‘Nothing through Prefectus channels?’

‘No, Bask.’

‘So we have no idea where Kolea is?’

‘We don’t,’ Blenner agreed.

The alarms suddenly went off again. They shrieked for a second before shutting off. Blenner flinched.

‘Feth that,’ said Baskevyl, and strode away.

Alone, Blenner leant against the door jamb and breathed out slowly, trying to calm himself. His hands were shaking, so he stuffed them in the pockets of his storm coat.

‘Nice chat?’ Meryn whispered.

Blenner jerked with a start. The Tanith captain was standing right beside him in the shadow of the archway.

Meryn grinned his crooked grin.

‘Don’t do that,’ Blenner hissed.

‘I’ve got something for you, Vaynom,’ Meryn said. He took a baggie of pills and stuffed them into Blenner’s top pocket. ‘Something to take the edge off.’

Then Meryn leaned in until he was eye-to-eye with Blenner, and the back of Blenner’s head was pressed against the stonework behind him.

‘I heard all of that,’ Meryn said. ‘That talk with Bask. You’re a fething idiot. How guilty do you want to look exactly? Play it chill, for feth’s sake. I’m not kidding, Blenner. If I go down, you go down. And if it comes to that, I think I can throw you to the damn wolves a lot more effectively than you can throw me. Are we clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ Meryn smiled. He raised both hands and smoothed the front of Blenner’s coat as if he was a tailor finalising a perfect fit. ‘Don’t make me have this conversation with you again.’

Meryn walked away, humming to himself. Blenner took out the packet of pills. Somnia. He took two.

He knew it would hardly be enough.

Long rows of cots had been set up down the lengths of the arched undercroft chambers. Heaters were running, and lumen globes hovered under the arches. The close air smelled of sweat and volcanic fumes and the damned latrines.

And fear. The whole retinue was afraid. Apart from the dirty business with Wilder and Gendler, everyone had heard the story about Elodie and poor little Yoncy. Some kind of monster out in the wasteland behind Low Keen had taken out an entire squad of enemy soldiers and almost killed them both too.

Baskevyl walked the length of the billet, pausing to chat with troopers and members of the retinue. He did what he could to reassure them. They did what they could to appear reassured.

Baskevyl spotted old Ayatani Zweil gingerly feeding scraps of dried meat to the regimental psyber-eagle mascot.

‘Fattening him up, father?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘Oh no, no,’ Zweil replied, offering another scrap and trying to guess which head would take it. ‘Gaining the beast’s confidence. Making friends, you see? I have named him Quil. He didn’t have a name. It’s short for–’

‘I get it,’ said Baskevyl.

‘It puts us on good terms, see? Makes us friends. So I can get close enough to groom him.’

‘Groom him?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘Groom him and maybe slip a garland of islumbine over each of his heads… ow! Bastard nearly took my finger off!’

‘Because why?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘I presume because he was hungry,’ said Zweil.

‘No, father. Why do you want to groom him?’

‘Well, because there’ll be a parade. When she gets here. We want the bitey little bastard looking his resplendent best.’

‘A parade?’

‘For the Beati, man.’

Baskevyl frowned. ‘Father, the arrival of the Saint is not open knowledge. How did you find out? Who told you?’

‘No one,’ Zweil replied, his eyes fixed on the raptor as he held out another chunk.

He glanced at Baskevyl.

‘I’m ayatani imhava, major,’ he said. ‘One of her roaming chosen. I know these things. Just as I know the imhava are gathering in Eltath. Coming from all over. It’s taken years for some of them to get here, following the long routes of the Saint’s pilgrimage. I believe even some delegations of the templum ayatani are coming here too. Her priesthood, major, gathering at her side at the site of the victory.’

‘This is a victory?’ asked Baskevyl dubiously.

‘It will be,’ replied Zweil.

‘It doesn’t feel much like one.’

‘I didn’t say whose victory,’ said Zweil. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, major. I wasn’t being pessimistic. The paths of the esholi have not yet revealed the outcome of the future, even to those of her chosen, like me. All we know is, we should be at her side at this time and feth! Bastard! Shit! Bugger!’

‘Did it bite your finger again, father?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘I find it has a tendency to do that,’ said Zweil, sucking at his fingertip.

‘Maybe don’t put your fingers in its beaks, then?’

‘I’ll get a stick,’ said Zweil.

‘So you can offer the scraps at arm’s length?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Oh,’ said Zweil, ‘that’s a better idea.’

Elodie was helping several troopers from E Company to mop the outer hallway of the undercroft where groundwater had sopped up through the washhouse drains.

‘The Munitorum can handle that,’ Baskevyl said to her as he walked up.

Elodie leant on her mop. ‘In the meantime, the billets flood, major,’ she replied.

‘It’s a mess,’ he agreed.

‘They say it’s the heavy rain,’ said Elodie. ‘Backing up along the storm drains.’

‘Does that happen a lot?’

‘Apparently, it’s never happened before,’ she replied.

‘Well, then we’re blessed,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Are you all right?’

She shrugged and nodded. She didn’t look all right. She was drawn, as though she hadn’t slept much or well, and where her hands gripped the mop, Baskevyl could see that she’d bitten her nails off short.

‘I don’t know what happened, major,’ she said. ‘I still can’t get the stink of blood out of my clothes. The Sons of Sek were right on us and then… they were dead and the world folded up.’

‘Folded up?’

‘I passed out. I don’t know. There was a sound.’

‘What sound?’

‘Like a… a bone saw. I’ve seen some bad things, major, and been in some dangerous places, but that was the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me. Terrifying because I have no idea what it was.’

‘But the child’s all right?’

‘I haven’t seen her. She’s with Dalin, I think. I suppose she is. Yoncy never says much, but–’

‘But?’

Elodie looked at him.

‘She’s a very strange child.’

‘She always has been, mam.’

‘She says things sometimes,’ said Elodie. ‘Creepy things, really. I… I used to think that it was because she was just a child, but she’s not, is she? I mean she’s not a child anymore. She acts much younger than she is, like it’s a defence mechanism. A way to get people to like her.’

Baskevyl nodded. ‘To be fair,’ he said, ‘she’s had a tangled upbringing. What she’s seen in her life, I wouldn’t wish that on any child. If she acts young to make people like her, then it’s probably an effort to get some security.’

‘Maybe,’ Elodie replied with a shrug.

‘What?’ asked Baskevyl.

She shook her head. He felt he shouldn’t press her. Ban Daur was due back soon. Maybe she’d confide in her husband.

‘Do you know what a changeling is, major?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Like… in the faerie tales?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Sometimes, I honestly think she’s that. Not human. Switched at birth.’

‘Isn’t that… a little unkind?’ he ventured.

‘Of course it is,’ she agreed. ‘But you know the story about her, don’t you? Half the retinue was convinced that Kolea had two sons, not a son and a daughter. Naturally, that’s nonsense. But why would so many people think it?’

‘Hearsay?’ Baskevyl suggested. ‘Crossed wires? Stories getting mixed up?’

‘There’s no point asking Gol,’ Elodie said. ‘I think a lot of his memories are missing, you know, since Hagia. It’s as though he doesn’t even know his own children properly.’

‘He hasn’t been much of a father to them,’ said Baskevyl. He grimaced. ‘That came out wrong. What I mean is, he hasn’t had much chance. He thought they were both dead for the longest time, and by the time he found out they were alive, Criid had taken them on. Saved them both. Anyway, we can’t ask Gol.’

‘Is he still missing?’

Baskevyl nodded.

‘Look, don’t say anything,’ Elodie said. ‘I mean, what I said about Yoncy. Everyone’s on edge and I’m just jumping at shadows because of what happened at Low Keen. That shook me up, Bask, it really did. So this is just my nerves talking.’

‘I won’t,’ said Baskevyl.

At the far end of the undercroft billet, a space had been set aside for supply crates and piles of kitbags. The Munitorum had shipped in the personal effects of the Tanith troops still deployed in the field at Millgate. Bonin, Domor and Sergeant Major Yerolemew were sorting through the kitbags, working from a list.

Baskevyl knew what they were doing. The list was the casualty list from the Millgate action. The men were setting aside the personal belongings of the troopers who wouldn’t be coming back to claim them.

It was a miserable task, one they had to do all too often. The effects of the dead would be sorted through, dispersed, recycled where possible. Decorations would be returned to the regimental coffer. Personal trinkets might be given to close friends as mementos.

Baskevyl watched them work for a while, then admitted to himself that it was unkind not to help them.

They nodded to him as he came over. Along with Commissar Fazekiel, Baskevyl and Domor had endured a tough time together prior to the evacuation from Low Keen.

‘Any word on Gol?’ Domor asked immediately.

Baskevyl shook his head.

‘And we can’t even get a warning upstairs to the chief,’ Domor sighed. ‘Since when did Gaunt fail to respond to a request from the ranks?’

‘He’s First Lord Executor now, Shoggy,’ said Baskevyl. ‘He’s got a plateful.’

‘But it’s urgent,’ Domor stressed. ‘The fething ordos sniffing after Kolea’s blood.’

‘Daur’s on it,’ said Baskevyl. ‘He’s promised to take the matter right to Gaunt, first chance he gets.’

‘If the fething ordos are sniffing after Gol’s blood,’ said Bonin quietly, ‘getting word to the chief isn’t going to help. They’ll have him. That’s what they do.’

‘Cheerful,’ said Domor.

Bonin shrugged. There was nothing cheerful about him. With Mkoll gone, Bonin had been made chief of scouts. But that was only a title. Circumstances prevented Domor, Baskevyl and Bonin from re-joining the main regiment elements in Millgate. They all felt the frustration of being stuck, inactive, away from their companies. Out in the field, Caober or Vivvo would be running scout operations.

Bandmaster Yerolemew was looking grim too. The old, one-armed sergeant major was working methodically through the kitbags. Jakub Wilder had been his direct superior. Baskevyl could feel the shame hanging on the old man’s shoulders, and the responsibility. Yerolemew was acting lead of V Company for the duration.

‘Damn,’ the old man whispered. He’d just unzipped a kitbag.

‘What?’ asked Domor.

‘It’s Mkoll’s,’ Yerolemew replied.

‘I’ll take that,’ said Bonin. ‘Don’t sort it.’

Yerolemew zipped the bag back up and handed it to the scout.

‘You know the procedure, Mach,’ Baskevyl said gently.

Bonin nodded.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘But Mkoll’s MIA. He’s not dead. Not until we find a body. Until then, I’ll take care of this.’

‘What are you doing?’ asked Dalin.

He’d found his sister standing alone in the hallway outside the billet area. She was staring at the broad flight of steps that led up into the palace.

‘Papa’s coming,’ she whispered, not taking her eyes off the steps.

Dalin breathed out heavily. Yoncy had a habit of calling everybody ‘papa’ or ‘uncle’. He was getting sick of it. It had been cute when she was small, but she was a young woman now. With her hair shaved short after the recent lice problem, she looked like a teenage pilgrim. What did they call them? Esholi?

Dalin wanted to tell her to stop it with the infantile chatter. It was grating. She showed no sign of puberty yet, but she was getting taller. She was only a head shorter than he was.

But he refrained. Something bad had happened to her at Low Keen. He decided to cut her a little slack.

‘Gol will be here soon enough. Tona too,’ he said.

‘Papa said to wait for him, Dal,’ she said. ‘He would send word. I have to wait and listen for him.’

‘What happened at Low Keen, Yoncy?’ he asked.

‘Papa said it was time. I don’t want it to be time. I don’t want it, Dal. But he said it was. And he said I had to be brave about it. Then the men came, so the shadow fell.’

‘The shadow?’

‘The bad shadow, silly.’

Dalin gritted his teeth. ‘Please stop it with the baby-talk, Yonce,’ he said. He remembered a dinner on board the Highness Ser Armaduke, now genuinely years ago, and a drawing she’d made for Gol Kolea. She’d talked about a bad shadow, like it was her new bogeyman.

Of course, she had just been a child then.

Yoncy looked at him.

‘It’s not baby-talk, Dalin,’ she said. ‘You know. You know what Papa says too.’

‘What’s that on your neck?’ he asked, reaching forward. She flinched back.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

He could see a sore patch of skin around the base of her throat.

‘Is that the eczema again? Yoncy? Has it come back?’

Before the mission to Salvation’s Reach, Dalin had given her a medallion, a souvenir of the Saint. She’d proudly worn it around her neck until it had been lost. The metal of what had undoubtedly been a cheap, mass produced medal had caused a reaction and given her eczema.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t hurt.’

‘Come inside,’ Dalin said. ‘We’ll find some food.’

‘I have to wait here,’ she replied firmly. ‘Papa told me to wait here for him. It’s time, and he wants to talk to me. You should wait too, Dalin. He’ll want to talk to you as well.’

‘Gol may be a while yet,’ Dalin said.

‘I don’t mean Gol. Not Papa Gol. I mean Papa.’

‘Who… who is Papa, Yoncy?’

She looked at him so fiercely it made him recoil slightly.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘Weren’t you listening to him too?’

Dalin raised his hands and backed away. She’d clearly been much more upset by the incident than he thought. He’d ask someone about it. Maybe Doctor Curth when she returned. It was some kind of trauma. He’d seen it in soldiers before.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. You stay here and wait for… for Papa. I’ll go and get you some soup.’

She nodded.

‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘I love you, Dalin.’

‘I’m your brother. You’re supposed to.’

She smiled.

‘I do what I’m supposed to do,’ she said, and then turned back to stare at the steps.

FOUR: VAPOURIAL QUARTER

The shots came again. Las-rounds, a short burst.

Down in cover, Wes Maggs glanced at Caober.

‘Building down at the end of the street,’ he said. ‘Second or third floor.’

The chief scout nodded. ‘Discouragement fire,’ he said. ‘They haven’t got a target, but they’ve spotted us moving up.’

Hugging the wall, Gansky scuttled up to their position, and dropped down beside them.

‘Word from Fapes,’ he said. ‘He’s done a vox-check. There are none of ours in this area.’

‘Not Helixid stragglers, then,’ said Maggs.

‘More Sek bastards,’ said Caober. ‘Cut off when they fell back. We have to flush them.’

He peered past the heaps of rubble that was suffering them limited protection. Visibility was poor. Heavy rain was still falling, and three days of constant downpour had raised a thick mist through the Millgate and Vapourial quarters. A lot of it was steam from the countless fires and burned-out buildings, the rest was smoke streaming in from the blazing mills and well-fires on the Northern Dynastic Claves.

‘Take a squad,’ Caober said to Maggs. ‘Move off to the left there.’

Maggs nodded, and slid out of cover. Caober tapped his micro-bead link.

‘Larks, this is Caober. You got eyes on this?’

‘Stand by,’ the vox crackled back.

On the far side of the mangled street, Larkin and Nessa moved, heads low, across the third floor space of a merchant house that had been gutted by tank shells. They picked their way through broken furniture and partly burned piles of inventory paperwork, and set up at one of the windows. There was no glass. Concussion had blown it out like an eardrum. Rain dripped steadily from holes in the ceiling as though a tap had been left on somewhere.

The marksmen lined up with their long-las rifles, and adjusted their scopes.

‘Chief?’ Larkin whispered into his micro-bead. ‘Definitely third floor. Whup! Yeah, that was muzzle flash.’

‘Can you angle from there?’

‘Stand by,’ Larkin replied. He moved to another window. Nessa had also repositioned herself further along the gutted office space.

‘I can’t get a clear shot,’ she signed. ‘I can’t see in.’

‘And the wall’s too thick,’ Larkin agreed, signing back.

‘If we moved down,’ Nessa suggested, ‘to the next building along…’

Larkin shook his head. ‘There is no “next building”, Ness,’ he said quietly, echoing the words with gestures. ‘Just a heap of bricks that used to be a hab before said hab had a life-changing encounter with aerial munitions.’

‘Ah,’ said Nessa Bourah, remembering. She was tired. After three days, one hab shell looked like the next.

She settled back against the wall for a moment, and wiped the rain off her face, an action which did little more than rearrange the dirt on it.

‘This sucks,’ she said.

‘Agreed,’ said Larkin.

‘When are they going to pull us back? We were at the sharp end of it. The fething Helixid have gone.’

‘We’re specialists, aren’t we?’ he grinned. ‘They want this area cleaned out. Our expertise is in demand.’

Nessa explained in clear, anatomically precise terms what high command might do with their expertise. Larkin chuckled, and slid along to the next window gap.

‘We’ll get relief,’ he said, ‘sooner or later.’ He set up again, training his weapon, peering with an unblinking eye through the powerful scope.

‘Caober?’ he voxed.

‘Go.’

‘We can’t deliver from here.’

‘Understood. Maggs is moving left of the target.’

Larkin adjusted his aim.

‘I see him, chief,’ he whispered. ‘Tell him if he follows that alley, it’ll bring him around to the back of the walled court behind the target site.’

‘Keep your eyes on him,’ Caober replied over the link.

The alley was high-walled and almost ankle-deep in water and debris. Maggs moved at the head of his team, lasrifle up to his cheek and aimed. He made a series of quick, clear hand signals to the Ghosts behind him.

Gate. Go around me. Either side.

They stole around him, weapons trained on the old wooden gate in the yard’s high wall. The gate was the only access. Going over the wall would draw fire from the building.

Maggs pointed to Gansky, signalled ‘kick it in’ and then raised three fingers to count him down.

‘Maggs, hold position!’

Maggs froze. He adjusted his micro-bead.

‘Larkin?’ he whispered.

‘Hold position,’ Larkin replied over the vox-link. ‘I’ve got a view into that yard. Definite movement behind the wall.’

‘I read that,’ said Maggs. He glanced at his squad, and pulled a grenade from his musette bag.

‘I request, not for the first time,’ said Rawne, ‘permission to withdraw the Tanith First from this line.’

‘I’m not unsympathetic, colonel,’ said Major Maupin. ‘But the lord general’s orders are specific. The Tanith must hold here for a while longer.’

Rawne looked the Narmenian officer up and down. Maupin’s clothes were clean, and he’d had a shave that morning. A few hours earlier, he’d been asleep in a bed somewhere. Probably the Urdeshic Palace.

‘We held this line and took a bruising,’ Rawne said. ‘Now you’re here to reinforce. It’s time to rotate us out.’

Rawne looked at the signal the Narmenian had handed him again. A direct communique from Lord General Grizmund. Raindrops flicked and tapped the flimsy paper.

They were standing in a street in the Millgate Quarter, under the shadow of the now silent Tulkar Batteries. It had been the scene of the heaviest fighting against the Sons of Sek four days earlier. From the seawall and esplanade, the edge of the city was a mess of burned and bombed habs and manufactories, through the tight warren of Millgate Quarter south-east into the mercantile districts of Vapourial and Albarppan. Smog rolled in from the sea in the heavy rain, and behind the fume of petrochemical smoke that made the sky seem oppressively low, huge fires burned to the south of them in the Northern Claves, as though pit-gates down to the inferno had opened up.

Maupin’s column had arrived ten minutes before. His line of Vanquishers and Conquerors stood waiting on the esplanade highway, tailing back into the upper streets of Millgate, engines idling.

‘Grizmund has command of this theatre, does he?’ Rawne asked.

‘Lord Grizmund does, yes,’ Major Maupin said, stressing the ‘lord’ gently to correct Rawne’s lack of protocol. ‘Staff has charged him with the securement of the south-western line in advance of further enemy assault.’

‘So secure it, sir,’ said Rawne. ‘You’ve brought your big guns and everything.’

Maupin smiled.

‘The lord general’s approach is two-pronged. To secure these quarters of the city, house-to-house, using infantry, and to advance the armour into the Northern Claves and hammer a proper pushback against any remaining enemy forces holding there.’

‘My Ghosts are tired,’ said Rawne. ‘They were in the thick of it four days ago. We drove the bastards back. They haven’t slept since.’

‘Resources are stretched,’ replied Maupin. ‘We are awaiting reinforcements. You are a vital infantry asset.’

‘You withdrew the Helixid.’

‘In part.’ Maupin sighed. He looked at the tired and filthy Ghosts standing around them, watching, and drew Rawne aside.

‘In all candour,’ he said quietly, ‘the Helixid forces are competent at best.’

‘They broke here,’ said Rawne.

‘They did. It’s been noted. Inquiries will follow. Your Ghosts, colonel, are a prestige unit. Famously specialised. Lord Grizmund knows you of old, I gather, and values your abilities. You might consider this a compliment.’

‘Doesn’t feel like one,’ said Rawne.

‘I’m sure it doesn’t, right now. We have signals of assurance that brigades of Urdesh, Keyzon and Vitrians will move up to relieve you in the next thirty hours. The Urdeshi will be on station before that, in fact. Look, colonel, the First Lord Executor gave Lord Grizmund this command personally. The two of them have a history, you know that. And your Ghosts are the Lord Executor’s personal regiment. Lord Grizmund wants people he can trust to keep this line tight. And he trusts Gaunt’s Ghosts.’

‘Major,’ said Rawne, ‘you keep making everything sound like it’s doing us a favour and bestowing an honour on us. Gaunt would have pulled us out of here long since.’

‘The Lord Executor has delegated zone command to Lord Grizmund, and Lord Grizmund has chosen the Lord Executor’s elite troops to assist him in this endeavour.’

Rawne sighed and nodded.

‘Then…’ he said. ‘Signal received. Happy hunting, major.’

‘You too, colonel,’ Maupin replied as he walked back to his waiting tank.

Colonel. That still sat uneasily with Rawne. He wandered back to the waiting Ghost squads.

‘We’ve been delegated,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Ludd.

‘Skip it,’ said Rawne. ‘We’re holding this quarter for now. Another thirty hours.’

They tramped into the partial shelter of a damaged manufactory. Rain pattered down through sections of missing roof. Oysten, Rawne’s adjutant, had spread area maps out on a printmaker’s table.

‘We’re stretched thin,’ remarked Elam.

‘I know,’ said Rawne.

‘The armour could clear this zone out in a couple of hours,’ said Obel.

‘The tanks are moving south,’ said Rawne.

‘And this area is still inhabited,’ said Ludd. ‘We can’t just flatten it.’

‘Update on that?’ Rawne asked.

‘These quarters were not evacuated before the assault began, sir,’ said Major Pasha. ‘There are hundreds of citizens and workers cowering in these ruins, waiting to get out. They’ve been sheltering in basements and whatever. Now the shelling has stopped, they are emerging. Short of water, food, medical supplies.’

‘Our sweeps are making contact with them all the time,’ said Obel. ‘They’re risking exposure because they can’t stay where they are any more. We’re sending all we find into the city, to the nearest waypoints. There are camps in Gaelen that can take them.’

‘Which makes our job harder,’ said Varl. ‘Any contact we encounter on the sweeps could be a friendly. Could be women, kids. We’re holding ourselves in check, every building we clear, every door we kick–’

‘I know,’ said Rawne.

‘Which means no flamers,’ said Brostin, as if this was the biggest disappointment of his life.

‘I feel your pain,’ said Rawne. He stared at the map and scratched at a scab on his chin. It was a mess. Even before the recent assault, the city of Eltath had been porous. The Tanith had found that out to their cost at the Low Keen billet. There were insurgent forces inside the city, either Sek soldiers moving in unseen or sympathisers already embedded in bolt-holes. The recent fighting had left the Millgate and Vapourial Quarters even more penetrable. Add to that, enemy units that had been left behind or detached during the withdrawal.

And the withdrawal itself. Rawne’s mind kept coming back to that. The Ghosts and other Imperial defence forces had held off the full-on assault. A victory to be proud of. Except, they shouldn’t have won. The Archenemy had fielded significantly superior numbers, backed by armour momentum against thinly stretched and hastily prepared defence lines. Despite extraordinary individual actions by Ghosts like Pasha and her anti-tank teams, the marksmen, and – Throne rest him – Mkoll, the outcome should have been decisive in favour of the Anarch’s forces. Millgate should have broken. The batteries should have been overrun. Eltath should have been opened up.

But the Archenemy had, suddenly, fallen back. Not in defeat. By choice. A deliberate retreat.

As if, Rawne thought, they had achieved their objective.

The thought troubled him. He knew it troubled his officers too, and hoped it troubled staff, and the lords general, and even his newly crowned excellency the First Lord Executor. Sek was a wickedly cunning bastard. He’d done something, and they had no idea what it was. He’d had a knife to the Imperial throat, and he’d taken it away without finishing the slice.

‘Because the knife was a distraction,’ Rawne murmured to himself.

‘What’s that?’ asked Varl.

‘Nothing,’ said Rawne. He wanted to know. To figure it out, he had to try to think like a Sek packson, and that was something he didn’t relish. Archenemy tactics on Urdesh had been incomprehensible from the very start of the campaign. It was like trying to play a game when no one had bothered to teach you the rules.

Well, he was going to learn them. Lord Grizmund, one of the few senior commanders Rawne had any time for, had misjudged things. Operations in Millgate and Vapourial weren’t a simple matter of hold and secure. Though the main fighting had ceased, there was still a coordinated enemy action going on, as far as Rawne was concerned.

He looked at the crumpled signal again. ‘Secure and hold south-western line – Millgate, Vapourial – and deny enemy action in zone.’

When he’d dictated that order, Grizmund had clearly intended some hab-to-hab clearance, and the construction of more permanent defences, pickets and trenches. But it was open to interpretation. Rawne was good at interpretation. ‘Deny enemy action in zone.’ That was the choice phrase. The enemy was taking some kind of action, it just wasn’t obvious.

Rawne had a gut feeling the Millgate assault had been a feint. Now he had specific orders to deny. He was going to follow them to the letter. There was intelligence to be gathered.

He looked at the officers around the table.

‘We’ll focus on sweeps, building by building,’ he told them. ‘Systematic, area by area. Advise all to err on the side of caution.’

‘Because of the civilians–’ Ludd began.

‘No, commissar. I mean the opposite. If in doubt, shoot.’

‘But–’ Pasha began.

‘No arguments,’ said Rawne. ‘I think the Archenemy is all over this area. Hiding like rats in the rubble. I’m not talking about stragglers and survivors. I’m talking active units. They’re up to something. My orders are to deny.’

Pasha looked grim. ‘We’re going to kill friendlies that way, sir,’ she said.

‘There may be some collateral,’ said Rawne. ‘Be clear to your squads. If in doubt, shoot.’

‘But–’ said Pasha.

‘How would the Ghosts take a city, major?’ Rawne asked. ‘Full on assault, or bleed in through the margins, probably while someone makes a very loud noise to draw attention from us?’

Pasha lowered her head.

‘We thought we were fighting off the attack the other day,’ said Rawne. ‘I think the real attack is happening now. Shoot first. Make that explicit to all. I’m not letting them through this line just because we think the danger’s passed and we can go easy.’

He walked down towards the esplanade. Elam and Obel followed him.

‘No one likes this,’ said Obel.

‘I don’t like it,’ Rawne said.

‘So, should we–’ Elam began.

‘I’m colonel now, so just follow my fething orders,’ said Rawne.

Zhukova was standing by the sea wall, staring out at the rusting shells of the agri-harvester boats. Rawne knew why she was there, and why the sight preoccupied her.

She turned as she heard him approach.

‘Help you, sir?’ she asked.

Rawne stood for a moment, staring at the rotting hulks.

‘He’s not dead,’ he said at last.

‘I fear he is,’ she replied.

Rawne shook his head.

‘How can you be so sure?’ Zhukova asked.

‘Because there’s nothing in this fething galaxy that can kill Oan Mkoll,’ he replied.

He looked at her.

‘He chose you for scout duties,’ he said. A statement, not a question.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Go find Caober and Vivvo. Spread the word in the scout units. I want one alive.’

‘One…?’

‘One of them. A Son of Sek. We need intel.’

‘And you expect to get that out of a captured Archenemy trooper?’ she asked.

‘You have no idea how persuasive I can be,’ he replied.

‘What happened?’ asked Tona Criid.

Caober glanced at her sourly. ‘Non-combatants, sir,’ he said simply. He sighed and shrugged. Smoke was lifting off a small, walled yard beside the derelict habs ahead, and Criid could hear shouting and the misery of the stricken and wounded.

‘We were trying to clear that place,’ said Caober, gesturing to the hab. ‘Shooters in the higher floors. Larks got a bead on some movement in the yard, so Maggs tossed a grenade over the wall.’

Criid could guess the rest. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Civilians, hiding, trying to find shelter, caught in the crossfire. She watched the regiment corpsmen leading the injured out of the yard, men and women with burns and cuts from the shrapnel blast. They were sobbing, or wailing curses at the Ghosts. She saw children too. Nearby, she saw some Ghosts from Caober’s team unpacking bedrolls so they could be used to cover the dead still laying in the yard.

It was only going to get worse. Rawne had just issued a ‘shoot first’ order.

‘They must’ve known the civilians were there,’ she said.

‘Mmm?’ asked Caober.

‘The shooters,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah. They knew,’ said Caober. ‘Made a nice little buffer for the bastards. Shoot at us from up top, get us to storm in and kill our own. Bastards.’

He said the last word with a weary force that made Criid wince.

‘Where did they go?’ she asked. ‘The shooters? You clear the building?’

‘Of course, captain,’ Caober replied. ‘They’re gone. Off on their heels into the back streets while we were dealing with the injured.’

Criid looked at the wounded children Lesp was trying to patch up. They were sitting in the rain, caked in dirt, glazed eyes looking into forever as the corpsman attempted to clean and close the gashes on their faces.

‘They can’t have gone far,’ said Criid. She hoisted her lasrifle. ‘You lot, with me.’

The Ghosts she’d summoned moved in close to her, eyes dark.

‘You too, Maggs,’ she called.

Maggs was leaning against the wall, smoking a lho-stick, staring at his boots.

‘Leave him be,’ Caober whispered to her. Criid ignored the scout. Going soft never worked. When a man was rattled, you got him back in the game as fast as you could.

She could see Wes Maggs was struggling. He’d lobbed the grenade. The blood was on him.

‘Come on, Maggs,’ she called, beckoning, then turning away to show that she expected him to follow without her having to check.

They filed down the alley and onto the adjacent street. Roof tiles covered the roadway like shed scales, and the rain drummed down. They hugged the left side of the street, checking the blown-out fronts of shops. Something had taken the top off the public fountain at the end of the street, and a broken pipe was jutting from the throat of a decapitated griffon, heaving a fat, irregular column of water into the air.

Sergeant Ifvan signalled, indicating something across the street. Criid led the way, keeping three men back to supply cover. She reached the side wall of a low building that had once been some kind of street kitchen or eating hall. Criid could smell rotting food waste and rancid spilled fat. Ifvan and Maggs slid past her, weapons up and aimed.

‘Something in there,’ Ifvan whispered. Criid nodded. She noticed that Maggs’ index finger rested outside his trigger guard. He wasn’t going to shoot unless he was sure of a target.

She edged into the dark interior, her weapon up to her cheek, grimacing at the smell of the place. The floor was covered in broken pots and beakers and dented tin plates. Trestle tables had been overturned. A chalkboard had been blown off one wall, and lay face up, revealing the prices and choices of the day’s offerings, simple meals for the district mill workers.

She saw movement.

‘Hold!’ Maggs hissed.

He shone his flashlight. She saw huddled figures, a flash of blue.

‘Come out!’ she called. ‘Right now!’

There were six of them, ayatani priests in blue robes. They were dirty and soaked through, and looked at the Militarum troops with suspicion.

‘Praise be the Beati,’ mumbled one.

‘Praise be indeed,’ said Criid. ‘You sheltering here?’

‘We tried to move on, but there was shooting,’ said another.

‘You’re esholi?’ she asked.

The ayatani looked at her in surprise. The term was quite obscure, and they hadn’t expected to hear it from an outworld Guardsman.

‘We are,’ the first one said. ‘Pilgrims come to the side of the Saint.’

‘Pilgrims getting in the way,’ muttered Maggs. ‘This is a war zone.’

‘We walk where she walks, and go where she goes,’ said one of the esholi.

‘This is no place for you–’ Maggs began.

‘That’s enough, Maggs,’ said Criid. ‘How many more of you in here? More out the back? No? Then come on out.’

They led them back onto the street. The esholi blinked at the daylight and shivered.

‘We cannot escort you,’ said Criid, ‘but head that way. Head west. When you reach the main thoroughfare, turn north. There’s an aid station in Faylin Square. Move quickly. Don’t look back.’

The esholi nodded. One tried to give Criid a sprig of islumbine. She refused it, and urged them on their way.

‘Who walks into a war?’ Maggs asked as he watched the ayatani move away.

‘I heard the fleet was having trouble with pilgrim ships,’ said Ifvan. ‘They’re trying to keep them off-world, and most ships haven’t got the vittals to stay in orbit.’

‘How do they even know she’s here?’ asked Mkvan.

‘Same reason we’re here doing this fething stupid job,’ said Criid. ‘Faith in something bigger than ourselves.’

Maggs had raised his weapon.

‘More of them,’ he said.

Across the street, another group of pilgrims had appeared from cover. There were more than twenty of them, wearing the blue robes, lugging bundles of possessions. Apparently encouraged by the sight of Criid’s team allowing the other pilgrims to pass, they had come out of cover to refill their water-flasks from the broken fountain. They were all small and thin, stooped with age and fatigue. They reminded Criid of birds coming to drink.

‘Fething idiots,’ said Criid.

‘I’ll move ’em on, captain,’ said Maggs. He crossed the street. Criid could see the confidence coming back into him. He’d taken a knock, but she’d made him push on. Now they’d saved a few lives, some tally in his head was beginning to even out. He was more like his old self, the smart-mouthed Wes Maggs who’d spit in the eye of anyone, including death.

More like his old self, she thought, but not whole. The kids with their empty stares and bloody faces would haunt him from now on. Another piece of a good man chipped away.

‘You cannot stay here,’ Maggs said to the esholi around the fountain. They looked at him silently.

‘You have to move,’ he said. ‘Get walking, that way. That way.’

‘Will you kill us, soldier?’ asked the leader of the group. He straightened up slightly. He had some height when he wasn’t hunched over, but it was hard to determine his age. He was rail-thin and haggard, and his skin lined and weathered, from long pilgrimages outdoors and meagre rations.

‘No,’ said Maggs. ‘No, I won’t. Just get moving. Get your things and move that way. Head west. What’s your name?’

‘Hadrel,’ said the man. His eyes were as oddly flat and lightless as his tone.

‘You’re an ayatani?’

‘I am Hadrel.’

‘You need to get your group to move, father. You understand? Fast as you can. Off this street, head west.’

Hadrel glanced at his followers. They picked up their things and began to walk.

‘That’s it,’ said Maggs. ‘Off you go.’

Criid walked over to him.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘With them?’ Maggs asked, gesturing to the departing pilgrims. ‘Shell-shock, I’ll bet. They were just weird with me. Like they didn’t care.’

‘They’ve probably been through shit,’ said Criid. ‘And since when were ayatani not weird? You’ve met Zweil?’

Maggs smiled.

‘They’re alive, Maggs,’ said Criid. ‘When they get food inside them and their wits together, they’ll offer thanks to the trooper who pointed them to safety.’

The House of Ghentethi sat halfway up the hill where Vapourial Quarter became Albarppan Quarter. It was a substantial manse made of worked ouslite, its street windows tall and blue. To the rear of its significant plot lay adjoining manufactory buildings and craft halls, high roofed and raised from local stone. Chrome chimneys vented from the furnace hall.

The house had survived the recent conflict in the district unscathed, but the Ghentethi had not so successfully weathered the past few generations. They had once been one of the most significant dynastic claves on Urdesh, lay-tech makers allied to the might of the Mechanicus. Their power had dwindled during the long years of the war as the Mechanicus relied less and less on the machine shops of the dynastic claves. Ghentethi holdings had reduced from three dozen properties of shop halls in the southern districts of Eltath to this one little fortress of industry, manufacturing bayonets, buckles and focus rings for the Urdeshi regiments.

In the main salon, the rain against the street windows washed the chamber in blue, moving patterns, like the bottom of a pool. Jan Jerik, ordinate of the clave, prodded the fire in the huge, ornate stove with a poker, and then closed the grille. He eyed his guests warily. They had done eating and now sat in silence.

Jan Jerik was a proud man, well-dressed in a dove-blue jacket and embroidered waistcoat. The silver keys and ciphers of his rank as ordinate hung around his neck on a long chain. His white shirt was high-collared, and the boss of his walking cane was the engine motif of his beloved clave.

Jan Jerik had nursed doubts about the endeavour since its first whispered suggestion. But Ghentethi came before everything, and it was his duty as ordinate to ensure its prosperity and survival. Since the earliest days of the dynasts, clave-wars had been fought in all manner of ways, and open violence was the rarest form. Trade wars, espionage, assassination… these were the arsenals of the Urdeshi claves. Clave-loyalty, survival, wealth and knowledge were the touchstones. Despite its risks, and its distasteful aspects, the endeavour promised unprecedented trophies of wealth and knowledge for Clave Ghentethi. He would have been remiss, as ordinate, in ignoring the opportunity.

He heard a knock from below, someone banging repeatedly against the street door. Jan Jerik nodded to a footman, and the footman hurried away to answer.

‘The last few,’ said the leader of his guests, rising to his feet. His accent was strong.

‘They will be made welcome, sir,’ said Jan Jerik, ‘as you were made welcome.’

‘I’m sure they will,’ replied Corrod.

The footman returned, leading the visitors from below. They shuffled in, and stood, dripping wet, glancing around the high-ceilinged salon at the old murals.

‘This place is… secure?’ asked their leader.

‘Yes,’ said Corrod. ‘You’re the last to arrive.’

‘They’re sweeping the streets,’ said the new arrival. ‘Searching. Hunting.’

‘How close?’ asked Jan Jerik nervously.

‘We’ll be gone before they arrive to search your property, ordinate,’ said Corrod. ‘Provided everything is in place as you promised.’

‘It is,’ said Jan Jerik. ‘Everything that was requested.’

‘And the access?’

‘Remains open, sir,’ said Jan Jerik.

‘Do we have data?’ asked the leader of the new arrivals. ‘Reliable intelligence?’

Jan Jerik took a packet of documents from inside his embroidered waistcoat. He unfolded them and spread them on a small side table. Corrod and the leader of the new arrivals looked over his shoulder.

‘We believe the location is here,’ said Jan Jerik, pointing to a section of the hand-drawn map.

‘We?’ asked Corrod.

‘Information supplied by agents of my clave,’ said Jan Jerik.

‘There is certainty?’ asked the leader of the new arrivals.

‘Nothing direct,’ replied Jan Jerik. ‘The Mechanicus, and the other organs of the Imperial machine, keep such data secret. Their belligerent confidences are, of course, part of the problem–’

‘Keep to the point,’ said Corrod. ‘We understand your grievance, ordinate. You help us, and we secure you a better future.’

Jan Jerik nodded. He hadn’t known what to expect of his guests, but Corrod and his companions, and now the newcomers, seemed simply disappointing. Thin and shrivelled, unwashed and stinking from days in the open. They seemed frail and exhausted, and quite unsuited to the task ahead. He was disheartened.

‘It is a matter of reading the hole in the available data,’ he said. ‘Movement and reassignment of specialist Mechanicus adepts from other facilities to this one. These transfers have been made since the arrival in the city of the warship Armaduke. Also, the classification of some data is specific to the ordos. So, by elimination, we can see… specialists moved to this location in the last few days. Higher classification to all data traffic relating to said location. They have masked what they are doing there, but we can see the mask. What you seek is there.’

‘By your estimation,’ said the leader of the new arrivals.

‘The likelihood is high, sir,’ said Jan Jerik. ‘For the bargain we are striking, I aim to be diligent in my part of it. I would say a ninety-five per cent likelihood. There is one other location that might have potential. Here. But this, we think, is not research or analysis. The facility is too small. Prisoner holding, is my guess. The traitor, the pheguth.’

Corrod nodded. ‘The equipment?’ he asked.

‘Laid out, in the sub-levels,’ said Jan Jerik.

‘Well then,’ said Corrod. ‘We can begin. I’ll lead the effort here, at the primary target. You take the secondary one.’

The leader of the new arrivals nodded.

‘We cover both possibilities,’ said Corrod. ‘If the second is the pheguth, then we win some justice.’

He looked at the new arrivals.

‘Take off those damned robes. Burn them.’

The men stripped off their wet, blue silk garments, and pushed past Jan Jerik to stuff them in the mouth of the iron stove.

‘Are you ready, sirdar?’ Corrod asked.

‘Yes, my damogaur,’ replied Hadrel. ‘His voice commands us, and we obey, for his voice drowns out all others.’

FIVE: LEAVING SADIMAY

The cloister air smelled of burning: burning history, burning faith, burning tradition. Packsons were in the record house and librarium of the old Basilica, sweeping books off the shelves and bundling them onto bonfires that had been lit in the low stone walk. Mkoll walked past them, his knife-hand pressed into the small of Olort’s back, guiding him. His instructions had been plain, and he’d made them in Olort’s language: draw attention to me and you’re the first to die.

Some of the packsons even threw ritual salutes – the hand across the mouth – to the damogaur and his sirdar as they passed. The sirdar’s uniform was a barely adequate fit. The man had been both taller and broader than Mkoll. But the chief scout made a few adjustments, hoping that dirt and drying blood would cover any discrepancies, and besides, the uniform discipline of the Sons of Sek never seemed that precise to him. They all looked like a mob of filthy, ragged barbarians to him, wasteland raiders who cared little if a button or epaulette was out of place, or a pair of boots unpolished.

But what did he know? He was Imperial bred. He understood and recognised the uniform codes of the Astra Militarum in all its variation. He could tell a Throne trooper from a non-Throne at a glance because of cultural familiarity. But the packs were not his heritage. This ruined island, this world, was no longer his culture. He was deep in the heart of the Archenemy, deeper than he had been on Gereon. What nuances was he supposed to notice, what details might he miss with his unfamiliar eyes? He found himself working obsessively about details. The mud on men’s boots, the blood stains on their patched tunics. Was that just random, just dirt? Or was there some deliberate significance… marks daubed or smeared to signify something?

How was he giving himself away? The customs and habits of the Sanguinary Tribes, from whose far-rimward feral worlds Sek and that bastard Gaur drew their forces, were entirely alien to him.

Mkoll fancied that when, inevitably, he was finally discovered, it would be some ridiculously small detail that would give him way. Some tiny Sanguinary custom that he couldn’t possibly have known.

As they walked along the cloisters, he decided it might be the helmet. He’d buckled it across his face, the foul-tasting leather mask across his nose and mouth. Tanned human hide, a boneless hand, a trophy turned into a chin-strap that symbolised the Sons of Sek’s gesture of humility to their Anarch. That was it. The touch of it against his mouth made him gag. He’d tear it off to be free of it, unmask himself, and be revealed.

They walked out onto a colonnade that overlooked the Basilica’s harbour. The hillside below the Basilica plunged away almost sheer to the docks and stone-built ware barns below. Mkoll made Olort stop beside the low ouslite wall, and looked out.

The day was grey. There was rain in the air. Thirty kilometres ahead of him, across the unwelcoming waters of the strait, lay the mainland, the industrial shorelines and dingy habs of south-west Eltath.

That was where they’d brought him from.

He couldn’t see the city itself. Its bulk, and the massive rise of the city mound and the palace mount were lost behind weather and wind-drawn banners of smoke. The fighting in those south-western wards had been intense. Whole areas were on fire, and the smoke plumes dragged back across the sky for kilometres, dense and dark.

It looked so close. The strait looked swimmable. But he knew the scale was deceiving him. A thirty kilometre crossing, in sub-zero water, with strong currents. If he made that, which he wouldn’t, then it was another forty kilometres on foot through the industrial zones of the Dynastic Claves before he even reached the formal outskirts of Eltath. And that was all enemy ground, held by the Sons of Sek. Even the city fringes were disputed.

Mkoll changed his view. The great black crags and hilltop Basilica of Sadimay Island stood to his right, but over its rugged shoulder, he saw the hazed waters of the channel, and the mauve shapes of other islands. He searched his memory, trying to recall the overheads of charts he’d seen during briefings in the last few weeks. His focus had been on Eltath and its maze of streets and quarters. He’d paid little attention to what lay outside, the greater clave zones, the industrial heartlands, the neighbouring forge-towns. He knew the Strait ran from the bottom of the Great Bay of Eltath southwards, and was a major shipping channel. It separated the island chain from the mainland. Sadimay was one of the principal islands because of its religious centre. There had once been regular ferry links for pilgrims and forge devotees. But it was just one of many. The whole planet was blistered with islands in chains and groups and archipelagos, most of them volcanic. Sadimay was just one of hundreds in this particular chain, some closely spaced, divided by much narrower channels, no more than a couple of kilometres in places. Might he find sanctuary there, perhaps? Just for a while. Get himself to one of the small islands, something the Sons of Sek regarded as strategically unimportant, and just wait it out?

Was that even what he wanted to do?

Mkoll had an idea, a notion, and it made him fret to even think of it. Did it come from madness, or desperation, or some higher calling? He’d never believed in that last thing much, so he put it down to desperation.

He looked down at the small harbour. The island’s little port was swarming. Watercraft were coming inshore in small fleets, some staying off-station while they waited for quaysides to clear. They were laden with Archenemy troops withdrawing from the mainland or bringing more Imperial captives to Sadimay for processing.

But the agriboats and barges were loading again as fast as they emptied. The enemy was in the process of abandoning Sadimay too. Packed tight and low in the water with the weight of men and vehicles, the barges were leaving the dockside and chugging out into the Strait, turning south on slow, steady curves of wake water.

Turning right. Heading towards the channel into the island chain.

Mkoll reached for Olort. The movement made the damogaur flinch.

‘Be calm,’ Mkoll hissed in the enemy tongue. He fished Olort’s field glasses from his belt pouch.

He scanned the harbour, resolving greater detail through the small, grimy glasses. Miserable huddles of prisoners on the wharf, waiting to be loaded for transport. So they’d kept some alive, and were shipping them into the islands. The prisoners were all Guard. Were they men who had turned? Had they been offered the same choice Olort had offered him, and said yes?

If they were, then induction awaited them in the islands. Induction, and the pledging of their new loyalties. And you couldn’t pledge without there being someone present to pledge to.

He loosened the vile chinstrap, and wiped his mouth. Who? An etogaur? A senior chieftain? Someone more significant than that?

He panned the glasses around again. At the north end of the docks, he saw a cluster of small craft tied up. Small cutters and jet-launches, and two or three skiff bikes.

Small and fast. Just sitting there. One of those could get him across the Strait in less than an hour. A sirdar on a one-man skiff, carrying confidential orders to officers on the mainland. Maybe he could pull that off. Maybe he could get down there, commandeer one of the jet-launches, and get clear.

Maybe he could even get as far as the harbour mouth before someone challenged him and the shore batteries began tracking to blow him out of the water.

It was a chance. It was as slim as a fething knife-blade, but that was the sort of chance he’d dealt with his whole life.

‘Planning flight?’

Mkoll glanced at Olort. The damogaur was staring at him in vague amusement.

‘Shut up,’ he said.

‘You wouldn’t get far, Ghost,’ Olort said. ‘Someone would notice.’

‘Not you,’ said Mkoll.

Olort shrugged. ‘Nen. Not me. I’d be dead. You’d cut my throat for my silence before you attempted such misadventure. But someone would.’

‘Shut up,’ said Mkoll.

‘Give up now,’ said Olort. ‘Give up these dreams, Mah-koll. You won’t be killed. This, I swear. You are special. You are enkil vahakan. We would transport you to where deliverance awaits. You would share words with he that speaks all truth. Life would be yours, if you repudiate and pledge. This, I can promise you.’

‘You’re not really in a position to make or keep any promises.’

‘Oh, I am, despite the knife at my back,’ said Olort.

‘Don’t pretend that you care whether I live or die,’ said Mkoll.

‘I do not,’ said Olort with a surprisingly honest shake of his head. ‘You are the archenemy. I would that I could bless you – vahooth ter tsa. Take your light from this world. But I think of myself. You are enkil vahakan. You have value, and such value may be transmitted to those who find you and deliver you. Our voice told us to be alert for you.’

‘So you’d benefit?’ asked Mkoll.

Olort shrugged again, diffidently, as if it was of no consequence.

‘Bringing me,’ said Mkoll. ‘That would be a good mark for you? Raise your status? Win you favour? What would you get? A promotion? Etogaur Olort?’

Olort winced in distaste at the sound of the word on an enemy’s lips.

‘Kha,’ he admitted, grudgingly. ‘I would be elevated. Perhaps receive a bounty.’

‘Money? Blood money?’

Olort frowned.

‘The things your kind place value on, Ghost,’ he muttered. ‘Money. The elevation of rank. We do not chase these foolish nothings. I mean a gift would be bestowed. A passport – is that the word? A passport to the elite. A command posting. Responsibility. Authority. Presence. Or even perhaps a gift of reworking.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The great blessing of the Eight Ways. A reshaping of form, an influx of holy gifts. To be wrought and reworked by our magir’s ingeniants. To be chosen and changed, perhaps even as a Seneschal of Ways, or as a Qimurah.’

‘A what? I don’t know that word.’

‘The chosen of chosen. The blessed reworked.’

Mkoll chewed his lip and studied the damogaur’s smiling face.

‘You’re an ambitious little feth, aren’t you?’

‘I go where the voice calls me to go, Ghost, and I ascend through my devotion.’

Mkoll glanced back at the grey waters below. He had a choice. Either way, there was no coming back. A desperate, perhaps suicidal flight to find safety, or something even more insane.

‘You found an enkil vahakan today, damogaur,’ he said. ‘If you’d kept control of him, if he hadn’t got a knife at your back, what would you have done? Where would you have taken this special prisoner?’

‘To the Fastness,’ said Olort.

‘Where’s that?’

Olort gestured to their right. The island chain.

‘So you’d have taken me to the voice?’ Mkoll asked.

‘Yes,’ said Olort.

The rusting barge was an old agriboat that had long passed the end of its useful life. The sirdars running the quays had pressed all available watercraft into service. Its deck and flanks were a corroded mess, and it stank of rot and mildew. Almost seventy packsons were crammed aboard, along with a dozen manacled and terrified Imperial prisoners.

The barge chattered out of Sadimay harbour, engines groaning and rumbling, leaving the drab rock of the sea cliffs to aft. High above, the Basilica had been put to the torch. A crown of flames clung to the clifftops, lifting a thick pall of black smoke into the sea air. Soot and cinders fluttered down, as gently as snow.

The agriboat was one of eight in a small, puttering flotilla, barges and tub-hulks. One was even being towed by another on a long, caulked hawser. They nudged out into the Strait, wallowing in the chop, sluggish and heavy as a funeral procession. The men aboard held on to the side rails or to wire stanchions to stay upright in the churning swell.

They cleared Sadimay and its burning crown, and chugged south into the Strait. A couple of kilometres ahead, they could see other small flotillas like their own, turning south into the paler waters of the channel. Beyond that, islands, some crags and atolls, some larger bars of purple in the wet haze.

The voyage lasted three hours, passing islands and rock slopes on either side, until a great section of the sky ahead, what had appeared for some time to be the lowering black form of an approaching westerly storm, resolved and solidified.

Another island. High cliffs as black as the rich loam of the lost Tanith forests. It was huge, many times larger than Sadimay, its towering sides like the ramparts of some keep raised by the titans of old myth. There were rainbow slicks of promethium on the approach waters, and the air stank of bulk machines and heavy industry.

The chugging flotilla came in over the shadow of the cliff wall. There was a huge inlet, an arch like a sea cave a couple of kilometres wide. The barges followed the channel in, until they began to pass under the arch of rock, the island consuming them.

It grew dark. The noise of the flotilla’s weary engines echoed louder in the wide confines of the rock-roofed passage.

Mkoll stood at the barge’s stern, beside the rail. His hand at Olort’s back. The darkness slid across him, blotting out the sky.

There was no going back.

SIX: PROTECTION

‘You’re conducting a Hereticus investigation of my regiment?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Your specificity is wrong, Lord Executor,’ replied Inquisitor Laksheema. ‘It is a more–’

‘You’re running an investigation?’ Gaunt asked more firmly. The sharpness of his question stilled the room. They sat across a table in an empty ward room a short distance along the hall from Gaunt’s chambers. Daur had claimed the ward room for what clearly had to be a private meeting.

Daur sat at Gaunt’s side, his face impassive. Colonel Grae sat beside the inquisitor. Hark occupied a chair at the table’s end, as if he was somehow moderating the discussion. He had chosen the seat himself. His eyes were narrow. He could see how Laksheema was testing Gaunt’s patience, just as she had tested his.

Gol Kolea sat alone on a low-backed chair in the corner, staring at the floor.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Laksheema. The burnished golden sections of her partly augmetic head glowed in the lamplight. She was impossible to read. Was she smirking? Annoyed? Amused? Viktor Hark knew there was no way of telling. Her face was a mask. That made her very good at her job. It was probably why she’d had herself rebuilt that way, after whatever grievous damage she’d suffered.

No doubt deserved, Hark thought.

There was no misreading Gaunt’s annoyance.

‘An investigation of my regiment? And of the Astra Militarum dispositions on Urdesh?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Without approval? Without notifying anyone in high command?’ asked Gaunt.

‘The matter is sensitive–’

‘So high command itself is under suspicion?’

‘I didn’t say–’

‘You’re not saying much, inquisitor,’ said Gaunt. ‘But you would have informed senior staff militant unless you thought senior staff were also potentially complicit.’

‘I am informing you now, lord,’ said Laksheema. ‘I have come to you directly.’

‘Not directly,’ said Gaunt. ‘First, you detained one of my officers.’ He looked at Kolea, whose attention remained resolutely fixed on the floor. ‘Then you come to me with questions, and not through official channels. That’s not informing me. My man, my regiment. I fall within the compass of your investigation too, don’t I?’

‘Lord, this is a formality to expedite the–’ Colonel Grae began.

‘I don’t think it is, colonel,’ said Gaunt. Grae closed his mouth. Gaunt turned his unnerving stare back to the inquisitor.

‘Ask. Speak. Inform,’ he said. ‘If you wish to expedite, get on with it and I’ll cooperate.’

‘You are correct, my lord,’ said Laksheema calmly. ‘We have issues of concern that involve the Tanith First and so, by extension, you. Those concerns stretch into other departments of the Astra Militarum and other regiments, and simply due to your status, to high command.’

‘Lay these concerns out for me,’ said Gaunt.

‘There are issues of strict confidence that–’

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘You’re cleared, Grae is cleared, and I am cleared, all at the highest level. Because of my status, which you so delicately point out, the officers of my regiment present are also, by extension, authorised.’

Laksheema shrugged slightly.

‘Certain ratification would be necessary,’ she said. ‘For Commissar Hark, Captain Daur and Major Kolea… paperwork and disclosure approval–’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘Again, dissembling. If your investigation encompasses the entire Astra Militarum on Urdesh, who stands outside that purview to warrant and approve such authorisation? You’re hiding behind the rules you’re seeking to subvert, asking us to chase our tails through the Administratum, knowing we’d never get an answer. Let’s be clear. I am ratifying them. Right now. With these words.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Laksheema.

‘And you are clearing them with yours, on behalf of the ordos,’ Gaunt added.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Laksheema. ‘We will consider them cleared to both our satisfactions.’

‘Good,’ said Gaunt. ‘Begin.’

‘There has been a crisis on Urdesh for some time,’ said Laksheema, ‘one that existed before your return. The obvious challenge of overcoming the Anarch’s military threat, matched by a lack of understanding of his tactics. This is now, for the most part, resolved. It is clear that the Anarch’s strategy on Urdesh was a mirror of our own, to whit, the enticement, containment and elimination of the opposing leaders. The obliteration of the warmaster and his high command. The neutering of this crusade.’

‘I think we can agree that the Lord Executor played no small part in the revelation of that stratagem,’ Grae said to Laksheema. ‘He saw Sek’s trap, and prevented it from springing shut, and–’

‘Please, don’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘Don’t what?’ asked Grae.

‘Attempt to flatter and support these men,’ said Laksheema. ‘They are of your institutions, Grae, not mine. I serve the Throne, directly. My intentions are not filtered through the strata of a vast and hidebound organisation like the Astra Militarum.’

‘I advise you not to push that point,’ said Hark quietly. ‘Say your fething piece or get your fething arse out of the door.’

Laksheema looked at Gaunt. ‘Will you not reprimand your man for such–’

‘I find,’ said Gaunt, ‘as I grow older, the Astra Militarum indeed to be a vast and hidebound organisation, inquisitor. Starched with needless formality and protocol, and strangled by the chains of command. So, in this room, Viktor can speak his mind with my entire support. Say your fething piece.’

Laksheema sat back, her eyes fixed on Gaunt.

‘Whatever your accomplishments in revealing the truth of the Anarch’s stratagem,’ she said, ‘I do not believe it is ended or even halfway done.’

‘Then we agree on something,’ said Gaunt.

‘And your very return is an issue,’ Laksheema said. ‘For it changed the nature of things. Of the crisis. Whatever long game Sek is trying to win on Urdesh, it altered overnight to accommodate you.’

‘Me?’

‘The material you brought with you from Salvation’s Reach,’ said Laksheema. ‘Its import is unknown to us, but it is clearly of great significance to the enemy. Such significance, in fact, that he is willing to abandon – or at least, delay and modify – a scheme of war that he has been preparing and executing over a period of years.’

‘The eagle stones,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes, those artefacts,’ said Laksheema.

‘Apparently, a Glyptothek–’ Grae began.

‘Whatever,’ said Gaunt. He looked at Laksheema. ‘Again, agreed. I believe the late assault on Eltath was as much about recovering said items as it was about annihilating high command.’

‘The attack was repulsed,’ said Daur.

‘Was it, captain?’ asked Laksheema.

‘Yes, Ban, was it?’ Gaunt said, glancing at Daur. ‘The main assault was repulsed. Perhaps. It certainly fell back without warning. Secured objectives were not capitalised on. It may have been a feint. A cover for some clandestine objective now invisibly secured.’

‘But the Beati struck a blow at Sek at Ghereppan,’ said Daur. ‘That surely was the decisive factor? The timing was no coincidence.’

‘It seems likely,’ said Gaunt. ‘He may have been disadvantaged by the Beati’s work. Feth knows, he may even be dead. But his strategy isn’t. My gut says so. Sek wasn’t defeated four nights ago. He didn’t walk away from Eltath and Ghereppan empty-handed with his arse whipped. Whatever it cost him, he achieved something.’

‘And we don’t know what it is?’ said Daur.

‘And we don’t know what it is,’ said Gaunt. ‘But like an enemy under cover of darkness, we don’t need to know where he is. We just need to prepare.’

‘This is the thinking of high command?’ asked Laksheema.

‘This is my thinking,’ said Gaunt. ‘That’s enough.’

Laksheema was about to speak when there was a knock at the door.

‘Ignore it,’ said Gaunt.

The knock came again. Both Daur and Hark were in the process of rising, but Gaunt shoved back his chair and strode to the doorway.

Sancto and the other bodymen stood in the hallway outside. Nearby stood Beltayn and Merity and the members of Laksheema’s entourage, waiting where they had been told to wait, along with the tactician Biota and several Officio Tacticae officials Gaunt didn’t know. Behind them stood two officers from the command echelon, their braid denoting them as members of Van Voytz’s staff.

‘My lord–’ Sancto began.

‘Not now,’ snapped Gaunt, and slammed the door in his face.

He walked back to his seat slowly.

‘What are the eagle stones?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know,’ said Laksheema. ‘They are currently subject to detailed analysis.’

‘Where are the eagle stones?’ asked Gaunt, sitting down and straightening his chair.

‘Secure,’ said Laksheema.

‘Where?’

‘That’s classified.’

‘But they are of strategic significance?’

‘My lord,’ said Laksheema, ‘they could be lumps of broken brick, but if the enemy considers them significant, we must too. Even if they are sacred objects of no intrinsic value or power, they may still provoke the Archenemy into action and response, to our disadvantage.’

She paused.

‘We believe, however,’ she said, ‘that they are malign.’

‘Malign?’

‘My inquiry into their nature and purpose revealed a connection to your Major Kolea, which is why I had him detained for interview. Major Kolea has revealed, reluctantly, that he knows more about the stones and adjacent matters than he has admitted to you, or to anyone.’

Gaunt looked over at Kolea. Kolea was still staring at the floor. Gaunt saw the muscles of his jaw clench.

‘A malign influence,’ said Laksheema, ‘one that has been exerting its power over your man there, and by extension your entire regiment, since you first obtained the objects. By the reckoning of world-time, Lord Executor, that’s ten years. Some of the precarious events of your odyssey home may be connected to it. Your warp-translation accident… the curious sparing of your vessel by the Archenemy battlecruiser, which surely failed to annihilate a clearly identified enemy because it knew something valuable was aboard… even the replenishment drop to Aigor 991, a mission Major Kolea was personally involved with.’

‘So,’ said Gaunt, ‘you wish to arraign the Lord Executor for heretical contamination?’

‘My lord,’ said Laksheema, ‘you and your regiment have a worrying record of straying outside the safety of approved behaviour. I might cite your mission to Gereon in 774, and the suspicions that followed your return from that mission, that you had spent too long in the tainted environment of a Chaos-held world.’

‘Cite all you like,’ said Gaunt. ‘Those matters are closed. We have been determined as loyal and true. I was reinstated, and my regiment returned to me, despite the naysayers.’

‘Dirt and rumours cling to a man,’ she replied, ‘even one of your rank.’

‘Perhaps you should discuss this with Warmaster Macaroth,’ said Gaunt. ‘He appointed me to this station. He has faith in me.’

‘Your unorthodox reputation goes back a long way, lord,’ said Laksheema. Her haunting non-smile ignited. ‘Your unusual career path of colonel and commissar. Reports from 765 and thereabouts – I have Inquisitor Abfequarn’s files at my disposal – suspicions that, for a considerable period, you sheltered in your regiment, and close to you, a suspected psyker. An unregistered boy. Also, the business of a Major Soric–’

‘A boy? You mean Brin Milo,’ said Gaunt. ‘I haven’t seen him in years. He left my company on Herodor, and joined the personal retinue of the Beati. I think that’s a fairly glowing reference for his good standing. Or do you intend to interview the Saint when you’re done with the warmaster?’

‘I do not,’ said Laksheema.

Gaunt sat back. He watched her. She betrayed nothing.

He got up.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Stay here please, all of you. I want to talk with Major Kolea. In private.’

‘We… wait here?’ asked Laksheema.

‘I’m sure we can entertain ourselves, ma’am,’ said Hark.

Gaunt led Kolea out of the room. Biota and the other officials were still waiting expectantly outside the ward room. More had joined them, carrying data-slates and reports.

Gaunt could see questions and requests about to explode at him from all sides.

‘Not now,’ he growled.

‘My lord,’ said Sancto. The Scion stiffened as Gaunt turned to look at him.

‘Sancto?’

‘I appreciate this is not the time,’ Sancto said quietly, ‘but there are matters that demand your attention. Many matters. I hesitate to detain you, but–’

Gaunt raised a hand and Sancto shut up.

‘Quickly,’ Gaunt said to the rest of them.

Beltayn shrugged. ‘Oh, just stuff. It can wait, sir,’ he said.

‘You requested my presence, lord,’ said Biota. ‘To form a tactical cabinet and–’

‘I did,’ said Gaunt. ‘I wanted you specifically, Biota.’

‘I’m honoured, sir,’ said Biota. ‘It will be a pleasure to serve. May I introduce–’

He had started to turn to the Tacticae officials with him.

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘Not now. Just get to work. Choose effective people you can trust. Triage the data for me. Deal with the stuff that doesn’t need my personal attention. My adjutant Beltayn has been doing your job single-handedly for the last four days, so use him. He can bring you up to speed.’

‘My lord,’ said one of the officers from Van Voytz’s echelon. ‘The lord general wishes you to know that the Beati is inbound to the palace and will be arriving shortly. He thought–’

Gaunt’s hand came up again. He looked at Biota.

‘Things like that, Biota. I’m delegating. Get everything in order. I will, of course, greet the Beati as soon as she’s here.’

‘Of course, sir,’ replied Biota. ‘And, uhm, if there are matters that do require your personal attention…?’

Gaunt sighed, and looked at the faces around him. He pointed to a figure at the back of the group.

‘Along with Beltayn, add her to your cabinet,’ he said. ‘Merity Chass, of House Chass. Well-versed in administrative duties, and entirely familiar with the immediate business of my regiment.’

‘Her?’ said one of the officials, bewildered.

‘Sir,’ said Biota, looking pained, ‘this is entirely unconventional. The personal cabinet of a Lord Executor can’t be thrown together as a makeshift–’

‘We’re improvising today, Antonid,’ said Gaunt. ‘This is just expediency to keep things from leaving the rails. We can refine it all later. For now, get on with it.’

He looked at Merity.

‘Are you all right with this?’ he asked.

‘I will be delighted to have something practical to do, sir,’ she said.

‘But why her?’ asked one of the officials.

Gaunt glared at him. ‘Because she’s the only one of you that could knock on my door and not make me want to shoot them in the face. So use that advantage.’

‘This is highly unorthodox, my lord,’ said Biota.

‘Apparently, that’s my reputation,’ said Gaunt. ‘Run with it and let’s see where it gets us.’

He turned to Kolea.

‘With me,’ he said.

Jan Jerik tapped his fingers on the head of his cane as he waited for the freight elevator to ascend. They could hear it grumbling and clanking its way up from far below.

Corrod stood with him in the dank chamber of the lift-head, a chamber seated deep in the basement crypts of House Ghentethi. They were the last to descend. His men, and those who had arrived with his second, Hadrel, had already gone down, escorted by house footmen and the subordinates of the clave. All told, Corrod’s company numbered sixty-four, all scrawny, emaciated and filthy individuals who had seemed barely able to lift and load the crates of equipment Jan Jerik had provided for them. A singularly unimpressive mob, Jan Jerik concluded. The gear and uniform his people had procured, most of it standard-size trooper fit removed from an abandoned Munitorum depot in Albarppan, wouldn’t fit them. They’d look like children dressing up in adult clothes. Jan Jerik’s disappointment and unease had risen considerably. They were vagabond heathens clad in rags, stooped and bone-thin like the victims of famine, weak and frail. Beggars. They all reminded him of beggars. He hadn’t expected beggars, and he hadn’t asked for them. These wretches wouldn’t be physically able to conclude the endeavour, and he doubted they’d make good on any promises. The deal was sour, and he should never have made it.

Still, the clave’s thermal junction, far below, was quiet and out of the way. A good place to divest himself of this mistake. Five minutes before, he’d spoken quietly with one of his subordinates, out of earshot of his guests. His staff were set and ready. They’d make short work of the business, and dispose of the corpses in the geotherm vents.

Jan Jerik had pulled on a work-suit and protective boots for the descent. He carried a glowglobe set in a lantern holder. When he’d buttoned up the work-suit, he hung his keys and ciphers on the outside.

‘Why do we go last?’ Corrod asked.

Jan Jerik shrugged. ‘Just a custom of the house, sir,’ he said. ‘The ordinate always comes to the workface last, once his crews have prepared the area. A protocol.’

‘Damogaur,’ said Corrod.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Jan Jerik, looking up.

‘You called me “sir”,’ said Corrod. ‘I hold the office of damogaur. That is the correct form of address.’

‘Of course.’

‘A protocol,’ said Corrod.

Jan Jerik smiled thinly. Corrod was watching him. His eyes were dull and lifeless. The weather-beaten skin of his face had shrunk back to every promontory of cheekbone and jaw. His neck was like a reed, and his throat the slack, wrinkled wattle of a nonagenarian.

‘A military rank?’ said Jan Jerik. The elevator finally arrived, rattling into place. He stepped forward and dragged open the folding metal shutter of the cage.

‘Yes,’ said Corrod.

Jan Jerik ushered him into the freight car, and Corrod shuffled past him. The ordinate closed the cage, secured the lock latch, and pulled the lever down to the indicator for the lowest level. With a lurch and a whir of cable gears, the car started its descent.

‘I hadn’t realised,’ said Jan Jerik.

‘What?’

‘That things had gone so badly for… for your forces. I now see why you would be so desperate to engineer a deal with men of, uh, Imperial leanings.’

‘Your leanings seem quite fluid,’ remarked Corrod.

Jan Jerik shrugged. ‘Our loyalty is always to Ghentethi,’ he said. ‘Ghentethi before all. Our house has stood, like many of the dynastic claves, since the early times of settlement. We consider ourselves independent, and ally with those who will benefit us most. My dear s– damogaur. You know well that the mastery of Urdesh has changed many times over the centuries. The Throne, the rimward tribes, and back, and forth. We have worked with and for the Sanguinary Brood as often as we have distant Terra. Indeed, in some golden eras, past gaurs have favoured us more than the Throne or the forge-priests of Mars have ever done.’

The elevator continued to rumble down into the darkness.

‘What did you mean?’ asked Corrod.

‘Mean?’

‘Your comment… that you see now why we are desperate?’

Jan Jerik smiled. ‘Oh, I meant no offence, damogaur,’ he said. ‘Merely an observation. I was expecting warriors. Soldiers. Strong and able men. But your forces are clearly so depleted that they send us old men. Veterans, I presume. I doubt not your courage, but you are a flimsy bunch. Presumably all that could be spared. I am sad to see the might of the tribes so wasted and reduced.’

‘My lord Anarch has sent his best to accomplish this deed,’ said Corrod, without emotion.

Jan Jerik chuckled. ‘Rather my point, damogaur. If you are his best, then woe betide the Anarch’s host. I had heard that the Guard had the measure of you, that the war had swung hard to the Throne on this world, and others. I had no idea that it was quite so parlous. Just dregs remaining. I am surprised the Administratum hasn’t broadcast this jubilantly to raise the public mood. That the Archenemy in these parts is reduced to a tattered relic, and that the fire is gone from them.’

Corrod looked at him almost blankly for a second, then shuffled across the car and threw the lever into neutral. The elevator halted abruptly, between levels. It rocked and creaked gently on its cables.

‘What are you doing, sir?’ Jan Jerik snapped. ‘Have you taken umbrage at my words? Have I offended you? Well, then, forgive my spirit and my honesty. Let us resume.’

Corrod turned to face him.

‘We came to you in guise, ordinate,’ he said. He grimaced slightly, his lips curled back from his dirty teeth for a second, as if suffering some quiet anguish. ‘We entered this city masked, so that we might pass unheeded. You have made a misapprehension.’

The ordinate chuckled, nervously.

‘I crave your pardon, then,’ he said lightly. ‘Let us continue on. The lever, sir–’

‘I wish to reassure you, ordinate,’ said Corrod. He grimaced again.

‘No need, no need! Let us–’

Jan Jerik stopped speaking. His eyes and mouth opened wide, and he took two or three involuntary steps backwards.

Corrod’s eyes had lit. They shone with an ugly yellow light. There was acute intelligence in them now, and a predatory precision. He began to twitch, his thin arms pressed into his ribs, elbows bent, hands spavined into shaking claws. His lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl, and his mouth slowly opened under tension, as if he was screaming silently.

Neon tears began to well and drip from his eyes, the same luminous yellow that glowed inside his sockets. His skin began to ripple. Jan Jerik could see muscle, fibre and bone shift and undulate beneath the surface, bending and poking, twitching and pulsing. He heard a series of ugly cracks, the snap of bones and the click of joints, that made him flinch.

Corrod was growing taller. The weak, slack musculature was filling out and growing taut. Ribs stretched, and vertebrae rattled like beads. The dirty rags he wore tore in places across his shoulders as he grew within them. He tilted his head back in a rictus, mouth wide, spittle flecking from his brown and broken teeth. Neon tears ran from his hollow cheeks. His jaw clicked forwards.

‘The Emperor protects!’ Jan Jerik whispered. His voice shrunk to nothing.

‘No,’ said Corrod. ‘He does not.’

The alchemy was done. Corrod towered over the ordinate, staring down at him. He was more than two metres tall. His limbs were longer. He was still cadaverously lean, a tall, thin spectre, but the muscles were hard under his fat-less flesh. His nose had all but receded into a cavity, and his mouth had extended like a snout, with a long, narrow chin. The teeth, top and bottom, were a tangled mess of canine points, some as long as the ordinate’s little fingers.

Corrod’s neon eyes glowed, yellow heat behind a milky surface.

‘Now you may see us,’ he said.

‘What are you?’ Jan Jerik stammered.

‘We are the Anarch’s chosen of chosen, the blessed reworked, the blessed of his voice, which drowns out all others.’

‘I don’t…’ Jan Jerik gasped.

‘We are his favourite sons. And we are few,’ said Corrod, ‘granted our rare and precious gifts by the holy Changer of Ways through the Ministry of the Great Anarch. We are the Qimurah, and within the Sabbat Worlds, a mere sixty-four of us exist as the Anarch’s elite.’

Corrod paused, wiping a neon tear off his cheek with the back of his thumb.

‘And all of us,’ he said, ‘all sixty-four, in unprecedented unison, have come to perform this task.’

‘I’m sorry!’ said Jan Jerik. ‘I’m sorry!’ He had backed to the far wall of the car in terror, and was pressed against the cage.

‘Apology accepted,’ said Corrod. He reached for the lever. ‘Shall we continue?’

Gaunt led Kolea into his quarters, took one warning look at Sancto and the Scions as they took up position outside, and shut the door.

‘Sit,’ he said.

Kolea breathed heavily, and sat down on one of the chairs.

‘Talk,’ said Gaunt. He crossed to a cabinet and poured two cap glasses of amasec.

Kolea looked like he was in pain. He couldn’t make eye contact.

‘I don’t know where to start, sir,’ he said.

‘Try,’ said Gaunt. He handed one of the glasses to Kolea, who took it carefully, but didn’t sip. Gaunt dragged over another chair and sat down, facing Kolea.

‘Gol?’

Kolea sighed.

‘What has she got on you?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I don’t know. Falsehoods, lies.’

‘She’s making it up?’

‘No. I mean… there are things that I don’t… I don’t even know if they’re true. Things that have haunted me.’

He looked up into Gaunt’s eyes for the first time.

‘Things I should have told you long ago,’ he said.

‘About Aigor? The supply drop?’

‘Mostly. Yes.’

‘Now’s the time, major,’ said Gaunt.

Kolea looked down at his drink. He paused, then he sank it in one gulp.

‘There was something there,’ he said.

‘You told me that. It was in your report.’

‘A voice, that demanded the eagle stones.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Demanded they be brought to Urdesh.’

‘All this I know, Gol.’

‘It said it was the voice of… of him. Sek. It said it had power over me.’

‘To deliver the stones?’

Kolea hunched his shoulders. ‘We brought them anyway,’ he said. ‘To Urdesh, I mean. It’s what we were doing. It’s not like I had to steal them, or break orders, or do its bidding…’

‘And this was all in your report, Gol. So what has Laksheema got hold of? What didn’t you tell me?’

‘It said I was marked,’ said Kolea, his voice thin. ‘It knew my name, and said I was… susceptible. That the harm done to me on… the injuries that were healed on Herodor, that they had made me vulnerable.’

‘To Sek?’

‘To the warp. Throne help me. The voice told me I was… I was a conduit for daemons.’

He looked up at Gaunt.

‘How can a man say that? It damns him. It walks him to the scaffold or the stake.’

‘Probably better to say it than to hide it, Gol. This is late to learn it.’

‘I know!’ Kolea snapped. He subsided. ‘I know. But I told myself… I told myself it was all lies. Sir, we both know how the Ruinous Powers game us. Play with our minds. Whispering and polluting. I thought it was that. The warp trying to… to play me.’

‘So your report was incomplete because you were protecting yourself?’ asked Gaunt.

‘No,’ said Kolea, in the tiniest whisper.

‘What, then?’

‘The voice told me that if I didn’t comply, it would kill my children.’

‘Your children?’

‘Dalin and Yoncy. It told me they’d perish, if…’

Gaunt nodded. ‘They’re safe, you know?’ he said. ‘Both of them. They got here safely. It was lying to you.’

‘It’s what I thought.’

‘But what? Gol?’

Kolea sighed again.

‘It’s like I don’t know what to trust any more. I thought it was my head, the old damage… so many things that don’t make sense. I just locked it all up. Kept it to myself.’

Kolea rose to his feet abruptly. He fiddled with his empty glass, as if wondering where to put it down.

‘I thought if I told you, you’d execute me,’ he said. ‘That, or the Black Ships. And the kids too, by extension. Named by the darkness. Feth, what? The Black Ships for them too?’

‘So you told yourself it was all lies?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Yes,’ Kolea replied. ‘But I made a promise to myself. An oath, that I’d keep the children safe. Protect them. That if this darkness, this bad shadow, was real, I’d deny it and kill it. That’s what we do. We’re soldiers of the Throne.’

He looked at Gaunt.

‘Aren’t we?’ he asked.

‘We are,’ said Gaunt.

‘But it was getting too… too hard,’ Kolea said. ‘Spinning out of control. Just so much. Once Laksheema got her claws in me, I knew it was just a matter of time. That it would all come out.’

Gaunt got up, took the glass from Kolea’s hand, and went to refill it.

‘We didn’t know what the eagle stones were, Gol,’ he said. ‘Not back then. Not at Aigor. It was much later we made that connection. Bask saw them after the accident. Spread out like wings.’

‘Yeah,’ said Kolea. ‘That’s when it all really started to unravel. Sir, I should have told you right at the start, damn the consequences. I was a coward.’

Gaunt held out the refilled glass. ‘You’re one of the strongest men I’ve ever served with, Gol,’ he said. ‘Whatever you are, you’re no coward.’

‘What happens now, sir?’ Kolea asked. ‘I’ll resign my pins. You’ll want me in the stockade at least.’

Gaunt wiggled the glass he was holding out slightly, reminding Kolea to take it.

‘What happens now, Gol,’ he said, ‘is you tell me the rest.’

‘The rest?’

‘What started to unravel?’

Kolea took the glass. ‘Have you heard…’ He began, then winced as if he couldn’t believe he was saying it out loud. ‘Have you heard the rumours? About Yoncy?’

‘Rumours?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I thought Dalin and Yoncy were dead and gone with Livy on Verghast,’ Kolea said. ‘Lost and gone. But then, like a miracle, it turns out Criid had saved them. Brought them into the fold. Raised them.’

He sighed.

‘I guess a man can only have one miracle in his life, and mine was the Beati saving me. The kids were alive after all. I blessed the Throne for that. I let them be. I stayed back. They were too young to remember me, and they’d been through too much. But, you know, Dalin’s grown into a fine man. A good lasman.’

‘There’s distinction in him,’ Gaunt agreed.

Kolea nodded. ‘And Yoncy. Everyone’s favourite. More of a damn mascot than that fething bird. All the women dote on her. And Criid, well, she coaxed me back into their lives. Said it was dumb for me to be apart from them. So I made that connection again and… well, I was glad of it. For all the obvious reasons. I don’t need to tell you how it is to make a bond with a child you didn’t know existed.’

Gaunt pursed his lips. ‘No.’

‘But it got me close to them, you see?’ Kolea went on. ‘And I thought, “here’s how you look after them, Gol. If there’s any fething truth in that voice’s threat, I can be here. Right with them. Protect them, like I promised.” Because I thought… thinking like a solider, you understand, that the threat would be violence. An attack.’

‘But?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I think the threat was more venomous than that,’ said Kolea. ‘More… what’s the word? Insidious.’

‘How?’

‘This rumour,’ said Gol. He took a sip of amasec and glanced at his seat. Gaunt nodded, and Kolea sat back down. ‘This rumour. Don’t know where it started, but some women in the entourage, Verghast women, they thought my kids had both been boys. Two boys. Well, this got back to me, and I laughed. No, a boy and girl…’

He looked at Gaunt again, solemn. ‘Now I’m not so sure. I can’t trust my memory. I can’t trust anything in my mind, not since the harm done to me, or since the voice was in my head. I get headaches and… well, anyway, I think it’s right. There was no girl child. Two boys. I asked Hark to check, but there’s been no word back from the Administratum.’

‘It was just a mistake,’ said Gaunt. ‘You’d know. The women got it wrong. You know what camp rumour is like.’

‘I don’t reckon so,’ said Kolea.

‘Why would you think like that?’ Gaunt asked, sitting down again and leaning forward.

‘Yoncy, she’s an odd child. Always has been. A little girl, reluctant to grow up.’

‘She’s had a tough life.’

‘Not just that.’

‘Exactly that. Lost her mother. Lost you. Been through hell. Her life now as part of a nomad regiment.’

Kolea shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘I do,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’ve seen her. She acts young because it’s safe. Subconscious, I’m sure, but she acts like a little girl, because people always look after the little girl. It’s just a defence mechanism.’

‘No, sir,’ said Kolea. ‘I’ve had… I’ve had memories. I’m increasingly sure she isn’t my Yoncy. Before you say it, I know. Maybe that’s the punishment. Maybe that idea, that uncertainty, is the cruel trick the voice threatened, playing with me. In which case, I’m tainted and damned. But maybe…’

‘Maybe what?’

‘Maybe I’m right,’ said Kolea. ‘Maybe the true punishment is this. This is what the voice promised on Aigor. My girl, my Yoncy. Not mine at all. Maybe this is the way the warp shreds me.’

‘What do you think she is, then?’ asked Gaunt.

Kolea exhaled hard, his eyes wide and wondering.

‘Who the feth knows?’ he said. ‘Something placed among us? Some changeling thing. Something malevolent.’

Gaunt smiled. ‘Yoncy?’ he asked. ‘You think the Ruinous Powers planted her among us years ago? Years, Gol. As what? Some elaborate plan to destroy us from within? That it’s just been waiting?’

‘Well…’

‘Come on! If Yoncy’s a daemon, Gol, or whatever… she’s had plenty of chances. We’d know by now. The warp plays games, but not long-term games like that. And for what? To cripple or destroy a regiment that, until recently, was just another Guard unit? We’re not that important.’

‘We are now,’ said Kolea. ‘You are now.’

‘So it could see the future too?’ Gaunt laughed. ‘Predict? Project? Put an agent in place waiting for the day, the remote chance, years to come…?’

‘The eagle stones–’

‘Feth’s sake, Gol!’

‘I know how it sounds. But I know what my heart says.’

‘We’re sheltering a creature of the warp?’

‘All right, when you put it like that…’

‘Gol, you’re all mixed up,’ said Gaunt. ‘I get why. I understand. We’ve been through many hells, all of us. We’ve all faced the darkness and felt it mess with us. It’s what it wants. It’s what the Archenemy does to us. It wants to ruin our bonds, our trusts… it wants us to suspect each other and collapse in fear and hatred. And we’re not going to let it. That’s our job, after all. Our calling. Of all the citizens in the Imperium, we’re the ones that hold fast. The Imperial fething Guard. We’re the ones that are supposed to fight. You’re just messed up.’

‘But–’ Kolea began.

‘Whatever state your mind’s in,’ said Gaunt, ‘whatever confusion, maybe you don’t know. But Dalin does.’

Kolea blinked.

‘He’d know, wouldn’t he?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Forget your doubts. A brother would know his sister.’

Kolea wiped his mouth. He took a few deep breaths.

‘I suppose there’s that,’ he admitted.

‘Fething right there’s that,’ said Gaunt.

‘So what do we do?’

‘We fix this. We deal with the actual problem. Coordinate with Laksheema and divine Sek’s true intention. I need all the good men I can get, so I’m not losing you. And I have a way to get the inquisitor off your back and clear your mind about this.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. Drink up, then come with me. I’m going to talk to Laksheema again. Later on, you can go down to the billets and see your kids. See them and hug them and know that everything’s all right.’

Gaunt raised his glass.

‘You know why?’ he asked.

‘Because you’re Lord Executor and you said so?’

‘No. Because the Emperor protects.’

The glasses clinked together.

They all rose to their feet as Gaunt walked back into the ward room with Kolea.

Kolea stood by the door. Gaunt resumed his seat, and gestured for them all to sit.

‘So here we have it, inquisitor,’ he said. ‘I believe, absolutely, that we share the same desire. To serve the Throne. To deny and destroy the Archenemy of Mankind. To end the pernicious blight of Anarch Sek, and to achieve victory in this crusade for Terra. Sek, or at least his schemes, live on. Only a fool would believe the eagle stones play no part in them. So let’s combine our efforts. Identify the nature and value of the stones, their use and implication. Defend them. And ascertain through that effort the Archenemy’s intent, so that we may not only block it but also accomplish a total victory.’

Laksheema nodded. ‘The Holy Ordos would find the cooperation and assistance of the Lord Executor invaluable.’

‘Good. Where are the stones?’

‘As I said previously, sir, the location is necessarily classified–’

‘Laksheema,’ said Gaunt. ‘No more games. The ordos do not have combat forces of sufficient scale present on Urdesh to defend a location against mass attack. The Astra Militarum does. Please don’t presume that keeping their location a secret is an adequate defence against a monster who deals in secrecy.’

‘My lord,’ Laksheema began to protest.

‘You said it yourself,’ said Gaunt. ‘The Archenemy battleship withheld fire from my vessel – indeed, perhaps fought to save it – because something valuable was on board that it could not bring itself to destroy. We can safely assume it was the eagle stones. It knew they were aboard without even seeing them.’

‘I will supply data on the location,’ said Laksheema. ‘But it must remain classified, even within the Guard and the high command. We are certain the enemy has spies throughout Eltath. It has been enemy ground for too long.’

‘And the city leaks like a sieve,’ agreed Gaunt. ‘I have a regiment at my disposal that is cleared at my level. Have Grae give the data to Captain Daur.’

‘What about the pheguth?’ asked Hark quietly.

‘The traitor general?’ asked Laksheema. ‘I think his uses are exhausted.’

‘He’s scheduled for termination,’ said Grae.

‘Mabbon led us to them,’ replied Hark. ‘He was the key that allowed the Salvation’s Reach mission to happen. The strategy of division between Blood Pact and Sek came from him. I’m not saying he’s lying, or withholding, but… he’s still an asset. He may know things that can help us, even if he doesn’t realise it.’

‘Do you want him brought here?’ asked Grae.

‘Again, I want his location,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’ll have him delivered to the palace by an escort who knows how to handle him.’

He turned to look at Daur.

‘Go fetch Beltayn,’ he said. ‘I want a secure link to Rawne in five minutes.’

Jan Jerik wrenched the cage door open, and stepped out of the freight car. Corrod followed him, stooping slightly to move under the door frame.

The air stank of sulphur, and it was unpleasantly hot. Jan Jerik was already sweating. He led Corrod across the rockcrete loading bay outside the elevator and into a broad chamber where the others were assembled and waiting.

Corrod’s men, under the supervision of Hadrel, were busy equipping themselves from the crates House Ghentethi had provided. They were pulling on drab Guard fatigues and regulation boots, and unshipping lasrifles and hellguns from the munition crates. Each packson was checking his chosen weapon with assured ease and familiarity.

Like Corrod, they had all changed. Each one was a towering spectre of tall bones and hard muscle, and taut; too tall, too thin. The uniforms, which Jan Jerik had feared would be too big for them, were, if anything, too small. Some had rolled up sleeves where cuffs fell far short of their bony wrists. Their eyes shone, like those of wild animals caught by lamp light in the dark. On the deck plates, Jan Jerik saw spattered drops of neon tears.

The ordinate’s men, a dozen or more footmen and subordinates, were standing watch. Jan Jerik could see the pallor of their faces, and smell the fear. They were all armed with carbines as per his earlier private instruction, but they carried the guns as if ashamed of them.

‘My ordinate,’ said one of the footmen, coming forward quickly in concern.

Jan Jerik waved him off. They were committed now. He didn’t dare think what might befall him and his men if he reneged, or tried to purge his guests.

‘You… you have everything?’ he asked.

Corrod was pulling on a faded Guard jacket and checking its fit.

‘It would appear so,’ he said. ‘Sirdar?’

‘Most of what we requested, my damogaur,’ said Hadrel. ‘Though the quality of the weapons and clothing is merely serviceable. Just standard lasrifles. And no support weapons or grenades as stipulated.’

‘We got what we could,’ said Jan Jerik. ‘Sources are few at a time of war. And to ransack Munitorum property without detection–’

Corrod raised a lasrifle, checked its aim and feel quickly, shortened the carry-strap, then opened the receiver to load a powercell.

‘It will suffice,’ he said. ‘Sirdar, share the ammunition equally between all. Hacklaw? Make sure everyone has a blade.’

His officers moved to their tasks.

‘This… this is the lower level,’ said Jan Jerik. ‘From down here, we draw power from the geothermal vents to run our lathes and processors.’

‘And the vent system links all Mechanicus and forge facilities in the city?’ said Corrod, strapping on an ammunition belt.

‘All of them, and beyond the city too,’ said Jan Jerik. ‘It was a network constructed by the earliest settlers, to harness the power of the mountain and–’

‘Yes,’ said Corrod, cutting him short. ‘Let’s begin. Give me the chart.’

Jan Jerik handed it over, then lit his lantern and walked through the preparing group towards a large hatch at the end of the chamber. He selected a silver cipher key from his chain, and unlocked the hatch. Stinking gases and heat billowed out.

Corrod gestured, and his men assembled.

Jan Jerik unhooked a rebreather mask from a rack on the wall. His subordinates did the same.

‘You’ll need these,’ he said to the damogaur.

‘No,’ said Corrod.

‘Damogaur, the heat alone can be treacherous,’ said Jan Jerik. He adjusted a toggle on his worksuit to activate its cooling system. ‘And the accumulated gases are noxious. They can blind and choke. Moreover, if there is unscheduled system venting or an upwelling from the–’

‘No,’ said Corrod again. He began to blink rapidly, and the neon glow of his eyes increased in intensity. His jaw clenched tightly, as if he was suffering discomfort. There was a sudden, wet, sticky noise of bubbling fluids.

Milky secondary eyelids formed over his eyes, a tough organic membrane oozing with mucus that resembled the bulbous, glassy stare of a deep sea fish. The lids dulled the light of his eyes a little. Another film of mucus oozed out to cover his raw stub of nostrils and his mouth, hardening like resin. It formed a bony sheathe across his nose and mouth, like a muzzle on a dog woven from intestine and coral.

Hadrel and the other men had all done the same.

‘We will manage,’ he said to Jan Jerik, his voice muffled to a low murmur.

Jan Jerik winced with distaste.

He raised his lantern.

‘Then follow me,’ he said.

SEVEN: ARRIVALS

They ran under the shadow of the rock and entered the Fastness. The deep water of the channel lapped against the huge rock overhang, stirred by the current and chopped by the wake of the watercraft. It was brisk and cold under the shadow, and the growl of the hard-running engines echoed off the rock.

Mkoll didn’t know the Urdeshi name for the island, and there were no maps to hand. As they cleared the shadow, the nature of the Fastness became evident. It was a vast volcanic peak, long extinct. At some point in its long history, the sea had invaded the dead cone through fissures like the one they had entered by. The immense internal flue had become a sea-lake ten kilometres in diameter. Around it, the inner walls of the cone rose like cliffs, a kilometre and a half high. Above, the cone was open to the heavens, a ragged circle of grey sky fringed with vapour.

Urdesh’s clave dynasts and agri-fleets had used the Fastness as a natural harbour. The wide internal water, deep enough to handle the draft of any vessel, was protected from all sides by the rock bastion of the cone, defending it from foul weather and oceanic gales. From the waterline up, the internal cliffs were clad in buildings: docks and wharfs, landing platforms, boat pens and salting houses. Above these rose habitats, administrative halls, workshops, warehouses and machine rooms, all built out over the water on rusted metal pilings, and stacked up like blocks, clinging to the cliff walls and linked by open staircases and suspended walkways. A small city, accumulated over the years around the inner circumference of the dead flue. In some places, the piled structures reached almost a quarter of the way up the cliffs. Everything was caked in a thick coating of algae.

The cold air stank of seawater, promethium slicks and venting exhaust fumes. Mkoll saw fleets of watercraft – landing barges and battered agriboats – packing in at the landing stages, unloading war machines, cargo and hundreds of Sekkite troopers. This was the Archenemy’s safe haven, the point of flight for the vast forces retreating from the mainland brawl. Cranes and industrial hoists swung the heavier items onto the docks from the agriboats, ponderously manoeuvring tracked armour and troop carriers to the ramps of the foreshore yards. Horns blew, their bass notes echoing across the hidden lake, and standards flapped along the walls of the waterline, company standards, battle flags and banners of the infernal powers proudly displayed for incoming vessels to see. There was a screech and chatter of machine tools from the work-barns on the waterside.

The most arresting sight, dominating all others, was the ship. It was an Archenemy cruiser, gnarled and scarred, a medium-displacement shiftship over a mile long. Like the tiny agriboats beneath it, it had taken shelter in the cone of the Fastness. It hung in place on its grav-anchors and suspensor arrays thirty metres above the water, and the bulk of it seemed to fill the open hollow of the cone’s interior. Supply pipes looped from its flanks and belly to the dockside plants and manufactories. Bracing cables of woven wire as thick as a man’s thigh strained tight between anchor points on the hull and the surrounding cliffs, as taut as the strings on a lyre. Vapour and steam vented in thick, slow, dirty clouds from the ship’s aft drives. Bilge water and liquid grease poured in steady cascades from its underside. It had clearly not been at the Fastness long. The surface of the lake beneath the ship, black in the ship’s immense shadow, rippled with moire patterns triggered by the invisible action of the suspensor fields.

The cruiser’s down-lights were lit, illuminating the immediate wharfs with searchlight beams of an ugly radiance. Banks of lights had been set up on the docks too, angled to light the ship’s paint-scabbed and warp-scorched plates. Mkoll could see the minuscule figures of men moving like lice on the ship’s upper hull, work-crews engaged on field repairs and plate refits. There was the occasional blue-white twinkle of welding torches and fusion cutters.

Structures resembling siege towers had extended out from the docks, bridging the gap and linking ship to shore. As the agriboat passed beneath one, Mkoll could see the internal hoists lifting freight up to the access levels, and crews of stevedores and servitors hauling the loads across the bridge-spans overhead into the ship’s open airgates. Small lift ships and lighters droned like flies, shuttling between the cruiser’s gaping belly holds and the shoreline landing platforms. One flew overhead, running lights flashing, wings angled for low-flight mode, and the agriboat rocked in the wake of its thrusters.

The agriboat’s engines started to mutter a new note, and the vessel began to slide sideways towards the waiting docks. Other boats in the small fleet slowed and moved in with it. There were dock crews, servitors and soldiers waiting on the quay.

Mkoll heard chattering. It was in his head, a constant hissing, like a thousand soft whispers.

Olort looked at him, noticing his reaction.

‘He speaks to us all,’ he said, ‘to all and to every.’

Mkoll grimaced slightly. The psionic background drone would take some getting used to. It felt like fingernails scratching at his eardrums and the lining of his sinuses.

He was here. Close by.

They were moving in to dock. At the prow of the boat, men were standing ready to catch and throw the mooring lines.

‘I don’t know how you expect to–’ Olort began.

‘You have urgent business to attend to, damogaur,’ Mkoll replied.

‘Business?’ asked Olort.

‘Reports. Statements of deployment. You’ll be inventive. We’ll move directly through the crowd and get in.’

Olort sighed. He looked at Mkoll with an almost kindly smile.

‘This is the end. You realise that? Whatever plans you were nursing, they end here. You have delivered yourself. Your own choice. You are here and this is it. There is no escape, and no opportunity for any course of action except surrender.’

Mkoll didn’t reply.

‘Come,’ said Olort. ‘Submit now. I’ll take you in directly, and deliver you. It’ll be a feather in my cap, but it will make things easier for you. I’ll see to that. We have an understanding, don’t we? You’ve spared me. I’ll spare you.’

‘Spare me?’

‘Spare you the worst. You’re a trophy. You have value, and for that reason, you will be treated with care.’

‘And accept induction?’

‘If you choose so. I appreciate you may not be able to bring yourself to that. But you are enkil vahakan, Ghost. Special status will be afforded you.’

Mkoll looked at him.

‘Give me the blade,’ said Olort.

‘No.’

‘You’re a prisoner already,’ said Olort. He shrugged. ‘Look around. You have entered the heart of us. You have placed yourself in our bastion and in our midst. Your identity will not remain hidden for long. There is no escape. Give me the knife, and I will make things go as well for you as they can.’

The agriboat rocked against the quayside, grinding against the sacking bumpers. Men shouted instructions, hauled on cables, and jumped the gap to tie up. The boat’s engines coughed into reverse.

‘You have urgent business to attend to,’ Mkoll said.

Olort’s face fell. ‘A knife at my back? You think that will get you in here? That will keep you alive?’

‘It’s worked so far.’

‘I am but one life–’

‘But you don’t want to lose it. I’m sure you would die in the name of your lord. Cry out, and bring them all down on my throat. But you want to live, damogaur. You’d rather live. I see that in you. You see purpose and personal glory in this, and all the while that chance exists, you’ll keep your mouth shut. So… you and your sirdar have urgent business to attend to.’

The agriboat had scraped to a halt, and sat rocking. The troops aboard began to clamber out, passing up packs and folded support weapons, and reaching out for proffered hands. Packsons barked orders and got the shackled prisoners on their feet.

Mkoll let Olort feel the solidity of the blade at the base of his spine.

‘Let’s go,’ he whispered.

Olort moved forwards.

‘Make way here!’ he called. ‘I have urgent business to attend to!’

They made their way along the pier, and Mkoll stayed close to the damogaur. The whole structure had a cake of algae on it, hard-set from years of growth. It was pink, purple and ochre. The crowds were tight. At every side, packsons stood in loose groups, some resting, some swapping stories. A few had knelt down in what little space was available to offer prayers and observations. Sekkite officers and grotesque excubitors moved through the masses, marshalling the arrivals, and despatching them in ragged columns up the wharf to holding areas. Gangs of prisoners were being led away. Mkoll counted more than sixty captured men unloaded from the boats. How many more had already been brought to their doom?

The great horns roared above them. A cargo-lifter skimmed by, its shadow flickering in the searchlight beams.

‘Keep moving,’ Mkoll whispered.

A sirdar with a data-slate approached them. He threw a cursory salute to Olort with a quick hand to his mouth, a reflex gesture that to Mkoll had begun to read as blowing a kiss. The Tanith found the cultural mis-connect of the gesture unsettling. The sirdar and Olort exchanged a few words. The enemy tongue was fast and hard to follow, but Mkoll heard the phrase ‘urgent business’ more than once. The sirdar nodded, and pointed in the direction of the stilted buildings overhanging the wharf.

The scratching whispers in Mkoll’s skull continued.

From the rail of the dock, he saw a rockcrete foreshore where Sons of Sek with flamer packs were torching piles of what looked like undergrowth. Thick clouds of black smoke billowed from the burning heaps. The smell was pungent and sweet.

‘What are they doing?’ Mkoll asked.

Olort answered, using a word Mkoll didn’t know. There was no time to question further. They crossed a busy yard and entered the nearest building.

The place was old. Lumen-globe lamps hung from chains anchored to the ceiling. It was part modular build and partly carved from the rock wall. Industrial meltas had been used to fuse the rock and modular plate together. The hallway space was big, and echoed with voices and the tramp of feet.

The walls of the hallway were lined with engravings, tall and narrow. The place, Mkoll guessed, had been a centre of clave administration. The engravings displayed the Urdeshi loyalty to Terra in the form of images of the God-Emperor, but they reflected the interests of Urdesh. Here was the Emperor in the aspect of a sea god, coiling with scaled tentacles, and here he rose from the Urdeshi deeps in a vast bloom of algae. On another panel, he was festooned with weapon-pods, triumphing the product of the forge’s war-foundries. On another, he was so augmeticised with cyber implants he resembled a Titan war engine with a single, human eye. Slogans had been daubed in yellow paint under each image, utterances of the Archenemy. But the images themselves had not been defaced.

‘Why have these not been torn down?’ Mkoll asked Olort.

Olort seemed surprised. ‘They show him as he is,’ he replied. ‘Why would we break those?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The Urdeshi know the deeper truths,’ said Olort. ‘They are kin to us. They understand the fluidity. You cannot stand upon a border line for generations and not see both sides.’

Olort glanced up at one of the images. ‘See him there, not as a false emperor surrounded by saints. He is shown as the machine, as the mutation, a force of war. He has always been a creature of the deep warp, warped like us. You know him only as you want to see him.’

Olort made a gesture of respect to the engravings.

‘You worship him?’ Mkoll asked.

‘Nen, we respect,’ replied Olort. ‘He is no god, nor is he an emperor. But a prophet? Kha. Yes. He has seen the enlightenments of the Eight Powers and witnessed the truth of the warp. Ghost, your kind… they follow blindly. They see what they want to see. The Holy Lord, blessed of all, defying the darkness. But he stands in the darkness, beyond the curtain of death, fed by the warp and changed by it. He is a brother to us, a brother we must sadly fight to subdue until he renounces his insurrection.’

Olort looked at him.

‘You know nothing of this?’ he asked.

‘It makes no sense.’

‘This is because of your breeding. The indoctrination of your heretical culture. Do you… not know why we fight?’

‘You fight to annihilate.’

Olort shook his head sadly.

‘You are a man of war, Ghost,’ he said. ‘You have spent your whole life, I’d wager, serving your Throne in the field of battle. And you have never stopped to wonder what those you fight believe in? What our cause is?’

Mkoll didn’t reply.

‘We fight to bring you back,’ said Olort. ‘We fight to break your mindset and your blind beliefs. To make you see the truth and embrace it. Your prophet-lord has seen it, but he can no longer speak it, so your kind, they fight on according to ancient decrees and fossilised laws, things you believe are what he would have wanted. He is of us, and will be welcomed back to our bosom on such day as his followers finally lay down their swords and accept the warp-truth. Your faith in a man that was never a god has blinded you for ten millennia.’

‘No,’ said Mkoll simply.

‘This is the way of it,’ replied Olort. ‘You think we are the darkness. But you are the darkness. Your ignorance is a shadow on your eyes and a fog in your mind. We fight to deliver you from that. We fight, Ghost, to save you.’

They moved on past administrative chambers where rubricators worked at cogitation systems, then out across a suspended walkway towards another stacked complex of cliff-side buildings.

‘You know this place?’ Mkoll asked.

Olort nodded.

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘Twice, not for long.’

‘I want to find… information,’ said Mkoll. ‘Data on layout. Personnel locations. Those chambers back there–’

Olort shook his head.

‘Just the old processing centres of the Urdesh dynasts,’ he replied.

‘There were people at work. Using the cogitators–’

‘They have finished stripping out the memory cores of the dynastic claves. A gathering of intelligence. Now those machines are simply being used to compose and circulate our litanies.’

‘Then, assuming your life depended on it–’ said Mkoll.

‘Which I know it does,’ Olort replied with some sarcasm.

‘Where would you go?’

Olort pointed to the structures that lay ahead of them. ‘The record rooms,’ he said. ‘There we collate deployment details and pack data by hand. Machines cannot be trusted on this world.’

‘Lead me.’

‘What do you seek, Ghost? Do you cherish some plan, some great scheme, whereby a lone man with a knife can bring down this host? How long will you persist in such fantasies?’

‘Lead me. I know what I’m looking for. And to answer your question, until my life is over. The Emperor protects.’

‘Not here he doesn’t,’ said Olort. He shrugged. ‘Come, then.’

They began to cross the walkway. Below, the water of a dock inlet gleamed like a rainbow where the floodlights caught the scum of spilled promethium lapping the surface.

Packsons were coming the other way, hefting metal barrows laden with dead vegetation. More fodder for the bonfires on the rockcrete strand. As they passed, Mkoll saw what the vegetation was.

Islumbine. It had been torn up in great quantities, leaf, flower, stem and root.

‘They’re taking it to burn it?’ Mkoll asked as the soldiers with the barrows moved past.

‘I told you this.’

‘Why?’

‘It is vergoht,’ Olort replied, using the unknown word again. ‘The flower of your Saint. It never grew here, not on Urdesh. It was not…’

He hesitated, trying to find the correct word.

‘Native?’ asked Mkoll.

Olort nodded. ‘Yet now it grows everywhere,’ he said. ‘Like weed. We cut it and it grows again. So we cut it and burn it.’

‘Why bother?’

‘Because it is her flower,’ Olort said. ‘It is a holy aspect of her heresy. We must purge it, for while it grows and flourishes, it means she is here.’

‘Sir?’ Oysten called. She held out the headphones of her vox-set.

Rawne sniffed and trudged back to her, tugging his collar up against the incessant rain. He was soaked to the balls and his mood was foul. From down the wet, rubble-strewn street came sounds of sporadic gunfire. He hoped there’d be some killing left to do when he got there. He needed to take his mood out on something.

He took the headset and pulled it on.

‘Rawne,’ he said. He looked at Oysten, who nodded. ‘Link is secure,’ he continued. ‘Speak.’

The signal chattered and whined. A burst of static. Then a voice broke through.

‘–do you copy? Repeat, Colonel Rawne–’

‘Daur? That you?’

‘Affirmative, sir. This link is bad.’

‘Agreed. The weather. Tell me you’ve raised me to give a withdraw notice.’

‘Negative, sir. Sorry. I have new orders for you.’

‘I’ve just had new orders, Daur, from some arsewipe in Grizmund’s brigade. I don’t know what the feth is going on, but we’re locked in grunt work, street cleaning, and–’

‘These orders are direct from the Lord Executor, and they supersede all others.’

Rawne wiped his mouth.

‘Why isn’t he talking to me himself?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be an arse. Because he’s the Lord Executor and he’s got shit on his plate. This is vital work, Rawne. I’m going to brief you, so get ready.’

‘Stand by,’ replied Rawne, waving a hand distractedly at Oysten. She jumped up and passed him a data-slate and stylus.

‘All right,’ said Rawne. ‘Go.’

‘First point. The Tanith First is now cleared at vermilion level. Copy that?’

‘I heard.’

‘Gaunt orders you to withdraw from the Old Town district, effective immediately. Pull everybody. Commandeer transports if you have to. Leave any wounded at field stations, or have them shipped to the palace.’

‘Understood.’

‘You have two targets, both inside Eltath limits. Orders are to secure both locations. Both are classified. Location one…’

Rawne wrote the details down on the slate in company code, then read them back to make sure there were no mistakes.

‘Secure both sites,’ Daur said over the link. ‘The stones are at site one. Send the main force there. The pheguth is at site two. Smaller, mobile force there. Gaunt thought you’d want to handle that one yourself.’

‘Indeed.’

‘You’ve got that clear?’

‘I have. What’s this shit about?’

‘I don’t know the half of it myself,’ Daur replied. ‘But this is direct from the top, coded special task deployment. I’m advising you to keep this to yourselves. You have waiver authority to pass where you need to pass, but don’t discuss the details with any other units.’

‘Are we compromised, Daur?’

‘We don’t know anything, Rawne. Situation is fluid. But this is special task deployment. Gaunt needs men he can trust to perform this, and you’re the only ones in reach.’

There was a long pause. The rain pattered down.

‘The only ones period,’ Daur added. ‘This is on us. The Ghosts are now a discretionary unit operating at the Lord Executor’s personal instruction.’

‘So… outside the Guard command structure?’

‘For the duration. Those two locations carry the highest confidence ratings. Update on this channel as you can. And don’t feth it up.’

Rawne cleared his throat.

‘How deep are we in this, Ban?’ he asked.

‘Assume it’s the end of the world and your arse is on fire, then act accordingly,’ said Daur. ‘The Emperor protects–’

‘Feth he does. Rawne out.’

Rawne stood for a moment reading back over the notes he’d made. Then he took off the headset and tossed it back to Oysten, who caught it neatly.

‘You weren’t planning on living forever were you?’ Rawne asked her.

‘Sir?’ his adjutant replied, puzzled.

‘Skip it. Call the Ghosts in. All of them. Disengage and fall back to my marker. Now.’

Daur handed his headset back to Beltayn. Rain was lashing against the tall windows of the palace and the overhead lamps were flickering slightly, as if damp had got into the wiring.

‘They’re despatched,’ he said.

‘I’ll inform the Lord Executor,’ Beltayn replied.

‘That’ll have to wait,’ said Hark.

They turned to look at him.

‘He’s got a greeting to make,’ said Hark.

Gaunt led his small honour guard into the reception chamber. It was one of the finest rooms of the palace, its floor tiled, its pillars and cornices gilded. Mythical beasts of the ancient Cyberzoic Era ran rampant across the immense ceiling fresco, surrounding a luminous image of the God-Emperor, who they seemed to regard with a mix of appetite and dread. The God-Emperor looked down, sword raised, one mailed foot resting on the head of a vanquished and pliant cockatrice.

Rows of company and brigade banners had been brought into the hall and set up along its length specifically for this moment. Many were still damp and dripping. At the far end, a large hydraulic hatch had been opened, allowing for a view out onto the exterior landing platform. Gaunt could feel the wind blowing down the length of the hall, and see the veil of heavy rain outside.

He advanced. In step behind him were Kolea, Grae, Inquisitor Laksheema and the Tempestus squad.

At the far end, just inside the hatch, Lord General Barthol Van Voytz was waiting. There was a wet semi-circle on the floor at the hatch sill where the wind was blowing the rain in. Van Voytz had put on his finest uniform, the breast ribboned with medals. Accompanying him were a dozen other senior officers and adepts and a phalanx of heavy Urdeshi storm troops. Gaunt recognised their leader, Kazader of the 17th.

The storm troops were set either side of the hatch, rigidly at attention with weapons presented. They were as immobile as granite. Kazader matched their pose, but Gaunt could tell Kazader was watching him approach out of the corners of his eyes. Kazader was one of Van Voytz’s inner circle. There was bad feeling there.

Van Voytz turned as Gaunt came up, and the party of officers turned with him. All snapped a salute in unison. Van Voytz’s salute was a nanosecond slower than the rest. It wasn’t because Barthol was an older man, Gaunt thought. He wasn’t slow. That tiny delay was micro-aggression. A way of showing his resentment without being directly insubordinate.

Gaunt returned the salute.

‘At ease,’ he said. ‘The Emperor protects.’

Van Voytz stepped closer, making a respectful head-bow with a smile on his face. All for show.

‘My lord,’ he said, like an old friend.

He held out his hand, and Gaunt shook it. Like we’re all pals together, he thought. No grudge, no bitterness. He wants to stay relevant inside high command, and if that means making a show of friendship to a man who blocked his plans, a man whom he once regularly sent to do death’s work…

Gaunt smiled. The informality of the handshake wasn’t for his benefit. It wasn’t a gesture of reconciliation. It was for the officers looking on. Look at me. I am Van Voytz, the old wardog. I am so tight with the Lord Executor, I get to bypass protocol and shake his hand.

‘Has the transport arrived?’ Gaunt asked.

‘It touched down some minutes ago,’ said Van Voytz, ‘but no one has yet emerged.’ Gaunt noted how Van Voytz avoided the honorific of ‘sir’ or ‘my lord’, yet could not bring himself to risk an ‘Ibram’.

‘Awaiting security clearance from the war room,’ said Gaunt.

Van Voytz nodded. ‘I’m sure,’ he said.

‘Then we have a moment, Barthol,’ said Gaunt, drawing him to one side. Van Voytz went with him eagerly, but his expression was tight.

‘There’s bad blood between us, Barthol,’ Gaunt said quietly.

‘Not at all, not at all…’

‘We need to work together, Barthol,’ said Gaunt firmly. ‘This is a precarious time. High command needs to be of one mind and one purpose. So don’t deny it. There’s bad blood here.’

‘Well…’

‘And there always has been.’

Van Voytz looked both shocked and pained. ‘Now, sir–’

‘Since Jago, and there’s a lesson there. I learned it the hard way. Duty and service over friendship. My duty was to your command then, and it was what it was. I see a bigger picture that you always urged me to appreciate. Now your duty is to me. Our roles are reversed. It’s uncomfortable for you, but at least I’m not sending you into a killing ground.’

Van Voytz cleared his throat, and sagged slightly.

‘I appreciate that,’ he replied.

‘You were on the path to disgrace, Barthol. Macaroth wanted your head on a stick.’

‘I was merely putting the safety of the crusade first–’

‘I know. I know that. Which is why I talked the Old Man down, and found you a staff position that allowed you to retain your rank and privileges. No direct command, I know, but that may come in time.’

‘If I behave myself,’ rumbled Van Voytz.

‘Feth’s sake, it could have been an outworld command for you. The arse-end of everywhere. Or a penal regiment. I covered your back because I know you’re a fine officer. Don’t piss on that respect. What took place in the command chamber–’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself, Ibram,’ Van Voytz said with a long sigh.

‘I don’t. And I won’t,’ said Gaunt. ‘I drew you aside to tell you that I don’t have to explain myself. Do we have an understanding?’

Van Voytz nodded. He saw the look in Gaunt’s eyes, steel-cold eyes that Van Voytz’s orders had cursed Gaunt with a long time before.

He straightened up and saluted.

‘We do, my lord,’ he said.

Gaunt looked back at the hatch. The rain was still falling.

‘Someone check on the transport,’ he said. Sancto made to move, but Kazader sternly broke line, held up a hand to halt the Scion, and strode out into the rain.

‘And keep him in check too, Barthol,’ Gaunt murmured sidelong to Van Voytz. ‘He’s got a bigger streak of resentment in him than you have.’

‘Kazader’s good Guard,’ Van Voytz replied. ‘He’s got the makings of a high career. A generalship in a few years. In fact, I dare say, he reminds me of you.’

‘Exactly my point,’ said Gaunt.

Gaunt returned to his escort.

‘This is peculiar,’ said Laksheema.

‘You’ll find that a lot as far as she’s concerned,’ Gaunt replied. He glanced at Kolea. Gol looked tense and fidgety.

‘Gol?’

Kolea shrugged. ‘She’s not out there, sir,’ he said. He nodded towards an anteroom adjoining the hall.

‘Really?’ asked Gaunt.

Kolea shrugged again.

‘Come with me,’ Gaunt said. ‘Stay here,’ he added firmly to the others.

The pair crossed to the side door. Gaunt saw a single raindrop glinting on the gold handle.

He opened the door. The shifting air shivered the hundred candle flames burning in the anteroom. It was dark, like twilight, but Gaunt’s eyes automatically reset.

She was standing in the centre of the room. She turned to face him, and lowered the hood of her simple woollen cloak. Her combat boots and fatigues were equally worn and filthy, and the silver breastplate she wore – part of an articulated, Urdeshi-made combat carapace that also covered her arms and upper thighs – was chipped and tarnished. The only things that shone were the pommel of the sword sheathed on her left hip, the gold grip of the autopistol holstered on her right, and – somehow – her face.

Gaunt dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.

She stepped forward, took his hand, and raised him back up.

‘Ibram,’ she said. ‘Lord Executor.’

‘Beati,’ he replied. ‘We were attending upon you without.’

‘I require no formality,’ she said.

‘The warmaster sends his apologies that he could not greet you in person–’

‘Again, no formality.’

‘There will be feasting and ceremonies in due course,’ said Gaunt. ‘Once the crisis is behind us–’

‘And I will endure them. For now, there’s work to be done.’

She was small. She looked up into his eyes. It seemed she had not changed. Perhaps a fleck of grey in her short black hair. She looked like the Esholi girl he had first met on Herodor. Sanian. The green eyes had not altered.

Her presence had. The room felt charged, as if some powerful electric or magnetic force had been loosed upon it. There was a faint scent of islumbine.

‘It has been a long while for us,’ she said. ‘Our paths have diverged, now they come together again.’

‘I hope there is a purpose to that reunion,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes. To bear witness to victory. The Anarch is broken.’

‘He fights on.’

‘And so he is at his most dangerous. Together we will prevail, for the Throne. I faced him. He set a trap for me, but I confounded it and I hurt him.’

‘You did?’

‘After Ghereppan. We broke his malicious efforts there. Shattered them and shattered his control of the field. Immediately, I pushed on into Oureppan, believing it to be his stronghold. It was headstrong, I suppose. But there was such a chance. Not just to vanquish him on the field of war and drive his forces to rout, but to finish him.’

Gaunt realised she looked very tired. She had come to Eltath directly from the heat of combat. She had not taken time to rest or clear her mind. He wondered how inexhaustible her divine strength really was.

‘I led an assault on the Pinnacle Spire at Oureppan early yesterday. It was a trap laid for me. A warp snare. But it failed. He fled. His ship was as damaged as he was. He has hidden to heal his wounds.’

‘But he’s close?’

‘Too close. Our focus shifts here now. The last part of this business.’

‘Your forces?’

‘Are moving up country. I have left good people in charge. Ghereppan is secured. Oureppan will be by tomorrow. The brigades that stood with me there are now driving the Archenemy out of Lartane and the Northern Claves. They will be with us in, perhaps, ten days. I wanted to lead them in person, but the warmaster summoned me.’

‘And you came.’

‘Of course.’

Gaunt became aware that there were others in the room. Two Guard soldiers, standing outside the ring of candles. They had assault weapons braced and ready across their chests. One was a small woman with an angular face and glossy dark hair. She wore the black-and-mulberry long coat of the Jovani Vanguard, and Gaunt noticed the insignia of the Collegia Tactica on her collar. The other was a man, his simple battle dress dark and ragged.

For a moment, Gaunt thought–

The Beati turned, and gestured to them to stand down. ‘My seconds,’ she said to Gaunt. ‘Captain Auerben and Major Sariadzi. All the rest of my chosen people are with the main force moving north.’

The pair put up their weapons, and saluted, the simple salute of troops who were weary from the field and who had seen everything. They had marched with the Saint. A Lord Executor was nothing impressive.

‘My lord,’ they both said.

Gaunt took their salute.

‘You remember my officer, Major Kolea–’ he began.

The Beati had already turned to Kolea with a bright smile.

‘Gol,’ she said.

He tried to bow again, but she took his wrists and kept him on his feet.

‘It is good to see you,’ she said.

‘Is it?’ asked Gaunt.

She glanced at him sideways with a quizzical smile.

‘I crave your indulgence for a moment, Beati,’ Gaunt said. He pulled open the anteroom door and called out into the reception hall.

‘Inquisitor?’

Laksheema strode in, followed by Grae. Gaunt closed the door in the faces of Van Voytz and anyone else following.

Grae and Laksheema stared at the Beati for a moment, as if surprised at the sight of her. It took a second for them to register the magnitude of her presence and see she was much more than a scruffy girl dressed like a gutter-trench auxiliary.

Grae dropped to his knee. Laksheema bowed respectfully. Gaunt saw an involuntary tear welling in her eye.

‘Introductions can wait,’ Gaunt said. ‘Beati, I want you to vouch for this man, for Gol, in front of these people. Let them witness it.’

‘And if you can’t vouch for me,’ said Kolea, ‘then speak that truth too. Right here. Let it be over with.’

The Beati frowned. She looked at Kolea with deep intent, as if she was seeing through him. He averted his eyes, flinching like a man waiting in a foxhole for a shell to fall.

She stepped closer to him, uncoupling the cuff-lock of her carapace unit and removing the glove. With a bare hand, she reached up, and turned his face to look at her. She ran her fingers down his cheek, then traced lines up across his scalp, reading the map of his old scars beneath his hairline.

‘Know that I know this man,’ she said softly. ‘From Herodor. He has remarkable courage, but then so do many of the infamous Ghosts, not least their commander. But in Gol Kolea of Vervunhive, there is a singular strength. A fortitude I’ve seen in only one in every hundred thousand. In you, Sariadzi, that day on Caliber Beach.’

Behind her, the solemn major blushed slightly.

‘And perhaps you, Auerben,’ she added. ‘We have not known each other long, but I sense your potential.’

The woman laughed. The olive skin of her face was marked from collar to cheekbone by an old pyrochemical burn.

‘I’ll see what I can do, my lady,’ said Auerben in a dry rasp.

‘This strength is something I yearn for,’ said the Beati. ‘It is… I can’t describe it. But those I choose to be close to me, those I make my seconds and my instruments, they all have it. And Gol Kolea was, I think, the first instrument I made.’

The Beati looked at Laksheema.

‘You have doubts, lady,’ she said. ‘I see them in you. You are wary.’

‘Major Kolea’s reputation is formidable,’ said Laksheema, ‘but there are concerns that the Ruinous Powers have touched him. Made him a conduit…’

The Beati shook her head.

‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘Well, the darkness has touched him. Burned him. Tormented him. But he is not of its part. The fortitude remains intact. You have no reason to mistrust him.’

She withdrew her hand. Tears were streaming down Gol’s face.

‘I think that will be satisfactory,’ Gaunt said to Laksheema.

The inquisitor paused.

‘I cannot question that verdict, my lord,’ she replied. She wiped the corner of her eye with her knuckle.

‘No apology offered?’ asked Gaunt.

‘She should not apologise for doing her duty,’ said the Beati. She glanced at Laksheema. ‘But Major Kolea should now be taken into your circle of trust.’

Laksheema nodded.

‘Wait outside,’ Gaunt told Laksheema and Grae. As they withdrew, he turned to Kolea.

‘Your mind at rest now?’ he asked.

Kolea nodded.

‘Then go down. See to the company here. See your children.’

Kolea nodded again. ‘Thank you–’ he began to say.

Gaunt shook his head.

‘Get on with you,’ he said.

Kolea smiled, rubbed his reddened eyes vigorously, and walked out.

‘There are things going on here,’ said the Beati. ‘For such great suspicions to exist, for such–’

‘There are,’ said Gaunt. ‘We need to talk. At length.’

He hesitated.

‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘When you came here, I wondered who would be with you. I wondered if Brin–’

She placed a hand on his arm.

‘Brin Milo has gone,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Ibram. He stood with me during the assault on Oureppan. Brave to the last. He, and many others, including a warrior you know. Holofurnace of the Iron Snakes. It was a hellish fight. We won the day and hurt the Anarch Magister, but they were lost in that struggle. Caught in the warp snare and never recovered.’

The Beati gestured to Sariadzi, who stepped forward with a small bundle wrapped in a khaki ground sheet. She took it and handed it to Gaunt.

‘Just… yesterday?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Milo died yesterday? After all these years, and–’

The Beati nodded. ‘I have not had time to rationalise the loss,’ she said quietly. ‘Brin stood at my side longer than any other. I will grieve when this war permits me space to do so.’

She pressed Gaunt’s hands around the bundle.

‘I felt I should bring these for you,’ she said.

Gaunt looked down, and slowly unwrapped the bundle. It was a set of Tanith pipes, old and worn, the same set Brin Milo had been playing the day Gaunt first met him.

EIGHT: DEPLOYMENT

‘Well, Throne be blessed,’ said Blenner. ‘Major Kolea? Back from the dead?’

‘Back from somewhere,’ replied Kolea.

‘Well, welcome anyway,’ said Blenner. He offered up a little shrug, suggesting he was about to give Kolea a brotherly embrace, but Kolea looked distant. Blenner turned the shrug into a smoothing of his tunic, as if that’s all he had intended to do in the first place. ‘Welcome to our new home.’

Kolea glanced around. Blenner was the first person he had encountered since descending to the undercroft.

‘Temporary home,’ he said. ‘Our homes are always temporary.’

‘Well, that’s indeed the truth of it,’ Blenner replied cheerfully. ‘Ever marching on, no bed to call our own. But this is better than some. I recall a billet on Sorclore where the lice, I tell you–’

‘What’s the smell?’ asked Kolea.

‘Yes, there is a smell,’ said Blenner. ‘An aroma. Latrines, I gather. Backing up. It’s the fething weather.’

Kolea glanced around at the whitewashed stonework. The overhead lamps ticked and flickered.

‘And the lights?’

‘Another maintenance issue, I gather.’

‘What are our numbers here?’ Kolea asked. ‘I was told two companies…’

‘Uhm, E Company and V Company, along with the retinue, of course.’

‘And they’re all accommodated? Needs met?’

‘Well, Major Baskevyl has that in hand. That and the maintenance issues. I gather–’

‘You gather?’ asked Kolea. ‘You seem to gather a lot, commissar, but nothing seems gathered to me. You must be one of the ranking officers here. Why aren’t you supporting Bask and getting things fixed?’

Blenner looked stung. ‘I do what I can, major,’ he said, then added, ‘What they’ll let me do.’

‘What does that mean?’

Blenner dropped his gaze and his voice. He seemed miserable. Four women from the retinue went past, carrying baskets of laundry. When Blenner spoke, it had an air of confidentiality.

‘Did you hear about Low Keen?’ he asked.

‘Yes, briefly. Gendler and Wilder. And Ezra.’

‘Well, it’s put a stink on things,’ said Blenner. ‘On me. Just now, I am not regarded with the same warmth as I once enjoyed.’

‘You did your job, didn’t you?’

‘It’s not a popular job. The Belladon–’

‘It’s a dirty job, is what you mean?’

Blenner nodded. Kolea eyed him. He’d never thought Vaynom Blenner much of a soldier, and his lack of discipline made him a poor discipline officer. Kolea suspected he’d only ever become part of the company because he and Gaunt went back. Now Gaunt was elevated above the Tanith, Blenner had no ally to hand, no shadow to lurk in. His chief value had always been his endless cheer and informal conduct, which Kolea had to admit had been an asset to morale at times. Even that seemed dimmed.

‘A dirty job indeed,’ Blenner said.

Kolea felt a pang of pity for the man. Blenner was good for little, but Kolea knew all too sharply what it felt like to lose status and relevance, or at least to stand on the brink of that.

‘Bask doesn’t trust you?’ he asked.

‘No, and I don’t blame him,’ said Blenner. ‘No one seems to. I’m sort of out of the loop a little. Shunned, you might say. Throne knows, I’m–’

He shrugged, as if unwilling to finish any searching self-reflection.

‘Good old Vaynom, you know,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Good for a laugh. Fond of a drink. Fun to have around until the laughing stops.’

‘Do you know what I think?’ Kolea asked.

‘Please tell, sir,’ said Blenner.

‘I think it’s shock.’

‘Mine?’ asked Blenner.

‘Theirs,’ Kolea replied. ‘You have a reputation for… good humour. People forget you’re a commissar. You just reminded them. You executed a killer. You upheld the dictats and discipline of the Astra Militarum. You showed your true self to them. Give them a few days to reconcile that with the Blenner they know.’

‘Well, I suppose. That’s kind of you to say.’

‘And there are always duties,’ said Kolea. ‘Gendler was Meryn’s man, so I’d be looking at Meryn pretty hard right now if I was a commissar.’

‘Ah, well, ah… Fazekiel is in charge of the investigation,’ said Blenner nervously. ‘I can’t be involved in that, seeing as I was the one that pulled the trigger and all…’

‘I suppose,’ said Kolea. ‘But there’s always other work. You don’t have to be asked. Do the asking yourself. For a start, it smells like there are drains to be unblocked.’

‘I’m not unblocking drains, major,’ said Blenner with a waspish smile.

‘No, but you can order someone to,’ said Kolea. ‘Get on with things and make this situation better. Show them you don’t care what they think of you.’

‘Sage counsel, sir, thank you.’

‘Blenner?’

Blenner looked at him.

‘You did your job, and you saved her, didn’t you?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘Gaunt’s daughter, Blenner.’

‘Ah, Throne knows what that maniac Gendler might have done…’

‘Take pride in that, then. Gaunt knows what you did. Throne above, I know what it’s like to be a father. Despite everything.’

‘Despite…?’ Blenner asked.

‘What I mean is, that’s a bond that ties a man’s soul. Children. The future, and all that. If Gendler had threatened Yoncy, or Dal, I’d like to think a good man like you would have stood up to defend them. And I’d be blessed thankful for that. You did your job.’

Blenner looked almost embarrassed. Or ashamed. It was hard to read the expression on his face. For a moment, Kolea thought the commissar was going to blurt something out, as if he carried some awful burden he needed to set down.

‘Major,’ he said. His voice was hesitant. ‘Gol, I–’

Raised voices suddenly echoed down the hallway, and they both looked around.

‘Someone’s annoyed,’ said Blenner with forced lightness.

‘Indeed.’ Kolea looked back at Blenner. ‘You were going to say something.’

‘No, nothing,’ Blenner laughed. ‘Nothing, nothing. Just an idle… Really nothing.’

‘All right,’ said Kolea. ‘Let’s see what this is.’

Their spur of the undercroft hallway met another coming in from the vaults to the left. Baskevyl was arguing with a Munitorum overseer, with Bonin and Yerolemew looking on. The overseer’s three man work crew, lugging their equipment panniers and bulky in their yellow overalls, stood sheepishly behind their boss. A small crowd of women and support staff from the retinue was gathering to watch.

‘There’s nothing to unblock, sir!’ the overseer snapped.

‘There fething well must be!’ Baskevyl snarled back.

‘I’m telling you, I know my trade,’ the overseer retorted.

‘Fifteen centimetres of soil-water in the second and third billet halls would seem to suggest otherwise,’ said Bonin.

‘Do I tell you how to fight?’ asked the overseer.

‘Would you like to?’ asked Bonin, stepping forward.

‘Whoa,’ said Yerolemew, arresting Bonin’s arm with a tight grip.

‘Yeah, listen to the old chap,’ the overseer said. ‘We haven’t come down here to do no brawling.’

‘You misunderstand,’ the old bandmaster told him. ‘I just wanted it fair. Start with me, and see how you get on against a one-armed man. Then you can have a crack at the big time.’

The crowd laughed at this. The overseer blinked rapidly.

‘We’ve checked the drains through to the north outfall,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing blocked. I don’t know where the water’s coming from.’

‘What about the lights?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Circuit systems is on a different docket,’ said the overseer. ‘My docket says waste overflow.’

‘Your docket is about to say “ow, my face hurts”,’ said Yerolemew.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Kolea, stepping in.

They looked at him. A broad smile crossed Baskevyl’s face.

‘Gol,’ he said, and gave Kolea a hug. Blenner looked on from the edge of the group. That was how good comrades greeted each other. He sighed.

‘Back on duty?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘Back on the slog,’ said Kolea. ‘And not before time, looks like.’ He glanced at the overseer. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Taskane,’ the man replied. ‘Technician, first class.’

‘I’m Kolea. Major Kolea. My company, we were pretty pleased to be staying in a palace for the duration. But it’s hardly palatial.’

‘Well, I grant you–’

‘Taskane, I know you’ve got orders. Dockets, in fact. So have I. The Lord Executor wants his personal regiment well taken care of.’

‘The Lord Executor?’ asked Taskane.

‘You’ve heard of him?’

‘Well, of course.’

‘He’s an absolute bastard,’ said Kolea. ‘Kill you as soon as look at you. We don’t want that. We don’t want complaint reports filed with names on them, do we? What’s that form again?’

‘K 50715 F,’ said Blenner quickly, trying not to grin.

‘That’s the very one, commissar,’ said Kolea. ‘Thank you. Oh, and commissar? Please keep your weapon holstered. This isn’t a discipline matter.’ He looked at Taskane and pulled a face. ‘He’s a right bastard too,’ he whispered. ‘We don’t want to get him riled up.’

‘We do not, sir,’ said Taskane.

‘So we’ve got water, backflooding.’

‘I explained this, sir.’

‘Soil water too, so from the latrines not the drinking supply. So that’s a hygiene matter, which will bring in the Medicae.’

‘I’ve explained,’ said Taskane. ‘It’s the weather. Unseasonal quantities of rain, backing up the waste flows. We’ve checked the pipework.’

‘You could check it again, though?’ asked Kolea. ‘I mean, a thorough double-check. Thorough never hurt, did it? Then maybe pole it out with extenders. Run a rod right through?’

‘I could do that…’ Taskane began.

‘Then flush the whole system with a chem-sluice. It’s old, stone built, so there’s no danger of corroding metal pipe. And if that fails, you could set up a pump or two, and evacuate the flood water using suction tubes.’

Taskane hesitated. ‘How come you know so much?’ he asked.

‘I was a miner before I took to soldiering,’ said Kolea. ‘I know how to dry-down a flooded section. Lives depended on it.’

‘Well, I can imagine…’

‘But I’m no expert,’ said Kolea. ‘Not municipal, like this. That’s your area. I’ll bet with your skills, you can get this handled by nightfall.’

‘We’ll get to it, sir,’ said Taskane. He glanced at his men and directed them back the way they’d come. ‘And we’ll take a look at the circuit system too,’ said Taskane. ‘The problems could be related.’

‘I appreciate it, overseer,’ said Kolea. ‘The Emperor rewards diligent service.’

The overseer and his team trudged back down the hall towards the flooded section.

‘Direct orders from the Lord Executor?’ Bonin asked.

‘I may have re-worked the actual truth a little there,’ Kolea said with a smile. ‘Then again, I think there was a little invention at work with the complaint forms too.’

Blenner winked. ‘Made the whole fething thing up,’ he said.

‘It’s good to have you back,’ Baskevyl said to Kolea.

‘It is.’

Kolea glanced around. Dalin had appeared, gently pushing his way through the amused crowd of onlookers.

‘Hello, son,’ said Gol.

The morning showed no signs of ending. From the darkness outside the chamber windows, it looked like it was night already, and they had sat through the entire day, but Merity knew that was just the storm hanging over Eltath, a turbulent, rain-belting blackness that had despatched any sign of daylight.

Senior Tactician Biota had seized the room ‘by order of the Lord Executor’, a phrase he seemed to enjoy using. The chamber was a prayer chapel adjoining the hub of the main war room, a vast place teeming with people that Merity had only glimpsed as they had gone past it.

The chapel was small, but a cogitation station and a strategium display had been brought in, along with an old, solid table that could accommodate ten. As part of the war room area, the chapel was screened and proofed against scanning and detection. The trunking on all the device cables was thick and reinforced, there was a small back-up power unit, and the walls had been crudely over-boarded with panels of bare flakboard that sandwiched suppression materials against the original stonework. Even the windows had been treated with anti-invasive dyes, which further darkened them, adding to the gloom, though Merity could still see the shifting speckle of raindrops striking them.

The back-up power unit was also an asset. Main palace power kept fluctuating, and twice during the morning had blink-failed entirely, causing displays to go dark. Biota had taken to kicking the power unit automatically every time the lights dimmed, to make it whirr into action. It had become a reflex gesture: he did it even when he was talking, without even looking at it.

She quite liked Biota. She believed his name was Antonid. He was a veteran, but no soldier. The small, bespectacled man had spent his career in the Departmento Tacticae, and he seemed fiercely clever, though his people skills were clumsy. She suspected he was the cleverest man she had ever met. Throughout the morning, he had led the way through a slew of documents, discussing everything from ‘geographical suitability’ to ‘Munitorum Asset efficiency’, and displayed a knowledge of everything. He didn’t even need to consult lists to be able to name, with accuracy, specific divisions, companies, unit commanders, or the numbers of men active in any bracket. Now he was leading the way through a review of orbital images, pointing out details she wasn’t able to detect.

It was fascinating, yet still boring. Merity had a decent general grasp of the situation at Eltath, and on Urdesh at large, but the minutiae were lost on her. She could barely follow the logistic data, the deployment specifics, or the tactical nuance. Biota’s team had spent ten minutes debating the weight tolerance of a single bridge in Zarakppan.

But she had always been fascinated by the sight of people, expert people, doing what they did best. There was a wonder to it. And these individuals, hand-picked by Biota to form her father’s tactical cabinet, were the best. Among the best in the entire Imperium, and certainly within the crusade host.

It reminded her of the long afternoons when she had been forced to attend the congress meetings of House Chass, where matters of hive politics and house business affairs were discussed in forensic detail. Now, as then, she was but a witness. Beltayn had assured her she would come to grasp the finer points soon enough. She certainly had nothing to offer, except her attention and the promise of direct access to the Lord Executor, should the need arise.

She did not have an actual seat at the table. Biota had vaguely pointed her to a row of chairs in the corner. She started off taking notes, but Beltayn had seen her doing this and had shaken his head.

‘Why?’ she’d whispered.

‘It’ll end up in the burn box as soon as you leave the room. I’ll get you an encrypted slate for tomorrow.’

Merity had put the noteblock aside, and tried to rely on her memory.

Aside from Beltayn and Biota, there were three others present. Two wore the same tacticae uniforms as Biota: a younger man named Willam Reece, who had the darkest skin she’d ever seen, and a rather tall, haughty woman called Geneve Holt. Neither seemed to smile, ever, and they matched Biota’s pace and knowledge detail for detail.

The other person was a fierce, body-armoured Tempestus Scion called Relf. Relf had been assigned to guard Merity, and the Scion had taken it upon herself to remain standing throughout, at duty beside the door. Biota had broken his flow several times to offer the Scion a seat.

‘Thank you, no,’ Relf had replied each time.

Eventually, around mid-morning, Biota had insisted she sit down.

‘You’re in my eye-line every time I look at the display,’ he said.

‘I would prefer to stand,’ Relf had replied. ‘Standing, I can react more swiftly to danger presenting at the doorway.’

‘If danger presents at the doorway, then the palace has fallen,’ remarked Holt, ‘and then we’re all screwed, and you being here will make little odds.’

Reece had actually laughed at this.

‘Take a seat, Scion,’ Biota had said. ‘I insist. By order of the Lord Executor.’

Relf had, reluctantly, sat, though she had taken Merity’s chair and forced Merity to shift one seat down so that Relf could be between her and the doorway.

Merity hadn’t argued. She was used to this kind of protection work. It wasn’t the first time she’d had a lifeward.

Biota was finishing up the orbital scans when there was a knock at the door. Relf answered immediately, and after some wary discussion with the porters, admitted a very fierce woman in the uniform of a lord militant.

‘Ah, Marshal Tzara,’ said Biota. ‘We’re ready for your presentation. Please, take a seat.’

Tzara, het-chieftain of the Keyzon host and Mistress of the Seventh Army, eyed the chapel room and its occupants stiffly.

‘The Lord Executor asked me to report to you and deliver yesterday’s data from the suppression in the Northern Claves. I’m not sure why I couldn’t send an adjutant to do this, nor why I am asked to report to a broom cupboard.’

‘The Lord Executor wants the chain of command kept as short as possible, Marshal,’ Biota replied. ‘Senior officer briefings only, to reduce data dispersal and the risk of breaks in the confidence chain. Reporting to me, you may consider yourself reporting to the Lord Executor himself.’

‘This is undignified,’ said Tzara. ‘This is his… tactical cabinet?’

‘Yes, well…’ Biota faltered slightly.

‘Triage,’ Beltayn hissed at him.

‘You have requested his audience several times, and it was granted this morning,’ said Biota.

‘Indeed–’ Tzara began.

‘One does not need to be an expert on human behaviour to see that you want to ingratiate yourself with the new First Lord.’

‘Is that so?’ Tzara said. The tone of her voice dropped the temperature in the room.

‘Well, yes,’ said Biota. ‘No one likes to fall from grace.’

‘I have not fallen from grace,’ Tzara snarled.

‘No,’ said Biota, ‘but the precipice is close and sheer. You backed others in the move to disempower Macaroth. You’ve held on to your position, like Lord Blackwood and Lord Cybon, but there is a cloud over you. You need an ally, and the Lord Executor is the best ally to have. So please, take a seat. Consider my polite request an order of the Lord Executor.’

Tzara sat down.

‘He really likes saying that,’ Merity whispered to the Scion beside her. Relf trembled slightly. Merity realised the Scion was trying to suppress a snigger.

‘Please walk us through yesterday’s efforts in the Clave theatre,’ said Biota. ‘Be as specific as possible. We have received a summary document, but you will have detailed lists of enemy strengths and so on.’

Marshal Tzara produced a data-slate from her belt pouch. She took a last, sneering look around the room.

‘The Astra Militarum has protocols,’ she remarked. ‘I fear they are being forgotten. There is a common line trooper here.’

She glanced at Beltayn, who suddenly found his notes fascinating.

‘And as for her,’ Tzara added, nodding in Merity’s direction. ‘I did not realise that the Guard had become a family business.’

‘I was asked to attend,’ Merity replied before Biota could answer.

‘By your father,’ said Tzara. ‘The Guard operates through excellence. Training, experience, and hard-won seniority. Not nepotism.’

Merity felt her cheeks flush hot.

‘I’m sure it does, ma’am,’ she replied. ‘I’m sure that’s why the third, ninth and fourteenth companies of the Keyzon host are commanded by your sons.’

Tzara blinked. Her mouth formed a sharp, pursed, horizontal line.

‘Ballsy,’ she remarked, and turned back to Biota.

Biota had removed his spectacles and was looking at Merity with a frown.

‘We reviewed the disposition of the Keyzon about four hours ago,’ he said. ‘You remembered that detail?’

‘I’m trying to remember everything I can, sir,’ said Merity. ‘So there’s some point in me being here.’

Biota raised his eyebrows, put his spectacles back on and turned back to the table.

‘Right, let’s continue,’ he said. ‘Marshal, kindly run us through–’

There was another knock at the chamber door.

‘If that’s Lugo, he’s an hour early,’ snapped Biota.

Relf answered the door. ‘It’s a commissar,’ she reported stiffly. ‘Requesting my lady Chass.’

‘I’ll step out so you can carry on,’ said Merity, getting up. She went to the door as Tzara began her report.

It was Fazekiel.

Merity stepped into the hallway. Relf followed.

‘No need,’ Merity said.

‘I’ll say what’s needed,’ Relf replied. She closed the door behind them, then stood with her back to it, gazing at the wall opposite.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ said Fazekiel. ‘I see you’re busy.’

‘How can I help?’

‘I’m still conducting the investigation. I want to re-interview everybody involved. Blenner, Meryn, you. Just go over it again.’

‘There’s nothing much I can add that you don’t already have,’ Merity replied. ‘I was unconscious during the… the murders.’

‘Well,’ said Fazekiel, ‘your memory might throw up something, even if it doesn’t seem pertinent to you.’

‘Her memory’s very good, it seems,’ said Relf from behind them.

‘I don’t know, commissar,’ said Merity.

‘Well, think about it,’ said Fazekiel. ‘I’m based in the undercroft with the regiment billet. If you think of anything, come and find me. Anything at all, all right?’

Merity nodded.

‘And maybe tomorrow, when you’re not tied up, we can run another interview just for the record.’

‘Of course,’ said Merity.

Fazekiel nodded.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I won’t keep you.’

An air battle was underway to the south. Most of it was hidden by the low cloud cover of the rainstorm, but they could hear the blow-torch growl of thrusters and odd pops and crackles. Occasionally, a white dart would become visible, rolling and swooping against the black clouds, a canopy briefly catching the sun. Varl had told her they were Lightnings, probably out of Zarak East, running an interdiction patrol to maintain Eltath airspace. Curth didn’t know anything about that, but she knew that a skirmish was underway. She sat in the cab of the cargo-10, reviewing her medical reports, but the sporadic noise of the battle kept drawing her attention.

Something flashed. A silver dot, about five kilometres west. She saw it screw-roll down out of a great dark, buttress of low cloud, blurred by the rain. A flurry of tiny lights suddenly surrounded it, a cloud like fireflies or sparks cast up by a bonfire. They swirled for a second, then streaked away, lost in the cloud. A moment later, the entire cloud bank was back-lit by a fierce series of yellow flashes, flames blooming behind the dark vapour. The staggered pops of the multiple detonations reached her after a second. By then, the silver dot had gone. She saw something drop out of the cloudbank. A streak of fire that fell straight down, the sunlight flashing off wing panels as they folded around the fireball and fluttered away. The streak of fire vanished behind the rooftops.

Someone rapped at the window of the cab door.

Curth got out and climbed down. The rain was worse than before.

‘They’re all loaded and secure,’ Kolding told her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I can go with them,’ Kolding offered.

‘Colonel Rawne’s ordered me to do it, so…’ she shrugged.

Curth’s inclination was to move with the main force, but they were carrying forty casualties from the action at the Tulkar Batteries, and nine were critical. Her oath as a doctor made those souls her responsibility, and her position as the regiment’s chief medicae landed the duty firmly in her lap. Rawne knew that. The casualties needed more than a field station. They needed the surgical and intensive facilities of the Urdeshic Palace.

Across the shattered street, beyond the line of waiting transports, Rawne was briefing the officers. The Ghost companies were drawn up along the length of the street, standing at loose order, resting, and using the blown-out shop fronts as partial cover from the downpour.

‘Major Pasha has command of the primary group,’ Rawne said.

‘We can move at once, sir,’ Yve Petrushkevskaya replied confidently. ‘Three hours to the location, barring mishaps.’

Rawne nodded. ‘Asa Elam and Ferdy Kolosim are your line officers. Chain of command flows through them. Pasha gets final operational say. All clear?’

The company commanders all nodded.

‘First section, B Company, goes with me to the secondary,’ Rawne continued.

‘Just one section?’ asked Obel.

‘Don’t question me,’ Rawne replied.

‘But it’s a fair question,’ said Criid.

‘We’re stretched as it is,’ Rawne replied. ‘The primary objective needs everything we can throw at it, which is fething little as it stands. The Suicide Kings have handled him before, so we can handle him now. In and out.’

First section, B Company had become known as the Suicide Kings when the regiment first took custody of the enemy asset known as the pheguth. No one doubted they had the best level of experience.

‘But if there’s trouble…’ Kolosim began.

‘Trouble can kiss my Tanith arse,’ Rawne replied. ‘Get your companies up and ready to move. That’s it.’

‘No cheery words of inspiration, sir?’ asked Theiss.

Rawne paused. ‘Am I known for that sort of thing?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Theiss admitted with a grin.

‘Then imagine me sending you thoughts and prayers,’ Rawne said.

The officers laughed.

‘I tell you what,’ said Rawne. ‘These orders come directly from Gaunt. That should be enough for all of you. Feth, imagine it’s him standing here briefing you in this fething rain. I’d prefer that. I’d be much happier sitting in the palace with my boots up on a desk. Get on with it.’

The group broke up. The company officers – Criid, Kolosim, Theiss, Arcuda, Elam, Obel, Spetnin and the rest – strode back to their waiting men, shouting brisk orders. The drenched Ghosts began getting to their feet and shouldering their packs. Ludd moved among them, yelling strong words of encouragement.

Rawne turned and saw Curth waiting.

‘Ready to go?’ he asked.

‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I’d be happier going with Pasha’s formation. It’s bound to get ugly.’

‘Pasha will have Kolding and the corpsmen,’ said Rawne. ‘Besides, this isn’t about your preference. I gave you an order.’

‘You did.’

‘No disrespect to Kolding, but I think you’re the only one who can get them to the palace alive.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘Now, about an escort,’ he said.

Curth shook her head. ‘You need everyone you can get. Don’t waste anyone on a guard duty. We can get there.’

He looked at her.

‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘We’re making a run to the palace through what should be friendly territory. We’re not heading into danger. You are.’

‘All right,’ he said.

Curth turned away, then looked back at him, wiping rain off her face.

‘I don’t know what this is about,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting into…’

‘Join the club,’ Rawne replied.

She rested her hand on his arm gently.

‘Just don’t die,’ she said.

‘I’ll see how that goes,’ he replied.

She turned and walked back to the waiting transports.

‘Start them up!’ he heard her shout.

The heat was fierce. Jan Jerik could feel the sweat pooling in his boots. He paused, wiping the visor of his mask, to check the duct number stencilled on the wall.

‘This way,’ he said, his voice muffled.

There was a junction ahead. The main shaft of the vent continued north-west. To the left was a grating mouth that had rusted open. The geotherm network had been built a long time ago, and the secondary ducts were not well-maintained. Only the grates of the principal ducts still operated, opening and closing huge iris valves in response to over- and under-pressure demands.

Jan Jerik sloshed to a halt in the soup of mineral swill that flowed along the base of the duct. He raised his lantern, and the light illuminated the old grating through the rolling steam.

‘Here is your division,’ he said.

Corrod and Hadrel stepped forward. The sirdar consulted his chart. Jan Jerik could hear the wet, rasping respiration of their mucus-thick snouts.

‘This runs to the secondary?’ Corrod asked him.

‘All the way,’ Jan Jerik nodded.

Corrod and Hadrel faced each other.

‘Select your team,’ Corrod said.

Hadrel nodded, and began pointing at packsons in the line behind him. Seven of the Archenemy warriors split from the main group and came to stand with Hadrel.

‘He dies,’ said Corrod.

‘He dies,’ Hadrel agreed.

They both raised a palm to their mouths in a brief salute.

Corrod turned to Jan Jerik.

‘The main duct takes us to the primary?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Jan Jerik. ‘I’ll show you–’

‘No,’ said Corrod. ‘You, and your men, you are no longer needed. We will find the way from here.’

‘But we’ve not yet–’ Jan Jerik began.

‘Go back. You’ve done your part. Forget us. Say nothing. If the warp approves our endeavour, then we will return, and the voice of our lord will reward those who have served him in this. The courage of House Ghentethi will not be forgotten.’

‘Well,’ the ordinate wavered. ‘His voice… his voice drowns out all others.’

‘Go back now,’ said Corrod.

Jan Jerik nodded. He signalled his men and they began sloshing their way back down the line, returning the way they had come. He looked over his shoulder, and saw Hadrel leading his team into the rusted grating.

He kept walking. At every step, he expected Corrod’s daemon-men to fall on him from behind, to butcher him and his subordinates to ensure their silence.

No strikes came, but he would never shake the feeling of death at his heels, not for the rest of his life.

He looked back again. Through the darkness and steam, neon eyes watched his departure.

‘You’re all right then?’ Kolea asked.

‘Yes,’ Dalin nodded. ‘You?’

‘It’s been eventful,’ said Kolea. ‘Yoncy?’

‘She’s around here somewhere,’ said Dalin. ‘She’s a little shaken.’

‘I’d like to see her,’ said Kolea. ‘She’ll be scared, especially as Tona’s not here. Look…’

‘What?’

Kolea looked uncomfortable. ‘Dal, I’ve… I’ve never been much of a father to you, to either of you–’

Dalin laughed and held up a hand. ‘Seriously?’ he said. ‘Where’s all this sentimental crap coming from? This isn’t the time or the place, and it probably never will be. We’re Ghosts. This is our life–’

‘I just wanted to say–’ Kolea insisted, quietly urgent.

‘You don’t need to,’ said Dalin. ‘What’s brought this on? It’s not the end of the world… well, no more than it ever is.’

Kolea smiled. ‘Things just don’t get said, you know?’ he replied. ‘Not the things that matter. It’s always too late. A day goes by and suddenly, someone’s not there to speak to any more. So many times over the years, I’ve realised it’s too late to talk to somebody.’

‘Are you expecting to die?’ Dalin asked.

‘No.’

‘Are you expecting me to die?’

‘No,’ said Kolea. He shrugged. ‘My mind’s been a jumble for a few weeks now. Gaunt helped me get it straight. Yoncy’s really all right?’

‘Seems to be.’

‘Dal, have you ever thought there’s something different about her?’

‘She’s my sister. She drives me mad.’

‘I’d better find her,’ said Kolea. ‘She’ll probably hear me out with more patience than you.’

‘Look, I appreciate what you were trying–’

‘Dal, feth take the sentiment of it, I want you to know… you and your sister… I’d walk into hell for you both. I mean it. While there’s breath in me, I’ll stand between you and anything–’

‘I know,’ said Dalin.

‘Good then.’

‘Can we go back to being normal now? This is awkward.’

Kolea laughed.

‘Gol!’ Baskevyl’s voice echoed down the hallway. Kolea turned and, past two Munitorum workmen rolling out flexible piping for a pump unit, he saw Baskevyl wave to him and brandish a bottle.

‘Come and join us!’ Baskevyl called out.

Kolea shrugged a ‘maybe’.

‘Go on,’ said Dalin. ‘Do you good. I’ll go and find Yoncy and bring her round to you.’

‘All right. I really want to see her.’

Fazekiel appeared, striding down the hallway, stepping neatly over the unrolling pipes.

The smell hasn’t got any better, then?’ she said.

‘They’re working on it,’ said Kolea.

‘Nice to have you back, major,’ she said. ‘Trooper Dalin?’

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘I’d like some time with you. In half an hour or so?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Concerning?’

‘The incident at the billet. You were the last one with… Felyx before the attack.’

‘Is she all right?’ Dalin asked. ‘Merity, I mean?’

‘She seems fine.’

‘I’ve got an errand to run. Half an hour, then?’

Fazekiel nodded. The three of them went their separate ways.

In a side room nearby, Meryn leaned against the cold stone wall beside the open door.

‘She’s relentless,’ he said quietly.

Blenner didn’t reply. He sat on the dirty cot, and knocked back a pill with a swig of Meryn’s amasec.

‘That’s right,’ said Meryn. ‘You swallow it. Keep calm.’

Blenner looked at him with poorly disguised contempt.

‘We’re good, Vaynom,’ said Meryn. ‘For now. But she’ll come back to both of us too. More questions. So keep the story straight and keep it simple.’

Blenner rose to his feet. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it. Throne knows, I don’t want to lose what I have. And forget a shit-duty posting or a demotion. This? It’d be a headshot for me.’

He looked at Meryn.

‘But Luna’s good. She’s got a ferocious eye for detail,’ he said. ‘I don’t think she can catch anything, but if she does–’

‘We stick to the story.’

‘And live with the guilt? I’ve lived with shame most of my career, Flyn, one way or another. But guilt? Guilt this heavy?’

‘Take another pill, Blenner,’ said Meryn.

‘Don’t you just ever want to let it go?’ Blenner asked. ‘No matter the consequences, just let it all out? Get that weight off you?’

‘No,’ said Meryn. ‘Because I’m not a fething idiot.’

Blenner smiled sadly. ‘No, I don’t suppose you are.’

‘Are you going to crack on me?’ asked Meryn. ‘You sound like a coward who’s close to giving up. But then, you always have. You suddenly going to grow a fething spine and face the music?’

Blenner shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Actually, I’m not worried about me. It’s you that bothers me.’

‘Me?’

‘You shift stories like you change clothes, and you’ve got the wit to sell them too,’ said Blenner. ‘I think if it gets close, you’d throw me under the wheels to save yourself. Feth, you did it to that idiot Wilder. Whatever it takes to cover your arse. Throne, I can imagine it.’

Blenner put on an earnest but wheedling voice.

‘“It was all Blenner’s plan. We had to go along with it because he’s a commissar. He threatened us with the brute force of the Prefectus. Summary execution if we didn’t go along with him. And he’s hooked on pills too. I was too afraid to speak up, sir, but I need to clear my conscience now…”’

Blenner smiled at Meryn.

‘I can hear you doing it. Blinking those wide, handsome eyes. I mean, no one likes you, Meryn, but they all just think you’re a snake. A self-serving creep. They have no idea how truly toxic you are.’

‘And they won’t,’ said Meryn. ‘Will they?’

‘No,’ said Blenner. He put his cap back on. ‘I’ll keep to the story. But you keep leaning on me, I might decide the guilt and all that shit just isn’t worth it.’

He patted Meryn on the shoulder.

‘Feth,’ he grinned, ‘maybe I am growing a spine after all. How about that?’

Luna Fazekiel had a small room at the north end of the undercroft. Just enough space for a cot and a folding desk. She had the picts laid out there, all the images she’d captured on site at Low Keen. It was a damned shame they hadn’t been able to preserve the scene, and an exam of the bodies brought back from Low Keen – Gendler, Wilder and Ezra – had revealed nothing useful.

Low Keen. The very thought of that place made her tense. Aside from the Gendler case, there had been the incident with Daur’s wife and the girl, Yoncy. Fazekiel had been one of the first on the scene. Something had torn bodies apart. Some monster.

She’d heard it too. She’d heard the shrieking sound it made. Fazekiel was a strong soldier, but that sound had shaken her to an extent that troubled her. It had been more than a hazard – they faced those all the time. It had stirred some primal response in her.

She hadn’t slept. The memory of the shrieking sound was playing on her nerves, and she was afraid it might unlock some of the old anxieties she had spent so many years learning to contain and control.

The unknown made her worry. Data comforted her. Solid facts gave her a way to understand the world and retain agency. The Gendler case was reassuring. It helped take her mind off the mysteries she couldn’t address.

She sat down, and brushed invisible dust off the lip of the desk. The picts were telling her nothing. There was no inconsistency of evidence, no clash of accounts. She’d run each interview again – Merity, Blenner, Meryn, Dalin – perhaps twice more, to see if anything shook loose. But she was already sure how her report would run. The data upheld the story Meryn and Blenner had given.

The overhead lamps flickered.

Fazekiel sighed. She wished she’d brought some food with her from the canteen. That was the second time in two days she’d forgotten to eat.

The lights flickered again.

She stood up to fiddle with the lumen element and halted. She suddenly had a really uncomfortable feeling, as though something was scratching at her eardrums and her sinuses.

She coughed and tried to clear her nose. Probably just the damp down in the undercroft getting to her–

The lights went out.

Blackness. The lights didn’t flicker back on. She groped her way to the door, and peered out. The hallway was pitch black too. She could hear voices from other chambers raised in complaint.

The damn circuit fault had finally become terminal.

She fumbled her way back to her desk, reached down, and fished her stablight from her kit pack. It wouldn’t switch on. She slapped it against her gloved palm and the beam speared into life, lighting a frost-blue disc on the far wall. She panned the beam around quickly. Her ear drums itched again.

The beam passed over the open doorway. For a second, it starkly lit a face staring in at her.

Fazekiel jumped in surprise.

She played the beam back.

Yoncy stood in the doorway, hands at her sides, her face expressionless. She was staring right at Fazekiel.

‘Yoncy, you scared the shit out of me,’ Fazekiel said.

The girl didn’t answer. She stared at Fazekiel for another few seconds, then just turned and walked away.

Fazekiel got up quickly, stumbling slightly against her chair.

‘Yoncy?’

She reached the doorway, and stepped out into the hallway. More voices of protest and complaint were echoing through the undercroft. The scratchy sensation in her ears was worse. She played the beam to the left, then to the right. There was no one there.

‘Yoncy?’

She started to move to her left. The overhead lights suddenly buzzed and came back on. Alarms whooped for a second, then cut off. Fazekiel blinked at the glare.

Meryn stood a few metres away, wincing in the light.

‘Captain,’ she said.

‘Oh, ma’am. I… I was just looking to see what had happened to the lights.’

‘With your silver out?’

Meryn looked down, He was holding his warknife.

‘Well, to be honest, I thought I heard something,’ he said.

‘Did you see Yoncy?’

‘What? No,’ said Meryn. He rubbed at his left ear.

‘You feel that?’ asked Fazekiel.

‘What?’

‘In your ears. An itch.’

He nodded.

‘It reminds me of–’

She stopped short. She could feel the anxiety rising inside her and quickly focused on the mental coping strategies she’d been taught to help her deal with her obsessive nature. She shut the anxiety down.

‘Of what?’ said Meryn, looking at her warily.

‘Go and get Baskevyl or Kolea.’

‘Why?’ Meryn asked.

‘Something’s not right,’ said Fazekiel.

‘What are you going to–’

‘I’m going to find Yoncy. She was right here and she’s probably scared. Go and get Baskevyl. Now, please.’

Meryn sheathed his warknife and hurried away.

‘Advise him amber status!’ she called after him.

In the wardroom, the lights fizzled back on in a brief squeal of alarms. Baskevyl was standing with a bottle in his hand.

‘As I was saying…’ he said.

‘They haven’t gone off for that long before,’ said Domor.

Kolea shrugged. ‘Maybe the Munitorum took them off line to reconnect or test?’ he said.

‘You want me to go and check?’ asked Bonin.

‘Well, I was about to open this precious bottle of sacra to celebrate Gol’s return,’ said Baskevyl. He put it down. ‘But we probably should.’

The others got up from their seats around his camp table.

Yerolemew and Blenner came in from the hall outside.

‘A lot of fuss in the billet halls,’ said Blenner. ‘That black-out was the whole undercroft.’

‘Go calm them down,’ Baskevyl said. ‘It was just a circuit fault.’

Blenner eyed the bottle on the table. ‘Private party?’ he asked.

‘Go calm them down, Blenner,’ said Baskevyl, ‘and you might get an invitation to join us.’

Blenner nodded, and hurried out.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Bonin asked the bandmaster.

‘Can’t you hear that?’ Yerolemew asked.

‘Hear what?’ asked Domor.

Yerolemew frowned. ‘Like a… whistle. A note. High pitched.’

They shook their heads.

‘You’ve spent too many years standing beside the full brass section,’ said Domor.

‘You really can’t hear that?’ Yerolemew asked.

Bonin glanced around. He looked at the shot glasses standing on the table beside the bottle.

‘What, Mach?’ asked Kolea.

Bonin reached out and placed his splayed hand down on the tops of the glasses.

‘They were vibrating,’ he said.

‘Well, it must’ve been that,’ said Yerolemew. ‘The sound’s gone now.’

Bonin lifted his hand.

‘Now it’s back,’ said Yerolemew.

‘What the feth?’ said Domor. The sound made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of something he’d heard recently.

‘My, uh, ears itch,’ said Baskevyl. ‘What the gak is going on?’

Meryn hurried in. ‘Commissar Fazekiel wants you,’ he said to Baskevyl.

‘Why?’

‘Something’s going on. She said amber status. She’s spooked about something.’

‘What?’ said Domor in surprise.

‘Amber?’ asked Kolea. ‘On what grounds?’

Meryn shrugged mutely.

‘Let’s get some control back into this situation, please,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Come on! Act like you know what you’re doing. Get the retinue calmed down and secure, get the companies stood to. Shoggy, find that Munitorum work crew and ask them if they know what the problem is. Yerolemew, send a runner upstairs and find out if this is just us or the whole palace. And get them to advise Daur we seem to have a situation down here. Gol, Mach, with me–’

The lights went out again.

This time, they did not come back on.

She’d been thinking about it all the while Biota had quizzed Marshal Tzara about the integrity of the bridges and causeways serving the Zarakppan and Clantine canals.

Dalin had been waiting for her outside the showerblock. Standing guard at the door to protect her modesty. As she’d stepped into the shower pen, she’d heard his voice through the door. Dalin speaking to someone.

It was so vague. Just a partial memory she didn’t feel she could trust.

But the other person had sounded like Captain Meryn.

‘I’m sure this can wait,’ said Relf.

‘I’m not sure of anything,’ said Merity. ‘But Commissar Fazekiel said to report anything to her. Anything at all.’

‘But now?’ asked Relf, following Merity down the steep stone staircase into the undercroft.

Merity turned to her.

‘Can I ask?’ she said. ‘Do I take orders from you, or do you simply follow me where ever I go?’

‘Uhm, the latter,’ replied the large Tempestus Scion.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Merity, and continued on her way.

They reached the bottom of the steps and followed the white-washed corridor into the chambers of the palace undercroft. Merity glimpsed the billets of the retinue, through side arches. There seemed to be some general agitation.

‘It smells down here,’ said Relf.

‘Never mind that,’ Merity said. ‘Let’s ask someone where Fazekiel is billetted.’

They turned a corner and Merity recoiled. The hallway floor ahead was awash with drain water. It wasn’t just standing water. The frothy waste was spilling towards her rapidly, as if it was being fed gallons at a time by some serious leak or overflow.

‘Come on,’ said Relf.

The lights went out.

Merity froze. She heard voices crying out from the billet halls in alarm.

‘There is one circumstance in which you take orders from me,’ Relf said in the darkness behind her.

‘Yes?’

‘Get behind me and do what I say.’

‘You have, honoured one, no active knowledge of the Anarch’s whereabouts?’ asked Van Voytz.

‘No,’ replied the Beati.

‘Or any views as to his plan of attack?’ Van Voytz added.

‘No,’ said the Beati.

‘But he lives still?’

‘He lives, Lord General,’ she said.

Van Voytz stood back and glanced at Gaunt. The three of them were standing at a strategium desk in a privacy-screened gallery room overlooking the war room. Kazader and the Beati’s deputies were with them. Sanctus and his Scions stood guard outside.

Gaunt wasn’t sure what was wrong. The Beati could be unpredictable, but in the last ten minutes, her manner had become distracted and remote. He knew she was tired. He could see it. She’d come straight from the Oureppan fight. He wished they could give her time to recuperate, but synchronising intel was a priority.

Gaunt turned to Captain Auerben. ‘You’ve brought reports from Oureppan?’

‘Yes, Lord Executor,’ Auerben replied. ‘Full field accounts from the victory and subsequent miracle at Ghereppan, and supplementary command reports and pict records from the raid on Pinnacle Spire.’

‘Then let’s upload and review those at least,’ said Van Voytz. ‘And maybe we should bring in Blackwood and Urienz?’

‘Let’s run through it first,’ Gaunt said. ‘Then we’ll brief high command as a group. Blackwood and Urienz have got plenty to be getting on with.’

Gaunt looked at the Beati.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

She looked up at him. He was surprised by the distance in her eyes.

‘I think I hear a voice,’ she said very quietly. ‘Nagging at my head. His voice. Scratching…’

‘What?’

‘Ibram,’ she said. ‘A shadow is falling. Something bad is about to happen.’

‘An attack?’ asked Gaunt.

‘No,’ said the Saint. ‘It’s already in here with us.’

Olort led the way into the record chambers. It looked like an old library space that had been requisitioned for the Sons of Sek. Packson scribes worked at the old wooden desks, scraping bare the pages of old shipping ledgers so that they could be reused as palimpsests.

There was no electronic activity or apparatus. The dark, high-ceilinged rooms were lit only by candles and wick-lamps.

‘I want information about prisoners,’ Mkoll whispered to Olort.

‘Prisoners?’

‘You’ve brought plenty here. There will be lists.’

Olort looked dubious.

‘When we’ve found that, maps and charts. Plans of the whole Fastness.’

‘You sound like an etogaur planning a campaign,’ said Olort.

‘Maybe I am.’

‘You also sound like a hopeless fool.’

‘Humour this fool, and the fool won’t kill you.’

Olort spoke to two of the sirdars, and was directed to a side room. It was a small space, lined with shelves, with high windows facing the hollow mountain’s interior lagoon. There was a maritime desk, with an empty crystal decanter on a silver tray. Mkoll fancied this had once been the office of the port master or a shipping baron.

Mkoll pushed the heavy door shut.

‘Here?’ he asked.

Olort turned to the half-empty shelves. The books were all old, leather-bound ledgers. Fresh labels marked with the spiked symbols of the archenemy had been glued to their spines. Mkoll unbuckled his helmet and took it off.

Olort pulled a volume from the shelf, set it on the desk, and opened it.

‘This one,’ he said.

Mkoll moved closer to look. He placed the helmet on the desk beside the ledger, nodding at Olort to stand back.

The pages of the ledger had been treated and scraped to remove the old ink. Faint ghosts of the original writing remained. Over the top, fresh script had been added, the jagged characters of the Archonate’s tribal tongues. Symbols adorned the margins of the palimpsest, and in some places great effort had gone into the decoration of the words and letters that began chapters or sections. Illuminated images, rendered in different coloured inks, sometimes with a hint of gold leaf or egg tempera. Beasts with horns and wings and cloven hooves peered out from the shadows behind the large capital characters.

‘It will be meaningless to you, kha?’ Olort asked, amused.

It was dense, and the script hard to read. But a year on Gereon had taught Oan Mkoll more than the rudiments of the spoken language. He began to turn the old pages, running his finger along. He found lists. Pages of lists, with details beside what seemed to be names.

‘That word means “captives”, doesn’t it?’ he asked.

Olort nodded.

‘This gives names. These are Imperial names. Here, location of capture. The names of the Imperial units the men belonged to, where given.’

‘We are thorough,’ said Olort.

‘There must be a thousand names here,’ Mkoll said. ‘And this word, this indicates induction? Or a willingness to be inducted?’

Olort stepped closer and looked at the pages.

‘Kha,’ he said. ‘Those willing are held here…’

He slid his finger across the page.

‘…the holding spaces beneath the chapter house. These others, they are resistant but promising. Otherwise, we would not have brought them here. They are held in the livestock compound.’

‘A thousand or more…’ murmured Mkoll, reading on.

‘Do you suppose you have an army, Ghost?’ Olort asked, smiling broadly. ‘Is that your hopeless plan? To release them? Then what? Mobilise them to fight? Stage a revolt within the Fastness?’

‘A thousand men is a thousand men,’ said Mkoll.

‘A thousand starving men, unarmed. Beaten. Defeated. A thousand traitor sons of the Emperor. They would not follow you. And even if they did, they would accomplish very little. Unarmed men? Broken men? If this is your plan, you are no etogaur. I say again, give up, Mah-koll. Let me deliver you. You are alone at the heart of my Anarch’s bastion. The sons of the pack surround you. Give me the skzerret and discard these hopeless dreams.’

Mkoll ignored him. He skimmed on through the pages.

‘Nen, I see it now,’ Olort said. ‘Not an army. A distraction. Kha, kha… a distraction. That’s what you plan. Prisoners released, chaos and confusion. Mayhem. You care not for the lives of these captives. You would use them. Use their lives as cover for your own activities. But not escape. You would have tried that long before now. Not escape, but…’

He looked at Mkoll sharply.

‘You have come to kill,’ said Olort, his eyes wide. ‘Nen mortekoi, ger tar Mortek. These words you said to me. You see your fate as an opportunity.’

Mkoll continued to ignore him. He was reading on, and had come upon a small separate section divided from the other lists.

‘Enkil vahakan. That’s what you called me. Those who hold the key of victory. There are three names here.’

‘So?’ asked Olort with a sneer.

‘Held aboard the ship,’ Mkoll said. He peered closer to read the three names. He blinked in genuine surprise. ‘Feth,’ he murmured.

Olort lunged. The old crystal decanter smashed across the side of Mkoll’s head and hurled Mkoll across the desk face-first. He rolled, blood streaming down his neck, shards of broken crystal falling off him, and dropped to the floor. Helmet and ledger fell off the desk with him.

Olort ripped the skzerret out of his hand.

‘Help me here!’ Olort roared in the enemy tongue. ‘Help me here! Intruder! Intruder!’

NINE: BAD SHADOW

Olort stabbed down with the ritual blade. Mkoll was blinded by his own blood, which was pouring out of the scalp wound the decanter had left. His head was spinning.

Somehow, he managed to block the stab with his forearm. The edge of the skzerret sliced his sleeve and broke the skin beneath.

Still shouting for help, Olort stabbed again, and again Mkoll blocked, grabbing his knife-wrist. Olort had Mkoll pinned under him. Mkoll grabbed frantically with his free hand, seized something, and swung it.

The sirdar helmet smacked into the side of Olort’s face. He lurched sideways. Mkoll hit him again, fending him off with his left arm and swinging the helmet by the chinstraps with his right.

The second blow clipped Olort off balance and made him yelp. Mkoll kicked out and sent him staggering back across the room.

Olort came back at him, hatred in his eyes. Blood was running down his cheek from a cut above the left cheekbone. He thrust in with the dagger. Mkoll, barely on his feet, blocked the thrust with the dome of the helmet, using it like a buckler. Olort jabbed again.

‘In here! In here!’ he was yelling in the Archenemy dialect.

The skzerret punched through the top of the helmet and dug deep. Mkoll twisted his grip and wrenched the dagger out of the damogaur’s grasp. The helmet, with the dagger transfixing it, bounced away across the floor.

Wide-eyed, Olort dived for it. Mkoll went for the damogaur, landing a glancing kick that knocked the diving man down short of his target. Olort landed on the floor and scrambled for the helmet.

Mkoll dived for it too.

He got his hands on the dagger’s hilt. Olort merely managed to grasp the helmet. He clawed at it. Mkoll wrenched the blade out. Olort’s hands got to it too late. All he managed to grab was the blade as it slid free of the helmet. The serrated edge sliced off all the fingers of his right hand.

Olort screamed.

Mkoll smashed the dagger back down again. It punched through the side of Olort’s neck. Mkoll turned his grip with a sharp jerk and tore out Olort’s throat. The scream turned into a gurgle.

Mkoll rose, dagger in hand. He was dizzy and disorientated. He was drenched in his own blood, and Olort’s was still pumping out across the floor in a pool of astonishing size. Mkoll heard hurried footsteps outside.

He kicked the damogaur out of the way. Olort rolled, still making ghastly sucking sounds. Mkoll opened the door. Two packson scribes were right outside. One had drawn a laspistol.

‘Voi tar karog!’ Mkoll yelled at them, stepping aside to let them in. They rushed in, not knowing what to expect, just that a sirdar had ordered them to assist him.

They halted. One almost slipped in the widening pool of blood. They saw a damogaur bleeding out on the floor, his throat cut through.

Mkoll punched the skzerret into the ribcage of the scribe with the gun. With his left hand, he grabbed the laspistol as the man dropped to his knees. There was no time to turn the pistol. Mkoll swung it instead, hitting the other scribe in the face with the butt of the gun. The packson reeled away, blood and spit flying from his lip, and bounced off the door.

More footsteps. Mkoll stuck the blade in his belt and stepped out into the long hallway. Two more packsons were running towards him from one direction, three more from the other. They were shouting. They had weapons. Mkoll raised the pistol and fired, cutting the approaching pair off their feet with four neat snap-shots. Then he turned smartly, and fired on the trio. He dropped one and clipped the second. The third hurled himself into the cover of a doorway. The second tried to rise, and Mkoll plugged him in the side of the head with a single bolt. The man flopped back down.

From the adjoining chambers, Mkoll could hear raised voices and the frantic ringing of handbells. The whole building was scrambling to respond.

He stepped back into the room. The scribe he’d dropped with the pistol butt was stirring and moaning. Mkoll put a shot through his head. He shoved the bodies of the packson scribes out of the way, and closed the door. There was no lock, and merely the overpainted marks where a bolt had once been screwed in place.

He looked around and made a rapid assessment. Then he dragged the bodies of the two dead scribes and piled them against the foot of the door in an awkward heap. They would hardly keep the door shut, but they’d slow down any attempts to shove it open. There was no time to check the bodies for anything useful like spare clips or keys.

He crossed to the desk, bent down, and opened the ledger, brushing splinters of decanter glass off the pages. He found the page that had surprised him, the page of enkil vahakan, and tore it out. He folded it and stuffed it in his pocket. His hands were leaving bloody finger marks on everything.

He swayed slightly, and steadied himself against the desk. There was a dull, throbbing ache behind his right eye. The scalp wound was still bleeding freely. Shaking his head, he gritted his teeth and shoved the heavy desk against the end shelves.

Olort was still twitching, staring at him with wide eyes, his bloody mouth opening and closing dumbly.

‘Vahooth voi sehn,’ Mkoll said. I bless you.

He shot Olort between the eyes.

There were more footsteps outside, raised voices, thumps at the door, an attempt to shoulder-barge the door open. The door opened a crack, but the weight of the bodies slammed it shut again. The thumping resumed. Another fierce shoulder-barge.

Mkoll clambered up on the desk, and climbed the shelves to the high windows. There was no clasp or opening, but the sea air had rotted the ancient windows in their frames long since. He pushed out a pane of glass and heard it fall and shatter somewhere far below.

Then he hauled himself up and out through the gap. Cold air met him, and a strong sea breeze. He clung to the sill. The wall dropped away sheer directly below him, but there was an adjoining tiled roof three metres down to his left.

He jumped.

Behind him, the first las-rounds tore through the door.

Baskevyl was handing out stablights from a packing crate.

‘One each. Check the charge, grab a weapon, and start searching.’

‘What are we looking for, sir?’ asked Leyr, taking the stablight offered and testing it.

‘Commissar Fazekiel, for a start,’ replied Baskevyl. ‘She was the one who called this amber status. Right, Meryn?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Aside from her… I don’t know,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Is this an attack?’ asked Neskon. ‘I mean, has the undercroft been penetrated, or–’

‘We don’t know anything,’ said Kolea. ‘This is probably just faults in the circuit. Spread out like Bask says and take the undercroft by sections. There will be stragglers, so round them up and send them along to the exit staircase.’

The darkness felt close, as if there was no room to move or breathe. The stink of the cellar level was getting worse, but Baskevyl thought this was probably just his imagination. That, or the air-circ pumps and vents had shut down too. And the scratching in their ears was persistent. That, more than anything, made Bask feel like this was more than a technical problem.

The chamber itself possessed the eerie qualities of a bad dream. It was so lightless, it was hard to tell who you were standing next to, even though it was packed tight. As stablights flashed on, the moving beams came at haphazard angles, like bars of pale blue glare that showed frosty details but nothing of the whole. The alarms kept stuttering and squeaking in short, fitful bursts, little shrill gasps of sound that came and went, truncated. Neskon had strapped on his flamer unit, and had used the ignition burner to light tapers. He was now passing these, one by one, to Banda and Leclan so they could light the wicks of little tin box-lamps. The box-lamps issued only a dull glow, but it was more diffuse than the hard beams of the stablights.

‘Pass them out,’ said Leclan. ‘Maybe take a bundle of them up to the stairs. The retinue haven’t got many lamps.’

‘Do that, Luhan,’ ordered Baskevyl.

‘On it, sir,’ replied Trooper Luhan.

‘I could take them along,’ suggested Blenner.

‘Luhan’s doing it,’ replied Baskevyl, passing a stablight to Blenner.

‘Well, maybe I should at least check on the progress,’ said Blenner. ‘There’s a lot of women and children, in the dark, trying to find their way out–’

‘Yerolemew and Bonin are running the evac,’ replied Baskevyl. ‘They’ve got it covered. Help with the section search.’

‘All right,’ sighed Blenner. ‘Of course.’

‘Has anyone seen Dalin?’ Kolea called out. ‘Or Yoncy?’

His voice was sudden and loud. Everybody, even Baskevyl as he called the shots, had been talking low, as though louder voices might somehow offend the choking darkness that had engulfed them.

‘We’ll find them, Gol,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Come on, shift your arses and get to it!’

Shoggy Domor hadn’t waited for a stablight. He’d simply flipped his bulky augmetic optics to night vision and set off.

Now he was beginning to regret responding to Baskevyl’s instruction so eagerly. He could hear an agitated murmur of voices several chambers behind him as the retinue hurried to evacuate and find their way to the undercroft steps. The alarm system kept piping in sudden, unnerving squelches of sharp sound.

His heart was racing. It was unnerving. Domor could feel an unpleasant rasping in his ears, as if someone was wiggling a pin against his eardrum. He wished he’d waited for some company. He wished he’d picked up a weapon. All he had was his straight silver.

He wondered why he felt he needed a weapon. Was it just the non-specific amber status that had been issued? Out on the line, that usually meant bad shit was coming, but this wasn’t the line. Domor didn’t scare easily, and this was surely just a power-out. But the darkness was oppressive. It didn’t feel like the simple absence of light. It felt like a thing in its own right, as if darkness had poured into the undercroft and filled it like black water.

‘Taskane?’ he called. ‘Overseer Taskane?’

The blackness seemed to eat his voice.

‘Commissar Fazekiel?’

Domor moved forward, seeing the world as a cold, green relief map. He moved with one hand on the wall, feeling his way even though his augmetics gave him the best sight of anyone down on the undercroft level.

‘Taskane? Overseer?’

Domor jumped as the alarms sounded again. This time it was a dying shriek that ended in a long, warbling throb of defective speakers. It tailed off into nothing, but while it lasted, for five or six seconds, it sounded less like a broken, misfiring alarm system and more like a baby crying.

‘Feth,’ he whispered to himself.

He edged on, following the hallway that led to the latrine area. The stone wall was hard and rough under his groping hand. Just to the right, he thought, the tunnel turns and–

There was a blank stone wall ahead of him. A dead end.

Domor stood for a second, and adjusted his optics. How was that possible?

He cursed himself. You got turned around, Shoggy, he thought. You took a wrong turn. Mach Bonin will have your guts when he finds out a Tanith man got himself lost in his own fething billet.

He turned and moved back the way he had come. Stupid. Just stupid. Just nerves. They’d been in the undercroft for four days. He knew the fething way around.

Domor came back under a low lintel into one of the main billet halls. His optics showed him the rows of empty cots, the rumpled sheets a brighter, almost incandescent lime green compared to the deep emerald of the bedrolls. Kitbags had been knocked over and left.

‘Taskane! For feth’s sake!’

He thought he heard something, but it was just the damn scratching in his ears. He turned back and took the correct exit this time, fumbling along another wall.

He went down a couple of steps and found himself shin-deep in water. It was cold as hell, rushing into his boots.

‘Feth’s sake!’ he cursed.

He splashed on for a few metres.

‘Taskane!’ His optics winked out.

Domor stood stock-still for a moment. He tapped at the sides of his augmetics.

Vision returned in a jumble of green noise.

Then it failed again. The temperature seemed to drop sharply.

In utter darkness, he sloshed his way backwards and found the reassuring solidity of the wall. Get your breathing under control, you idiot. You’re not afraid of the dark. There’s nothing down here to be scared of–

A noise shuddered through the darkness. It wasn’t the burble of the faulty alarms. It was a rasping, keening whine.

He’d heard it before. A noise like a surgical drill. A bone saw.

He’d heard it down at Low Keen, while searching behind the billets for Elodie and Gol’s kid.

Heard it right before the… the whatever it was slaughtered an insurgent pack of Sekkite troops.

Shoggy Domor drew his warknife, and felt the comfort of it in his hand. He tried to adjust his optics and get them working again.

Something grabbed him from behind.

‘Good to see you,’ said Daur.

‘You too,’ replied Curth.

He’d come down to a reception hall just off the palace east gatehouse as soon as he’d received word that the regimental casualties had arrived.

‘I’ve got them all to the palace infirmary,’ she said, handing Daur the casualty list. ‘All stable. No losses en route.’

Daur nodded, reading the list. ‘Some of these look grim,’ he said.

‘It was fething brutal at the batteries,’ she said. ‘Some of them should have been shipped back from the front line days ago. It’s a miracle three or four of them made it.’

‘I imagine that miracle was you,’ said Hark as he joined them.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just luck and maybe the blessing of the Emperor. They’re all with the palace medicae now. Best surgical teams in the crusade.’

She looked at Daur.

‘I’d like to get back out there,’ she said. ‘Re-join Pasha’s group, or Rawne’s. Are you sending V or E out in support?’

‘This is Gaunt’s op,’ said Daur. ‘He’s told us to sit here for now.’

‘Well, can you authorise my return, Ban?’ Curth asked.

Hark looked at her. She was filthy with dirt and blood stains, and had a dazed look in her eyes, a look he’d seen many times before. She clearly hadn’t slept in days.

‘I think a little turn-around rest here first, eh, Ban?’ said Hark gently. He glanced at Daur.

‘I think so,’ he replied.

‘Feth’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘They’re deploying into… well, who the feth knows what. No one’s clear about it. The whole regiment’s been on the line for nearly a hundred and fifty straight. They’re burned through–’

‘I know,’ said Daur. ‘And so are you. Take an hour or two at least, get cleaned up, and we’ll talk about it again.’

‘I’ll take this to Gaunt, then,’ she said, her chin jutting pugnaciously.

‘Good luck,’ said Hark. ‘No fether’s getting in to see him. He’s with the Saint. He’s the Lord high fething Executor, Ana. We’re just getting scraps from his table, and the scraps say do this and get it done.’

Curth breathed out hard and her shoulder slumped.

‘Is it true?’ she asked.

‘About what?’ asked Daur.

‘Ezra being dead? Felyx being…’ her voice trailed off. ‘Gaunt’s daughter or some shit?’

‘All true,’ said Hark.

‘Feth!’ she said.

‘It’s been quite a time, all told,’ said Hark. ‘Ana, let’s go find you a billet.’

‘And a drink, maybe?’ she asked.

‘Oh, definitely that,’ said Hark.

The three turned and began to walk back down the reception hall. It was filling up with Helixid and Keyzon troopers, just arriving off transports that had set down in the Hexagonal Court. The trio had to skirt between gaggles of men and stacks of fieldpacks and bagged support weapons. Munitorum staffers were shouting orders and herding the arrivals into formations. A squad of Urdeshi troopers hurried through the hall, and spat disparaging taunts at the Helixid as they pushed through.

There were some angry answers. Some of the Helixid squared up, blocking the big Urdesh men.

‘You! Yes, you!’ Hark yelled. ‘That’s enough. Back off and get about your business or I’ll turn the lot of you arseholes-out!’

‘That’s an actual surgical procedure, right?’ Daur murmured sidelong to Curth.

‘Takes a steady hand, but it’s highly effective,’ she replied with a weak grin.

‘Idiots,’ muttered Hark as he turned back to join Curth and Daur. ‘Is it me, or is there something in the air tonight?’

‘The storm?’ asked Daur. Hark didn’t look convinced.

‘No, Viktor’s right,’ said Curth. ‘A really ugly mood. I thought it was just me, but you could sharpen steel on some of the looks in here.’

Hark nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know I’ve got a bastard of a headache. Right between the ears. Gnawing away.’

‘Probably brain worms,’ said Curth.

‘That would explain an awful lot,’ said Daur.

‘The two of you are simply hilarious,’ said Hark.

‘Sir! Captain Daur!’

They turned at the sound of a woman calling out anxiously. Trooper Ree Perday, the helicon player from V Company, was pushing her way through the hall towards them, waving to be seen over the tall, solid mob of assembling Guard.

‘Perday?’

She ran up, slightly out of breath, and threw a salute.

‘Message from Major Baskevyl,’ she said. ‘There’s a situation in the undercroft, sir.’

‘Where?’ asked Curth.

‘Our spectacular billet,’ replied Hark, ‘also known as the old palace wine vaults that no one else wanted.’

‘What sort of situation, trooper?’ asked Daur.

‘Well, the lights have failed. Total blackout,’ she said.

‘Then get a fething tech crew on it,’ said Daur. ‘Bask doesn’t need my permission to call in a–’

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Perday, ‘he’s already done that. It’s f – bad word dark as arseholes down there – sorry, sir. It’s totally dark. And Commissar Fazekiel, she’s called an amber status.’

Daur and Hark looked at each other sharply.

‘What?’ asked Daur. ‘Why?’

‘No one really knows, sir, but that’s what happened. Sergeant Major Yerolemew sent me up right away to appraise you, sir.’

‘Amber status is a hazard advisory…’ said Daur, mystified.

‘“Threat suspected”,’ Hark agreed. ‘But that’s a combat zone condition. This isn’t a combat zone.’

‘I think Rawne might disagree with that,’ said Curth.

Hark scowled. ‘Urdesh is,’ he said. ‘The fething palace isn’t.’

‘Luna’s not one to jump at nothing,’ said Curth.

‘No, she’s not,’ said Hark. ‘Nor one to get a technical definition wrong.’

‘Granted,’ said Daur, ‘but even so…’

‘Major Bask, he’s ordered the retinue out, sir,’ said Perday. ‘Personnel evac. They’re making their way up now.’

‘Luna and Bask don’t piss around, Ban,’ said Hark.

Daur nodded. ‘I’ll alert the palace watchroom. See if they’ve got anything. Then I’ll take this to Gaunt immediately. In person. Viktor, you go down and take a look. Report back to me.’

‘Of course,’ said Hark.

‘You think this is something?’ asked Curth.

‘I think someone’s got their shorts in a knot,’ said Daur.

‘But you’re taking it to Gaunt…’ Curth said.

‘Yes,’ said Daur, ‘because he’ll put a rocket up the Munitorum and get specialist crews down there to sort it out.’

‘If it’s just a circuit problem…’ Hark said.

‘We’re inside the void-shielded Urdeshic palace, Viktor,’ said Daur, ‘as you just pointed out. What else could it be?’

Curth and Hark exchanged uneasy glances.

‘Well, that’s why you’re going to check it out, isn’t it, commissar?’ said Daur.

Hark nodded.

‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve spoken to Gaunt,’ said Daur, and hurried away.

‘There’s an officer’s mess on the third floor,’ Hark said to Curth. ‘Decent log fire, decent amasec–’

‘Feth that,’ she replied, ‘I’m coming with you.’

The beams of their stablights criss-crossed the walls as they moved into the darkness.

‘Gol, take the left there,’ Baskevyl instructed.

Kolea nodded, and moved through an archway with a team of troopers from V Company.

Baskevyl shone his torch around to the right. ‘Meryn?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Move through the billets in that direction.’

‘Right,’ Meryn replied. He sounded reluctant. Baskevyl couldn’t blame him. The internal scratching was getting more intense, like a dry hum, a crackle. His own hands were shaking.

Meryn played his light around, picking out the faces of Leyr, Banda, Neskon and the E Company corpsman, Leclan.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Baskevyl could feel Blenner’s nervous presence at his elbow, even though he couldn’t see him.

‘We’ll follow the main tunnel down to the latrine area,’ he said.

‘Close up behind,’ Blenner said to the E Company men at their heels. ‘Where’s Shoggy?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t he go this way?’

‘I don’t know where the feth he is,’ said Baskevyl. He tried the micro-bead links several times, but there was some kind of interference pattern.

‘Domor? Domor, this is Blenner,’ he heard Blenner say behind him. ‘Report your location, Shoggy. Have you found the work crew?’

‘I’ve tried that,’ Bask snapped.

‘Just getting noise,’ Blenner muttered. Their voices in the small, dark space sounded dead and muffled. ‘Is that jamming?’

‘In here?’ Baskevyl replied. ‘I don’t know how that would be possible.’ The palace was the most secure Imperial site on the Urdesh surface, and its void shields were up. Furthermore, they were in a sub-surface level. The undercroft might not be the most salubrious area of the palace complex, but it was buried in bedrock and sheathed in foundation stonework metres thick. None of the Archenemy dispositions on Urdesh could get within kilometres of the Great Hill, let alone undertake the engineering efforts necessary to undermine the foundations without being detected.

But Baskevyl’s mind kept returning to two things: the weird acoustics that they were all experiencing, and the simple fact that Luna Fazekiel was trustworthy and meticulous.

Baskevyl called her name into the darkness. There wasn’t even an echo, just a dull silence. Then he called other names… Domor, Dalin… Yoncy…

Nothing.

‘Keep up,’ he said to the others.

‘Sir?’

Baskevyl looked back, shining his beam. It was trooper Osket.

‘What?’

‘Something’s up with the commissar,’ Osket said.

Baskevyl played his beam around. Blenner was leaning against the passage wall, breathing hard.

‘Vaynom?’

He got a light on Blenner’s face. Blenner flinched. He was sweating and almost panting.

‘Vaynom?’ Baskevyl said calmly. ‘Vaynom? You’re having a panic attack. Vaynom, just breathe with me–’

‘There’s no air,’ Blenner gasped. ‘There’s no fething air…’

‘Vaynom, breathe with me. Slow. Count of three in… Hold it, count of three exhale…’

‘This is death,’ Blenner gasped, his breathing painfully quick and shallow. ‘This is death. It’s fething death. It’s fething punishment–’

‘Vaynom, breathe. Slow. Slower than that. Now hold it. Fill your lungs.’

‘What did I ever do, Bask? I mean really,’ Blenner stammered. ‘I didn’t want it. Not any of it. Just wanted to mind my own business and–’

‘Concentrate on your breathing,’ Baskevyl said firmly. He gripped Blenner by the shoulder. ‘Come on. That’s better.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Blenner mumbled, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ said Baskevyl. ‘It happens to all of us. Just gets up in your head–’

He paused. Where he was gripping Blenner’s shoulder, it felt wet to the touch. He took his hand away and shone his stablight at his palm.

‘What is it?’ Blenner asked.

‘Oil, I think,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘There must be some on the wall. You’ve leant on it–’ He sniffed his hand.

It wasn’t oil.

Baskevyl pushed Blenner out of the way and shone his light on the wall. The wet spatters read only as black in the harsh glare. Baskevyl didn’t have to see red to know it was blood.

‘Are you hurt, Vaynom?’ he asked. ‘Are you cut or–’

‘N-no,’ Blenner replied.

Baskevyl ran his beam along the ground. More black spatters there, gleaming in the light.

‘Someone’s hurt,’ he said. Then he pulled his lasrifle off his shoulder, clipped the stablight to the under-barrel lugs, and brought the weapon up in a ready position.

‘Secondary order,’ he said.

‘I thought…’ Erish began.

‘What?’ Kolea asked.

The big V Company bandsman hesitated.

‘Just thinking out loud, sir, sorry. I just thought there was another room beyond this one.’

Kolea’s team was in one of the smaller billet chambers. Forty cots in neat rows, head-ends to the cellar walls. Kolea turned his stablight on the end wall.

‘There, you mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Erish.

‘You’d know better than I would,’ Kolea said. This was his first visit to the undercroft. Erish and the others had been down here for two days.

‘The layout’s really simple,’ said Kores. ‘Just a grid with…’

He paused.

‘What?’ asked Kolea.

‘I don’t like to say, sir,’ replied Kores awkwardly. ‘But Erish is right. I’d have sworn there was a door there. An archway.’

Kolea slapped the stone wall with his hand.

‘Well, there isn’t,’ he said. ‘Let’s back it up and go on to the left.’

The squad started to turn.

‘What was that?’ asked Arradin, a little woodwind player.

‘What?’ asked Erish.

‘Didn’t you hear that?’ asked Arradin. ‘Sounded like crying. Sobbing.’

Kolea couldn’t hear anything.

‘Just the alarms again?’ Erish suggested.

Kolea led the way back to the left-hand archway. ‘Close up,’ he said.

He aimed his light beam through. Nothing–

He played it back. He’d seen a damned figure. Someone standing there in the darkness. Gone now, gone before his beam could return to it.

‘Yoncy?’ he called. It had been her, he was sure of it. Just the flash of a pale face in the dark. ‘Close up,’ he said.

There was no one behind him.

‘Erish? Kores? Where the feth have you gone? Erish?’

He heard Erish call back. It sounded distant. The acoustics in the basement were off-putting.

‘Where the feth have you gone?’ Kolea yelled.

‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called back.

‘I went to the left. You were right behind me!’

‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called.

‘Feth’s sake!’ Kolea growled. It sounded like Erish was on the other side of the wall. He went back a few steps to the archway.

‘Erish!’

The archway was there. The chamber beyond was small, and stacked with munition boxes and kitbags.

Where the feth were the cots? Kolea snorted in annoyance. How the feth had he done that? He’d gone into a side room by mistake, not the billet they’d just searched.

‘Erish! Follow the sound of my voice!’

‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called from a distance. It didn’t sound like a voice. It sounded like the echo of a voice, the echo returning slowly from Erish’s previous yell.

Kolea heard a skitter of movement behind him and turned fast. His stablight was quick enough to catch a pale figure darting out of sight.

‘Yoncy!’

He ran after her.

‘Yoncy! It’s me! Yoncy, don’t be scared! It’s just a power-down!’

The hallway ahead of him dead-ended in a solid section of curtain wall.

‘Yoncy?’ he called.

He heard muffled sobbing. He couldn’t tell for the life of him where it was coming from.

Trooper Luhan moved up through the tail-end of the retinue, handing out the little box-lamps.

‘Pass ’em out,’ he said.

They were crowded into the wide stone hallway that led to the stairwell.

‘Why’s everyone stopped?’ Luhan asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said one of the women.

‘They’re jammed up on the steps,’ said an elderly tailor, clutching his workbag to his chest so he could take a lamp from Luhan.

Luhan gave them the rest of the lamps to pass around, and began to push his way up the tightly packed hall.

‘What’s the hold up?’ he asked several times, getting nothing but anxious shrugs in reply. The retinue was a fair size: women, children and support artisans. But they should have been filing out by now, up the long steps to the undercroft’s single exit.

‘We just stopped moving a couple of minutes ago,’ Elodie said to him as he squeezed past.

‘Maybe someone’s had a fall on the steps, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I mean, in this dark.’

Luhan saw her expression by the glow of the box-lamp he was holding. Captain Daur’s wife was a strong woman. He didn’t like the fear he saw.

‘Let us through,’ said Elodie, pushing forwards. Luhan followed. Elodie had become the spokesperson and leader of the retinue, partly because she was married to Daur, but mainly because she was well-liked and cool-headed. She didn’t crumble easily. Luhan stuck close behind her. The retinue was letting her through with more civility than they might have shown him.

They reached the bottom of the stone staircase. The stairs too were packed with people. The air was very close. Luhan could smell sweat, anxiety and the fouled diapers of some of the babes-in-arms.

‘What’s the hold up?’ Elodie called up.

‘I think the door’s locked,’ Juniper called back.

‘The door? The door to the undercroft?’

‘I dunno,’ the woman replied.

Pushing and apologising, Elodie shoved her way up the steps, Luhan close behind, squirming through the press of bodies.

‘Mach!’ she called up. ‘Mach, what’s the issue?’

High above, in the shadows, she saw the wink of moving stablights.

‘Elodie?’ Bonin’s voice boomed down to her.

‘What’s the problem?’ she shouted. ‘We can’t leave everybody here like this! We’re crushed in! Get it moving!’

‘Keep everybody calm,’ Bonin called back.

Bonin looked at Yerolemew. They were painfully aware of the tight press of bodies on the deep stairs behind them.

‘What do we do?’ the sergeant major asked quietly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Bonin.

‘With respect, Mach, you’re the fething scout.’

‘These are the stairs,’ Bonin growled. ‘The only fething stairs. Unless there’s another flight of stairs I didn’t know anything about.’

‘Just the one flight,’ Yerolemew replied. There was a twitch in his voice, the faintest hint of anxiety breaking through. ‘You know that.’

‘Right,’ replied Bonin in a low whisper. He shone his light at the wall. ‘So where’s the fething door?’

The hallway ahead was flooding. Baskevyl tipped his light-beam down and saw the dirty liquid spilling along the flagstones. It stank. The latrine area had backed up entirely. He wondered if it was still raining. How much more water was going to pour into the palace’s ancient drains and force its way up into the lower levels?

‘Form on me,’ he instructed. All the Ghosts with him had weapons ready, as per his order to secondary. Blenner was hanging back, but he’d drawn his weapon.

‘We’re not going on, are we?’ Blenner asked.

‘Of course we are,’ Baskevyl said. ‘This is the area the crew was working.’

‘Well, they’re not working now,’ said Blenner, stepping back as the water began to reach his boots.

That much was obvious. There was no sound of pumps, no sign of pump tubing. Baskevyl had a scenario in his mind: Taskane’s crew had been working to drain the water, and there had been a short. It had blown the circuit and caused the blackout, and shocked Taskane and his men, who’d been standing in flood water. A maintenance accident, that’s all this was. They had to get in and help. The Munitorum crew could be seriously hurt. Maybe Fazekiel too, if she’d been with them when it happened.

The blood… there had to be some other explanation for that.

He stepped forward. In just a few steps, he had water gushing around his ankles as it back-fed along the hall.

‘Stay sharp!’ he said.

They splashed into the stream. It was getting deeper. Did the tunnel slant down at this point?

‘Sir!’ Osket called out.

The lamp’s beam moved and Baskevyl saw an object floating along in the tide. A work boot. Old and worn, laces broken.

‘That’s Munitorum issue,’ said Osket.

‘Fish it out,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t bother then,’ Baskevyl snapped, and took a step forward.

He fell, unable to catch himself. He crashed into water at least a foot deep, and thrashed around to get up again. He’d tripped over something.

‘Bask?’ Blenner called.

‘Feth it!’ Baskevyl replied. He groped around, swirling the water, trying to keep his light and his weapon raised out of the way.

He located the object he’d tripped on. He shone his light down.

A face stared up at him out of the filthy water. Overseer Taskane. Baskevyl jerked back.

‘Throne,’ he gasped.

‘Bask?’

‘I’ve found Taskane. He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

Baskevyl swung the light around. There were other shapes in the water. Other bodies. Munitorum overalls.

‘Bask?’ Blenner called. ‘How can he be dead?’

‘They’re all dead. I can see all of them. The whole crew.’

‘How can they be dead? Did they drown?’

‘No,’ said Baskevyl. He rose slowly, weapon braced in his dripping hands. ‘They were killed.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because not a single one of them is intact,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘They’ve been torn apart.’

TEN: WOE

‘Down here?’ asked Curth, dubiously.

‘That’s right,’ said Hark. He led her off the well-lit palace hallway and down a broad flight of steps, Trooper Perday at their heels.

‘They gave us the palace cellars,’ said Hark, walking briskly. ‘The undercroft.’

‘It’s quite cosy, really,’ remarked Perday. ‘Except, you know, in the dark. It really is black when the lights go.’

‘Only the best for the Tanith First,’ said Curth.

‘As usual,’ Hark replied with a nod.

They reached a large and heavy set of doors. The area was bare and whitewashed, with simple rush matting on the floor. Overhead, old lumen globes burned in iron holders.

‘You close the doors when you came up, Perday?’ asked Hark.

‘No, sir.’

‘I thought they were bringing the retinue out?’ said Curth. ‘Where are they?’

‘Maybe they have the problem sorted,’ said Hark.

‘Well, the lights are on,’ said Curth.

‘Up here,’ said Perday quietly.

Hark gripped the door handle and turned it. Then he rattled it hard.

‘Come on, Viktor,’ said Curth wearily.

‘It won’t open,’ said Hark.

‘Stop messing around.’

‘I’m not,’ said Hark, and rattled the door again.

Curth looked at him. She could see the bewilderment on his face.

‘Is it locked?’

‘No. There’s no lock. Bolts on the inside.’

‘Who would draw those and lock us out?’ Curth asked.

Hark shook the doors again. They wouldn’t budge. He hammered his fist against the heavy wooden panels.

‘Hello? Hello in there!’ he yelled.

There was no reply. Hark hammered again.

‘Open the damn door!’ he yelled. ‘This is Hark! Open it up!’

He waited.

‘Can you hear that?’ asked Curth.

‘Hear what?’

‘Viktor, I can hear someone crying. A child…’

Curth stepped to the door and pressed her ear against the wood.

‘It’s really faint. Far away. There’s a child crying down there.’

She tried the handle herself, then yelled. ‘Hello? Hello? Who’s in there? Can you hear me?’

She looked at Hark.

‘We need to break this down,’ she said.

Gaunt and Van Voytz stood watching the Beati. She was standing at the railing, looking down at the seething activity of the palace war room. Then she tilted her head back and gazed up at the high ceiling of the huge chamber.

‘What’s she doing, Ibram?’ Van Voytz asked.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Gaunt. ‘Waiting. Listening…’

‘Listening?’

‘I trust her instincts,’ Gaunt replied. ‘If she thinks there’s something wrong… senses it… then…’

‘Should we go to an alert?’ Van Voytz asked. ‘Inform the warmaster and the others? If an attack is imminent–’

‘She said it was here. Right here.’

‘Then all the more reason,’ Van Voytz began.

They heard voices behind them, and turned. Sancto’s team was letting Beltayn and Gaunt’s tactical cabinet into the gallery room. It was getting crowded in there. Kazader was still present, along with the Beati’s deputies. Inquisitor Laksheema and Colonel Grae had also arrived a few minutes earlier.

‘I’ll go and talk to them,’ said Gaunt. ‘Barthol, I don’t want to cause an uproar. The Beati is mercurial to say the least, and her insight isn’t always true. But let’s play it safe. Alert the Palace Watch. Then round up any high command in the building. Tzara’s here, I think, also Lugo and Urienz.’‘I think everyone else is already in the field,’ said Van Voytz. ‘Grizmund, Blackwood, Cybon, Kelso–’

‘I think you’re right. Just get the seniors assembled and aware. Tell them to get all the strengths they have in the Great Hill zone brought to secondary order. Tell Urienz to take charge of the war room… no. No, scratch that. You take charge of the war room. Lock us down, bring us to order and watch for anything. Anything, Barthol.’

‘Right.’

‘Send Urienz to inform the warmaster we may have a situation on site. He’ll receive Urienz more readily than you.’

Van Voytz nodded.

‘Tell Urienz that comes direct from me,’ said Gaunt.

‘I will.’

‘Good. This could be a chance to demonstrate your mettle again,’ Gaunt said.

‘That had occurred to me, Ibram,’ Van Voytz replied, ‘but I rather hope that it won’t be, for all our sakes.’

He made the sign of the aquila, and strode away.

Gaunt stepped off the gallery walk into the screened glass box of the briefing room.

‘What’s happening?’ Laksheema asked immediately.

‘The Saint has a presentiment of danger,’ Gaunt began.

‘Are our assets compromised?’ the inquisitor asked.

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘I have strengths moving in to secure them both as we agreed. The Saint’s feeling is that the danger is here.’

‘What sort of danger?’ asked Kazader.

‘She can’t be specific yet,’ said Gaunt.

‘Can’t be specific?’ Kazader asked scornfully.

‘I’ve raised the ready status of the palace, and the garrison is coming to secondary–’ Gaunt began.

‘But she can’t be specific?’ Kazader cut in.

‘Her visions are not always particular,’ said Sariadzi. ‘We must give her time to focus–’

Kazader looked at her, his eyes narrowed.

‘I think this is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘If there’s a threat, we deal with it. If not, this is dangerous foment. Scaremongering. Are we really just going to wait for some peasant girl to–’

Auerben had to hold Sariadzi back.

‘That’s enough!’ Gaunt snapped. ‘Not in here. Not anywhere. Kazader, step out. Go get your men ready. There will be a reprimand on your record for that.’

Kazader glared at Gaunt, then saluted and walked out.

Gaunt looked at the rest. ‘I’ve brought you here to consult and assist. Colonel Grae and the inquisitor are party to the most delicate confidences attached to the Urdesh situation. Biota, you and your staff need to be aware so you can support me.’

Biota nodded. The two tacticians with him were solemn and silent.

‘Where’s Merity?’ Gaunt asked, an afterthought. ‘I thought she was with you?’

‘Mr Biota excused her, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘She’s gone down to the undercroft. Commissar Fazekiel wanted to ask her a few more questions about the Low Keen incident.’

‘She’s down there now?’

‘Went down a little while ago, sir.’

‘Alone?’

‘She has an appointed Scion with her, my lord,’ said Biota.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Right. Let’s run over what we know. Starting with the Beati’s sense that there’s a–’

Gaunt broke off. Through the room’s glass door he saw Ban Daur arrive, and exchange words with Sancto. Sancto gestured to the room. Daur said something else. Sancto turned and looked through the glass at Gaunt.

Gaunt was about to shake his head. Regimental business could wait, and Daur knew it. But there was something in Daur’s body language.

He nodded.

Sancto hesitated for a moment, as if surprised, and then opened the door for Daur.

‘My apologies, Lord Executor,’ Daur said as he stepped in.

‘What do you need, captain?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I…’ Daur hesitated. Everyone was looking at him. ‘I need to report that there seems to be a situation in the Tanith billet. In the undercroft, sir.’

‘An issue?’

‘A power-out, my lord. It–’

Gaunt sighed. His gut had been wrong. Daur was fussing, and he should have known better.

‘That’s a technical issue, Captain Daur. Take it to the palace custodians.’

Daur wavered. ‘I don’t fully understand the circumstances, my lord, but an amber status has been issued. By Commissar Fazekiel.’

‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I don’t know, my lord. I came straight to you. Commissar Hark has gone to investigate directly.’

He looked at the others in the room.

‘I apologise for interrupting this meeting,’ he said.

Gaunt had risen to his feet.

‘Amber status?’ he asked. His voice was oddly fierce.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Daur replied.

‘Is it in darkness?’

Everyone looked around. Daur blinked in surprise. The Beati had entered through the walkway door and was staring at him.

‘Captain Ban Daur,’ she said. ‘I asked you, is the undercroft in darkness?’

‘It is, my lady. Entirely. So I understand.’

‘Are there children there? Children who might be afraid? Who might be sobbing?’

‘Yes, my lady. There are children. The entire retinue.’

The Beati turned to look directly at Gaunt.

‘Anarch,’ she said.

‘Sound the alarms!’ Gaunt snarled.

Hark took another run at the doors, and bounced off again.

‘You’ll break your fething shoulder,’ said Curth.

He didn’t reply. He pulled out his plasma pistol and adjusted the setting.

‘Stand the feth back, both of you,’ he said. Curth and Perday stepped away. Perday’s eyes were wide.

Hark aimed the weapon at the doors, and fired.

The whoop of discharged plasma echoed in the empty hallway, and Curth winced. Smoke drifted up and clouded the air around the hissing lumen globes overhead.

The doors were unmarked.

‘How the hell–’ Hark stammered.

‘Is there something wrong with your gun, Hark?’ Curth asked.

‘What? No. That was a full discharge.’

He examined the door, running his fingers over the wood. Not so much as a blemish.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘I hear alarms,’ Perday said, looking up. ‘That’s the threat alert.’

Klaxons were sounding in the corridors and hallways above them. The bells in the palace campaniles were being rung too.

‘Try it again,’ Curth urged Hark.

Footsteps clattered down the stairs from the hall above. They turned, and saw Gaunt striding towards them, with Daur at his side. Behind them came Gaunt’s Scion guard, Beltayn, some tacticae officers, a woman with an augmetic golden mask, and several individuals who looked like scratch company partisans. Curth didn’t know them at first. Then she saw the face of one of them.

‘Oh feth, Viktor,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the Beati.’

‘Hark?’ Gaunt said as he arrived.

‘The door won’t budge, my lord,’ said Hark. ‘I even took a shot at it.’

Laksheema pushed forward and stared at the door. ‘A las-round will hardly tear down–’

‘Plasma gun, inquisitor,’ Hark said. ‘Full load, point blank.’

‘My lord?’ said Sancto. ‘Shall we?’

‘No disrespect, Sancto, but I don’t think you and your men are going to make a better dent than Hark,’ replied Gaunt.

‘It’s bound shut,’ said Laksheema. She had been stooping to examine the door. ‘The warp is holding it.’

‘You sense that?’ asked the Beati.

‘Don’t you?’ asked Laksheema. ‘My lord, even if we could force it, we have no idea what’s on the other side.’

‘My regiment–’ Gaunt replied.

‘And what else besides?’ asked Laksheema. She adjusted her micro-bead link. ‘I will summon my staff. We need specialist assistance.’

She frowned.

‘My link is dead,’ she said.

‘No response from any vox source below,’ Beltayn called out. He’d set his vox-unit against the wall and was adjusting the settings. ‘Dead air. No microlink. No vox-unit. Just–’

Beltayn jumped in surprise, and pulled the headset away from his ears.

‘What the feth–?’ he gasped.

‘Bel?’ asked Curth, crossing to him.

‘I heard a voice,’ Beltayn said. ‘A child, weeping.’

‘Speaker!’ Gaunt ordered.

Beltayn switched the set to speaker output. There was a hiss of static, then they could all hear the tinny yet distinct sound of sobbing. A young voice, far away, in anguish.

‘Grae?’ said Laksheema over the eerie sound. ‘Go get my team, please.’

Grae nodded.

‘And tell Van Voytz we have a red status location,’ Gaunt added. ‘Biota, you and your team go too. Start briefing on everything we know.’

‘Which is precious little,’ replied Biota.

‘Do it anyway.’

Grae was already running back along the hall. Biota and his aides turned to follow him.

‘Biota?’ Gaunt called.

‘My lord?’ Biota responded, pausing to look back.

‘You said my daughter went down there?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Gaunt cleared his throat. ‘Carry on,’ he said. Biota and his aides hurried after Grae.

Curth looked at Gaunt. She gripped his arm.

‘We’ll get in,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Gaunt replied.

‘The offspring of the Great Master,’ Laksheema muttered.

‘What?’ said Hark.

‘Do you not recall, commissar?’ Laksheema said, glancing at him. ‘The signal from the Archenemy warship that spared the Armaduke so mysteriously. The translation provided by the pheguth spoke of “the offspring of the Great Master”. A child, a daughter. The noun was female.’

‘You remember all that?’ Hark asked.

‘I have reviewed the reports many times,’ Laksheema said. ‘Merity Chass was aboard the Armaduke. She is here now. She is the offspring of a Great Master… a Lord Executor perhaps? Major Kolea’s misfortunes may have been a wilful distraction. A creation of significance. That’s how it translated. All this shall be the will of he whose voice drowns out all others.’

‘The feth are you suggesting?’ Hark asked, stepping forward. Gaunt held up a hand to him in warning.

‘We have been confounded by the Archenemy’s actions,’ said Laksheema. ‘We have many elements that do not fit together. All we agree on is that Sek achieved something after the Eltath raid, and now enters a new phase of attack. It would seem that is here, now, beneath us. Elements begin to connect.’

‘The hell they do,’ said Hark.

The sobbing continued to crackle from Beltayn’s vox-unit.

‘Turn it off,’ said Curth.

‘Should I, my lord?’ asked Beltayn.

Gaunt nodded. Beltayn reached for the speaker switch. Just before he could throw it, the noise of weeping shut off and was replaced by a hellish shrieking roar. The volume was so great, it blew out the vox-caster’s speakers. Smoke wafted from the ruined set.

‘What the Throne was that?’ asked Auerben.

‘It sounded like… a surgical saw,’ Curth said.

‘A bone saw,’ said Daur. ‘That’s what Elodie said. Whatever attacked at Low Keen, it sounded like a bone saw.’

Gaunt took a step towards the undercroft doors and drew his power sword. The blade powered up with a fierce hum.

‘No, my lord!’ Laksheema cried.

‘My daughter’s down there,’ Gaunt said. ‘My daughter and my regiment.’

‘And my fething wife!’ Daur snarled at the inquisitor. ‘Step the hell back!’

‘Please, my lord,’ Laksheema protested.

‘Do it,’ said the Beati quietly. ‘There is death down there. The child is weeping. All the children. Every soul.’

‘Positions!’ Sancto growled. The Scions raised their hellguns and fanned out to flank Gaunt. Auerben and Sariadzi hoisted their assault weapons. Daur had drawn his sidearm.

Gaunt swung the power sword of Heironymo Sondar at the doors with both hands. Wood splintered and billowed out, burning. A bloom of flickering, sickly energy surrounded the blade as it slashed across the panels, as if the blade was biting not just through ancient wood, but through the skin of some subspace membrane. There was a flash, and Gaunt staggered back a few steps.

This time, damage had been done. The centre panels of the ancient, heavy doors were blackened and crumbling. Arcane energy fizzled and spat frothing residue from the collapsing wood.

Sancto and Daur moved in, tearing at the ruined wood, dragging sections of the damaged doors away.

‘Be careful!’ Laksheema warned.

‘Are you all right?’ Curth asked Gaunt. He flexed his grip on the power sword.

‘It nearly overloaded,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never known it fight and buck in my hands like that.’

Stendhal, one of the other Scions, moved in to assist Sancto and Daur. The other two raised their weapons to their cheeks, and sighted the centre section of the door.

Daur, Stendhal and Sancto hauled the doors apart. Both doors fell away in their hands, disintegrating into hot dust and embers that the men threw aside.

‘Something’s awry–’ Beltayn began to say.

‘Oh, Emperor protect us!’ Curth exclaimed, clasping her hands to her mouth.

Behind the burned and shattered doors, there was no doorway. Just the solid, white-washed stone of the wall, perfectly intact, as though no door had ever existed.

By the time the trucks rolled onto the rockcrete apron of Eltath Mechanicore 14, visibility had dropped to thirty metres.

Major Pasha peered out of the cab, then looked down to check the rumpled chart in its plastek sleeve.

‘Grim place,’ murmured Konjic at the wheel.

Pasha nodded and held out her hand. The adjutant passed her the vox handset without hesitation. Pasha held it to her mouth and thumbed it on.

‘R Company lead,’ she said, ‘let’s see who’s home, and make our purpose clear. Elam? Please to do honours.’

She took her thumb off the button.

‘Loud and clear, lead,’ said Elam over the link.

She held the button down again.

‘Convey my respect,’ she said. ‘Everybody else, stand by. This runs according to pattern agreed. Kolosim? Hold the rearguard on the approach road. No one get twitchy until I say they get twitchy.’

Konjic’s vox set, on the seat between them, pipped out a little flutter of vox signal-bursts as each company leader in the convoy behind her acknowledged.

Pasha had the full muscle of the Tanith First with her, packed up in canvas-backed cargo-10s behind her. Only the first three trucks had pulled onto the apron: hers, Elam’s, and a second strength from R Company. They’d come to a halt side by side, their headlamps on. Rain danced like digital static in the beams.

The rest of the convoy was on the long slope of the approach road, lamps hooded and set to dark-running. They were arranged in a double column, filling both lanes of the road. At the back of the formation, Kolosim deployed four sections to hold the road and form a rear guard. They set up crew-served weapons in the gutters. Bannard, Kolosim’s adjutant, walked down the road a little way and scattered pencil-flares that fizzled in the rain. The flickering green glow of the flares illuminated little except the empty road behind them, and the dead ruins on either side.

The approach road was flanked by sheet-wire fencing. Mkflass eyed the fencing dubiously. Beyond it was just scrub wasteland. It was impenetrably dark. He could smell wet vegetation and rain-swilled earth.

He glanced at Kolosim.

‘Get some cutters,’ Kolosim told him. ‘Get two sections through, one each side.’

Mkflass nodded. The men in his section started to cut the fence and drag it wide enough to let men pass.

Bannard returned.

‘Ugly spot, sir,’ he said. ‘Feels wide open.’

Kolosim knew what he meant. They were boxed in on the road by the fence, the rain and the darkness. It was hard to see anything. But it felt unpleasantly exposed.

‘With luck, we won’t be sitting here long,’ Kolosim replied. He keyed his micro-bead.

‘Rearguard,’ he said. ‘Sit tight but get combat-light. Stow your packs. Exit on my word, not before. And let’s kill the engines, please. If we can’t see, let’s hear at least.’

One by one, the idling engines of the big transports shut down. The low grumble was replaced by the sound of rain, hissing off the strip of road and pattering on the canvas truck-tops. It wasn’t a great improvement. The sound of the rain seemed to magnify the emptiness to an unnatural level that suggested it wasn’t empty at all.

Up on the apron, Pasha saw three figures dismount from Elam’s transport: Captain Elam, Captain Criid and Commissar Ludd. Elam walked through the cold puddles of headlamp light and came up to her side door.

She pulled the window down and handed him the waiver certificate that Daur had sent through. It was a heat-printed flimsy produced by Konjic’s vox-caster. Pasha had slipped it in a clear-plastek chart cover to keep the rain from turning it to mush.

‘Don’t take any shit, Asa,’ she told him.

‘I never do,’ he replied with a smile.

Elam turned and walked across the apron, his rifle strapped across his chest. Criid and Ludd fell in step with him. The row of headlamps bleached the backs of them bone-white and stretched their shadows, long and thin ahead of them.

‘Let’s be confident about this,’ Elam said to his companions. No one liked dealing with the Mechanicus, even when they had the authority of the Lord Executor to back them.

Criid glanced ahead at the ominous bulk of Eltath Mechanicore 14. Air raid regulations had placed it in blackout, like the rest of the city. The only lights came from the fortified gatehouse, a rockcrete bunker at the top of the apron that was protected by huge hornwork demi-bastions. The night was so black and the rain so sheer, she couldn’t make out the main site beyond, but she had the impression of something invisible and vast. It had to be a big place. The scale of the demi-bastions told her that much. She’d seen smaller outworks on Militarum fortresses. Eltath Mechanicore 14 – EM 14 – was one of the many Mechanicus strongholds in the city, occupying a stretch of lowland hillside in Klaythen Quarter on the eastern flank of the Great Hill, surrounded by extensive worker habitats and just below the vast spread of the shipyards. It wasn’t one of the principal forges, the huge structures dominating entire districts she’d seen on her first day on Urdesh. Indeed, even they were minor forge sites, she’d been told. Eltath was the subcontinental capital, an administrative centre. The giant forge complexes within its territory were nothing compared to the mass forge installations elsewhere on the planet. Pasha’s briefing had described EM 14 as a research facility, one of the old tech-dynast manufactories that had been absorbed by the Mechanicus occupation and repurposed with a specific role.

Guard mindset regarded Urdesh as simply a contested world, a battleground to be cleared and secured. Criid reminded herself that it was contested because of what it was: a forge world. A place of industry and manufacture, the largest and most important of its kind in forty systems. To her, it was a place to be fought for. To the Priests of Mars, it was holy ground, a precious outpost of their far-flung technomechanical empire.

That’s why it had survived. Other worlds so bitterly disputed would have been obliterated long before by the ultimate sanction of fleet action. Whoever held Urdesh held the most vital munition source in the rimward Sabbat Worlds. She knew that it had been held, lost and retaken by both sides many times in its past. She wondered if any world anywhere had suffered under so many temporary masters. Reign after reign, Archenemy and Imperial, changing hands with each occupation, claimed and reclaimed. No wonder it bred such ferocious warriors. She had often felt that the Urdeshi troops she’d met had been fighting for Urdesh above and before any other cause.

There was a furnace smell in the wet air that reminded her of Verghast, but she knew that Verghast, for all its mighty hives, was a minor industrial world compared to this.

They heard a sudden, throaty rush of air that sounded like the mother of all flamer units. The three of them halted in their tracks, bathed in an infernal glow. Above them, the sky burned for a few seconds, a massive, boiling rush of churning flame-clouds.

Not an attack. EM 14 had just vented a gas plume burn-off from its vapour mill. The burning clouds died back into blackness, but before they did, they briefly revealed EM 14 in red half-light. Criid glimpsed the outlines of vast rockcrete ramparts and cyclopean galvanic halls, heavy casemate defences, and outer thickets of razor-wire. Criid sucked in her breath. She wondered what the hell Gaunt thought was coming that a place like this would not be a sufficient defence.

The massive gatehouse straddled two defensive ditches lined with wire. Inside that was another ring of dead earth sandwiched between a heavy chain fence and the outer wall.

‘What’s that?’ Ludd asked.

‘What?’

‘It sounds like an animal,’ Ludd said.

Criid and Elam listened. They could hear the constant sizzle of the rain, which was dancing silver splashes on the rockcrete around their feet. Beyond that, they heard a bark, a growl somewhere in the night. It was a deep, ugly sound, full of pain and rage.

‘Feth knows,’ said Elam, lowering his hand to the grip of his strung weapon.

The growl died away, then others answered it, yaps and snarls that faded into scraps of noise. They were weird sounds, a blend of deep-throated reverberation and higher pitched whining.

Lights snapped on, blinding the three of them. They had tripped the gatehouse auto-sensors. Automated weapon mounts in the gatehouse’s deep-set embrasures rotated to target them, whirring softly. Criid could see the targeting lasers moving across their soaked battledress like fireflies.

‘Astra Militarum! Tanith First!’ Elam called out. He held up the waiver in its plastek wrap. ‘We require access!’

The laser dots continued to drift. The guns stared, occasionally micro-shifting with the pulsed hums of platform gears. There was a thump, and the gatehouse projected a fierce blue scanning beam. The horizontal blue bar tracked up and down them from head to foot and back. It shut off.

An outer hatch clanked open in the side of the bunker. Two men appeared, large, armed and armoured. They stepped out into the rain and approached. They were Urdeshi Heavy Troops from the infamous Third Brigade, the Steelside Division. They wore full ballistic plate and grilled helmets, all finished in puzzle camo. Each one wielded a .30 ‘short-snout’ hip-mounted on a gyro-stable bodyframe. Fat, armoured feed belts ran from their weapons to auto-delivery hoppers inside the gatehouse. Both of them had stylised Mechanicus emblems fused to their breastplates, denoting their proud secondment to the protective service of the forge.

‘Explain your business,’ said one, his voice amplified by his vox-mask.

Elam held up the waiver again.

‘My business is the business of the Lord Executor,’ he said. ‘Here’s my waiver authority. I have an infantry regiment under transport on the road behind me. My commander seeks access and immediate conference with the facility senior.’

‘Not tonight,’ the Urdeshi said.

‘Oh yes, tonight,’ said Ludd.

‘The seniors of the forge will take no audience with the city on lock-down.’

‘Then I’ll take names,’ said Ludd. He stepped right up to them, eye-to-eye with the massive troopers, and fished out his black pocket book. ‘You wear the sigil of Mars and you do loyal work,’ he said, ‘but you’re Astra Militarum, and I will have your names.’

With a gloved fingertip, Ludd casually wiped raindrops off the name tag bolted to the chest-plate of the man he was facing. He did it with such matter-of-fact calm it made Criid smile.

‘Erreton. Captain,’ Ludd said, and wrote the name down. ‘And you?’

The other Steelsider didn’t reply, so Ludd studied his name tag too.

‘Gorsondar,’ he said. ‘I suppose you boys know who the Lord Executor is?’

‘We do,’ replied Erreton. ‘We–’

‘Find yourselves hurtling at near light speed towards a pile of shit for this, captain,’ said Ludd. ‘I’ll give you a moment to reconsider and verify the waiver. Out of courtesy. The Mechanicus is a mighty institution, but it won’t protect either of you from the Prefectus.’

‘In,’ said Erreton, jerking his head at the bunker.

They followed the men inside. The gatehouse command was lit with amber panel lights. A third Urdeshi Heavy manned a control station of multi-level display screens. Each screen showed a different low-light image of the apron outside. The slack of the sentries’ ammo-feed belts retracted into the big autohoppers as the men entered.

Criid stood with Ludd, water dripping off them onto the deck grille. She saw the inside of the automated gun-points, the subhuman forms packed foetally inside tiny turret cages, wired by spine, hand and eye-socket into the weapon systems. Each of the embrasure weapons that had tracked them outside had been guided by a vestigial flicker of human consciousness. Mechanicus gun-slaves, the lowest and most pitiful order of the infamous skitarii.

Erreton took the waiver from Elam and passed it to the Steelsider at the station desk.

‘Check it,’ he said.

The desk officer took the waiver flimsy out of its wrapping, and slid it under the optical scanner. A digital version, instantly verified by the Urdeshic Palace war room, appeared on one of the monitors surrounded by a vermilion frame.

‘My apologies,’ Erreton said to Elam.

‘None taken,’ smiled Elam as though he was responding politely. ‘Get your transport gates open so we can bring the regiment inside. And have a senior of this facility summoned to meet with my commanding officer.’

‘Do that at once,’ Erreton said to the desk officer, who began speaking rapidly into his vox-mic.

‘Follow me,’ Erreton told them.

He walked to the rear hatch of the gatehouse and opened it. The ammo-feed of his rig-weapon buzzed as it played out behind him. When it reached the limit of its tension, the whole hopper, an armaplas container the size of a fuel drum, detached itself from the wall and scuttled after him on short, thick insectiform legs.

They followed Erreton and his obedient, mobile ammo hopper out of the rear door and onto a caged walkway that ran across the ditches to a blast hatch in the main wall. Flood lights had come on, catching the spark of rain falling through the wire. Beyond the second ditch, the walkway bisected the ring of caged, dead earth outside the wall.

Criid peered through the chain link at it as they walked by, presuming it was a firefield, a boundary margin left deliberately open so that nothing could cross it without becoming a target for the main wall guns. Were the high chain fences and wire roofing just there to slow down an invader’s progress?

A shape slammed into the chain link, making it shiver. Criid recoiled. Something feral was glaring at her, clawing at the chain link separating them.

‘Keep back from the wire,’ Erreton said. ‘We keep shock-dogs in the inner run.’

It wasn’t a dog. It wasn’t even an animal, though it was making the animal growl the three of them had heard outside. It was a form of attack servitor, a grim fusion of cybernetic quadruped and human flesh. It barked and snarled at them, dragging its steel foreclaws across the mesh. Its steel jaws looked like they could bite a man’s arm off. Criid couldn’t see its face. Its scalp and nape were covered with a thick mane of cyber cables that draped across its deep-set eyes like dreadlocks.

Other shock-dogs appeared out of the darkness behind it, drawn by the lights and the smell of unmodified humans. They padded forwards, growling, hackles raised. Some sported spikes, or body-blade vanes, or saw-edge jaw augmetics. They were feral kill-servitors, permanently goaded to madness and hyperaggression by neuro-psychotic implants, most of their humanity long since surgically excised and replaced with biomimetic augmentation. Criid had heard of such inhuman monsters, but she had hoped never to see one.

Erreton waited while the inner blast door opened, then led them through the portal into the inner gatehouse. His hopper scuttled after him diligently. A full squad of Urdeshi Heavies and two towering adept wardens of the Cult Mechanicus Urdeshi were waiting for them. The wardens were robed in embroidered rust-red silk and stood almost two and a half metres tall. They carried ornate stave weapons, and their cowled faces seemed like nightmarish cartoons of Guard-issue gas-hoods: big, round ocular units staring out above pipework rebreather masks. Their duty was the protection and security of the forge facility. They turned to look at the visitors in perfect neurosync unison.

‘This is unorthodox,’ said one. His voice was a modulated arrangement of digital sounds emulating human words.

‘You’ve seen the authority,’ said Erreton.

‘It has been relayed by the manifold,’ said the other warden. ‘Noospheric verification is complete. However–’

‘–this is unorthodox,’ the first finished. One voice, speaking through two bodies. ‘We serve the Omnissiah.’

‘Right now, you serve the Lord Executor,’ said Ludd, ‘who is protecting your interests on this world. My regiment is a Special Task Deployment sent by the Lord Executor himself. You will cooperate fully.’

The adept wardens looked at each other, a perfect mirror of movement, and exchanged a burst of machine code.

‘Signal your commanding human officer–’ said one.

‘–the gates will open now,’ the other finished.

There was a deep rumble of heavy machinery.

‘Move in,’ Elam’s voice crackled over the vox.

‘Understood,’ replied Pasha. A bloom of light appeared through the rain, as the main gate hatches unlocked and yawned open, dragged by immense hydraulics. Outer defence barriers beside the gatehouse retracted into the ground, and a long metal ramp extended across the ditches like a tongue.

‘Pasha to Kolosim,’ she said. ‘Please to hold back one quarter strength and take up a broad defensive position around the access road and surrounding waste-ground, as per pattern. Please also to cut damn fence down and get all transports off the road. I want a clear, unimpeded run when we come out. I’ll want to be moving fast. Do it by book, Ferdy, and keep me advised of anything.’

‘Understood.’

‘I mean anything.’ Pasha looked at Konjic. ‘Start her up,’ she said.

Konjic nodded and woke the big engine of the cargo-10.

‘Engines live,’ Pasha said into the vox handset. ‘Recovery detail, orderly fashion, single file, follow me in, please.’

A voice in the darkness, a whisper barely loud enough to hear, told him, ‘Stay still and don’t make a sound.’

Domor obeyed, dumb. The firm hands that had grabbed him pulled him back against the cellar wall. He could feel the rough brick of it.

‘Who is that?’ he managed to hiss.

‘Shhhhh!’ the whisper replied.

The bone saw sound died away. Near silence settled like a stifling weight in the impenetrable blackness. All Domor could hear was the blood pounding in his ears and the water lapping around his knees. The quiet pressed in on him, robbing him of the ability to fill his lungs.

It wasn’t the quiet doing it, it was fear. He tried to focus. He knew his cortisol levels had ramped right up. He wondered what his heart rate was. Higher than 140, and his motor skills would be eroded. Higher than 160 or thereabouts, he’d have tunnel vision and begin to slide into the decayed, non-rational world of fear.

He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t see to tell if his vision was tunnelling down. But he knew for a fact he’d never been so scared. Ever. And that was saying something, because he’d been through some wicked feth in his time. Domor knew fear. They all did. The story of their lives was punctuated by regular spikes of terror: the threat of death, the insanity of combat, the gnawing in-between times of waiting that whittled away the soul.

Domor had known men, strong men, freeze or panic, or lose the ability to speak, or perform simple motor skills. There was no hierarchy to fear. It bit everyone who came near it. The best of the Ghosts had learned, with only brutal experience as a tutor, to tame it. They had honed intuitive mechanisms to channel the adrenaline and the hindbrain threat responses, to overcome the drastic shifts in blood pressure and biological process, and remain operational. Gaunt was a master at it. Some, like Mkoll and – Domor fancied – Rawne – had been born with the knack. Others, like Baskevyl and Varl, had acquired the skills over time and hard use.

Domor had evolved that way. Most of the veteran Ghosts were only veterans because they could look fear in the eye and remain functional. The crucible of battle did that to a man or woman quickly, and they coped or they died. The initial startle response was still there, but you barged through it and used your heightened state to push on rather than be crippled by it.

Some called it the rush. Hark called it fight time. A good Guardsman turned his own poleaxing biological responses into a weapon.

But this… this wasn’t a battlefield. There was no whip-crack of passing las to trigger the startle, no visible threat to engage the mind with. Domor had no idea why this was the most terrifying experience of his life.

That puzzled him, and it felt like a weight lifting. His bafflement acted like a sponge, blotting up the fear. His mind became occupied with the question of why he was so uniquely scared rather than the fact of being scared.

He wrested control of his breathing.

‘Are you still there?’ he whispered.

A hand squeezed his arm in affirmation.

Domor sheathed his blade, and fumbled with his optics. There was a fizzle of green light as the augmetics came back on. He glimpsed the chamber, awash with water; his own dripping hands, ghost-white and radiant. Then it went out again.

The reassuring hands gripped his shoulder and guided him backwards. His boots kicked blindly at step risers, and he felt his way up them. A dry floor. His right hand found the wall beside him.

His optics flashed back on.

He saw Zweil ahead of him. The old ayatani was trailing a hand behind him, trying to lead Domor as he groped blindly along the wall.

Domor reached out and tucked Zweil’s arm under his.

‘I can see, father,’ he whispered. ‘Move with me.’

‘There’s something down here,’ Zweil said very quietly, cocking his head and trying to sense Domor in the darkness.

‘It’s just the lights,’ whispered Domor. ‘The lights have failed.’ He knew he was lying. He knew the sound he’d heard.

‘No, son,’ said Zweil. ‘It’s just the darkness.’

The Scion Relf had a stablight slotted on the under-barrel rail of her weapon. When she turned it on, the light made Merity jump.

‘Nice and calm now,’ Relf said. There was a glass-squeak edge to her voice that undermined her reassurance. She brought her weapon up to her cheek, and aimed ahead. The weapon was a short-form lascarbine that had been strapped to her back from the moment Merity met her. It wasn’t a battlefield weapon, but its compact length made it ideal for close-quarter protection duties in interior spaces.

‘Feth nice and calm,’ Merity said. ‘It’s just a power-out.’

Now there was light, the hard stripe beaming from Relf’s weapon, Merity’s anxiety dropped. What had it been about the darkness? The suddenness of it? No. The thickness, the density of it. The lights hadn’t just cut. An airless darkness had swallowed them.

Relf’s beam picked up the waste water extending towards them. In the wobbling oval of light, it looked like blood. Merity could hear it gurgling. It was a sound she’d heard before in the infirmary, and in the aftermath of hot contacts on Salvation’s Reach. Blood leaking from wounds, the steady, hideous trickle of life leaking away. She looked at the black water slopping towards them and swallowed hard. It looked like blood. It looked as though the ancient bowels of the palace were bleeding out.

‘Come on,’ said Relf. She turned, tweaking the stablight in different directions.

Merity heard her curse. It seemed like an odd sign of weakness.

‘Scion?’

‘Where are the stairs?’ Relf asked.

‘What?’

‘The stairs, missy. We just came down the stairs…’

She panned the light right and left. The smooth, whitewashed walls looked like snow-covered ground.

‘And the billets…’ Relf said.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Merity.

Relf swung the light behind them and then forward again fast. Merity glimpsed the encroaching water.

‘We came down the stairs,’ Relf said, as if rationalising it to herself. ‘Came down, turned, walked along. The flood was ahead of us.’

She twitched the stablight back and forth again.

‘Flood there, stairs there. And archways… through to the billets, there.’

The disc of light hovered on glacial whitewash.

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ said Merity. ‘I just don’t understand what you mean.’

Relf snapped around, tilting the light so it underlit their faces. She looked hurt, as if she’d been slapped for no reason.

‘The stairs have gone. The access to the billets has gone. Where have they gone?’

‘You’re mistaken,’ said Merity. ‘We must be confused. The steps were behind us.’

She moved into the darkness, hands raised, expecting to catch her toe on the bottom step. Relf reached to stop her, but there was no need. Merity had come to a halt, her hands pressed flat against stone wall.

‘That’s just fething impossible,’ she said.

Relf grabbed her arm. ‘With me,’ she said, pulling Merity after her. She was heading for the water, the light-beam bobbing.

‘What? Where to? The water’s that way–’

‘I know, I know,’ said Relf. Merity could smell the woman’s sour fear-breath. ‘But somehow we’re in a… in a dead end. The water’s rising fast, so we can’t stay put.’

They were already sloshing into the spilling tide of water. It rose around their boots like a stream that had burst its banks after a rainstorm.

‘Relf? Scion?’

‘Just walk,’ Relf said, pulling her arm. ‘You’re right. We’re just confused. The dark confused us. There will be an exit. Just nearby.’

The water was shin-deep and flowing hard. Merity thought – no, she knew as an awful certainty – that Relf was wrong. Something had happened. Something had changed in the darkness. Things had shifted like the walls and faces in the stress nightmares that had haunted her as a child.

All of which was impossible. She wondered if it was still pitch dark and this was all some imagined nonsense. Maybe her concussion was worse than the medicaes had said. Maybe she was hallucinating. Her head ached. She had a rasping itch in her ears. But the water around her knees, her thighs, was not impossible. It was soberingly cold. In fact, everything had suddenly become much colder.

‘Scion, stop.’

Relf wouldn’t. She pulled at Merity, then she froze. They had both heard it.

A quick, purring buzz. A whine, as though someone nearby was squeeze-testing a drill or a powered saw. It came again, twice, like an insect droning past their ears.

‘What was that?’ Relf asked.

‘Hello?’ Merity called out. They’d heard voices from the billet spaces when they’d first come down. There had to be people close by. Why was it so quiet?

‘Shut up!’ Relf snapped. ‘Shut up, shut up.’

There was a tremor in the light beam. The Scion’s hands were shaking. Merity could hear Relf’s rapid, shallow breathing.

The lights came back on, stark and over-bright. It made them wince. Then they died back down to a filament glow and went out again. While the light lasted, Merity saw the cellar hallway, thigh deep in gleaming black water, and an archway ahead to the left.

‘That way!’ she hissed. ‘That way!’

The lights came back on, along with a brief chirrup of faulty alarms. They lasted two seconds, long enough for Merity to see that there was no archway ahead to the left.

Not any more.

Merity didn’t have time to mentally process that. The cellar lights began to flash on and off like an intermittent strobe. The lights came on for half a second then off for two or three seconds, then back on. The rapid, erratic blinking made Merity feel nauseous. She reached out to hold onto Relf.

But Relf wasn’t there.

In darkness, she gasped the Scion’s name.

The light fluttered on and off again. In the third flash, she saw Relf on the far side of the tunnel, clawing at the wall. In the fourth flash, Relf had vanished.

In the fifth flash, Merity saw a figure standing directly ahead of her, its back to her. A figure standing nearly waist deep in the blood-black water. A figure waiting, still and upright, her hands at her sides. A simple smock dress. Head shaved.

Blackness.

‘Yoncy?’ Merity called out.

A saw buzzed somewhere in the darkness.

In the sixth flash, nothing.

Blackness.

In the seventh, a heartbeat later, the figure was there again, its back to her still. But it was closer. Three metres closer.

Blackness.

In the eighth flash, Yoncy was still there, and she was starting to turn. Starting to turn slowly to face Merity.

Blackness.

An angry warble of damaged alarms.

Abrupt las-fire ripped across the hallway in the dark. Merity flinched. She saw the searing bolts of energy, heard the close-by shriek of the carbine. One shot passed her head so close it crisped the downy hairs on her neck. She could smell the hot ozone as it went by, cooking the chill air. Scalding steam erupted where the las bolts hit the water.

Merity staggered backwards, eyes wide and hungry for light. She saw Relf’s stab-beam moving wildly, reflecting in the water, tracking across the walls. More howling las-shots overlapped it.

‘Go back!’ she heard Relf yelling. ‘Go back!’

Something that sounded like a surgical saw screamed in the tight confines. Merity covered her ears. Water splashed across her chest and face.

Silence. Blackness. The reek of superheated air and brick-dust. The lap and gurgle of the water. Merity moved, blind, hands out, splashing through the flood.

She saw a point of light ahead, a pale blue glow. It bobbed, then drifted down and away from her, foggy and distorted.

It was Relf’s stablight, still attached to the weapon, sinking slowly in the black flood, the beam spearing up through the rippling water.

Merity plunged and grabbed at it before it sank out of sight. She pulled the short-form carbine out of the water, and turned it, holding the thing like a massively oversized flashlight rather than a gun.

‘Relf? Relf?’

Debris floated on the choppy, dark water. Scraps of fabric, flecks of foam insulate from a body jacket liner, a few broken rings of armour scale. Small slicks of jelly.

Two human teeth. Some shreds of hair.

Merity gathered the dripping carbine up, and gripped it properly. It felt heavy as feth. Steam smoked from the muzzle as the heat of its recent discharge evaporated the water. She panned around, gripping it tightly with trembling hands.

The lights came back on, first a flutter, then straining half power. In the amber haze, she saw someone up ahead, someone wading through the flood towards her.

‘Relf?’

Luna Fazekiel aimed her sidearm at Merity, then slowly lowered it.

‘Merity?’ she mumbled.

‘Commissar?’

Fazekiel blinked. She looked unsteady and distressed. Her eyes were red and sore, and the expression in them was dull. Merity was shocked. Fazekiel was ordinarily the most immaculate figure in the regiment. Even the tiniest blemish on her uniform would famously irritate her deeply. Now, her clothes were torn and stained, and buttons were missing. Merity saw blood dribbling from Fazekiel’s ears and one nostril.

‘You’re hurt,’ Merity said, wading forward.

Fazekiel shook her head. ‘Heard shots,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘No, Relf. The Scion with me.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know. She–’

‘Did you see anything else?’ Fazekiel asked.

‘I saw Yoncy. I think.’

Fazekiel nodded. ‘We’re in hell,’ she said.

‘What?’

Fazekiel shook her head, gulping for breath. She had the zoned-out look of a soldier who’d been in contact for too long. She was soaked through, and pawed at the blood seeping from her left ear.

‘We’re in…’ she began, then shook her head as if what she wanted to say was too hard to articulate.

‘You’re bleeding,’ said Merity.

‘Where?’ asked Fazekiel, as though it didn’t matter. ‘So are you. Are you hit?’

‘I’m not–’ Merity said.

‘There’s blood on you. Your face and neck.’

Merity looked down and realised that the front of her tunic was soaked, and it wasn’t just water.

‘It’s not my blood,’ she said.

Luna Fazekiel wiped her hand across her mouth.

‘When?’ she asked. ‘When did you come down here?’

‘Just minutes ago,’ replied Merity. ‘Just before the lights went out.’

Fazekiel looked at her sharply. The dead exhaustion in her eyes scared Merity.

‘That’s not right,’ said Fazekiel. ‘The lights have been off for days.’

The undercroft lights had come back on at low power. It was a sickly, wavering light, an ochre glow no brighter than the trickling fizz of a slow fuse.

Gol Kolea sloshed through the shin-deep water of a flooded connecting passage. The cast of the wall lamps caught the moving surface of the water, and lapping reflections trembled along the whitewashed ceiling, creating an illusion that the ceiling was awash too.

The sobbing had stopped. Kolea hadn’t heard anything in a while. At one point, he thought he’d heard Erish somewhere, and just after that, he was sure he’d heard Bask shouting, much further away.

He turned off his stablight to conserve power, but kept his rifle ready. The world was closing down, as though the malice of the under-universe had seized control. This was no longer a matter of technical problems.

It was here. He knew it was. It had followed him all the way from Aigor 991, across a decade and billions of kilometres. Gaunt’s stoical reassurances seemed so flimsy now, Kolea was shocked at how readily he’d believed them. The Ruinous Powers had marked him, and they had come for him.

And they had lied. Everything the voice had said to him in that gloomy supply dump had been a lie. Even the promise that if they delivered the eagle stones it would cease to threaten him and his children.

Kolea hadn’t done its bidding, but he hadn’t denied it either. The Ghosts had brought the eagle stones to Urdesh. But that hadn’t been enough. It had come for them anyway.

‘What did you want?’ he asked the shadows around him. The damp silence made no reply. ‘What did you want us to do? Did we fail? The stones are here. Is here not where you wanted them?’

Nothing answered. That was a relief, in a way, but part of him wanted the voice to speak, so he could challenge it and deny it.

It had broken its promise. That’s what the warp did, so it came as little surprise. The things that dwelt in the shadows that life cast were made of untruths and demented logic. They were lies incarnate and could never be trusted. Their promises meant nothing.

But his did. He didn’t break them. Not his allegiance to the Astra Militarum, not his trench pledges to the brothers in his scratch company at Vervunhive, nor his fealty to Number Seventeen Deep Working that had been his living before that, and certainly not his vows to Livy Kolea. Livy Tarin, as was, bright in his mind as the day he’d met her.

He’d made an oath to protect his children, and all of his comrades, from the bad shadow stalking them. He’d face it down, and he’d kill it. And his promises couldn’t be stronger if they’d been wrought from the metal ore he’d once dug out of the Verghast pits.

‘When are you going to show yourself?’ he asked. ‘When are we going to have this out, you and me? Or are shadows your only trick?’

He knew they weren’t, but he was angry, and taunting the darkness felt good. Maybe he could annoy it, and provoke it into revealing itself.

Give himself a target.

It had played with him all along. It had toyed with him, and its lies had even made him doubt his own kids.

Gol hesitated. His priority was to find Dalin and Yoncy, and anyone else stuck in this hellhole. He had to find them before the shadow did, and stand in its way. It had made an enemy of Gol Kolea, and any bastard could tell you that was a bad idea.

He moved forwards, swilling the flood around his knees.

‘How dare you,’ he murmured. ‘How dare you make me think my kids were part of this. That was just torment, wasn’t it? A way to plague me and make me weak.’

His mind went to the cruel fantasies that had been rattling around his head for months. Stupid, stupid thoughts. What had Gaunt said to him?

A brother would know his sister.

Fething right. It was so ridiculously easy to demolish the warp’s falsehoods. If only he’d had the clarity to do that months ago. Some things just don’t get thought when a man’s head is all of a jumble. Some things just don’t get said. They get left unspoken. Simple things that lasted and held more power than anything the warp had ever conjured. I love you. I care. I’ll walk into hell for you.

Well, this was hell, and he was walking into it. But his mind was clear now, sharp as straight silver. The Ruinous Powers had threatened the wrong man.

At the end of the flooded hall was a flight of brick steps that led to the door of a billet hall. The lights in the stairwell were fluttering out. He thought he could hear voices.

He edged up the steps, shoulder to the wall, lasrifle aimed from the jawline. He peered out.

The billet hall was dry. Forty cots stood in two rows under a low arched roof of whitewashed stone, lit by low-power lamps. There were signs of disarray, of possessions disturbed, of people leaving in a hurry.

He hoped they’d all got out.

From the cover of the archway, he saw two figures sitting side by side on a cot at the far right end of the chamber.

It was Dalin and Yoncy.

Dalin was just staring at the next cot along, his arms in his lap, his rifle on the sheet beside him. Yoncy was snuggled up against his side, whispering quietly in his ear.

He heard Dalin murmur, ‘No, Yoncy.’ Like a denial. A weary refusal to accept.

Kolea took another step.

Yoncy looked up sharply, frowned at him, and then darted away.

‘Yoncy! Come back, girl!’ Kolea yelled, and ran down the chamber between the cot rows. She’d already vanished through an archway at the back.

‘Where’s she going?’ Kolea asked.

Dalin didn’t look up.

‘Dal! What’s she playing at? This isn’t a game.’ He turned back to look at Dalin. ‘Get up, Dal,’ he said. ‘Right now. Help me fetch your sister.’

Dalin looked up at him, his face deadpan.

‘She doesn’t make any sense,’ he said quietly.

Kolea frowned, and sat down beside him. ‘You all right? Dal?’

‘Yeah, yeah. This is all just a bit strange.’

‘You got that right,’ said Kolea. ‘There’s some ugly feth going on down here, Dal. So let’s jump to it. Find your fething sister, and drag her out of here by the skirts.’

‘She’s only playing,’ said Dalin.

‘Well, this isn’t time for games.’

‘She said she was hungry.’

‘Well, we’ll cart her upstairs and get her a meal.’

Dalin nodded.

‘Dal, have you seen anyone else? Bask or–’

‘No.’

‘Not anyone? They got everyone else up out of here? The whole retinue?’

‘I think so. I was just looking for Yonce. She was playing hide-and-seek when the lights went out. Got scared, I think.’

‘No doubt. Come on, move your arse before she gets too far ahead of us. Dalin?’

Dalin looked at him. It looked like he was trying to process something. Kolea didn’t like the way Dalin seemed so lethargic.

‘She said things,’ said Dalin.

‘What things?’

‘She said… she said word had come. That it was time. She said there was a woe machine here.’

‘A woe machine? What, like–’

‘Yeah,’ said Dalin. ‘It’s one of her games. “There’s a woe machine coming” she’d say, and then she’d hide and you’d have to find her. She’s been doing it for years. But when she said it just now, I thought…’

‘What?’

Dalin shrugged. ‘How does she know about woe machines? I’ve never thought about it before. I mean, I barely remember Vervunhive. I was just a child, and she’s younger than me. How does she remember that?’

Gol scratched his cheek. He remembered woe machines all too well. It was the term Vervunhivers had used to describe the ingeniously grotesque death engines that Heritor Asphodel had launched against the hive. They had come in an inventively murderous range of designs. None of the Verghastites in the regiment, Guard and retinue alike, had ever forgotten their malevolence.

‘She’s just heard talk over the years,’ said Kolea. ‘Gossip in the camp, bad memories.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And made a bogeyman out of it. You know how she is with games.’

‘What, like her bad shadow?’ Dalin asked.

Kolea said nothing.

‘She said I should talk to you about it,’ said Dalin.

‘Me?’

‘She said papa would explain it to me.’

‘She calls everyone papa,’ Kolea replied sadly.

He put his hand to Dalin’s shoulder.

‘What’s the matter with you, Dal?’ he asked. ‘I don’t like this. Are you sick?’

‘I just…’ Dalin stopped and sighed. ‘She said such weird things. She’s always been strange, but–’

‘She’s always been your sister,’ said Kolea.

Dalin looked at him sharply. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Dal, get your fething head in gear. We have to find her, wherever she’s hiding, and get her out of here. There’s bad shit going on and she shouldn’t be down here. We shouldn’t be down here.’

Dalin nodded and got to his feet. He picked up his lasgun.

‘Yeah, of course,’ he said. He seemed a little more together. ‘I’d just spent so long looking for her in the dark, and then I found her, and I tried to calm her down, but she just wanted to play. And then the things she said just got to me.’

He looked at Kolea.

‘You know about that thing that attacked her and Mam Daur down at Low Keen?’

‘I heard,’ said Kolea.

‘What if that was a woe machine? I mean, it took apart a whole pack of enemy troops.’

‘But spared the pair of them? Where’s the logic in that?’

‘Did woe machines ever have any logic?’ Dalin asked. ‘You’d know.’

‘Not much,’ Kolea admitted.

‘And they were made by the Heritor.’

‘Asphodel.’

‘Right.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘I know,’ said Dalin. ‘But there are other heritors. We know that. I mean, Salvation’s Reach was a workshop for their breed. What if this is something made by one of the others? What if it followed us here from the Reach? What if… what if it’s here? In the city. What if it was out there at the old billet, and now it’s got in here?’

Kolea shook his head. ‘A death engine like a woe machine couldn’t get in here. The palace? Dal, it couldn’t get past the guards. The walls. The–’

‘Something has,’ said Dalin quietly.

‘Yes. Something has.’

They looked at each other for a moment.

‘Let’s find her, Dalin,’ said Kolea.

‘Oh, for feth’s sake!’ Baskevyl snapped and lowered his rifle.

Up ahead, in the low light of the bunk hall, Meryn and Banda lowered their weapons too.

‘I nearly fething shot you, you fething idiots,’ Baskevyl said.

‘Likewise,’ snorted Banda. ‘How are you lot fething in front of us?’

‘I’m telling you,’ said Blenner, coming up behind Bask, his voice agitated. ‘I’m telling you, there’s something not right going on down here. How are Meryn’s mob up there when they should be behind us? And where’s everybody else? Hmm? Where is everybody?’

‘There’s definitely something shitty-weird going on,’ growled Meryn. ‘We can’t find anyone and we can’t find the way out.’

‘What?’ snapped Baskevyl. He looked past Meryn at Leyr, one of the regiment’s finest scouts. Leyr looked deeply uncomfortable.

‘I can’t find the main stairs, sir,’ Leyr said.

‘Is everyone a fething idiot today?’ asked Baskevyl. ‘What do you mean you can’t find the stairs?’

‘I just can’t,’ said Leyr. ‘They’re not where they were. It should be back two rooms, and then to the right. But it’s not. It’s freaking me out.’

‘You’re freaking me out,’ said Baskevyl.

‘I’m not joking,’ said Leyr angrily. ‘It’s like everything is shifting around. Doors, walls–’

‘This palace,’ said Baskevyl very calmly, ‘has been standing for centuries. It’s about as solid as anything gets. It’s not fething-well shifting around in the dark. Have you been at the sacra, Leyr?’

‘Feth you. I’m telling you what I know. The plan of the whole undercroft is not stable. Every time it goes dark, things move.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Find me Bonin. Find me a scout who knows what he’s fething doing.’

‘Mach was leading the retinue out,’ said Neskon. He was standing just behind Leyr. His eyes were hard. ‘There’s no sign of him, or the sergeant major. Or the retinue. It was a lot of people, sir. A lot. Women, kids. With the dark and all, and just the one staircase, they should still be filing out. An evac would take half an hour at least. We should still be able to hear them.’

‘And we can’t even find the stairs,’ said Banda.

‘Are you going to tell them what we found?’ Blenner asked.

Baskevyl glared at him.

‘We found the Munitorum work crew,’ said Blenner, looking at Meryn’s squad. ‘What was left of them.’

‘What?’ said Meryn.

‘They were very dead,’ said Blenner. He palmed something from his coat pocket and swallowed it dry.

‘So this is an attack?’ Banda asked.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Baskevyl quietly. ‘We can’t find Shoggy, or Luna, or Dalin, or the girl. We can’t find anybody.’

‘Not just me, then,’ muttered Leyr.

Baskevyl glanced at him. ‘Well, as long as your professional reputation is intact, we’re all good,’ he growled.

‘Have you seen anybody at all?’ Osket asked Meryn.

‘Not a soul until you came along,’ said Meryn.

‘From the wrong direction…’ Blenner whispered.

‘Gol?’ asked Baskevyl.

Meryn shook his head.

‘All right,’ said Baskevyl. ‘We’ll try to finish the section search. At the very least, Gol’s team is down here somewhere. Then we’ll pull back. Meryn, take your squad, circle back and find the fething stairs. Got any pencil flares? Any chalk?’

‘I’ll find a way to mark the route,’ said Leyr.

‘Good. Do it.’

Baskevyl turned and led his team back the way they had come. Meryn glanced at Banda, Leyr, Neskon and Leclan.

‘You heard him,’ he said.

They turned around and moved back down the hallway. The lights were flickering again. Every three metres or so, Neskon paused and scorched a burn-mark on the wall with a quick burst of his flamer.

‘That’ll do the trick,’ said Leyr.

The air began to fill with the stink of burned paint and scorched brick dust. It mixed with the damp reek of burst drains, and caught in their throats. They reached a T-junction that none of them could remember being there before.

‘Right or left?’ asked Neskon.

Leyr paused.

‘Left,’ Meryn decided.

Banda held up her hand.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘It sounded like sobbing,’ she said.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Leyr.

Meryn gestured at Neskon, who damped the ignition flame of his unit. The constant, chugging rasp of the flamer died away.

They listened.

‘That’s sobbing,’ said Banda. ‘Or giggling.’

‘A kid…’ said Leclan.

‘Gol’s brat,’ said Meryn. ‘Gotta be.’

‘Well, we should find her,’ said Neskon. ‘Everyone was looking for her.’

‘That way,’ said Leyr, indicating the left-hand tunnel.

They advanced. Neskon and Leyr took the lead, but Neskon kept his burner dead so they could hear. He roped the nozzle-gun over his shoulder, and drew his sidearm. Banda and Leclan followed them, and Meryn lurked in the rear. He kept glancing behind him.

‘Oh feth,’ Leyr murmured.

Up ahead, every few metres, there were burn patches on the whitewashed wall.

‘Somebody else had the same idea,’ said Neskon.

Leyr shook his head. He touched one of the marks. ‘Still warm,’ he said. ‘You did this.’

‘Feth I did,’ Neskon objected.

‘We’re following our own footsteps,’ said Leyr.

‘Shut the feth up,’ Meryn told him.

The lights dimmed suddenly and went off. The darkness lasted about three seconds, then the lamps began to glow again. They barely rose from nothing. There was no more light than an overcast dusk, sallow and yellow.

The Ghosts flipped on their stablights.

‘Door,’ said Leclan, and nodded ahead. There was an archway to their left. A small storage room.

Leclan and Leyr advanced, and came in either side of the door. Leclan had his sidearm out, Leyr had the butt of his lasrifle tight in his shoulder.

They swung in.

The room was a small stone vault. On one side, the wall was lined with old wooden racks that had once held wine casks. Several broken packing crates stood nearby. The stone floor was wet, with a couple of centimetres of rank standing water. Several steady drips were spilling from the bowed ceiling.

Yoncy sat on a crate in the far corner with her back to them. Her head was bowed and her shoulders were shaking.

‘Hey, Yoncy,’ said Leclan. He holstered his sidearm and hurried in, pulling his medicae satchel in front of him. Leyr followed.

Leclan knelt down by the young girl.

‘You all right? Yoncy? It’s me, Leclan. Are you hurt?’

Yoncy glanced at him, her head still down. She had been crying.

‘Papa Leclan,’ she whispered, and sniffed.

‘That’s right. Are you hurt? I’m just going to check you over, and then we’ll get you out of here.’

‘I was hiding,’ she said softly. ‘Because the woe machine is here.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Leyr, moving closer.

‘Something about a woe machine,’ replied Leclan. He was trying to turn Yoncy’s head towards him so he could check her pupil response with his penlight. ‘I think she’s in shock.’

‘Woe machine?’ said Neskon. He and Banda had followed the scout and the corpsman into the room. ‘Tell her there’s no fething woe machine here.’

Meryn stood in the doorway behind them.

‘It’s just a game she plays,’ he said. ‘Hide-and-seek. Stupid little freak.’

Banda glared at him. ‘Feth you, Flyn,’ she warned in a hard whisper. ‘She’s scared.’

Meryn shrugged. ‘We’re all fething scared, sweetie,’ he replied.

‘There’s no woe machine,’ Leclan told the girl gently. He opened her mouth and shone the penlight inside. ‘Have you seen anybody? Yonce? Did you see anybody when you were playing your game? When it went dark?’

Yoncy closed her mouth.

‘I saw Dal. And Papa Gol,’ she said.

‘Where were they?’ Meryn called across from the door.

‘They took a wrong turn,’ Yoncy whispered to Leclan conspiratorially. ‘I’m really hungry.’

‘What’s that mark on your neck here?’ Leclan asked, tilting her head gently to look.

Banda looked back at Meryn.

‘If Gol’s close,’ she said, ‘or Dalin… maybe try your link again?’

Meryn sighed, and adjusted his earpiece. The deep itching in his eardrums was back. It suddenly seemed to have got very cold.

‘Kolea? Dalin?’ he called. ‘Anyone read? Kolea?’

There was a sharp screech, a howl like grinding metal. Meryn started, and yanked the earpiece out, thinking it was the wail of feedback. But the noise continued even with the earpiece gone.

He looked back into the room. Something was happening to Leclan. He was standing with his back to them. His body and out-flung arms were vibrating violently. Meryn stared in utter incomprehension. What the feth was Leclan doing? He couldn’t see Yoncy. Just Leclan, shaking and juddering like some fething ecstatic worshipper.

Leclan began to rise into the air, his arms still wide. Water dripped off his suspended boots. Meryn screwed up his face in disbelief. The screech turned into the excruciating, full-on howl of a bone saw.

Leclan disintegrated. Tissue, shredded clothing and shattered bone fragments blasted out in all directions, splattering the room. A small bone shard caught Meryn under the right eye with the force of a slingshot, even though he was metres away.

There was blood everywhere. A drenching mist of it.

Leyr stumbled backwards. A piece of Leclan’s left clavicle had embedded in his throat. He tried to raise his weapon, arterial blood squirting from his neck.

Darkness, wailing like a cycling saw blade, boiled out of the back of the room. It came on like a wall of shadow, a flash-flood of darkness. Leyr loosed two wild shots. Neskon screamed and reignited his flamer. It took two or three frantic pumps to gun it into life.

By then, the rushing tide of shadow had reached him. The saw howled. Neskon shredded. He came apart where he was standing. It looked as though he had been sliced vertically by four or five separate blades. As the pieces of him toppled in a blizzard of blood, the trigger spoon still clutched in his right hand gouted, engulfing Leyr in a sheet of roaring flame.

Leyr, burning from head to foot, dropped to his knees and toppled forwards.

The entire horror had taken just a second or two. Meryn shrieked, and scrambled backwards out of the doorway. The darkness swept towards him, like black water filling the vault.

He ducked aside, about to run, but something clawed at him, holding his arm and shoulder tightly.

He snarled and fought back.

Banda was clinging to him with both hands. He could only see her head, shoulders and arms. She was folded around the door jamb by the armpits, the rest of her inside the room.

Her eyes were so big.

‘Flyn! Flyn!’ she screamed.

He fought to break her grip. It was like a vice on his arm.

‘Flyn!’ Banda shrieked. ‘It’s got me! It’s fething got me! Pull me out!’

‘Let go!’

‘Pull me out, you fething bastard! Pull me out!’

Meryn thrashed wildly. He refused to look into her staring eyes. His churning elbow mashed her left wrist and her grip broke.

Meryn tumbled backwards into the hallway.

‘You fething bastard!’ she screamed as the room pulled her back in. ‘You toxic fething–’ Her fingers raked along the whitewash, leaving bloody scratches. Then she was gone, snapped back like a whip around the edge of the door.

He heard her final scream, mangled by the screech of the bone saw.

Blood squirted out of the doorway and spattered three slashing lines across the floor and up the opposite wall.

Meryn got up, almost crippled by terror. He was tangled in the sling of his rifle. Shadows began to ooze out of the vault like black silk swirling in a breeze. He could smell blood, promethium and burned flesh.

He opened up, firing from the hip at full auto as he backed away. Brick and whitewashed plaster exploded from the walls and ceiling around the doorway. The air clouded with white dust, and the shadow poured through it like a stain.

Meryn hurled the gun away and started to run. He screamed, sprinting for his life.

The hallway was suddenly very long and very straight. There was no end to it. Every three metres there was a burner scorch on the whitewash.

He kept running. Behind him, one by one, the low-burning lamps went out. He heard the pop and fizzle of each globe chasing him like gunshots.

He tried to run faster. He tried to stay ahead of the darkness. His bladder had gone, and he realised the piercing squeals he could hear were his own.

He fell, skinning his palms. He couldn’t breathe. Terror had closed his windpipe.

He looked up. His vision had tunnelled down to a grey haze.

There were two people standing over him. Merity Chass was looking down at him in utter bewilderment. Luna Fazekiel was staring past him, her eyes narrowed.

‘Stay the feth down, captain,’ Fazakiel said.

Fazekiel and Merity opened fire. Meryn screwed into a foetal position, arms clasped around his ears, as Fazekiel’s autopistol and Merity’s carbine blazed over his head. Hot brass bounced off his cheek and neck.

And then it stopped.

‘Check him,’ he heard Fazekiel say. He felt Merity’s hand on him, trying to turn him, trying to uncoil him. He wrenched away from her with a whimper.

He raised his head. Merity was staring at him.

‘What the Throne happened to you?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer. He looked back at the hallway. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to.

Fazekiel had stepped past him and was staring down the hall, checking the clip of her weapon. The long hallway was empty. The three ceiling lamps closest to them were still lit, fizzling weakly. Beyond them, it was just shadow.

‘I don’t know what we saw,’ said Fazekiel, ‘but it’s gone.’ She turned and looked down at him.

‘What was it, captain?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand what we glimpsed. We drove it off, but I don’t know if we could do it again. I don’t think I can protect you again. I can’t fight what I don’t understand. Captain? Do you hear me? What was it?’

Meryn shook his head. His mouth wouldn’t work.

Fazekiel crouched down.

‘What did you see, Meryn?’ she asked without a scrap of compassion.

‘I saw everybody die,’ he said.

ELEVEN: CONTACT

Handbells were still ringing along the shore line. Squads of packsons hurried through the steep streets of the stacked little cliff-town, going building to building and stopping to question everyone they passed.

Mkoll watched from the top of a bale stack in one of the quayside barns. The roof of the open-fronted barn extended over him, preventing anyone spotting him from above, and he had taken a sheet of tarp from the loading dock and pulled it over him.

Every inch of him ached. His scalp wound had finally stopped bleeding, but the whole area behind his ear was too painful to touch. Dried blood crusted his scalp, the side of his neck and his shoulder. He didn’t have a mirror, but he knew the side of his face was probably purple with trauma.

He was drawn tight with fatigue. He’d rested under the tarp for an hour, but hadn’t dared sleep. Fatigue was just something he’d push through. He’d done it before. It was a matter of will. Body-tired didn’t matter. Mind-tired was the killer. His mind was sharp. The pain had done that.

He watched the scene below him, wishing he still had Olort’s field glasses. The whole of the Fastness was on security vigil – the equivalent, he fancied, of an amber alert in an Imperial garrison. The search teams didn’t interest him much. They were sticking to the higher levels of the city, around the records building. They would have little idea who they were looking for. Their quarry had made a reckless escape across the rooftops of the high town. He was either hiding up there, or had fallen to his death in one of the ditch gullies between the stacked dwellings. They were probably dragging for a body already.

What interested him was the area directly below, a stretch of wharf around the base of one of the loading gantries. Internal freight hoists steadily ferried loads up to the level of the bridge spans where teams of servitors rolled them across to the cruiser’s hold gates. Sixty or more men were working on the rockcrete pan below him, mainly servitors and stevedores, plus a few gangs of Imperial slaves. They were being supervised by several Sekkite officers. They rolled metal carts out from the barns beneath him, carts laden with bales and crates, and shunted them into the hoist cages. A few men rode up with them. The rest waited as empty carts came back down, then clattered them back to the barns to be restocked.

A lighter bumbled past at low level, heading for the ship. Mkoll kept his head covered under the lip of the tarp. The small craft was chased by a shadow that flickered across the working dock and then out across the shivering water. Daylight had gone. Above the mouth of the cone, the sky was a starless grey. The shadow had been cast by the banks of floodlights framed on the edge of the wharf. Mkoll had thought about a lighter or a small lifter, but he wasn’t sure where they were working from. A landing area would be guarded, and it was hard to be anonymous among a small crew.

He watched the lighter turn and settle, lights winking, into a hold cavity further down the flank of the immense ship.

More agriboats were coming in, chugging sideways into the next dock bay along with smoke spilling at water level from their straining motors. They were loaded with more mainland personnel, a few shivering prisoners, and some small artillery pieces with sacks on their muzzles and their split trail carriages closed.

The thousand whispers in his head welled up again like the dead channel of a vox. The voice was speaking, a droning hiss he could feel in his sinuses and jawbone.

I have some words for you too, he thought. I’ll say them in person.

Down below, another train of carts rattled across the rockcrete, the gangs steering them shouting and exchanging comments. Servitors dragged empty ones back to the barn from the hoist. One of the officers, a sirdar, spoke to a group of stevedores, then wandered towards the barn, marking items on a slate.

The sirdar entered the lamplit barn and instructed the servitors which load to move from the freight stacks next.

One of his men called to him. He finished what he was saying, and walked around the bale stack to find out what the man wanted.

There was no one there.

Mkoll dropped down behind him, and snapped his neck with a practised twist. The sirdar’s feet jittered, and then he went limp. Mkoll dragged him behind a heap of trench-wire spools, and stripped off his jacket, watching all the while to make sure no one was coming. A decent jacket, and better boots than the ones Mkoll was wearing, but the boots were a size too small. He took the jacket, the Sekkite helmet and the weapons belt, which had a single shoulder strap. The belt’s pouches were full of hard-round clips because the sirdar carried a long-nosed autogun. There were no las cells to fit the sidearm he already had. But there was a small vox handset, a short-range unit, and three small grenades. They were little silver cylinders. Two were marked with red dots, which he guessed meant smoke. The other, its casing slightly ridged, was marked with a black dot. Fragmentation. Anti-personnel.

Mkoll tucked the laspistol into the back of his waistband, then put on the sirdar’s undershirt and jacket, and buckled the weapons belt over the top.

He stepped back behind the wire spools. Two packsons from the labour crews walked past the freight aisle. Once they had gone, he put on the sirdar’s gloves and full-face helmet, gagging slightly at the touch of the tanned leather and the acid smell of the sirdar’s spittle. Then he picked up the slate and stylus.

The sirdar walked back out onto the dock. A work gang was waiting beside a laden row of carts. A hoist car was returning to dock level, jangling with empty carts.

‘Ktah heth dvore voi?’ a stevedore asked him as he walked past.

‘Nen, nen,’ the sirdar replied, busy looking at his slate. ‘Khen vah.’

A bare-chested packson lifted the hoist’s cage door, and the servitors clattered the empty carts out.

‘Kyeth! Da tsa herz! Kyeth! Kyeth!’ the sirdar said, sweeping with his hand to urge the gang to load.

The men started to wrangle the heavy carts into the hoist. One of the packsons looked at the sirdar.

‘Khin bachat Sird Eloth?’ he asked. Where is Sirdar Eloth?

‘Tsa vorhun ter gan,’ the sirdar replied. Gone to his rest.

‘Tyah k’her het!’ the packson scoffed. This early?

‘Khen tor Sird Eloth fagrah,’ the sirdar replied. Sirdar Eloth is a lazy bastard.

The workers laughed. They pushed the cumbersome carts up the fold-down ramp, cursing each other as they handled them into the cage. Another lighter warbled overhead, heading towards the cruiser. Its shadow chased across the dock.

Three servitors and two packsons got into the cage with the new load. One went to pull down the cage door.

‘Nen, coraht!’ the sirdar barked, raising his hand.

He stepped forward and jerked his thumb, ordering one of the packsons out.

‘Shet, magir?’ the man asked.

‘Hsa gor tre shet,’ the sirdar replied, stepping into the hoist in his place. ‘Voi shet tsa khen verkahn.’ I’ve got to go up. Go ready the next load.

The sirdar pulled the cage shut. The hoist began to rise, slow and ponderous, the steel hawsers squealing through poorly greased drums.

The packson with him in the cage said nothing. The three servitors cycled their systems in neutral, and flexed their manipulator arms ready to resume effort.

The hoist reached the loading bridge level, and stopped with a jolt and a thump of block-brakes. The packson slunked open the cage door at the far end.

The sirdar waited while the servitors rolled out the first of the carts. More servitor crews and a few sweating labourers took hold of them, steered them clear, and began to roll them across the bridge.

The sirdar stepped out of the cage. He checked off items on his slate. Two Sekkite officers stood nearby with an excubitor, discussing loading options. None of them acknowledged him.

The sirdar fell in step behind the rumbling train of carts and followed them across the bridge span.

No one challenged him.

The hold gates of the Archenemy cruiser stood wide open to receive him.

‘How do we open a door that isn’t there?’ Curth asked.

‘Maybe we don’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘Say that again,’ said Curth.

Laksheema raised her voice to compete with the steady whoop of the red condition klaxons.

‘I said maybe we shouldn’t, doctor,’ she said.

Curth shot her a foul expression.

Gaunt ran his hand along the old stonework.

‘Maybe we need a drill,’ someone suggested.

Gaunt looked around. Trooper Perday flushed.

‘I mean, like in the Reach, sir,’ she added, nervously. ‘You know, a proper breaching drill. Just thinking out loud…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Is there a breaching unit in the palace compound?’ asked Gaunt. ‘A Hades?’

‘Must be,’ said Beltayn.

‘Think, think,’ Hark interrupted. ‘How do we get a fething Hades down here? Some of the halls between here and the transit grounds are too narrow, and there’s stairs–’

‘Go in from outside?’ Curth suggested.

‘Not viable,’ said Auerben. ‘Even if we could round one up.’

‘Agreed,’ said Sancto. ‘The thickness of the root wall. It would take days.’

‘And where do we drill?’ Auerben asked.

‘Someone find a fething plan of the undercroft level,’ Gaunt said to no one in particular.

‘Det charges,’ said Sariadzi bluntly.

‘Now, that’s better thinking,’ said Hark, nodding.

‘Stop,’ said Laksheema.

Everyone looked at her.

‘With respect, your debate assumes we want to open the undercroft,’ she said.

‘Feth you,’ said Curth.

‘Feth me all you like,’ Laksheema replied. ‘This is a security matter. A warp incursion. There’s something in there. I believe we would be derelict in our duty to the Throne to open that wall and let it into a palace containing the bulk of crusade high command and the person of the warmaster.’

Daur looked away. Hark squeezed his shoulder.

The Scions snapped around, weapons raised. Grae was returning, bringing the inquisitor’s savant Onabel and two robed interrogators.

‘Let them through,’ said Laksheema. She put her hand on the plump little woman’s elbow and cradled it. ‘Did Grae brief you?’ Laksheema asked.

‘He did, mam,’ Onabel replied. She combed her fingers through her curly silver hair. ‘All our meters are spiking. This is an incursion of serious grade.’

‘Serious enough to evacuate the palace?’ asked Gaunt.

Onabel hunched her shoulders. ‘Not my place to say, high lord,’ she replied. ‘But I wouldn’t stay here. I’m only here because I’m called to work. I’d venture that, at least, the removal to safe distance of senior echelon might be wise. That would include yourself, sir.’

‘I’m staying,’ said Gaunt. ‘Beltayn, go to the war room and…’ he hesitated. ‘No, it’s got to come from someone with authority. Van Voytz won’t act on the word of a vox-man. Inquisitor?’

Laksheema beckoned the two interrogators. She handed them her ordo rosette. ‘Convey to Lord General Van Voyz whatever the Lord Executor instructs you.’

They nodded.

‘Tell him immediate evacuation, including senior level,’ Gaunt said. ‘Tell him to carry Macaroth out of the palace on his shoulders if he has to. Tell him… Ibram told you this. It’s an unconditional order from the Lord Executor.’

‘Yes, lord,’ they replied, and hurried back the way they’d come, the tails of their robes lifting behind them.

Onabel had set her hands on the wall.

‘Here?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Laksheema.

The little savant closed her eyes. She took one hand off the wall and pressed it against her bosom. The other she left in place, her index finger tapping on the stone.

They could smell the ugly aura of psionics immediately. Perday covered her mouth. The Scions took a step back, uneasy.

Clear liquid began to seep out of the stonework, welling up and running down the wall around her hand like heavy beads of condensation. It felt as though someone had opened the door of a walk-in freezer.

‘Water?’ said Daur. ‘Is the flood up this high?’ He reached towards the droplets.

‘Don’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘It’s tears,’ said Onabel. She kept tapping her finger, her eyes squeezed shut.

‘Tears?’ asked Curth.

‘There is a great deal of pain on the other side of this wall,’ said Onabel. ‘Woe.’ Her voice was soft, but a tiny break betrayed her increasing discomfort. ‘I have voices,’ she said. ‘People are… there are dead people. Others crying out.’

‘May we hear?’ asked Laksheema. ‘If you can bear it?’

Onabel nodded. When her mouth opened next, it wasn’t her voice that came out of it.

‘–can’t find the door! There’s no door!’

There was no mistaking the voice. It was Mach Bonin. They’d never heard him so agitated, but it was undeniably him. The savant wasn’t impersonating. Bonin’s voice, the product of an entirely different set of vocal chords, was issuing from her mouth.

‘Mach?’ Gaunt said, stepping forward. ‘It’s Gaunt. Tell him it’s Gaunt.’

‘Is he the other side of the wall?’ asked Sancto.

Laksheema shook her head.

‘There’s no fething door, Yerolemew!’ Bonin said through Onabel’s mouth. ‘How’s that fething possible?’

‘I don’t know, Mach. Mach? Mach? There’s something on the stairs.’ Onabel’s speech had switched seamlessly to the gruff, rich cadences of the Belladon bandmaster. They’d never heard him panicking either. ‘Mach, it’s on the stairs. It’s all shadows. The women are screaming.’

‘Sergeant major!’ Gaunt shouted at the wall and the savant. ‘Sergeant Major Yerolemew! This is Gaunt! Can you hear me?’

‘Sir? Sir?’ Onabel’s lips kept moving, but Yerolemew’s voice had faded, as though he had moved away. The volume rose and fell like a ’caster looped on and off a signal. ‘Mach, did you hear that? Bonin! I heard someone. I heard Gaunt!’

The noises from the savant became inaudible. Muffled sounds. Echoes of words.

‘Bonin!’ Daur called out, moving in beside Gaunt. ‘Bonin? It’s Ban! Let me know you can hear us.’

The voice coming out of Onabel suddenly giggled. A different voice in another register. A child.

‘Feth,’ murmured Hark.

Curth nodded. ‘Yoncy.’

The giggle stopped. Onabel’s mouth continued to move silently. Then suddenly, sharply–

‘Ban?’

Daur shuddered. He fought to control the contortions of his face. His eyes filled with tears.

‘Ban?’ The voice was loud and very clear.

‘Elodie?’ Daur answered.

‘Ban, get us out. Ban? The shadow’s in here. We can’t find the door. Everything… everything’s moving around.’

‘Elodie… we’re trying to–’

‘Everyone’s scattering. Women and children. There was no door. The door just wasn’t there. The shadow came up. The bad shadow. Filling up everything. People – Ban? Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘Ban, love,’ said Elodie’s voice, as though she was just on the other side of a curtain. ‘Ban, it’s killing people.’ She started to sob. Tears ran from Onabel’s eyes and more droplets scurried down the wall. ‘I’m so afraid. There’s blood everywhere. It’s cutting through the retinue and– Ban? I think it’s hungry. I think it’s eating to… to get stronger. To grow. It’s filling everything up. Blood levels are rising–’

‘She means flood levels,’ whispered Sancto.

‘No, she doesn’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘Elodie?’ Daur grimaced through his tears. His fists clenched. ‘Elodie, stay put. Hide. We’ll get in there.’

‘Blood levels are rising. The shadow’s in us. It makes the sound I heard. The sound at Low Keen. The butcher sound. Juniper says it smells like a woe machine. I’m so scared. Get me out. Get me fething out. Please. I’m so sorry, Ban. So sorry. I was right. I was right about her, and I should have said before. I should have said. I knew what she was. I should have made someone listen–’

Elodie’s voice dropped to a distant whisper.

‘Oh Throne,’ she breathed. ‘She’s right here.’

‘Elodie?’

‘Ban? I love you. I always will.’

‘I love you, Elodie. I–’

Onabel fell silent. Her lips stopped moving.

‘Elodie?’ Daur murmured, staring at the savant.

Onabel let her hand slip off the wall. It flopped down at her side. She turned very slowly and opened her eyes. She stared right at Daur.

And opened her mouth. And somehow produced a sound it should have been impossible for a human voice to copy.

The howling shriek of a bone saw.

The light globes overhead shattered like autogun rounds.

Onabel coughed, and bloody phlegm sprayed from her lips. She fell down, twitching.

Daur sank to his knees.

‘Holy fething throne,’ murmured Beltayn.

Laksheema knelt beside her stricken savant. Curth ran to Daur, and tried to get him up. He wouldn’t move, so she crouched beside him instead and wrapped her arm around him.

‘Get charges,’ said Gaunt. ‘Viktor? Get charges now. A demolition team. We’re taking this wall down.’

‘My lord, we cannot let it out,’ said Laksheema. ‘Under no circumstances. It’s your regiment, I know. I understand your despair. But we cannot permit this thing to exit the undercroft area.’

Gaunt looked down at her.

‘I think if it wants to come out, it will,’ he replied. ‘I think it can come through that wall, or any wall, as easily as it can seal a door. I think killing the feth out of it is our only option. So kindly, inquisitor, shut the feth up.’

‘I’ll get charges,’ said Hark.

Auerben put a hand on Gaunt’s arm. He looked at her. She nodded her head to the back of the group behind them.

The Beati had been sitting on the floor beside Beltayn’s ruined vox-set the whole time. She hadn’t spoken a word. She hadn’t uttered a sound. She had just sat as if chronic fatigue had finally overcome her entirely.

She rose to her feet.

‘If we leave it in there, it will keep feeding and get stronger,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘I’ve been trying to focus. Trying to… trying to know.’

‘Know?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Know what I should do.’

‘You should leave,’ said Grae. ‘You and the warmaster. All the vital personnel. It’s here to kill, to obliterate the command structure–’

‘It is,’ the Beati nodded. ‘It’s a Heritor weapon. An old one. A rare one. Asphodel made it. His finest and most nightmarish work. A woe machine like no other. It’s been growing this whole time, learning, maturing.’

‘How the feth do you know any of that?’ Curth snapped.

‘He told me,’ said the Beati. ‘Because I asked and I waited and he answered.’

‘Who?’ asked Curth.

The Beati looked at her with a sad smile as though the answer was unambiguous.

‘Move your poor savant,’ she said to Laksheema. ‘Captain Daur? I need you to move too. Stand back. Weapons up.’

Laksheema and Grae carried Onabel clear. Daur got up, and allowed Curth to walk him aside. The others raised their weapons in a clatter of charging bolts, released safeties and slotting clips.

The Beati approached the wall.

‘Wait,’ said Gaunt. ‘You’re too valuable.’

‘No one’s too valuable, Ibram,’ she replied, ‘and no life is disposable.’

She put out her hand and touched the spot where Onabel had been tapping. There was no ceremony, no fanfare, no warning. The stone work crumbled. It collapsed around her fingertips. Blocks fell out and bounced across the floor. Some disintegrated into dust. The rupture widened, radiating out from her touch. A section of whitewashed stone three metres wide flexed, folded and fell back into the darkness with a rumble like an avalanche.

Dust billowed around them, glittering the red target beams of the Scions’ aimed weapons.

There was a ragged hole, like the mouth of a cave. Beyond it, the air was a soft blackness tinged with red. They could smell smoke, the stench of waste water. Blood.

The Beati drew her sword. She looked weak and drained, as though collapsing the wall had sapped her fading strength even more, but her voice was strong.

‘We kill it,’ she said. ‘We kill it before it eats its fill and becomes strong enough to kill us.’

Ordinate Jan Jerik checked his timepiece again. Just over an hour until middle night. According to schedule, Corrod’s forces would be at the execution points by now. By sunrise, Urdesh could be a different world, a place of new prospects and possibilities. Indeed, the complexion of the Sabbat Worlds as a whole should have begun to change.

He snapped shut the engraved silver cover of the timepiece and slipped it back into his waistcoat pocket. An hour until middle night. It was quiet. The halls of House Ghentethi were almost silent, with only night staff at their stations. Outside, the rain had eased, and an easterly was spoiling in across the Great Bay, piling steep banks of dark cloud inland across the south-western limits of the city, black against the slate-black sky. Full dark. That, he gathered, is what soldiers called it.

It all seemed too still and silent for such a significant moment. The world, he thought, should be shaking apart as such fundamental changes were made.

There would be difficult and confusing times ahead, of course. He understood that. Existential transitions were painful. But Urdesh had weathered many such transitions in its history. It had grown resilient. His efforts would focus on keeping the house secure, and on ensuring that the Archon and his magisters appreciated and remembered the role of his clave appropriately. It would be an era of renewal, an end to the long conflict that had kept them cowering like starving dogs, an end to the decades of war that had convulsed the Sabbat Worlds. The chokehold of the Cult Mechanicus tyrants would be broken, and the claves would be free to prosper again in the ways they had done generations before. They would be the demiurge masters of the world-forge, and Urdesh would be the precious, beating heart of a new epoch. A new Archonate.

This had been explained and promised to him repeatedly by the intermediaries who had visited frequently over the last two months. Some had been insurgent chieftains, others rogue tech-shapers from the wasteland zones. Once or twice, Sekkite officers in hooded rain cloaks had appeared on the house loading docks in the dead of night. Some had conversed in Jan Jerik’s tongue, while others had brought servitors as translators. One had channelled a voice which had spoken out of him like the wheeze of ruptured bellows.

The promises had been consistent. In return for assistance and specialist intelligence, Ghentethi would be spared and favoured. In the aftermath, it would have priority access to food supplies and resources, and after that, a pact-bond granting it first pick of contract-projects and commissions of manufacture. Jan Jerik had already made a comprehensive list of the forge assets and industrial facilities he would demand as Ghentethi’s due recompense, as well as acquisition orders for the labour force he would require.

The war was about to end. It would not end all at once, and there would be lean years as the broken forces of the vanquished were prised out of the Sabbat Worlds and driven to flight. But it would be a victory, the victory long imagined, and it would begin in earnest tonight. Ruined and shamed, the crusaders would not attempt to return for generations to come. It would take lifetimes for them to recover from the loss, and gather strength enough to contemplate the prospect of a fresh campaign.

Lifetimes, if ever.

Jan Jerik took out his timepiece again, checked it, and put it away. Corrod would be in position. Hadrel would be in position. The future hinged on those uncanny creatures. There was no way to know how they had fared. One unscheduled venting of the thermal network could have ended them already, and no one would know. Dawn would come and the future would be unaltered. The hope of victory would have passed away invisibly.

But things needed to proceed on the assumption that they had prevailed. A data wafer lay beside his glass of amasec on the lacquered side table. On it was a code-burst written in Sekkite cipher, designed to be broadcast via wide-band vox on the lower frequency channel used by the Archonate’s communications network. Corrod had helped him to compose the specifics. A call to arms. An order of uprising to all the insurgent forces in the tattered skirts of the city and beyond. Eltath had been pregnable for months. There were cells embedded everywhere, even in the inner quarters, along with Sekkite combat packs that had gone to ground in the city rather than flowing out with the general retreat a few days earlier. The code-burst commended their mettle and loyalty, promised them spiritual reward and deliverance, and specified critical targets.

They would be no more than noise, a violent disruption intended to fog the situation and draw Imperial attention from the key objectives.

Of course, if Corrod was already dead, the uprising would be a meaningless snarl, swiftly put down by the Militarum divisions for no result. And the code-burst transmission would be tracked, and Ghentethi erased by crusade prosecution.

Jan Jerik thought of Corrod, of the abomination that had revealed itself in the freight elevator. The image made him shudder. He had allied his House with abhuman creatures. It had been a gruelling choice. His doubts over the last few weeks had been many, not least at the sight of Corrod’s apparently worthless wretches when they first arrived at the house door. It was a choice between the continued yoke of slavery to the Omnissiah of the Golden Throne, and the prospect of an age without the privations of chronic war. He still didn’t know if he could trust the warp-words of Sek’s changeling angels. He feared their terrible beauty. But he did know what a lifetime under the scourge of the Mars priesthood felt like.

He knew true monsters when he saw them. He knew where freedom lay. Life was a series of choices, and every choice contained an unknowable risk.

He reached for his timepiece again and stopped himself with a smile. He didn’t need to know the time, for it no longer mattered. He had made his choice an hour earlier when he sent the code-burst.

He sat back and waited for the dawn to bring whatever it would bring.

Van Voytz looked at the ordo rosette again, and then handed it back to the waiting interrogators.

‘This is from the Lord Executor?’ he said.

‘I have repeated his words precisely, lord,’ one of them replied. ‘He insisted on that.’

Van Voytz nodded, and they stepped back. He stood for a moment and surveyed the war room. He’d come down to the main floor, his favourite place, among the strategium tables and the bustle of tactical staff. They’d been on red condition for the best part of an hour. Chevrons still flashed on the alert boards, though he’d had the interminable klaxons muted to allow them space to think.

He went to his station, and quickly wrote down a general command on a signal pad. He tore the sheet off and handed it to a runner.

‘Take this to the watch room,’ he said. He looked at his console, and began to type his authority code in.

‘You have accessed Central Classified Command Notation,’ an adept at the desk beside him said immediately.

‘I know,’ said Van Voytz. He continued to type.

‘This order burst will instruct on the General Band to all stations,’ the adept said.

‘I should hope so,’ Van Voytz replied. ‘I’m not so old I got the damn coding wrong.’

‘You have entered a Priority One Red Condition mandate. This will be an Unconditional and General Order to all personnel in the palace zone.’

‘Yes, it will,’ said Van Voytz.

‘What’s going on, Barthol?’

Van Voytz looked up from the keypad. Urienz had crossed the war room floor to join him.

‘I’m ordering full evacuation.’

‘You’re joking, surely?’ The brows of Urienz’s pugnacious face narrowed.

‘No. Direct instruction from the Lord Executor.’

‘This is an attack, then?’ Urienz asked.

‘There’s something going off in the sub levels,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Well, they haven’t got in there,’ said Urienz.

‘Gaunt says something has. An incursion. Clearly one he considers a credible threat.’

He resumed typing.

Urienz took hold of his wrist, gently but firmly. ‘Macaroth won’t wear this, Barthol,’ he said.

‘Well, he’s not in a position to argue.’

‘I did what Gaunt asked,’ Urienz said. ‘I went to Macaroth. As usual, he was furious about the interruption. I had to weather another of his tirades. I got a little sense out of him when his anger blew out. He’s aware that there’s a situation in the undercroft levels. He believes it’s–’

‘What?’ asked Van Voytz.

‘A misidentification. Perhaps the product of technical problems, perhaps some remote influence by the Archenemy. A distraction, Barthol. Macaroth insists that any significant Archenemy counter assault is a week away at least. There’s nothing of substance within a hundred and twenty kilometres of Eltath. Look, in the last two hours we’ve stepped up from amber status to red condition, plus the secondary order. Macaroth’s livid. The enemy’s poking at us somehow, trying to get us to dance a jig and lose our grip on the game. And we’re dancing, Barthol. Dancing like idiots.’

Van Voytz scowled at him. ‘The Beati supported Gaunt’s concern,’ he said.

‘And praise be to her,’ said Urienz. ‘But she’s a figurehead, a field commander. It’s not her place to direct strategy. An evacuation, Barthol? That would be a disaster. If this is anything solid, it’s a psychological attack intended to spook us into disarray before next week’s assault. An evacuation is exactly the sort of mayhem it’s designed to cause. The Sek packs will roll in across Grizmund’s line in the south west and find high command camping in the streets and shitting in doorways.’

‘I have an order, Vitus,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Well, the warmaster will have your balls in a monogrammed box if you follow it.’

Van Voytz shook his head. ‘I know Gaunt,’ he said. ‘He’s many things. But he’s no fool. If he says there’s cause, there’s cause. Throne’s sake, Urienz, he’s seen more of this shit first-hand than you or me. And that doesn’t matter anyway. He’s the Lord Executor. This is his order.’

Urienz shrugged. His broad, powerful frame stretched at his tailored blue jacket.

‘Your funeral,’ he said.

‘Better mine than everybody’s,’ replied Van Voytz.

He smiled at his fellow lord.

‘Yours too, actually,’ he added. ‘Gather an escort company and convey the warmaster from the palace.’

‘You bastard,’ Urienz replied, with a sorry shake of his head. ‘Can’t you charge Lugo with that?’

An adept at a nearby station called out and held up a signal form. Marshal Tzara strode across and took it. She brought it through the hustle of the floor to Van Voytz and Urienz.

‘An alert from vox-net oversight,’ she said, frowning. ‘Unauthorised broadcast detected about an hour ago. Code-burst, wide-band, low numbers.’

‘Origin?’ asked Van Voytz.

‘Vapourial or Millgate. They’re working to lock the source.’

‘Could be one of ours, strayed from the line,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Damn Helixid no doubt,’ added Urienz.

‘No,’ said Tzara. ‘It was encrypted. Cipher division is searching for a key. It’s not a Throne pattern. Ciphers grade a seventy-eight per cent likelihood that it’s a Sanguinary code, probably Sekkite.’

‘What are they doing, transmitting from down there?’ Van Voytz asked. ‘That’s under the line.’

‘And they’re painting a target on their backs,’ said Urienz. ‘Twenty minutes, and we’ll have Valks executing gun runs on the position.’

‘Call it in,’ said Van Voytz. ‘As soon as we have a lock.’

‘The issue is not who is sending and how swiftly we can wipe them,’ said Tzara. Her tone was gruff and no-nonsense. ‘The issue is who was listening. Wide-band, a transmitter of that power… it could only be received inside the city bounds.’

Van Voytz glanced up. A section chief at strategium station four had just raised his hand, clutching a signal form. Within seconds, another hand had risen at station six, then two at station eight. Three at tac relay. Two at forward obs. One at vox coordination. Five, all at once, at acoustic track. Still more hands rose, brandishing forms.

‘Shit,’ said Urienz.

‘Call them in!’ Van Voytz ordered.

‘Reporting small arms discharge in Albarppan,’ the section chief called back.

‘Sustained weapons fire, possible rocket grenades, East Vapourial into Millgate,’ shouted the woman at six.

‘Tracking mortars, two possible three, region of Antiun Square,’ called out an adept at eight. ‘Rapid, sustain, ongoing.’

‘Gunfire, harbour-side. Gunfire, Lachtel Rise. Gunfire, Shelter Slope.’

‘Vox activity, tight band, tight chatter, region of Kaline Quarter. Chatter reads as Sekkite.’

‘Detonations in Plade Parish and adjoining arterial. Habs ablaze.’

‘Movement reported, Millgate and surrounds. No confirmation of hostiles, but no ID tagging and no call response.’

‘Coordinate response primary!’ Van Voytz bellowed. ‘Marshal, tracking now. I want target solutions for the city batteries.’

‘At once!’ Tzara replied.

‘Air cover, up!’ Van Voytz shouted, turning to station two. ‘Call it in, call it in! Suppression and containment! Support divisions mobilise in five minutes or I’ll have heads on sticks!’

He looked at Urienz.

‘Get Macaroth out,’ he said.

‘You’re going with the evac?’

‘This isn’t a damn coincidence, Vitus. Get a bird ready to take him out of the city.’

Urienz nodded and made off across the floor. Van Voytz turned back to his station. ‘I want direct vox with Grizmund, Kelso and Bulledin in three! Advisory signals to Cybon and Blackwood. Tell them to stand by for instruction. And find me Lugo!’

He reached for the keypad. His screen flickered and went dark.

‘What the hell? Technical here!’

He looked up. There was a thump and a dying moan of power as the strategium nearest to him shut down. The holomaps it was displaying shivered and vanished. One by one, the strategiums around the war room floor blinked, sighed and shut down. As the tables failed, the main screens went dark in rapid succession.

Then the overhead lights strobed and went out.

‘Power down! Power down!’ an adept yelled.

‘No shit!’ barked Van Voytz above the tumult of voices. ‘Auxiliary power now!’

‘Switching,’ the adept replied. ‘No automatic. Re-trying… Auxiliary, failure! Back-up generators, failure!’

‘They can’t fail,’ Van Voytz snarled. ‘Re-initialise and re-start! Fire them up!’

‘Technical reports… the reserve batteries have drained,’ the adept said. ‘Support generation systems are experiencing a critical loss of capacity. No power to palace systems. No power to core-vox. No power to war room reserve and safety. Auspex is down. Detection grid is down. Fire control is down.’

She looked at Van Voytz in the half-light.

‘Void shields are down,’ she said.

‘Holy shitting Throne,’ whispered Van Voytz.

Ferdy Kolosim put the unlit lho-stick to his mouth and clasped it between his teeth, grimacing. A night this dark, he couldn’t light it in the open.

The sky was a huge swathe of reddish black cloud, low and menacing. It spread out across the unlit city like a shroud. Kolosim could barely make out the outline of Eltath. Blackout conditions were still in force. He located a few spots of light; the twinkle of a pylon beacon, small building lights like distant stars, a floodlight washing something to the southwest, the brief vent flare of a gas plume at Millgate.

The rain had stopped. There was a smell of wet soil in the darkness. A slight breeze had lifted, stirring litter in the waste ground to his left. The breeze felt like the prelude to something stronger, maybe a big storm that would roll in from the bay by dawn.

Heat lightning growled in the low cloud. There wasn’t much spark to it, but the mumbling sheet-flashes let him see the city for a fraction of a second every few minutes, the climbing skyline rising to the east, a key-tooth silhouette of spires and habs.

Sergeant Bray approached, effortlessly making no sound on the rough scree.

‘Are we set?’ Kolosim asked.

‘Oh yeah. All four companies, left and right of the approach road. Wire’s cut back. We’ve got support teams set up, decent, broad field with a focus on the road. Fire positions in a string off that way for about a kilometre.’

‘Transports?’

‘All off the road. Got them side-on, in case we need fall back cover. Scouts out on both flanks. It’s mostly bomb-site ruins on both sides for five kilometres.’

Kolosim turned and looked back up the approach road towards EM 14. It was the only vaguely lit thing around. He could see the glow of the gatehouse lights. The road was dark. The steel fenceposts stood out starkly where they hadn’t been pulled down. The oblong shadows of some of the transports were just about visible, rolled back on the rough slip.

‘Quiet order?’ Kolosim asked.

‘Everyone’s behaving,’ replied Bray. ‘Pretty decent alert level, actually.’

‘An active purpose refines the mind,’ said Kolosim.

Bray nodded at the Mechanicore complex.

‘Taking a while,’ he said.

‘Red tape. Reluctance,’ said Kolosim. ‘The priests don’t like to cooperate. Pasha’s probably reading them the riot act.’

His micro-bead pipped.

‘Kolosim, go.’

‘Caober. You pick that up?’

‘Be more specific.’

‘Uh, mortars. Mortar fire. South-west.’

Kolosim glanced at Bray.

‘Nothing here,’ he said into the link. ‘Crossing to you.’

They moved down the shallow slope and jogged across the road into the waste scree on the other side. Kolosim could see Ghosts hunched around him, the folds of their capes making them blend with the stone heaps and slabs of broken rockcrete they were using as cover. He and Bray moved along behind the outer line of them. Caober emerged from the darkness.

‘Mortars?’ asked Kolosim.

‘Sounded like,’ Caober told the big red-head.

They listened for a moment, and heard nothing except the breeze stirring litter. There was a faint flash of heat lightning.

A second later, a slow, soft peal of thunder.

‘Not mortars,’ said Bray.

Caober shook his head. ‘It wasn’t thunder just now. More punctuated. A little trickle of thumps. I’d put money on mortars.’

‘Well, that could be coming up from the line,’ said Kolosim. ‘It’s active beyond Tulkar.’

‘We wouldn’t hear it,’ said Caober. ‘Not at this distance, in these conditions. It was closer.’

Bray frowned. ‘Listen,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Kolosim.

Bray raised a finger, his head tilted to hear.

Pop-pop-pop.

‘That’s not mortars either,’ said Kolosim.

Pop-pop-pop.

‘That’s fething small arms,’ said Bray. ‘Autogun.’

Kolosim reached for his bead.

‘Stand ready,’ he said.

The distant popping stopped. About a minute passed, and they started to hear much louder cracks, like branches snapping.

‘Las,’ said Bray.

‘Definitely,’ said Caober.

‘What do you think?’ asked Vadim from his position nearby. ‘Insurgents?’

‘Must be,’ said Kolosim. ‘Can’t be Sek packs this deep in.’ He hoped he was right. The city edge was far from secure, but they were well inside the inner ring. If it was a company strength of the Sons, someone somewhere had made a big tactical error. Insurgents were bad enough. The small raid-cells were still pocketed throughout Eltath, lying quiet. They’d found that out to their cost at the Low Keen billet.

They couldn’t see the first few shots. Then a ripple of bright bolts flashed in high, looping into the scrub behind them. Two or three at first, then a sudden riot of them, incoming from a dozen sources. They flashed and zipped across the highway bank, hitting rocks, raising tufts of dust from the edge of the slip, and spraying pebbles off the front portion of the scree. A volley stitched across the mouth of the approach road, and Kolosim heard a sharp twang as a fence pole was cut in half.

‘Hold,’ he said into the micro-bead. He flicked channels. ‘R Company lead, R Company lead, this is rearguard. Be advised, we have contact at the gate at this time.’

‘Copy, rearguard.’

Kolosim switched channels.

‘All positions, hold fire. Let’s see how busy this gets.’

A second flurry came in, stinging the night air with bright darts. The las-fire began to chop at the forward positions, cracking and splitting rock cover.

‘They’re correcting,’ said Bray. ‘Cutting in closer now.’

Somewhere out in the dark, a support weapon started to chatter. A hard round .30, crew served. The shots licked along a line from the outer fence post to the nearest transport. They heard the slap as the heavy rounds punched through bodywork, then a smash as a windscreen blew out. The firing stopped, then they heard it begin again, the distinctive clattering cough of a belt feeder. It was spitting blue tracers this time, every tenth round. The illuminated rounds seemed to float and drift as they came in, feeling the range.

‘Seena,’ said Kolosim into the link.

‘Sir.’

‘They’re giving us tracers. Are you sourcing that?’

‘Angle’s wrong from here, sir.’

‘Melyr?’ Kolosim said.

‘Sir. If he keeps chucking that at us, I can narrow it down to about a ten metre zone.’

‘Don’t be greedy, Melyr. Just make a mess of the whole area.’

‘Pleasure, sir.’

‘Pour it on, please,’ said Kolosim.

Forty metres from him, one of the support positions opened up. The .30 howled for about ten seconds.

When it ceased, the tracers stopped skimming in.

‘Thank you, Melyr. Do it again if he starts back up.’

Kolosim didn’t hear Melyr’s reply. The night opened up with an intense barrage of small arms fire. A rain of las and hard rounds swept across their position. The combined roar felt extreme after the long quiet. If these were insurgents, there were a lot of them, and they had coordinated with alarming effect. Kolosim guessed at eighty or ninety shooters. How did cells link up to deliver this?

For thirty seconds, the barrage was so intense it kept them down. The noise seemed deafening. A sheet of smoke and lifted dust rolled off the scree.

Kolosim rolled onto his back, and adjusted his bead.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘They’re determined to have this out.’

He lay on his back for a moment, watching las-bolts flit over him, dazzling against the black sky.

‘Full contact, full contact,’ he ordered. ‘All positions. Light them the feth up.’

The moment he spoke, four prepped and ready companies of Ghosts opened fire. The light-shock lit the entire gate area.

Now the noise was truly deafening.

Major Pasha strode down the burnished arcade of the Mechanicus station behind the two adept wardens. Elam and Ludd led a squad of Ghosts in her wake. Behind them, Criid, Theiss, Spetnin and the other company officers were deploying squads to cover the front half of the complex.

The place was vast and the layout complicated. There were floors of polished brass and ornate walls dry with rust. Deep turbine halls throbbed with energy, and were criss-crossed by suspended walkways that would easily hinder standard practices of cover. Machine shops thrummed with power tools, dancing with sparks. Side vaults gave access to cryonic bays, and were bathed in cold blue light.

Everywhere they went, servitors and cowled adepts stared at them in curiosity and suspicion. They could hear the muted tick and chatter of machine cant as the adepts gossiped to each other. Newcomers, outsiders…

Halfway along the arcade of the inner court, Pasha was met by a senior tech-priest and a slender young man in black. The two adept wardens stepped back and stood to attention, their dendritic fingers holding their stave weapons upright.

‘Pasha, commanding Tanith First,’ Pasha said, snapping the sign of the aquila.

‘Sindre, interrogator, Ordo Hereticus,’ the pale young man replied. ‘I present Versenginseer Etriun, the study lead.’

The cowled priest nodded. Mandelbrot-pattern electrodes in the flesh of his throat rippled with light. He emitted a soft buzz of code.

‘You are aware of our business here?’ asked Pasha.

‘The gatehouse relayed the details,’ said Sindre. ‘The Mechanicus formally objects to this invasion by the Astra Militarum.’

‘Invasion?’ asked Pasha, amused.

‘All these Guardsmen. So many. How many companies did you need to bring into the sanctity of the Mechanicore?’

‘Sufficient,’ said Pasha. ‘I note that the priesthood objects to the intrusion of the Militarum, but not to the presence of the Inquisition.’

‘You’re not terribly good at politics, are you?’ said Sindre.

‘Don’t have much call for it,’ said Pasha.

‘Well, for one thing, I haven’t trooped a regiment in here,’ said Sindre. ‘For another, I am attached to the study. The ordo has a fundamental interest in the items. And for another, the versenginseer requires my assistance as an intermediary. Unless you speak mechmata hyper-bineric?’

‘I do not,’ said Pasha.

‘That’s a shame, captain.’

‘Major,’ said Pasha. She tapped her collar studs. ‘Just dots. Not hard to remember. If you can’t tell dots from dots, I wonder how you can tell heresy from a hole in the ground.’

The tech-priest made an urgent, buzzing sound. Sindre nodded.

‘We find your tone aggressive, Major Pasha,’ said Sindre.

Pasha shrugged. ‘Aggressive? I am soldier. Aggressive is my mother. She would bite your throat right out. Grrrr! Bite it.’

Pasha clutched her own throat for emphasis.

‘Now, eagle stones please, thank you,’ she said.

‘This is untoward,’ said Sindre. ‘The stones are xenos artefacts, under safekeeping. Neither the Mechanicus nor the Ordo Hereticus has yet determined their potential or use. It was clearly understood that they should remain in our hands for the duration. This was a given, signed off by the Militarum, the office of the warmaster, the Intelligence Division, your company commander Gaunt, and my associate Sheeva Laksheema.’

Pasha nodded, as if chewing this over.

‘I tell you what is untoward,’ she said. ‘I am here, asking you for thing. It is not a matter of negotiation. My rearguard is already in hot contact with the Archenemy on your doorstep. My company commander, “Gaunt”, as you speak him with shocking lack of respect, is Lord Executor. Lord Executor? You know this thing? My orders are his will, and his will, it cannot be challenged by Ordo Hereticus, Mechanicus of Mars, Intelligence Division, my fething mother, whatever. Also, I have asked you very nicely, please. Now get me the eagle stones, ready for transport, or I will stick my boot up your arsehole and go get them myself.’

‘I’d do it if I were you,’ said Ludd. He was standing at Pasha’s side, his arms folded. ‘I’d run and do it. She doesn’t feth around.’

Sindre glared at them.

‘I will take this up with the ordo senior,’ he hissed.

‘And he will take it up with the Lord Executor,’ said Pasha. ‘Then everyone will be happy, as long as they are the Lord Executor.’

The tech-priest’s actuators buzzed.

‘This way,’ said Sindre, gesturing behind him.

Pasha grinned.

‘You are lovely man,’ she said. ‘No matter what the other boys in the ordo say about you.’

They followed Sindre and Etriun along the arcade. As he walked, Sindre gestured to one side and then the other. The two adept wardens stayed where they were, but six skitarii emerged from the shadows and fell in beside the Ghost party, three on each side. They moved in perfectly synchronised step.

‘Expecting trouble?’ asked Ludd.

‘Security is elevated,’ replied Sindre, ‘the Urdeshic Palace issued an amber status advisory for Eltath this afternoon. The skitarii are a precaution. We’re lucky to have them. Few remain on Urdesh these days.’

The skitarii were the martial division of the Cult. They were as tall as the adept wardens, but seemed bigger because of their armoured mass and their breadth of shoulder. They were skitarii of the Cult Mechanicus Urdeshi, and wore the traditional double robes: short black coats over longer red mantles. Little of their original organics remained. Their augmetic hands were bare metal claws, clutching weapons across their chests. Their faces were silver masked, polished to a mirror sheen. Green pinpricks glowed in the deep recesses of the eyeslits. Four carried archeotech firearms across their chests: antique galvanic sleetguns. The other two – members of an officer caste, denoted by the intricate etching that covered their steel craniums – brandished black metal staves that were a metre and a half long, plainer versions of the ceremonial staves the adept wardens carried.

Without breaking stride, Etriun waved his actuator, and opened a massive golden blast hatch, then a second, and then a titanium iris valve six metres in diameter. Cold, sterile air blew out at them. They descended a metal ramp into a grand laboratory hall. Polished chrome workbenches gleamed in pools of stark, directional light. Each bench was equipped with manipulator robotics: long, delicately articulated alloy limbs that curled over each work surface ready to activate and begin work. They looked like huge metal whip-spiders clinging to the end of each workstation. They were dormant, shut down, limbs raised and splayed like hands raised in greeting.

‘Access crypt K of the Gnosis Repository,’ Sindre said to a trio of waiting adepts logis.

‘Crypt K is released and waiting,’ one replied in a synthesised voice.

Sindre led them across the lab. A compression hatch parted with a pneumatic hiss. What lay beyond resembled a detention bay. The deck was underlit and the general light levels were low. Thick pipework ran along one wall, connecting to a complex junction of ducts and vertical pipes at the far end of the bay. Massive hatches lined the other side. Light beading around each hatch glowed red, except for one hatch towards the far end, where the beading shone green.

Etriun entered the bay, followed by one of the skitarii officers and one of the warrior-caste. Sindre followed with Pasha’s team. The other skitarii remained on the lab side of the hatch.

‘Wait,’ said Sindre. ‘This is the Gnosis Repository. The crypt-safes contain their most precious relics. The versenginseer will perform the retrieval.’

The Ghosts halted. Etriun shuffled and approached the green-lit hatch. He hauled on the rail, and the crypt door swung open on galvanic hinges. Etriun paused for a moment, staring into the crypt, bathed in the soft white light that streamed out of it.

His actuator buzzed.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Sindre, stepping forward.

Las-bolts tore out of the open crypt, hitting Etriun in the thigh, groin, chest and head. He wobbled backwards, and fell against the wall behind him.

‘Throne alive!’ Sindre yelled. ‘Close the crypt! Lock crypt-safe K!’

More bolts whickered down the length of the bay. A second shooter, out of sight in the ductwork at the far end. Sindre was hit in the upper chest and hip. He squealed and fell onto the lighted deck. The skitarii warrior beside Elam took four hits and spun around hard, sparks and fluid spraying from its body. It recovered and swung back immediately to re-aim. Gerin, the Ghost to Pasha’s left, took a bolt in the face and collapsed on his back. He did not recover.

‘Suppressing fire!’ Pasha roared. Her side arm, a heavy Tronsvasse service pistol, was already blasting. The Ghosts opened up, raking the length of the Repository with assault fire. The two skitarii began unloading their weapons, advancing steadily. The damaged warrior fired its ancient galvanic. The sleetgun spat hails of micro ’chettes down the length of the bay. The officer’s stave juddered and pumped out invisible bursts of force that rippled the air. Ducting at the far end crunched and buckled.

There was no cover. Multiple hostiles were concealed at the opposite end of the long chamber. The entire length of the bay lit up with a furious cross pattern of exchanged fire.

Ludd ran to Sindre, clamped his hand around the man’s gouting chest wound, and started to drag him backwards. Wall panels shattered. A las-round went through Ludd’s sleeve. Sindre was staring up at him, eyes wide, his mouth gaping. The shot had gone into the top of his chest, almost at the base of the throat. He was soaked in blood.

‘Where the feth are they?’ Pasha yelled, jerking as a las-round clipped her shoulder plate.

Elam was hollering into his link.

‘All sections! We are compromised and taking fire! Intruders inside EM Fourteen! Repeat intruders inside EM Fourteen!’

Two figures emerged from the open crypt hatch. They were hard to see. The bright light shining out of the crypt seemed to attenuate them, making them seem eerily tall and unnaturally slender. One was using the open hatch as a shield and shooting a lasrifle at Pasha’s group. The other dashed across the walkway, grabbed Etriun’s body and dragged it back into the crypt. The skitarii officer drummed a pulse from its stave that dented the crypt hatch. Somehow, the slender man behind it braced it open. He returned fire. The las-bolt hit the skitarius directly in the left eye. There was a minor implosion inside its gleaming chrome skull. It wavered, and dropped to its knees so hard that it cracked the clearplex panels of the underlit floor. Three more shots found it, and blew out its neck with such force, its almost-detached head swung around at a wild angle and hung sideways off a stump of fractured ceramite vertibrae. The stave clattered from its hands. It did not move again.

The fire rate from the far end of the Repository increased. Within moments, two more Ghosts had been killed by las-bolts.

‘Back! back!’ Pasha bellowed. ‘We are dead in the open!’

They backed towards the laboratory hatch, making their own cover with streaming las-fire. Ludd was dragging Sindre. Trooper Setz ran to help him.

The remaining skitarius did not retreat. It advanced steadily and remorselessly into the storm of shots. Its sleetgun whined as the voltaics cycled to power, then cracked as the galvanic charge launched a cloud of micro dart rounds. It got off four shots and almost drew level with the open crypt before sustained las-fire finished tearing it apart. It fell, its robes ablaze.

Pasha’s survivors backed into the gleaming lab space. Shots shrieked after them. Elam and Kadle stood in the hatch frame and hosed with full auto while Pasha found the activator for the compression hatch and slammed it shut. The four skitarii who had remained in the lab were advancing, match-step, towards the hatch.

‘Wait! You, wait!’ she yelled at them. ‘They just cut down two of your kin! And four of mine! That’s a kill zone in there!’

The skitarii halted. Binaric code bursts snapped between them.

Ludd and Trooper Setz dragged Sindre to one of the chrome benches and laid him on it. They left a long trail of blood all the way back to the hatch. Setz tried to maintain compression, while Ludd opened his field kit with bloody fingers.

‘Keep him still!’ Ludd cried.

‘How the living feth are they in there?’ Pasha demanded, storming towards the nearest adept. The adepts logis in the lab seemed to have frozen in disbelief. A logic problem had made them cycle.

‘We do not understand,’ one said. ‘The Repository space is secure. There cannot be danger within a secure space–’

‘There must be another access point!’ Pasha snapped. Her upper arm was bleeding. She ignored it.

‘No,’ said another adept. ‘The Gnosis Repository is a sealed section. One access.’

‘One access my backside!’ cried Pasha.

‘The thermal vents,’ said the third, arriving at a viable hypothesis. ‘If hostiles entered via the thermal vents–’

‘Impossible,’ replied the first. ‘They would never have made it through the geotherm system alive.’

‘Well, they fething did!’ snarled Pasha.

The adept wardens strode into the lab through the iris valve, followed by Criid’s first section and a squad from Theiss’ company.

‘What the feth is happening?’ Theiss asked.

‘Compromised!’ said Pasha. ‘Their fething security is compromised to shit! The enemy is in the vault! They have the fething stones!’

‘They cannot exit,’ said the remaining skitarii officer in a grinding voice that echoed from its chest plating. It and its three kin aimed their weapons at the compression hatch in neosynchronous unison. ‘We will cancel their lives as soon as they try.’

‘Do this,’ ordered the adept wardens in unison.

‘They can get out the same way they fething got in!’ Pasha roared.

‘Not possible,’ said the adept wardens.

‘Stop telling me that,’ said Pasha. ‘This vent system. This ge-o-thermal vent. Is there a way into it?’

‘There is access at several points within the complex,’ said an adept logis. ‘The geothermal substrate is a network that supplies power to all aspects of this facility, and to all other forge sites on Urdesh. It underpins the city, connecting a subterranean duct network that draws heat and pressure energy from the natural volcanic–’

‘Don’t give me lecture!’ Pasha cried. ‘Show me way in! Show me fething access point!’

‘Turbine Hall One is the closest,’ said an adept logis.

The adept wardens looked at each other and then back at Pasha.

‘We will show you the location,’ said one.

‘We will mobilise the remainder of our skitarii complement from cryonics,’ said the other, ‘and activate all automata gun slaves.’

‘Tona!’ Pasha called out. ‘Go with this pair of… of… wardens. Ready a strike group. Prep to go in fast, cut the devils off!’

‘Get flamers up front, Criid!’ Elam added.

Pasha looked at him.

‘Flamers? Not fething flamers!’ she exploded. ‘These devils came up through fething ge-o-thermal system! They are fething fire-retardant!’

‘There’s something about them, that’s for sure,’ said Kadle. ‘I’m certain I clipped one in the firefight. One of the two who came out of the crypt. It didn’t even jolt him.’

‘Tona? Tona, go!’ Pasha yelled. ‘Shoot them, kill them with sticks, fething kick them to death! Whatever! Get in and cut them off!’

Criid was already yelling orders into her link as she followed the adept wardens out of the lab.

Under the hard light inside crypt K, Corrod looked down at Etriun. The versenginseer was lying on his back, fluids leaking from his multiple wounds. There was a spark of life in him, machine life at least. His electoos had gone a cold blue colour.

Ulraw entered the crypt. He had been clipped on the arm during the exchange, but the bolt had barely broken the skin.

‘One casualty on our side, damogaur,’ he said. ‘Ekheer. Struck by flechettes. He’s healing. The enemy has withdrawn to the lab level and closed the hatch.’

Corrod nodded. ‘Bring the others up,’ he said.

The Qimurah had entered the Gnosis Repository through a spur in the thermal vents that rose through the sub-levels of EM 14. As they drew close, Corrod had been able to smell the eagle stones, and feel their pull. He had been preparing a device to unlock the crypt hatch when the light surrounding it had gone green. Like a gift. The shapers of the dark had granted him a boon.

He had known what it really meant. Someone was approaching. He had sent the bulk of his force back to the vent access at the end of the bay to take up firing positions, and then entered the crypt with Ulraw.

The stones were lined up on either side of the crypt. Eight stone tablets, each encased in a sterile plastek cover and set in an illuminated alcove. The Glyptothek removed during enemy action from the College of Heritance on Salvation’s Reach more than ten years earlier. An heirloom of past eras, prized beyond any other thing by He whose voice drowns out all others. They were Enkil Vehk, the key of victory. Not just victory over the scum of the Throne, but victory over the bloated Archon, Urlock Gaur. Anarch Magir Sek would crush both of them. He would drive the crusade of blighted Terra back into the stars, and he would claim his rightful place as Archon of the Sanguinary Tribes.

Ulraw returned with several of the others. They gazed at the tablets.

‘Remove them carefully,’ Corrod told Ulraw. ‘We’ll be moving out quickly.’

‘The enemy will counter-attack within minutes,’ said Hellek. ‘They are not fools, sad to say. They will have realised we used the vents. They will block them or attempt to flush them.’

‘Which is why we will move with haste, Hellek,’ Corrod said. ‘And why I will create a suitable distraction.’

Ulraw began to remove the stones from their alcoves. Corrod knelt down beside the dying adept.

Ordinate Jan Jerik had provided him with all the technical support he had demanded: access to the vents, schematics, pass keys, system codes. He had also supplied, at Corrod’s request, a data plug of Mechanicus pattern loaded with a tailored code he had called Berserker. It was, Jan Jerik had explained with pride, sanctioned codeware dating back to the Dark Age of Technology, a machine plague that would poison and corrupt any system it infected. This, he had promised, would scramble and deactivate even the most secure Mechanicus holding crypt.

Corrod hadn’t had to use it. The crypt-safe had been unlocked for him. But it seemed such a waste.

‘Friend,’ he said to Etriun, speaking in the Imperial tongue.

Etriun’s eyes fluttered. Soupy fluids gurgled out of his mouth.

‘I have something for you,’ Corrod said. ‘A gift from me, and from the Anarch whom I serve. You will share it with all of your kind, so they may delight in its wild ecstasies.’

Corrod yanked several cables out of the plug ports behind Etriun’s left ear. The versengineseer shuddered and emitted several shrill, buzzing calls of despair. Corrod fumbled with the ports until he found one that matched the data plug. He pushed, and the plug connected with a snap.

Berserker initiated. The tech plague streamed from the data plug into Etriun’s amygdala and cyber-cerebral implants. It flooded his micro-cogitators. It burned what was left of his flesh. It was feral code, magnificent in its ferocity and aggression.

Etriun spasmed. He was dying, but his neosync connections to the EM 14 noosphere were still open.

Kolding entered the laboratory space.

‘There!’ said Captain Elam, pointing to the workbench where Setz and Ludd were fighting to keep Sindre alive.

Kolding opened his kit and assessed the man’s wounds. ‘Keep pressure there,’ he told Setz. ‘I’ll try to seal and then pack the wound.’

‘I think he’s bleeding out,’ said Ludd.

‘He is bleeding out,’ replied Kolding simply. ‘That’s what I’m trying to prevent.’

Pasha glanced at Theiss. ‘Are they there yet?’

Captain Theiss was listening intently to his bead. He nodded.

‘Yes, mam,’ he said. ‘Criid and Obel have reached the vent access. They have squads with them. Preparing to enter.’

‘Word from outside?’

‘Major firefight at the gate,’ Theiss replied.

Pasha paced. Waiting was always the worst. She’d give the vent parties ten minutes, then she’d re-open the compression door and storm the Repository bay. Cut the devils off at both ends.

She eyed the room. The four skitarii still stood motionless, weapons aimed at the hatch. Two of the adepts logis had left to activate the facility’s automata weapon servitors. The one who had remained seemed most concerned that Sindre was leaking pints of blood onto the polished, sterile surfaces of the laboratory zone. Elam and the other Ghosts were just waiting, checking weapons and slotting fresh powercells. The firefight had keyed them up. They didn’t want to crash. They wanted to manage the stress so it was ready the moment the fighting resumed.

She knew how they felt. She’d lost four men. Four fething men. And the Archenemy devils had reached the stones before her. She would not allow them to leave the site with such a precious cargo.

She would not allow them to leave the site alive.

Several of the laboratory’s wall screens suddenly fluttered and started to crawl with odd, rapid lines of code script.

‘What is that?’ she asked. ‘Is that data? Do we have new data?’

The adept logis stared at the screens.

‘I do not recognise the code,’ he said. ‘I do not recognise it. Non-standard. Source unknown. Type unknown. Codeware has entered neosync. Codeware has penetrated internal cogitation. Codeware has penetrated the machine-spirit core. Codeware has–’

‘What?’ asked Pasha. ‘Codeware has what?’

The adept logis didn’t reply. He turned to look at her. There was something very wrong with his eyes. Watery blood was trickling from his sockets and the augmetic optic implants had hazed with roiling fields of static. A substance like treacle was oozing out of his breather mask.

‘Berserker,’ he said in a flat tone. ‘Berserker. Berserker. Berserk. Berserk. Zerk. Zerk. Zerk. Zerk–’

He headbutted her with savage force. It took her by surprise, and she fell, clutching her face. The adept logis knelt on her and began to throttle her. He started screaming a high pitched stream of obscenities.

Asa Elam rushed forward and tried to pull the adept logis off her. It was like trying to shift a boulder. The adept logis had locked solid like a piece of machinery. His grip on Pasha’s throat tightened. Her eyes bulged. Her tongue, protruding from her spittle-flecked mouth, went blue.

Elam smashed the butt of his rifle into the adept’s head. The adept went limp and let go. Elam wrenched him off her. Pasha lay on her back, gasping, trying to breathe again. There were red hand marks around her neck.

The sagging adept logis suddenly came to life again and broke Elam’s sturdy grip. Screaming further obscenities, he lunged at Elam and clawed at his face.

‘What the feth is wrong with you?’ Elam snarled, trying to fight him off. He threw a fast punch, the snap-jab special that had seen Asa Elam triumph in many garrison sparring bouts. Elam cursed as he broke a finger on the adept’s brass faceplate.

‘Throne’s sake! Help me here!’ he yelled.

The other Ghosts, aside from those fighting to save Sindre, were already hurrying to his side.

‘Shit!’ said Kadle.

The robot arms on all the benches had suddenly started to twitch and writhe. Blade limbs and cutter dendrites gouged blindly at the steel work surfaces, making metal-on-metal squeals that hurt their ears.

The four skitarii at the hatch turned. Facing into the lab, they started shooting.

The first sleetgun blast exploded Kadle’s head and upper body in a cloud of meat and bone. The second, another tight cloud of micro flechettes, blew a hole through Mkjaff’s torso, almost removing his entire right side. Gore painted the wall screens behind him. He gazed down in disbelief at the missing part of his torso, then his spine splintered and he folded and fell.

The others ducked for cover. There was little of it. A galvanic shot-cloud grazed Captain Theiss, and stippled the wall beside him with a thousand tiny punctures. He blinked and saw he was bleeding from dozens of small wounds across his right thigh, hip, and right arm. The pain was excruciating. The micro ’chettes were still boring into him. He began to scrape frantically at his skin.

The skitarii officer thumped a pulse from his stave. The bubble of hyper-dense gravity bent light and air as it crossed the room. It hit Theiss while he still scrabbled at his own flesh, and pulped his head like an invisible jackhammer.

Ludd wheeled from Sindre’s body. His bolt pistol boomed and the explosive shell struck a skitarius at very short range. The warrior’s torso blew out. Ludd fired again, and knocked the Cult Mech officer sideways in a bloom of flame. On the far side of the lab, Konjic, Mkget and Dickerson unloaded on auto, side by side, hosing skitarii and the area around the hatch with a storm of las. Another skitarius fell, shorting out at every joint. The remaining two – a warrior-caste and the officer Ludd had damaged – kept advancing, firing, las-fire clipping and puncturing their armour. Caught in the middle, Kolding ducked his head and continued working on Sindre as las shrieked past him in one direction and galvanic bursts burned past in the other.

Pasha rose and spat blood. She started blazing at the skitarii with her sidearm. Elam, snarling in frustration, punched the frenzied adept logis in the gut and then the neck. As the adept staggered backwards, Elam swung up his lasrifle and shot him twice. Elam’s right cheek was raked with claw marks. A graviton pulse shivered the air right in front of him, and then punched a dent the size of a medicine ball in the lab’s metal wall. Elam threw himself flat. He fast-crawled, reached the nearest workbench, and got to his knees, using it as cover. He started to hose at the skitarii too.

The multiple flailing cyberlimbs serving the bench grabbed him, like a spider seizing its prey. Elam yelped. The limbs had his wrist, forearm and shoulder, and the digital claws were drawing blood. Mechadendrites slashed and whipped, trying to loop his neck. An additional servo-arm reached in, servos purring, extending a gleaming titanium scalpel towards his face.

Elam tore free, leaving most of his sleeve and part of his cape behind him. He landed clumsily on the polished floor. The manipulator limbs began to mercilessly dissect the scraps of fabric they had captured.

A galvanic shot-burst went through Dickerson and exited in a giant mist of blood and disintegrated meat. The spray drenched Mkget and blinded him for a moment.

Ludd heard Setz shriek. The manipulator arms on all the work benches were thrashing and clawing wildly. Drill-limbs and flashing surgical blades were ripping into Sindre’s helpless form. They skinned and butchered him in a matter of seconds, dividing him into bizarre, geometric pieces.

Setz had still been trying to compress Sindre’s wound. The limbs had seized him too.

Kolding tried to grab him. The hyper-mobile limbs slammed Setz face down into Sindre’s steaming remains. Mechadendrite cables lashed around him, and constricted him, binding him to the bench. The cutting beams, shuttling side-to-side along rapid and precise lines, did the rest, slicing Setz from crown to shoulders into dozens of wafer thin cross-sections.

Kolding backed away, utterly dazed by the horror of it. Ludd body-slammed him, bringing him down out of the crossfire.

Elam and Konjic concentrated fire on the remaining skitarii warrior. The barrage of las-bolts ripped off its arm and destroyed its face. It fell, fluid jetting from the impact cracks crazing its bodyplate.

The last skitarius, the officer with the engraved skull, came to a halt. Cerebral fluid and hydrodynamic synthetics gushed from a large hole in the middle of its forehead. It died standing up, augmetic limbs locked.

Pasha lowered her sidearm. The air in the lab was thick with discharge smoke, and almost every surface was splashed and dripping with blood. A broken monitor was sparking and burning.

‘Throne alive,’ whispered Mkget.

‘Alert!’ Pasha yelled. ‘Alert, all sections–’

She realised that her ear-bead had been yanked out when the adept assaulted her. She fumbled for it, found the trailing wire, and stuffed it back in her ear.

Before she could speak, she heard the frantic traffic from the Ghost units inside EM 14.

‘–attacking! They’re fething attacking! I say again, the Mechanicus have turned on us! The Mechanicus have turned on us!’

Outside the lab, rapid gunfire was rolling through the hallways and arcades.

TWELVE: QIMURAH

The man who was going to kill him at dawn came to save his life in the middle of the night.

Keys scraped at the locks of the old cell door. It took three keys to release the thick slab of battered metal. Usually, the unlocking routine was methodical and precise, but this sounded hasty and rushed.

Mabbon waited patiently. He could do little else. The iron manacles on his wrists attached him to the floor by a heavy chain. He could stand and walk in a small circle in the tight confines of the filthy cell, or he could sit on the rockcrete block that served as a stool. They always ordered him to sit when they were coming in, and he preferred it that way.

The heavy door opened, groaning on its metal hinges. Zamak looked in at him. Zamak was one of the six guards who watched Mabbon around the clock. He was Urdeshi, a thick-set man from the 17th Heavy Storm Troop cadre that provided all six members of the guard team.

Zamak looked flustered, his face red, sweat on his forehead. His puzzle-pattern jacket was open as if he hadn’t had time to button it properly. He wasn’t wearing his body armour.

He stepped into the cell, producing the set of keys that fit the manacles. No body search first. No thorough pat-down. None of the usual, painstaking protocols.

‘I don’t usually see you at this hour,’ said Mabbon.

‘I’ve got to move you,’ said Zamak. He was trying to find the correct key. His hands were shaking.

‘Is it dawn already?’ Mabbon asked.

‘Shut up,’ said Zamak. He breathed hard. ‘They’re through the yard already. They’re killing everybody.’

Mabbon had been aware of the gunfire for the past ten minutes. Las-fire, sporadic, its whip-crack sound muffled by the cellblock’s thick stone walls.

‘Who?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Your kind!’ Zamak spat. ‘Your filth!’

Mabbon nodded, understanding. It had been inevitable. He had been waiting for it.

‘Sons?’ he asked. ‘Sons of Sek?’

‘I don’t know what they are!’

Mabbon shrugged, as much as the chains would allow.

‘A kill team, I should think,’ he said placidly. ‘Mortuak Nkah. An “extinction force”. I imagine that’s what they’d send.’

Zamak fumbled and released the heavy cuff around Mabbon’s right wrist.

‘I’ve got to move you,’ he said. ‘Get you clear. Get you to a safe location.’

‘Why?’ asked Mabbon.

Zamak stared at him. ‘They’re coming to kill you,’ he said.

Mabbon nodded. ‘I know they are,’ he replied. ‘Zamak, you’re scheduled to shoot me at dawn.’

‘Yeah,’ Zamak said, struggling to fit the key to the other cuff. Garic, the S-troop squad leader, had explained the timetable to Mabbon two days earlier. At dawn, the six man team guarding him would take him from the cell, escort him down to the yard, put him against the wall, and shoot him. Mabbon didn’t know which of them would actually end his life. It might be any of them. All six would fire their lasrifles at once. He would, he had been told, be offered a blindfold.

‘Well, I don’t understand,’ Mabbon said. ‘You want me dead. They want me dead. Stand aside and let them have me.’

‘I can’t do that!’ Zamak exclaimed. He looked horrified at the suggestion. ‘I’ve got to get you clear–’

‘Why?’ asked Mabbon. He was genuinely bemused. ‘The packsons are killing people to get to me. Killing anyone in their way, or so it sounds. If you try to protect me, you will become a target.’

‘So?’

‘Zamak, the logic isn’t hard. Let them have me. Save yourself.’

‘I can’t do that. I’ve got to move you. That’s orders.’

‘If you get me clear, are you still going to execute me at sunrise?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Of course.’

‘Then what–’ Mabbon began.

‘Shut up!’ Zamak snapped. He couldn’t get the key to fit the left cuff.

‘I’m serious,’ said Mabbon. ‘You’re risking your life over a… what? A bureaucratic issue? By dawn, I’ll be dead. Does it matter who does it?’

‘It doesn’t work like that!’ Zamak said.

‘Well, I think it should. There’s a strong chance you’ll die protecting me. If you don’t, you’ll only shoot me yourself. Go. Get out of here. By dawn, I’ll be dead. You don’t have to be dead too.’

‘Shut the hell up!’

‘I really don’t understand the Imperium sometimes,’ Mabbon said. ‘It’s so constrained by administrative nonsense and paradoxical–’

Zamak had become so flustered he dropped the keys. They landed on the floor between Mabbon’s feet.

‘Shit!’ said Zamak. He bent down to pick them up. Outside, close by, a lasgun ripped out three shots. They heard a man cry out in pain. The cry cut short.

Zamak turned in fear. He drew his sidearm and stepped back to the cell door warily. He peered out.

‘Shit,’ he said again. He stepped out of the cell and disappeared from view.

Mabbon looked at the open door. He waited. He looked down at the keys on the floor at his feet. He cleared his throat and sat up straight, his hands resting in his lap.

He stared at the doorway.

He heard a man shouting nearby, then a burst of pistol fire. An auto sidearm, emptying its clip. The double-crack of two las-shots, then a third. Silence.

Zamak reappeared. He leant against the frame of the cell door. His breathing was laboured, and he was struggling to change the clip on his autopistol. He was making a mess of the task because his hands were both slippery with blood. There was a hole in his torso just below the rib line, and his jacket and undershirt were soaked, dark and heavy.

He’d just slammed the fresh clip home when a las-bolt struck him in the centre of his body mass. The impact bounced him off the door frame, and he half-fell, half-slid to the ground outside the cell with his body turned to the right and his legs splayed.

His killer appeared, framed in the doorway. He looked down at Zamak, then fired another shot into him for good measure.

The killer turned, and stared at Mabbon through the open door.

‘Pheguth,’ he said.

‘Qimurah,’ Mabbon said. ‘I’m honoured. I did not expect him to send one of your kind.’

‘More than one,’ said the Qimurah. ‘The vengeance of He whose voice drowns out all others will not be denied this time.’

Mabbon nodded.

‘I am not trying to deny it,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

The Qimurah stepped into the cell. He was fully worked and revealed, towering and skeletally taut. His neon eyes shone. The Anarch did make such beautiful things.

The Qimurah wore dirty, Guard-issue fatigues that didn’t fit well. The old combat boots had bulged and split a little where they failed to contain his elongated, clawed feet. He carried a worn, humble lasrifle. His tangled rows of yellowed teeth, like little tusks, shaped into what was probably a smile.

‘Shadhek,’ said Mabbon.

‘You recognise me.’

‘It’s been a long time. Fefnag Pass. Scouring the archenemy into the sea.’

‘You are the archenemy now,’ said Shadhek.

‘No, not to anyone,’ said Mabbon. ‘And yet, to everyone. My end is sought by everyone under the stars.’

‘Do you want me to pity you?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘I will not understand you, Mabbon,’ said Shadhek. ‘Not in a thousand thousand years. You were etogaur. A great warrior. No soul more loyal, no commander more shrewd. It was an honour to serve at your side. There were the makings of a magister in you. All who knew you said so.’

‘That’s consolation, I suppose,’ said Mabbon.

‘And then,’ Shadhek murmured. He shrugged. ‘Pheguth. Lowest of all. Lower than filth. A traitor. A betrayer of all trust. You turned.’

‘I have turned more than once in my life. Neither path ever took.’

‘Why, Mabbon?’

‘Because no one ever offered me an answer, Shadhek,’ Mabbon replied.

‘An answer? What answer?’

‘To the most simple of all questions. Why.’

‘Why?’

‘Why all of this? Why any of it? Why do we kill with such consuming intent? Why does this galaxy burn? Imperium and Archonate, eternally locked in rage. No one ever asking why. Who is right? Who is wrong? What secret domain of truth lies between those two extremes?’

Shadhek sneered.

‘You have lost your mind,’ he said.

Mabbon smiled.

‘I think I am the only sane soul alive,’ said Mabbon, ‘but that amounts to the same thing.’

‘Well,’ said Shadhek, ‘now you won’t even be that.’

He raised the lasgun until the muzzle was just a hand’s length from Mabbon’s face. Mabbon did not cower. He did not try to shy away from it. He sat in place, back straight, staring into the notched barrel.

‘Vahooth voi sehn,’ Shadhek said.

The sound of the shot boomed in the close confines of the cell.

Mabbon’s head snapped sideways. The las-bolt had scorched his right cheek and torn through the fleshy lump of his right ear before stroking the back wall of the cell. Blood poured down the side of his head.

He blinked.

Shadhek had been wrenched backwards at the last second, enough to swing his aim aside. The tip of a silver warknife protruded from the middle of his chest, neon blood oozing out around it. A man was clinging to him from behind, one arm locked around his throat, bending him back, the other driving the warblade into his back.

‘Feth me, what are you?’ snarled Varl.

The Qimurah still had his weapon. It fired twice as Varl wrench him backwards. One las-bolt missed Mabbon’s shoulder by a centimetre. The other hit the stone block he was sitting on. Mabbon didn’t flinch. He didn’t even move.

‘Ah,’ he murmured wearily.

Cursing and raging, Varl hauled the Qimurah backwards, trying to turn him away from Mabbon before he fired again.

‘Fething feth-bag shit-stain won’t fething die!’ Varl yelled through gritted teeth.

Shadhek snarled and shoved himself back, mashing Varl between himself and the door frame. Varl barked as all the air was crushed out of him. Shadhek tried to shake him off and turn. Gasping, Varl managed to jerk his straight silver out of the Qimurah’s back before he lost his grip on it completely. As the reworked turned, Varl raked the blade in a frantic slash that opened a diagonal slit across Shadhek’s chest and cut through the strap of his lasgun.

Varl kicked, planting the entire sole of his left boot in the Qimurah’s belly. Shadhek lurched backwards and slammed into the cell wall. The impact forced neon blood from his chest wound. His rifle tumbled out of his grip and clattered across the floor.

Jaws wide, he lunged at Varl.

‘Feth–’ said Varl a second before he was driven into the corner of the cell. He’d been reaching for the lasrifle looped over his shoulder, but Shadhek didn’t give him time to act.

Shadhek’s paws locked around Varl’s throat, squeezing to snap his neck. Thrashing, Varl rammed his warknife into Shadhek’s sternum and shoved with both hands until the blade was buried to the hilt.

An agonised, mangled sound came out of Varl’s mouth as the Qimurah throttled him.

Mabbon looked down at the keys again. He looked at the cuff on his left wrist.

He looked at Varl, as the Ghost sergeant reached the final moments of his life.

With one last burst of near inhuman effort, Varl shoved. Shadhek staggered back, his hands still locked around Varl’s throat. Varl’s hands, soaked with neon blood, were clenched around the grip of the warknife buried in Shadhek’s solar plexus.

Mabbon stood up. He looped the heavy floor chain of his remaining cuff around Shadhek’s neck, took up the slack, and wrenched the Qimurah away from the Ghost.

Shadhek stumbled, the loop of chain biting into his neck. Mabbon kicked the back of his knees and brought him down, then stood on his chest and pulled the chain as tight as he could.

‘Gun,’ he said.

Varl was coughing and retching. He snatched his dangling rifle and aimed it down at the Qimurah.

‘Hurry,’ said Mabbon patiently. ‘I can’t hold him for long.’

Varl roared, and put three rounds into the Qimurah’s grimacing face. Incandescent blood sprayed out across the flagstones and spattered them both. Half of the Qimurah’s face was a smoking ruin of neon gore.

Mabbon kept the chain tight.

‘More,’ he said.

‘I’ve fething–’ Varl gasped.

‘More,’ said Mabbon.

Varl fired again. Four shots, five, six. When he stopped, very little of the reworked’s head remained. Broken tusk fangs stuck at angles in the shapeless, bloody mess.

Mabbon let the chain go slack, and took his foot off the body.

‘They’re hard to kill,’ he said.

‘No shit.’

‘Qimurah. Their tolerances are beyond human.’

‘Uh huh,’ said Varl. He coughed, then turned and threw up on the floor. He stood bent over for a second, heaving and gasping.

‘You had a rifle, sergeant,’ said Mabbon. ‘Why didn’t you use that? Why did you lead with the blade?’

Varl spat on the floor. He straightened up.

‘You were right in the line of fire,’ he replied, his voice hoarse. ‘I might have hit you too.’

‘That seems to bother a surprising number of men today,’ said Mabbon.

Varl saw the keys lying on the floor. He picked them up and reached for Mabbon’s cuff.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘These fethers are all over the place. It’s fething murder outside. Shift your arse.’

‘I am not sure why you’re saving me,’ said Mabbon.

‘Me neither,’ said Varl. ‘Gaunt’s orders.’

‘Ah.’

‘Come on,’ Varl said, stripping off the remaining cuff.

‘I am resigned to die, Sergeant Varl,’ Mabbon said, not moving. ‘I have been waiting for it. Longing for it, probably. All of this is entirely unnecessary. You’ve risked your life and wasted your time–’

‘Come. The feth. Along,’ said Varl.

Mabbon looked at him.

‘Please, I… I’ve had enough,’ said Mabbon.

‘Yeah? Really?’ asked Varl. ‘Then why did you step in? You sat there like a dozy fether while all of that went down, then at the last moment, bang, in you come. Why do anything if you want to fething die?’

Mabbon hesitated.

‘I don’t care about my life any more,’ he said. He looked at Varl. ‘But you were always decent to me, Sergeant Varl. Fair. One of the very few who were. My submission would have meant your death too.’

‘Oh, gee,’ said Varl. ‘I’m touched. I’m getting a nice warm feeling in my… no, that’s vomit. Move your fething arse now, Mabbon. We are leaving and it’s not going to be pretty.’

They left the cell and headed down the dank blockway, Varl in the lead with his weapon ready. Tatters of gunfire continued to echo.

‘I don’t even know where we are,’ said Mabbon.

‘Camp Xenos,’ said Varl. ‘Used to be a civilian jail, but it got turned Prefectus pen during the occupation.’

‘Where is that?’ asked Mabbon.

Varl glanced back at him with a frown.

‘Plade Parish,’ he said. ‘East Central Eltath.’

Mabbon nodded. ‘They brought me in blindfold,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Eltath looks like. Is it a pleasant city?’

‘Not right now,’ said Varl.

Mabbon looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. ‘I have only known the inside of cells for a long time. I have not been without manacles or leg irons for years–’

‘Just keep it down and keep it tight,’ Varl hissed. They passed through a rolling cage divider into another gloomy bay. Two corpses lay on the stone floor surrounded by puddles of blood that looked as shiny and black as tar in the low light. Their poses were clumsy, as though they had been frozen in the middle of restless sleep. One of them was Garic, the leader of the execution watch.

‘Grab a weapon,’ said Varl. Mabbon didn’t.

The prison was old, just a series of rockcrete blockhouses. Most of the paint-scabbed cell doors were open, and Mabbon saw weeds growing between the floor slabs.

‘Are there other prisoners?’ Mabbon asked.

‘No,’ said Varl. ‘They cleared the place to make it all special for you.’

‘Me and six guards?’

‘No, a garrison of thirty plus a six-man prisoner detail.’

They approached an open yard twenty metres wide. The area was roofed in with chain mesh. Above the high wall, Mabbon could dimly see the stacks of a vapour mill blowing slow, silent columns of pale steam up into the night air.

Varl made Mabbon wait before stepping out into the yard. Rawne appeared at a doorway on the far side.

He gestured, Tanith hand-code.

‘Got him, colonel,’ Varl said, signing back.

‘Colonel?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Yeah, there’s a lot of shit been going on,’ said Varl.

On the far side of the yard, Rawne edged a little way out of the doorway, lasrifle ready, peering up at the rooftops that overlooked the chain mesh layer. Trooper Nomis got in beside him, forming a V cover. They drew no immediate fire.

Apparently satisfied, Rawne signalled to Varl.

‘With me, double time, now,’ Varl told Mabbon.

They started out across the yard. Within seconds, las-bolts slammed down around them, steep plunging fire from above and behind. The shots dug scorch-holes in the yard’s rough ground, and left glowing, broken holes in the mesh above.

Rawne and Nomis both opened up, squirting shots up at the roof, and pinging more molten holes through the mesh. Varl got his arm around Mabbon and bundled him towards the door they had just left by.

Something landed hard on the mesh, making it jingle and undulate like a trampoline. The Qimurah had jumped from above. He turned, balanced in a low, splayed crouch on the wobbling mesh, and fired rapid, angled shots at the retreating Varl and Mabbon.

Rawne and Nomis hailed fire at the exposed figure. Hit multiple times, the Qimurah tumbled forwards, rolling and bouncing on the metal net. It was tearing in places where his weight combined with the heat-tear damage of gunfire. He wasn’t dead. He was trying to regain his balance to shoot again.

Rawne and Nomis stepped out into the open, training their fire at him. Spurts of neon fluid spattered down through the mesh.

Brostin stomped out of the doorway behind Rawne. He was hefting up his flamer’s nozzle.

‘Feth him up!’ Rawne yelled. ‘We’ll be all day killing the fether at this rate!’

Brostin’s flamer belched, and hosed a broad, yellow cone of flame up at the netting. The Qimurah was engulfed. They saw him thrash and twist, fire encasing him.

The damaged security mesh tore with a series of sharp metal whip-cracks. Part of it flopped down, spilling the burning Qimurah down onto the yard.

‘All right,’ said Varl, dragging Mabbon back out of the doorway where they had almost fallen. ‘Brostin’s cooked his–’

‘No!’ Mabbon warned.

The Qimurah got up again, flames still licking and swirling off his body. His clothes had burned off entirely. His flesh, from head to toe, was a bubbling mass of yellow ooze, blistering and dripping.

He raised his lasrifle. His hands and the rifle were swathed in fire. He got off three shots. One hit Brostin, fusing and snapping the buckle of his tank pack and knocking him backwards. The other two hit Nomis in the face and throat and killed him outright. Then the intense heat made the Qimurah’s rifle jam.

The Qimurah tossed it aside like a burning stick and began to limp towards Varl and Mabbon.

‘Shitty shit shit!’ Varl gasped, and started firing. Brostin was trying to wrestle with his now un-anchored tanks so he could let rip again.

‘Trooper Brostin! Tight squirt! Tight squirt!’ yelled Mabbon over Varl’s head. ‘Pull your flames tight!’

Brostin frowned, but obediently screwed the nozzle choke as tight as it would go. Varl had no idea how Brostin wasn’t burning his hands on the metal of the flamer spout. Rawne had run forwards to help brace the heavy tanks swinging off Brostin’s shoulder.

Brostin hosed again. His flamer made a much wilder, higher shriek. He shot a narrow, focused spear of nearly white-hot flame that struck the advancing Qimurah in the back.

The Qimurah staggered, seared from behind by the intense surge. He re-combusted in a rush of furious light, the flesh on his back rippling away in blackened flakes like paint stripping under the tongue of a blow torch. He became a column of fire in which they could see his ribcage and long bones in silhouette as meat and muscle transmuted into billowing clouds of ash and droplets of burning fat.

He collapsed, his remains making a heap like a pile of burning sticks. His skull, black as anthracite and steaming, rolled clear.

Varl pulled Mabbon out of the doorway. Brostin put the tanks down, panting. Rawne crossed to Nomis to check for a pulse, but one look at the man’s wounds told him it was futile.

‘Nice trick,’ said Brostin to Mabbon.

‘Qimurah secrete mucus through their skin,’ said Mabbon. ‘It makes them highly resistant to energy fire and to strong levels of heat. Blanketing them in flame is ineffective, but even they can’t withstand a sustained, focused blast at the very highest temperature.’

‘Good to know,’ said Brostin, trying to cobble a make-do repair on his tank-straps. ‘Because they’re awful fethers.’

‘What did you call them?’ asked Rawne.

‘Qimurah,’ said Mabbon. ‘The Anarch’s chosen ones. Elite and very rare. Hello, colonel. I gather it’s colonel, now. On your way to making etogaur at this rate.’

Rawne looked at him.

‘Not really the time or place for a catch up,’ he said. ‘Varl, get him under cover. There could be more of the fethers up there.’

Varl led Mabbon by the arm towards the door Rawne had emerged from.

‘How many are they, colonel?’ Mabbon asked over his shoulder.

‘We’ve seen six,’ said Rawne.

‘And killed two,’ said Varl.

‘I am flattered they sent more than one,’ said Mabbon. ‘Colonel, there will be eight of them. They either come alone, or in squads of eight.’

‘Eight? You sure?’

‘Please, colonel,’ said Mabbon. ‘It’s the holy number. Only sixty-four Qimurah ever exist at one time. Eight times eight, you see? There will be eight. How many men are with you?’

‘One section,’ said Rawne.

‘One?’

‘Just the Suicide Kings. B Company, first section.’

‘Then, with respect, you are dead,’ said Mabbon. ‘Six remain. It is unprecedented for the Anarch to deploy eight Qimurah together in this day and age.’

‘You’re clearly high on his to-do list,’ said Rawne.

‘But the pheguth’s not the primary target, is he?’ said Varl.

‘What?’ asked Rawne.

Varl shrugged. ‘Their primary target is gonna be the same as ours,’ he said. ‘Collecting Mabbon’s just a courtesy. We sent the bulk of our lot after the eagle stones. And if they sent eight here–’

‘What’s that?’ asked Brostin. ‘Sixty-four minus… that’s fifty-six. Fifty-fething-six of these bastards?’

‘To field all the Qimurah on one world at one time,’ said Mabbon. He was clearly stunned. ‘That’s unheard of. That’s never happened. It–’

‘It means Pasha and the Ghosts are totally fethed,’ said Rawne. ‘Oysten! Get me the vox. Now!’

From the blockhouse ahead, gunfire renewed in serious, frantic blurts.

‘Oysten!’ Rawne yelled. He looked at Brostin and Varl. ‘Close on him,’ he said, pointing at Mabbon. ‘We’re going to take him straight through and out. Staying here is not an option.’

Lunny Obel opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He shook his head.

Finally, he said, ‘Fethed if I understand any of this.’

He put another las-round into the already dead adept warden, just to be certain.

He looked around.

‘How many?’ he called out. ‘How many did we lose?’

‘Eight,’ said Maggs quietly.

‘Nine,’ said Larkin. ‘Nine. Etzen’s over here behind the… the thing.’ He waved his hand wearily at one of the turbine hall’s control desks.

Tona Criid rose from the body of the other adept warden. She had picked up the ornate stave he had, without warning, used to kill three of the Ghosts. She turned it over in her hand. Then she looked around the hall. Fyceline smoke was still hanging in the air. Zhukova had just managed to manually close the outer hatch, locking out a Mechanicus automata that was now standing outside, emptying its munition hoppers against the hatch plate. The impacts were making a noise like a machine-hammer, and flecks of green paint were scabbing and flying off the inside of the door. Behind that immediate thundering, Criid could hear other gunfire. The automata, a squat gun servitor, had been one of several that had started shooting in the arcade outside the Turbine Hall just seconds before the adept wardens had gone berserk. By the sound of it, there was now a full-scale rolling battle tearing through EM 14, as the companies of Tanith Ghosts who had entered the facility with Major Pasha tried to fend off the Cult Mechanicus personnel who had turned on them for no reason.

Criid took a quick head count: Obel, Larkin, Zhukova, Mkhet, Boaz, Falkerin, Galashia, Cleb, Ifvan, Maggs, Lubba… all told thirty-one Ghosts from the two teams that she and Obel had assembled were left.

‘What do we do?’ Lubba asked.

‘We go in,’ said Obel. ‘We go in now, as per Pasha’s orders.’

Criid nodded.

‘I think the situation has changed wildly since she issued that order,’ said Larkin. ‘The fething Mechanicus freaks are trying to end us.’

‘I don’t think they know what they’re trying to do,’ said Maggs. He gestured at the data screens that covered one wall of the imposing hall. They were rolling with broken codeware and half-formed runes. The hall’s lights were flickering, and the huge turbine didn’t sound as though it was running well. Even a tech-novice could tell that something catastrophic had swept through the Mechanicus facility.

‘They didn’t turn on us,’ Zhukova agreed. ‘They just all turned insane, like a switch being thrown.’

‘How could you tell?’ asked Larkin. ‘They’re freaks at the best of times.’

‘You could tell,’ said Zhukova. ‘They went feral. Central system corruption. Maybe part of the Archenemy attack. I don’t know. But if they’d simply decided to kill us, for whatever reason of logic, we’d be dead.’

She looked at the corpses of the two adept wardens. It had taken the combined, desperate efforts of all of them to drop the wardens, and only then because the wardens had attacked without any regard for their own safety.

‘They went mad?’ Larkin asked. ‘How could you tell?’

‘Because they behaved like humans,’ said Criid. ‘Emotion. Frenzy. That’s not Mechanicus.’

‘Well,’ Larkin pouted. ‘Whatever, are we still going in?’

‘Orders still stand,’ said Criid. ‘Orders from Pasha, given to her by Gaunt. The objective is still essential, even if the game on the ground just turned bad.’

‘All right,’ said Ifvan. ‘But how do we get in? And how do we know where to go? Those murdering shit-heads were supposed to show us.’

Zhukova pointed to an embossed metal sign bolted to the marble wall. It looked like a circuit map.

‘That seems to be a schematic of the vent systems,’ she said.

‘Make some sense of it,’ Criid ordered. ‘Everybody get kit-light. We’ll be moving fast because we’ve already lost time. Weapons, torches and ammo. And water. Check your reloads. Strip extras from the dead.’

Several of the Ghosts looked at her.

‘They’d want us to have them,’ she said flatly. ‘They’d want us to use them. Lunny, see if you can raise Pasha. Or anyone.’

Obel nodded, and started trying his micro-bead. Criid crossed to where Zhukova and Maggs were studying the metal sign.

‘Is that a plan?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Zhukova. ‘This is us here. Turbine Hall One.’ She pointed. ‘So access is that duct over there. It’s a bit of a maze, but if I’m reading this right, we can follow the ducts down to the main geotherm shaft here. If the bastards got in this way, then that’s the way they’re coming out. It’s the main spur to the city power system. So if we can get down here as quick as we can, we can block their route. Their only way out will be through us. That is, if I’m understanding this correctly.’

‘You’re our best hope,’ said Criid. ‘And our best chance for finding the way.’

Zhukova nodded grimly. The scouts in both Criid and Obel’s team sections were amongst the dead, their flesh and bone demolished by the wardens’ grav pulses. Ornella Zhukova was the closest thing they had to a fully fledged scout.

‘Finding the way’s not going to be our problem,’ said Maggs. ‘Stopping the bastards is. Pasha and Kadle reckoned they were like bullet proof or some shit.’

‘We’ll just have to pack as much punch as we can,’ said Criid. ‘Flamers–’

‘And fire-retardant,’ said Maggs.

‘We’ve got Larkin and Okain, so we’ve got hotshots,’ said Criid. ‘We can bring the .20.’

‘Snipers and a crew-served? In a tunnel?’ Maggs said, mocking.

‘We’ve got grenades and tube charges,’ Criid went on firmly. She looked at the stave in her hand. ‘And we can improvise.’

Maggs sighed. He looked at the sign. ‘If I had some paper, I could make a rubbing of this. Or a data-slate, we could copy it.’

‘All the data-slates have crashed too,’ said Criid. ‘Central link. The noospheric thing. And I don’t think the Mechanicus uses paper.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Zhukova, staring at the sign and moving her right index finger around her left palm as though she was sketching. ‘I can memorise it.’

Criid, Lubba and Ifvan opened the duct cover. Automation was off, so they had to force the heavy bolts manually. They were sweating by the time they’d finished. It was work a power-assisted servitor would normally have performed. Lubba heaved the circular hatch open, and a wall of heat and gas fumes rolled out.

It made them all step back.

‘Shit,’ said Ifvan. ‘That’s gonna kill us.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ said Criid.

‘Do we need masks?’ asked Lubba. ‘You know, rebreathers and stuff?’

Criid looked around. There were plenty of equipment racks in the hall’s workspace, but no masks or rebreather hoods. The adepts of the Cult had no need of such things.

‘We’ll be fine,’ she repeated. She peered into the duct, and shone her stablight. It was a circular metal tube three metres in diameter, the interior black with soot and mineral deposits. Every three metres, it was banded with a big iron reinforcement ring. The duct stretched as far as her beam could reach.

‘Let’s go!’ she called out.

Obel was gathering his kit, still trying his bead.

‘Obel to Pasha. Do you copy? Obel to Pasha.’

In the laboratory space, Konjic passed the vox-mic to Pasha.

Pasha took it.

‘Lunny? Is Pasha. Sorry, vox is being scrambled by whatever crazy has happened to our Mechanicus hosts. Konjic had to run re-routes, clever boy.’

‘We’re going in, major,’ Obel replied on speaker. ‘Not ideal circumstances–’

‘You do your best, Lunny Obel. Make Belladon proud.’

‘I’m from Tanith, ma’am.’

‘And where is that, these days, eh? Belladon will give you land and honour when you come home a hero. An adopted son. Do what you can. In five minutes, I start sending teams down from this end.’

‘We’ve locked ourselves in here, major,’ said Obel, his voice crackling with static. ‘What’s the situation?’

‘Is bad, sad to tell,’ she replied. She looked over at the door that led from the lab into the arcade. Spetnin had a squad there and two more outside, fending off anything that came close. She could hear the constant chatter of las-fire. ‘The Mechanicus makes deadly toys. Gun-servitors. Kill machines. Very bad. Also, the priests have gone insane. We are killing many, and so are they.’

‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ replied Obel. ‘Can you contact the palace for reinforcement?’

Pasha grimaced. ‘I will try, Lunny. Now off you go. The Emperor protects.’

‘Obel out.’

Pasha handed the mic back to her adjutant.

‘Didn’t have the heart to tell him,’ she said. Konjic had been trying the Urdeshic Palace and high command channels for several minutes. They were all dead. It wasn’t just scrambling or interference. The caster display read all those sites as non-functional. She dreaded to think what might have happened.

She took a deep breath. All she could do was focus on the job at hand, the job the Lord Executor had given her.

Spetnin hurried over. He was bleeding from a scalp wound.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Almost an over-run,’ he replied. ‘All our companies inside the complex have been driven into pockets by the frenzy. The Mechanicus has run amok. But they’re making easy targets. It just takes a lot to kill them. Our casualty rate stands at about thirty per cent.’

‘Throne,’ she rumbled. That was hundreds of men.

‘Our big problem is going to be ammunition,’ Spetnin said. ‘We’re burning through it, and we can’t get out to resupply. Are we getting reinforcement?’

She shook her head.

‘Not from the palace,’ she said. ‘But we have four companies outside.’

‘Who are in a fight themselves,’ Spetnin reminded her.

‘They may be better off than us,’ she said. ‘They were ready for theirs. Konjic, please to see if you can raise Kolosim.’

On the scree around the approach road, the Ghosts were lighting up the night. Their position was holding, and they were answering everything the insurgents handed them with interest. Already, the fire rate from the Archenemy, invisible in the waste-ground on the far side of the highway bank, had begun to drop off. Kolosim reckoned that in another ten minutes the hostiles would run out of munitions, or the will to continue, or the Ghosts would have simply killed enough of them to break them.

He cracked off some shots himself, using a rockcrete post as cover, his cape drawn in around him to mask him in the night. Ripples of bolts were criss-crossing the highway, and the Ghost’s extended line was dancing with discharge flashes and the big fire blurts of the heavy support weapons.

His link crackled.

‘Kolosim, go,’ he said.

‘Pasha. It is shit-show in here. We’re going to need some help.’

‘Happy to oblige as soon as this breaks, major,’ he replied.

‘Make it fast, captain. We are running dry of ammunition. If you can get in here, bring plenty. And consider anything and anyone you meet who isn’t a Ghost a hostile. The Mechanicus has turned.’

‘They’ve turned?’

‘Bah. Long story. Just get in. But bring ammo, and bring things that kill hard. Tread fethers. Grenades. Crew-served units. All targets have a high stopping factor.’

‘Stay alive,’ he responded. ‘I’ll advise you as soon as we’re moving. Kolosim out.’

Kolosim ducked down and crawled through the rubble to Bray’s position.

‘Here’s a twist,’ he said. ‘We’re going in.’

‘Into the Mechanicore?’ Bray asked.

Kolosim nodded and quickly related what Pasha had said. ‘I want you to get at least a company strength ready to fall back as soon as this dies down enough.’

Bray nodded. He looked back up the approach road at the dark, grim bulk of the Mechanicus fortress, a grey monolith in the night.

‘Ironic,’ he said. ‘We thought our job was going to be defending that place. Not invading it.’

‘You know what ironic gets you?’ Kolosim asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Fething nothing. Not a thing. This situation is ongoing and developing. I don’t much fancy assaulting a fortified location like that head on, but I’m not leaving Pasha and the rest to die in there. That’s over two thirds of the Ghosts.’

‘If we can get the main gate open, we might be able to use the transports to move munitions inside in bulk. Faster than carry-teams.’

‘All right,’ said Kolosim. ‘Clock’s ticking.’

The fire rate coming in at them suddenly dropped away to almost nothing. Just a few lone shooters continued to pink away.

‘The feth?’ said Bray.

Kolosim pulled his bead close. ‘Ghost formations, cease fire. Cease fire.’

Firing from the Tanith lines died back. An almost eerie silence settled over the nightscape, broken only by a few cracks and pops from persistent shooters and the distant grumble of heat lightning. A haze of smoke drifted.

‘I don’t like that,’ said Bray.

Kolosim didn’t either. He’d expected the attack to die away eventually, because the insurgents moved in small, mobile, ill-supported units and their ammunition was limited. But they hadn’t all run out all at once. This fire-halt was coordinated.

They waited. After an anxious minute or two, they heard the engine.

A cargo-6 was coming down the highway from the east, lights hooded. It was moving at a fair pace. Kolosim couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked like its cab windows had been plated with flakboard.

‘Crap!’ he said. ‘Oh crap!’

He knew what it was. The Sekkite insurgence had driven bombs into several targets during the long months of the Urdesh campaign. They were rolling something in now. The foot attack had been to keep the Ghosts in position. Now the kill thrust was coming.

A cargo-6 could carry about ten tonnes. If it was fully laden, and that load was thermite or D60, both of which the insurgents used, then it would level a couple of square kilometres around the approach road.

Several Ghosts had taken aim at the approaching truck.

‘No!’ Bray ordered. A stray shot would set off an unstable load. A tread fether like the one Chiria was lugging would certainly stop the truck, but the result would be the same. It was already too close. A blast would take half of the Ghosts with it.

‘Fall back?’ asked Bray.

Kolosim shook his head. There was no time. No one would get clear. Not even at a run.

He dashed down the line to Nessa.

‘Driver!’ he said, signing. ‘Driver or engine block! Nothing else!’

She nodded, and set her long-las, resting it on its folding bipod across the top of the boulder she was crouched behind.

The cargo-6 thundered closer, kicking up dust. It was running fast, and wavering across the centre-line of the highway.

‘Nessa?’ Kolosim urged.

‘I have to wait,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It has to be side-on, or the round will go clean through to the back compartment.’

‘Shit!’ Kolosim hissed.

The truck came up the final stretch. Ghosts in the line nearby had ducked flat. It took the corner hard, tyres squealing, tilting hard on its suspension. Throne, it was loaded heavy.

Past the corner it began to accelerate up the approach road. It was almost level with them.

Nessa looked serene. She seemed to have stopped breathing.

Her long-las boomed.

The hotshot round went through the boarded side window of the cab. It must have delivered a straight kill to the driver, because the truck veered hard. Nessa ejected the cell, slammed home another, and fired again. Her reload cycle had taken less than a second. She didn’t even appear to aim the second time. She fired, and the second hotshot punched through the truck’s engine cover. Something blew out under the hood and the truck decelerated hard. Its motor was clattering and stricken. The truck came to a slow halt as its sudden lack of motive power worked with the incline of the approach road. It started to coast, then swung sideways and rammed a fencepost.

Kolosim had closed his eyes. He opened them. The truck had not detonated. Its front end was caved around the post. It started rolling backwards slowly, carried by its own weight on the slope.

‘Feth!’ Kolosim said.

The truck rolled silently, motor dead, and bounced off the approach road on the other side, rear axle down in the gulley.

Again, it did not go off.

Kolosim was up and running. So were Caober and Chiria, heedless of the fact that they were exposed with insurgents in range on the far side of the highway.

Chiria reached the truck first, and clambered into the back.

‘Chiria?’ Kolosim yelled.

‘More D60 than I ever want to see in one place again,’ she called back. ‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘It’s on a timer.’

‘How long?’

‘You don’t want to know. Run.’

Caober had opened the cab door. The driver, a Sek packson, was dead behind the wheel. Nessa’s shot had entirely vaporised his head.

Kolosim got up into the back. His jaw dropped. He’d never seen so many boxes of D60. Maybe a tonne and half, plus some open crates of thermite mines. Chiria was hunched over them.

‘It’s pretty rudimentary,’ she said. ‘Impact trigger running the timed fuse. Very rough. Surprised they didn’t die rigging it.’

‘How long?’

‘You still don’t want to know.’

‘Stop saying that!’ he exclaimed.

‘Just cup your balls and pray,’ she said. She was good with explosives. If anyone could do it, it was Chiria.

‘Uh oh,’ she said.

‘What!’

She turned to look at him. A big grin split her famously scarred face. ‘We’re still alive,’ she said.

She tossed him the detached timer and firing pack. He caught it badly.

‘Feth you,’ he said. ‘I nearly shat.’ He kissed her on the side of the head.

‘Get off,’ she said.

They heard pops and cracks. The insurgents had started up again. It wasn’t as heavy as before. They had little left to deliver.

But they were aiming for the truck. They wanted to finish the delivery of their gift.

Kolosim jumped down out of the cargo-6. Las-bolts and hard rounds were clipping the road and gulley around him. He heard one slice through the cargo-6’s canvas cover.

‘Light ’em up! Make ’em stop!’ he yelled into his bead.

The Ghosts began firing, trying to drive the remaining insurgents down and keep them so pinned they couldn’t fire.

But shots were still coming in.

‘Over here!’ Kolosim yelled. With Chiria and Caober, he was already straining to push the truck out of the gulley. The nearest fire teams ran over to join them. One was hit in the back of the leg as he ran forwards. Someone stopped to drag him back to cover, yelling for a corpsman. The others came to Kolosim’s side, tossing down their weapons and planting their hands against the truck’s bodywork. Kolosim had fifteen Ghosts heaving on the truck with him. They got it bumped out of the gulley and back onto the road. Caober leaned into the cab to correct the steering while he pushed. Backs breaking, they began to roll it up the long slope towards the Mechanicore. Shots pinged and cracked down around them.

All they had to do was get it out of range. Push it up the slope. Just a hundred metres would be enough.

A hundred metres. Under sustained fire. Pushing a five tonne truck carrying a tonne and a half of high explosive.

The air in the ship was stale and humid. It had clearly taken damage in the past week, and major environmental subsystems had been taken off-line for repair. The sirdar passed through areas where the main lighting was out and red-lensed lanterns had been hung from the spars to provide temporary illumination. Oil, grease and waste water dripped through the decks and pooled under the walkway grilles. Some sections were closed off entirely. The sirdar heard the whine of power tools and the sputtering pop of welding gear. Several other sections were stacked with structural debris and baskets of broken plasteks and ceramite. Gangs of servitors and haggard human slaves were working to clear the detritus from the companionways and compromised compartments. Packsons and gold-robed crewmen roamed past.

The hissing whisper was everywhere. It scratched at his ears, and tugged at his brain. It was far, far louder inside the ship.

At most junctions and compartment hatches, the sirdar passed easily, unchallenged by the packsons posted at each way point. At one, an overzealous guard called out after him as he passed. The sirdar kept walking with confidence, as though he hadn’t noticed the cry, and the guard didn’t follow it up.

At another junction, he was stopped by two etogaurs who berated him for over a minute about the noxious heat aboard ship and the lack of circulating air. The sirdar nodded, checked his slate, and promised he would look into it directly.

Access was alarmingly easy. All that was required was confidence, the ability to look like you belonged there, and a few words of the language to get you past. Enough purpose in your stride, and no one gave you a second look.

And the Archenemy had no reason to be alert. They were in the heart of the Fastness, a secure location unknown to Imperial intelligence. The only Imperial humans in a radius of ninety kilometres were in chains.

The brig lay on the eighth service deck aft. Most prisoners were held ashore, especially those who had signalled they were ready to convert and accept impressment. Only the most significant and sensitive were chambered aboard the ship.

Like enkil vahakan.

The sirdar loitered in the shadows of a through-deck ladder well for a few minutes, and observed the operation of the brig access. There was an outer and inner cage, large and heavy sliding metal frames, and between them was a security post manned by two large packson watchmen. There was a small operations console built into the wall, a vox-link and security board, and a belt-fed Urdeshi-made .20 on a tripod, mounted to cover the inner bay of the brig block through the second cage.

While the sirdar watched, a damogaur and two packsons arrived, and gained access to the outer cage using a pass key. They talked briefly to the duty watchmen, who then used their own key to let them through the inner cage. A few minutes later, a different damogaur exited alone, locking the outer cage securely with his own key.

The sirdar followed him along the service deck to a traverse, waited while a detail of packsons hurried past, then called out a question to catch the damogaur’s attention. The sirdar left his body stuffed in a service locker.

The sirdar returned to the brig with the damogaur’s key.

Without hesitation, he let himself in.

The security watchmen looked up at him.

‘Desh arad voi toltoom,’ the sirdar said. More interviews.

‘Who?’ asked one of the watchmen.

‘Enkil vahakan,’ the sirdar replied.

The security watchmen hesitated. One said they hadn’t been notified. Nothing was scheduled.

‘He has set new questions,’ the sirdar replied with a shrug. ‘He wants them asked tonight. Are you going to be the ones who delay him getting the answers? It’s on you, brothers. I’ll just say you were doing your job.’

The watchmen glanced at each other. One got up, unlocked the inner cage, then slid it open.

‘The grace of his voice guide you and drown out all untruths,’ the sirdar said as he stepped through the cage. ‘I will not be long.’

The brig block was a stinking, infernal realm. It was lit by age-stained lumen globes set in iron cages, and the deck and walls had never been cleaned. They were caked with the residue of pain and suffering. Some of the cells in the block were unoccupied. Through the open hatch of one, the sirdar saw a man being tortured by the damogaur he’d seen entering the brig ten minutes before. His packsons, stripped to the waist, were doing the work while the officer stood on and watched, asking the same question over and over.

The man was an Urdeshi colonel, a high value prisoner. He was so far gone, he was no longer making a sound or even flinching as the packsons worked at his flesh with flat-wire knives.

The man’s eyes just stared out past his tormentors into the hallway, gazing at a freedom he would never know. He caught the sirdar watching him. Their eyes locked.

The man’s staring eyes twitched. His mouth moved, leaking slightly. He knew. He saw what every Sekkite aboard had missed. Despite the uniform and the hand-strap mouth, he saw the sirdar’s eyes. The expression there. The horror and the pity.

The sirdar hesitated. He wanted to go in, to lay vengeance on the officer and the two packsons. He wanted to put the Urdeshi out of his suffering.

He could not afford that kind of diversion.

Very slowly, he shook his head. Don’t.

Then he made the sign of the aquila.

The Urdeshi did not respond. He simply closed his eyes.

The sirdar hurried on. Beyond the block of regular cells, there was an area reserved for more specialised containment. The notification mark on the page he’d torn out of Olort’s book matched a sigil scratched above the archway. Highest level securement.

He checked there was no one close by, then deactivated the screening field and stepped through the arch. The dank and rusted chamber beyond was octagonal. Each wall section was formed by a heavy hatch with a vox-speaker set into a large window of reinforced glass.

The hatch windows were dirty, but it was clear that each looked into a flooded cell. The sirdar peered into the nearest one. The fluid beyond the glass was murky green, drifting with fibrous scraps, like the dredged sediment of some polluted canal. There was a shadow in it. A human cadaver, rotting back to bone, floating like a revenant apparition. It looked like the corpse of a drowned mariner who had been in the water for a long time.

There was a similarly ragged corpse in the silted water of the next cell. The sirdar squinted in at it. The corpse within suddenly jerked its head and glared at him with rheumy, lidless eyes, its fleshless mouth snapping and chewing.

The sirdar recoiled from the glass. He could hear a scratchy, gurgling voice. It was coming from the cell’s vox speaker. He saw that cables were attached to the corpse’s temples.

These were stasis tanks, filled with nutrient fluid. The prisoners were held in suspension, their minds wired via augmetic links to vox-grilles that articulated their thoughts.

He moved to the third tank. The fluid suspension here was a little cleaner, as though it had only been filled a few days before. A drowned man drifted inside. His hair was black, his clothes the tattered fabric of Imperial Guard fatigues. Cables were fixed to his temples too. His flesh was bloodlessly white and shrivelled by long immersion.

‘Feth,’ the sirdar murmured. He knew the face. Time had passed, and it was older, but it was unmistakable.

He put his hand against the dirty glass.

‘Hello,’ he whispered. ‘Can you hear me? It’s me. It’s Oan.’

The figure inside stirred, as though it was twitching in a bad dream. A few oily bubbles broke from its lips.

The sirdar looked around. There was a control panel beside the hatch frame. He didn’t know much about stasis suspension. He didn’t know if abrupt removal would shock or damage the subject.

There was no time to debate it. He threw the switch that would open the sluices and drain the tank.

The fluid level inside the tank began to drop. The sirdar could hear it gurgling and flushing through the underdeck drains. The body inside was slowly revealed, losing its buoyancy and slumping into the corner of the metal vat.

As the fluid level dropped, the sirdar saw his own reflection in the glass, and took off his helmet. If the captive survived release, he wanted him to be able to see his face.

As soon as the fluid had dropped far enough, the sirdar opened the hatch. Excess water, stagnant and foul, sloshed out over his boots. The tank reeked of organic waste and bacterial processes.

The man inside was limp. Dead or unconscious. The sirdar grabbed him and dragged him out. His flesh was cold and extraordinarily colourless. The sirdar tore the cables out of his temples, leaving little bloodless punctures, and pumped at his chest. Brackish soup glugged out of his slack mouth and nostrils.

‘Come on,’ the sirdar whispered. ‘Don’t let this be hello again and goodbye.’

The man convulsed, and started to cough and choke. His eyes opened. He retched and spat out ropes of mucus and spittle while the sirdar supported him.

He looked up at the sirdar, blinking in the stale light. Some colour was returning, and his flesh began to show livid bruises from beatings and many minor combat injuries.

‘Oan?’ he asked, his voice made of nothing.

‘Hello, Brin,’ said Mkoll. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Mkoll locked his arms around Brin Milo, like a man greeting a son he’d thought he’d lost forever.

THIRTEEN: UP INTO THE LIGHT

Luna Fazekiel had an excessively ordered and compulsive mind. It had been remarked upon, not always in a complimentary manner, and accounted for her career path into the Prefectus rather than a regular Militarum command.

When the Ghost companies and the retinue had arrived at the undercroft, an event that seemed like months ago to her, she had walked every centimetre of the cellars to learn the layout.

The information was useless to her now, and that troubled her deeply. She liked to have solid, verifiable facts to give her power over her circumstances. That was gone, and she felt her long-conquered anxieties rising.

The hallway she was following was long. She knew that no single hallway in the entire undercroft was this long or this straight. The environment had turned against them, buckled by the warp-aura of whatever stalked them.

Whatever it was that made the noise she had first heard at Low Keen, a noise that had lodged in her ever since and thrown her into a downward spiral of anxieties.

She led the way, controlling her breathing to avoid the onset of panic. Merity and Meryn followed her. Merity seemed alert, but Meryn was either traumatised, or unwilling to hide his usual, sullen nature. He had said very little about what had happened to him, despite her questions. People had died. His squad. Something had torn them apart.

Information – specific detail – was a tool that allowed for greater control. Meryn’s reluctance to help her with much compounded her sense that she was losing her grip.

‘You’re sure,’ she asked, ‘that we have only been down here an hour?’

‘Thereabouts,’ said Merity.

It was difficult to allow for that. It lacked sense, and wasn’t backed up by the evidence of Fazekiel’s own experience.

‘I’m not sure any more,’ Merity added. ‘I’m not sure of anything.’

‘Why did you come down?’ she asked Merity. ‘You came down to the undercroft. Why?’

‘I…’ Merity said. She eased her grip on the carbine. ‘Does it matter?’

Fazekiel looked at her.

‘You were working with the Lord Executor’s cabinet up in the palace, but you chose to come down.’

‘I came to find you,’ said Merity.

‘Regarding the Low Keen incident?’ asked Fazekiel. She was fidgeting with the front of her coat in a futile effort to wipe the stains off it.

‘Yes,’ said Merity. She was painfully aware of the way Meryn was staring at her, his eyes hooded. ‘Look, it’s hardly important right now, is it, commissar?’

Fazekiel turned to Merity and presented her with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. She was finding it hard to know what expression her face was actually wearing, or how much of her mounting terror she was betraying.

‘We don’t know what’s important,’ she said. ‘Things happened at Low Keen. The thing that attacked Yoncy and Elodie Daur. Mam Daur described a very distinctive noise associated with the attack, a noise I believe we have now heard. Yoncy was present at both places–’

‘So?’ asked Meryn.

‘I’m just assembling facts,’ said Fazekiel. ‘You said she was also present when your squad died. And we both saw her before the lights went out.’

Meryn said nothing. He looked at the wall. His breathing was too fast, too shallow.

‘I’m sorry,’ Fazekiel said to Merity quietly. ‘I… I am meticulous to the point of compulsion. I always have been. I like detail. I like to know the far side of everything. I suppose it is a weakness. An obsession. Detail gives me a sense of control.’

‘I’m sure it makes you a very good investigator,’ Merity answered. Merity was edgy and scared, and she could see how strung-out Fazekiel was. She didn’t feel reassured by either of the people she was with, though she was glad she wasn’t alone.

‘Detail freak,’ muttered Meryn. ‘That’s what everyone says about you. Taking great pains and giving them to everybody else.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Merity said to him.

Meryn glared at her. ‘We’re lost, little girl,’ he said, ‘and something out of a nightmare is hunting us. But yeah, let’s swap a few personal secrets and braid each other’s fething hair.’

‘In the face of an unknown threat, assembling reliable data seems sensible,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Do you have a better idea, captain?’

‘Give me a gun,’ he replied.

‘We only have two firearms,’ said Fazekiel.

‘And she’s a fething civilian!’ Meryn growled, indicating Merity with contempt. ‘I’m a fething serving officer in the Tanith First.’

He looked at Merity.

‘Give me the carbine,’ he said.

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Commissar?’ he said, looking for support.

‘What happened to your weapon, captain?’ Fazekiel asked.

‘Feth you. Both of you,’ he murmured and looked away. Merity could see how badly his hands were shaking.

‘Why did you come down here?’ Fazekiel asked Merity.

‘I just… I just did.’

‘To find me. You had something to tell me regarding the Low Keen incident?’

‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s not important.’

‘You were in a meeting with Gaunt’s tactical cabinet, ma’am,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It must have been important to tear you away from that.’

‘I remembered something, that’s all,’ said Merity. She kept flicking her eyes in Meryn’s direction, trying to show she didn’t want to speak in front of him, but the commissar was too weary and anxious to notice the hint. Merity had always disliked Meryn intensely. She wasn’t about to throw suspicion his way. Not in front of him. So, she thought she’d heard his voice outside the shower block? So what? How did that matter even slightly now?

Meryn had turned to stare at her, listening intently.

‘What did you remember?’ he asked. There was an edge to his tone. His eyes were bright and unblinking, like a snake’s.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.

‘It might be important,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It might relate to this.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Merity insisted.

Fazekiel sighed, and turned to start walking again.

Meryn stood for a moment, staring at Merity. When she went to walk past him, he whispered, ‘Careless talk, that’s always a bad thing. Rumour, gossip. Don’t want people getting the wrong idea, do we?’

Merity blanked him and kept walking.

They’d only gone another few metres when they heard the sound again. The saw-blade, screeching somewhere close by. It was like the shriek of an animal. The lights flickered.

‘Feth this,’ Meryn whispered. ‘Give me the gun.’

‘No,’ Merity replied. It was the only thing making her feel remotely safe.

‘What I think,’ said Ayatani Zweil, ‘is that darkness follows the light.’

‘Is that so?’ Domor replied. They sloshed, knee-deep, along the flooded hallway. Domor had his straight silver in his hand, for all the good it would do.

‘Yes, oh yes, Shoggy,’ Zweil replied earnestly. ‘Like a shadow, you know? Imagine a candle.’

‘All right.’

‘The candle’s lit, you see? So there’s light.’

I’m familiar with the fething principles of candles, Domor wanted to scream. He didn’t. The old priest was scared. He’d been talking non-stop for the last twenty minutes. Domor wanted him to shut up. He liked the old man dearly, but he longed for silence. He wanted to be able to hear things coming.

He sighed to himself. And then what? he wondered. He looked around at the half-lit gloom, the reflections of the low-power lamps flickering on the rippled surface of a waste water flood that was still rising.

This was going to be a grim old end. Not at all what he’d ever imagined. Domor had always known for sure he would die in the regiment. He was resigned to that. He’d come close often enough, including the occasion that had robbed him of his eyes and left him with the buggy optical augmetics that had earned him his nickname.

But he’d always pictured the end as a glorious one. On the field of battle, a valiant stand at Gaunt’s side. A noble death. Maybe there’d be wreaths afterwards, and a bugle call or a gun salute.

But those days were gone. Life was changing. Gaunt was high and mighty now. He’d never stand in the line with his boys again. The glory days and noble ends of the First and fething Only were memories. Reality and the future was a colder place. He had to reimagine his own destiny.

And he couldn’t ever have imagined this. Not this. A stinking, unwitnessed end in a sealed fething dungeon that shifted around him like a living thing, like a sorcerous labyrinth in the old-time myths. And a nightmare monster, straight out of those same childhood stories, coming for him, sniffing at his heels and tasting his tracks.

‘So, the candle’s lit, and there’s light,’ Zweil was saying. ‘But the candle casts a shadow too, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘The shadow’s only there because of the light,’ said Zweil.

Domor glanced at the old man. ‘Is it?’ he asked. ‘Or is the shadow still there when the light goes out, and we just can’t see it because it’s dark?’

Zweil frowned. ‘Shit me sideways, boy,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s some deep philosophy there.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, I’ve just got to factor that into my thinking…’

‘No need.’

Zweil paused, scratched his head, and then scooped the skirts of his ayatani robe up out of the water and wrung them out. He kept doing that. Domor wasn’t sure why. As soon as he’d wrung them out, Zweil would simply drop them back into the water and keep going.

‘Well,’ said Zweil. ‘That’s what I think. The darkness follows the light, you see? Like a… like it can smell it.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Opposites, light and dark, each needing the other to survive. To exist.’

‘Right.’

‘Can’t have one without the other. They can’t be separated.’

‘I’ve often thought that,’ said Domor, not really listening.

‘So we’re in this shit,’ said the old man, ‘we’re in this awful, awful shitty shit-balls mess, because she’s here.’

‘Who?’

‘Haven’t you been listening? Her. The Saint. My beloved Beati.’

‘Oh.’ Domor paused. ‘I thought you meant Yoncy.’

‘Yoncy?’ The old man asked, puzzled. ‘Why would I mean Yoncy?’

Domor shrugged.

‘Well, Shoggy? Why did you think I meant her?’

Domor shook his head. ‘Yoncy’s odd,’ he said. ‘Odd follows her around. Haven’t you ever noticed that? And this thing we keep hearing, it sounds like whatever it was came for her at Low Keen. I heard it, father. It sounds the same.’

‘I dunno, Shoggy,’ said Zweil. ‘That’s a terrible thing to think about a little girl.’

‘She’s not a little girl,’ said Domor. ‘She’s… look, I love Kolea. He’s my brother. Dalin’s a good boy. Solid and brave. And Tona, well, she’s done a hell of a thing, raising them. But Yoncy… I’m not the only one to think it. Elodie, she gets freaked out by her. Even Gol.’

Zweil thought about this for a moment, then started to laugh loudly.

‘Shhh!’ said Domor, in alarm.

‘You think Yoncy’s coming for us?’ Zweil laughed.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yoncy. Hnnh! Yoncy? I’ve heard some notions in my time–’

‘Well, you just said it was the Saint.’

‘No, I didn’t!’ said Zweil sharply. ‘I said the darkness is here because of her. She’s light, Domor. The light of the Throne. Just so magnificent. And the darkness is drawn to that. The shadow of the warp, you see? She’s the candle–’

‘I get it.’

‘–and the warp, see, that’s the–’

‘I get it. The Archenemy, the Ruinous Powers, they’re here tonight because she’s here.’

‘In the palace,’ Zweil nodded. ‘I can feel her presence, calling to me.’

‘So we’re not the targets?’ asked Domor. ‘We’re just in the way?’

‘I suppose so. The darkness has come for her. She’s strong, and she’ll fend it off, but I hope she’s got loyal soldiers at her side.’

‘She might not even be here yet,’ said Domor, sloshing forward. ‘There was no announcement. No ceremonial welcome–’

‘Oh, she’s here. I told you, I can feel her–’

Zweil fell silent.

‘Father?’

Domor looked around. Zweil had stopped, deeply pensive.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I can feel her,’ said Zweil. ‘I can feel her close by.’

‘So you said.’

‘No, Shoggy. Think about it. I can feel her. And I thought, well, that’s nice and reassuring. A comfort. But I can feel her. Like a lodestone feels true north.’

‘What?’

Zweil turned abruptly and began splashing off the way they’d come.

‘Father? Father!’

‘Come on, Shoggy!’ Zweil called back. ‘I was stupid, is what it is! It was right before my eyes and I missed it.’

‘What was?’

‘I can feel her call,’ Zweil said emphatically. ‘Goodness, Domor. Don’t you listen? Keep up. She can lead us out of here. I only have to listen, to let myself feel. Then follow. Be her pilgrim, her imhava, just as I’ve done my whole life. Follow her path. Go to her, wherever she’s calling from. Let her guide me out of the darkness and up into the light. You too, of course.’

‘We’ve been that way,’ Domor protested.

‘We’ve been every which way,’ Zweil replied. ‘There’s no sense to this place any more. The warp’s seen to that. We just follow the light. What?’

Domor was smiling. ‘That makes as much sense as anything I’ve heard today, father,’ he said.

Zweil nodded. ‘Miracles wear disguises, my boy. Like, you know, moustaches and hats and those sash things with the pom-poms on them. Also, masks. The point is, you don’t always recognise them at first, even when your mind is a highly tuned spiritual organ like mine. The Emperor protects, Shoggy Domor, and today he is protecting us through the sanctity of his Beati. We were just too scared and bothered and worked up to see that before. But I see it now, oh yes! A revelation. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I behold the path of salvation–’

There was an awful, blood-chilling screech and something black sawed out of the darkness right at them. Zweil cried out and fell over in a huge splash of flood water. Domor recoiled. Terror seized him again.

This was it. This was it. This was fething it–

He felt claws slice into his cheek, hot blood pouring down his face.

The darkness was still shrieking at him.

‘Shoggy? Shoggy?’

The shrieking stopped.

‘Father?’

‘Oh,’ said Zweil. He got up, soaked through, wiping his face, and peered at Domor. ‘It got you a good one. Gashed your cheek.’

‘What the feth–?’ Domor stammered.

Zweil splashed past him, and scooped a bedraggled mass out of the water, a large, tattered shape that had been thrashing around where it landed.

‘Oh, hush now, you poor little bugger,’ Zweil cooed.

It was the regimental mascot.

‘Shit,’ said Domor.

‘You see?’ said Zweil. ‘It’s Quil. Poor little bugger.’

‘Quil?’

‘I named it. Because it didn’t have a name. It’s short for–’

‘Whatever,’ said Domor.

The psyber-eagle had been damaged and wounded. Feathers were mangled, and it was matted with blood. One of its heads had been sliced off.

‘Poor old bastard,’ said Zweil, clutching the surprisingly large and heavy creature in his arms as best he could manage. ‘It’s lost a head.’

‘So I see.’

‘Like a… what’s the word? What do you call a two-headed eagle that’s missing a head?’

‘An… eagle?’

Zweil shrugged. ‘I suppose.’

The psyber-eagle started to thrash wildly in his arms, raking the air with its wings.

‘Steady! Steady!’ Zweil cried. He was forced to let it go. It flew back up the hallway away from them, feather filaments drifting in its wake.

‘See?’ said Zweil.

‘What?’

‘It’s going the same way. The way I was going. It can hear her too. Birds are very cunning. Hunters, you see? It’s attuned. It’s following her call. Saints can do that, you know? They can call animals and creatures of the wild to their side. The grazing beasts of the farm and the hunters of the woods alike, they come flocking. I’ll bet it can hear her better than I can. The sharp sense of the untamed, you see, untrammelled by conscious thought. Running on instinct.’

‘You’re saying we should follow it?’

‘Yes. It’ll take us to her. It’ll take us out of the shadows.’

‘Right,’ said Domor.

Dalin stopped, and leaned heavily against the stone wall.

‘Dal?’ Kolea asked, turning to look at him. Dalin was pale, and sweat was leaving blanched trickles in the dirt on his face.

‘Give me a moment,’ said Dalin.

‘Are you sick?’

‘I feel…’ Dalin swallowed hard. ‘My head hurts. My ears. You feel that? Like a buzzing? A scratching?’

Kolea nodded. ‘That’s been going on since before the lights failed.’

‘What is it?’

‘Some manifestation,’ Kolea said. ‘A harmonic, a vibration. I don’t know. It’s the background noise of this bad shadow.’

‘It’s making me feel ill,’ Dalin said. ‘My head, my gut. Like a fever–’

Kolea pressed the back of his hand to Dalin’s forehead. Dalin jerked back in surprise.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Checking your temperature. There’s no fever.’

‘What are you, my dad?’

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

‘Yes,’ said Kolea.

Tears welled in Dalin’s eyes. He wiped them away, hurriedly.

‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ said Kolea. ‘It’s just anxiety. I feel it too. We’re both worried sick about Yonce.’

‘I suppose.’

‘We’re going to find her, Dal.’

‘I know.’

‘No, I mean it.’ Kolea sighed. ‘I made an oath, you see? Swore I’d protect the both of you.’

‘When was this?’

‘Oh, when you were born. That was the first time. But it was after the Aigor drop. That’s when I made it, out loud. Spoke it. To myself, and to the Emperor, who I hope was listening.’

‘We could die down here,’ said Dalin. ‘I think we probably will die down here.’

‘No, that’s the thing,’ said Kolea. ‘It wasn’t a whim. It was an oath. Solemn in intent. A Kolea oath, you see? The Kolea family has a strong and proud tradition. The universe respects a Kolea oath like, Throne yes. Knows not to go breaking it.’

‘Gol–’

‘I’m serious, Dal. Even the fething Ruinous Powers know better than to try and defy an oath like that. I will stand with you, you and Yoncy, even in the darkness. I’ll stand between you and hell–’

‘Gol.’

‘What?’

‘I know you mean well. I appreciate the effort. You’re just pretty new at this father business, aren’t you?’

Kolea shrugged. ‘Not had much practice over the years,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Dalin. ‘I appreciate it. But it’s weird. Let’s just find her.’

Kolea nodded. ‘I was trying too hard?’ he asked.

Dalin smiled. ‘Just a bit.’

Kolea turned and hefted his weapon up.

‘All right, Trooper Dalin,’ he said. ‘Let’s head that way. To the left.’

He let his voice trial off. He raised his right fist and flicked the signal for ‘noise’.

Dalin raised his weapon, instantly alert.

Somewhere, not close, but still in the undercroft, there was a sawing howl.

Then, nearby, a splash.

They both wheeled.

‘Show yourself!’ Kolea growled.

‘Gol?’

‘Bask?’

Baskevyl and his squad appeared. They lowered their weapons and sloshed towards Kolea and Dalin.

Kolea and Baskevyl embraced.

‘Thank the Throne!’ Bask said.

‘You all right?’ Kolea asked.

‘Just lost,’ said Baskevyl.

‘And scared,’ Osket said.

‘What’s up with him?’ Kolea asked, looking over at Blenner. The commissar was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed.

‘This is getting to him,’ said Baskevyl quietly. ‘The tension’s making people sick.’

Kolea nodded. ‘It’s not just tension,’ he replied. ‘I think the warp is acting on us all. Dalin’s sick too.’

‘At least you found him,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Yeah. And Yoncy’s around here somewhere too.’

‘All right, let’s stay together and find her. We ran into Meryn’s team a while back, but divided again. That was a mistake.’

‘Safety in numbers?’ asked Kolea.

‘Right,’ said Baskevyl. ‘And firepower. Whatever this is, I think we’re going to need to put it down hard. It makes a real mess of people.’

‘It’s killing?’ asked Kolea.

‘Yes, whatever it is. It’s trapped us in here and it’s killing. You seen anybody?’

‘No,’ said Kolea. ‘This gakking place is playing mind-games. I was with Erish and that lot, then lost them. The walls moved. I haven’t seen anybody except Dal and Yonce. And that’s weird, because there were a lot of people down here. I don’t know where they’ve all gone.’

‘Bonin was leading them out,’ said trooper Ells. ‘But, I dunno…’

‘Maybe it’s eaten them all,’ said Osket.

Kolea and Baskevyl looked at him.

‘You’re a fething ray of sunshine, Osket,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Let’s move forward,’ Baskevyl said. ‘Eyes open for Kolea’s girl, all right?’

‘Stay close to Dalin for me,’ Kolea whispered to Baskevyl.

‘Sure. Why?’

‘I think I got a little heavy-handed. Tried to do the whole caring father thing and did not pull it off. He needs a comrade and an officer.’

Baskevyl nodded. ‘No problem.’

‘And I’ll see if I can get Blenner to pull his wits together,’ Kolea said.

‘Good,’ Baskevyl whispered back. ‘He’s spooked badly, Gol. I think… I think he might be on something.’

‘Pharms?’

‘I don’t know. But I think he keeps taking something. If he’s wired, he’s a liability. I mean, I feel sorry for him. Fear is a bitch, and I know it bites us all in different ways. But he’s been a useless sack of shit since this whole thing started.’

‘You mean since he joined the regiment?’ asked Kolea.

Baskevyl snorted.

‘Don’t be unkind,’ said Baskevyl. ‘He’s had his moments. But down here today? I think he might have been more rattled over the Ezra business than we thought.’

‘What, executing Wilder?’

‘I know, I know. It was the right call after what that shit did. But I think our dear Vaynom might be struggling with it. Killing a foe in battle is one thing. Sanctioning one of your own…’

‘He’s a commissar, Bask.’

‘Yeah. But as you point out, not a very good one. I wonder if he’s ever had to do that before. I mean, carry out a summary sentence that way. I think it’s shaken him.’

‘He almost said as much to me,’ said Kolea.

‘Right. Now this, plus maybe pharms. It might be a good idea to get his weapon off him. If this goes balls-up and turns into a close-quarter firefight, he could be an utter liability.’

‘Got it,’ said Kolea.

‘Right!’ Baskevyl announced, raising his voice again. ‘Let’s roll out. Head down to the left.’

‘All right there, Vaynom?’ Kolea asked, falling in beside Blenner.

‘Oh yes, fine and dandy,’ Blenner said. He was unconvincingly chipper. Kolea could smell the stink of his fear even above the rank odour of the flood water.

‘This is a bad deal,’ Kolea said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘But we’ve got each other’s backs. I’ve got your back, all right?’

Blenner nodded. He adjusted his cap and hoped that, in the gloom, Kolea couldn’t see that he’d begun to cry.

The Saint led them to the bottom of the steps.

‘I didn’t know the undercroft was this far down,’ said Gaunt quietly.

‘It wasn’t,’ replied Hark.

Gaunt tightened his grip on his sword. He glanced at Curth.

‘I would prefer it if you went back up, Ana,’ he said.

Curth shook her head.

‘There may be wounded, Lord Executor. You need a medic,’ she said simply.

‘While we’re on the subject of staying out of harm’s way, sir,’ Sancto began.

‘Don’t even try it, Scion,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes, my lord.’

All the lights were out, but the undercroft was lit by a dull glow, as if unhealthy light was oozing out of the stones. The Beati led the way down, flanked by her two alert officers, then came Gaunt, Hark and Curth and the four Scions. Behind them were Daur, Beltayn, Trooper Perday and the inquisitor. Gaunt had sent Grae to find aid for Onabel and direct the reinforcements Gaunt hoped to Throne were on their way from Van Voytz.

The long flight of stone steps ended in an archway that seemed too big and broad for even a palace wine cellar.

The air scratched at their ears and the insides of their heads. It was like a buzzing of flies or the restless boring of maggots, as though everyone in the party was already dead and decomposing. There was a smell in the air of waste and rot.

Beyond the arch lay a vast chamber. Gaunt could see its impossibility in an instant. No deep cellar in a massive stone edifice like the Urdeshic Palace could be so wide and low without the need for pillars or column supports. The walls were whitewashed, but that looked sallow yellow in the ugly light.

The floor was black.

They advanced slowly, weapons raised, covering each other.

‘This wasn’t here,’ said Hark softly. ‘It was a hallway, then barrack chambers off the side. Not this place.’

‘It’s getting stronger,’ said Laksheema. She adjusted the setting on the archeotech weapons built into her sleek golden cuff. ‘If it’s feeding, and growing… its ability to manipulate and warp reality is increasing.’

‘Agreed,’ said the Beati gently.

‘Woe machines were mechanical engines,’ said Curth. ‘They couldn’t–’

‘Heritor Asphodel, may the Throne curse him, was a genius,’ said Laksheema. ‘I fear we continue to underestimate what his vile imagination could make and unleash.’

Hark stood on something that broke with a crack. He looked down.

‘Oh Throne,’ he murmured. He could barely see it because it was as black as the floor. Curth bent down with him.

It was part of a human jawbone, with three molars still embedded in it. It was black because it was covered in blood, and in the odd light, the redness of the blood appeared black.

They realised what they were looking at. The whole floor of the chamber was soaked in blood, and littered with the physical debris of dozens of people. Scraps of bone, odd ribs, hunks of meat and muscle, no piece so big it couldn’t sit on a man’s palm.

‘It’s fed,’ said Laksheema.

Daur began to tremble. He fought to keep it in, but a terrible groan of anguish broke through his gritted teeth. Beltayn grabbed him and held him tight with both arms to stop him falling. Curth and Gaunt went to him.

‘Ban?’ Gaunt said.

Daur couldn’t speak.

‘Ban? Go back,’ said Gaunt. ‘Go back up. You don’t need to be here. I’ll finish this. You have my word.’

‘No,’ Daur managed to answer. His voice was tight and small as if it was being crushed by a high gravity field. ‘I need to be here now.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Keep with him,’ he said to Curth.

They moved forwards again. The far end of the vast charnel hall became visible in the gloom. Eight doorways, forking off in different directions.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Gaunt. ‘Not like this before?’

Hark shook his head.

‘It’s playing with us,’ said Laksheema. ‘It senses us. Senses her, I think.’

She nodded towards the Beati. The Saint was facing the doorways, her sword raised.

‘It wants to divide us,’ said Laksheema. ‘Trap us, make us lost in its little pocket maze.’

‘You seem to know a lot,’ said Sariadzi.

‘I’ve seen a lot,’ said Laksheema. She paused. ‘Nothing on this scale.’

The Beati stepped towards the doors. Auerben and Sariadzi hurried to flank her, but she held up a hand to keep them back.

‘I won’t play its games,’ she said. ‘Just so it knows, I’m saying that out loud. I won’t play these games.’

The whine of a bone saw echoed from one of the eight doorways, followed by silence. Then there was a scrape of stone against stone. The end wall was slowly shifting in front of them. They could see the stonework moving, grating edge against edge as it realigned. Seven of the doorways vanished, becoming solid wall. Only one remained.

‘It heard you,’ said Laksheema.

‘Or it’s playing another game,’ said Hark.

The Beati raised her sword and approached the doorway. They formed up behind her, following tight. After a few steps, they realised they were stepping into floodwater several centimetres deep. Lights blinked on, the old lumen lamps of the undercroft in their rusted wire frames, illuminating the white-washed walls ahead of them.

‘This… this is how it was,’ said Hark. ‘The main hall. There should be a doorway ahead to the right. The first billet.’

There was. The old wooden doors had been pushed shut but not quite closed. They looked as though someone had taken a circular saw to them repeatedly.

Gaunt moved in beside the Saint, and they approached the doors together.

‘My lord!’ Sancto hissed.

‘Shut up.’

Gaunt looked at the Saint. She nodded.

They kicked the doors open together.

The man stood facing them, just a few metres inside. He fired his lasrifle at them repeatedly. It made a dry, clacking sound. Its powercell was long since exhausted.

The man dropped it, his arms limp and heavy, and drew his straight silver. He took a step forward, then halted.

He stared at their faces, bewildered, as though he didn’t properly recognise them.

He was covered in dried blood.

‘M-my lord,’ he said.

‘Mach,’ said Gaunt.

Exhausted and traumatised beyond measure, Bonin flopped to his knees at Gaunt’s feet.

‘I tried,’ he whispered. ‘I tried. I tried to keep them safe. As many as I could. It came from everywhere. Every shadow.’

Gaunt bent down. ‘Easy, Mach,’ he said, holding the man by the shoulders. ‘Ana? Here, please.’

Gaunt looked past Bonin. Another man was nearby. He stepped out of the shadows, a chair leg in his hand ready to use as a club. He too was caked in blood, and swayed wordlessly on his feet.

It was Yerolemew. The Saint went forwards to support him.

‘Sit,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’

‘We… we have to keep going. Keep the doors shut…’ the old bandmaster murmured.

There were others. Trooper Luhan crawled out of cover, put down his rifle and started to cry. Sobs and murmurs spread through the darkness behind him. Shapes stirred. Gaunt saw the terrified faces of women and a few children, all members of the retinue.

‘How many did you save, Mach?’ he asked.

Bonin shook his head, his eyes lifeless.

‘Twenty… maybe thirty…’ he said. ‘Any we could.’

Gaunt squeezed his shoulder.

He rose and faced the cowering survivors.

‘The Saint’s here,’ he said. ‘The darkness is going to end. We’ve come to get you out.’

‘There are no stairs…’ Yerolemew mumbled.

‘There are now,’ the Beati assured him. ‘Stairs, a door, and light above. You have endured great horror, but you have remained strong. The Emperor has protected you.’

‘Not enough,’ said Bonin. ‘Not nearly enough. We tried, but…’

‘I need these people led up out of here,’ said Gaunt. ‘Fast. Now. Sancto?’

The Scion frowned. ‘I will serve your word without question, my Lord Executor,’ he said, ‘except in this one way. My primary oath is to protect you. I will not leave your side.’

Gaunt looked him in the eye. Sancto did not flinch. Gaunt didn’t like him, but he had to admire the man’s steel discipline and devotion.

‘Can they all walk?’ he asked. ‘Can you all walk?’

He was answered by moans and weak affirmative noises.

‘All right,’ said Gaunt. ‘Perday, Beltayn? Lead them out and up the stairs. Have them link hands. Take them all, one of you at the front, one at the rear. Yes, like children, Bel. Get them out and get them to the nearest medicae hall.’

‘Level three,’ said Hark.

‘Now, while the walls stay where they are,’ said Gaunt.

‘Mach? Sergeant major? Luhan?’ Gaunt looked at the three shell-shocked Ghosts. ‘Bel’s in charge. Just follow him. No arguments. Follow him, and do as he tells you. You’re walking wounded. You’re also brave as feth.’

Bonin nodded dumbly.

Beltayn took his hand and began to lead the line of shuffling, blank-eyed survivors out.

Daur looked at Bonin as he passed.

‘Elodie?’ he asked.

‘She… she was on the stairs,’ said Bonin in an empty voice. ‘I didn’t see her after that.’

The long line of survivors snaked out. Sancto’s team covered them until they had cleared the hallway.

‘It didn’t get them all,’ said Laksheema. ‘It’s still hungry, then.’

‘Agreed,’ said the Beati.

They waited until the survivors had walked clear, then exited the chamber where Bonin and the others had concealed and protected them, following the hall deeper into the undercroft. Blood stains flecked the whitewash in places, bloody hand prints smeared across the stonework.

The hall narrowed and dropped down by way of six stone steps. Flood water lapped at the steps, knee deep. The saint didn’t hesitate. They waded after her through the chill water and through an arch into another large billet. This one was vaulted, with stone pillars supporting the bowed ceiling. Pieces of bedding and splinters of wood floated on the gently rocking surface of the flood. An empty mess tin. A child’s toy.

‘It’s close by,’ said Laksheema.

The scratching and buzzing had grown louder. Curth looked down at the water around her legs, and saw that the surface was trembling as if subject to microvibration interference patterns.

They fanned out, weapons ready, leaving little frothing wakes behind them. Curth stayed with Daur.

Sancto suddenly swept his weapon around, aiming.

Yoncy was standing ahead of them, several metres away. She stared at them with big, frightened eyes. The water came up to her thighs and she was soaked, her clothes clinging to her. She hugged herself for warmth, her flesh pink with cold.

‘Papa Gaunt?’ she said.

Gaunt pushed Sancto’s aim up.

He stepped towards Yoncy.

‘Yoncy? Are you all right? Are you alone here?’

Yoncy nodded, her teeth chattering.

‘I got lost,’ she said. ‘The bad shadow was here.’

Curth splashed over to join Gaunt. They approached Yoncy together.

‘How is she still alive?’ Laksheema called out.

‘Same way as Bonin and the others,’ snapped Hark.

‘Alone?’ asked Laksheema.

Gaunt waded towards Yoncy, who held out her hands to be picked up.

Curth caught his arm.

‘She was giggling. We heard her,’ she said.

‘So?’ he asked.

‘The offspring of the Great Master,’ said Curth. ‘What Laksheema said. A daughter. Born on Verghast.’

Gaunt looked at her, and then back at the child stretching out its arms to him.

‘This is Major Kolea’s child?’ asked Laksheema suddenly.

‘Yes,’ said Hark.

‘It is possible the signal may be interpreted in a number of ways,’ said Laksheema. She strode forwards, the water rippling around her long gown. ‘Lord Executor–’

‘Yoncy,’ said Gaunt. ‘Listen to me, Yonce. Why were you laughing? What made you laugh?’

‘Because it’s time, silly,’ she said. ‘Papa says it’s time. I didn’t want it to be, but he says it is. The bad shadow won’t wait any longer.’

A low whine began, like a bone saw cycling up to full power. Violent ripples radiated out across the water from Yoncy Kolea, and out through the air around her as subspace membranes cracked and buckled.

Curth screamed. Gaunt just put himself in front of her.

Yoncy was no longer Yoncy. A stifling darkness whirled out of her as though a dead star had blinked anti-light. She fractured and rearranged in a neat but complex fractal fashion, folding like some intricate, hinged puzzle. Her smile was the last thing to disappear.

What took her place was still her. It was also the most abominable thing any of them would ever see.

FOURTEEN: TRUTH AND OTHER LIES

‘This is grim, there’s no way to pretend it isn’t,’ said Kolea as they waded along.

‘Your little girl, she’ll be all right,’ said Blenner beside him. ‘I’m sure of it, major.’

He didn’t sound convinced. In the half-light, Kolea could see Blenner’s stressed body-language, as if he was trying to flee into himself because there was nowhere else left to go.

‘I appreciate you trying to sound encouraging, Vaynom,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s what commissars are for,’ said Blenner, his laugh empty.

‘That and other things.’

Blenner sighed. His breathing had sped up. ‘Comes with the territory,’ he said.

‘Must be hard though, that first time?’

‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Blenner.

‘Sorry,’ said Kolea. ‘We should keep our chins up.’

Blenner nodded. ‘I’m… I’m finding that hard these days, major,’ he replied.

‘Sometimes you just need someone to talk to,’ said Kolea. ‘A friend. You know? Otherwise, those things can build up inside. Lock a man’s mind down. Make him do stupid things.’

‘Things?’

‘I’ve known men fall apart,’ said Kolea. ‘Turn to drink. Or abuse pharms. Just to keep the daemons inside.’

‘Pharms?’

‘There’s always a way back, Vaynom. You just have to open up and talk.’

‘I wish–’ Blenner began.

‘What?’

‘I wish you hadn’t just said “daemons”,’ he said.

Kolea smiled. ‘Vaynom?

‘Yes?’

‘Earlier on… you remember? When I first came down into the billet. You were going to tell me something.’

‘Was I?’ asked Blenner. ‘I don’t recall.’

‘I do,’ said Kolea. ‘If I ever saw a man who was going to lift a burden off his shoulders, it was you then. What was it?’

Blenner didn’t reply for a moment. Then a little crushed squeak came out of him.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said. Kolea could barely hear him. ‘The guilt. It’s the guilt, you see? Just on me, on me all the time.’

‘Talk to me, Vaynom.’ Kolea had dropped his voice to a low hiss. They had slowed down, and the rest of Baskevyl’s squad was pulling ahead slightly.

Blenner looked at Kolea. His eyes were puffy and red. A little tic was making his left cheek twitch.

‘Low Keen,’ he said. ‘It was stupid. So stupid. I… I was just trying to hold it together. They had their claws on me. I mean, I was properly screwed. They had dirt on me that would have… it would have been the end.’

‘Who?’

Blenner gulped, and wiped his eyes.

‘None of it matters now,’ he said. ‘It all seemed so important then, but now? Here? Feth! It’s so ridiculous! The horror here, our lives… death coming for us, and no way out.’

‘Tell me,’ said Kolea.

‘What?’ Blenner uttered an empty laugh. ‘A death bed confession?’

‘Think of it as absolution,’ said Kolea. ‘If this is going to be the end of us down here, then how do you want it to go? Don’t you want to pass from this duty into the next life with a clear conscience?’

‘Only in death, eh?’

‘That’s where they say it ends. Duty, that is. I don’t know about guilt.’

Blenner hesitated.

‘I can’t remember whose idea it was,’ he said softly. ‘Gendler, maybe? Wilder jumped at it, and they pulled me in because they knew, they knew, they could blackmail me into assisting. It was just money, major. Just money. Gaunt’s boy had so much, I mean, so much. Access to House Chass accounts. We didn’t know, not then. We didn’t know that the boy was… not a boy.’

‘And?’

‘Gendler was supposed to jump him in the showers. Put the scares on him, and force him to transfer a little funding our way. That’s all it was supposed to be. But Gendler, that feth Didi Gendler, he was heavy-handed. Knocked the boy down. That’s when we came in. That’s when we realised that the son was actually a fething daughter. Then Gendler fething improvised. Decided she couldn’t talk if she was dead.’

He looked up at Kolea.

‘Ezra found them. I think he was watching Merity, shadowing her. He went in and he killed Gendler. Wounded Wilder. Then we came in and pretended to help him, though we’d been in on it all along. He killed Ezra. Said we could say that Wilder had done it. And that I’d found them and executed Wilder on the spot. No loose ends, you see? You see how that worked? He made me kill him, Gol. He made me shoot Wilder. Wilder was begging me not to, and I just–’

‘Vaynom? Vaynom, listen. Who made you? Who was the other man in your group?’

‘Meryn,’ said Blenner.

Kolea clenched his jaw tight.

‘That little shit,’ he whispered. ‘It was him? He killed Ezra?’

Blenner nodded. Kolea wanted to punch him in the face and then keep punching. But he held his rage back.

‘You’ve done the right thing, Vaynom,’ he managed to say. ‘The brave thing. You feel better now, right?’

Blenner nodded again.

‘Good. All right. Let’s deal with this, and if we survive it, we can deal with Meryn. You’ve done the right thing.’

‘I just couldn’t do it any more,’ said Blenner.

‘Vaynom, I need you to give me your weapon now. Your sidearm. Can you do that?’

‘Yes,’ said Blenner, and handed his pistol to Kolea.

‘Good. I–’

‘Gol!’ Baskevyl’s voice echoed back down the hallway. ‘Problem?’

‘No!’ Kolea called back.

‘Close it up! We don’t want to lose the pair of you!’

‘All right!’ called Kolea.

He took hold of Blenner’s arm and began to move him along the hall. There’d be time for anger later. He couldn’t let it weaken him now. He couldn’t let it break his concentration. There was too much at stake.

They had just caught up with the others when the bone saw started shrieking. It sounded very close, as though it was just on the other side of the thick and unending stone wall.

‘Oh Throne!’ Baskevyl cried. He raised his weapon.

‘Move!’ he said. ‘Move! With me, now!’

Luna Fazekiel started to tremble uncontrollably when she heard the bone saw howling again. It was very close, and persistent this time. The long, drawn-out shrieks of destructive wrath echoed down the hallways.

She shoved her pistol into her belt to stop herself dropping it, and then clenched one hand around the other in an effort to control the trembling.

Meryn looked up in fear, twitching with every echoing shriek.

‘Feth,’ he whispered. ‘We’re so fething done. Just done. You know what? Feth him. Damn him. Screw him to hell! Fething God-Emperor, he does this to us?’

‘Captain,’ Merity said, trying to hold her own terror back.

‘What?’ he snapped, rounding on her. ‘It’s true! It’s true, you stupid little high-hive bitch! We serve him, serve him all our days, following his fething light, because he’s the way and the truth and all that bullshit! And for what? This? This shit? If we are his children, and he’s our god, then he’s a fething monster!’

‘That’s enough,’ Fazekiel said, her voice not much more than a stammer.

Meryn sneered at her. For a notably handsome man, his face had twisted in an ugly way. ‘What? That blasphemy, is it? Not the sort of thing a Guardsman should say in earshot of his Prefectus stooge? I don’t care. Feth you. You know it’s true as well. It’s a joke. It’s a farce. We give our lives every day, year-on-year, just to serve his great and inscrutable scheme. I have marched every bloody step from Tanith to this. There’s never been any hope. There’s never been anything but the most fleeting respite. And I’ve seen horrors. Horrors no one should see. And this is the reward. Trapped in a pit with some daemon fiend. Feth Terra. Feth the God-Emperor–’

‘I said that’s enough, captain,’ said Fazekiel.

Meryn looked away. ‘What’s he going to do?’ he murmured. ‘Damn me? Curse me? There’s no curse worse than this.’

He closed his eyes and clasped his hands to his forehead.

‘There’s never a way out,’ he whispered. ‘Never.’

Fazekiel swallowed hard and took a step towards him gingerly. She reached out one trembling hand in a futile gesture of consolation.

Something black and thrashing landed on the ground between them, shrieking. They both leapt back.

Meryn lowered his warknife.

‘It’s the fething mascot,’ he said. He started to laugh. Somehow, Merity felt his empty, cold laughter was worse than the echoing daemon-shriek.

She looked down at the wounded eagle. It was shuddering, its plumage a mess. Its remaining head jerked from side to side, regarding them with wild incomprehension.

‘There it is! You see? There–’

The old ayatani and Shoggy Domor appeared from a hallway beside them. They came to a halt and stared.

‘Throne,’ said Domor, ‘I never thought we’d see another living soul again.’

‘Shoggy,’ Meryn said in disbelief.

‘Are the three of you all right?’ Zweil asked.

‘Yes, father,’ said Merity. ‘Glad of company.’

Zweil looked at Fazekiel, then went over to her and hugged her tightly, pressing her head against his shoulder.

‘There, there,’ he said as she wept into the folds of his robe. ‘It’s all been a bit much. But we’re coming through it now. The Emperor protects. He really does.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Meryn. ‘You hear that, right? That’s the sound of death coming for us.’

‘Come on, Flyn,’ said Domor. ‘Father Zweil is–’

‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Meryn. ‘You know we’re all fethed.’

‘I don’t like your tone, young man,’ said Zweil, releasing Fazekiel from his embrace. He looked at Merity with a sad smile, and squeezed her hand.

‘Your father will be proud,’ he said. ‘You’ve kept your reserve. Must run in the blood, eh?’

‘I think my courage is about gone,’ Merity said.

‘Courage is transient,’ said Zweil. ‘Like flowers and pain and also soft cheeses. The things that matter are the things that last. Faith. Belief. And hope is surprisingly durable.’

‘I don’t believe in anything,’ muttered Meryn.

‘That would explain a lot about you,’ said Zweil. ‘I myself have belief to spare. I believe we’re getting out. I believe we’ll live.’

‘You mad old bastard,’ said Meryn.

‘Father Zweil may be mad–’ Domor began.

‘It’s been said,’ Zweil agreed with a chuckle. He had stooped down to comfort the eagle, cooing at it and stroking its feathers.

‘But I trust him,’ said Domor. ‘He’s got me this far.’

‘I’d hate to think what sort of shit you were in before, then,’ said Meryn.

‘Are you going to stay here, or are you going to follow us?’ Domor asked.

‘Where to?’ asked Meryn.

The bird shook out its wings, squawked, and took off again.

‘That way,’ said Zweil, pointing to it as it flew off.

‘You’re following the fething bird?’ asked Meryn.

‘We’re going to the light,’ said Zweil. ‘Come on.’ He took Merity by the hand.

Meryn just shook his head in despair.

‘He’s not wrong,’ said Domor. They all looked at him, even Zweil.

‘I’m not?’ he asked.

Domor adjusted his optics.

‘I’m reading light down there. Right where the bird flew. Outside light. Throne, it can smell fresh air.’

‘Are you joking?’ asked Fazekiel.

‘No,’ said Domor. He set off, striding urgently down the hallway. They followed him.

‘See?’ he called back. ‘Do you see this?’

There was light ahead. A pale shaft of light slanting down.

‘It’s the steps!’ Domor yelled. ‘It’s the fething steps.’

They caught up with him. There was no sign of the eagle, but ahead was a broad flight of stone steps. It was, without doubt, the entry steps that connected the undercroft with the upper levels. Thin light shone down from above.

Domor grinned at them, then gave Zweil a hug.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The Emperor was watching us after all.’

‘A little faith, Shoggy,’ said Zweil, leading Fazekiel up the steps after Domor. ‘I told you, boy. A little faith, I said.’

Merity glanced at Meryn.

‘I hope he wasn’t watching you,’ she said.

‘Movement, sir!’ the Urdeshi trooper called out. ‘More survivors coming up!’

Grae pushed his way to the front of the Urdeshi detachment covering the undercroft door. Domor appeared, leading the others the last of the way.

They looked around, blinking in the light, staring at the armed and armoured soldiers surrounding them. Power was still out in the entire palace, but Grae had set up portable light rigs with battery cells to bathe the doorway area.

‘How many of you?’ asked Grae.

‘Five, sir,’ Domor replied.

‘Tanith?’ Grae asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Trooper Zent?’ Grae said to a subordinate. ‘Get their names then escort them to the medicae area.’

He looked back at Domor’s bedraggled party.

‘Did you see anybody else down there. Anything?’

‘It’s a warp incursion, sir,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Something’s loose.’

‘We are aware of that, commissar,’ replied Grae. ‘Are you Fazekiel? It was your amber alert that got us mobilised in the first place.’

‘What’s happening up here, sir?’ asked Domor.

‘Power’s down,’ said Grae. ‘We think it’s a result of the incursion. Come on, let’s move you clear and get you seen to.’

‘How many others got out?’ asked Merity.

Grae looked at her.

‘Are you Merity Chass?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘That’s a blessing at least,’ said Grae. ‘How did you find your way out?’

‘We stuck together,’ said Meryn. ‘Just saw it through and looked for an exit.’

Merity glared at him. She was too tired to qualify his reply.

‘Good job, captain,’ said Grae. ‘I’m sure the Lord Executor will commend you for seeing his daughter safe.’

‘I asked how many got out,’ Merity said.

‘About thirty so far,’ said Grae. ‘Mainly retinue, badly traumatised. I hear it’s grim down there.’

‘Grim as hell, sir,’ said Meryn.

‘Where is my father?’ asked Merity.

Grae glanced at the doorway.

‘He’s gone in to eradicate the threat,’ he replied. ‘The Beati is with him.’

‘That’s a mistake,’ said Merity. ‘It’s… you have no idea. It’s a horrifying destructive force. You should be closing the area off and purging it. Or sending in a battalion strength of heavy troops.’

‘Our resources are limited,’ said Grae. ‘The palace is defenceless. All systems are down and the Archenemy is striking at the city. As soon as you’re checked out, you’ll be joining the evacuation.’

‘I’d prefer to stay, sir,’ said Merity.

‘Not a choice you get to make,’ said Grae. ‘Even the warmaster is being moved clear.’

They were led up two floors, through palace hallways lit only by emergency lanterns. In the night outside, heavy rain beat against the windows. It was strange not to be able to hear the constant fizzle of the palace void shields.

A prayer chapel had been converted into a medical post. By lamplight, medicae staff were checking all survivors brought in. Most of the survivors were sitting in the chapel pews, silent and huddled, staring and exhausted. Merity saw women from the retinue and a few children. Their clothes were dark with dried bloodstains. Nearby, Beltayn and Trooper Perday stood with Bonin, Yerolemew and Luhan, waiting for news. Domor and Zweil went over to them immediately. Merity saw Domor and Beltayn talking with animated urgency. Bonin, Luhan and the sergeant major moved with the dull, blank stupor of the profoundly combat-shocked.

Urdeshi corpsmen led Merity and Fazekiel aside for examination. Meryn just sat down on a pew, refusing attention.

The corpsman with Merity went to take her carbine away. She shook her head.

‘I want to keep it,’ she said.

She sat patiently on a metal stool while a palace medicae checked her eyes with a light and took her pulse. An eerie calm settled her, the empty void that followed protracted stress. Her hearing became muffled and everything seemed like a dream: the hollow faces of the silent survivors, the low murmur of voices, the clink of medical equipment in chrome trays, the flutter of candles, the wink of light on the gold leaf adorning the old frescoes on the chapel ceiling.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

Fazekiel was sitting on a stool beside her while an orderly took her resting pulse.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You got me out of there,’ said Merity.

‘Not really,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Father Zweil was right. You kept it together.’

‘I just… I didn’t want to die,’ said Merity.

She glanced at Fazekiel. The commissar was letting the orderly remove her coat.

‘You kept it together better than me,’ Fazakiel said. ‘That thing, that noise… it’s haunted me since Low Keen. I can’t explain. Domor and I, Blenner too. We all heard it there and I think it made us–’

‘What?’

‘Vulnerable. More susceptible to fear. I don’t know. I know I’ve never been that scared before. I know I shouldn’t have been that scared. That lost. I–’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Merity. ‘You didn’t break like that bastard Meryn.’

They looked across the chapel at Meryn, sitting alone, a brooding look on his face as he stared at nothing.

‘I think he saw more than us,’ said Fazekiel.

‘Maybe,’ Merity said.

She looked at Fazekiel.

‘It’s not important now. Throne knows, it’s trivial. But when this is done, you need to talk to him,’ she said.

‘To Meryn?’

Merity shrugged. ‘About the incident. I couldn’t say down there because he was with you. You kept asking. But that’s why I came to find you. I remembered hearing him speaking to Dalin just outside the shower block. Just before it happened.’

‘You think Meryn was involved?’

‘Yes,’ said Merity. ‘He almost admitted it to me in the undercroft. He warned me to keep my mouth shut.’

Fazekiel nodded.

‘I’ll break him,’ she said. ‘I’ll end his career. Once he’s confessed, it’ll be sanction for him.’

Meryn sat alone. On the far side of the chapel, Merity Chass sat with Fazekiel, orderlies bustling around them. They were talking.

That’s how you get treated, he thought. That’s the privilege right there. The daughter of the Lord Executor. So fething special. People give thanks to see she’s survived.

She was nothing. Just a high-hive aristo bitch, born into wealth and power. She knew nothing about real life, and certainly nothing about soldiering.

Meryn did. He’d been a Ghost since Tanith. He’d come all that way, watching his own back because no other bastard would. He had the skills. He’d learned them along the way. How to fight to survive. How to defeat an enemy that was going to kill you. How to use a blade.

And, thanks to the damaged bastards they’d brought in after Vervunhive, how to read lips.

He watched them. Merity Chass and Luna Fazekiel.

He watched them talk.

Gaunt held on to Curth’s arm and dragged her through the darkness. The air was freezing and howling around them, and the water in the chamber was thrashing, like waves driven by an ocean gale.

They could hardly see. The bad shadow was everywhere, lashing out tendrils of hideous fractal darkness, folding light into void-blackness along sharp, straight edges.

Gaunt hauled her against one of the chamber’s stone columns and lashed out into the elemental fury. Whatever his power blade struck, it caused a huge spray of sparks, as though he had shoved the sword of Hieronymo Sondar into a grinding lathe.

There were flashes in the churning darkness. Weapons discharging. Over the shriek of the bone saw, Gaunt heard the rasp of Hark’s plasma gun, and the rapid snap-roar of hellguns. The Scions.

‘Yoncy!’ Curth yelled in disbelief. ‘Yoncy!’

‘Hold on!’ Gaunt yelled back over the tumult.

Sariadzi suddenly appeared, staggering through the crashing waves. His upper body had been slashed in a dozen places and all his fingers were missing. He tried to cling to them. Curth attempted to hold on to him and pull him close. He looked at them in desperation, pleading in his eyes, no words coming from his gaping mouth.

The sharp edges of the darkness seized him from behind, jagged and piercing like negative lightning. It ripped him away from them. In the split second before he vanished from sight in the lofting spray, he disintegrated as though his entire body had been pushed through a mincer.

Light suddenly bloomed through the chamber, a fierce golden glow that began in the heart of the place and flowed outwards. The tendrils of shadow retreated swiftly with an angry crackle.

The surging water calmed to rocking waves.

Gaunt looked around. He saw Hark two pillars away, leaning against the stone column for support. His leather coat was shredded, and his cap was gone. His augmetic arm had been torn off, leaving only a stump of sparking, torn biomech. With his one good arm, he clung onto Inquisitor Laksheema. She was limp and drenched in blood, and her augmetics, even her beautiful gold mask, were crazed and scratched as though they had been sand-blasted. Smoke was billowing from the golden cuff on her left wrist where intricate and powerful digital weapons had overloaded and burned out.

There was no sign of Auerben or Daur, or any of the Scions, except Sancto, who was on his knees, the water up to his sternum. He was clutching his torso, bloody spittle drooling from his agonised mouth.

The Saint was in the centre of the chamber, at the very heart of the light. It shone out of her. All around her, the frothing churning water had smoothed to a mirror stillness.

She was locked in combat, her sword flashing as she swung two-handed into the beast attacking her.

The woe machine.

It was a shadow mass three times her size, a focus of darkness penned in by her radiance, but still lashing and rending with razor tendrils. It was hard to look at, and harder still to define: a cloud of knife-edged shadow that shifted and swam in supple, geometric patterns. It had a constantly changing texture, like rippling mirror scales, part absolute void, part iridescent black, like the wing-cases of some daemonic beetle. It was a storm of whirling, midnight-black thorns surrounding a super-dense core of immaterium darkness.

But the worst part wasn’t the look of it, the churning, abstract nightmare. It was the feel of it. The intense quality of primal horror that radiated from it. The eager, inhuman malice of pure annihilation.

It was Asphodel’s perfect vengeance weapon.

It was the Anti-Saint.

The Beati was covered in lacerations, blood streaming from a thousand knife cuts. Her clothing was shredded, and her breastplate and armour pitted and scoured. Her sword whirled in her hand, deflecting the oil-thick darkness that lashed and tore at her. Her sword was not especially large, nor was it particularly extraordinary. Just a standard, bulk-issue officer’s weapon.

It was the force she imbued it with that counted. A crisp, green aura shone around the blade, and where it struck, the darkness burned. She was drawing on all her power, channelling from a distant and almighty source. The divine light pouring out of her had caged and contained the woe machine, at least temporarily. She thrust and stabbed to end its existence. A phantom shadow of wings, huge and made of emerald light, had sprouted from her back. A halo of bright light surrounded her head.

‘We have to help her,’ said Daur, appearing at Gaunt’s side. He was soaked to the skin, his uniform torn. He was covered in small wounds.

Gaunt nodded.

‘She has it pinned,’ he said. ‘She’s contained its power.’

He and Gaunt moved forward together.

‘Don’t be fething idiots!’ Curth yelled after them.

Sancto saw them moving forward. He got up with a raw growl, clutching his hellgun with one hand and a terrible belly-wound with the other. Something had slashed clean through his body armour and almost gutted him.

All three of them fired into the shadow assaulting the saint. It barely seemed to notice Daur’s shots or the blasts from Sancto’s weapon, but the explosive round from Gaunt’s bolt pistol blew a hole in it. Thorns spiralled away, like a swarm of insects driven from a nest.

In seconds, the damage had re-formed, and the thorns had re-joined the main, whirling mass.

They all fired again, repeated shots. Auerben stumbled up to join them, her hair matted with blood. She added her own shots to the fusillade.

‘It won’t die!’ she wailed.

‘It’s gonna die,’ Sancto snarled. ‘It took all my men. Took ’em all and shredded them!’

The woe machine dropped back, still whirling and keening. The water under it rippled and seethed.

The Saint stood her ground, panting. Her ghost wings were fading and flickering, as if the power sustaining them was ebbing. Blood dripped off her armour. They went to her side, but she flung a hand to warn them back.

‘It’s still strong,’ she gasped. ‘Impossibly strong. But it’s still not full-grown. It wants my power. It wants to feed on me, so it can fully form and then–’

‘Then?’ asked Sancto, fighting back his pain. ‘Then what?’

‘Then it will do the Anarch’s bidding and raze this city and everything in it,’ said the Beati.

She took a step forwards.

‘I won’t let that happen,’ she said.

‘Wait!’ Auerben yelped.

‘You’re hurt,’ said Gaunt.

‘That hardly matters,’ she said. ‘The Emperor is with me.’

She took another step. The pitch of the woe machine’s keening intensified again, the sawing shriek filling the air. Its intricate, churning patterns of leaden darkness and polished black grew more fierce. It surged to meet her.

A storm of heavy las-fire blocked it. Multiple weapons unloaded into it at full auto.

Gaunt turned. Baskevyl and Kolea were advancing across the chamber, flanked by Dalin and the men from Baskevyl’s search squad. All of them were unleashing heavy, accurate suppression fire. Squad drill, close focus fire-team pattern. Twelve lasrifles emptying sustained destructive force into the abomination.

The woe machine roiled backwards like an angry mass of flies. Baskevyl’s men were reloading as they came, switching out dead cells for fresh ones as they ran dry, maintaining the punishing fusillade.

The woe machine retreated further. Darkness and fluid shadows spread out around the walls. Its thousands of individual, razor-sharp cutting teeth chipped and rattled against the ancient stone walls. The temperature dropped. They heard stone blocks scrape and grind as it threatened to warp the undercroft reality again.

‘Is it hurt?’ Gaunt asked.

The Beati nodded.

‘Hold fire!’ Gaunt yelled to Baskevyl. ‘Let’s get in close. Save whatever you have left until we–’

‘What is it?’ Kolea asked.

Gaunt looked at him. ‘I–’

‘Sir?’

‘I was wrong,’ Gaunt said to him. ‘I was wrong, Gol. I’m so sorry. It’s a woe machine. We brought it with us all the way from Vervunhive.’

He could see Gol Kolea’s face twitch as he fought to control his reaction.

‘Yoncy?’ he asked very quietly.

‘It never was her, Gol,’ said the Beati. ‘She was never real.’

Dalin uttered a slow moan of anguish. He dropped his rifle and fell to his knees in the flood.

‘That can’t be true,’ he mumbled. ‘That can’t be true. It can’t.’

‘That’s Yoncy?’ Kolea asked, his voice dull.

‘Oh, throne, Gol…’ Bask exclaimed, heartbroken.

‘That?’ Kolea said. He stepped forwards. Baskevyl tried to hold him back, but he shook his dear friend’s hand away.

‘The warp has tricked us all,’ said the Beati. ‘Lies are its first weapon–’

‘Feth that,’ said Kolea, staring at the seething mass of darkness. ‘I had a child. A child. I swore I’d–’

He stepped closer.

‘I loved you, Yoncy,’ he said. ‘I would have done anything to… to…’

The howl of the saw barked at him.

‘Yeah. You know me,’ said Kolea. ‘You were human long enough. You know me. Can you kill me? Your papa? Eh? I think the warp made you too human. There’s too much human in you still.’

The razor storm shivered. Its frenzy decreased.

‘Yoncy?’ Kolea called. He held out his hand. ‘You come back now, you hear? Come back to me. Come back to papa.’

The darkness shifted. Shadows folded, shearing and twisting into new patterns of darkness. A smaller shape formed. A vague human shape inside the buzzing cloud of thorns.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Kolea. ‘That’s good.’

He looked at the Beati. When he spoke, just the one word, there was a tiny break in his voice.

‘Now,’ he said.

The Saint’s green wings reignited with power, brighter than before, and she plunged her blade into the shadow.

The darkness exploded.

Deaf, blind, dumb, insensible, they were all hurled backwards into the consuming void.

FIFTEEN: INTO FIRE

Zhukova gestured, and Criid moved the fire teams forwards. The air in the vent stank of sulphur and it was so warm and close, it made their lungs tight. All of them were streaming with sweat.

The entire environment felt toxic in the worst way. Every now and then, a rank breath of air would rumble along the duct from far below. Criid kept expecting a super-hot vent of gas to come boiling up and roast them where they stood.

‘Down from here,’ Zhukova said. A wide vertical duct connected to the horizontal one they had been following. Rusted grip rails ran down one side, for use by servitor work crews. The drop glowed with bioluminescent algae.

‘You sure?’ asked Obel.

Zhukova had been tracing the pattern on her palm with her index finger. She coughed and nodded.

Maggs peered down the drop.

‘Straight down?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Zhukova. ‘Fifty metres or so. It meets the main thermal outflow. We can intercept the hostiles.’

‘How do we get the support weapons and flamers down that?’ asked Ifvan.

‘Carefully,’ said Criid.

She swung over the lip, got her feet on the first grip rail and looked at them.

‘Come on,’ she said.

Pasha stopped pacing. She looked over at Spetnin at the arcade hatch.

‘It’s getting quieter out there,’ he said. ‘No more assaults in the last few minutes.’

Pasha nodded. ‘We’ve given them long enough. Ready up. We’re taking that Gnosis Repository.’

Her squads prepped weapons. Pasha re-checked the antique sleetgun she had spent the last few minutes examining. She was confident that she understood its function. She’d taken a satchel of shells from one of the skitarii corpses. She was going to need decent stopping power.

At the compression hatch, Mora’s squad was ready, lined up for fast assault. At her nod, Ludd punched the hatch key.

The compression hatch sighed on its hydraulics and opened.

The Gnosis Repository was quiet. The bodies of their dead lay where they had fallen. Mora’s team led the way, moving quickly, weapons hunting for movement. Elam’s first squad followed, with Ludd. Pasha led the third assault element inside.

Nothing moved. No fire came their way from the ducting network at the far end.

Ludd glanced into the open crypt-safe.

‘Etriun,’ he said.

Pasha glanced in at the versenginseer’s corpse, face up on the crypt floor. Her brow crinkled with distaste.

‘Keep moving,’ she instructed.

Mora’s squad approached the Repository’s far end. Steam guttered from several sub-ducts that had been forced to release pressure. The heavy lid of the main down-duct had been forced, and lay on the deck. Broken locking bolts were scattered on the ground around it.

Pasha pushed forwards and leaned over to peer down the duct.

‘Feth’s sake,’ said Elam. ‘Don’t just go sticking your head in there!’

She regarded him sarcastically.

‘Head still attached,’ she told him, gesturing to her neck. ‘The enemy is in there, and running. I pray to Throne that Tona and Lunny have got their strength down in front of them. We box them in like rats in a pipe. So, Asa, I am going to stick more than just my head in there.’

She heaved herself out onto the duct’s access ladder, a metal frame that ran down into the darkness below.

‘You coming,’ she asked, ‘or have I got to do this alone?’

A light rain had started to fall out of the low, ink-black sky. Behind them, the last crackle of exchanged fire with the insurgents echoed from the end of the approach road.

Bray signalled, and the first of the squads moved out, running low and quiet across the rockcrete apron towards the gatehouse. Chiria and Haller brought up the rear, lugging a .20 and ammo box between them, moving at a shuffling trot.

Bray threw a stop signal, and tossed a rock towards the gatehouse. It clattered across the open yard, in range of the gatehouse sensor net.

Nothing stirred. No lights kicked in, no hum of auto-aiming weapons.

The place was dead.

Bray let his breath out. If the gatehouse had been live, it would have probably stopped them cold. Cracking that kind of bunker was tread-work. Besides, if the gatehouse had opened up, the slaved weapons in its embrasures would easily have had enough reach to hit the bomb truck they pushed up out of range of the insurgents behind the highway rise.

They moved in. Bray waited, edgy, as Mkoyn burned through the outer door’s lock with a cutting torch. He toed open the heavy door, the lock mechanism still glowing and dripping gobs of molten steel.

The Ghosts made entry, clearance style.

Gatehouse command was dead, and so were the two Urdeshi Steelsiders in it. The whole place was torn apart by intense gunfire. The walls were peppered with blast holes, and the floor was covered in drifts of spent brass. Smoke fumed the air. Monitor screens hung, shattered and crazed. Those still linked and functional displayed dead-air feeds. A noxious smell wafted from dead things caged in each of the bunker’s gun embrasures.

They checked the bodies. Both Steelsiders had been riddled with bullets at close range. The smashed ruin of a gun-servitor lay near the door. One of the dead automata’s cyclic cannons was still rotating, a dry, grinding whirr. It had emptied its entire munition canisters.

Chiria set down the heavy .20 and relieved one of the dead Urdeshi of his .30 short-snout, strapping the hip-mounted onto a gyro-stable body-frame.

‘Easier to carry,’ she said. Haller nodded, and secured the other short-snout. They straightened out the fat, armoured feed belts. The slaved auto-hoppers were dead too, but Chiria found the release catches and lifted the hoppers from their mountings. They were heavy, but she and Haller hefted them up like buckets.

Bray moved through the inner door and entered the walkway across the ditches. Rain pattered down, jingling the chain mesh. He led the fire team advance. There was a caged inner run beyond the ditches. The meshing here had been torn down.

‘Something was penned here,’ said Mkeller.

Bray nodded. Whatever it was, it was loose.

Trooper Armin called to Bray there was something on the ground near the door to the main wall. It looked like a large dog. They approached carefully.

It was a bio-mech thing, a quadruped defence servitor of canine build. What organics it possessed had originally been human. The sight of it disgusted them both.

It was sprawled on its side. They could tell it was still alive, though its vitals were collapsing.

‘Shot?’ Armin asked.

Bray shook his head. Thick black mucus was welling from the creature’s steel jaws, and films of it crusted the thing’s eyes. Its systems had crashed. It had been compromised and corrupted, and that corruption was now killing it.

Bray keyed his bead.

‘Bray to Kolosim.’

‘Go.’

‘We’ve reached the inner gate. The place is dead. No contacts. Can confirm signs that the Mechanicus elements turned. Probably some kind of mechanical infection. I don’t know the right word, but it got in their system, drove them mad, and then shut them down.’

‘Dead?’

‘Looks like it, sir. Burned them out really fast, but they went down feral. No signs of gunfire from inside.’

‘How long to main entry?’

Bray and Armin tried the massive blast door. It was sealed tight.

‘Three, maybe four minutes to cut an entry.’

‘Copy that. Get it done.’

Behind the transports on the approach road, Kolosim looked at the men behind him ready to deploy.

‘Move up,’ he said. ‘Bray’s about to let us into the place. It’s gone quiet, but stay sharp.’

He turned to look at EM 14.

‘Let’s go,’ he ordered.

Behind him, two full companies of Ghosts began to advance on the gatehouse.

Eli Rawne’s plans always erred towards the simple. Life had taught him that much. The more moving parts, the more chance there was for something to go very wrong. He liked lean plans that were supple enough to absorb nasty surprises.

His plan for Camp Xenos had been so lean, there wasn’t a scrap of body-fat on it. Get in, grab Mabbon, get out. But life, or some great external power that Rawne didn’t choose to believe in, was laughing at him from the void. It had other ideas.

He’d been anticipating Sekkite insurgents or, at the very worst, packson units. He’d chosen to move light, with just one section, to make the most of speed.

The things he was facing instead – ‘Qimurah’, the pheguth had called them – were the sort of freaks that made that Great External Power In The Void positively hoot with glee. The Great External Power In The Void wasn’t something Rawne had any plans to get to know on a personal level. For a start, the Great External Power probably had a face like a grox’s puckered arse. But sometimes – times like this – Rawne felt a burning desire, like an ingot of foundry-fresh steel sinking deep down in his gut, to meet that laughing fether face to face and have words.

Strong words. Strong words punctuated by straight silver every time Rawne made a salient point.

With Varl and Brostin in tow, he’d barely got Mabbon into the main guardhouse when the yard-front area lit up. Cardass called out four shooters, minimum. They were pinned down. Their transport was sitting in the yard, near the gate block. Just thirty metres, but the rockcrete yard was wide open all the way. It might as well have been parked on Balhaut.

Rawne reviewed his situation fast. Most of the Camp Xenos garrison had been dead by the time he’d arrived. He’d lost several good men of his own just getting inside. In the time it had taken him to secure Mabbon, Troopers Okel and Mkfareg had been butchered too. Oysten, his adjutant, had also taken a hit. She’d survived, but the las-bolt had destroyed her vox-caster set.

That meant no warning was getting out. No message to Pasha that the frighteningly resilient things currently killing his men were also probably coming for her. In larger numbers.

It also meant there would be no calling for help. Oysten was pissed off about it. If there had been time, Rawne would have enjoyed seeing his normally meek and precise adjutant getting riled.

‘I’d just got that fether tuned up!’ she snarled. He helped her pull the smashed vox-caster unit off her back. More shots ripped in through the windows and outer door.

‘It seems your exit route is blocked?’ Mabbon asked.

Rawne glared at him.

‘Strangely enough, prisons aren’t built with multiple exits,’ he replied.

He signalled Brostin forward to join the Ghosts defending the front of the guardhouse. Varl was sticking tight beside the pheguth.

‘We could do with another shooter, you know?’ Varl said to Mabbon.

‘I don’t want a gun,’ Mabbon replied.

‘Not really your choice,’ said Rawne, snatching fire through a window slit.

‘Oddly, it is,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’ve been a prisoner for too long. Colonel, how many years has it been now? And every day, you and your Ghosts actively preventing me from having anything, anything at all, that could remotely be used as a weapon?’

‘I let you keep your mouth, didn’t I?’ Rawne spat.

Trooper Kaellin uttered a grunt as a well-placed las-round found his forehead and threw him back from the window slot. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Rawne cursed. The Archenemy were incredibly effective, and his team were penned in a target building that was being demolished around them one las-bolt at a time. The Suicide Kings, his fine first section, had been reduced to eight: him, Oysten, Varl, Bellevyl, Brostin, Cardass, Laydly and LaHurf.

End of an era. End of the infamous Kings. He was damned if this was how he was going to go out.

Then again, he reflected, I’m probably long since damned anyway.

‘I told Sergeant Varl this, and I’ll tell you too, colonel,’ said Mabbon. ‘It’s me they want. They don’t care about you, except to kill you on their way to me. Let them have me and spare–’

‘No.’

‘Rawne–’

‘No, Mabbon,’ said Rawne. ‘I’ve got orders. A duty. And duty only has two endings. Accomplishing it or–’

‘I know the other one,’ said Mabbon.

Rawne got in beside Laydly, who was burning through his ammo at another of the window slots.

‘Cardass says four,’ said Rawne.

‘That’s what I count, sir,’ said Laydly. ‘One on the roof of that bunker there. Two in the blockhouse beside it, the other one up by the gate–’

A burst of las bracketed the slot. Laydly stopped pointing, and he and Rawne ducked. Rockcrete chippings and metal fragments rained down on them.

‘You’ll have to take my word on the last one,’ Laydly said.

‘What did that bunker look like to you?’ Rawne asked.

Laydly shrugged. ‘A silo, maybe?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he replied. Xenos was a prison, not a fortress. It wasn’t designed to keep attackers out, it was designed to keep people in. Vital elements, like the guardhouse and any garrison areas or arsenals would be securely distanced from the cell block compound.

‘Bellevyl!’ Rawne called out.

Trooper Bellevyl was holding another window slot several metres left of Rawne.

‘Sir?’ the Belladon called back.

‘Think you can lob one onto that bunker?’

Bellevyl pulled a face, assessing his very limited angle of fire.

‘Dunno, sir,’ he said.

‘Let me re-phrase,’ said Rawne. ‘Lob one onto the bunker, Bellevyl.’

Bellevyl nodded. First section, B Company – the Suicide Kings – were Rawne’s personal squad. Every Ghost in it had been hand-picked by him. In the early days, they’d all been Tanith, because Rawne had nursed an antipathy to any new influx from Verghast or Belladon. But he had mellowed. Skill-sets and raw talent mattered more to him than some notion of loyalty to a world that no longer existed. That, and the fact that so many of the original Tanith in first section had been smoked over the years he’d needed replacements.

Like the First’s scout cadre, B Company first section followed its own rules. It was part of the privilege of membership. Rawne allowed greater discretion in weapon choice. He liked the idiosyncratic adaptability of variety. The Suicide Kings went to work packing a range of firepower normally found in elite storm troop platoons. Okel, Throne rest him, had carried a large calibre autogun that chambered armour-piercing rounds. Conglan, now dead out on the yard somewhere, had favoured a hellgun. Oysten, along with her vox-caster, lugged a stock-less riot gun and a bag of breaching shells. Cardass carried a box-fed .20 stubber with a pump shotgun cut-down bolted under the primary barrel.

LaHurf and Bellevyl had standard pattern lasrifles like Varl’s, but both had increased the carry-weight by a third through the addition of under-barrel grenade launchers.

Bellevyl slotted in a chunky krak grenade and lined up at the slot, scooting around for the best angle. Heavy enemy fire kept licking at his position, making him duck.

‘Take your time,’ Varl said. ‘No fething rush.’

The ceiling collapsed.

A Qimurah dropped down onto them in a shower of flakboard and masonry debris. He landed on LaHurf, breaking both of the man’s legs. LaHurf was still screaming when the Qimurah struck him with a fist-full of talons. The blow lifted LaHurf off the ground, spinning him in mid-air, blood jetting in all directions from his torn throat. He landed hard.

The Qimurah reached for LaHurf’s weapon.

Ignoring the tight confines, Cardass opened up across the room with his .20. The deafening hard-round burst tore chunks out of the Qimurah’s chest and shoulder, and threw him against the guardhouse wall. Despite severe wounds that would have killed a standard human instantly, the Qimurah lurched forward again with a roar, neon blood pouring from his injuries, and opened fire with LaHurf’s weapon. Bellevyl was killed at his window slot. Oysten was winged. Cardass was hit in the left hip, and overbalanced.

Brostin hit the Qimurah in the side of the head. He was using one of his flamer tanks as a club. Two blows knocked the creature down, and Brostin kept beating, slamming the heavy metal cylinder into its skull over and over again.

‘There,’ he said, finally tossing the tank aside. It was slick with neon blood. The Qimurah had nothing left above the neck except a spatter of yellow paste and bone shards. ‘Knew there’d be more than one way to kill these bastards with a flamer.’

Oysten was already up, blood oozing from her shoulder. She and Rawne ran to Cardass.

‘I’m all right,’ Cardass said. He wasn’t. His hip was a ragged mess. Oysten reached for field dressings, but Cardass told her where she could stick them. He heaved himself back to his window slot and started to fire his stubber again.

Varl had dashed across to Bellevyl’s position.

‘Sorry,’ he said to Bellevyl’s corpse. Varl felt bad about it. No man deserved to be mocked the instant before his death. Varl set down his own rifle, and hoisted Bellevyl’s. He checked the grenade was still set in the tube launcher.

‘Call it! Bunker?’ he asked, peering out of the slot.

‘Would you?’ Rawne shouted back. Prolonged bursts of fire were striking the guardhouse facade.

Varl angled the gun and fired the underbarrel. It launched the grenade with a sound like an ogryn hawking into a tin spitoon. The grenade sailed up and out, described an arc across the contested yard, and landed on the bunker roof.

It exploded with a fierce sheet of flame that was entirely consumed a second later by the detonation of the bunker itself.

Rawne had been right. Camp Xenos kept its munition store away from the main buildings.

The blast was considerable. It battered the gate area, swallowed their transport in a shock of expanding flame, and blew out the blockhouse beside the bunker. A cone of fire lifted off the bunker site, blooming out into the night sky like a mushroom cap. Debris rained down. They could hear secondary pops and bangs as stored munitions and power cells caught and cooked.

Something landed in the yard along with the debris from the blockhouse. The Qimurah, one of the shooters using the blockhouse as cover, had been cut in two. He was scorched and dripping yellow fluid. His head lolled, and he began to drag his upper half across the yard towards the guardhouse with his spasming hands.

‘Kill it!’ Rawne told Cardass.

‘He’s been cut in half–’

‘Does he look dead?’ Rawne asked. ‘He doesn’t look dead to me.’

Cardass angled his .20 down and raked the clawing mass with stubber fire until it stopped moving.

‘Move!’ Rawne yelled. ‘We’re out now!’ The blast had killed one for certain. Maybe more. Whatever their losses, the Qimurah squad had been blinded and rocked. They had a moment of opportunity.

Varl grabbed Mabbon. ‘Truck?’ he said.

‘That’s gone,’ Rawne replied. ‘Head for the wire and out.’

Varl bundled Mabbon through the door. Laydly followed, then Oysten. Brostin grabbed Okel’s big autogun and ran out after them.

Rawne looked at Cardass.

‘Judd! Now!’ he barked.

Cardass smiled.

‘You need covering fire, sir,’ he said. He locked eyes with the colonel. Rawne knew what he actually meant was I can’t walk. Hip’s gone. I’m bleeding out and there aren’t enough of you to carry me and stay functional. This is where you ditch me.

‘Cardass–’

Cardass ignored him, lining up his .20.

‘Covering fire in three,’ he said. ‘Two…’

Suicide Kings, Rawne thought. Like the old card game. It had seemed like a clever name once.

He ran out across the yard after the others, his head low. There was burning debris everywhere. Cardass’ heavy fire ripped from the guardhouse window slot and punished the gate and the front of the blazing blockhouse.

Varl had reached the fence. High chain wire and a ditch separated the prison’s front yard from the perimeter of the neighbouring vapour mill. The mill loomed, pale in the night, exhaling huge, crawling plumes of white steam from its stacks.

The night was cold. They had the heat of the flames behind them and the night breeze in their faces. The bunker blast had taken down several sections of the security fence. Varl led the way, scrambling over the flattened fencing.

Rawne was last to arrive. Las-bolts whipped around him as he ran. He fell.

He tried to get up. Behind him, a Qimurah was walking slowly out of the inferno of the blockhouse. His blistered form was still on fire, and a splinter of roof spar had impaled his chest. He was firing his lasrifle from the hip, as if that was the highest he could raise it.

Rawne heard the rattle of Cardass’ stubber. A sustained burst of fire knocked the Qimurah back into the flames.

Brostin grabbed Rawne’s arm and dragged him to his feet.

‘Come on, chief,’ he yelled.

‘All right,’ said Rawne.

‘You sure?’ Brostin asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rawne. He decided not to mention the las-round that had gone through his abdomen. He could feel the blood running down his thigh and into his groin.

They headed for the fence.

Behind them, Cardass’ weapon fell silent. Gunfire from the remaining Qimurah warriors chased them into the night.

‘This isn’t a rescue,’ said Mkoll as the third stasis tank finished draining.

Milo nodded.

‘I understand,’ he said.

‘What is it then?’ asked Mazho.

‘An opportunity,’ said Mkoll.

Colonel Mazho was the first prisoner Milo had insisted on releasing. He was a stocky, middle-aged officer from the Urdeshi Fourth Light ‘Cinder Storm’ who had been assigned to the Saint as military liaison by high command after her arrival on the forge world. He’d served with her ever since, which made him enkil vahakan. He and Milo had been captured together.

‘How did that happen?’ Mkoll had asked.

‘Oureppan,’ Milo had told him. ‘The Saint had achieved a miracle at Ghereppan. The Archenemy was reeling. She became convinced that Sek was located nearby. Oureppan. A place called Pinnacle Spire. So we went in fast, so as not to lose momentum. It was a trap.’

‘A trap?’ Mkoll had asked.

‘For her. A warp vortex. He wasn’t really there, you see? He was projecting himself using psykers. Well, the trap failed. She survived. The vortex destabilised. The blow-back hurt Sek, I think. Hurt him badly. And we were too close. We were pulled through to his side. Blink of an eye, and we were aboard his ship.’

The last of the nutrient suspension flushed from the third tank. Mazho was sitting on the rusted deck trying to shake off the raw ache of stasis shock. He was peering around, half-blind and dazed. He finally reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out a pair of rimless spectacles. One lens was cracked. He’d lost just about everything except his ragged Urdeshi fatigues, but somehow his spectacles had survived.

He got up to help them as Mkoll opened the third tank’s hatch. It took all three of them to drag out the body inside. It was a massively heavy dead weight. They laid the body on the deck, and Milo pulled the vox-plugs out of its temples.

‘Pain goads,’ said Mkoll. ‘They weren’t going to take any chances.’

They looked down at the body. Kater Holofurnace, of the Adeptus Astartes Iron Snakes, had been stripped of his plate armour and left in its ragged underskin, a tight mesh bodyglove. The armour had not been removed efficiently, and many of the inter-cutaneous plugs and anchor points had been damaged. The Snake’s body had been studded with steel spikes, each one staked into a major muscle group or joint. The spikes were pain goads designed to paralyse and incapacitate. Each one had a small rune glowing on its head.

Holofurnace moved his head and uttered a low groan. Fluid ran from his mouth, and his eyes blinked open, glassy.

‘He’s immobilised,’ said Mkoll. He drew his skzerret.

‘You going to end his pain?’ Mazho asked.

‘Of course he isn’t,’ said Milo.

Holding the serrated edge of the blade flat, Mkoll began to lever the goads out of Holofurnace’s flesh. As each one came free, a shudder of pain ran through the Space Marine. Blood and other bio-liquids dribbled from each wound. They reminded Mkoll of the stigmata he’d heard some sacred beings displayed.

It was going to take a while. It took effort to dig each goad free and pull it out. Mkoll took the laspistol from his waistband and handed it to Milo.

‘Watch the hatch,’ he said.

‘How long do we have?’ asked Mazho.

Mkoll didn’t reply. Mazho limped around the chamber and peered into the other tanks. Two of the other prisoners were comrades from Oureppan, both men from Mazho’s command. They hadn’t survived the vortex intact. It was not possible to free them from suspension. Mazho turned away and closed his eyes.

‘Who are you?’ Mazho asked.

‘That’s Mkoll,’ whispered Milo from the doorway.

‘The Ghost?’ Mazho looked intrigued. ‘Brin’s told stories about you.’

‘They were all true,’ whispered Milo.

‘So how many of you are there aboard?’ Mazho asked.

‘I told you this wasn’t a rescue,’ said Mkoll, plucking out another goad.

‘How many?’

Mkoll looked at him. Something in his eyes made Colonel Mazho recoil slightly.

‘Just me.’

‘How did you get here?’ Mazho asked.

‘Pure blind chance and an obstinate nature,’ said Mkoll.

‘I’ll bet,’ whispered Milo.

‘Do they know you’re here?’ Mazho asked. ‘Are they looking for you?’

‘Stop with the questions,’ Holofurnace growled. He opened his eyes and looked up.

‘Mkoll,’ he said in a low voice.

‘War brother,’ replied Mkoll, nodding.

‘Come to kill me?’ asked Holofurnace.

‘You’d be dead,’ said Mkoll, yanking the last goad out of the Space Marine’s torso.

Holofurnace laughed, but the laugh turned into a wince.

‘Pain goads,’ said Mkoll, moving down to the legs. ‘I’ll have the last of them out in a few minutes. Then some feeling might return.’

‘I’m not sure I want it to,’ said the Iron Snake. He sat up.

‘Already?’ said Mazho, amazed.

‘Pain focuses the mind,’ said Holofurnace, flexing his hands.

‘Doesn’t it just?’ replied Mkoll.

Holofurnace held out a huge hand to Mkoll.

‘Give me that,’ he said. ‘I’ll finish it.’

Mkoll handed him the dagger. Holofurnace leaned forwards with a grunt and started to hook the goads out of his paralysed legs.

Mkoll rose.

‘What did you mean when you said opportunity?’ Mazho asked, rising too.

‘I’m here by blind luck. You’re here by bad luck. Luck alone led me to you,’ replied Mkoll.

‘Not sure it was luck,’ whispered Milo. ‘The influence of the Beati flows–’

‘Not here it doesn’t,’ said Mkoll.

Milo looked at him.

‘This ship is sitting at the heart of the Archenemy’s primary stronghold on Urdesh,’ said Mkoll. ‘The enemy is here in brigade strengths, all around us. The nearest Imperial force is ninety plus kilometres from here, and no one on our side knows of this location.’

‘So we’re behind enemy lines, cut off, without support?’ asked Holofurnace, yanking a goad out of his knee. ‘In the heart of a nest of devils?’

‘The odds are not in our favour,’ said Mkoll.

‘Is there a way out?’ asked Mazho.

‘No,’ said Mkoll simply.

‘So all that matters is what we do while we’re here?’ asked Milo. ‘What we accomplish before they find us and take us out?’

‘Yes,’ said Mkoll.

‘And you’ve already decided what that could be, I’m guessing?’ said Holofurnace.

‘Yes,’ said Mkoll.

The Iron Snake pulled out the last of the goads, and hauled himself to his feet. He grimaced as locked muscles eased and flexed. He got upright, then immediately slumped, leaning hard on the hatch door of his tank. Mkoll darted to support him and stop him toppling.

‘Thank you, brother,’ said Holofurnace, his voice laced with pain. ‘I’ll be myself again in a moment, I promise.’

‘Lean on something,’ growled Mkoll through gritted teeth. ‘You’re too fething heavy to hold upright.’

Holofurnace chuckled, and shifted his weight, getting a better grip on the rim of the heavy hatch. Mkoll straightened up.

‘So tell me,’ Holofurnace said.

Mkoll frowned thoughtfully.

‘We have three choices,’ he said. ‘One is to try and annihilate this stronghold from inside. I think finding the means to do that will be near impossible. The second is more viable. We try to commandeer a communications station or similar. Get a message out. Alert crusade command to this location in the hope that air strikes or orbital bombardment can level it.’

‘That works,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Astartes code can verify us and emphasise the significance of our signal. If high command isn’t asleep at the helm, fleet elements could have this site triangulated and locked in seven or eight minutes.’

‘Loss of this stronghold would cripple Sek’s efforts on Urdesh,’ Mkoll agreed. ‘So that strategy has a lot going for it.’

‘What’s the third idea?’ asked Mazho.

‘Sek,’ said Mkoll. ‘He’s the key. Whatever damage the crusade does to his armies, they will continue to be a threat all the while he’s alive. And he’s here. On this vessel.’

‘But a fleet strike–’ Mazho began.

‘There’s always a chance he could escape,’ said Holofurnace.

‘He can’t escape if he’s dead,’ said Milo.

‘So if we can only attempt one thing, and we want it to have the maximum effect…’ said Mkoll. He let the rest hang, unsaid.

No one spoke for a moment.

‘Whichever we chose,’ said Mazho, ‘we’re dead.’

Mkoll looked at him.

‘You need to grasp, sir,’ he said, ‘that we’re dead already.’

SIXTEEN: CLOSE QUARTERS

Mkoll buckled the sirdar’s helmet back on. He glanced at the other three, made the Tanith hand-sign for mute, and walked off along the brig.

The interrogation he had observed on his way in was finished, and the cell door locked. He wondered if the Urdeshi colonel inside was still alive.

He hoped to the Throne he was not.

The two packson watchmen were still on duty in the security post. One opened the inner cage to let him through. The other stood leaning on the back grip of the sentry gun.

The packson with the key remarked that the sirdar had been a long time.

Mkoll replied that the best work often took a long time.

‘Harneth den voi?’ the packson asked. So you got what you wanted?

‘Den harnek teht,’ Mkoll replied. Everything it was possible to get.

With an open palm slap, he rammed the pain goad into the key-holder’s solar plexus. The man’s entire system shut down. His mouth opened to voice the unthinkable agony that was screaming through his nervous system, but his vocal chords and lungs no longer worked.

He buckled to the deck. The other watchman turned from the sentry gun in surprise as his comrade collapsed. Mkoll was already on him. The skzerret went in between his ribs.

Two kills, three seconds. No sound.

Mkoll used the watchman’s key to reopen the inner cage and dragged both bodies through. He stood in plain sight at the end of the brig corridor and made the hand-sign for clear.

Milo and Mazho hurried down to him. Holofurnace followed, limping.

‘Uniforms,’ Mkoll said.

Milo and the colonel stripped the packsons of their kit and pulled it on. The fit was poor, but it would have to do. Mkoll went back into the security post, and searched the area. Both packsons had been armed with old Fleet-pattern lascarbines, which were hooked on a wall rack. Mkoll took them down and checked them. Decent weapons, short-pattern for use in shipboard environments. The packsons had kept them clean and in good order. The more disciplined, Astra Militarum-style regimen observed by both Sekkite packs and the Blood Pact had some benefits. Milo and Mazho would have spare clips in the over-rigs of the uniforms they were acquiring, as well as ritual daggers. As they entered the cage in uniform, Mkoll tossed a carbine to each man.

‘Carry them down, over the crook of the arm,’ he said. ‘Packsons don’t shoulder weapons.’

Milo nodded.

Holofurnace appeared.

‘No disguising me,’ he said.

Mkoll knew there wouldn’t be. Most of what would follow was going to be improvisation, though Mkoll had talked them through a few basic plays.

Holofurnace took the big Urdeshi sentry gun off its tripod. It looked like a regular autogun in his paws. He picked up the ammo box and made sure the belt between box and weapon was slack enough not to jam with any sudden movement.

Mkoll opened the outer cage.

‘Someone will soon spot that the brig watch is unmanned,’ said Mazho. He was having difficulty getting his spectacles to sit comfortably inside the stolen helmet and its ghastly mouth-guard.

‘The plan isn’t perfect,’ Mkoll replied. ‘Sooner or later, someone is going to spot that not everything on board is the way it should be.’

They moved through the ship, rising to deck seven and then six. Mkoll led the way, and every time he heard movement or spotted personnel approaching, he signed to the men behind him, and Holofurnace pulled himself into cover: a bulkhead, a through-deck well, or an inspection bay. As soon as the contact passed, Mkoll moved them on.

At a junction on deck six they had to wait for almost fifteen minutes while work crews and servitor gangs moved machine parts through on trucks. Once it was clear, they hurried on, through a compartment airgate, and followed a shadowed walkway that ran along the side of a large processing bay. In the harshly lit space below them, they saw gun-crew servitors loading huge munition shells into the bare-metal clamps of conveyer trains. Tall figures in dappled golden gowns supervised the labour, shouting instructions through hand-held vox-horns. As each half-tonne shell loaded, the automated track rattled forwards and lowered them into deck shafts where they descended on hydraulic rotators into the autoloader magazines on the battery deck.

Mkoll and the others watched for a moment from the shadow of the rail. The enemy warship still had fight in it.

Mazho looked at Mkoll with one eyebrow raised. Mkoll shook his head. Due to their sheer size and power, shiftship munitions were remarkably stable and inert until selected for use. They could waste hours trying to force a shell to detonate, and even then there was no guarantee of a cascade in the magazines.

And they didn’t have hours.

On deck five, they waited as an excubitor strode past with two lekt psykers hobbling in his wake, then almost ran into a damogaur and squad of six packsons. Mkoll didn’t even have time to signal, but he knew Holofurnace must have slipped out of sight behind him because the damogaur started to question Mkoll and his two packsons about the location of an etogaur called Karane.

‘I haven’t seen him, damogaur,’ Mkoll replied. ‘Perhaps he is on the bridge with He whose voice commands the stars.’

The damogaur looked at him, annoyed.

‘The Holy Magister’s not on the bridge, you shit-stain,’ he snapped. ‘When was the Holy Magister last on the bridge?’

‘Apologies, damogaur, of course not,’ said Mkoll quickly. ‘I misspoke. I meant–’

‘No, I’ve tried there too,’ the damogaur replied. ‘The Oratory is closed to all at the moment. Karane must be ashore, then.’

He cursed.

‘What’s your name, sirdar?’ he asked.

‘Eloth, my magir.’

‘If you see Magir Karane, Sirdar Eloth, tell him the shipmaster needs those manifest orders by dawn. Dawn, you understand?’

‘Yes, my magir.’

The damogaur snapped his fingers, and his pack followed him away down the hall.

‘What was that?’ whispered Mazho.

‘Our objective’s no longer the bridge,’ Mkoll replied.

‘So where?’ asked Milo.

‘The Oratory.’

‘And where’s that?’ asked Mazho.

‘I have no fething idea,’ replied Mkoll.

They reached deck three, and almost immediately entered a large section that was undergoing heavy repairs. Work crews of industrial servitors were fitting new armour lining along a section of hull panel that ran for about sixty metres. Welding arrays sparked furiously. Slave gangs were wheeling out tubs laden with fused scrap metal and lumps of slag that had been stripped out from the failed lining.

Mkoll got his little squad in temporary cover, and then walked on through the repair zone alone. He spotted an open compartment where two provision officers in filthy golden robes were arguing about puncture sealant. The compartment was being used as a supervision post for the work. It was stacked with tools and rebreather sets. There was a small work table covered in junk and requisition dockets.

He strolled up to the provision officers, and as he did so, realised they weren’t packsons of the Sekkite host. They were V’heduak, companions of a different tribal order that served as the equivalent of Navy personnel for the Archonate Fleet. They were tall men, larger than Mkoll had realised when he first approached, their big-boned mass and heavy muscle speaking of many family generations serving in high gravity shift operations. He had encountered the V’heduak’s brutal tech-cannibal shock troops before, but not the ruling class. Their heads were shaved except for long, square beards, and they had dented blast visors lowered to their chests. Their faces were fetishistically covered in piercings, so many in the ears that the flesh was stretched. Their scalps were covered in complex tattoo work. Starmaps, Mkoll guessed. The realms and worlds they had made shift between.

They turned to look at him with augmetic eyes.

‘What do you want, soldier?’ one spat using a formal construction that emphasised disdain.

‘That his voice may never fade, I apologise, my magirs,’ he replied, throwing the Sekkite salute.

They returned it, grudgingly, glaring down at him.

‘My magirs, Etogaur Karane extends his respects,’ said Mkoll, trying to use the awkward construction of formal deference. He began to sweat. This had been a bad idea. His command of the Sekkite tongue was nothing like fluent enough to handle a strange accent and odd word-orders of the V’heduak sub-dialect. ‘Etogaur Karane wishes to express his concerns that the strenuous work here may disturb the Oratory.’

‘How?’ asked one.

‘We would not risk disturbing the Magir-Who-Speaks!’ the other exclaimed.

‘I merely express the concern, my magirs,’ Mkoll said. ‘The noise and commotion–’

One of the V’heduak sneered at him.

‘The Oratory is two decks hence, soldier,’ he said. ‘It would not be possible for us to interrupt the solace of the Magir-Who-Speaks.’

Two decks in which direction, Mkoll wondered.

‘Begone,’ said one of the V’heduak. ‘And tell your etogaur he is a weeping sore.’

‘I will at once, my magirs,’ said Mkoll, backing away.

He retraced his steps through the work area. The V’heduak had given him little, but the risk had been worth it. He had spotted something over their shoulders while they had been insulting him.

He passed a row of spoil bins that were packed with scrap plate and insulation materials. Without breaking stride, he dropped one of the grenades from the sirdar’s weapon’s belt into it. Red dot. He hoped that meant smoke.

It did.

In seconds, thick red signal smoke was pouring out of the spoil bin.

He hurried back to the V’heduak.

‘What now, you ulcer?’ one roared.

‘My magirs!’ Mkoll said, pointing. ‘A fire! In the waste tubs! Something has caught alight!’

Snorting with anger and surprise, the V’heduak pushed past him. Smoke was now clogging the back of the work space. He heard them shout for extinguishers, and begin to reprimand the servitors for using their fusing torches too close to scrap insulate.

With their backs turned, Mkoll stepped into the supervision post, snatched up the folded sheet of schematics he had seen lying on the table, and vanished entirely into the shadows.

‘What did you get?’ asked Milo.

Mkoll took out the thick fold of paper, and they opened it out.

‘Deck plans,’ he said. They were hand-drawn, a top plan and side elevation, and the work had been done with great skill. The ghostly traceries of the penmanship even revealed the intricate lines of principal power relays and coolant systems.

‘They were using it to supervise the repair work,’ he said.

‘No cogitators? No data-slates?’ Mazho asked.

‘They don’t trust digital records,’ Mkoll replied.

‘I think we can put it to better use,’ said Milo, and began to study it carefully.

‘I have a question first,’ said Mkoll. ‘Where the feth is Holofurnace?’

The hot, dark confines of the duct opened out into a long rockcrete gallery. It was a hundred and sixty metres long and thirty wide, an artificial ravine lit by the lambent glow of thick biolume algae. Steeply sloped rockcrete walls splayed out from the central channel, to form high and narrow overlook ledges that could be used as inspection walkways. By the phosphorescent light, Obel noted the large and heat-eroded stencil HALL 7816 on one of the rockcrete revetments. The channel bed running between the high, sloped banks was a mess of fused magmatic spoil through which ran a trickle of foul, liquefied waste. The air stank.

‘This is a better site for an ambush,’ Zhukova remarked.

Obel nodded. Meeting the Archenemy in the geotherm duct would have been a slaughter. The duct was only wide enough for two people, side by side. They needed room to deploy so they could bring more of their force to bear against a physically superior enemy.

Criid assessed the chamber quickly. It had clearly once served as an overpressure gallery to regulate geothermic flow at times of peak output. The remnants of huge ceramite gates stood halfway down the gallery. They had long since fused to immobility, but their purpose had been to stem or even shut off magmatic flow and geothermal pressure. Urdesh’s geothermic system was thousands of years old. Long ago, it had been a subtle system, expertly managed and regulated by dynast technicians who could acutely gauge, direct and govern the natural power.

Those delicate archeotech mechanisms had long since fallen into disuse. Now Urdesh’s power grid was an open network of tunnels that either fed or did not. Power modulation was done by the individual sites – the forces and facilities like EM 14 – that tapped into it.

But this now-defunct gallery had advantages. More space, more range. There was cover at their end, and further cover and firing positions provided by the open gates and the high rockcrete ledges. Criid could see the open mouth of the duct at the opposite end. That’s where they’d be coming from. It was the only vent out of the duct network serving the Gnosis Repository area.

That is, she hoped it was. If the adepts had lied to Pasha, if Zhukova had read the plan wrong, if there was another, redundant and disused spur they didn’t know about…

‘They’ve got to be close,’ she said to Obel. ‘Let’s make it here. It’s the best option we’ve seen.’

‘The only option,’ said Larkin.

Obel threw quick hand signs – defensive positions, here. The Ghost squads behind them began to fan out into the gallery, taking up firing positions around the duct mouth using the ends of the rockcrete revetments as cover. Mkhet and Boaz set up the .20. Lugging the support weapon and its firing stand all the way from the Turbine Hall had left them almost dead on their feet from heat exhaustion. Other squad members had carried the ammo boxes. Falkerin and Cleb prepped the two satchels of tube charges, and Ifvan handed the primed sticks out. In the tight confines of the chamber, explosives would be a last resort, and Criid made sure everyone understood that.

Lubba checked his flamer.

‘Keep it tight in here,’ Obel advised. ‘Backwash could cook our own people, especially if they’re up on the overlooks.’

Lubba nodded. He lacked Aongus Brostin’s gleeful love of fire, but he understood flames and flamers. He’d been a flame-trooper since he joined the regiment, and Larkin had once described him as ‘Brostin without the, y’know, nutso pyro aspects.’

Jed Lubba was a big man. Most flame troopers were. It took bulk and core strength to heft a full-size flamer-unit around all day. He was sweating profusely, his jacket off, his vest dark with sweat.

‘Nice and tight, sir,’ he promised.

Larkin and Okain clambered up the moulded foot-holds at the end of the revetments to reach the inspection walk, one on each side.

‘Feth, it’s high,’ Larkin complained once he was up.

‘Quiet,’ said Criid.

‘And narrow,’ Larkin added. He eased his way along, carrying his precious long-las carefully, and took up position at the top of the left hand gate, in among the rusted gears that had once opened and closed it. Okain had already set up on top of the right hand gate. Other Ghosts clambered up after them, taking up precarious firing positions along the ledges, some on their bellies. Obel wanted to maximise the number of guns they could bring to bear. Maggs and Zhukova picked their way along the channel, heading down to scout the remainder of the gallery and listen at the far-end duct.

‘This is recovery?’ Obel said quietly to Criid.

‘This is stopping them,’ she replied.

‘But they’re carrying the things,’ said Obel. ‘Gaunt wants the things, right?’

She nodded. ‘But he doesn’t want the bastards to have them. So if it comes to a choice, better no one gets them than they do.’

Lunny Obel didn’t look sure.

‘Pasha didn’t specify,’ he said.

‘I don’t think she knows either,’ said Criid. ‘Our orders were to secure and recover. That idea went up the wall. So now it’s recover or deny. Look–’

She dropped her voice low, and turned him aside.

‘Honest to Throne, I don’t rate our chances here. Just thirty-one of us, no support? These hostiles were cutting through skitarii fifteen minutes ago. We’ll be lucky to hold them. If we’re really lucky, we smoke them. Just pour it on. If there’s anything to recover after that, hooray for us. Bottom line, they don’t get past us with the stuff unless we’re all dead.’

‘These things are important, aren’t they?’ Obel said. ‘These eagle stone things?’

‘Feth knows why,’ she replied. ‘But yes. Clearly. They’ve sent in elites to get them. So if we have to destroy them to stop them taking them, so be it.’

Obel shook his head.

‘Hey,’ she said, nudging him. ‘Come on. Lunny? They’ve sent in elites, Gaunt’s sent us. The Lord Executor, no less. So what does that make us?’

‘Elites?’ Obel asked with a tired grin.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It makes us suckers and las-bait. But at least I made you smile.’

‘Feth you, Tona,’ he chuckled.

‘Sir!’ Sergeant Ifvan hissed.

Okain was hand signing from his position.

Maggs and Zhukova were returning down the channel. They were moving fast, dodging and sprinting along the dirty, uneven bed of the gulley.

Primary order, Obel signed.

Corrod raised his hand and the Qimurah halted. He peered ahead at a pale disc that showed where the duct opened into some grander chamber.

He looked at the detailed plans Ordinate Jan Jerik had given him.

Hacklaw glanced at him.

‘Damogaur?’

‘We’re approaching the gallery,’ he said. Hacklaw nodded. He remembered it from the way in.

‘If they’re smart and diligent, this is where they’ll try to stop us.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s the point I’d choose,’ Corrod said. He looked at the chart again. ‘Wide enough to deploy, tight enough to defend.’

‘I doubt our Imperial foe has the wit or ability to get a force down here fast enough,’ said Hacklaw.

‘And that is why we have been at war with them for ever,’ said Corrod. ‘That sort of thinking. We underestimate them. Our foe is smart and diligent. They sent soldiers to recover the stones. They wouldn’t have sent just anybody. Special troops. Trustworthy elites.’

Hacklaw nodded, chastised.

Corrod looked back at the duct mouth. He squinted, his neon-bright eyes searching. The vents were dulling his reworked senses badly. The mucosal resin excreted to protect his lungs from heat burn was clogging his normally hyper-sharp gifts of smell and taste, and the general heat elevation was making it hard for his eyes to detect human heat tracks.

But he could hear. The soft but urgent drumming of human hearts, elevated with tension. The skitter of loose stones. The clink of metal as clips were gently slotted into receivers.

‘They are there,’ he said.

‘We cannot go back,’ said Ulraw. ‘They will have secured the other end by now.’

‘I said nothing about going back,’ replied Corrod. ‘We are Qimurah, brothers. We ascend always. We follow the song of his voice.’

‘We rush them?’ asked Hacklaw.

‘Yes,’ said Corrod. ‘We will lose some. That is the price. But they will not be prepared for our speed or our fortitude. Remember why our magir wrought us thus?’

Hacklaw nodded. The Imperial preference for energy weapons, especially the las-form, had influenced the ritual evolution of the Qimurah. The ingeniants of the Heritor College had given earlier generations of their kind the ability to grow hardshell plates to absorb solid kinetic munitions. That had been back in the dim times of the First Human Wars. Now Qimurah were made to exude the resin coat that sloughed away energy fire. The ingeniants had developed the idea from the study of loxatl biomechanics.

Lasweapons were excellent tools against human flesh. But the Qimurah, while not invulnerable, were far more than that.

‘You remember the plan of the chamber?’ he asked.

The Qimurah nodded.

‘Hacklaw, take your warriors and scale the left side. Gehrent, yours to the right. Ekheer, charge the gulley.’

All the Qimurah hissed assent. They waited for a moment, neon light crisping in their eyes, as what once had been their sweat glands released more mucus to thicken the glistening coating of their flesh. Hacklaw, Gehrent and the warriors who would accompany them took off their boots. They focused with grimacing concentration, ignoring the pain, as they reworked to lengthen the talons on their fingers and toes. The chitin sprouted, cracking and growing, becoming ugly grey hooks.

Corrod settled the old, Guard-issue musette bag on his shoulder. It contained four of the stones. Ulraw had the other four secure in his satchel.

‘These get through,’ said Corrod. ‘That is all that matters. If I fall, if Ulraw falls, someone takes up the burden.’

‘Yes, magir,’ they whispered.

‘Now let us show this human filth how Qimurah fight,’ said Corrod. ‘For the Anarch, who is Sek, whose voice drowns out all others.’

It had been still and quiet for several minutes. The waiting tugged at Larkin’s nerves. He kept his eyes on the mouth of the duct, but had sighted his long-las at a rock in the channel bed some thirty metres in. That was a point nothing would cross without taking a headshot. His musette bag was open at his hip, restocks of over-charged cells ready to grab.

Come on then, let’s be having you…

Criid glanced at Obel. Sweat was running down his cheeks and neck, and it wasn’t just the merciless heat of the vent system.

‘Movement!’ Zhukova hissed.

Silently, without battle cry or howl, the Qimurah burst from the duct and came at them. The first glimpse of their enemy made the Ghosts flinch. They were inhuman. Tall as ogryn, thin as corpses, sprinting from the duct with astonishing stride-length, almost springing like bipedal game-bucks.

Their speed was the second shock. How could anything move so fast?

Criid felt fear flood through her. The enemy had flung themselves forwards to attack. They had known it was an ambush, a prepared position. Yet still they had charged.

The Qimurah bore in like a tide, like a cavalry charge, flowing down the channel, firing their lasweapons from the shoulder.

The first shots, the cracks echoing around the enclosed space, grazed and chipped the shoulders of the rockcrete revetment. Then the first two Ghosts dropped, knocked off their feet by inconceivably accurate strikes.

‘Fire!’ Obel yelled.

The Tanith guns began to blaze. A blizzard of las-fire ripped down the rockcrete ravine, countercut by fire from the overlooking ledges. Boaz opened up with the .20, pumping streams of rounds down the channel. The noise was painful.

The leading Qimurah buckled and fell. Those behind leapt over the fallen, firing. Some of the creatures struck down got up and began to run again.

‘Feth this,’ whispered Larkin. They’d outrun his pre-set sighting point before he’d even squeezed off a shot.

What the feth were they?

He fired, and the long-las barked. A Qimurah toppled as his skull exploded. His forward momentum kept his corpse tumbling and cartwheeling for several metres.

Larkin didn’t stop to enjoy his kill. He slammed in another cell and put a second hotshot into the face of another of the neon-eyed fiends. Okain had opened up too. The two snipers had dropped five of the creatures before the front of the charge had reached the rusted gates. The over-charged hotshots had true stopping power. Not even Qimurah bio-defences could block or soak up that kind of energy force.

The .20 was also taking a toll. The streams of heavy hard rounds were shattering limbs and shearing bodies apart.

They can’t get past this, Obel thought. Doesn’t matter what they are, doesn’t matter how fast they are, they can’t run this killbox. None of them are going to make it to us alive.

But the bulk of the Tanith firepower wasn’t the heavy crew-served or the two long-las weapons. It was standard lasrifles. Hits from them made Qimurah stumble and falter. Some fell, others took visible damage.

But they kept going. They soaked it up. Obel wondered how many times he’d have to hit the same target spot before he did any lethal damage.

The Qimurah came on. Their weapons were basic, but their supple, strong bodies allowed them to fire on the move with great accuracy.

And lasweapons were excellent tools against human flesh.

Four Ghosts were down. Five. Six. Boaz was hit in the throat and arm, and flopped back from the .20, which chattered into silence. Ifvan leapt in to take over, but the .20 had feed-jammed when Boaz lurched away from the tripod. He fought to unblock the receiver.

‘Clear it! Clear it!’ Obel yelled.

Larkin heard Okain scream out. Two more groups of the enemy were pouring up the revetments onto the ledge. They didn’t have to balance. Hooked claws on their feet and hands bit into the crumbling ’crete like pitons. Some were almost running along the wall on all fours like human spiders.

Larkin and Okain switched aim. They no longer had time to fire at the charging tide below. They began sighting over the gate mechanisms to fend off the horrors that were racing along the walls at their level.

Okain hit one, and the kill-shot hurled the scurrying scarecrow shape off the ledge, spinning and flailing. Larkin blew the head off the first one coming at him, then reloaded to greet the second.

On the far side, Okain missed with his third shot. Hacklaw vaulted over the corroded gears of the gate, and decapitated Okain with a slash of his fore-claws.

Down below, Maggs saw Okain perish.

‘On the walls! They’re up on the walls!’ he yelled. Several of the Ghosts at the duct mouth tried to angle up and fire at the Qimurah advancing along the edges. This further reduced the firepower concentrating on the main charge.

Hacklaw and two others had swept past Okain’s station, sending his corpse tumbling down the revetment, and fell into the Ghosts positioned on the ledge. The Ghosts tried to fight back, shooting point-blank at the unexpected attack, or trying to fend off the Qimurah with rifle butts or blades. The Qimurah killed some outright with their meat-hook claws, or simply threw the troopers off the ledge into the channel below, a drop that either killed or crippled them as they hit the rockcrete gulley below.

Ifvan got the .20 cleared, but the front end of the charge was already on them.

The Qimurah had left many of their kin dead and mangled in the rockcrete channel behind them. But with undimmed fury and unfaltering speed, the remainder of the reworked warriors swept into the Ghosts’ fragile line.

SEVENTEEN: FLESH IS WEAK

There was no quarter, no room to move, no time to think. The twilit gallery shook with gunfire, stray las-rounds spitting through the fug of accumulated smoke. The leading Qimurah hit the line, taking shots point blank, shredding and dying, and soaking up damage for the warriors behind them. The Ghosts had fixed silver, and resorted to stabbing and thrusting as the Qimurah swept into them. Most were simply bowled backwards by the superior power and force of the Archenemy creatures. Even with bayonets driven deep into blistered neon flesh, they were carried over or dragged backwards.

Some were crushed underfoot, others fell to raking claws or sprays of shot. Corrod was in the thick of it, tearing his way forwards. He had known since setting out that many of his kind would not return from the mission. One did not enter the heartland of the enemy and expect to survive unscathed. The holy work was all that mattered. The orders of the voice. The Qimurah could be remade. New and worthy sons could be blessed and reworked to replace the fallen. They would all share the same, eternal purpose: to prevail, even to the last of them.

And they would prevail. They would break all opposition and bear the keys of victory to his side, and lay them at his feet. Even if they were reduced to just a handful. To just one.

Never had so many of the Qimurah been deployed together, and never had so many perished in the same action. It was a mark of honour. A mark of trust. Their very losses, unthinkable in extent, proved the magnitude of their task. Victory, no more, no less. Ultimate victory in the Sabbat War. A few metres of filthy ground in a rockcrete channel. A few outclassed enemy soldiers in their path.

That was all that stood in the Anarch’s way.

A few metres. A few bags of human meat. The Qimurah could conquer that. The Imperials had fought well. Where they lacked strength, they had compensated with wit and diligence. They had executed to effect. They had shown courage and resolve, and tactical skill.

And now they would die because their unworked bodies were too fragile to sustain the effort, their weapons too weak. At the last moment, which was always the only moment that truly mattered, their strength could not match their determination.

He could see the looming mouth of the duct behind them.

‘Flamer!’ Obel yelled into the carnage. The .20 was overrun. Everything was just smoke and blood and jarring impacts and crashing bodies.

Lubba stood his ground, and sent a lance of sucking, roaring white heat into the first of the Qimurah, searing flesh from bone. The superheated stream annihilated one entirely, scattering fused and burning fragments of bone. Another managed to stagger a few steps, skinless and ablaze, before falling.

Criid and Obel tossed their rifles aside and pulled the adept wardens’ staves out of their shoulder packs. They stood their ground and fired.

The air distorted as grav-pulses blasted from the ends of the staves. The next two Qimurah fell back, their skulls crushed like eggs. Criid and Obel tried to fire again, but the Mechanicus weapons took a moment to cycle.

And there were no more moments.

‘Lunny!’ Criid yelled.

‘Charges now!’ Obel roared.

On the ledge, Larkin heard Obel’s distant order as he scrambled back from the gate. A Qimurah bounded over it, dropping onto him. For a second, he locked eyes with the thing’s neon gaze. Then he met it with his silver.

The Qimurah landed and impaled itself on the Tanith blade locked to the end of Larkin’s long-las.

It writhed, pulling on the long gun, threatening to wrench it out of the old marksman’s hands or roll them both off the ledge.

Larkin pulled the trigger. The hot shot blew the Qimurah in half and hurled the sectioned creature off his blade. Another Qimurah came over the gate gears behind it. Larkin reached for his reload bag, but quick as he was, there wasn’t going to be enough time.

Hands grabbed him from behind and shoved him down onto his face. Wes Maggs was kneeling on his back, hosing rapid fire at the oncoming Qimurah. Trooper Galashia was behind him, lighting it up over Maggs’ head. The combined fire swatted the Qimurah off the ledge. It plunged towards the channel below just as the Ghosts’ explosives began to go off.

Tube charges and grenades were the only things they had left. The dwindling line of Ghosts was being crushed back into the mouth of the gallery. At Obel’s order, they had frantically hurled their tube charges and whatever grenades they were carrying.

The staggered blasts lit up along the Ghosts’ end of the chamber, filling the artificial ravine with a sudden forest of explosions. It was a desperate choice. A final choice. Many of the Qimurah were blown apart instantly, but the blast pressure was trapped and channelled. The rockcrete ravine cupped and focused the over-shock and drove it up and out.

The Ghosts defending the duct mouth were hurled off their feet by the hammering wave, rolling and tumbling, deaf, dazed and blind.

The over-pressure scorched up the revetments too. It swept Maggs off the ledge. Larkin and Galashia managed to grab him before he fell, and clung on desperately as he tried to drag himself up again, his feet swinging over the drop.

Smoke and flames boiled down the gulley, dense and caustic. Criid tried to rise. She saw a Qimurah almost on her, and fired her stave. The gravity round hammered him back into the revetment wall and split his torso like a ripe ploin. The Qimurah had a guard-issue satchel over one shoulder. It slumped along with his corpse into the filth of the channel bed.

Corrod saw Ulraw die.

‘Take it up! Take it up!’ he yelled.

He saw Drehek stumble out of the swirling, spark-filled smoke, casting aside an Imperial he’d just gutted with his claws. Drehek saw the fallen treasure, and ran for it. He pulled it off Ulraw’s corpse and turned. A javelin of white-hot fire raked him and torched him. The Qimurah and the satchel collapsed in a consuming ball of flame.

Corrod howled. There was no time to go back. No time to recover what was lost. He still had four of the stones.

He threw himself on, the duct ahead.

An Imperial blocked his path. He smashed the man aside, snapping his neck and removing half of his face.

Zhukova, deafened by the bombs, saw the monster kill Gansky. She fired full auto, cutting Corrod off his feet with a hail of las. Corrod rose, his skin blistered and smouldering. She hit him with another burst. He fell, then came at her.

She hit him again, and saw neon blood spurt and spatter.

He was centimetres from her when his head wrenched sideways. The side of his skull caved in and burst.

Corrod fell.

Lunny Obel lowered the stave.

‘These fethers just don’t know when to die, do they?’ he asked.

A hunched, stumbling figure slammed into Obel from behind and knocked him aside. Hacklaw, wounded and disfigured and perhaps the last Qimurah left alive, was still going. His claws tore the musette bag from his damogaur’s corpse.

Clutching it to his chest, he plunged on into the duct.

Chiria offered Kolosim the detonator casually, the way a trooper might offer a comrade a pack of lho-sticks.

‘You wired it,’ Ferdy Kolosim replied. ‘You do the honours.’

Chiria shrugged. The scars on her face crinkled with a grin of relish.

‘Ghosts, Ghosts,’ she said into her bead. ‘Stand by for det. Brace and ease.’

It had just begun to rain again. Fine sheets of drizzle washed across the approach to EM 14. The Ghosts huddled in the darkness, braced, and opened their mouths to prevent burst eardrums.

Chiria flipped off the switch-guard and pressed the detonator stud.

There was a light-flash, and then a shock that they all felt in their lungs and bones.

Then a boom split the night in half.

A sheet of flame ripped across the front of the Mechanicore fortress. Huge chunks of rockcrete and ouslite came tumbling out, crunching like a landslip across the apron. The blast shock flattened the security fences, tearing the chain link apart, and blew in the back of the guardhouse.

As the concussion dropped, pebbles, grit and flecks of stone began to fall with the rain.

‘Get into it!’ Kolosim ordered. The chosen tactical squads hurried from cover, weapons ready. Debris was still fluttering down. Smoke blanketed the site, and numerous fires were burning. The Mechanicore’s main gate zone was a mass of broken slag and buckled rebar.

The huge blast doors themselves were still entirely intact. They were simply lying on the ground.

‘Nice job,’ Kolosim commented as he clambered over the rubble on the heels of the point team. Chiria followed, lugging her short-snout rig and ammo hopper.

‘I knew a truck load of hi-ex would have its uses, sir,’ she replied.

Needs must, Kolosim thought. Bray and Armin had spent almost twenty minutes trying to cut an entry in the main doors. The Cult Mechanicus built things to last, and on top of that, EM 14’s systems had suffered a catastrophic collapse, so there had been no joy trying to rewire the circuits either.

Kolosim had been urgently considering other potential entry points when Chiria had tapped him on the shoulder and simply pointed to the bomb truck that the Sekkites had tried to drive into their lines.

He had said, ‘Oh, what the feth. Breach it.’

The point teams slithered and climbed in over the rubble, moving through the heavy haze of smoke and dust with weapons up and sweeping. Primary lights and environment were down, but self-powered auxiliary lumen banks had come on, illuminating the interior hall with a soft, blue glow.

Bray had tac lead. He threw hand signs, fanning his entry team wide. They left the edge of the rubble and the blast area, and crossed a marble floor covered with in-blown grit and lumps of rockcrete. The Ghosts moved from pillar to pillar, bounding cover. Vadim’s squad moved in at their heels, then Kolosim with the heavier weapons. Kolosim signalled his own squad wide, then moved up to join Bray and Caober.

The hall ahead was large and silent, a long chamber like the nave of a temple. Back-washed smoke from the entry blast was collecting in the high ceiling space. Kolosim looked around.

A fight had torn through here in the last hour or so. The walls and floor were scarred with bullet and las strikes. He saw several Mechanicus weapons servitors, dead and blown out, plus the bodies of half a dozen Tanith troopers.

It must have been hell, trapped in here when the machines turned.

Caober pointed. Several of the automata had been shot out and wrecked, but several others seemed intact. They had just shut down and died. Kolosim edged close to one and inspected it. Black goo, like treacle, was seeping out of its casing. It had burned out from within, its cogitator and biomech processors dissolving into mush.

‘Like the thing outside,’ Bray remarked.

‘Same here, sir,’ called Vadim. He was examining systems built into a wall – a data duct and a row of monitor screens. Tarry black slime oozed from all of them.

‘Kolosim to Arcuda,’ Kolosim said into his bead. ‘Entry achieved.’

‘Copy,’ Arcuda’s voice replied. ‘I thought I heard you knock.’

Arcuda had taken charge of the companies inside the Mechanicore. Pasha and Elam had already descended into the ducts and, like Obel and Criid’s hunter squads, they were out of comm range. Word was, Theiss was dead, and he’d died in the first few minutes. Kolosim had warned Arcuda once it had become clear he was only going to force entry by unsubtle means. Arcuda had pulled all Ghost forces clear of the entry hall.

‘Moving in by squad,’ Kolosim said. ‘You still got actives?’

‘It’s quietened down a lot,’ said Arcuda. ‘A few bursts, so watch yourself. But the frenzy is done. I think they’re all dead, or dying.’

‘It true about Theiss?’

‘Yeah. We’ve taken a beating. Big purse.’

Kolosim winced. Big purse. The euphemism stung. The Militarum had bastardised it from Munitorum jargon, an assessment term used in action reports and logistical summaries. Big purse was actually ‘big perc’, the cover-sheet abbreviation for ‘big percentage casualty rate’, indicating forty-five per cent losses or higher. To Kolosim it always sounded like some thieving bastard had got away after a brutal mugging.

‘We’re going to need medicae and med-vac soon as,’ Arcuda reported.

‘Working on that,’ Kolosim replied. ‘Links to high command and Eltath Operations are still down.’

‘Another big hit?’ Arcuda asked.

‘Can’t say. Hoping it’s just technical feth. But shit’s kicking off all over town.’

‘No way the palace has been hit,’ said Arcuda.

‘You’d think,’ Kolosim agreed.

The teams moved forwards again. Kolosim stuck tight with Vadim and Caober.

‘What’s the plan,’ Kolosim asked into his bead. ‘Do we start extraction?’

‘Cas-vac yes, soon as you can,’ Arcuda replied. ‘But otherwise we secure the feth out of this place. The operation’s still live down in the ducts. No signal yet, but we need to be ready to support. Or block anything that tries to come out.’

‘Copy that. Key me in.’

‘We’ve covered all the possible duct exits,’ replied Arcuda, ‘but we haven’t reached Turbine Hall One yet. That’s where Criid and Lunny went in. That’s closer to you.’

‘On it,’ said Kolosim. ‘We’ll lock that up.’

He followed the advance in. More automata wrecks. Dead tech-priests and adepts, some of whom had been shot apart or torn limb-from-limb. The Mechanicus had turned on itself as well as its guests. Black slime spattered the floor and was sprayed up some walls. Most of it leaked from the machine dead, but some of it was oozing and dripping from the building itself.

There were more dead Ghosts too. Men and women Kolosim knew well, lying where they had fallen, buckled and twisted. Some had died instantly from massive wound trauma. Others had died slowly, alone and in pain, caught in the open. Blood trails demonstrated that.

‘Feth this,’ Vadim muttered.

‘How do we know they’re dead?’ Bray asked.

‘Throne, look at them!’ Kolosim replied.

‘Not ours, sir,’ said Bray. ‘The Cult Mech.’

Kolosim hesitated. Feth of a time to think that thought. They looked dead. Servitors and priests, cold and still, leaking black shit onto the floor.

They’d been infected by something.

But they had never been alive in the first place, not in ways Kolosim or his Ghosts understood. Cult Mechanicus were pretty cold and still at the best of times. How could he tell? The shot-up ones, sure, but the others? They knew a frenzy had overtaken them, a killing bloodlust. Then they’d shut down and dropped, spewing the black goop everywhere. Was that death? Or was it just another phase? Inertia? A dormant state while the infection progressed to the next stage?

Kolosim looked around and swallowed nervously. There were hundreds of dead Cult Mech personnel and servitors littering the halls and arcades. He could see forty alone from where he was standing.

What if they were about to come back? Switch the feth back on? Wake up and resume their kill-frenzy?

He’d just walked two full companies in amongst them.

‘Feth,’ he breathed.

‘What?’ Caober asked.

Kolosim fumbled for his bead.

‘Kolosim to all entry teams. I want confirm taps on every Mech body you see. Repeat. Kill-confirm every potential hostile. No exceptions.’

His team leaders voxed affirmative. The shots started. The men around him spread out, aiming down at the heads or central processors of every dead adept, priest and servitor, and firing a point-blank round to destroy them.

It was grim work. It was vital work. The Mechanicus kept its mysteries and secrets to itself. If there was even a slim chance any of them would revive, it had to be erased.

Obel clambered to his feet and stumbled towards the duct. Criid and Zhukova had already taken off into the vent in pursuit of the fleeing Qimurah.

‘Tona!’ he yelled.

There was no reply. He felt woozy, his lungs tight from the heat. The thing had hit him hard, and he was pretty sure he was carrying broken ribs or worse. But the adrenaline surge of the savage fight was still pumping through him.

He glanced back at the devastation behind him. Smoke virtually filled the gallery’s rockcrete ravine, and fires were burning where both bodies and the chemical silt in the channel bed had caught. The enemy dead choked the gulley mouth, and the Tanith dead and injured were all around him.

‘Sergeant!’ he yelled.

Ifvan limped to him, gashes on his face. ‘Sir?’

‘Check the dead. The enemy dead. None of these bastards can be alive, you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then see to our wounded. Come on, Ifvan! Rally whoever’s left!’

Ifvan nodded.

‘Where – where will you be, sir?’ he asked.

Obel was already hurrying towards the vent.

Tona Criid was a strong runner, but Zhukova was staying with her. The heat in the close confines of the vent was intense. Criid wasn’t sure how much longer either of them would last before dehydration shock or the stifling air overcame them.

She wasn’t going to let the bastard go.

And there were very few places he could go. This was the main vent spur, the route they’d followed to get in. It ran all the way out beyond the limits of the EM 14 site, and eventually joined the main geotherm shaft. No divisions, no sub-tunnels. At least that was what the chart had seemed to show. Two kilometres out to the main magmatic pipeway.

The heat was bad enough. The noxious volcanic gases were burning her throat and binding her chest, as though her respiratory system was corroding. The duct was a tube, and the base was littered with magmatic residue and liquid spoil, making it treacherous under foot. She twisted her ankle twice, and then stumbled so badly she fell and slammed painfully into the curved wall of the duct.

Zhukova pulled her up.

‘We can’t–’ Zhukova began.

‘We can,’ Criid insisted.

It had been easier coming in, despite the weight of gear. They’d moved steadily, picking their way. Nothing like this blind, headlong rush. Chasing down a pipe into hell after one of its daemons.

They started to run again. Zhukova had strapped her rifle over her back. Criid’s rifle was back in the gallery, but she still had the Mechanicus stave.

‘He was hurt–’ Zhukova said, coughing.

‘So are we.’

‘No, he was wounded. I don’t care how inhuman he was, he was damaged!’

Criid knew she was right. She’d seen the Qimurah go past her, torso and arm torn and blistered from weapons-fire. She’d seen splashes of yellow fluid on the wall of the duct as they rushed into it. Maybe that was their only edge. Maybe they could overtake him, despite his speed, because he’d start to flag as his wounds slowed him.

She saw a vertical beam of pale light ahead. It was the down-duct that led back to Turbine Hall One, the one they’d lugged the support weapons and ammo down, rung by rung.

She ran straight under the opening and kept going.

‘Tona!’ Zhukova called.

Criid looked back. ‘Not that way!’

‘He might have–’

‘No! He’s gone out the same way he went in! Right down to the main thermal line, Zhukova! That just goes back up into the Mechanicore!’

‘But–’

‘Come on!’ Criid turned and started running again.

‘Captain Criid!’ Zhukova yelled.

Criid cursed and swung back around.

‘What?’ Zhukova was standing under the ceiling duct, looking up.

‘What, Zhukova?’

‘He would have gone up,’ Zhukova said, ‘if it was the easy way.’

Criid stumbled back to her, panting.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘If he was wounded,’ said Zhukova. ‘Desperate. Knew he couldn’t make it all the way to the main line. Decided to hide.’

Criid looked at her. ‘Is that a guess? Are you guessing?’

‘I’m trying to think as he might think,’ Zhukova replied. ‘I don’t think I can go much further. Not all the way along. And then how many more kilometres to get out of the city, the clave zones, back to enemy lines? If I was hurt, I’d hide. And this is the only hiding place. The only one.’

Criid glared at her.

Zhukova reached up and grabbed the lowest rung of the service ladder. She hauled her way up a short distance into the base of the down-shaft.

She paused, and dragged her hand along the next rung up, then looked down at Criid and showed her palm.

It was smeared with yellow fluid.

‘The bastard went up,’ she said.

‘Feth,’ Criid growled. ‘Jump down! Jump the feth down, Ornella!’

Zhukova landed beside her. Criid raised the stave, aimed it up the down-shaft, and loosed a pulse of rippling gravitron force.

They heard it strike something in the darkness far above. A dull metallic thump. Dust, pebbles and flakes of rusted metal showered down on them.

Criid pushed the stave into her pack and grabbed the lower rungs, heaving herself up.

Obel ran up, panting and coughing, from the duct behind them.

‘Criid? Where the feth are you going?’ he gasped.

‘Up!’ Criid yelled, disappearing from view.

Zhukova looked at Obel.

‘Because he did,’ she said.

‘Is it dead?’ he asked.

The Beati Sabbat sighed. Gaunt had never seen her look so exhausted. Even the soft, inner light she seemed to generate had dimmed.

‘Yes,’ she said.

The billet hall of the undercroft was just a billet hall. All the reality distortions had vanished like dreams. The flood water had drained away swiftly, leaving only foul puddles and debris on the flagstones. Baskevyl’s men were lighting lamps so there was a little light at least.

Gaunt slowly looked around. Just a cellar now: cold, damp, damaged, old. Just a place, a solid, ordinary reality, a set of deep chambers no one cared about. The malice that had infused the stones had fled with the woe machine’s death-shock. The undercroft had realigned with reality and returned to what it had always been.

Gaunt checked himself. No, the place had changed forever. No one would come here now. It ought to be sealed, not because there was some lingering trace of immaterial evil, but because of what it was. A tomb. A scene of murder. A site so burdened with grief and loss it was hard to even stand there.

The dead littered the ground between waste-water puddles and broken cots. Sancto’s men. Osket was moving from body to body, checking for life, though it was just a formality. They had been cut to ribbons. Sariadzi had been destroyed so completely, no trace of him remained.

Gaunt wondered how many others had died here. Ghosts, men and women of the retinue, so devoured by the darkness that nothing had survived to show they had ever existed.

Daur sat in a corner, his back to the wall. This loss, this slaughter, had scarred them all. Gaunt doubted he would ever see Ban Daur flash his eager smile again.

And then there was Gol.

Kolea was sitting on the ground, staring at the spot where Yoncy had been. Only a few fused black thorns remained, like a scatter of dead leaves. There was no expression on his face. Gaunt couldn’t begin to know what Gol Kolea was feeling.

Except that part of him was afraid he could. Merity had been down here. She’d been caught in this. Gaunt barely knew her, and what little he did know was lies. In truth, he hadn’t known his daughter any better than Gol had known his. But the damage was primal. It defied rationalisation. A child was a child, no matter how estranged, no matter how false.

Dalin Criid stood apart from the rest, leaning against a wall, staring at the whitewashed stones. His weeping had stopped, and his anguished denials had trailed into silence. Gaunt knew Dalin felt this more bitterly than anyone. Even more than Gol, he had been close to the girl. The conflict had broken him. Grief for the loss of a sister, rage at the sheer depth of the betrayal.

Yoncy had never been Yoncy, but that hadn’t stopped them from believing she was real. For years, she had been part of them, part of the Tanith company, a survivor, a cheerful, quirky girl who had often been a welcome antidote to the grind of war. Caring for her, laughing with her, protecting her, amusing her… that had been part of their lives, simple human interactions that had allowed them to forget, once in a while, the struggle they were committed to.

Except she had been the war all along. The war had been dwelling with them, within their ranks, inside their trust, inside their minds and their hearts, waiting to reveal its true nature.

This was the greatest wound the Ghosts had ever suffered. It had cut the heart of them out, from the inside, striking from the single place that seemed safe. Gaunt had never doubted the devotion of his duty. He had never questioned his belief that man should fight against the Ruinous Powers with every fibre of his soul. Yesterday, he’d wanted the Anarch dead and defeated, just as he had the week before that, and the year before that.

But this? Sek would die, not because it was Gaunt’s duty, not because it was the right thing, not because it was the Emperor’s will, and not because his death would protect mankind.

Sek would die because of this.

Stablights bobbed in the archway behind him. Colonel Grae appeared, leading a team of Urdeshi troops and palace staff.

‘My lord?’

‘See to the survivors,’ Gaunt said. ‘Get them out of here.’

Grae nodded, and his men moved forward, gathering up Sancto, who was bleeding out and could no longer stand or speak, and assisting Hark, who was still supporting the wounded Laksheema.

Laksheema looked at Gaunt.

‘This area must be purged and sealed, sir,’ she said, her voice frail. ‘The entire level.’

‘It will be.’

‘I will assign ordo staff to undertake the purification rituals.’

Gaunt nodded. Laksheema turned and allowed Hark to help her limp away.

‘What is the situation?’ Gaunt asked Grae.

‘All power and systems in the palace are out, my lord,’ Grae replied. ‘Defences are down, and all comms are non-functional.’

‘So no word from Rawne?’

‘None, sir. There are reports of attacks throughout Eltath. The enemy has made a play.’

‘I’ll be up directly. Does Van Voytz have command?’

‘He does, sir,’ said Grae. ‘He began evacuation, but then the power crashed. I believe he is working to restore the palace and war room to combat function as quickly as possible.’

‘We need it.’

Grae nodded. He saluted, and turned to go, then looked at Gaunt again.

‘My lord,’ he said, ‘your daughter is safe. I had her taken to a medicae station just twenty minutes ago.’

Gaunt found he could not reply.

‘She was shaken, sir, but essentially unharmed. I’ll request further reports. I would say she acquitted herself well. Braved the ordeal with great composure.’

‘Thank you, colonel,’ said Gaunt. Grae made the sign of the aquila, and hurried off to oversee the recovery efforts.

Gaunt had never, in his entire life, felt more like weeping. He looked at Gol, seated, silent, staring, and registered a stab of guilt at his own, selfish relief.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Curth.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Ibram,’ she said in a low voice. ‘This is something… this is… Throne, I don’t know. None of us will just walk away from this. It won’t just heal like a battle wound. And even when it does, it won’t be a scar any of us wear with any pride. And Gol, and Ban and poor Dalin–’

‘I know,’ he said. He hugged her quickly, to her surprise, then let her go. ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘Ana, I was thinking… I might be forced to step down.’

‘As Lord Executor?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘No one would question it,’ she said. ‘This trauma, it would break any–’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I might step down because Macaroth will never permit his Lord Executor to lead a vengeance strike in person.’

‘Against Sek?’

‘Wherever he is. Yes. He dies for this. For this, above and beyond any part of his heinous catalogue of crimes.’

‘Don’t be rash,’ she said. ‘Bram? Bram, listen. You can do more against him as Lord Executor than as an avenger. This is what he wants. It’s the spite he uses to snap us. He weakens us by striking at our souls. He wants to break you, and if you step down, he will have succeeded.’

She gripped his arm and stared into his eyes. Only she, it seemed, was not afraid to look into his eyes.

‘Sek doesn’t feel,’ she said. ‘He has no humanity. That’s why he can do this to us. Don’t let him turn your humanity against you. Feel this, and use it to help you prosecute this war to victory. Don’t squander it on some doomed gesture. You’re the Lord Executor. Worlds depend on you. And Sek should be fething afraid.’

‘Afraid?’

‘He’s made a mortal enemy even stronger.’

There was a clatter. The Beati’s sword, scorched and buckled, had slipped from her hand. Auerben rushed to steady her.

‘She’s passed out,’ Auerben cried out, her fire-scarred voice even more of a rasp than usual. ‘Help me here!’

Curth and Gaunt rushed to the Saint’s side.

‘Just exhaustion,’ said Curth, examining her.

Gaunt nodded. The Saint had come straight from days of battle at Ghereppan and Oureppan. Her divine strength had already been depleted before they’d even begun. These superhuman efforts in the undercroft had drained all the reserves she had left.

‘I see no major wounds,’ said Curth. ‘But then, I don’t begin to know how the warp may have wounded her in that fight.’

‘She is so pale,’ said Auerben. ‘Her light is gone–’

‘Get her up!’ Curth yelled. ‘Help me! Osket!’

The Ghosts from Baskevyl’s team rushed to her, and lifted the Beati’s limp form between them.

‘There’s no weight to her!’ Osket exclaimed.

‘This way!’ Curth urged them, leading the men towards the exit.

The Ghosts, in black, with their fragile pale burden, reminded Gaunt of pall bearers.

‘Ana?’ he called out.

Curth looked back at him and simply nodded. The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. It was the same uncompromising determination he’d seen every time Medicae Curth had fought to save a wounded soul on the fields of war they had crossed together.

There were very few of them left in the undercroft now. Daur, Kolea and Dalin lost in their own pain, Blenner lurking by the door, anxious, as if he was waiting for something. Gaunt was heartened a little to see Blenner show a simple, human response of sympathy for once.

Baskevyl glanced at Gaunt. Shock was etched on his face too.

‘Should we try to move them?’ he asked Gaunt.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Gently,’ he said. ‘They should mourn as long as they need to, but this place is–’

‘I know, sir,’ Baskevyl replied. Gaunt took a step towards Kolea, but Baskevyl stopped him. Bask and Gol were best friends. Bask would be a more welcome comfort.

Gaunt crossed to Daur instead.

‘Let’s go upstairs, Ban,’ he said.

Daur looked up at him. He rose, and brushed off his coat.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ban–’

‘I haven’t found her yet,’ he said. ‘I’m not leaving until I have.’

‘Ban, we can get teams down here, a proper search of all–’

‘No,’ Daur said fiercely. ‘I’ll look. Me.’

He walked past Gaunt, and disappeared into the neighbouring chamber. Gaunt heard Daur calling her name.

Haller cut loose with a long burst from the short-snout rigged around his body. The link-belt from the hopper at his feet clattered as it fed out. Harsh flowers of muzzle flash flickered around the cannon’s wide barrel, and spent brass fluttered into the air.

The automata, limping and drooling black ooze, punctured in fifty places. Its casing disintegrated, flayed off it by the hail of shells, and it slumped, burning from the core, black fluid pouring from its ruptured innards.

‘Still one or two of them active,’ Haller remarked.

‘Stay sharp,’ Kolosim said. He looked at Bray. The sergeant was trying to force the hatch into Turbine Hall One. Caober was working with him.

‘Any luck?’ Kolosim called out.

‘Stand by,’ said Bray.

‘Are we gonna need more shit from that truck?’ Kolosim asked.

‘No, I’ve got it,’ said Bray, working intently. ‘It’s just locked from inside.’

Criid and Zhukova clambered out of the open duct, weapons ready. Obel limped out behind them. Turbine Hall One was just as they’d left it. The huge vapour engines had slowed down to an impotent wheeze. The bodies of the dead – Ghost and Mechanicus alike – lay where they had fallen.

‘You were wrong,’ said Criid.

‘No,’ replied Zhukova with a firm shake of her head.

‘Then where is he?’

Criid edged out across the floorspace, picking her way over bodies, watching for any sign of movement. There were plenty of hiding places. So much pipework, bulk machines, consoles. The hostile could have concealed himself. Criid wasn’t sure if he’d had a weapon, but if he did, he could be lining up a shot.

She crossed to the hatch. It was still locked tight, internal setting, just the way Zhukova had sealed it before they had entered the ducts. No one could have exited and locked it again from the inside.

‘We went the wrong way,’ she said. She was dizzy from the fumes of the duct, dead on her feet from running and climbing. ‘He didn’t come this way.’

‘He did,’ Zhukova said.

‘Then where is he?’ Criid asked. ‘Fething where?’

‘Somewhere,’ said Zhukova. She prowled across the chamber. ‘He’s in here.’

‘I’ll tell you where he is,’ snapped Criid. ‘He’s two kilometres away heading out into the main thermal pipe. He’s home free. We went the wrong fething way.’

‘It was just a call, Tona,’ said Obel, sitting down and trying to collect his breath. He was wheezing badly. ‘We made a call. It was just the wrong one.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Zhukova.

‘Then where is he?’ Criid snarled.

‘Hiding,’ said Zhukova. She started to slam open storage lockers along the west wall, aiming her weapon into each one as she threw the doors open. Just machine spares. Clusters of cables. Pipework.

‘They won,’ said Criid. ‘They fething won. They got the stones.’

The main hatch let out a bang of auto-bolts and then slid open with a slow pneumatic hiss. Criid, Obel and Zhukova turned, weapons aimed.

‘Hold fire! Hold fire!’ Bray yelled as he saw them. The Ghosts around him lowered their aim, and fanned out into the hall.

‘What happened?’ asked Kolosim.

Criid just shook her head, exhausted.

‘We met them coming out,’ said Obel. ‘Held them. Fething mess of a fire-fight. Unreal. They weren’t human and they kept coming. Just savage. Big purse. But one got past us.’

‘Just one,’ said Zhukova.

‘Fething bastard had a bag. Had the stones,’ said Obel. ‘We went after him, but he got out through the geotherm system.’

‘Oh feth,’ said Kolosim.

‘He didn’t go that way,’ Zhukova insisted. She turned back to her search. ‘He came this way.’

‘Then where?’ asked Criid.

‘I told you,’ said Zhukova. ‘He’s hiding. In here somewhere. There’s nowhere else. That’s the first time that hatch has opened. He’s in this chamber right now.’

‘Search! Top to bottom!’ Kolosim yelled. Squads of Ghosts fanned out, hunting in every alcove, checking the service walks behind machines. Some climbed up onto the inspection gantries. Others stood in a mob by the hatchway, gazing dismally at the dead.

‘No sign!’ Bray called. Other Ghosts sang out negatives.

‘See?’ said Criid.

‘I’ll try and patch through to Pasha,’ said Kolosim. ‘Tell her the word.’

Zhukova was still searching. She ducked down to look behind the hall’s control desks. Trooper Etzen’s corpse was sprawled under the console.

He’d been felled by one of the adept wardens’ grav pulses. The energy had crushed and mangled him.

Zhukova frowned. The graviton force was powerful, but it would not have removed Etzen’s jacket and cape.

She rose.

‘Shit,’ she said.

‘What?’ asked Obel.

‘Etzen. No cape. No–’

Criid and Zhukova turned. The bodies of four Ghosts had been lying on the floor between the consoles and the hatch. Now there were only three.

Criid and Zhukova sprang forwards, Obel staggering after them.

‘What the feth, Tona?’ Kolosim exclaimed as Criid pushed past him.

‘He’s just walking out!’ she yelled. She had no idea how a rail-thin, two-metre tall spectre could just walk out, but she knew it had. She and Zhukova pushed through the bewildered Ghosts standing in the doorway.

‘Move!’ Criid yelled at them. ‘Move!’

One Ghost had detached himself from the back of the group. Draped in his camo cloak, he was limping away across the wide arcade outside, heading for the main exit. He was just walking past the Ghost squads stationed in the arcade area.

It wasn’t her quarry. This man was short, small. He looked old and frail, the cape pulled tight around him.

But Criid knew it wasn’t any Ghost she knew.

‘You!’ She yelled. ‘You! Halt!’

The Ghost kept walking.

‘Last warning!’ Criid yelled.

The man paused. He stopped limping, he glanced back at her over his shoulder.

He was an old man, weathered and skinny. He looked like one of the scrawny ayatani priests that had been flooding into the city.

He looked straight at her for a second, then turned and kept on going, limping on towards the door.

In that one second, Criid had seen the neon glint in his pupils.

She fired her stave. The grav pulse thumped out of the projector end. Ghosts scattered and recoiled as the seething mass of distorted air bubbled across the concourse.

It hit the limping man in the back, crushing his spine and ribcage, and pulping his internal organs.

Hacklaw fell. He died as he had entered the world, his blessed reworking hidden from view.

Criid and Zhukova reached the corpse. Criid turned it over gingerly with her foot. Just a dead old man, wrapped in a Tanith combat cloak.

Zhukova knelt down, and pulled the dirty musette bag out of his dead hands.

She opened it, and gently lifted out one of the four eagle stones.

‘I take it back,’ Criid said. ‘You were right. Fether came this way.’

They ran through the rain into the drab rockrete compounds of the vapour mill beside Camp Xenos. Snapshots of las whined after them.

‘Keep moving,’ Rawne said.

‘There’s no fething cover, sir,’ said Laydly, glancing around. The trooper was right, and Rawne knew it. The Plade Parish vapour mill was a large site generating power for an entire district of the city. Open-air yards and serviceways ran between the rows of blank work-sheds and machine-shops. The main stacks and primary hall of the mill were ahead.

It was an automated facility. There was no one around, and every door or hatch they tried was sealed. Wartime. Blackout protocols. The mill had been locked down.

Overhead, masses of white steam oozed from the huge stacks and flowed like a glacier into the night’s black sky. Full dark. Rain was blowing in off the wastelands beyond the mill perimeter. It smelled of the fycelene lifted by the munition store explosion.

‘Just go,’ Mabbon said. ‘Leave me. I will face them. It will all end then.’

Rawne wanted to slap him, but the pain in his gut was getting worse. He gritted his teeth to stop himself from making a sound.

‘Shut the feth up,’ Varl said to Mabbon. ‘Just shut up. We lost good people getting you out–’

‘I never asked for that–’ Mabbon replied.

‘I won’t let them be dead for no reason,’ said Varl. He sniffed, breathing fast. ‘I just won’t. I just fething won’t. So shut up about leaving you. Shut up.’

Mabbon looked away.

‘How many left?’ asked Oysten.

‘Three,’ said Laydly. ‘Three, I think.’

‘What have we got that will put them down?’ asked Rawne, finally managing to speak without screaming.

‘Launcher, grenades,’ said Varl, brandishing Bellevyl’s weapon.

‘Maybe this?’ said Brostin, indicating the big autogun he’d taken off Oken. ‘AP rounds. Not much ammo though.’

‘Hard rounds are better than energy weapons,’ said Mabbon.

‘I’ll take anything at this point,’ said Rawne.

Two las bolts shrieked around a blockhouse nearby.

Rawne bundled them forward. Varl ran with Mabbon, driving him on, the others following, covering the group’s six with weapons levelled.

‘What can we do that they won’t expect?’ Varl asked.

‘Turn,’ said Brostin. ‘Turn on them. Meet them.’

‘Feth off,’ said Oysten.

‘No, he’s right,’ said Laydly. They got in against the wall of a work-barn and he pointed at the sheds and service buildings around them. ‘Someone in there, by the steps. Another there. You see, by those tanks? You could get in under the pipework right there. They come through there, the yard, you’d have a killing ground. Rake ’em.’

‘No,’ said Rawne. ‘Suicide.’

‘Suicide Kings, sir,’ said Laydly.

Rawne glowered at him.

Oysten grabbed Rawne’s arm. ‘Sir!’

The pull on his arm made Rawne grunt with pain.

She looked at him.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes, Oysten.’

‘Sir, are you hit?’

‘No. What did you want?’

She studied his face for a second, questioning, then turned and pointed. About half a kilometre away, on the other side of the mill compound, there was a small light. Oysten handed Rawne the scope, and he took a look.

‘Night watchman’s station,’ he said. It made sense. The mill would leave a supervisor on site overnight, even in raid conditions.

‘In case something goes wrong?’ Oysten said. ‘A fault in the mill? Then what would he do?’

Rawne glanced at her.

‘Call it in,’ he said. ‘Call in for service support.’

She nodded. ‘He’ll have a vox, that one,’ she said.

‘We’d… we’d need the Militarum code channels,’ said Rawne.

‘I know them by heart, sir,’ said Oysten. ‘Learn them off pat every morning.’

Rawne took her by the face with both hands and smacked a kiss on her brow.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Go fast as feth. Think you can make it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Call in the fething cavalry, Oysten,’ he said. ‘We’ll dig in and slow these bastards down.’

She nodded, then surprised him by throwing a formal salute.

‘It’s been an honour, sir,’ she said.

‘It will be again, you silly bastard. Run!’

She took off into the darkness.

‘Right,’ said Rawne. ‘Let’s slow these fethers down.’ He looked back at the yard.

‘All right,’ he said. He was having trouble breathing.

‘You all right? Eli?’ Varl asked.

‘Fething fantastic,’ Rawne replied. ‘Varl? Keep going. Keep moving Mabbon that way. Just stay with him. Keep him alive.’

He looked at Laydly and Brostin.

‘Let’s fething do this,’ he said. ‘Just like Laydly set it out.’

‘Only two decent firing positions,’ said Brostin.

‘I can get in there,’ said Rawne, pointing. ‘Down by that vent.’

‘That’s shit-all cover, sir,’ said Brostin. ‘Go with Varl. Two of you are better than one. Keep that fether safe, all right?’

‘I think I’m in charge here,’ said Rawne.

‘I think we play to our strengths,’ said Laydly. ‘Suicide Kings. Picture cards are high, and you keep your kings back in case you need them late in the game.’

‘I should never have taught you to play,’ said Rawne.

‘I should never have joined the Imperial Guard,’ replied Laydly.

‘We had a choice?’ asked Brostin.

Rawne looked at them both.

‘Live forever,’ he said.

They nodded. Brostin lumbered away to the steps of the service shed. Laydly sprinted low across to the heavy feeder tanks. They vanished into the deep shadows, just ghosts, then gone.

Rawne stood for a moment, then turned and hurried after Varl and Mabbon. He was limping. Every step was a jolt of pain.

Hadrel sniffed the rain. He looked at the others. Sekran. Jaghar. Just the three of them. More than enough.

‘They’re close,’ he said. They’d stripped the resin from their snouts so their acute senses were as sharp as possible.

Jaghar nodded. ‘I smell blood, sirdar.’

‘At least one is wounded,’ Sekran agreed.

Hadrel eyed them. The fight had been fierce. He and Sekran were intact apart from some las burns. Jaghar had been hurt in the blast. Swollen crusts of mucus covered part of his face, throat and shoulder.

‘We’re low on munitions,’ Hadrel said. ‘They have run us quite a game. So conserve. The pheguth is the one that counts. Bite out his throat if you have to.’

‘Kha, magir,’ they responded.

‘He dies,’ said Hadrel.

‘He dies,’ they echoed.

Hadrel gestured, and they moved forwards.

‘He will regret the day he left us,’ he said.

Nade Oysten ran through the darkness, following shadows, darting between blank anonymous sheds and silent service huts.

The mill compound was larger than it had seemed. The night watch post still looked a million kilometres away, and every shadow made her jump. She kept expecting one of those things, those Qimurah, to loom up, to spring out of the darkness.

She had her weapon ready, her cut-down riot gun and its bag of breaching shells. Let’s see how they like that, she thought. Let’s see how they like a face-full of wound titanium shot-wire.

Oysten touched her face where Rawne had seized her with both hands to kiss her. There was blood on her fingers.

She’d known. Just the way he had been moving, holding himself. Always a lying bastard. That look he’d shot her.

Say nothing.

She turned towards the distant light and started running as fast as she could.

There was no sound except the hiss and spatter of the rain. Laydly had his weapon up, covering the middle of the yard. They had to come through here. He had switched to full auto, last cell locked in the receiver.

He couldn’t see Brostin, but he could see the steps of the service shed. Good bit of shadow. Nice angle for that big autogun. Brostin would be the hitter on this one. That thing, at short range, with those armour-piercing shells Okel had prized, would make a hole in anything.

A waiting game now. Patience. Waiting for the deal. Waiting for the cards to land. Those things moved as quietly as any Ghost, but there was an open killbox waiting.

Laydly took aim, nice and loose, ready for the snap.

Sekran’s claws closed around his throat. The Qimurah hoisted him off the ground. Laydly tried to scream, but the vicing grip had crushed his throat. Sekran kept squeezing until he’d wrung and snapped the human’s neck. As he died, Laydly squeezed the trigger. Full auto, aimed at nothing, sprayed out of the swinging gun, tearing into the rockcrete ground of the yard, pinging off the tanks, stitching up the wall.

Brostin saw the wild burst, saw two figures strobe-lit by the muzzle flash. One lifting the other by the throat.

He yelled Laydly’s name, then opened fire. The autogun’s big rounds smacked into the feeder tanks. The Qimurah tossed Laydly’s body aside and ran at Brostin, bringing up his lasrifle to fire.

‘Yeah, you fething come at me,’ Brostin snarled.

He put the first armour piercing hard round through Sekran’s face, the second and third through his torso. By then, there was very little left of him above the sternum or between the shoulders. The Qimurah folded and collapsed in the middle of the open yard.

Brostin switched around, looking for the others. He saw movement and banged off two more shots.

On the roof of the machine shop opposite, Hadrel noted the muzzle flashes. He took the grenade out of his jacket pocket and weighed it in his hand. They’d picked over the bodies of the Imperial dead, and found a few useful items.

He threw it.

Brostin heard it strike the gutter above him. He knew the sound of an anti-personnel bomb whacking against metal. He threw himself forward.

The grenade splintered the front of the service shed and obliterated the steps. The blast rolled Brostin hard across the rockcrete, and shrapnel whickered into his flesh.

He lay for a moment, deaf and dazed. Then he tried to rise.

My turn again, you fethers–

The front wall of the wrecked service shed collapsed, and the entire roof gave way. An avalanche of slabs and rockcrete roof tiles buried Aongus Brostin.

Dust billowed off the heap of rubble. It was piled up like the rocks of a tribal grave on some lonely hillside. Just one hand protruded, caked in dirt.

Hadrel leapt down from the roof and landed on his feet. Jaghar emerged from cover and walked to join him.

They clutched their lasrifles and advanced side by side.

‘Just the last of them now,’ said Hadrel.

‘Gol? We have to go up now,’ Baskevyl said gently. ‘Can’t stay down here all night.’

Kolea didn’t reply. He was staring at the burned thorns.

‘Gol?’

‘I made a promise,’ Kolea said at last. ‘Swore it, Bask.’

‘It was a promise you couldn’t keep,’ said Baskevyl. ‘They don’t count.’

‘I should have known.’

‘None of us knew, Gol.’

Kolea looked at him.

‘I did, though,’ he said. ‘I thought it. I considered it. I even… I even took it to Gaunt. I told him what I feared.’

‘I’m sure he–’ Baskevyl began.

‘He reassured me,’ said Kolea. ‘He talked me down, said it was a mistake.’

‘Nobody could have known the truth,’ Baskevyl said. He glanced over his shoulder. Gaunt and Blenner were standing a few yards away, watching them. He could see the expression on Gaunt’s face. Guilt. Guilt for brushing Kolea’s fears aside.

They all felt the guilt. Baskevyl certainly did. Odd nagging doubts that he’d cast aside as stupid. Then the things Elodie had said to him–

He clenched his eyes tight shut. She’d known, but just like Gaunt had done with Kolea, Baskevyl had allayed her fears. Because it just couldn’t have been true.

Now she was dead. Now so many were dead. Nobody had listened. Daur’s wife was dead because Baskevyl hadn’t taken her seriously.

Kolea got up suddenly.

‘Gol?’ Baskevyl rose, and put his hand on Kolea’s arm.

‘I’ve still got a son,’ Kolea said, and pulled his arm away. He walked over to Dalin, who was hunched against the wall.

Baskevyl joined Blenner and Gaunt. They watched Kolea approach the boy.

‘He just needs time,’ Baskevyl said quietly. Gaunt nodded.

‘What did he say?’ asked Blenner.

‘What do you think?’ Baskevyl replied.

‘I don’t know. I was just wondering.’

‘He can’t believe it, even now it’s happened,’ said Baskevyl. ‘He blames himself. He blames everybody. That part’ll go. But he’ll never stop blaming himself. He’s not making much sense at all, to be honest.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t,’ Blenner nodded. ‘I mean, a shock like that. A tragedy. It’d shake a man to his core. It’s shaken all of us. I doubt an ounce of sense will come out of him. Just… just a lot of old nonsense.’

‘What?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘I just meant,’ said Blenner, awkwardly, ‘we can’t expect him to make any sense. Not at a time like this. He’ll probably say all sorts of things, rant and rave, you know, until that pain eases. A trauma like this, that could take years.’

Baskevyl stared at him.

‘Are you trying to make some kind of point?’ he asked.

‘N-no,’ said Blenner.

As they watched, Kolea knelt down facing Dalin. He reached out and put his trembling hands on the young man’s shoulders.

‘Dal.’

‘Leave me alone,’ said Dalin.

‘I don’t know what to say, Dal,’ Kolea said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything anyone can say–’

‘She said plenty,’ said Dalin quietly. ‘All those weird things. She was always so strange. But she was my sister.’

He paused.

‘I thought she was,’ he added.

‘Dalin, let’s go up. Get out of here, eh?’ Kolea said.

‘She was always so strange,’ Dalin said, staring at Gol. ‘Growing up, all her games. All her stories. I used to love them. Now I remember every one of them and I see how creepy they were.’

‘Come on, now.’

‘Then the things she said tonight. When I found her. The things she said. They didn’t make any sense. But then her stories about bad shadows didn’t make any sense either, and they were true. She told me there was a woe machine. That was true. What if all the things she said were true?’

‘Like what?’ Kolea asked.

Dalin shook his head.

‘Look, son, none of us could have known–’ said Kolea.

‘I’m not your son.’

‘Dal, listen. None of us could have known. Not me, not you, not–’

He stopped. There was still a burning anger inside him. He hated himself for it, but the anger was directed at Ibram Gaunt. Kolea had laid it all out, exposed everything that had plagued him, and Gaunt had just talked him out of it. He’d brushed all the fears away, found ways to account for every strange detail, and swept it all out of sight.

If he’d listened–

But no. He’d had an answer for everything. Your mind’s confused, Gol. The Ruinous Powers play games. Even the Archenemy wouldn’t lay a plan that elaborate. They couldn’t see the future and be that many steps ahead.

A brother would know his sister.

Kolea looked at Dalin.

That had been the clincher. The one that had really changed Gol’s mind.

A brother would know his sister.

‘What did she say to you, Dalin?’ he asked.

Dalin shook his head again, lips pursed, fighting back tears and daring not to speak.

‘Dal? Dalin? What did she say to you?’

‘It was all true, wasn’t it?’ Dalin sobbed. ‘It was all true and I didn’t know.’

Kolea pulled him close and wrapped his arms around him. Dalin wept against his chest.

‘Easy, Dal, easy,’ he murmured. ‘What was it she said to you?’

Dalin whimpered a response that Kolea couldn’t hear with the boy’s face buried in his chest. He eased Dalin back, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and looked him in the eyes.

‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘You can tell me. I’ll protect you.’

‘You can’t,’ whispered Dalin.

‘Of course I can. I made that oath, remember? The Kolea oath? Walk into hell to protect you.’

‘You couldn’t protect Yonce.’

‘Well, I couldn’t. Because she wasn’t mine, was she? But you. You are. You’re my son.’

‘Not really. I’m not really.’

‘Ah, so our road through life’s been an odd one. So what? That’s all right. Blood is blood. So come on, what did she say that upset you so much?’

Dalin stared at him.

‘She said there were two of them, papa,’ said Dalin.

EIGHTEEN: IN THE SLOW HOURS

As a younger man, a mere colonel in the Calahad Brigade, Barthol Van Voytz had acquired a distrust of the night that had never left him. He was not afraid of the dark, and like any good soldier he knew that darkness could be an ally and a weapon. And back then, there had been a concrete reason. During the gruelling campaign through the Fenlock Forest, night had been the most dangerous time. The Drukhari butchers had always struck between sunset and sunrise. Ninety per cent of Calahad casualties had been taken after dark.

But it was the night itself. A part of it, specifically. Past middle night, there was always a period of particular blackness, with dawn just a hope. It was the worst time. He called it the slow hours. It was a time when a man might feel most lost, his very mortality at its most vulnerable. A man, say a young colonel, might fret away those creeping hours, awaiting almost certain attack, knowing his men were at their coldest and slowest ebb, aching for the dawn. A man might dwell upon the darkness, knowing it promised only ill. A man might have far too long to contemplate his own small soul, his human weakness, and the meaningless measure of his little life.

Standing in the war room of the Urdeshic Palace, that young colonel now just an old pict in a regimental archive, Van Voytz knew the slow hours were upon him again. The power had been down for over an hour. Fear clung to every surface. The palace, perhaps the most impregnable stronghold on Urdesh, was wide open. Eltath was under attack, and there was some unknown danger here, even here, inside the fortress.

And no solid data. They were blind, deaf and dumb. The shields had fallen. A grave moment for any commander to handle, but fate had decreed it should happen now. Past middle night, with sunrise still too far away: that particular heavy, slow and silent chapter of the night that took too long and was no friend of man.

He’d never checked – he was sure some rubricator or archivist could compile the data if he asked – but Van Voytz was sure that the Astra Militarum had lost more battles in the slow hours than at any other point in the diurnal cycle.

Lamps had been lit in the five storey chamber, candles in tin boxes. For all their sophistication, they had been reduced to candles in boxes. Personnel moved with stablights, conversing in low voices, working at repairs. The hall’s great windows were just paler blocks of darkness.

‘Any word?’ he said to Kazader.

‘Nothing from below, my lord,’ Kazader replied. ‘Last I heard, the Lord Executor, via Colonel Grae, requested full troop support to the undercroft.’

‘Which I approved,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Indeed, my lord,’ said Kazader, ‘but there is conflict. To maintain effective watch-security on the palace and precinct, we cannot afford to move companies from the walls or–’

‘Dammit, man. What about the evacuation?’

‘It continues as best we are able. Again, it is slow, of course, in these conditions.’

‘The warmaster?’

‘I have not had word, my lord.’

‘Has Urienz got him off-site or not?’ Van Voytz asked.

‘I’ll despatch a runner to find out.’

‘Do that. Kazader?’

‘Sir?’

‘Has any support been sent to the Lord Executor?’

‘Orders have been posted, my lord. With respect, I stress again that under these circumstances, it takes a while for men to be redeployed, and sufficient cover maintained along the bastion–’

‘How much has been sent?’

‘I believe Colonel Grae has three platoons of Urdeshi with him, sir.’

‘That all? I gave the damn order almost an hour ago, Kazader.’

‘My lord, as I explained–’

‘Screw your excuses,’ Van Voytz growled. ‘I’m a lord militant general, Kazader. I have theatre command here! I give an order, I expect–’

He fell silent. He could see Kazader’s expression in the candlelight. It was contrite, attentive. But it said Look around, you old fool, you have command over shit.

‘My lord?’ an adept called out.

‘Yes?’

‘We’re ready to test again.’

‘Do it.’

Van Voytz heard orders being relayed, and the clatter of main connectors locking into place. There was a pause, then a deep, bass-note thump of power engaging.

The glass tables of the strategium stations underlit with a flicker. The light throbbed, as unsteady as the candle flames, then stations lit up, followed by the main monitors, repeater screens and sub-consoles. The war room lights came back on at emergency levels. Cogitators began to chatter as operative systems refreshed and rebooted, and backed-up data began to scroll up the screens at an alarming rate, as though some information dam had broken.

There was a ragged cheer and some small applause from the war room staff.

‘Decorum! To your stations!’ Van Voytz yelled. ‘City reports to me in two minutes! I want an active read of Eltath security, and tactical appraisals in five. Vox?’

‘Systems up but limited, my lord.’

‘Live links to all company and division HQs in the Eltath theatre as soon as possible,’ Van Voytz demanded. ‘I want Zarakppan too, priority, and get me the fleet!’

The vox station coordinators hurried to obey.

‘Eltath overview on strategium one, please!’ Van Voytz ordered.

‘Compiling data composite now, sir.’

‘Shield status?’

‘We have power to the war room and battery defences, my lord,’ replied an adept. ‘Power supply will be restored to the rest of the palace in twenty minutes, barring further interrupts. Estimate void shields to power in forty-seven minutes.’

‘Make it thirty,’ snapped Van Voytz. He cracked his knuckles. Now they were in the game again.

‘Circulate the formal evacuation order,’ he said. ‘All stations.’ The power-break had gagged the order digitally. So far, he’d only been able to have it circulated by word of mouth and paper flimsy. ‘I want a progress report in three.’

He paused, and scratched his cheek, thinking.

‘Request you confirm that,’ said Marshal Tzara. ‘You wish evacuation to proceed?’

‘Yes,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Then you still believe the situation in the undercroft–’

‘The power died for a reason, Marshal,’ he replied. ‘It wasn’t a random bloody fault.’

‘We don’t know anything,’ she said calmly.

‘Exactly,’ he replied. ‘Except we do, because Gaunt told us that shit was happening.’

He glanced at Kazader, and then back to the Keyzon Marshal.

‘Marshal Tzara?’

‘My lord general?’

‘I’m committing theatre control to you as of now. You have my orders and my objectives. Follow them.’

‘With discretion?’ asked Tzara.

‘With the dedication of a Throne-damn bloodhound,’ he replied. Then he nodded. ‘You have discretion, of course, Tzara,’ he said, ‘but use it sparingly. Are we understood?’

‘Perfectly, lord general.’

He straightened formally, and made the sign of the aquila.

‘I commit theatre command to you at this time,’ he said. ‘Let it be so recorded.’

She returned the salute.

‘I accept and receive this duty,’ she replied. ‘Let it be so recorded.’

Van Voytz turned to Kazader.

‘Get your storm troops, colonel,’ he said. ‘You’re with me. And find me a damn gun.’

‘Is that lights?’ asked Hark.

The wardroom they had been taken to was lit with small lamps and candles, but its large windows looked out across the Hexagonal Court towards the main keep.

Inquisitor Laksheema was standing at the windows, staring out. She was a tall, slender phantom in the twilight.

‘I believe so,’ she replied. ‘It looks as though they have restored power to the main keep.’

‘That’s something, then,’ he replied. ‘Felt like we were sitting here with our pants down.’

‘Something you often do, Commissar Hark?’ she asked.

‘I’m a soldier, mam,’ he replied. ‘We get up to all sorts.’

Hark was lying back on a couch. A Keyzon corpsman had just finished swabbing and stitching the gashes on his throat and face, and now had turned to the stump of his augmetic and was sealing the shredded wires with a fusing wand.

Laksheema had refused any treatment. Her robes were torn, and the burnished, ornate augmetics of her face and body were grazed and scratched. When the orderlies had come to her, she told them that she was not in any pain and they should attend those who were.

Hark wondered if she had any significant organic parts, anything that could feel pain. Feel anything.

She was pacing before the windows. The digital weapons inlaid in the golden cuff of her left wrist had been destroyed in the ordeal. She kept adjusting the still-functional ones built over her right wrist like an elaborate golden bangle.

She crossed to the doorway of the adjoining room and watched the Urdeshi surgeons working by candlelight to repair the grievous wounds Sancto had received. The Scion had long since slipped from consciousness. He’d been laid out on a dining table, and the floor around it was littered with parts of his body gear and blood-soaked surgical towels.

She observed impassively for a moment, then walked back through the wardroom and stepped out into the corridor.

Hark glanced at the corpsman.

‘Enough,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘You gonna re-fit me with an arm tonight?’

‘Sir, I’m just a–’

‘Thought so,’ said Hark. He got up off the couch, and tossed aside the surgical smock that had been draped across him. ‘Thanks for your duty,’ he said to the corpsman.

Hark walked out into the hall. He was sore as hell. Every joint. He couldn’t have been more thoroughly bruised if Brostin had come at him with a mallet. The arm he didn’t mourn. The augmeticists would fix him a new one. His plasma pistol, though. It had been a beauty. He’d miss that.

He sighed. There were many more important things to miss and mourn.

The corridor was wood-panelled and grand. Old paintings hung in gilt frames, though it was impossible to see what they depicted. Layers of age-darkened varnish and the weak glow of the lamps in the hall conspired to make them impenetrable. There was almost a warmth to the hall with its dark wood and dim yellow light. The Urdeshic Palace had been a fine, grand place once. He would not, he felt, remember it fondly.

Several doors along was the entrance to the prayer chapel where most of the Tanith survivors were being ministered to. He could hear Zweil, leading them in a deliverance blessing.

Not quite Hark’s cup of caffeine.

Down by the chapel door, in the shadows, he saw the orange coal of a lho-stick. Hark squinted. It was Meryn, leaning against the wall, smoking. The old ayatani’s blessings were clearly not his cup of caffeine either.

Hark began to walk in Meryn’s direction. He was a cigar man, himself, but a shared smoke with a Guardsman was a bonding thing that often helped after a nasty go-around.

But he stopped. Flyn Meryn wasn’t good company at the best of times. Hark walked the other way instead.

Something stirred in the shadows above him and rasped. He glanced up, and saw the regiment’s mascot peering down at him. It was perched on a game trophy, the mounted skull of a creature that possessed the broadest and largest antlers he’d ever seen.

‘Rough night, bird,’ he said to the half-hidden eagle. It clacked its beak angrily. ‘I hear you,’ he replied, and wandered on. He flexed his hand. His one remaining hand. The bird had made him jump. He had reached instinctively for his weapon, but the arm he had reached with was just a phantom, and the holster empty. With his good hand, he felt under his coat to the back of his waistband, and found his hold-out weapon, a snub-nose laspistol in a leather buckle-on pouch. At least that was still there.

Laksheema was standing at a doorway just ahead, staring in. He joined her.

Through the open door, he saw Curth and several medicae aides attending to the Beati. She was laid out on a bed, straight and still, like a body ready for viewing.

Captain Auerben was watching Curth work. She noticed Hark and the inquisitor at the door and came out to them.

‘She has not regained consciousness,’ she said. Her voice was just a croak. Hark had been told that Auerben had been hurt by a pyrochemical burst during the last Morlond campaign. It had scarred her face and burned her throat. Auerben paused, took an inhaler bulb from her pocket, and puffed it into her mouth to moisten her throat.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

Hark shrugged. ‘Ana Curth knows what she’s doing,’ he said.

‘I’m sure she does,’ said Auerben. ‘There are no significant injuries. It is extreme fatigue. A sapping of her will. I told her she was pushing too hard.’

Auerben took another puff from the inhaler.

‘But the woe machine,’ she said. ‘It was a focus of ruinous power. It sapped her, and fed on her light. I fear it may take a long time for her to recover strength.’

‘We repair. We recharge,’ said Laksheema.

‘She means we heal,’ said Hark with a smile. ‘The Emperor protects. His grace will flow back into the Beati in time. She will be restored as she once was.’

Auerben nodded. She went back into the room and resumed her vigil at the bedside.

‘The machine was a grim device,’ said Laksheema. ‘I am ever horrified by the limitless ingenuity of the Archenemy.’

Hark nodded in agreement. ‘It may have been the worst thing I have ever encountered,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘I have faced daemons, commissar,’ she replied.

‘Oh, we’ve all faced daemons, inquisitor,’ he replied.

She looked at him with a questioning frown.

Hark grinned. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve faced more powerful things, more dangerous things, though Throne knows that was hell. Without the Saint, we’d all be dead. The palace too.’

‘Indeed,’ said Laksheema. ‘It was young. Not fully grown. But already a threat we could scarcely combat. Without her, it would have been enough. The palace lost, Eltath, Urdesh itself. The Anarch had victory there, for a moment. Total victory. If the woe machine hadn’t been checked, the crusade would have been crippled beyond recovery. The Sabbat Worlds would have fallen, and all our years of gain lost. Anakwanar Sek almost won tonight. Not just the battle, the war.’

‘It wasn’t just its power or its fury,’ said Hark. ‘It was the very feel of it. The shadow of the warp was in it, as strong as any warp spawn. It radiated fear, that’s the thing. It didn’t just inspire fear because of what it was. It generated it. It amplified it within us.’

‘Part of its arsenal,’ said Laksheema. ‘Woe machines are essentially mechanical instruments, but the heritor ingeniants have found the means to bind other elements. The warp. The human soul. Asphodel was a genius, you know? To take a killing machine and construct it with such intricate care it fitted inside a human shell. They call it reworking.’

‘Who do?’ asked Hark.

‘The Heritors of the Archonate. Alloying human and warp and machine into one material. Fusing them, and giving them the capacity of shift.’

‘Like a ship?’ he asked.

‘No, like a lycanthrope, Hark. A shape-changer, the transmutation of form. Deceit and guile and disguise, they are weapons of warfare we utilise. And such things are second nature to the warp. But the reworked take that to an obscene level. Of course, change is a primary aspect of the Four, a fundamental property of the Way-Changer, the dark un-god of sorcerous transition.’

‘You’re very knowledgeable,’ he remarked.

‘Years of study,’ she replied.

‘How many years?’

Laksheema favoured him with her cold smile.

‘It is impolite to ask a lady her age,’ she said.

‘You’re no lady,’ he said.

‘Also impolite.’

‘I mean you’re beyond human, inquisitor. Reworked – is that the word? – in your own way. Like me. Though I am crudely wrought compared to you. How old do you feel?’

‘Viktor,’ she replied, ‘I barely feel at all, and I haven’t for a very long time.’

He was about to reply when a wind blew down the hallway, fluttering all the candles and lamps.

They turned.

‘What was that?’ he asked. She didn’t answer. A second later, they heard a scream. It came from far away, deep in the core of the palace, but it was so loud and piercing that it made the walls tremble.

It wasn’t a human scream.

Hark found he had his hold-out weapon in his hand. The fear had returned. The fear that had drowned him in the undercroft had soaked him again in a heartbeat.

‘Feth,’ he said. ‘What was that?’

Laksheema looked at him.

‘Do you feel that?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Right through the heart of me,’ he said. ‘Just–’

‘Terror,’ she said. ‘There is another one. There is another woe machine here.’

Light shuddered. Shadows twisted. Gol Kolea looked at his son in surprise. That scream he had uttered…

Dalin Criid looked back at him, blinking fast.

‘Dalin?’ said Gol.

‘No. No. No no no–’ Dalin moaned.

‘Dalin!’

‘How could I not know this?’ Dalin asked. ‘Never. Never knew.’

Gol let go of Dalin’s shoulders. ‘Oh no,’ he whispered. ‘Oh no.’

‘She was my sister,’ said Dalin.

Dalin Criid hinged open. His flesh peeled and folded like the rind of a fruit, his bones twisting like weeds. A subspace lattice bulged, stripping organics back into the immaterium and folding sentient inorganics out into real space in their place. He split down a centre line from the crown of his head and turned inside out with a snap like a switchblade.

He became a cloud of interlacing knives, each one vibrating and slicing as it moved. The blades, all black metal, moved in flawless formation, cycling and shifting in intricate, synchronised patterns, first a rippling figure of eight, then more complex hyperbolic formations obscenely alien to Euclidian geometry. The whirring blades flashed in abstract conic orbits around a central hub of dazzling yellow neon light, like a miniature sun.

Gaunt stared in disbelief. He reached for his bolt pistol, his hand shaking.

Vaynom Blenner stumbled backwards with eyes like saucers, and fell down hard.

‘Oh, Throne,’ gasped Baskevyl. ‘Gol! Gol!’

Still on his knees, Gol Kolea looked up at the whirring cloud of blades. His hands came up in front of his face instinctively to ward it off, then he lowered them. He stared directly into the neon light.

‘Dalin,’ he said, as if calling a child home after dark. ‘I won’t let you go alone. I’ll walk into hell–’

The cycling blades slowed, as if confused. They stopped, hanging still for a second, then slowly began to cycle in the opposite direction. Their pattern altered, returning to the simple, lemniscate orbit.

Then the figure-eight ploughed forward, and Gol Kolea was gone.

Baskevyl screamed his friend’s name, but there was nothing left to answer him except a billowing mist of blood.

Gaunt’s bolt pistol boomed. Explosive rounds tore into the glowing cloud of blades. Blade teeth shattered like glass as the rounds detonated like solar flares around the little burning neon sun. Fresh blades slid out of subspace to replace the broken ones, joining the perfect, rushing synchronicity of the revolving pattern.

The woe machine rose up, and turned towards them. Its neon sun-heart was throbbing hatred. Its noise was the whoosh of sword-strikes, the shearing snip of scissors, the steel-on-stone wail of a sharpening wheel. Terror radiated from it like heat.

Blenner was thrashing and twisting in a paroxysm of fear, shrieking and clutching his head.

‘Get back, Bask,’ Gaunt warned.

The woe machine drifted towards them. It elongated vertically, its rushing figure-eight extending taller and thinner, its inner sun stretching into an oval.

Gaunt faced it, forcing the lid down on his terror. He couldn’t fight it. There was nowhere to run. The wind whipping from it tugged at his coat. It smelled of hot metal and burned blood.

Gol’s words, Gol’s last words, had made it hesitate. Something human was still in it. Something that had been unwittingly human for so long, it couldn’t shed the habit as easily as it had shed its disguise.

‘Trooper Dalin!’ Gaunt yelled. ‘Trooper Dalin, stand easy!’

The rotation speed slowed and became irregular. The pattern deformed, some blades drifting out of alignment. The light of the neon sun dimmed slightly, wavering in intensity.

‘That’s an order, Trooper Dalin!’ Gaunt barked.

The figure-eight collapsed. All the blades re-formed into a simple pattern, a single circle orbiting the sun-heart. Gaunt could feel it struggling. The waves of fear were overlapping waves of confusion and panic. It was fighting with itself. The very ingenuity of its design, human fused with warp-machine, was battling with itself.

‘Trooper Dalin!’ Gaunt cried again.

The circle of spinning blades shifted position, rotating in a plane around the little sun until all the tips were pointing away from the three men and directly up at the ceiling. The blades sat like a spiked crown around their neon heart.

Then their rate-of-cycle increased dramatically. The woe machine rose and ripped into the ceiling, slicing through the ancient stone as though it was soft fat. The wailing woe machine gouged up into the ceiling, and vanished from view.

Dislodged blocks tumbled onto the chamber floor. The undercroft ceiling began to split and collapse, the integrity of its ancient vault sheared through.

‘Out! Out!’ Gaunt yelled to Baskevyl. The path to the exit and the stairs was no longer blocked. They grabbed the screaming Blenner and stumbled towards the door as the ceiling crashed in behind them.

The palace was shaking. All around, men and women called out in alarm and panic. Candle flames jerked and fluttered. Some went out in wafts of grey smoke. The lamps rattled on their hooks. Old paintings quivered in their frames. The psyber-eagle squawked as dust sifted from the jittering antlers it had settled on.

Objects on table tops trembled and shifted position. Glasses smashed. Medical trays skipped, dislodged and spilled to the floor. Cracks and splits appeared in the ancient floor tiles.

Hark and Laksheema rushed back into the wardroom where they had been treated. The Keyzon corpsman was staring out of the tall windows in amazement. They joined him, gazing down into the broad yard of the Hexagonal Court. The space was torchlit – burning tapers fixed in iron brackets. A company of Helixid troopers were loading packs into two Valkyrie carriers that had set down as part of the evacuation effort.

Hark and Laksheema could hear the men shouting, looking around frantically in an effort to comprehend the source of the shaking.

‘Is… is it an earthquake?’ asked the corpsman. ‘Is it the volcanics?’

‘No,’ said Hark. He could hear the wailing. The high-pitched metal squeal was getting louder by the second.

The woe machine reached ground level. Its whirring blades erupted through the flagstones of the Hexagonal Court, spitting splinters of stone in all directions. Some of the Helixid troops died immediately, cut down by the whizzing slivers.

Others were caught in the cloud of blades as it rose from the ruptured stone floor and expanded, blades flattening into a horizontal dish around the burning heart. The men vanished in puffs of blood vapour, or fell like parts of a broken puzzle, cut in sections.

The tail boom of one Valkyrie was lopped clean off, leaving bare metal stumps and sparking cables. The severed tail fins were hurled like a toy across the court, and punched in the wall and windows of a ground floor chamber. The other carrier, its ramp still down, tried to throttle up and lift clear. The blades shredded one side of it clean away, leaving the Valkyrie excised in cross-section. Its straining engines ignited, and it exploded in a savage fireball.

Hark slammed Laksheema down and away from the windows as the concussion blast blew them in. A blizzard of broken glass burst across the room. The corpsman stayed standing for almost ten seconds, blinded, flayed back to the bone from the thighs up. He fell sideways like a discarded kit-bag.

Down below, the woe machine had formed a new shape – a war shape, a woe shape, an octahedron four metres across made of sliding, slithering blades, the neon light glowing inside the lattice shell. The few Helixid troopers who hadn’t died or fled fired on it. The woe machine rushed at them, las-rounds pinging off its blades, one tip dilating to form a spinning, sucking maw.

Hark got up, broken glass cascading off him, and rushed to the door. Behind him, Laksheema struggled to her feet.

‘Out!’ Hark bellowed into the hallway. ‘Out now! Woe machine!’

Terrified staff and personnel began to scramble from the rooms all along the hall. The air itself was vibrating. An ancient painting of Throne-alone-knows-what fell off the wall with a crash as its ancient string snapped. Its gilt frame shattered.

Auerben appeared, people shoving past her. She looked at Hark.

‘We can’t move her,’ she said. ‘We can’t.’

By the chapel door, Meryn shrank back against the old wood panels as though he was willing the palace wall to swallow him up.

He could hear the killing, the screams. He could smell the blood.

There was going to be another slaughter. And it was going to make the first one pale into insignificance.

He started to laugh, unable to stop himself, because there was nothing funny left in the world.

NINETEEN: WHOSE VOICE DROWNS OUT ALL OTHERS

The hooded V’heduak magir strode down the companionway straight towards them.

‘Shit,’ Mkoll whispered to Brin and Mazho. ‘Let me do the talking.’

He turned to face the magir, trying to frame the formal constructions of the Blood-fare caste.

The V’heduak grinned down at him.

‘You bastard,’ Mkoll murmured.

‘I acquired a disguise,’ said Kater Holofurnace.

‘Clever,’ said Mkoll.

‘I was slowing you down,’ said the Snake. ‘Now we can move freely.

‘Where did you–?’ Mazho began.

Holofurnace shook his head. ‘One of them was fool enough to walk away alone. They won’t find his corpse.’ He parted the edge of the robes slightly, and let them see the belt-fed .20.

‘We know where to go,’ said Milo. He had the fold of deck plans.

Holofurnace nodded. ‘That show any weapons lockers?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mkoll. ‘But they’re secure and we–’

Holofurnace held up a ring of notched metal bars.

‘The Blood-fare had keys,’ he said with a smile.

Three packsons were guarding the strong room. They saluted, hands to mouths, as the V’heduak strode past them. He slotted his keys into the heavy door’s lock without comment.

The packsons watched him for a moment.

‘Magir,’ said one tentatively. ‘The orders are to leave all weapon rooms locked and secure while–’

Mkoll glared at them.

‘You question the magir’s authority, stool-worm?’ he asked.

‘No, sirdar. No. Your pardon.’

Holofurnace pushed open the hefty door, and they went inside, pulling it shut behind them. The locker was small, the walls shelved and racked. A small metal bench stood in the centre of the room. The plans had showed there was a locker like it on almost every deck, stocked for the quick distribution of arms to the ship’s crew in the event of a boarding action.

‘Not much,’ murmured Holofurnace, glancing around. ‘It’s crude stuff. I was hoping for something with some punch. Plasma or cyclic.’

‘It’s just crew-issue small-arms,’ said Mazho. He stared at a rack of boarding hatchets.

‘Be selective,’ said Milo. ‘There’s reloads at least. Pack your pockets with cells.’

‘Think small and useful,’ said Mkoll. ‘Concealable.’

‘If we’re going to kill the devil in his own lair,’ said Holofurnace, ‘we need power.’ He looked at them. ‘He’s a magister. He won’t be human now, if he ever was.’

‘We don’t know what he is,’ said Mkoll.

‘I saw his face,’ said Milo quietly. ‘In the vortex. I saw his face.’

Mazho shivered. He’d glimpsed it too.

‘He’s definitely not human,’ said Milo.

‘So he won’t die like one, which is my point,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Carbines? Blades? Even this?’

He put the heavy sentry gun down on the table.

‘I have grenades,’ said Mkoll.

‘How many?’ asked the Iron Snake.

‘Two,’ said Mkoll. ‘One smoke, one anti-personnel.’

‘Two,’ sighed Mazho.

Holofurnace looked at Mkoll. ‘Oh, my brother,’ he said with a smile. ‘Scout and hunter. Best of both. You move light but you think small. You can hunt this prey, I don’t doubt that, but can you kill him when you run him to ground? Straight silver won’t be enough here.’

‘This might help,’ said Milo. He’d spotted a battered crate on a lower shelf, and dragged it out. It was heavy, but he lifted it clean to the table. Mkoll watched him. Milo wasn’t the boy piper any more. He was strong, and he was tall. He handled weapons with complete familiarity. He had become a seasoned warrior in the years after the Ghosts. And that had been more years than Mkoll could accept. Thanks to the warp incident that had broken the Armaduke’s return voyage to Urdesh, Milo was ten years older, relative. That made him over thirty standard. Mkoll knew he had to stop thinking of Milo as some boy, some eager but harmless adolescent lasman like Dalin Criid, or the Belladon bandsman Arradin. He wondered if that, in part, was why the regiment had welcomed Dalin when he became old enough to pledge in. A little of Boy Milo about him. A return to the early days.

He wondered where they were now, how they were faring. Had they held the batteries that night? Was the retinue safe in a new billet? He hoped Dalin was safe. He’d grown fond of him. A brave lad. Just like Milo had been.

All those years, he’d thought of Milo often, and prayed he was safe at the Saint’s side. He’d never pictured him as a grown man.

Milo unlatched the crate.

Anchor mines, wrapped in wax paper, packed in plastek beads. Imperial issue, salvaged by the Sons from some overrun depot. Each one was the size of a ration tin. They packed a fyceline/D60 mix that could blow a hole through a ceramite bulkhead.

Milo took them out, handling them with care and expertise.

‘Mechanical timer,’ he said. ‘Contact-fusion anchor pad on the flat side.’

‘I know bombs, lad,’ Mazho snapped, picking one up.

‘Good,’ said Milo. ‘Then you’ll know to treat them gently. Not to snatch or shake them. They’re volatile.’

‘I know that,’ said Mazho. He put the mine down again carefully.

‘Two each,’ said Mkoll.

‘Three if we carry fewer cells,’ said Milo.

‘Heavy pockets,’ said Mkoll.

‘Bigger punch,’ said Holofurnace.

‘Because straight silver won’t be enough,’ Mkoll nodded, conceding.

Holofurnace found a musette bag and emptied out the hard round clips it contained. ‘I can take four. Maybe five.’

‘Load up,’ said Mkoll.

They stepped out of the locker, and the V’heduak sealed the door with his keys.

‘Everything’s in order,’ Mkoll said to the packsons. ‘Lucky for you.’

They followed the main spinal towards the Oratory, Brin, Mkoll and Mazho forming an honour guard escort behind the cowled Iron Snake. The whispering buzz of voices was getting louder. It vibrated their ears and made their skin crawl.

The hallways were busier in this part of the ship. Crowds seemed to be gathering: packsons, Sekkite officers, even other V’heduak magirs.

‘What is this?’ Mazho whispered.

Mkoll listened, catching snatches of conversation from the crew they passed.

‘A summoning,’ he told them. ‘The Anarch is calling them. He’s going to speak.’

‘He’s speaking all the time,’ Mazho whispered.

‘No, this is a formal declaration,’ said Mkoll.

‘Of what?’ asked Milo.

Mkoll kept listening.

‘Of victory,’ he said.

The Oratory was a spherical chamber that occupied a socket through three deck levels. The exterior was ribbed with iron-plate armour, and wrought from a pale brown, polished material.

As they came closer, Mkoll realised it was human bone. Thousands upon thousands of gleaming skull caps bonded together. The entrance was a huge doorway accessed via the middle deck. Two rows of abominable excubitors with power lances stood guard outside, forming an avenue that channelled the gathering officers inside. The low murmur of the gathering was drowned out by the rasping whisper in the air.

‘Once we’re in there, there’s no coming back out,’ whispered Holofurnace as they watched from a distance.

‘Agreed,’ said Mkoll. ‘But we knew that.’

‘Yes,’ said Mazho, clearing his throat. Mkoll could see the colonel was sweating behind his leather mouth guard. Mazho was a brave man who had served the Fourth Light ‘Cinder Storm’ with distinction. But this was no battlefield. This required another type of courage.

‘We can do this,’ Milo said to the colonel. ‘For your world. That’s all you’ve ever fought for.’

Mazho nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid. Not of death. Just centring my mind.’

‘You do it for Urdesh,’ Holofurnace said.

‘I do it for all worlds, sir,’ Mazho replied. ‘Fourth Light. Cinder Storm. Light on the breeze, then burning all around you.’

‘Cinder Storm,’ nodded Holofurnace.

Milo looked at the Oratory sphere again.

‘It’s a shame we can’t–’ he began.

‘I was thinking that,’ said Mkoll. ‘We might have time. It’s going to take a while for them to file inside.’

He looked at Holofurnace.

‘Give me the bag,’ he said.

Holofurnace handed it over.

‘Stay here,’ said Milo. ‘You and Mazho. Stay right here.’

‘We could all–’ Holofurnace began.

‘No, leave this to us,’ said Milo. ‘We’re Ghosts.’

They dropped a deck, keeping to the shadows, and skirted around the vast base of the bone sphere. Brin Milo hadn’t forgotten the old Tanith craft. He was silent, a shadow in the shadows.

They paused under a stanchion arch, and waited as a Sekkite platoon passed by. Mkoll opened the bag. Holofurnace had packed six mines inside it.

‘All of them?’ Milo asked.

Mkoll nodded. ‘And one from your pockets. Keep two back. We’ll see if we can set them inside, along with the ones Mazho’s lugging.’

‘Long timer?’

‘What’ll that give us?’

‘Thirty minutes. Give or take. They’re not accurate, or reliable.’

‘Longest mark, then. Go.’

They darted low between pools of shadow, running side by side, and slithered in under the curve of the sphere. The Oratory sat on huge shock gimbals, and thick trunks of cable sheaves and power ducting sprouted from its south pole into the deck.

Milo placed the first charge, using the fusion anchor to fix it to the bone. He removed the steel pin, and flipped the activator. They ran on a few metres, then fixed the second, trying to space the mines fairly evenly on a line of latitude near the sphere’s base. The fifth one wouldn’t stick, its anchor plate too old and corroded. Mkoll switched it for one of the mines in his coat pockets.

‘Hurry,’ Milo whispered.

‘I’m hurrying gently,’ Mkoll replied.

‘What’s taking so long?’ Mazho whispered. The procession of Sekkite seniors had almost finished filing into the Oratory, and the excubitor vanguard was preparing to unhook the doors and swing them shut.

‘They’re coming,’ Holofurnace assured him.

‘What if they’ve been taken?’ Mazho asked.

Holofurnace looked grim. ‘Then it’s down to us,’ he said. He beckoned Mazho, and they stepped out of the shadows and joined the last of the officers gathering before the doors.

They fell into line, the queue advancing slowly. Mazho kept looking back. He couldn’t see anyone behind them except enemy staff officers and V’heduak magirs.

‘Stop doing that,’ Holofurnace whispered to him. ‘If they’re not coming, they’re not coming.’

The whispering was getting louder, buzzing from the entrance like the sizzle of churning blow-flies.

They stepped through the doorway.

Eight Sons of Sek moved a slave gang along the walkway, then herded them through a hatch onto the main spinal.

Mkoll and Milo waited until they were out of sight, then moved out of cover and set to work attaching the last of the mines.

‘We’ve taken too long,’ Milo said.

Mkoll didn’t reply. The timer mechanism was refusing to set.

‘I need to be in there,’ Milo said.

Mkoll glanced at him.

‘You know duty, Oan,’ Milo said. ‘Better than most. This is mine.’

‘Yours?’

‘Sek,’ said Milo.

‘This is an opportunity, that’s all.’

Milo shook his head. ‘I’ve seen things,’ he said. ‘I’ve walked at her side and seen the galaxy the way she sees it. Learned to a little, at least. There’s chaos, but there’s order. An order driven by will. A grace that holds the chaos at bay.’

‘We all believe that,’ said Mkoll. He cleared the timer and tried to rewind it.

‘No,’ said Milo. ‘We believe it. But I’ve seen it. I thought they were coincidences at first. Just quirks. Chances. But I see a pattern now. She showed me that. Taught me to notice it. An orchestration. A determined force, vastly outnumbered by the immaterium, but holding it in check. Out-playing it, move-for-move, like a game of regicide. It doesn’t always win, but it moves the pieces it has, and places them where it can for the best effect.’

‘I prefer cards,’ said Mkoll. He took the mine off and blew into its corroded timer. ‘Suicide Kings…’

‘I’m serious.’

‘I know. You’re talking about fate.’

‘That’s one word. Call it what you will. I think it’s why I made it off Tanith with the First, why we found Sanian, why we… It’s why she chose me. She knew… she understood, that one day I would be here.’

Mkoll smiled. ‘To kill Sek?’

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘No, Brin. If you believe that’s why you’re here, as a chosen instrument, a weapon selected and deployed by… I don’t know… destiny, then Throne bless you. That’s the strength that drives you. Use it.’

He looked at Milo. He could believe it. There was a purity of purpose in Brin’s eyes. Not the blind fanaticism of the zealot or the pilgrim-radical, nor the howling and unquestioning fealty of the warp-corrupted Archenemy. A true faith, a certainty. He could see that long years in the company of a creature as gnomic as the Beati could do that to a man. It could affirm his purpose, give him a sense of calling that would carry him through the darkest and most hellish events. The boy piper had truly long gone. Milo had become a warrior of the Throne, as sure and committed to his function as any Astartes.

‘Don’t you feel it?’ Milo asked. ‘Aren’t you the same? You, and the Ghosts? I was there in the early years. I saw what was accomplished. And I’ve read the reports since. The deeds, the achievements. Gaunt, the regiment, you. That doesn’t just happen. That isn’t just luck. I think we’ve all been guided by that grace, all along, whether we like it or not. Whether we know it or not. It’s taken us to the places we’ve needed to be so that we could do the things it’s needed us to do. You must feel that too.’

Mkoll shrugged.

‘I don’t think on it, Brin,’ he said. ‘I suppose I only ever consider the immediate. The shadows around me, the foe ahead. I haven’t had the opportunity to see things the way you have, at her side. You’re a weapon. I don’t doubt that, I really don’t. We’re all weapons. I trust in the providence of the Golden Throne, but I don’t have the vision to see any great plan at work. I’m just Guard, Brin. Just Guard. I go where I go and I do my damnedest when I’m told to march or fight. I tell you this much, though… I find it hard to swallow that fate has any great plan spun out across the years. Our side or theirs. Reading the variables across a thousand worlds? Planning moves decades in advance? Plotting the future and setting players in position to execute some ingenious gambit years down the line? I don’t think it works that way, not for us or the Archenemy. I think it’s all a brawl. A free-for-all. Just carnage, and you swing when you can. Instinct. Reaction. Opportunity. What is it Hark calls it? Fight time? Shit just happens, the moment’s on you, and you just do. Then you see who walks away. That’s all there is. No transcendent plan. Just moments, one after the other, bloody and senseless. You do what you do. Duty gets you through, or you’re dead.’

He clamped the last mine in place and set it running.

‘Guess we’ll see which of us is right, eh?’ he said.

Mazho stepped into the Oratory, jostled along by the press of bodies passing through the door. Fear was almost strangling him. He could feel his rapid breathing sucking against the hand-strap across his mouth. He looked up.

The Oratory was huge, even bigger than the exterior shell had suggested. It was a vast, circular theatre. Rings of tiered stalls, each level fringed by a rail, stepped down the lower half of the sphere to a large dais in the centre of the floor. They were entering through the main doors at the equator of the sphere, around which ran a wide, railed walkway. Steep flights of steps ran down between the banks of stalls to the dais below. The place was packed. Sekkite officers, the magirs of the vessel, tribal dignitaries and arbitors of the warp-faith were filling the stalls, finding places to stand, talking and greeting and exchanging the hand-to-the-mouth salutes. Hundreds of them. Bloody hundreds of them. The weight of the mines packed in his pockets felt like they’d give him away. His mind raced. He was just a packson. All around him were seniors of the Anarch’s host. They would know he was too lowly to be present. They would know.

The press of bodies carried him forwards. He was forced onto the steps, descending from the equatorial ring into the tiers of stalls. Voices were all around him. Whispers in his ears. He’d lost sight of Holofurnace. The flow of the crowd had separated them. He shot anxious glances, trying not to look jumpy, scanning the stalls around him as they filled. Where was the Space Marine? He saw robed V’heduak giants. Each one was cowled. Was that the Snake there? Was that one?

The air stank of dry dust. Sweat was running down his spine. The whole auditorium was made of human bone: the floor, the steps, the platforms of the tiers. The handrails dividing each ring of stalls were fused from polished human long bones, fashioned not crudely but with precise craftsmanship. He glanced up. The dome above, hazed in the golden candlelight, was a mosaic of skulls. Thousands of them, fixed side by side on concentric shelves, staring out blindly, like some vast ossuary, a catacomb’s bone house displaying the relics of the dead. So many staring sockets. So many gaping jaws. The whole ceiling, the whole dome, was solid with yellowed skulls.

He was forced into one of the stalls halfway down the tiered bowl. The Sekkites around him spoke to each other, nudged him impatiently to move along and make room. He ran out of space, boxed in by packson damogaurs and V’heduak giants. He got a place at the rail, gripped it to steady himself, then took his hands away. Bone. He didn’t want to hang on to bone.

Below him, the dais was a platform raised on a scaffold of bones, turned, shaped and jointed like the work of the finest cabinet maker: interlocked femurs, some laminated to form thick post uprights, the cross-braces secured with shoulder blades and sacral plates, inlays of carved finger-bones. The railing around the edge of the dais was a basketwork of ribcages supporting a top-rail made of vertebrae carefully matched for size, and fitted together to make one long, continuous spine. The joinery had been done with experienced precision. Everything was polished, and delicately carved and veneered, like an exquisite ivory sculpture. It gleamed, a warm glow.

It was the most appalling thing Mazho had ever seen.

The dais faced the main doors. Behind it, the lower stalls were a reserved quire, the curved bench seats were packed with lekts, the Sekkites’ macabre psyker caste. They chattered and gibbered, their mouths covered by hand-print brands. Many were veiled. Mazho could feel the scalding throb of their minds, amplifying the whispers that buzzed and crackled in his ears.

He tried to control his frantic breathing. Iron bars of terror were locking him rigid.

A loud boom caused a temporary hush. The towering excubitors had closed and barred the doors. They took their places amongst the crowds on the equatorial walkway, gazing down, their power lances held upright.

He was in now. The only way out was shut. It had become a dream that didn’t belong to him.

A figure stepped up onto the dais. Mazho had no idea where it had come from. It had just emerged from the crowd packing the auditorium.

It was the Anarch. It was Sek.

Holofurnace found a place to stand at the bone-railing of the equatorial walk. He’d lost Mazho. From under his cowl, he surveyed the tiers below, his acute, post-human eyesight searching for detail. Where was he? Where–

There. Off to the right and down in the thick of it. A tiny figure, packed into an overcrowded stall. The poor damn bastard.

The excubitors were preparing to shut the doors. What of Mkoll and the Saint’s man? Had they come back in time? He studied the crowd again. Damogaurs, etogaurs, packson tribunes with tribal standards, a quire of cackling lekts, excubitors, cult shamen, Blood-fare officers and steersmen. The host was still taking its places, thronging the staircases, shuffling into stalls, milling around the base of the obscene dais.

‘D’har voi vehen kha,’ the V’heduak beside him said, and laughed.

Holofurnace nodded. He knew none of the words. He made a laughing sound and hoped it would be enough.

There. There was Milo. He was moving down one of the staircases, slipping through the crowd. Holofurnace watched. Unnoticed by those around him, Milo paused to re-strap his boot. Just a feint. Holofurnace saw him quickly, furtively slide a small object under the lip of the stall. A mine. Milo rose again. He threaded his way on down the steps.

Good boy.

The Snake scanned the throng. There. And there was Mkoll. Down on the floor beside the dais, moving through the gathering, pausing, looking out into the Oratory as he fished a hand behind his back and anchored a mine to a dais post. Right in plain sight, but no one saw. Mkoll moved with confidence, as if he was supposed to be there.

Mkoll looked up. He’d spotted Holofurnace across the packed chamber. A hunter’s sharp eyes. No chance to sign or signal. Just an exchanged nod.

‘Voi vehtah sahk!’ the V’heduak beside him exclaimed, nudging him.

‘Kha,’ Holofurnace said.

He’d lost sight of Mkoll. There was Milo again, though. Three-quarters of the way down the stairs. Another casual stoop to adjust his boot. A quick pass, sleight-of-hand. Another mine set, locked in the shadows of a stair riser. Milo rose again. Holofurnace tracked him as he edged into a lower stall. There was Mkoll too. They jostled through the press until they were side by side.

The main doors shut. The excubitor guards stepped to the rail. One pushed in just metres from Holofurnace, a terrible ghoul with stub-horns, taller than any Adeptus Astartes, his ornate lance held proud and straight.

There was a figure on the dais suddenly. The buzzing whispers grew louder.

Sek was here.

A hush fell. They watched him take his place.

‘Oh, Throne,’ Milo whispered.

Mkoll said nothing.

Fifty metres from them, and higher up, Mazho gazed in silent horror. This wasn’t the thing he had glimpsed through the madness of the vortex at Oureppan. It was worse.

A skeletal giant, its skin a mummified and flaking brown stretched taut and paper-thin around its bones. A ragged robe, decayed from centuries in a tomb. A crown of iron spikes. No lower jaw, just a yawning void.

Mazho sank deeper into the numb depths of terror. He tried to mumble a penitential prayer, but he couldn’t remember any of the words.

Holofurnace watched too. From the high rail, he saw his enemy in person for the first time. He considered the sheer bulk of the Anarch, the ungodly mass, a lumbering daemon that hauled itself into place. It was female in aspect, throat, shoulders and hunched back fledged in iridescent plumage. A carrion bird’s beak, big as a power-claw, snapped and yawned to reveal the blue, rasping dagger of its tongue. A spiked silver crown formed a band above its dozens of glittering eyes. Neon-yellow pupils flashed and shone. It spread its arms, its daemon wings. It possessed a terrible beauty that speared Holofurnace’s heart like a cold blade.

He could not look away.

Brin Milo shivered as he watched the magister take his place. Sek was just as he had seen him, the glaring demiurge that had haunted his dreams since the vortex. Upright, strong, with the power and build of an Astartes warrior, clad in black and yellow silks. His head was a bald mass of scar tissue. Black thorns grew from the gnarled flesh of his scalp, surrounding the top of his head like a spiked crown. The tubes and pipes of augmetic support systems knotted the back of his head and neck like vines. His face was a steel mask, sutured in place, a visage of cruel angles and sharp lines. Filthy light shone from the eye slits and the yawning, down-turned mouth. A chrome vox-mic, the tannoy speaker from some battle-engine, was fixed to his chest-plate and positioned so that the caged disc was set in front of his mouth.

Sek was about to speak.

Mkoll gazed, eyes narrowed, his gorge rising. This was the foe at last, barely six metres away. All that power, all that authority, invested in such a wretched thing. It came as little surprise. Mkoll thought of Macaroth. For all that great Macaroth was warmaster, commander of crusading hosts, they said he was just a man too, an ordinary man of flesh and blood, of weaknesses and flaws, just another mortal who happened to wield the greatest authority in the sector.

Anakwanar Sek was just a man. An old man, run to fat, of average height and sloping build. His robes were filthy and lacquered with grease. His hands were cased in shining silver gauntlets, clawed and segmented masterpieces of antique armour that he had stolen from some corpse, and wore to boast he was a figure of great importance. He looked like a gutter-gang vagabond who had chosen to wear ill-fitting, polished, regal boots he’d looted from the body of a high-hive noble. His body twitched with a palsy. His skin was scabbed and diseased. Mkoll couldn’t see his face because Sek, with one ostentatiously gloved hand, was holding up a cracked porcelain mask on a slender stick. The top of the stick was fashioned into a golden hand that wrapped across the mask’s mouth. Some twitching darkness lurked behind the serene mask.

Just a man. Just a vile old man. Mkoll could kill that.

The ceaseless chattering of the lekt quire increased. A buffet of psyker force welling out across the Oratory. Everyone winced, all of the Sekkite seniors and four Imperial interlopers lurking amongst them.

‘Let my voice drown out all others,’ the lekts hissed in unison. Now the constant, scratching whispers wove together into one set of words.

‘Anarch I am. Anarch of all,’ the lekts sang.

The host roared, shaking their fists, saluting, fingers to their lips.

‘All that was set in place has come to its conclusion,’ the quire hissed as the roars died back. ‘This night and the next day. My hours. My awaited moment, long foreseen. Those who hold the key of victory will pass to me what has always been mine.’

‘He’s saying,’ Mkoll whispered, ‘…he’s saying the enkil vahakan, “those who hold the key of victory”…’

‘I understand,’ Milo whispered back, unable to tear his gaze from the dais. ‘I understand what he’s saying.’

‘But he’s speaking in the Sekkite tongue…’ Mkoll hissed.

‘No, he’s not.’ Milo replied. ‘I understand every word. He’s declaring victory.’

The unclean voices of lekts swelled in exultation.

‘I have sent the blessed reworked,’ they announced.

The host roared again. ‘Qimurah! Qimurah! Qimurah!’

‘The blessed reworked, all eight times eight, have slipped like a skzerret’s blade into the heart of the foe,’ the lekts chorused. ‘By dawn, they will be returned to the sound of my voice. They will bring the Enkil Vehk, the key that was shamelessly stolen from me. This will be the victory I have pursued. The key will open the way. The key will sunder the stars. No one, no corpse-emperor, no Throne warrior, no false angel, no… not even any bold magir or preening Gaur… will stand in the fury of my wrath. The Archonate will prevail, reworked in glory. Anarch I am.’

The host roared again. A chant began. ‘Sek! Sek! Sek! Sek!’

Mazho saw the mummified titan raise a tattered hand for silence. Holofurnace saw an ethereal wing sweep for order. Milo flinched as the demiurge lifted his fist, compelling attention. Mkoll saw a silver gauntlet gesture, bidding them to indulge him a moment more.

‘For the plague of Terra is beheaded this night,’ the lekts proclaimed. ‘While the blessed reworked perform their holy ministry, I have unleashed woe upon the place called Eltath. The Herit ver Tenebal Mor. The Heritor’s bad shadow falls across the ground. The enkil vahakan will perish, all. All their chieftains. All their warlords. The crusaders of the corpse-prophet, so long a plague upon our realm, will be emasculated. Their order lost. Their authority annihilated. By dawn, this will be finished. The plague of Terra will break, as a fever breaks, lost and leaderless, and from tomorrow they will scatter, hopeless and afeared, into the farthest stars, and we will drive them before us, shattered, humiliated and put to rout.’

The host howled. The Sekkite Sons drummed on the handrails. They turned to one another in raptures, clasping hands and embracing.

Mazho gasped as the damogaur beside him turned, yelling, and hugged him.

‘Dahak enkil voi sahh, magir!’ the officer shouted in his ear. Mazho could smell his sweat, the stink of his breath.

‘Dahak enkil?’ the man asked, breaking the embrace and looking at Mazho, puzzled. ‘Dahak enkil voi?’ Mazho could barely hear him over the chanting. He didn’t understand the words anyway. He turned aside, pretending he was eager to congratulate the man to his left.

The damogaur seized him by the shoulder and turned him back. He gripped Mazho by the chin-strap and tilted his head, peering in under the helmet’s brim at Mazho’s eyes.

‘Sp-ecta-kles?’ he said, not understanding.

Up at the high rail, Holofurnace was trying to keep Colonel Mazho in sight through the forest of pumping fists and swaying banners. He glimpsed Mazho turning, a damogaur grabbing him by the face.

It was time. He threw back the folds of his borrowed robes.

‘Sp-ecta-kles?’ the damogaur hissed into Mazho’s face. Angry understanding flushed his face.

‘Pheguth!’ he snarled.

‘Fourth Light Cinder Storm!’ Mazho replied, and punched his skzerret into the damogaur’s chest. For a moment, no one around him realised anything was wrong. The cheering was too intense. The damogaur slumped, held upright by the tight-packed bodies.

Then gunfire ripped down from the equatorial walk.

Holofurnace had swept out the heavy sentry gun and opened fire, feeding the belt with his left hand. Hot shell cases bounced off the startled Sekkites at the rail beside him. The shots raked down the steep tiered bank of the Oratory, the first bursts killing cheering Sons in the front two rows. The .20 was not a sophisticated gun and, despite his strength, Holofurnace was not assisted by the automatic balancing, levelling and aiming systems of his Astartes armour.

He corrected by eye. His second and third bursts ripped across the dais.

He saw the winged daemon stagger, its golden armour puncturing. Scraps of white feather billowed into the air. Parts of the guard rail and dais platform splintered in showers of bone shards.

The massed cheering swelled and changed as one noise, becoming panic and howls of astonished horror.

Milo saw the towering demiurge shudder and reel, blood bursting from his black and yellow robes. He swung up his carbine, and blasted point blank into the Sekkites to his right, brutally clearing a space in the stall, then turned and blazed on full auto at the dais.

Mkoll vaulted the guardrail, the sirdar’s long-nosed autopistol in his hand, and landed on the bone steps. Men were already bolting from the stalls all around him in blind panic. He kicked a packson out of his way, sending the Sekkite tumbling down the stairs, and gunned down another two who came clawing for him. Then he ran down the steps towards the Oratory floor, firing as he went, zipping hard rounds across the ducking bodies in the stalls. He saw them hit. He saw the old man jerk as bullets smacked into his greasy robes. He saw blood. The porcelain mask slipped down. Mkoll glimpsed some vast and writhing maw where the old man’s face should have been. It yawned in pain and shock.

Mazho tried to get his carbine raised clear. Everyone was shouting and screaming. The lekt quire screeched in agony.

‘For Urdesh!’ he yelled. ‘For Urdesh! Cinder Storm!’

He tried to aim. The Sekkites in the stall fell on him from all sides, clawing and grappling. Mazho went down under the weight of them. A raging V’heduak wrenched the weapon from his hands. A packson hit him across the face so hard it broke his cheekbone and knocked his helmet askew. He lost his spectacles. The world became a blur of raining fists and screaming faces.

He disappeared beneath the berserk mob. His bones cracked and snapped as they kicked at him, and stamped on his helpless form.

The vicious, murderous beating jolted one of the ageing anchor mines. It went off, tripping the other two simultaneously.

The combined blast tore out the mid-section of the stalls, billowing out in a fierce, searing firestorm. Those closest to Mazho, including his frenzied tormentors, were vaporised instantly. Others were thrown headlong into the air, tumbling and falling on the rows below. Chunks of cracked ivory scattered like kindling.

The blast shook the entire Oratory. It rocked Holofurnace back. He had hosed almost all his ammunition at the dais. The feathered witch-thing had fallen to its knees, writhing, soaked in blood. Some of the quire were dead too, mown down in their seats by overshot.

The crowd around him grabbed at him, tearing his robes. He shook them off. He swung a fist that broke a packson’s neck. He grabbed a clawing V’heduak chieftain by the throat and hurled him over the rail.

‘Ithaka!’ he roared, using the name of his homeworld as a curse of defiance. An excubitor lunged at him, swinging his power lance. Holofurnace jerked clear, and the lance’s long blade splintered the bone guardrail. He put the rest of his ammunition through the excubitor’s face, blowing the fiend’s skull apart.

The belt was out. He brandished the sentry gun like a cudgel, cracking skulls and knocking Sekkites into the stalls below. Several las-rounds hit him in the lower back, shunting him forwards.

Milo’s first mine went off, annihilating a section of staircase in a blizzard of fire and bone shrapnel. The second mine detonated an instant later, obliterating another section of the staircase further down, and rippling flames along two blocks of stalls. Sekkites staggered, blundering, blinded, their clothing on fire.

The mine Mkoll had fixed to the dais fired, destroying half the spine railing and causing the entire platform to slump sideways. Upwashed flame boiled across the Anarch’s flailing figure.

Mkoll was near the bottom of the staircase. The blast shock knocked him off his feet. A body fell across him. He struggled to get the dead weight off his legs.

Milo saw Mkoll go down. He wanted to rain more fire at the Anarch, but Sekkites were rushing him from all sides. He switched furiously from target to target, chopping each one down as they came at him. Cinders and burning ash drifted around him like snow.

The exterior mines went off in a quick, staggered, uneven series of muffled roars. The Oratory rattled in its socket. Men sprawled off their feet. Dislodged skulls rained down from the dome, shattering like pottery on the floor and stalls beneath. Flames surged up in a dozen places around the dais and the lower stalls.

Gripping the rail, the Anarch hauled himself upright, braced against the drunken slope of the damaged dais. His maw uttered a roar of rage, and the remaining lekts echoed it in shrill chorus.

He had been betrayed. Deceived. Wounded in his own sanctum. His victory would only matter if he survived to see it.

Sek howled again. The uncouth noise of his voice drowned out everything around him. Some Sekkites simply fell dead, ears and brains pulped by the volume of his wrath.

He tore off his silver gauntlets and bared his hands. He focused his magisterial powers, invoking the dark eminences of the outer warp that he served. The quire took up his supplication, chanting words and conjurations that pre-dated mankind. The Saint had wounded him at Oureppan, and drained his psykomantic potency. He channelled all he had left to preserve himself.

The immaterium flexed, splitting the air around him. Foul winds sucked and screeched. Tendrils of yellow lightning flickered around his gesturing hands.

He was opening a gate to flee. He was folding the curtain of the warp aside through willpower alone, gouging through the subspace membranes, and throwing wide a door to step through into safety.

Milo saw reality bending around the demiurge. Another vortex. Smaller than the one at Oureppan that Sek had opened to destroy the Beati, less controlled, less stable. But a doorway all the same. A way out.

Milo yelled out, rushing forwards, hands grabbing at him from all sides, pulling him down.

Mkoll ran towards the burning dais, emptying the last of his autopistol’s clip into the Anarch’s back. They had to stop him. That had been the point of everything. They had to kill him here, now, before he slipped away and became invisible and untraceable for another decade or more.

Holofurnace punched a raving etogaur aside and grabbed the dead excubitor’s fallen power lance. Other excubitors were rushing at him, lances raised to strike.

The lance was long and heavy, more a halberd than a spear. Its blade tip was as wide as a cleaver and as long as a tactical gladius. Its weight and balance were poor.

But it was not so different from the wyrm-spears he had learned to handle back on Ithaka.

He pulled it back, right arm crooked, left extended before him, the lance horizontal beside his face. He saw Mkoll, far below, skzerret in hand, clambering onto the dais to grab at the fleeing magister.

The Tanith huntsman had been right. It had come down to straight silver at the last.

To bare blades.

Holofurnace let his fly. The cast was good. The shaft flew as true as a sea-lance. He saw it strike, slicing into the Anarch’s back, driving deep, cutting through, transfixing the daemon’s feathered torso.

He saw the daemon stumble forwards. He saw the subspace gate shatter, unfurl and then collapse in a wash of obscene light.

The excubitors fell on him, striking him down with hacking, butchering blows. He fought at them, clawing and punching. Their hands were on him, inhumanly strong, pinning him, gripping him. He could not break free.

Holofurnace looked up, blood streaming down his face, and met the eyes of the excubitor who would end him.

‘Vahooth voi sehn!’ the excubitor screamed as he brought the lance blade down.

‘Ithaka!’ Holofurnace replied with the last breath he would ever take.

TWENTY: BLOOD FOR BLOOD

Gaunt and Baskevyl bounded up the undercroft steps with Blenner trailing behind them.

‘Grae!’ Gaunt yelled.

Colonel Grae and his complement of Urdeshi field troops were milling in the lamplit hallway, clutching their weapons and looking up in dismay at the sounds of destruction rumbling through the palace above them.

‘What is this, my lord?’ Grae asked.

‘Another one,’ said Gaunt. ‘Another woe machine. Stronger than the first. Is the palace evacuated?’

Grae shook his head.

‘We’d barely begun,’ he said. ‘The power has only just been restor–’

Gaunt pushed past him. ‘Where’s the warmaster?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grae called, hurrying after him. ‘I think, still on site.’

‘Dammit, Barthol,’ Gaunt murmured. He looked at Grae. ‘And the Beati?’

‘Taken above,’ said Grae. ‘The medicae have her–’

‘It’s loose in the palace,’ said Gaunt. ‘Up there. Hunting for every target it can find. It’ll be seeking out Macaroth, the Saint… that’s its purpose.’

‘How do we stop it, my lord?’ Grae asked.

Gaunt was already running up the steps into the main hall of the wing.

‘I don’t know if we do,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it.’

‘It’s an abomination,’ Baskevyl said to Grae. He shrugged at the intelligence officer. ‘This night has been long enough, I think.’

‘Don’t go up there!’ Blenner wailed from behind them. ‘Fething hide!’

‘The best we can hope is to slow it down,’ Gaunt told Grae. ‘Buy any time we can to get Macaroth and the Beati clear.’

‘And you, sir, surely?’ said Grae.

‘Where did my daughter go?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Quartered with the Saint,’ said Grae. ‘The chapel. That’s where she was taken. All the survivors–’

Gaunt looked down the steps at the Urdeshi troops.

‘All of you, with me,’ he said.

‘You heard the Lord Executor!’ Baskevyl yelled.

They swept into the main hallway, Baskevyl forming the Urdeshi into firing lines at Gaunt’s heels. Grae and Blenner ran after them. Broken glass littered the floor. Gaunt could smell burning. He could hear the rip and chatter of gunfire, and then the answering wail of a blade on a whetting wheel.

Palace staff stumbled past in the opposite direction, fleeing, panicked. Some were injured and bleeding.

‘Don’t go that way!’ one man yelled.

‘Get clear! Get out!’ Gaunt told him as he ran past. Gaunt didn’t break stride. Sword in one hand, bolt pistol in the other, he stormed down the long hall towards the source of the uproar.

He slowed as he felt the ground beginning to shake.

The wall ahead disintegrated in a shower of stone and dust. The woe machine revealed itself, a floating octahedron of grating, sliding blades locked around an inner glow.

It came towards them slowly, shrieking its metal-on-metal cry.

Three of the Urdeshi dropped their weapons and fled.

‘Line! Line!’ Gaunt yelled.

‘Keep that line!’ Baskevyl bawled at the Urdeshi. The troops formed up, clattering their weapons to their shoulders, aiming.

‘Grenades ready!’ Gaunt yelled.

He heard the troopers slot and lock their under-barrel launchers.

‘Hold!’ Gaunt ordered.

The woe machine purred closer. The blades at the tip of its form began to spin and open out, blooming like a barbed flower, yellow light shining out of it.

‘Dalin!’ Gaunt called out. He hoped there’d be a response, some vestigial flicker of recognition as there had been before.

But he doubted it.

And none came. The wailing note simply began to rise into a squeal of wet fingers on glass.

‘Commence fire!’ Gaunt ordered. Eyes narrowed, he began to blast at the cloud of whirling blades with his bolt pistol. Either side of him, the Urdeshi opened up, training rapid, accurate fire from their lasrifles. Baskevyl ripped bursts of full auto from his own rifle, and Grae blazed with his service pistol. Blenner, a few steps behind him, stood empty-handed, gazing at the advancing horror.

The sustained fire flickered and danced across the woe machine: the fiery bursts of Gaunt’s heavy shots, the flash and spark of the assault weapon barrage. Spinning black blades shattered, and were instantly replaced.

The woe machine started to spit blades. The razored darts pulsed from its rotating central mass almost silently. An Urdeshi screamed and dropped, a blade skewering his thigh. Another toppled back with a blade transfixing his head. Grae grunted and slammed against the wall, a leaf of black metal embedded in his shoulder. Gaunt felt one slice through the meat of his upper arm as it whizzed past. He put three more bolt-rounds into the thing’s cycling maw.

‘Fall back, slow!’ Gaunt ordered. ‘Draw it this way! Maintain fire!’

They took a step back, then two, weapons blazing. The woe machine stirred forwards. In unison, all the blades on the front half of its form scissored around to point at them. It was about to loose them en masse in a pelting hail of knives that would murder the entire squad line.

Gaunt saw figures moving behind the woe machine at the far end of the hall. He heard a firm, clear voice calling for squad discipline.

Van Voytz. Kazader. A damn company of Urdesh Heavy Infantry. Storm troops. The notorious 17th.

Gaunt’s micro-bead crackled.

‘Get your arses out of the line of fire if you please, Lord Executor,’ Van Voytz said.

‘Cover, now!’ Gaunt yelled. His men scattered, heading for doorways and side rooms. Two of them dragged the trooper with the skewered leg clear. Baskevyl had to grab Blenner and almost lift him out of the way.

The storm troops began their blitz. Their methods were not subtle. Hellgun fire. Rotator cannons. Support las on man-portable rigs. The heavily armoured shock troops advanced down the long hall, demolishing the floor, the ceiling, the plasterwork, the panelling; pinning the woe machine in a kill-storm of destruction, a focused barrage that had seen the 17th drive through Archenemy lines, fortified positions, and even light armour opposition.

Churning black blades broke and shattered. The light inside the woe machine flickered, straining. It recoiled, stung hard, and with one rushing clatter, the sound of a thousand swords being drawn at once, it switched the angle of all its blades to face the steadily advancing Urdeshi.

‘Heard you needed some support,’ Gaunt heard Van Voytz chuckle over the link.

‘Appreciated, lord general,’ he replied.

‘Down payment on my debt, Bram,’ said Van Voytz. ‘For Jago–’

‘Just kill it, Barthol,’ said Gaunt.

The woe machine began to spur forwards to meet the oncoming storm troops. The Urdeshi didn’t waver. One step after another, resolute, they marched at it, burning through their ammunition to blow it apart.

‘Grenades!’ Gaunt called out. ‘Give it grenades while its focus is drawn!’

Grae’s Urdeshi Light swung out of their meagre cover. Their under-barrel launchers popped with hollow thumps. Krak grenades, arced in with practised skill, dropped on and around the Heritor’s weapon.

The blasts came rapidly, an overlapping ripple of hard concussions. Troopers at both ends of the long hall rocked back as the shockwaves pummelled them. A cluster of fireballs pounded through the space occupied by the woe machine, choking the hall with surging flames.

The woe machine shrieked. Its geometric rotations disintegrated, cohesion lost. Blades whirled out of alignment, crossing, colliding, snapping against one another.

The pattern broke. Black metal fragments spun out of the fire-wash like the vanes of a rupturing turbine engine. Stray blades augured into the walls, the floor and straight up into the ceiling. Most stuck fast, buried like arrows in the stone.

The woe machine had become unwound, thrown apart by its own cycling motion.

‘Again!’ Gaunt yelled. The Urdeshi around him re-slotted and locked. They raised their weapons to fire and deliver extinction.

But the woe machine was not dead. Its circling ribbon of blades, some broken or chipped, rose out of the flames in a strained and elongated figure-eight noose, looping out wide like a thrown lasso.

It was enraged. It was hurt. It wanted to flee.

It took the shortest route.

It went through the storm troops.

Baskevyl gazed in horror as the armoured men began to drop. Like wooden skittles slammed down in one strike, they rocked and fell, every one of them cut through a dozen times. Blood squirted from deep, scalpel-clean wounds, or poured out between the joints of their ballistic plate.

Screaming, its circling blades wide-spaced and overtaxed, the woe machine cut a hole through the end of the long hall and vanished.

Gaunt, Baskevyl and some of Grae’s Urdeshi hurried through the long stretch of scorched and burning devastation to reach the 17th’s half of the hall.

The storm troops lay in a carpet of bodies across the wide floor. Few of them were intact. Gaunt stepped over severed limbs and heavy weapons cut cleanly in two. There was blood underfoot, a broad pool of it, and speckles of blood-spatter covered the white-washed walls on either side.

Kazader was dead, his left arm split at the wrist and bicep. Half of his face was simply missing.

Van Voytz was still alive when Gaunt reached him.

He was on his back, staring at the ceiling. Gaunt could see his wounds were not survivable. Van Voytz was aspirating blood, bright red drops that dappled his cheeks and chin like a freckled birth mark.

Gaunt knelt down.

‘Barthol–’

Van Voytz blinked, unable to focus. He groaned, blood gurgling in his throat like phlegm.

‘Am I dead, Bram?’ he mumbled.

‘You are, my lord.’

‘Well… shit,’ Van Voytz said, his voice drowning and bubbling. ‘That’s payment in full, then. Eh? Blood for blood.’

‘Stay still, Barthol. We’ll fetch a chaplain. An ayatani or–’

‘I don’t need absolution, Gaunt,’ Van Voytz gurgled. He was still staring blindly at the ceiling. ‘Made my peace, long since. Just loyalty to prove, if late in the day.’

‘You had nothing to prove, lord general.’

‘Hnh. Late in the day. Always so dark at this hour. I knew, when it came for me, it would come in the slow hours–’

A slackness softened his face and body, the rigidity of pain released by the oblivion.

He was gone.

The night was wretchedly black.

In the small watch room of the Plade Parish vapour mill, the night watchman dozed across his console, stirring every now and then to wipe drool from his mouth. A single lamp burned, his only comfort. Rain beat against the room’s broad window ports, a blur of streaming water.

Nade Oysten appeared at the window, soaked through and out of breath. She yelled at him. He didn’t stir. The watch room was sealed and soundproof against the thunder of the mill when its turbines cycled every two hours.

She beat on the glass, yelling, hands flat and frantic. Her mouth moved silently. The thick glass just flexed slightly in its frame.

The watchman dreamed on.

Oysten tried the door, yanking at it, screaming silent profanities. It was locked.

She stepped back, defeated, and stared through the windows for a moment at the slumbering man. The rain had washed Rawne’s blood off her face.

She raised her cut-down riot gun, reached into her bag of shells, and loaded a breaching round. She stepped back, almost vanishing from view.

The big flash was silent.

The damage was not. The window in the door blew in with a smash like a dozen lead-crystal decanters hitting a stone floor. The metal door ruptured in its frame, and buckled, its handle and lock torn out in one lump that sailed clear across the room.

The watchman hurtled awake, yelping, blinking and confused.

Oysten kicked open the ruined door and stepped in out of the rain.

She glared at him.

‘Wha– wha–’ he stammered.

‘You have a fething vox somewhere, you idle fething ball-bag,’ she said. ‘Where the feth is it?’

The sun had risen thirty minutes ago, though it was still an hour before dawn half a world away in Eltath.

Orchidel Island, a flat rock of wind-swept salt-scrub and gritty beaches, lay at the southern end of the Faroppan archipelago. Few came there. It was a long way from the volcanic systems that fired Urdesh’s precious forges.

Once in a while, agriboats passed by, heading for the rich, offshore blooms in the southern ocean during the late summer algae season.

It was not late summer. No boat had passed by in six months.

The sky was clear, a soft grey-green. No cloud. Visibility out ten kilometres across the breakwaters. The waves rolled in along the broad shingle beach, hushing on the stones as it had done since the world was born.

Ten metres from the shore, the air blistered with a noise like spitting fat. For a few seconds, reality wrenched open and debris crashed out into the shallows. Smoke billowed with it. The scent of burning bone that the wind swiftly carried away. For a moment, the beach rang with the echoes of a distant, shrieking quire.

Then space closed again with a sledgehammer thump, an implosion of pressure so fierce, the sea beneath withdrew briefly, baring its bed of silt and algae-crusted stones.

Then rushed back in, and all was as it had been before.

A ragged figure stirred, half-swamped in the rolling waves. He crawled and clawed his way up the beach, the waves breaking around him in crossing plumes of foam.

Sek paused, panting, on his hands and knees, his feet in the water, blood trailing from his wheezing mouth onto the shingle. He was soaked through, engulfed in the pain of his wounds, and maimed by the violence of the translation. His power was reduced to an ember. It had taken everything to break away and escape to this remote and unregarded spot.

He crawled on, the shingle crunching and scattering under his hands. Clear of the water, he rose to his knees, reached back, and slowly drew out the power lance that skewered his torso. He gasped with the effort, and dropped the weapon on the beach beside him.

Out in the breakers, metres from the beach, Mkoll floated, rocked by the surging waves. He was gazing up at the sky. Daylight. A dawn. He knew he should move. That he had to move. He knew he had come there to finish something.

But his memory was vacant. He couldn’t remember anything. He had no idea why he was floating on his back in a cold sea, or how he had come to be there. His body was numb from the savage trauma of subspace bilocation, a process few mortals would ever choose to endure, even when armoured or cushioned by protective invocations.

He let the sea lift him and drop him, over-and-over, the soothing motion of the breakers.

Someone waded past him, staggering and splashing. A shadow blotted out the sky.

Milo reached down and clawed at Mkoll’s jacket, searching his pockets. He found the two grenades. One smoke, which he tossed aside.

One anti-personnel.

He gripped it, and waded ashore, teeth clenched, dazed and staggering. The Anarch was just ahead of him, crawling on his hands and knees. No demiurge now, no towering god. An old man in tattered robes, wounded in a dozen places, blood spotting the grey and green pebbles in a trail behind him.

Panting, unsteady, Milo reached him.

He grabbed Sek by the shoulder and threw him over, rolling him onto his back. The Anarch whined, and winced in pain.

He looked up at Brin Milo.

Milo stared down.

The old man had no face. Small eye sockets gazed up at the Tanith soldier. Beneath them, the rest of his face was a gaping hole. It was fringed with writhing, jointed claws like tiny human fingers. They twitched, holding the gaping mouth wide. Inside the maw was an endless blackness that the morning light could not illuminate. There was nothing in the blackness except the voice.

Enkil vahakan, it said.

The words buzzed at Milo’s ears, making him flinch.

‘You’ve said enough,’ Milo whispered. ‘You’ve spoken all you have to speak. It’s time for silence.’

He dropped astride the old man’s chest, pinning him to the loose shingle. Sek tried to fend him off, beating at him with his bare hands.

Milo fended the blows away. He clenched his fist around the grenade, thumbed out the pin, and stuffed his hand into the yawning maw.

Sek thrashed, choking. Milo held on, shoving his hand deeper.

Sek refused to submit. A surge of neon light lit his empty sockets. He hurled Milo off him.

Milo landed badly, rolling, spraying pebbles. The grenade flew out of his hand, and bounced across the shingle. He tried to scramble clear.

The grenade detonated. It threw up a cone of flame and rained shingle in all directions. Milo was half-caught by the blast and flung across the beach, dazed and limp.

He tried to rise, his ears ringing, his head spinning. He slumped down on his side.

Anakwanar Sek rose to his feet slowly. It took effort to get up. He clutched at his wounds, blood dribbling from the damage his foes had inflicted.

His maw-fingers twitched and fidgeted.

He had picked up the power lance. For a moment, he leaned on it, panting, using it like a staff to support his weary weight. He stared at the fallen warrior who had almost killed him. Milo wasn’t moving.

Sek stood up straight. He raised the lance, and spun it slowly with both hands in a skilled figure around his body that betrayed the weapon skills of his early years as a damogaur in the Archon’s host, four centuries past.

He brought the lance to his shoulder, haft up and back behind his head, blade tipped down, hands clasped and spaced for an expert down-strike.

This man would die first. He would be the first mark of Sek’s vengeance. Others would follow, one-by-one, then scores, then hundreds, then thousands, then millions.

He would make them pay for his defeat. He would make the corpse-prophet’s minions pay, until they wished that he had won at Urdesh so that suffering would not be multiplied a thousandfold upon their defiant kind.

He thrust.

A boot drove into his ribs, knocking him sideways and making him gasp with pain.

Another man had come.

Then two would die first.

Sek steadied himself and swung the lance.

Mkoll leapt back. The shingle squirmed under his boots. The lance blade lopped the air. Sek twisted and re-addressed, feet braced, looping the lance around to jab.

Mkoll danced clear. He dodged the next swing. He hunched low, a fighting stance, the skzerret in his hand. Not straight silver, but it would do.

Sek stamped forwards, scything the blade. He had speed and finesse for a wounded old man. He had strength.

Mkoll sidestepped. As Sek passed him, he slashed with the knife, and tore a deep gash along Sek’s upper arm.

Sek snarled. Mkoll felt the buzzing swarm into his ears. The Anarch lost the grip of one hand, blood weeping down his arm, but he kept his footing, and rotated the lance with frightening skill, spinning it in his right hand.

He lunged, then lunged again, forcing Mkoll backwards up the beach away from Milo’s prone form. He returned to a double-grip, blood-wet hands sliding on the lance’s haft. He speared at Mkoll.

Mkoll feinted right, avoiding the lethal strike. He punched in low with his left fist, cracking ribs, and as Sek hunched, followed with his right and slammed the dagger into the Anarch’s chest.

Sek flailed backwards. He dropped the lance. The air throbbed with the buzzing whisper of his cries. Mkoll came on, relentless, stabbing twice more with the serrated blade. Blood stippled his face as he pulled the blade out with each strike, ready to repeat it.

Sek fell on his back.

Swaying, Mkoll knelt down to finish the kill.

He ran the blade in where the heart should be. Sek shivered and convulsed.

His right hand snatched up, scattering pebbles, and clamped around Mkoll’s throat. Mkoll gasped, his air cut off. The Anarch squeezed. Frail neon light blazed in his dark orbits.

Sek would not die. He would not die.

Kater Holofurnace had been right all along.

Blades were never going to be enough. Anarch Sek was a magister. A man like Oan Mkoll, just a mortal man, was never going to carry enough punch to finish a monster like the Anarch.

Mkoll’s vision dimmed. Blood pounded in his head. The strangling grip around his throat tightened. His wet clothes clung to him. He felt a dead weight in his jacket pocket.

Unable to break the grip that was killing him, Mkoll let go of the knife and pulled the anchor mine out of his coat.

It was the last one remaining, the one they hadn’t used because its anchor pad was broken and refused to grip.

Mkoll had seen what Milo had tried to do. He rammed the anchor mine into Sek’s hissing maw.

Sek gagged. He let go. Mkoll scrambled backwards, kicking up stones, retching and gasping.

Sek writhed, choking, trying to disgorge the mine from his mouth. He sat up, and rolled onto his knees, kneeling for a moment, clawing at his mouth.

The mine went off.

Foul tissue and liquid sheeted in all directions.

Mkoll sat up, blinking away the blood in his eyes. Gore plastered him and the shingle in a two metre radius around the Anarch’s body.

Sek was still kneeling. His hands had flopped in his lap. He was gone from the shoulders up, smoke fuming from the massive blackened wound and a charred stump of protruding spine.

Mkoll raised his fingers to his lips and blew a goodbye kiss to mock the Sekkite salute.

The whispering had stopped.

TWENTY-ONE: MANY, MANY ARE THE DEAD

People fled past the chapel door in terror. The sounds of battle and destruction from the floors below were like an approaching nightmare.

Hark looked in through the door as people hurried by behind him.

‘Clear out!’ he yelled. ‘Come on! It’s coming this way! Head to the west exit. There are destriers on the landing field! Move, now! This is a full evacuation! If you can’t make the carriers, get out of the building and hide!’

‘You heard him!’ Beltayn shouted. ‘Don’t dawdle now!’

Most of the retinue and the other survivors who had packed into the chapel had already fled. The remainder were too badly wounded, or still too deep in shock to understand what was happening.

‘You have to leave!’ Beltayn yelled. ‘This thing is killing as it goes! It’s just… just blades! Many, many are the dead!’

A few of them struggled to their feet and stumbled blankly towards the door. They had already suffered immeasurably that night. It was hard for them to comprehend that anything could be worse.

Beltayn steered them out.

‘Go! go!’ he yelled.

‘Take her! Bel, take her!’ Merity shouted, pointing to an old woman from the retinue who was staring numbly at nothing.

Beltayn ran to the woman, and got her on her feet, gently guiding her by the shoulder and the hand.

‘You too, Mam Chass,’ he said.

‘We’re coming,’ Merity called back. Two stretcher cases remained, unconscious, and too injured to walk even if they’d been awake.

Merity and Fazekiel crossed to them as Beltayn led the old woman out.

‘We can’t carry both,’ Merity said.

‘Then this one first,’ said Fazekiel. ‘We’ll come back for the other one.’

Merity nodded. ‘Come back? There’s a prospect. All right, take that end.’

‘I can help,’ said Meryn.

They looked at him. He’d come from nowhere. His face was sallow with fear.

‘Get some help, then, captain,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Another bearer, anyone, and we can carry them both.’

‘No,’ said Meryn. ‘You take that one. I’ll shoulder-lift the other. There’s no time to be lost.’

‘All right,’ said Fazekiel, turning to grip the stretcher’s handles. ‘I appreciate your help.’

Meryn nodded. ‘Help,’ he muttered. ‘That’s right. A night like this, it’s time to help yourself.’

‘What?’ Fazekiel snapped.

Meryn ran his straight silver into Fazekiel’s back. She gasped, and fell backwards as the blade came out again.

Merity stared at Meryn.

‘Oh, feth,’ she said.

Beltayn gently escorted the old woman along the panelled hall, passing the wardroom and then the chamber door where Hark stood with Laksheema and Auerben.

‘Get her clear, Bel,’ said Hark.

‘I will, sir.’

‘Everybody out?’

‘Almost!’

‘Then get out yourself. We’ll do the rest.’

Beltayn nodded, and hurried on his way. Hark turned to his companions.

‘How will we do the rest, do you suggest?’ Auerben asked.

Hark grunted. He pushed past them and entered the chamber. The medicae staff had been ordered out, but Curth still tended the Saint. Zweil sat nearby, hands clasped, murmuring a prayer.

The eagle perched on the back of a chair.

‘The feth’s that doing in here?’ Hark asked.

‘Not high on my list of priorities,’ replied Curth, without looking up from her work.

‘The thing’s coming, Ana,’ he said. ‘Coming right for us. We have to move her.’

‘Well, we can’t,’ said Curth. ‘She’s barely hanging on. I believe she’s healing her psychic wounds, or something is, but it’s slow and it’s uncertain. If we move her, she will die.’

‘Then… then we have to leave her,’ said Hark.

Zweil shot him a toxic look.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Curth. ‘I’ll stay with her.’

‘Me too,’ said the old priest.

Hark sighed. ‘I bloody knew you’d say that,’ he said.

‘You’re not going either, are you?’ asked Zweil.

‘No,’ Hark admitted.

He turned back to the doorway.

‘We make a stand here,’ he said.

‘I was already planning to,’ rasped Auerben. She had a lasrifle in her hands.

Hark nodded. He pulled out his hold-out gun.

‘We make a stand with that?’ Laksheema asked, looking at the small weapon dubiously.

‘It’s not about size,’ said Hark. ‘No, I’m lying. Right now, a tank would be good. I feel you’ve got something effective up your sleeve, inquisitor. And I don’t mean that metaphorically.’

Laksheema raised her right wrist. The lamplight glittered off her ornate bangle.

‘Antimat disruptor,’ she said. ‘Xenos manufacture. Very small, but size isn’t everything, as you say. I used to believe these could stop anything. But I burned out the other one on the first machine.’

‘It’s better than nothing,’ said Hark.

They took up station in the doorway. The wailing swish of blades was coming closer.

Merity backed away from Meryn very slowly. The candles in the chapel flickered.

‘What did you tell her, eh?’ he hissed. He glanced down at Fazekiel. ‘Don’t worry, I know. I’m a Ghost. I read lips for a living.’

‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Merity.

‘Taking advantage of an opportunity,’ Meryn replied. ‘You heard Bel. Many, many are the dead, like the old song goes. All cut up to ribbons. Death’s everywhere. Who knows what the final body count will be? Who knows what dirty little secrets will die with the dead tonight?’

‘Meryn… Flyn…’

‘Don’t Flyn me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me good. But some secrets are meant to stay secrets, you see.’

‘I think you might have gone fething mad, captain,’ Merity said.

‘I think I’m perfectly sane,’ he replied. ‘I’ll take my chances. I’m quick on my feet. A little straight silver, and my secret’s safe. I’ll be gone, out there, in a destrier, running clear. What are two more corpses in a bloodbath like this?’

He stepped closer. She backed up. He smiled. Her eyes darted around. Relf’s carbine lay on a cot nearby.

He saw where she had looked.

‘Don’t even,’ he said.

Merity faked right then darted left for the cot. Meryn lunged at her, missing by a slim margin.

Merity forward-rolled across the cot, just as she had been taught in the relentless basic training drills aboard the Armaduke, back when she’d been a novice trooper called Felyx Chass.

She came up gripping the carbine. She aimed it at him with a grin. Then her face fell.

Meryn was aiming back at her. He’d snatched up Fazekiel’s pistol from the medicae cart.

‘Drop the carbine,’ he said. ‘I’d rather do this quietly. People might question gunshot wounds.’

‘Let them question,’ said Merity. ‘You bastard.’

Meryn fired. The gun clacked, empty. I don’t think I can protect you again. He remembered Fazekiel saying that, down in the undercroft.

The stupid bitch had meant she’d used up all her ammo.

He threw himself at Merity, the war-knife slicing in.

The carbine bucked in her hands. The muzzle flare was intensely bright in the gloomy chapel.

Rapid fire shots tore into Meryn, puncturing his torso six times and shredding off his left arm at the elbow.

The final two went into his face, destroying his look of indignant surprise.

‘Gunfire,’ murmured Hark.

‘Las,’ agreed Auerben.

‘It was close,’ said Hark. ‘Sounded close. Throne, it must be nearby now.’He glanced back at Curth and Zweil, vigilant at the Saint’s side. He smelled, very faintly, the scent of islumbine. He put it down to his frantic imagination. But the idea reassured him.

‘I can hear it wailing,’ said Laksheema.

‘I told you it was close,’ said Hark.

‘Very close,’ the inquisitor replied. ‘So why can’t we see it?’

‘What are you showing me?’ asked Marshal Tzara above the din of a war room seething with activity as it tried to rebuild its strategic overview of the Eltath zone.

‘Pict capture,’ replied Biota. ‘It has just come in. Vox operation received it two minutes ago, so I brought it to you directly.’

‘What is it?’ she asked. She stared at the on-screen image. It looked like a fuzzy map of an island. Graphic enhancement had compensated for the nocturnal view.

‘Well, it could be a breakthrough,’ said Biota.

‘It is an island, sir,’ snapped Tzara. ‘An island in a sea. My concern is the Eltath theatre. Bring me data on that!’

‘Please look,’ said Biota. ‘These images were captured by the battleship Naiad Antitor during a routine orbital sweep ten minutes ago. That’s Coltrice Island, a cone atoll west of the Eltath Peninsula, at the southern end of the Sadimay archipelago. It’s a dead volcano, hollow inside. Used in ages past as an agri-town and safe harbour, thus sometimes called the Fastness–’

‘Your insistence on detail bored me yesterday and it bores me today, tactician,’ Tzara warned. She kept glancing at the station chiefs who were holding signals in the air. ‘I’m coming!’ she cried.

‘Observe here,’ said Biota, enlarging the image with his fingertip and enhancing the thermal contrast. ‘On the last routine sweep, twenty hours ago, the island was cold. No heat read. No human activity. Look at it now, Marshal. We think it was cloaked by some form of masking field or cloak device, which has recently failed.’

‘This is heat?’ asked Tzara, peering in.

‘Indeed, a venting plume.’

‘Volcanic?’

‘The cone is extinct.’

‘So what?’

‘We think it’s a ship fire, mam,’ Biota said. ‘An engine fire or significant internal heat damage.’

‘A ship…’ said Tzara. She frowned and peered again.

‘Quiet!’ she yelled over her shoulder at the war room bustle. The noise subsided. ‘A ship, tactician?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Biota. ‘If I enlarge again… like so… you’ll see the shadow here. I’ll enhance contrast. A shadow, under the projection of the cone lip. That’s a shift-ship of considerable tonnage. A fast cruiser.’

‘Is it one of ours?’ she asked.

‘We’re waiting for confirmation,’ he replied. ‘A damaged vessel might have run to cover there and been unable to signal its position. But…’

‘But?’

A hand reached in past them, and enlarged a spectrographic code in the side-bar of the main image.

‘That plume is venting high levels of iridium matroxon,’ said Macaroth.

‘My lord,’ said Tzara, pulling herself upright.

‘You are quite correct, my lord,’ said Biota.

‘That’s fuel burning,’ said Macaroth. ‘Our ships burn a standard antium-beronel intermix. That’s an enemy ship, and it’s been hiding as close to Eltath as it can get.’

‘Is it him?’ Tzara asked.

‘We’ve searched for the bastard everywhere,’ said Macaroth, ‘and he’s cowering on our very doorstep. Marshal?’

‘My great lord?’

‘Link me to the fleet,’ said Macaroth. ‘I wish to call in an annihilation strike in the next thirty minutes and wipe that island off the face of Urdesh.’

Merity lifted Fazekiel up, and wiped the blood off her face and out of her mouth.

‘Luna? Luna?’

Fazekiel blinked weakly.

‘That really hurts,’ she whispered.

They heard the wailing rush of blades nearby. It was very close.

‘Oh shit,’ whispered Merity. ‘It heard us. It heard the shots. It’s coming.’

‘Leave me,’ said Fazekiel.

‘Balls, I will!’ Merity replied. She tried to hoist Fazekiel up, but the woman had blacked out and become a deadweight.

‘Come fething on!’ Merity snarled.

‘I came looking for you,’ said a voice behind her.

Merity looked around in surprise.

It was Dalin.

‘Oh, thank Throne,’ she said. ‘Please help me, quickly. We don’t have much time.’

‘Papa’s dead,’ Dalin said.

Merity laid Fazekiel back down gently and rose to face Dalin. His face was blank with shock. He appeared to be bleeding. She couldn’t tell where he had been wounded, but his hands were dripping with blood. Drips spotted the floor around his feet.

‘Oh, Dal,’ she said. ‘Gol? He’s dead?’

‘Papa’s gone,’ he said.

‘We have to go, Dalin,’ she said, stepping towards him.

‘There’s nowhere to go,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand any part of this. It’s all just chaos in my head.’

‘I think you’re in shock, Dalin,’ she said. ‘You’ve been through too much. If Gol is… and Yoncy…’

‘She was my sister,’ said Dalin.

‘I know. You believed that for so long. We all–’

‘She was my sister,’ he repeated.

‘Let’s go, all right? Dalin? Let’s go. You’re not feeling yourself.’

‘I’m not myself,’ he said.

‘Of course you aren’t–’

‘I came to find you,’ he said, ‘because I don’t understand anything. I don’t know any more. Except I know I trust you. I like you.’

‘I like you too,’ Merity said.

‘I think I might have been in love with you.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She smiled. ‘Might have been?’

He shrugged, expressionless.

‘I want to understand,’ he said. ‘And you know.’

‘Know what?’

‘You know what it’s like,’ he said. ‘To hide yourself. To hide your real self. Hide it inside and look like something else.’

‘That?’ she said. ‘Oh, that was just a game. It was childish, and I regret it.’

‘Childish,’ Dalin echoed. ‘Everything’s childish. Just games. Games that Papa makes us play.’

Merity turned to Fazekiel. Dalin grabbed her arm. His grip was strangely hard.

‘Ow,’ she said in surprise. ‘Let me go, Dalin.’

He didn’t.

‘That hurts. Please, let me go.’

He released his grip.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone. But Papa’s dead, and I miss his voice. He’d tell me what to do. He’d explain it all to me.’

‘Some things… they can’t be explained,’ Merity said. ‘Life is cruel and hard. It’s unfair. You just do what you can.’

He thought for a moment.

‘The difference,’ he said. ‘The difference between you and me. You knew what you were hiding. You did it on purpose. I never knew. I never knew at all. I never knew what I was hiding.’

‘I don’t understand, Dalin,’ she said.

‘Papa’s dead,’ he said. ‘He can’t explain it. I thought you could. But you can’t either.’

He raised his left hand. It was soaked in blood.

The sword sliced through him from behind. Dalin lurched, ripped almost in two. His face remained impassive. Gaunt hacked again, driving the sword of Hieronymo Sondar through the husk of Dalin’s body. He struck repeatedly and without mercy, until the Ghost was mangled on the floor.

Merity screamed. ‘Oh Throne! Stop! Stop! What the feth are you doing? What the feth are you doing?’

‘Get back,’ said Gaunt. ‘Get well back. He was vulnerable for a minute. He wanted to talk, so his defences were down.’

‘You killed him!’ she yelled. ‘You fething sliced him to ribbons–’

‘Look!’ Gaunt hissed.

She looked.

There was no blood, except the blood that stained Dalin’s hands. The deep cuts in his body revealed nothing but odd, dark strips, like thin metal leaves sheaved together. The ends of his fingers on both hands were split, as if they’d ruptured from within. Gleaming points, like the tips of scissor blades, protruded from the frayed skin.

His eyes were still open. A dull yellow light, like a pulse of neon, flickered inside his severed torso.

‘Oh, Throne,’ Merity whispered.

‘Inquisitor?’ Gaunt called. Laksheema stepped into the chapel, followed by Hark and Baskevyl. Baskevyl gently drew Merity aside. She gazed at Dalin in utter bafflement.

‘That was a risk, my lord,’ said Laksheema.

‘A chance,’ Gaunt replied. ‘His guard was down. Please, while he is still dormant. The self-repair is rapid and alarming.’

Laksheema nodded. She aimed her right hand, arm outstretched.

‘Look away,’ she said.

The disruptor made a high-pitched squeal. A steady, pencil-thin beam of blinding mauve energy lanced from her wrist and scored into Dalin Criid’s body.

She kept it burning for almost a minute, until there was nothing left but cinders and flakes of ash, like the soot in an empty grate.

TWENTY-TWO: THE VICTORY

‘When were you hit?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Rawne.

‘You’re hit?’ asked Varl.

‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ said Rawne.

They struggled on through the rain, past the silent rockcrete blocks of the mill.

‘It does,’ said Mabbon. ‘You can barely walk. Let me see.’

‘Get off me,’ said Rawne.

‘Oh feth, Eli,’ said Varl. ‘Look at you. I don’t know how you’re standing. Why didn’t you say?’

‘Because it’s something that happened and there’s nothing we can do about it,’ said Rawne.

He looked at them. His face was pale. He had to lean on the wall just to stay upright.

‘You can’t even lift that gun,’ said Varl quietly.

‘I can if I need to.’

‘You know they can smell the blood,’ said Mabbon.

‘I do now,’ said Rawne.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Mabbon. ‘They’d have our scent anyway. Sweat, pheromones, fear. But blood is always strongest.’

‘We just need to keep moving and lay low,’ said Rawne. ‘That’s all. Oysten will come through. I know she will.’ He tried to straighten up, but he couldn’t.

‘And if we have to fight?’ asked Varl.

Rawne held out the lasrifle to Mabbon.

‘You take it,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Mabbon.

‘For feth’s sake!’ Rawne growled.

‘I won’t fight anymore, Rawne,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’ve fought for too many sides. Too many causes. None of them have made sense to me. So rather than make an oath to others, I made one to myself. I would fight no more. It’s the only pledge I think I can keep.’

‘Pardon me, pheguth,’ said Rawne. ‘You’re hardly one to give a lecture on principles. You fething traitor.’

Mabbon looked away.

‘But you fought for us,’ said Varl. ‘In the end, you came to us. Crossed the lines.’

‘Not to fight,’ said Mabbon. ‘Even if you had let me.’

‘You came to help us win,’ said Varl. ‘To help us stop the war. That’s the same thing!’

‘No, that was very different,’ said Mabbon.

‘Well, I’ve seen some things,’ said Rawne, grimacing. ‘Now I’ve met the only fething pacifist objector in this whole fething galaxy.’

Varl suddenly signalled. Movement.

They hurried in against the flank of a work-shed.

‘Something,’ Varl whispered.

An object hit the wall behind them and bounced onto the floor. The grenade wobbled like an egg as it rolled.

Varl threw himself at Mabbon, driving him aside. Rawne tried to dive the other way.

The blast made a dull and hollow crump in the driving rain.

Rawne found himself lying on his side, his cheek against the wet ground. He couldn’t move. It had been almost an hour since he’d taken the hit in the yard of Camp Xenos. He’d been bleeding ever since, and he knew the loss was severe. He was too weak. Too weak for anything. His will was strong, but his body had given up.

He felt himself slipping into the dark place he’d spent his life fighting to avoid.

Mabbon stirred, and got to his feet. Small flecks of shrapnel had cut his face.

Rawne was down, curled on his side to Mabbon’s left. Varl lay to his right. The sergeant had shielded Mabbon with his own body. Mabbon saw the bloody shrapnel wounds and scorched clothes on Varl’s back and legs. He was face down, and still breathing, but the blast had thrown him into the wall and rendered him unconscious.

Mabbon saw the two figures approaching out of the rain. They were walking side by side, with no sense of haste. One carried a lasrifle, the other was empty-handed.

Mabbon sighed. He reached over and picked up Varl’s weapon, then stepped out to meet them.

Rawne saw the three figures. He couldn’t speak. He saw them side-on, the world turned on its edge. He tried to move. No part of his body responded.

But he could hear them speak. Like Oan Mkoll, he hadn’t survived a year on Gereon without learning the enemy tongue.

Mabbon faced the two Qimurah, rain streaming down his face. He held the weapon low, down at his hip, covering them.

‘Hadrel. Jaghar.’

‘Pheguth,’ said Hadrel.

‘No more grenades?’ Mabbon asked.

Hadrel shrugged, his hands empty.

‘Resources are limited,’ he said. His eyes flashed yellow and his talons crackled as they elongated into hooks. ‘But we don’t need munitions.’

‘You’d fight us now?’ asked Jaghar, his rifle raised.

‘I’d rather not,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’ve had enough. If it had been down to me, I would have submitted to you at the very start. But you threaten these men, and I will not let you kill them.’

‘What are they to you?’ Jaghar sneered.

‘Nothing,’ said Mabbon. ‘Not even friends. But they have protected me with their lives. I owe them as much. Let them live and I’ll come with you.’

‘All right,’ said Hadrel.

‘You lie so easily, Hadrel,’ said Mabbon.

‘I know,’ Hadrel replied. ‘But you know lies better than I do.’

He took a step forwards.

Mabbon raised Varl’s rifle in a quick warning gesture, adjusting the under-barrel tube.

‘No closer,’ he said. ‘You have a rifle, and you have claws. I have a grenade tube. The reworked are blessed and they are mighty, but this will make a mess of you both at close range.’

‘Indeed,’ grinned Jaghar. ‘If it was working.’ He eyed Mabbon’s gun. ‘I can see from here the mechanism is jammed.’

Mabbon was well aware of that. The launcher tube had been buckled when the blast slammed it against the wall. He’d noticed that the moment he’d picked it up.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘A bluff might have worked.’ He tossed the rifle aside.

‘I wanted to know why,’ said Hadrel.

‘All of us did,’ said Jaghar.

‘Why did you turn, Mabbon?’ Hadrel asked.

Mabbon laughed. ‘I am tired of explaining. I don’t owe you any answer, not you or anyone. I am done with war.’

‘But you sided with them,’ said Hadrel.

‘For the stones, nothing more,’ said Mabbon.

‘But they are everything,’ said Hadrel. ‘The Anarch has told us so. Enkil Vehk. A certain victory, and you brought it to them.’

‘The eagle stone key is an abomination,’ said Mabbon. ‘You know what it does. I am done with war, and it is the greatest monstrosity war has built. I cannot stop this crusade, this endless bloodshed, but I thought perhaps I could stop that.’

‘By giving it to them?’ asked Jaghar. ‘To the corpse-prophet’s chieftains? How is that not taking sides?’

‘The Anarch knows what the key does,’ said Mabbon. ‘He knows where to take it and how it works. But the men of the Throne, they know nothing. Except that the key is valuable, and must be kept from you. If they possessed it, they would guard it. Remove it from the Sabbat Worlds. Keep it from you, so that it could never be used.’

‘They would learn its secrets,’ said Hadrel.

‘I doubt it. A thing that old, that vergoht? They would never puzzle it out.’ He looked at them both. ‘They would not know how to use it, but they could keep it safe so Sek could never use it.’

‘The great magir will have the key by dawn,’ said Jaghar.

‘When his voice next speaks, it will be to tell us that the key is recovered,’ said Hadrel. ‘Corrod has been sent.’

Mabbon sagged. ‘Then it was all for nothing,’ he murmured.

The rain pattered around them.

‘It was all for victory,’ said Hadrel. ‘That was a thing you once rejoiced in. Why did that change?’

‘It changed because I was good at it,’ said Mabbon. ‘As sirdar, as damogaur, as etogaur. I rose and I conquered. I burned worlds. I was a champion of the Sekkite host, inculcated to the truths of the Anarch.’

He looked down at the ground and watched the raindrops dance around his feet.

‘He was pleased with my service. So pleased to turn a man from one side and make him its unflinching foe. So he rewarded me. He bestowed upon me the highest honour, as a favour for my service.’

‘A blessing,’ said Jaghar.

‘A curse,’ said Mabbon. ‘It let me see the truth. The deranged hell of the immaterium and those gods which dwell within it. I saw them all. I saw myself. I saw how he had changed me. I saw what he had made me. It was enough. I turned my back on war forever.’

He looked at them levelly.

‘Walk away,’ he said. ‘This does not have to happen.’

‘We will not,’ said Hadrel. ‘You are pheguth, and you will die. You and those who shelter you.’

Mabbon exhaled, a long slow breath.

‘I will not let you harm them, even if that means breaking my oath. I’ve broken many, so I suppose that doesn’t matter in the end. Last chance, sirdar magir. Walk away, and I’ll let you live.’

Jaghar fired. The las-rounds tore into Mabbon’s side and rocked him backwards. He ploughed forwards anyway, rushing into the hail of shots, flinching with each impact.

He tore the rifle from Jaghar’s hands, and sent the Qimurah flying with a fist. As Hadrel came at him, Mabbon swung and smashed the rifle across Hadrel’s face.

Jaghar bounded at him. Mabbon tossed the broken rifle away and met Jaghar’s attack with a punch that cracked teeth. Jaghar tumbled back.

Mabbon lunged after him. The pheguth’s clothing was torn, shredded by the las-fire. The flesh of his chest bubbled and dripped with yellow gore.

Neon heat welled in his tired, empty eyes. His fingers bulged. Bone snapped. The flesh broke and sprouted talons.

He smashed Jaghar down with a blow that snapped the Qimurah’s head aside and sprayed yellow gore into the air. Hadrel smashed into him, raking claws deep into Mabbon’s chest and back. Yellow plasma gushed from the wounds.

Mabbon grappled with Hadrel, strength to strength, limbs locked. He forced the sirdar backwards, their arms entangled. Jaghar crashed into them, gouging his claws and teeth into Mabbon’s flank.

Mabbon swung, hurling Hadrel away. He smacked Jaghar aside with a backhand, then ripped his talons through the Qimurah’s throat. Jaghar fell to his knees, clutching at the frothing yellow liquid pouring from his opened neck.

Mabbon grabbed his head with both hands, twisted, and wrenched it off.

Jaghar’s corpse fell forward.

Mabbon staggered, mauled and bleeding. He swayed. Hadrel was on his feet again.

‘You were always the best of us, Mabbon,’ he hissed. ‘So very blessed.’

‘I never asked for it,’ said Mabbon. He spat yellow blood, his eyes neon fire. ‘I never wanted it. But he blessed me anyway.’

They clashed like charging bulls, talons tearing and rending, and tore away each other’s flesh with the fury of daemons.

His vision greying back to nothing, Rawne watched as they both fell in the rain, tangled and torn apart, locked together in a final embrace.

Neither of them rose again.

His vision failed.

When it returned, for a brief moment, the cold of eternity was in his bones. He glimpsed lights, dazzlingly bright in the rain, pulsing green and red. He heard the scream of lifter jets. He heard Oysten’s voice calling his name.

Calling him back.

And that was all.

EPILOGUES: ONE WEEK LATER

Cold daylight streamed in through the preceptory windows. Hark entered the room, the empty sleeve of his leather coat neatly pinned up. Onabel held the door open for him. He nodded his thanks, and she turned and limped away very slowly with the aid of a walking stick. Her injuries had not been physical, but they would take a long time to heal.

‘Commissar,’ said Laksheema. She had been waiting. Her gown was clean and fresh, but he noticed she hadn’t had her golden augmetics repaired. The polished surfaces of her face and body were crazed and scoured. Perhaps she hadn’t had time, he thought, or perhaps she had chosen to leave the scars as they were.

One could only repair one’s self so many times.

‘Are you well?’ he asked.

‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘And you?’

Hark nodded. There was a silence.

‘Neither one of us is good at small talk,’ he remarked. She tilted her head, agreeing.

‘You’ve come to receive my report,’ she said.

‘The Lord Executor awaits it with interest.’

She lifted an actuator wand, and a screen lit. It displayed detailed picts of four eagle stones, side by side.

‘Your Major–’ Laksheema paused and consulted her data-slate. ‘Petrushkevskaya–’

‘Pasha,’ he said.

‘She delivered the recovered stones to the palace under guard,’ said Laksheema. ‘They were received by the ordos. Four had been retrieved intact.’

She flashed up another image. This showed four other shapes, broken into fragments, scorched and cracked, their ancient patterns barely visible.

‘Four other stones were recovered by a Sergeant… Ifvan. They had been subjected to intense burning. A flamer, I understand. They were severely damaged and incomplete, and much detail lost. These were also delivered, and savants are now working on restoration and reconstruction.’

‘Will that be possible?’ asked Hark.

‘Hard to say,’ she replied. ‘It is hard to reconstruct something when you don’t know what it is. Also, all the scanned details and analysis studies made after the original recovery were lost when Mechanicore Fourteen was razed. The EM Fourteen facility had the only copies of the data because it was considered so sensitive. The machine plague – Berserker – devoured it all.’

‘So… it’s all pending?’ Hark said. ‘I thought it might be. The Lord Executor will be particularly keen to know the stones are secure.’

‘They are in the central vault of the capital ship Deluge,’ she replied, ‘and that information, by the way, carries a vermilion classification. As per the Lord Executor’s instruction, the security and examination of the Glyptothek is in the hands of the ordos. The Cult Mechanicus will not be involved.’

‘As I understand, it was hardly their fault,’ said Hark.

‘The adepts failed,’ said Laksheema bluntly. ‘Their security was insufficient. We have received several formal petitions from the Mechanicus, requesting that we release the objects to them, or at least permit their full participation in their analysis. They wish, I think, to know what could be so valuable it cost an entire Mechanicore station. These petitions have been denied. That can be reviewed. It’s not my choice.’

Hark sat back and gazed at the images.

‘We knew they were important,’ said Laksheema. ‘Precious to the Archenemy, at least. I had favoured the explanation that they were of ritual or cult significance, but Sek committed everything he had to their recovery. To me, that suggests the stones have a more strategic function.’

Hark nodded. ‘We have hearsay evidence to support that,’ he said. ‘A report from the field that night. Archenemy combatants discussing the purpose of the stones. It’s not much, but it would appear they are a weapon, or the key to a weapon. A xenos device. Something so monstrous that even they were in awe of it. But something either side could use.’

‘Xenos?’

‘That’s our reading. The word used was “vergoht”. Forgive my pronunciation. I’m told it means alien, forbidden, or against natural order.’

‘Is that all?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a start. It points us in a direction at least.’

‘But this field evidence, is it reliable?’ Laksheema asked.

‘The source is beyond reproach,’ Hark replied.

Laksheema deactivated the display. They both rose.

‘I’ll convey your report to the Lord Executor,’ he said.

‘I am at his call if anything further is needed,’ she replied, ‘and will contact his office at once if anything new emerges.’

She walked him to the door.

‘Express my regards to him,’ she said. ‘I also wish to convey my sympathies for your regiment’s losses.’

‘Do you?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Just abstract platitudes, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘You told me you don’t feel, and I believe that.’

‘I am not entirely without feeling, Viktor,’ she said. ‘Not yet at least.’

‘Then I will convey them,’ he replied. ‘I have a feeling that, from here, we will be working in close collaboration for a while to come.’

‘I look forward to it,’ she said. ‘Despite all that occurred, I enjoyed our relationship.’

‘Our working relationship?’ he asked.

‘Is there another kind?’ she replied.

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ said Hark. He smiled. ‘Good day to you, inquisitor.’

Ban Daur moved the lamp. This time there had been no mistake about it. He could hear sobbing. A woman weeping.

He got up, leaving his water bottle and food-pack on the floor, and walked along the hallway, holding the lamp high. The undercroft was empty and silent.

He didn’t dare call her name.

He heard the sobbing again. His heart began to race. Behind the wall? The walls had moved once, though now they seemed dead and solid and inert.

He followed the sound.

He found her in the hall that had served as the central billet. She was perched on the pile of rubble and stone blocks where the vaulted roof had fallen in. A narrow shaft of daylight shone down on her, spearing through the hole in the Hexagonal Court above.

His heart sank.

He clambered up beside her and sat down, setting the lamp next to his feet.

She glanced at him. He was filthy. He hadn’t washed for days. He hadn’t emerged from the undercroft, despite direct orders. He’d only eaten because Haller and Baskevyl had brought him rations.

Tona Criid’s dress uniform was immaculate.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Criid said, wiping her eyes. ‘This is just the first chance I’ve had to come down here. To see.’

Daur nodded.

‘This was the room, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said.

People had died in every chamber of the old undercroft. Every single one. They’d died in droves in the Urdeshic Palace above, too. But here, in this room, Gol Kolea had died, and Yoncy had perished, and Dalin had –

– had ceased to be Dalin.

‘I just had to see it,’ she said.

‘I understand.’

‘I am at a loss,’ said Criid. ‘They were mine for so long. I took them out of certain death. I never… I never for a moment suspected that–’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Daur. ‘He was clever and he made clever things. Ingenious tricks that fooled everyone. We learned that at Vervunhive. None of us could have guessed how elaborate they could be.’

‘They weren’t tricks to me,’ she said. She let out a slow, calming breath. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without–’

She stopped herself and shot a look at him, ashamed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Feth, I’m sorry, Ban. That was a stupid thing to say.’

He shook his head.

‘It was honest,’ Daur replied. ‘I’m sorry this has happened to you.’

‘Is there…’ she asked. ‘Have you found any trace at all?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing. I thought I might find something that could… could stop me searching. But there’s nothing to find. I just can’t let go of the idea that she’s still here. Behind a wall somewhere. Just shut away by a fold of reality. Trapped on the other side, but alive and whole and waiting. And all I’ve got to do is look hard enough.’

He fell silent.

‘I’m fooling myself, I know,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s just something to cling to.’

He looked at her.

‘Why are you so dressed up?’ he asked.

Tona glanced down at her formal braid and pressed lines.

‘There’s a parade,’ she said.

‘Feth.’

‘I know. A fething parade. Apparently it’s the right thing to do. A show of respect and thanks. To the living and the dead alike. I’m supposed to be there. And I’m going to be late.’

‘And you don’t care?’

‘Feth, no.’

She looked around at the dark walls. The shadows that were just shadows.

‘This is my parade,’ she said.

She looked at him.

‘Will you ever come out of here?’ she asked.

‘They may have to drag me out,’ said Daur. ‘I don’t think I can ever leave.’

‘Ban, I think there are only ghosts here now,’ she said. ‘You can’t live out your life with only ghosts for company.’

He looked at her and almost smiled.

‘Yes, I just heard myself,’ Criid said. ‘Feth, I can only say stupid things today, right?’

He took her hand and held it tight.

They were waiting for him outside his quarters, wearing their dress blacks, but he walked right past them when he came out. His Scion guard, all new appointees unaccustomed to his habits, jumped to follow him.

‘My lord?’ Baskevyl called. He and Pasha scooped up their dress swords and ran to catch him up. ‘My lord, it’s about to start,’ Baskevyl called out.

‘I know,’ said Gaunt, still striding. His own dress uniform, though very plain, was quite imposing. ‘I have to make a visit first.’

He stopped suddenly, and turned to face them. The Scions skidded to a halt.

‘They expect me to write a speech,’ he said to the two company officers. ‘An address. What the feth do you say? After that?’

Baskevyl shrugged.

‘Not much to say,’ Pasha agreed.

‘I know,’ said Gaunt. ‘We won. We survived. Too many didn’t. Thank you for coming. There are drinks on the terrace.’

‘That should do the trick,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Van Voytz was good at this,’ said Gaunt. ‘He could spin a rousing address. Like a bastard.’ He fell silent and stared at the floor.

‘Sir–’ Baskevyl began.

Gaunt looked up.

‘Yes, you came to find me,’ he said. ‘What did you want?’

‘We came to fetch you,’ said Baskevyl.

‘The big hoo-hah is now,’ said Pasha. ‘You are, mmmmm, maybe late?’

‘Consider me fetched,’ said Gaunt. ‘Tell them I’m coming.’

They saluted.

He turned, then swung back to them.

‘Screw the parade,’ he said. ‘That’s all for show, and the dead can’t hear any of it. I want to commend you both, here and now. Face to face, not across a parade ground. The Tanith First excelled. You were both unflinching in the face of… of… feth! My thanks. I want you to convey my gratitude and admiration to all in the regiment. Do this personally. Express my highest regard.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Baskevyl nodded.

‘The process is very slow,’ Gaunt added, ‘because of all the red tape and paperwork, but there will be decorations to follow. Citations for honour and valour. A surprising number. You know who. I may be able to speed that process. It should be easier to issue commendations now the Tanith First is the formal escort brigade of the Lord Executor.’

‘It is?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Macaroth agreed to it this morning’ said Gaunt. ‘You’ll be the core I build my army group upon, Bask. Your duties will change. It may get very ceremonial from now on.’

‘Ceremonial is nice. Is very restful,’ said Pasha.

‘There’ll be a new pin to wear,’ Gaunt said, gesturing to his collar. ‘I don’t know what else. We’ll work out the details. Now let me run this errand and I’ll join you on the field.’

He made the sign of the aquila and strode away.

The infirmary, its walls and floor painted a pale, gloss green, filled one whole wing of the palace compound. Gaunt strode in with the Scions behind him, and consciously slowed his pace to suit the quiet calm of his surroundings.

‘Stay here,’ he told his bodyguard. They obeyed. Scion Cleeve had not yet found the pluck to argue with him the way Sancto had. Gaunt wondered if Sancto would ever be fit to return to duty.

He wondered if he’d ever want to.

He walked past rooms where medicae staff tended the injured from the retinue, the Tanith, and from all the other regiments and support divisions affected by the onslaught. So many people, yet a fraction of the number killed. There were more trays occupied in the morgue than there were beds filled in the infirmary.

He reached the door of a guarded room. Troopers of the Jovani Vanguard clad in polished chrome armour snapped to attention.

The room was quiet. There was a smell of counterseptic and floor wax, and a very slight trace of islumbine.

Ana Curth saw him, and crossed the room to meet him.

‘Any news?’ he asked.

‘She sleeps still,’ said Curth.

They looked over at the bed where the Beati lay, shrouded by a tent of gauze.

‘Is that normal?’ he asked.

‘Nothing about her is normal,’ Curth replied. ‘Her vitals are improving. There’s colour in her cheeks, steady rhythms. Perhaps a few more days.’

He nodded.

‘She was exhausted before she arrived,’ said Curth. ‘After Oureppan. More drained than she wanted to admit. And then I think she used every spark of power she had left to kill the first woe machine. No thought for herself. We are lucky to still have her.’

‘Well, keep me advised,’ said Gaunt. ‘Macaroth has expressed his concerns.’

‘Of course,’ Curth said. ‘Don’t you have a ridiculous parade to attend or something?’

‘Yes,’ Gaunt said. ‘But I heard he was awake at last.’

‘Earlier this morning,’ she said.

‘I wanted to see him first.’

‘Room at the far end,’ she said.

He looked at her. ‘Well,’ he said.

‘You saved my life, you know,’ Curth said. ‘In the undercroft. Not for the first time.’

‘You’ve saved mine, and more than once.’

‘It’s not a competition,’ she said. ‘Though if it was, I’d be winning.’

‘Your continued duty can never be repaid enough,’ Gaunt replied.

‘Is that a line from your speech?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘Bit rubbish,’ she said.

‘I felt that,’ he said.

Curth smiled. ‘I do what I do because it needs to be done,’ she said.

‘People keep saying that,’ said Gaunt.

‘Do they? Who?’

‘Just the people who matter most,’ he replied.

‘And there,’ she said, ‘I thought you just wanted me for my duty.’

They paused. He glanced around awkwardly.

‘So,’ he said.

‘Indeed,’ she replied.

‘I’ll go and–’

‘You should,’ she said.

He took off his cap, stepped forwards, and kissed her cheek. She stayed very still.

He stood back, and re-set his cap.

‘I’m going now,’ he said.

‘I see that.’

He turned.

She smiled slightly as he walked away.

Zweil was doing his rounds in a nearby ward as Gaunt strode past.

‘He looks busy,’ the old priest remarked to Blenner, who had agreed to accompany Zweil on the infirmary visit.

‘He does,’ said Blenner. ‘Good old Lord Ibram.’

‘Well, they all seem to be coping in here,’ said Zweil. ‘Let’s move along to the next ward, shall we?’

Blenner escorted him out into the hall, moving slowly so he didn’t leave the old, shuffling man behind.

‘They won’t let me bring the bird in,’ Zweil said.

‘So you said, father.’

‘I thought it might cheer people up. But oh no, they say it’s unsanitary. Just because it craps on the floor. I called it Quil, you know?’

‘Also information I already have at my disposal, father,’ said Blenner.

He stopped and turned to Zweil. They were alone in the pale green corridor.

‘Can I ask you something, father?’ Blenner said.

‘Depends on the area,’ replied Zweil with a frown. ‘I’m good on some topics. Like boats. Also, weaving, which I once liked to do. Other subjects, it’s more hit and miss, if I’m honest.’

‘Guilt?’

‘Oh, yes, my my. That’s priesting work. Out with it.’

‘It’s a–’ Blenner cleared his throat. ‘Purely hypothetical, of course. An ethical debate I was having.’

‘With?’ asked Zweil.

‘Sorry?’

‘Who was this ethical debate with?’

‘Oh, uhm… a friend.’

‘Ah yes,’ Zweil said, nodding sagely and tapping the side of his nose with a bony finger. ‘Know him well.’

‘So,’ said Blenner, ‘let’s say a man has done a… a questionable thing. A bad thing. He confesses, to seek absolution.’

‘That’d be the way to go,’ said Zweil, nodding along.

‘But his confessor dies,’ said Blenner. ‘Soon after. Does… does the absolution stand? Is the man still forgiven, or does the burden remain upon him?’

‘Hmmm,’ said Zweil, pondering. ‘That’s a knotty one. Bit of a murky area, philosophically speaking. Here’s what I’d tell this friend of yours, Vaynom. He’s probably all right. In the clear. His conscience all shiny and clean. Because he made confession of his sins, you see? But just to be on the safe side, you know, he should try to be the best fething person he can possibly be for the rest of his born days. See? Just to hedge his bets? In case the absolution didn’t take.’

‘I see,’ said Blenner.

‘Can he do that, do you think? This friend?’

‘I think he can try,’ said Blenner.

‘Good,’ said Zweil, and started to shuffle on his way again. ‘Because, tell him from me, guilt’s a little shit who will bite you on the fething arse and kill you stone dead. No doubt about it.’

Blenner nodded. He wiped his mouth on the back of his trembling hand.

‘Are you coming, Blenner?’ Zweil called. ‘They should have let me bring the bird instead of you, you know? The bird cheers people up. I’m teaching it tricks. You, you’re as much fun as a fart in a dreadnought.’

Merity Chass also saw Gaunt stride past. She was sitting at Fazekiel’s bedside.

‘Do you want to go and talk to him?’ Fazekiel asked.

‘He’s busy,’ said Merity. ‘There’ll be time later.’

Luna Fazekiel nodded. ‘Well, I appreciate the visit,’ she said, ‘but I’m no company. I’m very tired. At least it’s clean in here. Very clean. Very neat.’

She saw that Merity was still staring at the door.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to go and talk to him?’ Fazekiel asked. ‘He is your father.’

‘That’s a work in progress,’ said Merity.

‘You’re awake, then?’ said Gaunt. He took off his cap and sat down at the bedside.

‘Yes, that was a mistake,’ said Rawne. ‘It didn’t hurt when I was unconscious.’

‘I wanted to stop by,’ said Gaunt.

‘I’m honoured,’ said Rawne. He was bandaged from throat to groin, and drips fed into his arms. He looked anaemic, with dark circles around his eyes. ‘I suppose you want to quiz me about the report I gave to Hark this morning?’

‘I read it,’ said Gaunt. ‘Some interesting details. I presume you’re sure about the language used?’

‘I am.’

‘And it wasn’t a hallucination?’

‘Wish I could say it was,’ said Rawne.

‘It provides a lead,’ said Gaunt, ‘and sets up some interesting questions. Regarding the stones, I mean. As for Mabbon, we know more about him now he’s dead than we did when he was alive.’

‘He fought for me, that’s all I know,’ said Rawne. ‘For me and for Varl. Out of honour. Like a daemon.’

‘So I understand,’ said Gaunt.

‘No, literally like a daemon.’

Rawne lay back.

‘I hear it got interesting,’ he said. ‘Hark was filling me in. Close to the wire here, and with Pasha’s mob too.’

‘As close as it got with you,’ said Gaunt.

‘Hark says the battlefleet annihilated some island. Took out Sek’s flagship. Is the fether dead now?’

‘That’s the presumption,’ Gaunt replied. ‘His gambits failed. Except with Mabbon. The Sekkite host collapsed almost overnight. Those that survive are fleeing the system. Urdesh is won. This is a victory.’

‘So that’s what it feels like,’ said Rawne.

He looked at Gaunt.

‘Is it true what I heard? Kolea?’

Gaunt nodded.

‘And the lad Dalin, and–’

‘We lost a lot. It’s hard to take in.’

‘It always is,’ said Rawne.

Beltayn appeared at the doorway.

‘My lord,’ he said.

‘I know, I know,’ said Gaunt, getting up, ‘I’m late.’

‘No, sir, you need to read this.’ Beltayn held out a signal sheet. ‘It was just received. I brought it to you at once.’

Gaunt took the sheet and read it. Then he held it up so Rawne could read it too.

‘Well,’ said Rawne. ‘There’s your confirmation. An unequivocal victory. What does this part mean, the bottom here? ‘Execution undertaken by unidentified Astra Militarum personnel’?’

A Munitorum aide directed him to the new Tanith billet as soon as he stepped off the landing field.

It was a fine set of chambers, just off the palace’s Circular Court. Sunlight at the windows, rows of clean cots, a scrubbed floor.

The place was empty. He walked in, in his clean but borrowed clothes, down the length of the first chamber, between the lines of cots, each one laundered and made-up with precision.

A man, the only person around, sat on a cot at the end of the long line, buttoning the jacket of his dress blacks. He looked up.

He barely reacted. Just a flicker of surprise. Mach Bonin rose to his feet, smoothing out the front of his dress uniform.

‘There you are,’ he said, as if Mkoll had only stepped outside for a smoke. ‘There’s a parade about to start. I’m late as it is.’

He reached down and slid an old kitbag out from under his cot. He dumped it on the next cot along.

‘I was holding this for you,’ Bonin said, matter-of-factly. ‘That cot’s free, so you can have that.’

Mkoll nodded. ‘We’ll need another bed,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’ asked Bonin.

Mkoll pointed down the hall. Brin Milo was standing in the doorway. He looked reluctant to step inside.

‘Where did you find him?’ Bonin asked.

‘Long story,’ said Mkoll.

A strong wind was blowing in across the High Parade behind the palace. A hard sun burned high in the sky. The pale skies of Eltath were clear of smoke for the first time in months.

Years, probably.

Ibram Gaunt, Lord Executor, walked out onto the field, his camo cloak billowing behind him. Drill officers barked, and the assembled companies snapped to attention. Brigades of Jovani, Helixid, Narmenian, Vitrian, Keyzon and a host of gleaming Urdeshi regiments. To one side, the small formation of Tanith, in perfect order. A row of field guns stood ready to fire the salute.

Gaunt stepped up onto the podium. An Imperial flag had been draped over the lectern. Overhead, huge standard banners swayed and cracked in the wind.

He nodded to the honour guard as he walked past them, and to the seniors of high command in attendance: Urienz, Blackwood, Cybon, Tzara and Grizmund, each one of them regal in their ceremonial uniforms.

Gaunt stepped to the lectern. He took out a sheaf of papers. He looked out at the assembled regiments, then down at his notes. He paused, and gestured to Ludd, who was leading the honour guard. Ludd hurried forwards.

‘My lord?’ Ludd whispered.

‘Take these, Ludd,’ Gaunt said. ‘I won’t need them.’

Ludd took the sheaf of papers, careful not to let any of them blow away in the wind.

‘Isn’t this your speech, sir?’ he asked nervously.

‘It’s someone’s speech,’ said Gaunt. ‘Not mine.’

Ludd stepped back into line, stuffing the papers into his coat pocket. The lords militant and high officers looked at each other, baffled.

‘Astra Militarum,’ said Gaunt, speaking into the vox mic. His words boomed out across the field. ‘Guardsmen. Lasmen. I have been asked to address you today. To deliver thanks for the struggles we have all endured together on Urdesh Forge World, and to celebrate our accomplishments here. Death is a part of those struggles, and that makes it hard to celebrate, even in a time of triumph. I wrote a speech. It was shit, so let’s draw a veil over that.’

A murmur rippled across the field.

‘It was just words,’ Gaunt went on. ‘They rang false to me, so I know for sure they’ll ring false to you too. I’ve heard enough generals speak in my time. It usually means nothing except that they like the sound of their own voices. You all know what you’ve done.’

He paused. He reached into his pocket and took out the signal paper Beltayn had handed to him. He began to unfold it.

‘A few minutes ago,’ Gaunt said into the vox, ‘I was passed a signal. Information that has just been received. I want to share the contents of that signal with you, because it will mean more to you than any glowing words I can muster.’

He cleared his throat, reading off the thin paper, which fluttered and flapped in his gloved hands.

‘Just before noon today, the Astra Militarum Intelligence Service confirmed a report received yesterday from an Aeronautica Imperialis patrol in the Southern Oceanic Zone. The report, which has been verified, declares that seven days ago, on an island called Orchidel, in the Faroppan archipelago, the Archenemy Anarch, known as Sek, was apprehended and terminated by Astra Militarum troops.’

He looked up. The wind blew across the field. The banners whipped and cracked.

‘I repeat,’ he said, ‘the identity is verified and the termination is confirmed. The Anarch is dead. Today, we have achieved a victory that has not been paralleled since Balhaut. Perhaps, the victory of this crusade. I feel that’s the only thing you need to hear from me today.’

He stepped back from the lectern. Despite the wind, he could hear that the applause and cheering had already begun to spread through the lines.

He turned, and beckoned Trooper Perday forward from the honour squad. She looked so nervous and afraid he thought she might faint. In her arms, she clutched the battered old set of Tanith pipes he’d given her three days before, and which she’d been practising on ever since, enough to master the basic skills. The boy was never coming back, but Gaunt felt that the original Tanith traditions ought to be respected.

‘Trooper Perday?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Ree Perday replied, swallowing hard.

‘Now you can play something,’ he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Abnett has written over fifty novels, including Anarch, the latest instalment in the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series. He has also written the Ravenor and Eisenhorn books, the most recent of which is The Magos. For the Horus Heresy, he is the author of Horus Rising, Legion, The Unremembered Empire, Know No Fear and Prospero Burns, the last two of which were both New York Times bestsellers. He also scripted Macragge’s Honour, the first Horus Heresy graphic novel, as well as numerous audio dramas and short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer universes. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.

An extract from Dark Imperium: Plague War.

Weak light bobbed through pitchy black, casting a pale round that grew and shrank upon polished blue marble quarried on a world long ago laid waste. The hum of a grav motor sawed at the quiet of the abandoned hall, though not loudly enough to banish the peace of ages that lay upon it. The lamp was dim as candlelight, and greatly obscured by the iron lantern framing it. The angles of the servo-skull that bore the lantern further cut the glow, but even in the feeble luminance the stone gleamed with flecks of gold. The floor awoke for brief moments at its caress, glinting with a nebula’s richness, before the servo-skull moved on and the paving’s glory was lost to the dark again.

The lonely figure of a man walked at the edge of the light, sometimes embraced by it completely, more often reduced to a collection of shadows and mellow highlights at its edge. The hood of his rough homespun robe was pulled over his head. Sandals woven of cord chased the light at a steady pace. The circle of light was small, but the echo of the man’s footsteps revealed the space it traversed as vast. Less could be discerned about the man, were there anyone there to see him. He was a priest. Little else could be said besides that. It would certainly not be obvious to a casual observer he was militant-apostolic to the Lord Commander. He did not dress as men of his office ordinarily would, in brocade and jewels. He did not seem exalted. He certainly did not feel so. To himself, and to those poor souls he offered the succour of the Emperor’s blessing, he was simply Mathieu.

Mathieu was a man of faith, and to him the Space Marines seemed faithless, ignorant of the true majesty of the Emperor’s divinity, but the Mortuis Ad Monumentum had the air of sanctity nevertheless.

Mathieu liked it for that reason.

Beyond the slap of the priest’s shoes and the whine of the skull, the silence in the Mortuis Ad Monumentum was so total, the sense of isolation so complete, that not even the background thrum of the giant engines pushing the Macragge’s Honour through the warp intruded. The rest of the ship vibrated, sometimes violently, sometimes softly, the growl of the systems always there. Not where the priest walked. The stillness of the ancient hall would not allow it. Within its confines time itself held its breath.

Mathieu had spent his quieter days exploring the hall. Its most singular features were the statues thronging the margins. They were not just in ones or twos, effigies given space to be walked around and admired, nor were they ensconced in alcoves to decorate or commemorate. No, there were crowds of stone men, in places forty deep, all Adeptus Astartes in ancient marks of armour. It may be that they were placed with care once, but no longer, and further into the hall, the more jumbled their arrangements became. The hall had been breached in days gone by, and the statues destroyed. Untidy heaps of limbs were bulldozed carelessly aside and ugly patching marked wounds from ancient times.

The warriors remembered by the statues had died ten thousand years before Mathieu’s birth. Perhaps they had even fallen in the Emperor’s wars to create the Imperium itself. Such an incredible length of years, hard to comprehend, and yet now the being who had led these self-same dead men commanded the ship again.

It dizzied Mathieu that he served a son of the Emperor. He could not quite believe it, even after all that had happened, all that he had seen.

Mathieu stopped in the dark where a group of statues huddled together. White stone glowed grey in the gloom. He had the terrifying notion that they had come alive and gathered to block his path, a phalanx of ghosts angered by profanity. He put aside the thought. He ignored the cold hand of fear creeping up his back. He had come off course, nothing more. It was easy enough to get lost in a hall half a mile wide and almost as long.

His servo-skull bore a large HV upon its forehead. By the letter V alone he called it. He could not bring himself to refer to it by her name.

‘V,’ he said. His voice was pure and strong. It cut the shadows and frightened back the dark. Mathieu was an unimposing man, young, slight, but his voice was remarkable; a weapon greater than the worn laspistol he carried on his left hip, or the chainsword he bore into battle. Loud and commanding before his congregations, it seemed tiny in the face of the dead past, but like a silver bell chiming deep in winter-stilled woods, it was clear and bright and lovely.

V emitted a flat, static-laced melody of acknowledgement.

‘Ascend five feet. Elevate lamp, pan left to right.’

The skull’s motors pulsed. It rose up into the high voids of the monumentum. The light abandoned Mathieu, angling instead for the still figures surrounding him. Stone faces leapt from the dark, as if snatching the chance to be remembered, quickly drowning again in the black as V turned away. For a moment Mathieu’s fear came back. He did not recognise where he was, until V’s pale lamplight washed over a Space Marine captain of some unremembered era, the right arm held so proudly aloft broken off at the elbow. This warrior he recognised.

Mathieu breathed in relief. ‘Descend to original height. Rotate lantern downwards to light my way. Proceed.’

V voiced its fractured compliance. There were pretensions to musicality in the signal, but the limited vox-unit was fifth hand at least, scavenged like all V’s other fittings, and overuse had blunted its harmonies.

‘Proceed to the hermitage, quickly now. My time for this duty is running out.’

V banked around and swept onwards. Mathieu picked up his pace to keep up.

The Adeptus Astartes pretended to disdain worship. It was well known among the Adeptus Ministorum that they did not regard the Emperor as a god. Mathieu had known this all through his calling. The truth had proved to be not so simple. On the ship there were many shrines, decorated lovingly with images of death, and containing the bones of heroes in reliquaries that rivalled those of the most lauded saint in their ostentation. The Ultramarines’ cult was strong, though they did not worship. In chapels that denied religion their skull-masked priests protested loudly about the human nature of the Emperor and the primarchs while venerating them as gods in all but name. Their practice of honour, duty and obedience was conducted with a fanatical devotion.

There was an element of wilful blindness to their practices, thought Mathieu.

The way the Adeptus Astartes reacted to Roboute Guilliman bordered on awe. From the beginning Guilliman had warned Mathieu himself not to be worshipful, that he was not the son of a god. The priest had witnessed how irritated the primarch became with those who did not heed his words. And yet, these godless sons of his looked upon him, and they could barely hide their fervour.

Mathieu did as he had been told. He affected to see the man Guilliman wished to be, but his familiarity with the primarch was largely an act. Mathieu did revere the primarch, sincerely and deeply.

Previous militant-apostolics had carved themselves out a little realm in Guilliman’s palace spire atop the giant battleship. The position came with appropriately luxurious quarters. Some time before Mathieu’s tenure the largest room had been converted into a chapel of the Imperial Cult. It was gaudy, too concerned with expressions of wealth and influence and not faith. Mathieu had done his best to make it more austere. He removed some of the more vulgar fixtures, replaced statues of ancient cardinals with those of his favourite saints. There had been a sculpture of the Emperor in Glory standing proudly, sword in hand, upon the altar. Mathieu had replaced that with an effigy of the Emperor in Service; a grimacing corpse bound to the Golden Throne. Mathieu had always preferred that representation for it honoured the great sacrifice the Emperor made for His species. The Emperor’s service to mankind was so much more important than His aspects as a warrior, ruler, scientist or seer. Mathieu always tried to follow the example of the Emperor in Service, giving up what little comfort he had to aid the suffering mass of humanity.

The chapel was tainted by the dishonesties of holy men. He preferred to lead worship with the ship’s bonded crew in their oily churches. He maintained the private chapel only because the display was expected of him. He rarely prayed there.

For his private devotions he came down to this deserted cult monument of irreligious men.

At the back of the hall was a small charnel house, where the stacked skulls of fallen heroes were cemented in grim patterns. The dust lay thick on all its decoration when Mathieu had discovered it. Nobody had been there for a long time.

Beneath the eyeless stares of transhuman skulls, he had set up a plain wooden altar, this also bearing an effigy of the Emperor in Service. Arrayed around it were lesser statues of the nine loyal primarchs, as could be found in any holy place. That representing Roboute Guilliman was three times the size of the others. Mathieu genuflected to both Emperor and His Avenging Son, though the real Guilliman might well shoot him for doing so.

He knelt awhile and prayed to the statues, the Emperor first, His sons and then finally to Guilliman. He stood and took from a large ammunition box thirty-six candles which he added to the racks of hundreds around the periphery of the room. When the candles were in place upon their spikes, he ignited a small promethium flame, and from it lit the wicks one by one, whispering solemnly over each.

‘Emperor watch over you,’ he said. ‘Emperor watch over you.’

Each candle represented the wish for a prayer from a menial somewhere, those ordinary folk who made up the majority of the Imperial citizenry yet otherwise had no voice. When someone asked him for the blessing of light, Mathieu never refused, no matter how high or low, but promised to burn a candle for every request. There were so many pleas, so many in pain, even within the small world of a starship, that he could not possibly hope to keep his vow. In the end he had taken on aid, as his deacons insisted he should. Having always denied himself servants or servitors he was troubled by how easily he had got used to them. He never wanted to become like other high churchmen, with bloated households thousands strong, and feared this was but the first step on that road.

When he found himself taking the servants for granted, he had taken penance, straining the capacity of his auto-flagellator to punish himself. After his scourging he had prepared this hermitage for himself, clearing it out with his bare hands, washing the floors, crafting the objects of worship. When he had done, he had reverently set up an identical rack of candles to show his sincerity, so now every lost soul had two candles to burn for them; one above lit by his servants, and one below lit by himself. His hermitage was dark when he arrived. He doused the candles when he left and he relit them every single time he went within, until they burned down to stumps. There were always more to replace them.

‘The Lord Guilliman chose me for my humility,’ he said to himself. With one unwavering hand he touched the promethium torch to every stick of wax. His other hand was clenched so tightly in his robes his knuckles glowed white in the candlelight. His auto-flagellator ran at a setting of mild agony. He let the pain thrill his body, purifying him of his selfish thoughts. ‘O Emperor, do not let me lose myself in this office. Do not let me damn myself by forgetting Your grace and Your purpose for me. Let me be free of pride. Let me be pure of purpose. Let me help Lord Guilliman to see the truth of Your light. Help me, O Master of Mankind.’

After an hour, he was finished. He took out a sanctus-astrogator from his robes and let it find the likely position of Terra for him. Whether it truly worked in the warp he did not know, yet he followed its suggestion, and genuflected in the direction of man’s ancestral home, where the Emperor dwelled in majestic pain.

That done, he went to his desk.

He lit six large candles lodged into the open tops of a pair of skulls. They had belonged to the faithful dead, martyred in anonymity by the marauders of Chaos. He thanked each of them for providing him light in the dark. Then he sat down and opened the leather tome he had upon the desk. The paper was smooth and creamy, far better than any he had used before. There were some benefits to being the primarch’s tool. The book fell open at the title page, displaying the legend The Great Plague War. Mathieu turned the pages, looking upon those chapters he had already finished but whose illuminations remained rough sketches. Before committing his thoughts to this history, he worked and reworked them in chapbooks, until he deemed them ready for this first drafting. Today was a momentous day. The next part of his testament was finished and could be laid down for posterity.

Guilliman required so little of him. Mathieu’s assessment of the position of militant-apostolic as a mouthpiece was accurate. He was called upon from time to time to advise the primarch on how to handle the church, or to deliver oratory to one gathering or another. Often, Guilliman rewrote his sermons.

Mathieu filled his time with service to the Emperor as he understood it. As he had gone among the poor and sick on the worlds of Ultramar, now he went among the Chapter and vessel serfs that served aboard the Macragge’s Honour, dispensing alms or medical aid, and bringing spiritual comfort. In the dingy chapels of the lower decks he spoke of the Emperor’s mercy. Baseline humans in the fleet were discouraged from religious demonstrations, for the Ultramarines found open worship distasteful, but they were not forbidden their beliefs either. Mathieu gave them what comfort he could. Their lives were hard. He pitied them.

At other times he wrote. Partly he wrote in slavish imitation of the sainted primarch, whose every spare moment was spent in his scriptorium. Mainly it was because he believed the deeds of Roboute Guilliman should be recorded by one of the faithful for the faithful, and not only preserved in the obscurity of the Ultramarines librarium.

Mathieu turned to the next blank page and opened his inkwell. He looked away from the book, his fingers spread on the paper, and took a moment to steady himself, clear his mind and make his soul ready for the sacred task. Only then did he take up his quill, dip the nib into black ink and meticulously write an ornate title.

The Sainted Guilliman’s triumph upon Espandor against the horrors of the unclean powers.

He drew the letters slowly, filling the bubbles of each with decorative flourishes. Later, should the writing still stand up to his critical eye, he would expand these efforts at illumination, illustrating the document with fine pictures. For now, he sketched in a few ideas, only lightly so he might easily scrape them out. Once done, he thought a moment on whether to name himself as the author of the chapter. He wavered, then decided he would, and wrote quickly before he could change his mind.

As related by Militant-Apostolic Frater Mathieu of the Acronite Mendicants, third line postulant, who was present personally during the campaign.

He regretted his vanity as soon as he finished the sentences. Before commencing each instalment he had the same fruitless inner battle. Knowing only too well how fragmented documents could become over time, he had put his name under every chapter heading. Although he had been there on Espandor, and intended to refer to sights he had seen with his own eyes, there was little need to attribute the writing, less still to point out who he was and who he had been. His story was not the point, the primarch’s was, and yet he yearned to be recognised as its author. There was twofold pride in that sentence, in stating his exalted rank, and in insisting his humble origins so that all would know how high he had risen.

He meditated a moment, asking the Emperor for forgiveness. He resolved to write the entire account of the war, then remove his name. That was the way. He would continue with his ritual debate until the end, then purge himself from the account.

Breathing evenly so as not to disturb his penmanship, he started his story.

Upon Espandor, the Sainted Guilliman did drive back the forces of the dread primarch Mortarion, may he forever be condemned to suffering the Emperor’s punishments for his treachery. With great force and intelligence, the Imperial Regent Guilliman, the last and most faithful of the sons of the living God-Emperor, did set his forces against those of the unspeakable ones, and so remove them from the world and its attendant subject planets. And in the star systems close by he attacked with such aggressive certainty of victory that the fell voidcraft of the enemy were pushed out, and the blockade lifted, so Espandor was brought relief. The cities were retaken, and in them all the Sainted Guilliman wept to see the temples of his father profaned, and the servants of Terra much reduced by sickness and by war, so that only a tenth of the peoples of Espandor who had been before living remained in the Sainted Guilliman’s service, and that of Ultramar, and of He who rules from Terra.

For fifteen days the primarch did battle across Espandor, overthrowing the hegemony of daemons and Heretic Astartes alike. By cunning strategy, he drove them before himself, breaking their might and annihilating them piecemeal with his fury. With lightning strike and surprise assault, he divided the enemy and so overcame them. At the Spires of Priandor he cast down the rusting daemon-golems of the fallen Legio Onerus. The river of Gangatellium ran black with daemonic ichor so deep that to purify its waters required the prayers of twenty-two high cardinals. In the provinces of Berenica, Ebora and Iorscira the enemy were routed and slain. So swift and terrible was the primarch’s advance that all went to disarray before him, whether daemon, mortal, or undying legionary. At every clash the primarch led, the sword of his father flamed bright in his grasp. About the Sainted Guilliman the protection of His angels and His saints burned bright in a terrible nimbus that lit the souls of the faithful with great strength, and smote the servants of the enemy wheresoever it did shine upon them. The minions of the Plague Lord, who feed upon despair and hopelessness, knew despair themselves. Yea! And their skin did smoke at the light’s touch, and their wargear faileth, and the machine things that should not be fell into steaming parts, and were sent out of this realm forever.

Seven battles the primarch waged in defiance of the Plague Lord’s unholy number, for seven brings the Plague Lord power. The seventh battle was the greatest of all.

At the commencement of every fight, Guilliman strode forth out before his armies and spake these words for all to hear.

‘I am the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, fury of the Emperor! These worlds are under my protection. You will be driven out, and cast down, and all your number slain. There shall be no mercy for you who have turned your back on the holy light of Terra, and defied the divine grace of the Emperor. I call to you, and say, present unto me the arch-traitor Mortarion, my brother, fallen primarch and high daemon, and I shall take him, and slay him, and your multitudes will know the mercy of a swift death.’

I, Militant-Apostolic Mathieu, know these to be true accounts, for I was there at the Sainted Guilliman’s side, and fought in the Emperor’s name in the primarch’s sight.

Naturally, Guilliman had not phrased his challenges quite like that, and there was maybe a little bit of flourish around the displays of the primarch’s power. But Mathieu was convinced that the Emperor fought alongside His son. He could practically see Him. One day Guilliman would believe the truth of his father’s nature, and thank Mathieu for showing him the path to faith. What he wrote might not be strictly accurate, but it was truthful, he was sure of that.

These minor additions bothered him not in the least, but another part did cause him disquiet.

His shameful pride had resurfaced. He chewed his lip in anguish, rereading the lines where he mentioned himself. He had fought there. The Emperor’s name was ever on his lips. That, more than the bolts of light his holy gun had fired, had brought many fell beings to ruin. He was, however, far from unique. Many other faithful warriors of the Imperium had lent prayer and las-blast to the charge. Their names were not recorded, why should his be? But then, was it so very wrong to recount his own, modest part in these struggles? In many hagiographies the narrator regaled the reader with their own deeds at the sides of the saints. On the other hand, how many other accounts had he read where there seemed to be no connection between teller and tale because the writer had let modesty win out, when their own deeds had been greater even than Mathieu’s, so as to better honour their subject?

Mathieu’s neck flushed. He was tempted to scratch the last sentence out. He had not intended to include it. Pride moved his hand.

His pen hovered over the offending line. Another memory stopped him. Guilliman had said to him after the battle of the Cooling Spire on Espandor’s scorching equator that he had fought well. The approval of the primarch had been bestowed upon him. Had he not won the right to celebrate himself, if only a little?

He set aside the question for the time being. He was due on the lower decks soon, and he wished to finish before he went. A swift jolt from his auto-flagellator refocused his mind. Once the pain faded, he recommenced his work. The scratching of the pen cast its spell, and he fell into the storyteller’s rhythm.

The power of the enemy was broken by degree. No final glorious struggle was fought upon Espandor, for the enemy was craven and would not be brought to battle, preferring instead the quiet ways of disease and despair. By many hundreds of desperate skirmishes were they finally rooted out. Dirty and hard the struggle was, and seemingly without end. Sickness and maladies of the soul took their toll on all but the most faithful of the Emperor’s servants. But by His mercy the forces of evil are not infinite in their number, and so in this way was Espandor retaken piece by piece, until but small groups of the enemy remained upon its sacred earth, and these were ringed about by the siege lines of the avenging hosts, and marked by them for cleansing violence in due course.

Unto his lieutenants the primarch gave the final tasks of Espandor. War raged across the firmament, yea, from Talasa unto Iax and all places between those systems. In this, wise Lord Guilliman spake to his generals.

‘A single man cannot in every place be, but he might move swiftly, and bring the full force of his might to bear upon the weakest places, and so with pressure crack the walls of the enemy, and shatter his line of supply. Thusly shall we triumph, and make Ultramar clean again.’

So speaking, he took his leave, and with him went fully eighty-nine point three per cent of his armies. From the blighted forests of Espandor did the Lord Primarch Roboute Guilliman set out with mighty host in train, driving his course towards Parmenio where the forces of dread Chaos gathered in great multitude.

This was better, Mathieu thought. More honest.

The warp was in awful tempest as the sainted primarch travelled, and the great vessel Adarnaton was lost with all hands, and others scattered far. The light of the Astronomican did flicker dimly, and be obscured for a space of time, and the fleet was sundered. Lo! And the holy fields of Geller did break, and daemons run amok amid the ships of the Emperor’s servants, and the primarch fought alongside his sons and with the lesser men, and did drive the warp spawn from his ship, and by his example did inspire other men to do the same.

The faithful raised shouted prayer to their Emperor as they fought, and the light of the beacon burned true again, and the warp calmeth, and what daemons did remain were burned by the hymns of the faithful, so that soon no unclean creature remained, and those men struck by unnatural sicknesses were miraculously made well, and those close to death rose up and were become hale!

I saw this. I was there.

He grimaced. He had done it again. This time, he upped the output of his pain device so much that he cried out at its activation.

The expanses of the empyrean thereafter calmed to perfect smoothness, for the Emperor of all Mankind commanded it to be so, and in good time the primarch’s fleet made translation at the Tuesen System, which lies not far from the Parmenio System, and there regathered with much relief, for ships thought lost were brought home into the fold, and losses made good.

Sundry undertakings were ordered to make the fleet fit once more, and a layover of three Terran weeks decreed.

On the ninth day there was a great rejoicing when the sky was rent and from out of the warp came one hundred and one ships in the service of the God-Emperor. Many loyal children of men journeyed from across the Imperium, seeming as if by chance, and Guilliman’s warhost was greatly fortified by this good fortune. Taking his opportunity, Guilliman bade all his astropaths sing out a message without fear, for the warp was at rest, and he told them to summon what other aid they could to Ultramar, for many men under arms and war machines had come already at his command, but more he would have.

And then did he retreat to his strategium awhile, and set himself into thought.

He emerged ten hours later, and lo! was there the promise of victory upon his face, and a light did shine about his head. ‘Tell my finest astropaths to speak with their brothers upon the star fortress Galatan, and bring it hence to orbit around the prime world of Parmenio, and rain its fire down upon the unbelievers and the faithless, for in this way am I sure to destroy my brother, and undo the works of the unspeakable Plague God.’

Immaterial breach was made without incident, and in fine array the ships sailed again upon the seas of the empyrean where the light of the Emperor may be witnessed, and His eye is upon all.

From Tuesen, Parmenio was but two weeks’ journey, and the beacon light in the empyrean blazed strongly, and the soul seas between were much becalmed, so that the Navigator of the Macragge’s Honour, Guilliman’s great conveyance, did come down from his navigatorium to speak in wonder and in faith of the sights he had seen upon the currents of that Other Place. Of angels, and of saints, and walls of gold that held back the tides of evil that would drown us all, and take out our souls from our bodies.

By the grace of the Emperor, messages passed between the fleet and the fortress of Galatan, whose power was commanded that day by Chapter Master Bardan Dovaro of the Novamarines. Dovaro promised fealty, and immediate obedience, but delivered his utmost apologies. The star fortress, stationed then at Drohl, was slow in its hugeness, and so was delayed by dint of its own might, for verily it mounted many guns and carried a great host of the Emperor’s warriors, and much labour was needed to bring it out of Drohl thence to Parmenio. The Avenging Son would not wait, but told Dovaro to come as fast as he might, and upon arrival deploy the ancient power of Galatan in the Imperium’s favour.

Guilliman was resolved to make haste to the prime world of the Parmenio System with the greater part of his armies, where the enemy gathered all but exclusively, and there to save those of the good people of the Imperium that he might from painful death and the soul oblivion. Victory was assured by His decree, for the Emperor protects, as all faithful men and women know.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Johan Grenier.

Anarch © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Anarch, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-861-6

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